The Rebel Angels

"Sit down," said Hollier; "I want to talk to you. I want to warn you against Parlabane. I know that sounds extreme, and that you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself, and the rest of that nonsense. When I told you to try to understand him I had no idea you would go so far. But I mean precisely what I say: Parlabane is not a man you should become deeply involved with. Why? In the light of the work you and I share I don't have to explain in modern terms; very old terms are quite sufficient and exact – Parlabane is an evil man, and evil is infectious, and you mustn't catch the infection."

"Isn't that rather hard?" I said.

"No. You understand that I'm not talking village morality, but something that truly belongs to paleo-psychology. There are evil people; they're not common, but they exist. It takes just as much energy to be evil as it does to be good and few people have energy for either course. But he has. There is a destroying demon in him, and he would drag you down, and then jeer at you because you had yielded to him. Watch your step, Maria."

I was startled to hear him say what I had been saying to myself ever since I woke. That was Hollier – a touch of the wizard. But one can't just bow to the wizard as if one had no mind of one's own. Not yet, at least.

"I think he is rather pathetic."

"So?"

"He was telling me about his life."

"Yes, he must have it nicely polished up by now."

"Well, it's not a happy story."

"But amusingly told, I am sure."

"Are you down on him because he's Gay?"

"He's a sodomite, if there's anything gay about that. But that doesn't make him evil, necessarily. So was Oscar Wilde, and a kinder, more generous man never walked in shoe leather. Evil isn't what one does, it's something one is that infects everything one does. He told you the whole thing, did he?"

"No, he didn't. Most people when they set out on the story of their lives give you quite a passage about childhood; he began much later."

"Then I'll tell you a few things. I've known him since we were boys; at school together, and at summer camp together. Did he tell you what happened to his face?"

"No, and I didn't get a chance to ask."

"Well, it's not much in the telling, but much in the consequence. One summer when I suppose we were fourteen, we were at camp, and Parlabane, who was always very good with his hands, was working at a repair on a canoe. He was under the direction of one of the counsellors, and everything seemed to be in order. But he had set a pot of glue on a flame to heat it, without putting it in a pan of water: what the counsellor was doing at that moment, God knows. It burst and covered his face with the boiling stuff. He was rushed to hospital near by, and some drastic action had to be taken, and on the whole a good job was done, for he was left with a scarred face, but still a face, and his eyes didn't suffer as much as one might have feared. I went with him, and the camp people arranged for me to stay in the hospital because I was his best friend, and they wanted him to have a friend near by. When he wasn't in the operating-room I sat by his bed and held his hand for three days.

"All that time he was raging with anger, because his parents didn't come. They could have made it in a few hours, and the camp people had been in touch, but nobody appeared. On the fourth day they turned up – mousy, ineffectual Father, and his Mother, who was quite another kettle of fish. She was big in city politics – Board of Education, and then an Alderman – and a very busy woman indeed, as she explained. She had come as soon as she could, but she couldn't stay long. She was all affection, all charm, and, as I had cause to know, a really intelligent and capable person, but she was not rich in maternal concern.

"The way Parlabane talked to her was so dreadful that I wanted to creep out of the room, but he wouldn't release my hand. She was his Mother, and when he was suffering what was she doing? Labouring for the public good, and unable to set it aside for the private need.

"She took it very well. Laughed gently and said, 'Oh, come on, Johnny, it's bad but it isn't the end of the world, now, is it?'

"Then he began to cry, and because of the injuries to his eyes, that was excruciatingly painful and soon crying became screaming, coming from the little hole they had left for his mouth in all the bandaging. It was just enough to admit a feeding-tube. When he spoke it was like a child speaking from a well, muffled and indistinct but terrible in meaning.

"The little northern hospital was heavy with summer heat, because there was no air-conditioning in the wards; the bandages must have been insupportably hot, and the wounds sore, and the sedatives sickening to feel at work. The screaming brought a doctor with a syringe and soon John screamed no more, but Mrs. Parlabane never lost her composure.