“Hullo,” said Walter, as he got within speaking distance. The two young men shook hands. “How’s science?” What a silly question! thought Walter as he pronounced the words.
Illidge shrugged his shoulders. “Less fashionable than the arts, to judge by this party.” He looked round him. “I’ve seen half the writing and painting section of Who’s Who this evening. The place fairly stinks of art.”
“Isn’t that rather a comfort for science?” said Walter. “The arts don’t enjoy being fashionable.”
“Oh, don’t they! Why are you here, then?”
“Why indeed?” Walter parried the question with a laugh. He looked round, wondering where Lucy could have gone. He had not caught sight of her since the music stopped.
“You’ve come to do your tricks and have your head patted,” said Illidge, trying to get a little of his own confidence back; the memory of that slip on the stairs, of Lady Edward’s lack of interest in newts, of the military gentlemen’s insolence still rankled. “Just look at that girl there with the frizzy dark hair, in cloth of silver. The one like a little white negress. What about her, for example? It’d be pleasant to have one’s head patted by that sort of thing—eh?”
“Well, would it?”
Illidge laughed. “You take the high philosophical line, do you? But, my dear chap, admit it’s all humbug. I take it myself, so I ought to know. To tell you the honest truth, I envy you art-mongers your success. It makes me really furious when I see some silly, half-witted little writer …”
“Like me, for example.”
“No, you’re a cut above most of them,” conceded Illidge. “But when I see some wretched little scribbler with a tenth of my intelligence making money and being cooed over, while I’m disregarded, I do get furious sometimes.”
“You ought to regard it as a compliment. If they coo over us, it’s because they can understand, more or less, what we’re after. They can’t understand you; you’re above them. Their neglect is a compliment to your mind.”
“Perhaps; but it’s a damned insult to my body.” Illidge was painfully conscious of his appearance. He knew that he was ugly and looked undistinguished. And knowing, he liked to remind himself of the unpleasant fact, like a man with an aching tooth who is forever fingering the source of his pain just to make sure it is still painful. “If I looked like that enormous lout, Webley, they wouldn’t neglect me, even if my mind were like Newton’s. The fact is,” he said, giving the aching tooth a good tug this time, “I look like an anarchist. You’re lucky, you know. You look like a gentleman, or at least like an artist. You’ve no idea what a nuisance it is to look like an intellectual of the lower classes.” The tooth was responding excruciatingly; he pulled at it the harder. “It’s not merely that the women neglect you—these women, at any rate. That’s bad enough. But the police refuse to neglect you; they take a horrid inquisitive interest. Would you believe it, I’ve been twice arrested, simply because I look like the sort of man who makes infernal machines.”
“It’s a good story,” said Walter sceptically.
“But true, I swear. Once it was in this country. Near Chesterfield. They were having a coal strike. I happened to be looking on at a fight between strikers and blacklegs. The police didn’t like my face and grabbed me. It took me hours to get out of their clutches. The other time was in Italy. Somebody had just been trying to blow up Mussolini, I believe. Anyhow, a gang of black-shirted bravos made me get out of the train at Genoa and searched me from top to toe. Intolerable! Simply because of my subversive face.”
“Which corresponds, after all, to your ideas.”
“Yes, but a face isn’t evidence, a face isn’t a crime. Well yes,” he added parenthetically, “perhaps some faces are crimes. Do you know General Knoyle?” Walter nodded. “His is a capital offence. Nothing short of hanging would do for a man like that. God! how I’d like to kill them all!” Had he not slipped on the stairs and been snubbed by a stupid man-butcher? “How I loathe the rich! Loathe them! Don’t you think they’re horrible?”
“More horrible than the poor?” The recollection of Wetherington’s sickroom made him almost at once feel rather ashamed of the question.
“Yes, yes. There’s something peculiarly base and ignoble and diseased about the rich. Money breeds a kind of gangrened insensitiveness. It’s inevitable. Jesus understood. That bit about the camel and the needle’s eye is a mere statement of fact. And remember that other bit about loving your neighbours. You’ll be thinking I’m a Christian at this rate,” he added with parenthetic apology. “But honour where honour is due. The man had sense; he saw what was what. Neighbourliness is the touchstone that shows up the rich. The rich haven’t got any neighbours.”
“But, damn it, they’re not anchorites.”
“But they have no neighbours in the sense that the poor have neighbours. When my mother had to go out, Mrs. Cradock
