“Oh, it’s n-nothing,” Peter declared. And twisting his handkerchief round the bitten hand, he thrust it into his pocket.
Coo, meanwhile, had fastened the end of her leash to Pongo’s collar. “You can put him down now,” she said.
Peter did as he was told. The little black dog immediately bounded forward in the direction of his reluctantly retreating enemy. He came to the end of his tether with a jerk that brought him up on to his hind legs and kept him, barking, in the position of a rampant lion on a coat of arms.
“But are you sure it’s nothing?” Husky insisted. “Let me look at it.”
Obediently, Peter pulled off the handkerchief and held out his hand. It seemed to him that all was happening as he had hoped. Then he noticed with horror that the nails were dirty. If only, if only he had thought of washing before he went out! What would they think of him? Blushing, he tried to withdraw his hand. But Husky held it.
“Wait,” she said. And then added: “It’s a nasty bite.”
“Horrid,” affirmed Coo, who had also bent over it. “I’m so awfully sorry that my stupid dog should have...”
“You ought to go straight to a chemist,” said Husky, interrupting her, “and get him to disinfect it and tie it up.”
She lifted her eyes from his hand and looked into his face.
“A chemist,” echoed Coo, and also looked up.
Peter looked from one to the other, dazzled equally by the wide-open blue eyes and the narrowed, secret eyes of green. He smiled at them vaguely and vaguely shook his head. Unobtrusively he wrapped up his hand in his handkerchief and thrust it away, out of sight.
“It’s n-nothing,” he said.
“But you must,” insisted Husky.
“You must,” cried Coo.
“N-nothing,” he repeated. He didn’t want to go to a chemist. He wanted to stay with the goddesses.
Coo turned to Husky. “Qu’est-ce qu’on donne à ce petit bonhomme?” she asked, speaking very quickly and in a low voice.
Husky shrugged her shoulders and made a little grimace suggestive of uncertainty. “Il serait offensé, peut-être,” she suggested.
“Tu crois?”
Husky stole a rapid glance at the subject of their discussion, taking him in critically from his cheap felt hat to his cheap boots, from his pale spotty face to his rather dirty hands, from his steel framed spectacles to his leather watch-guard. Peter saw that she was looking at him and smiled at her with shy, vague rapture. How beautiful she was! He wondered what they had been whispering about together. Perhaps they were debating whether they should ask him to tea. And no sooner had the idea occurred to him than he was sure of it. Miraculously, things were happening just as they happened in his dreams. He wondered if he would have the face to tell them — this first time — that they could look for taxis in his heart.
Husky turned back to her companion. Once more she shrugged her shoulders. “Raiment, je ne sais pas,” she whispered.
“Si on lei donna it one livre?” suggested Coo.
Husky nodded. “Comme tu voudras.” And while the other turned away to fumble unobtrusively in her purse, she addressed herself to Peter.
“You were awfully brave,” she said, smiling.
Peter could only shake his head, blush and lower his eyes from before that steady, self-assured, cool gaze. He longed to look at her; but when it came to the point, he simply could not keep his eyes steadily fixed on those unwavering eyes of hers.
“Perhaps you’re used to dogs,” she went on. “Have you got one of your own?”
“N-no,” Peter managed to say.
“Ah, well, that makes it all the braver,” said Husky. Then, noticing that Coo had found the money she had been looking for, she took the boy’s hand and shook it, heartily. “Well, good-bye,” she said, smiling more exquisitely than ever. “We’re so awfully grateful to you. Most awfully,” she repeated. And as she did so, she wondered why she used that word “awfully” so often. Ordinarily she hardly ever used it. It had seemed suitable somehow, when she was talking with this creature. She was always very hearty and emphatic and schoolboyishly slangy when she was with the lower classes.
“G-g-g...” began Peter. Could they be going, he wondered in an agony, suddenly waking out of his comfortable and rosy dream. Really going, without asking him to tea or giving him their addresses? He wanted to implore them to stop a little longer, to let him see them again. But he knew that he wouldn’t be able to utter the necessary words. In the face of Husky’s good-bye he felt like a man who sees some fearful catastrophe impending and can do nothing to arrest it. “G-g...” he feebly stuttered. But he found himself shaking hands with the other one before he had got to the end of that fatal good-bye.
“You were really splendid,” said Coo, as she shook his hand. “Really splendid. And you simply must go to a chemist and have the bite disinfected at once. Good-bye, and thank you very, very, much.” As she spoke these last words she slipped a neatly folded one-pound note into his palm and with her two hands shut his fingers over it. “Thank you so much,” she repeated.
Violently blushing, Peter shook his head. “N-n...,” he began, and tried to make her take the note back.
But she only smiled more sweetly. “Yes, yes,” she insisted.
“Please.” And without waiting to hear any more, she turned and ran lightly after Husky, who had walked on, up the path, leading the reluctant Pongo, who still barked and strained heraldically at his leash.
“Well, that’s all right,” she said, as she came up with her companion.
“He accepted it?” asked Husky.
“Yes, yes.” She nodded. Then changing her tone, “Let me see,” she went on, “what were we saying when this wretched dog interrupted us?”
“N-no,” Peter managed to say at last. But she had already turned and was hurrying away. He took a couple of strides in pursuit; then checked himself. It was no good. It would only lead to further humiliation if he tried to explain. Why, they might even think, while he was standing there, straining to bring out his words, that he had run after them to ask for more. They might slip another pound into his hand and hurry away still faster. He watched them till they were out of sight, over the brow of the hill; then turned back towards the Serpentine.
In his imagination he re-acted the scene, not as it had really happened, but as it ought to have happened. When Coo slipped the note into his hand he smiled and courteously returned it, saying: “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. A quite justifiable mistake, I admit. For I look poor, and indeed I am poor. But I am a gentleman, you know. My father was a doctor in Rochdale. My mother was a doctor’s daughter. I went to a good school till my people died. They died when I was sixteen, within a few months of one another. So I had to go to work before I’d finished my schooling. But you see that I can’t take your money.” And then, becoming more gallant, personal and confidential, he went on: “I separated those beastly dogs because I wanted to do something for you and your friend. Because I thought you so beautiful and wonderful. So that even if I weren’t a gentleman, I wouldn’t take your money.” Coo was deeply touched by this little speech. She shook him by the hand and told him how sorry she was. And he put her at her ease by assuring her that her mistake had been perfectly comprehensible. And then she asked if he’d care to come along with them and take a cup of tea. And from this point onwards Peter’s imaginings became vaguer and rosier, till he was dreaming the old familiar dream of the peer’s daughter, the grateful widow and the lonely orphan; only there happened to be two goddesses this time, and their faces, instead of being dim creations of fancy, were real and definite.
But he knew, even in the midst of his dreaming, that things hadn’t happened like this. He knew that she had gone before he could say anything; and that even if he had run after them and tried to make his speech of explanation, he could never have done it. For example, he would have had to say that his father was a “medico,” not a doctor (m being an easier letter than d). And when
it came to telling them that his people had died, he would have had to say that they had “perished” — which would sound facetious, as though he were trying to make a joke of it. No, no, the truth must be faced. He had taken the money and they had gone away thinking that he was just some sort of a street loafer, who had risked a bite for the sake of a good tip. They hadn’t even dreamed of treating him as an equal. As for asking him to tea and making him their friend...
But his fancy was still busy. It struck him that it had been quite unnecessary to make any explanation. He might simply have forced the note back into her hand, without saying a word. Why hadn’t he done it? He had to excuse himself for his remissness. She had slipped away too quickly; that was the reason.
Or what if he had walked on ahead of them and ostentatiously given the money to the first street-boy he happened to meet? A good idea, that. Unfortunately it had not occurred to him at the time.
All that afternoon Peter walked and walked, thinking of what had happened, imagining creditable and satisfying alternatives. But all the time he knew that these alternatives were only fanciful. Sometimes the recollection of his humiliation was so vivid that it made him physically wince and shudder.
The light began to fail. In the grey and violet twilight the lovers pressed closer together as they walked, more frankly clasped one another beneath the trees. Strings of yellow lamps blossomed in the increasing darkness. High up in the pale sky overhead, a quarter of the moon made itself visible. He felt unhappier and lonelier than ever.
His bitten hand was by this time extremely painful. He left the Park and walked along Oxford Street till he found a chemist.
When his hand had been disinfected and bandaged he went into a tea-shop and ordered a poached e, g, g, a roll, and a mug of mocha, which he had to translate for the benefit of the uncomprehending waitress as a c, u, p of c, o, f, f, e, e.
“You seem to think I’m a loafer or a tout.” That’s what he ought to have said to her, indignantly and proudly. “You’ve insulted me. If you were a man, I’d knock you down. Take your dirty money.” But then, he reflected, he could hardly have expected them to become his friends, after that. On second thoughts, he decided that indignation would have been no good.
“Hurt your hand?” asked the waitress sympathetically, as she set down his egg and his mug of mocha.
Peter nodded. “B-bitten by a d-d... by a h-h-hound.” The word burst out at last, explosively.
Remembered shame made him blush as he spoke. Yes, they had taken him for a tout, they had treated him as though he didn’t really exist, as though he were just an instrument whose services you hired and to which, when the bill had been paid, you gave no further thought. The remembrance of humiliation was so vivid, the realization of it so profound and complete, that it affected not only his mind but his body too. His heart beat with unusual rapidity and violence; he felt sick. It was with the greatest difficulty that he managed to eat his egg and drink his mug of mocha.
Still remembering the painful reality, still feverishly constructing his fanciful alternatives to it, Peter left the tea-shop and, though he was very tired, resumed his aimless walking. He walked along Oxford Street as far as the Circus, turned down Regent Street, halted on Piccadilly to look at the epileptically twitching sky-signs, walked up Shaftesbury Avenue, and turning southwards made his way through by-streets towards the Strand.
In a street near Covent Garden a woman brushed against him. “Cheer up, dearie,” she said. “Don’t look so glum.”
Peter looked at her in astonishment. Was it possible that she should have been speaking to him? A woman — was it possible? He knew, of course, that she was what people called a bad woman. But the fact that she should have spoken to him seemed none the less extraordinary; and he did not connect it, somehow, with her “badness”.
“Come along with me,” she wheedled.
Peter nodded. He could not believe it was true. She took his arm.
“You got money?” she asked anxiously.
He nodded again.
“You look as though you’d been to a funeral,” said the woman.
“I’m l-lonely,” he explained. He felt ready to weep. He even longed to weep — to weep and to be comforted. His voice trembled as he spoke.
“Lonely? That’s funny. A nice-looking boy like you’s got no call to be lonely.” She laughed significantly and without mirth.
Her bedroom was dimly and pinkly lighted. A smell of cheap scent and unwashed underlinen haunted the air.
“Wait a tick,” she said, and disappeared through a door into an inner room.
He sat there, waiting. A minute later she returned, wearing a kimono and bedroom slippers. She sat on his knees, threw her arms round his neck and began to kiss him. “Lovey,” she said in her cracked voice, “lovey.” Her eyes were hard and cold. Her breath smelt of spirits. Seen at close range she was indescribably horrible.
Peter saw her, it seemed to him for the first time — saw and completely realized her. He averted his face. Remembering the peer’s daughter who had sprained her ankle, the lonely orphan, the widow whose child had tumbled into the Round Pond; remembering Coo and Husky, he untwined her arms, he pushed her away from him, he sprang to his feet.
“S-sorry,” he said. “I must g-g... I’d forg-gotten something. I...” He picked up his hat and moved towards the door.
The woman ran after him and caught him by the arm. “You young devil, you,” she screamed. Her abuse was horrible and filthy. “Asking a girl and then trying to sneak away without paying. Oh, no you don’t, no you don’t. You...”
And the abuse began again.
Peter dipped his hand into his pocket, and pulled out Coo’s neatly folded note. “L-let me g-go,” he said as he gave it her.
While she was suspiciously unfolding it, he hurried away, slamming the door behind him, and ran down the dark stain, into the street.
The Monocle
THE DRAWING-ROOM WAS on the first floor. The indistinct, inarticulate noise of many voices floated down the stairs, like the roaring of a distant train. Gregory took off his greatcoat and handed it to the parlour-maid.
“Don’t trouble to show me up,” he said. “I know the way.” Always so considerate! And yet, for some reason, servants would never do anything for him; they despised and disliked him. “Don’t bother,” he insisted.
The parlour-maid, who was young, with high colours and yellow hair, looked at him, he thought, with silent contempt and walked away. In all probability, he reflected, she had never meant to show him up. He felt humiliated — yet once more.
A mirror hung at the bottom of the stairs. He peered at his image, gave his hair a pat, his tie a straightening touch. His face was smooth and egg-shaped; he had regular features, pale hair and a very small mouth, with cupid’s bow effects in the upper lip. A curate’s face. Secretly, he thought himself handsome and was always astonished that more people were not of his opinion.
Gregory mounted the stairs, polishing his monocle as he went. The volume of sound increased. At the landing, where the staircase turned, he could see the open door of the drawing-room. At first he could see only the upper quarter of the tall doorway and, through it, a patch of ceiling; but with every step he saw more — a strip of wall below the cornice, a picture, the heads of people, their whole bodies, their legs and feet. At the penultimate step, he inserted his monocle and replaced his handkerchief in his pocket. Squaring his shoulders, he marched in — almost militarily, he flattered himself. His hostess was standing near the window, at the other side of the room. He advanced towards her, already, though she had not yet seen him, mechanically smiling his greetings. The room was crowded, hot, and misty with cigarette smoke. The noise was almost palpable; Gregory felt as though he were pushing his way laboriously through some denser element. Neck-deep, he waded through noise, still holding preciously above the flood his smile. He presented it, intact, to his hostess.
“Good evening, Hermione.”
“Ah, Gregory.
How delightful. Good evening.”
“I adore your dress,” said Gregory, conscientiously following the advice of the enviably successful friend who had told him that one should never neglect to pay a compliment, however manifestly insincere. It wasn’t a bad dress, for that matter. But, of course, poor dear Hermione contrived to ruin anything she put on. She was quite malignantly ungraceful and ugly — on purpose, it always seemed to Gregory.” Too lovely,”he cooed in his rather high voice.
Hermione smiled with pleasure. “I’m so glad,” she began. But before she could get any further, a loud voice, nasally chanting, interrupted her.
“Behold the monster Polypheme, behold the monster Polypheme,” it quoted, musically, from Acis and Galatea.
Gregory flushed. A large hand slapped him in the middle of the back, below the shoulder blades. His body emitted the drumlike thud of a patted retriever.
“Well, Polypheme”; the voice had ceased to sing and was conversational— “well, Polypheme, how are you?”
“Very well, thanks,” Gregory replied, without looking round. It was that drunken South African brute, Paxton. “Very well, thanks, Silenus,” he added.
Paxton had called him Polypheme because of his monocle: Polypheme, the one-eyed, wheel-eyed Cyclops. Tit for mythological tat. In future, he would always call Paxton Silenus.
“Bravo!” shouted Paxton. Gregory winced and gasped under a second, heartier slap. “Pretty high-class, this party. Eh, Hermione? Pretty cultured, what? It isn’t every day that a hostess can hear her guests shooting Greco-Roman witticisms at one another. I congratulate you, Hermione.” He put his arm round her waist. “I congratulate you on us.”
Hermione disengaged herself. “Don’t be a bore, Paxton,” she said impatiently.
Paxton laughed theatrically. “Ha, ha!” A villain’s laugh on the melodrama stage. And it was not his laughter only that was theatrical; his whole person parodied the old-time tragedian. The steep aquiline profile, the deeply sunken eyes, the black hair worn rather long — they were characteristic. “A thousand apologies”: he spoke with an ironical courtesy. “The poor colonial forgets himself. Boozy and ill-mannered boor!”
Complete Works of Aldous Huxley Page 395
