Read Online Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley - Free Book Online Page A

noticed.’ The annoyance, expressed in his frown and his ill-mannered words, was partly genuine, partly assumed. Many people, he had found, are frightened of anger; he cultivated his natural ferocity. It kept people at a distance, saved him from being bothered.
    ‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Lady Edward with an expression of terror that was frankly a caricature.
    ‘Did you want anything?’ he demanded in the tone in which he might have addressed an importunate beggar in the street.
    ‘You do look cross.’
    ‘If that was all you wanted to say to me, I think I might as well…’
    ‘Lady Edward, meanwhile, had been examining him critically out of her candidly impertinent eyes.
    ‘You know,’ she said, interrupting him in the middle of his sentence, as though unable to delay for a moment longer the announcement of her great and sudden discovery,’ you ought to play the part of Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Yes, really. You have the ideal face for a pirate king. Hasn’t he, Mr. Babbage?’ She caught at Illidge as he was passing, disconsolately alien, through the crowd of strangers.
    ‘Good evening,’ he said. The cordiality of Lady Edward’s smile did not entirely make up for the insult of his unremembered name.
    ‘Webley, this is Mr. Babbage, who helps my husband with his work.’ Webley nodded a distant acknowledgment of Illidge’s existence. ‘But don’t you think he’s like a pirate king, Mr. Babbage? ‘ Lady Edward went on. ‘Look at him now.’
    Illidge uncomfortably laughed. ‘Not that I’ve seen many pirate kings,’ he said.
    ‘But of course,’ Lady Edward cried out, ‘I’d forgotten; he is a pirate king. In real life. Aren’t you, Webley?’
    Everard Webley laughed.’Oh, certainly, certainly.’
    ‘Because, you see,’ Lady Edward explained, turning confidentially to Illidge, ‘this is Mr. Everard Webley. The head of the British Freemen. You know those men in the green uniform? Like the male chorus at a musical comedy.’
    Illidge smiled maliciously and nodded. So this, he was thinking, was Everard Webley. The founder and the head of the Brotherhood of British Freemen—the B.B.F.’s, the ‘B—y, b—ing, f—s,’ as their enemies called them. Inevitably; for, as the extremely well-informed correspondent of the Figaro once remarked in an article devoted to the Freemen, ‘les initiales B.B.F. ont, pour le public anglais, une signification plutot pejorative.’ Webley had not thought of that, when he gave his Freemen their name. It pleased Illidge to reflect that he must be made to think of it very often now.
    ‘If you’ve finished being funny,’ said Everard, ‘I’ll take my leave.’
    Tinpot Mussolini, Illidge was thinking. Looks his part, too. (He had a special personal hatred of anyone who was tall and handsome, or who looked in any way distinguished. He himself was small and had the appearance of a very intelligent street Arab, grown up.) Great lout!’
    ‘But you’re not offended by anything I said, are you?’ Lady Edward asked with a great show of anxiety and contrition.
    Illidge remembered a cartoon in the Daily Herald. ‘The British Freemen,’ Webley had had the insolence to say, ‘exist to keep the world safe for intelligence.’ The cartoon showed Webley and half a dozen of his uniformed bandits kicking and bludgeoning a workman to death. Behind them a top-hatted company-director looked on approvingly. Across his monstrous belly sprawled the word: INTELLIGENCE.
    ‘Not offended, Webley?’ Lady Edward repeated.
    ‘Not in the least. I’m only rather busy. You see,’ he explained in his silkiest voice, ‘ I have things to do. I work, if you know what that means.’
    Illidge wished that the hit had been scored by someone else. The dirty ruffian! He himself was a communist. Webley left them. Lady Edward watched him ploughing his way through the crowd. ‘Like a steam engine, she said. ‘What energy! But so touchy. These politicians—worse than actresses. Such vanity!