Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [186]
That Sunday afternoon Elinor and Everard Webley drove down into the country.
‘Forty-three miles in an hour and seven minutes,’ said Everard looking at his watch as he stepped out of the car. ‘Not bad considering that includes getting out of London and being held up by that filthy charabanc in Guildford. Not at all bad.’
‘And what’s more,’ said Elinor, ‘we’re still alive. If you knew the number of times I just shut my eyes and only expected to open them again on the Day of Judgment….’
He laughed, rather glad that she should have been so frightened by the furiousness of his driving. Her terrors gave him a pleasing sense of power and superiority. He took her arm protectively and they walked away down the green path into the wood. Everard drew a deep breath.
‘This is better than making political speeches,’ he said, pressing her arm.
‘Still,’ said Elinor, ‘it must be rather wonderful to sit on a horse and make a thousand people do whatever you want.’
Everard laughed. ‘Unfortunately there’s a bit more in politics than that.’ He glanced at her. ‘You enjoyed the meeting?’
‘I was thrilled.’ She saw him again on his white horse, heard his strong vibrating voice, remembered her exultation and those sudden tears. Magnificent, she said to herself, magnificent! But there was no recapturing the exultation. His hand was on her arm, his huge presence loomed almost threateningly over her. ‘Is he going to kiss me?’ she nervously wondered. She tried to drive out the questioning dread and fill its place with yesterday’s exultation. Magnificent! But the dread would not be exorcised. ‘I thought your speech was splendid,’ she said aloud and wondered parenthetically as she spoke what it had been about She remembered the sound and timbre of the words, but not their significance. Hopeless! ‘Oh, what lovely honeysuckle!’
Everard reached up, enormous, and picked a couple of blossoms. ‘Such beauty, such loveliness!’ He quoted Keats, fumbled in his memory for a line in the Midsummer Night’s Dream. He wondered lyrically why one lived in towns, why one wasted one’s time in the pursuit of money and power, when there was all this beauty waiting to be known and loved.
Elinor listened rather uncomfortably. He seemed to turn it on, this love of beauty, like an electric light—turn out the love of power, turn out efficiency and political preoccupations and turn on the love of beauty. But why shouldn’t he, after all? There was nothing wrong in liking beautiful things. Nothing, except that in some obscure indescribable way Everard’s love of beauty wasn’t quite right. Too deliberate was it? Too occasional? Too much for holidays only? Too conventional, too heavy, too humourlessly reverent? She preferred him as a lover of power. As a power-lover he was somehow of better quality than as a beauty-lover. A poor beauty-lover, perhaps, because he was such a good power-lover. By compensation. Everything has to be paid for.
They walked on. In an open glade between the trees the foxgloves were coming into flower.
‘Like torches burning upwards from the bottom,’ said Everard poetically.
Elinor halted in front of one tall plant whose first flower-bells were on a level with her eyes. The red flesh of the petals was cool and resilient between her fingers. She peeped into the open bell-mouth.
‘Think of the discomfort of having freckles in one’s throat,’ she said. ‘Not to mention little beetles.’
They moved away in silence through the trees. It was Everard who first spoke.
‘Will you ever love me?’ he asked suddenly.
‘You know how fond I am of you, Everard.’ Her heart sank; the moment had come, he would want to kiss her. But he made no gesture, only laughed, rather mournfully.
‘Very fond of me,’ he repeated. ‘Ah, if only you could be a little less reasonable, a little more insane If only you knew what loving was!’
‘Isn’t it a good thing somebody should be sane? ‘ said Elinor. ‘Sane beforehand, I mean. For everybody can be sane afterwards. Much too sane, when the fit’s over and the lovers begin to wonder whether, after all, the world was well lost. Think, Everard, think first. Do you want to lose the world?