Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [40]
‘Three-formed Hecate,’ he thought, blinking at the round brilliance. ‘But what about Sita Ram and Daulat Singh and the station-master, what about old appalling India, what about justice and liberty, what about progress and the future? The fact is, I don’t care. Not a pin. It’s disgraceful. But I don’t. And the forms of Hecate aren’t three. They’re a thousand, they’re millions. The tides. The Nemorensian goddess, the Tifatinian. Varying directly as the product of the masses and inversely as the square of the distances. A florin at arm’s length, but as big as the Russian Empire. Bigger than India. What a comfort it will be to be back in Europe again! And to think there was a time when I read books about yoga and did breathing exercises and tried to persuade myself that I didn’t really exist! What a fool! It was the result of talking with that idiot Burlap. But luckily people don’t leave much trace on me. They make an impression easily, like a ship in water. But the water closes up again. I wonder what this Italian ship will be like to-morrow? The Lloyd Triestino boats are always supposed to be good. “Luckily,” I said; but oughtn’t one to be ashamed of one’s indifference? That parable of the sower. The seed that fell in shallow ground. And yet, obviously, it’s no use pretending to be what one isn’t. One sees the results of that in Burlap. What a comedian! But he takes in a lot of people. Including himself, I suppose. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a conscious hypocrite, except for special occasions. You can’t keep it up all the time. All the same, it would be good to know what it’s like to believe in something to the point of being prepared to kill people or get yourself killed. It would be an experience….’
Elinor had lifted her face towards the same bright disc. Moon, full moon…. And instantly she had changed her position in space and time. She dropped her eyes and turned towards her husband; she took his hand and leaned tenderly against him.
‘Do you remember those evenings?’ she asked. ‘In the garden, at Gattenden. Do you remember, Phil?’
Elinor’s words came to his ears from a great distance and from a world in which, for the moment, he felt no interest. He roused himself with reluctance. ‘Which evenings? ‘ he asked, speaking across gulfs, and in the rather flat and colourless voice of one who answers an importunate telephone.
At the sound of that telephone voice Elinor quickly drew away from him. To press yourself against someone who turns out simply not to be there is not only disappointing; it is also rather humiliating. Which evenings, indeed!
‘Why don’t you love me any more?’ she asked despairingly. As if she could have been talking about any other evenings than those of that wonderful summer they had spent, just after their marriage, at her mother’s house. ‘You don’t even take any interest in me now—less than you would in a piece of furniture, much less than in a book.’
‘But, Elinor, what are you talking about?’ Philip put more astonishment into his voice than he really felt. After the first moment, when he had had time to come to the surface, so to speak, from the depths of his reverie, he had understood what she meant, he had connected this Indian moon with that which had shone, eight years ago, on the Hertfordshire garden. He might have said so, of course. It would have made things easier. But he was annoyed at having been interrupted, he didn’t like to be reproached, and the temptation to score a debater’s point against his wife was strong. ‘I ask a simple question,’ he went on, ‘merely wanting to know what you mean. And you retort by complaining that I don’t love you. I fail to see the logical connection.’
‘But you know quite well