Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [182]
Everard Webley rose in his stirrups. ‘Keep your ranks,’ he called peremptorily. ‘How dare you leave the ranks?’
There was a scurrying of officers to the scene of confusion, an angry shouting of orders. The over-zealous Freemen slunk back to their places. Holding a bloody handkerchief to his nose and escorted by two policemen, their enemy marched away. He had lost his hat. The dishevelled hair blazed red in the sunlight. It was Illidge.
Everard Webley turned to the officer commanding the company whose men had broken their ranks. ‘Insubordination,’ he began; and his voice was cold and hard, not loud, but dangerously penetrating, ‘insubordination is the worst…’
Illidge removed his handkerchief from his nose and shouted in a shrill falsetto, ‘Oh, you naughty boys!’
There was a guffaw from the spectators. Everard ignored the interruption and having concluded his rebuke, went on with his speech. Commanding and yet persuasive, passionate, but controlled and musical, his voice thrilled out; and in a moment the shattered silence was reconstructed round his words, the dissipated attention was once more focussed and concentrated. There had been a rebellion; he had made another conquest.
Spandrell waited without impatience. Illidge’s tardiness gave him the opportunity to drink an extra cocktail or two. He was at his third and feeling already much better and more cheerful, when the restaurant door swung open and in walked Illidge, very militant and defiant, with an air of truculently parading his blackened eye.
‘Drunk and disorderly?’ questioned Spandrell at the sight of the bruise. ‘Or did you meet an outraged husband? Or have words with a lady?’
Illidge sat down and recounted his adventure, boastfully and with embellishments. He had been, according to his own account, a mixture of Horatius defending the bridge and St. Stephen under the shower of stones.
‘The ruffians!’ said Spandrell sympathetically. But his eyes shone with malicious laughter. The misfortunes of his friends were an unfailing source of amusement to him, and this of Illidge’s was a particularly entertaining disaster.
‘But at least I spoilt the best effect in Webley’s disgusting oration,’ Illidge went on in the same selfcongratulating tone.
‘It might have been slightly more satisfactory if you’d spoilt his face for him.’
Illidge was stung by the note of mockery in Spandrell’s words. ‘Spoiling his face wouldn’t be enough,’ he said with ferocity, scowling as he spoke. ‘The man ought to be exterminated. He’s a public danger, he and his gang of bravoes.’ He broke into profanity.
Spandrell only laughed. ‘It’s easy to yammer,’ he said. ‘Why not do something for a change? A little direct action in Webley’s own style.’
The other shrugged his shoulders apologetically. ‘We’re not well enough organized.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought it needed much organization to knock a man on the head. No, the real trouble is that you’re not courageous enough.’
Illidge blushed. ‘That’s a lie!’
‘Not well enough organized!’ Spandrell went on contemptuously ‘At least you’re modern in your excuses. The great god organization. Even art and love will soon be bowing down like everything else. Why are your verses so bad? Because the poetry industry isn’t well enough organized. And the impotent lover will excuse himself in the same way and assure the indignant lady that, next time, she’ll find his organization perfect. No, no, my dear Illidge, it won’t do, you know; it won’t do.’
‘You’re being very funny, no doubt,’ said Illidge, still pink with anger. ‘But you’re talking rot. You can’t compare poetry and politics. A political party’s a lot of men who’ve got to be disciplined and held together. A poet’s one man.’
‘But so’s a murderer, isn’t he?’ Spandrell’s tone, his smile were still sarcastic. Illidge felt the blood running up again into his face like the warmth of a suddenly flaring inward fire. He hated Spandrell for his power of humiliating him, for making him feel small, a fool and ashamed. He had come in feeling important and heroic, flushed with satisfaction. And now, with a few slow sneering words, Spandrell had turned his selfsatisfaction to an angry shame. There was a silence; they ate their soup without speaking. When his plate was empty,