Webley shrugged his shoulders. “Dotty old lunatic!” he said to himself and aloud, “Parallel straight lines never meet, Lord Edward. So I’ll bid you good night.” He took his leave.
A minute later the Old Man and his assistant were making their way up the triumphal staircase to their world apart.
“What a relief!” said Lord Edward, as he opened the door of his laboratory. Voluptuously, he sniffed the faint smell of the absolute alcohol in which the specimens were pickled. “These parties! One’s thankful to get back to science. Still, the music was really …” His admiration was inarticulate.
Illidge shrugged his shoulders. “Parties, music, science—alternative entertainments for the leisured. You pays your money and you takes your choice. The essential is to have the money to pay.” He laughed disagreeably.
Illidge resented the virtues of the rich much more than their vices. Gluttony, sloth, sensuality, and all the less comely products of leisure and an independent income could be forgiven, precisely because they were discreditable. But disinterestedness, spirituality, incorruptibility, refinement of feeling, and exquisiteness of taste—these were commonly regarded as qualities to be admired; that was why he so specially disliked them. For these virtues, according to Illidge, were as fatally the product of wealth as were chronic guzzling and breakfast at eleven.
“These bourgeois,” he complained, “they go about handing one another bouquets for being so disinterested—that is to say, for having enough to live on without being compelled to work or be preoccupied about money. Then there’s another bouquet for being able to afford to refuse a tip. And another for having enough money to buy the apparatus of cultured refinement. And yet another for having the time to spare for art and reading and elaborate long-drawn lovemaking. Why can’t they be frank and say outright what they’re all the time implying—that the root of all their virtues is a five percent gilt-edged security?”
The amused affection which he felt for Lord Edward was tempered by a chronic annoyance at the thought that all the Old Man’s intellectual and moral virtues, all his endearing eccentricities and absurdities were only made possible by the really scandalous state of his bank balance. And this latent disapproval became acute whenever he heard Lord Edward being praised, admired, or even laughed at by others. Laughter, liking, and admiration were permitted to him because he understood and could forgive. Other people did not even realize that there was anything to forgive. Illidge was always quick to inform them.
“If the Old Man wasn’t the descendant of monastery-robbers,” he would say to the praisers or admirers, “he’d be in the workhouse or the loony asylum.”
And yet he was genuinely fond of the Old Man, he genuinely admired his talents and his character. The world, however, might be excused for not realizing the fact. “Unpleasant” was the ordinary comment on Lord Edward’s assistant.
But being unpleasant to and about the rich, besides a pleasure, was also, in Illidge’s eyes, a sacred duty. He owed it to his class, to society at large, to the future, to the cause of justice. Even the Old Man himself was not spared. He had only to breathe a word in favour of the soul (for Lord Edward had what his assistant could only regard as a shameful and adulterous passion for idealistic metaphysics); Illidge would at once leap out at him with a sneer about capitalist philosophy and bourgeois religion. An expression of distaste for hardheaded business men, of indifference to material interests, of sympathy for the poor, would bring an immediate reference, more or less veiled, but always sarcastic, to the Tantamount millions. There were days (and owing to the slip on the stairs and that snub from the General, this day was one of them), when even a reference to pure science elicited its ironic comment. Illidge was an enthusiastic biologist; but as a class-conscious citizen he had to admit that pure science, like good taste and boredom, perversity and platonic love, is a product of wealth and leisure. He was not afraid of being logical and deriding even his own idol.
“Money to pay,” he repeated. “That’s the essential.”
The Old Man looked rather guiltily at his assistant. These implied reproofs made him feel uncomfortable. He tried to change the subject. “What about our tadpoles?” he asked. “The asymmetrical ones.” They had a brood of tadpoles hatched from eggs that had been kept abnormally warm on one side and abnormally cold on the other. He moved toward the glass tank in which they were kept. Illidge followed.
“Asymmetrical tadpoles!” he repeated. “Asymmetrical tadpoles! What a refinement! Almost as good as playing Bach on the flute or having a palate for wine.” He thought of his brother Tom, who had weak lungs and worked a broaching machine in a motor factory at Manchester. He remembered washing days and the pink crinkled skin of his mother’s water-sodden hands. “Asymmetrical tadpoles!” he said once more and laughed.
“Strange,” said Mrs. Betterton, “strange that a great artist should be such a cynic.” In Burlap’s company she preferred to believe that John Bidlake had meant what he said. Burlap on cynicism was uplifting and Mrs. Betterton liked to be uplifted. Uplifting too on greatness, not to mention art. “For you must admit,” she added, “he is a great artist.”
Burlap nodded slowly. He did not look directly at Mrs. Betterton, but kept his eyes averted and downcast as though he were addressing some little personage invisible to everyone but himself, standing to one side of her—his private daemon, perhaps; an emanation from himself, a little Doppelgänger. He was a man of middle height with a stoop and a rather slouching gait. His hair was dark, thick and curly, with a natural tonsure as big as a medal showing pink on the crown of his head. His grey eyes were very deeply set, his nose and chin pronounced but well shaped, his mouth full-lipped and rather wide. A mixture, according to old Bidlake, who was a caricaturist in words as well as with
