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

insult about the vermouth advertisement,” he cried out. That had rankled. Those flaring, vulgar posters! “You thought you could mock me and spit at me with impunity, did you? I’ve stood it so long, you thought I’d always stand it? Was that it? But you’re mistaken.” He lifted his fist. Mr. Mercaptan cowered away, raising his arm to protect his head. “Vile bug of a coward,” said Lypiatt, “why don’t you defend yourself like a man? You can only be dangerous with words. Very witty and spiteful and cutting about those vermouth posters, wasn’t it? But you wouldn’t dare to fight me if I challenged you.”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Mr. Mercaptan, peering up from under his defences, “I didn’t invent that particular piece of criticism. I borrowed the apéritif.” He laughed feebly, more canary than bull.

“You borrowed it, did you?” Lypiatt contemptuously repeated. “And who from, may I ask?” Not that it interested him in the least to know.

“Well, if you really want to know,” said Mr. Mercaptan, “it was from our friend Myra Viveash.”

Lypiatt stood for a moment without speaking, then putting his menacing hand in his pocket, he turned away. “Oh!” he said noncommittally, and was silent again.

Relieved, Mr. Mercaptan sat up in his chair; with the palm of his right hand he smoothed his dishevelled head.

Airily, outside in the sunshine, Rosie walked down Sloane Street, looking at the numbers on the doors of the houses. A hundred and ninety-nine, two hundred, two hundred and one⁠—she was getting near now. Perhaps all the people who passed, strolling so easily and elegantly and disengagedly along, perhaps they all of them carried behind their eyes a secret, as delightful and amusing as hers. Rosie liked to think so; it made life more exciting. How nonchalantly distinguished, Rosie reflected, she herself must look. Would anyone who saw her now, sauntering along like this, would anyone guess that, ten houses farther down the street, a young poet, or at least very nearly a young poet, was waiting, on the second floor, eagerly for her arrival? Of course they wouldn’t and couldn’t guess! That was the fun and the enormous excitement of the whole thing. Formidable in her lighthearted detachment, formidable in the passion which at will she could give rein to and check again, the great lady swam beautifully along through the sunlight to satisfy her caprice. Like Diana, she stooped over the shepherd boy. Eagerly the starving young poet waited, waited in his garret. Two hundred and twelve, two hundred and thirteen. Rosie looked at the entrance and was reminded that the garret couldn’t after all be very sordid, nor the young poet absolutely starving. She stepped in and, standing in the hall, looked at the board with the names. Ground floor: Mrs. Budge. First floor: F. de M. Rowbotham. Second floor: P. Mercaptan.

P. Mercaptan.⁠ ⁠… But it was a charming name, a romantic name, a real young poet’s name! Mercaptan⁠—she felt more than ever pleased with her selection. The fastidious lady could not have had a happier caprice. Mercaptan⁠ ⁠… Mercaptan.⁠ ⁠… She wondered what the P. stood for. Peter, Philip, Patrick, Pendennis even? She could hardly have guessed that Mr. Mercaptan’s father, the eminent bacteriologist, had insisted, thirty-four years ago, on calling his firstborn “Pasteur.”

A little tremulous, under her outward elegant calm, Rosie mounted the stairs. Twenty-five steps to the first floor⁠—one flight of thirteen, which was rather disagreeably ominous, and one of twelve. Then two flights of eleven, and she was on the second landing, facing a front door, a bell-push like a round eye, a brass nameplate. For a great lady thoroughly accustomed to this sort of thing, she felt her heart beating rather unpleasantly fast. It was those stairs, no doubt. She halted a moment, took two deep breaths, then pushed the bell.

The door was opened by an aged servant of the most forbiddingly respectable appearance.

“Mr. Mercaptan at home?”

The person at the door burst at once into a long, rambling, angry complaint, but precisely about what Rosie could not for certain make out. Mr. Mercaptan had left orders, she gathered, that he wasn’t to be disturbed. But someone had come and disturbed him, “fairly shoved his way in, so rude and inconsiderate,” all the same. And now he’d been once disturbed, she didn’t see why he shouldn’t be disturbed again. But she didn’t know what things were coming to if people fairly shoved their way in like that. Bolshevism, she called it.

Rosie murmured her sympathies, and was admitted into a dark hall. Still querulously denouncing the Bolsheviks who came shoving in, the person led the way down a corridor and, throwing open a door, announced, in a tone of grievance: “A lady to see you, Master Paster”⁠—for Mrs. Goldie was an old family retainer, and one of the few who knew the Secret of Mr. Mercaptan’s Christian name, one of the fewer still who were privileged to employ it. Then, as soon as Rosie had stepped across the threshold, she cut off her retreat with a bang and went off, muttering all the time, towards her kitchen.

It certainly wasn’t a garret. Half a glance, the first whiff of potpourri, the feel of the carpet beneath her feet, had been enough to prove that. But it was not the room which occupied Rosie’s attention, it was its occupants. One of them, thin, sharp-featured and, in Rosie’s very young eyes, quite old, was standing with an elbow on the mantelpiece. The other, sleeker and more genial in appearance, was sitting in front of a writing-desk near the window. And neither of them⁠—Rosie glanced desperately from one to the other, hoping vainly that she might have overlooked a blond beard⁠—neither of them was Toto.

The sleek man at the writing-desk got up, advanced to meet her.

“An unexpected pleasure,” he said, in a voice that alternately boomed and fluted. “Too delightful! But to what do I owe⁠—? Who, may I ask⁠—?”

He had held out his hand; automatically Rosie proffered hers. The sleek man shook