Antic Hay, Aldous Huxley [whitelam books .txt] 📗

trampling and stumbling over everybody else’s feet⁠—and every stumble making the need more agonizingly great⁠—in the middle of the transformation scene. And there was Dan Leno, inimitable Dan Leno, dead now as poor Yorick, no more than a mere skull like anybody else’s skull. And his mother, he remembered, used to laugh at him sometimes till the tears ran down her cheeks. She used to enjoy things thoroughly, with a whole heart.

“I wish they’d hurry up with the second scene,” said Mrs. Viveash. “If there’s anything that bores me, it’s entr’actes.”

“Most of one’s life is an entr’acte,” said Gumbril, whose present mood of hilarious depression seemed favourable to the enunciation of apophthegms.

“None of your cracker mottoes, please,” protested Mrs. Viveash. All the same, she reflected, what was she doing now but waiting for the curtain to go up again, waiting, with what unspeakable weariness of spirit, for the curtain that had rung down, ten centuries ago, on those blue eyes, that bright strawy hair and the weathered face?

“Thank God,” she said with an expiring earnestness, “here’s the second scene!”

The curtain went up. In a bald room stood the Monster, grown now from an infant into a frail and bent young man with bandy legs. At the back of the stage a large window giving on to a street along which people pass.

The Monster Solus.

The young girls of Sparta, they say, used to wrestle naked with naked Spartan boys. The sun caressed their skins till they were brown and transparent like amber or a flask of olive oil. Their breasts were hard, their bellies flat. They were pure with the chastity of beautiful animals. Their thoughts were clear, their minds cool and untroubled. I spit blood into my handkerchief and sometimes I feel in my mouth something slimy, soft and disgusting, like a slug⁠—and I have coughed up a shred of my lung. The rickets from which I suffered in childhood have bent my bones and made them old and brittle. All my life I have lived in this huge town, whose domes and spires are wrapped in a cloud of stink that hides the sun. The slug-dank tatters of lung that I spit out are black with the soot I have been breathing all these years. I am now come of age. Long-expected one-and-twenty has made me a fully privileged citizen of this great realm of which the owners of the Daily Mirror, the News of the World and the Daily Express are noble peers. Somewhere, I must logically infer, there must be other cities, built by men for men to live in. Somewhere, in the past, in the future, a very long way off.⁠ ⁠… But perhaps the only street improvement schemes that ever really improve the streets are schemes in the minds of those who live in them: schemes of love mostly. Ah! here she comes.

The Young Lady enters. She stands outside the window, in the street, paying no attention to the Monster; she seems to be waiting for somebody.

She is like a pear tree in flower. When she smiles, it is as though there were stars. Her hair is like the harvest in an eclogue, her cheeks are all the fruits of summer. Her arms and thighs are as beautiful as the soul of St. Catherine of Siena. And her eyes, her eyes are plumbless with thought and limpidly pure like the water of the mountains.

The Young Lady

If I wait till the summer sale, the crêpe de Chine will be reduced by at least two shillings a yard, and on six camisoles that will mean a lot of money. But the question is: can I go from May till the end of July with the underclothing I have now?

The Monster

If I knew her, I should know the universe!

The Young Lady

My present ones are so dreadfully middle-class. And if Roger should⁠ ⁠… by any chance.⁠ ⁠…

The Monster

Or, rather, I should be able to ignore it, having a private universe of my own.

The Young Lady

If⁠—if he did⁠—well, it might be rather humiliating with these I have⁠ ⁠… like a servant’s almost.⁠ ⁠…

The Monster

Love makes you accept the world; it puts an end to criticism.

The Young Lady

His hand already.⁠ ⁠…

The Monster

Dare I, dare I tell her how beautiful she is?

The Young Lady

On the whole, I think I’d better get it now, though it will cost more.

The Monster

Desperately advancing to the window as though to assault a battery. Beautiful! beautiful!

The Young Lady

Looking at him. Ha, ha, ha!

The Monster

But I love you, flowering pear tree; I love you, golden harvest; I love you, fruitage of summer; I love you, body and limbs, with the shape of a saint’s thought.

The Young Lady

Redoubles her laughter. Ha, ha, ha!

The Monster

Taking her hand. You cannot be cruel! He is seized with a violent paroxysm of coughing which doubles him up, which shakes and torments him. The handkerchief he holds to his mouth is spotted with blood.

The Young Lady

You disgust me! She draws away her skirts so that they shall not come in contact with him.

The Monster

But I swear to you, I love⁠—I⁠—He is once more interrupted by his cough.

The Young Lady

Please go away. In a different voice. Ah, Roger! She advances to meet a snub-nosed lubber with curly hair and a face like a groom’s, who passes along the street at this moment.

Roger

I’ve got the motorbike waiting at the corner.

The Young Lady

Let’s go, then.

Roger

Pointing to the Monster. What’s that?

The Young Lady

Oh, it’s nothing in particular.

Both roar with laughter. Roger escorts her out, patting her familiarly on the back as they walk along.

The Monster

Looking after her. There is a wound under my left pap. She has deflowered all women. I cannot.⁠ ⁠…

“Lord!” whispered Mrs. Viveash, “how this young man bores me!”

“I confess,” replied Gumbril, “I have rather a taste for moralities.