Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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“Idiot!” said Hermione, and moved away.
Gregory made a movement to follow her, but Paxton caught him by the sleeve. “Tell me,” he inquired earnestly, “why do you wear a monocle, Polypheme?”
“Well, if you really want to know,” Gregory answered stiffly, “for the simple reason that I happen to be short-sighted and astigmatic in the left eye and not in the right.”
“Short-sighted and astigmatic?” the other repeated in tones of affected astonishment. “Short-sighted and astigmatic? God forgive me — and I thought it was because you wanted to look like a duke on the musical-comedy stage.”
Gregory’s laugh was meant to be one of frankly amazed amusement. That any one should have imagined such a thing! Incredible, comical! But a note of embarrassment and discomfort sounded through the amusement. For in reality, of course, Paxton was so devilishly nearly right. Conscious, only too acutely, of his nullity, his provincialism, his lack of successful arrogance, he had made the oculist’s diagnosis an excuse for trying to look smarter, more insolent, and impressive. In vain. His eyeglass had done nothing to increase his self-confidence. He was never at ease when he wore it. Monocle-wearers, he decided, are like poets: born, not made. Cambridge had not eradicated the midland grammar-school boy. Cultured, with literary leanings, he was always aware of being the wealthy boot manufacturer’s heir. He could not get used to his monocle. Most of the time, in spite of the oculist’s recommendations, it dangled at the end of its string, a pendulum when he walked and involving itself messily, when he ate, in soup and tea, in marmalade and the butter. It was only occasionally, in specially favourable circumstances, that Gregory adjusted it to his eye; more rarely still that he kept it, once adjusted, more than a few minutes, a few seconds even, without raising his eyebrow and letting it fall again. And how seldom circumstances were favourable to Gregory’s eyeglass! Sometimes his environment was too sordid for it, sometimes too smart. To wear a monocle in the presence of the poor, the miserable, the analphabetic is too triumphantly pointed a comment on their lot. Moreover, the poor and the analphabetic have a most deplorable habit of laughing derisively at such symbols of superior caste. Gregory was not laughter-proof; he lacked the lordly confidence and unawareness of nature’s monocle-wearers. He did not know how to ignore the poor, to treat them, if it were absolutely necessary to have dealings with them, as machines or domestic animals. He had seen too much of them in the days when his father was alive and had compelled him to take a practical interest in the business. It was the same lack of confidence that made him almost as chary of fixing his eyeglass in the presence of the rich. With them, he never felt quite sure that he had a right to his monocle. He felt himself a parvenu to monocularity. And then there were the intelligent. Their company, too, was most unfavourable to the eyeglass. Eyeglassed, how could one talk of serious things? “Mozart,” you might say, for example, “Mozart is so pure, so spiritually beautiful.” It was unthinkable to speak those words with a disk of crystal screwed into your left eye-socket. No, the environment was only too rarely favourable. Still, benignant circumstances did sometimes present themselves. Hermione’s half-Bohemian parties, for example. But he had reckoned without Paxton.
Amused, amazed, he laughed. As though by accident, the monocle dropped from his eye. “Oh, put it back,” cried Paxton, “put it back, I implore you,” and himself caught the glass, where it dangled over Gregory’s stomach, and tried to replace it.
Gregory stepped back; with one hand he pushed away his persecutor, with the other he tried to snatch the monocle from between his fingers. Paxton would not let it go.
“I implore you,” Paxton kept repeating.
“Give it me at once,” said Gregory, furiously, but in a low voice, so that people should not look round and see the grotesque cause of the quarrel. He had never been so outrageously made a fool of.
Paxton gave it him at last. “Forgive me,” he said, with mock penitence. “Forgive a poor drunken colonial who doesn’t know what’s done in the best society and what isn’t. You must remember I’m only a boozer, just a poor, hard-working drunkard. You know those registration forms they give you in French hotels? Name, date of birth and so on. You know?”
Gregory nodded, with dignity.
“Well, when it comes to profession, I always write ‘ivrogne’. That is, when I’m sober enough to remember the French word. If I’m too far gone, I just put ‘Drunkard.’ They all know English, nowadays.”
“Oh,” said Gregory coldly.
“It’s a capital profession,” Paxton confided. “It permits you to do whatever you like — any damned thing that comes into your head. Throw your arms round any woman you fancy, tell her the most gross and fantastic impertinences, insult the men, laugh in people’s faces — everything’s permitted to the poor drunkard, particularly if he’s only a poor colonial and doesn’t know any better. Verb sap. Take the hint from me, old boy. Drop the monocle. It’s no damned good. Be a boozer; you’ll have much more fun. Which reminds me that I must go and find some more drink at all costs. I’m getting sober.”
He disappeared into the crowd. Relieved, Gregory looked round in search of familiar faces. As he looked, he polished his monocle, took the opportunity to wipe his forehead, then put the glass to his eye.
“Excuse me.” He oozed his way insinuatingly between the close-set chairs, passed like a slug (“Excuse me”) between the all but contiguous backs of two standing groups. “Excuse me.” He had seen acquaintances over there, by the fireplace: Ransom and Mary Haig and Miss Camperdown. He joined in their conversation: they were talking about Mrs Mandragore.
All the old familiar stories about that famous lion-huntress were being repeated. He himself repeated two or three, with suitable pantomime, perfected by a hundred tellings. In the middle of a grimace, at the top of an elaborate gesture, he suddenly saw himself grimacing, gesticulating, he suddenly heard the cadences of his voice repeating, by heart, the old phrases. Why does one come to parties, why on earth? Always the same boring people, the same dull scandal, and one’s own same parlour tricks. Each time. But he smirked, he mimed, he fluted and bellowed his story through to the end. His auditors even laughed; it was a success. But Gregory felt ashamed of himself. Ransom began telling the story of Mrs Mandragore and the Maharajah of Pataliapur. He groaned in the spirit. Why? he asked himself, why, why, why? Behind him, they were talking politics. Still pretending to smile at the Mandragore fable, he listened.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” the politician was saying, prophesying destructions in a loud and cheerful voice.
“‘Dear Maharajah,’” Ransom imitated the Mandragore’s intense voice, her aimed and yearning gestures, “‘if you knew how I adore the East.’”
“Our unique position was due to the fact that we started the industrial system before any one else. Now, when the rest of the world has followed our example, we find it’s a disadvantage to have started first. All our equipment is old-fash—”
“Gregory,” called Mary Haig, “what’s your story about the Unknown Soldier?”
“Unknown Soldier?” said Gregory vaguely, trying to catch what was being said behind him.
“The latest arrivals have the latest machinery. It’s obvious. We...”
“You know the one. The Mandragore’s party; you know.”
“Oh, when she asked us all to tea to meet the Mother of the Unknown Soldier.”
“... like Italy,” the politician was saying in his loud, jolly voice. “In future, we shall always have one or two millions more population than we can employ. Living on the State.”
One or two millions. He thought of the Derby. Perhaps there might be a hundred thousand in that crowd. Ten Derbies, twenty Derbies, all half-starved, walking through the streets with brass bands and banners. He let his monocle fall. Must send five pounds to the London Hospital, he thought. Four thousand eight hundred a year. Thirteen pounds a day. Less taxes, of course. Taxes were terrible. Monstrous, sir, monstrous. He tried to feel as
indignant about taxes as those old gentlemen who get red in the face when they talk about them. But somehow, he couldn’t manage to do it And after all, taxes were no excuse, no justification. He felt all at once profoundly depressed. Still, he tried to comfort himself, not more than twenty or twenty-five out of the two million could live on his income. Twenty-five out of two millions — it was absurd, derisory! But he was not consoled.
“And the odd thing is,” Ransom was still talking about the Mandragore, “she isn’t really in the least interested in her lions. She’ll begin telling you about what Anatole France said to her and then forget in the middle, out of pure boredom, what she’s talking about.”
Oh, God, God, thought Gregory. How often had he heard Ransom making the same reflections on the Mandragore’s psychology! How often! He’d be bringing out that bit about the chimpanzees in half a moment. God help us!
“Have you ever watched the chimpanzees at the Zoo?” said Ransom. “The way they pick up a straw or a banana skin and examine it for a few seconds with a passionate attention.” He went through a simian pantomine. “Then, suddenly, get utterly bored, let the thing drop from their fingers and look round vaguely in search of something else. They always remind me of the Mandragore and her guests. The way she begins, earnestly, as though you were the only person in the world; then all at once...”
Gregory could bear it no longer. He mumbled something to Miss Camperdown about having seen somebody he must talk to, and disappeared, “Excuse me,” slug-like, through the crowd. Oh, the misery, the appalling gloom of it all! In a corner, he found young Crane and two or three other men with tumblers in their hands.
“Ah, Crane,” he said, “for God’s sake tell me where you got that drink.”
That golden fluid — it seemed the only hope. Crane pointed in the direction of the archway leading into the back drawing-room. He raised his glass without speaking, drank, and winked at Gregory over the top of it. He had a face that looked like an accident. Gregory oozed on through the crowd. “Excuse me,” he said aloud; but inwardly he was saying, “God help us.”
At the further end of the back drawing-room was a table with bottles and glasses. The professional drunkard was sitting on a sofa near by, glass in hand, making personal remarks to himself about all the people who came within earshot.
“Christ!” he was saying, as Gregory came up to the table. “Christ! Look at that!” That was the gaunt Mrs Labadie in cloth of gold and pearls. “Christ!” She had pounced on a shy young man entrenched behind the table.
“Tell me, Mr Foley,” she began, approaching her horse-like face very close to that of the young man and speaking appealingly, “you who know all about mathematics, tell me...”
“Is it possible?” exclaimed the professional drunkard. “In England’s green and pleasant land? Ha, ha, ha!” He laughed his melodramatic laugh.
Pretentious fool, thought Gregory. How romantic he thinks himself! The laughing philosopher, what? Drunk because the world isn’t good enough for him. Quite the little Faust.
“And Polypheme too,” Paxton soliloquized on, “funny little Polypheme!” He laughed again. “The heir to all the ages. Christ!”
With dignity, Gregory poured himself out some whisky and filled up the glass from the siphon — with dignity, with conscious grace and precision, as though he were acting the part of a man who helps himself to whisky and soda on the stage. He took a sip; then elaborately acted the part of one who takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose.
“Don’t they make one believe in birth control, all these people,” continued the professional drunkard. “If only their parents could have had a few intimate words with Stopes! Heigh ho!” He uttered a stylized Shakespearean sigh.
Buffoon, thought Gregory. And the worst is that if one called him one, he’d pretend that he’d said so himself, all the time And so he has, of course, just to be on the safe side. But in reality, it’s obvious, the man thinks of himself as a sort of Musset or up-to-date Byron. A beautiful soul, darkened and embittered by experience. Ugh!
Still pretending to be unaware of the professional boozer’s proximity, Gregory went through the actions of the man who sips.
“How clear you make it!” Mrs Labadie was saying, point blank, into the young mathematician’s face. She smiled at him; the horse, thought Gregory, has a terribly human expression.
“Well,” said the young mathematician nervously, “now we come on to Riemann.”
“Riemann!” Mrs Labadie repeated, with a kind of ecstasy. “Riemann!” as though the geometrician’s soul were in his name.
Gregory wished that there were somebody to talk to, somebody who would relieve him of the necessity of acting the part of unaware indifference before the scrutinizing eyes of Paxton. He leaned against the wall in the attitude of one who falls, all of a sudden, into a brown study. Blankly and pensively, he stared at a point on the opposite wall, high up, just below the ceiling. People must be wondering, he reflected, what he was thinking about. And what was he thinking about? Himself. Vanity, vanity. Oh, the gloom, the misery of it all!
“Polypheme!”
He pretended not to hear.
“Polypheme!” It was a shout this time.
Gregory slightly overacted the part of one who is suddenly aroused from profoundest meditation. He started; blinking, a little dazed, he turned his head.
“Ah, Paxton,” he said. “Silenus! I hadn’t noticed that you were there.”
“Hadn’t you?” said the professional drunkard. “That was damned clever of you. What were you thinking about so picturesquely there?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Gregory, smiling with the modest confusion of the Thinker, caught in the act.
“Just what I imagined,” said Paxton. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Jesus Christ!” he added, for himself.
Gregory’s smile was rather sickly. He averted his face and passed once more into meditation. It seemed, in the circumstances, the best thing he could do. Dreamily, as though unconscious of what he was doing, he emptied his glass.
“Crippen!” he heard the professional drunkard muttering. “It’s like a funeral. Joyless, joyless.”
“Well, Gregory.”
Gregory did another of his graceful starts, his dazed blinkings. He had been afraid, for a moment, that Spiller was going to respect his meditation and not speak to him. That would have been very embarrassing.
“Spiller!” he exclaimed with delight and astonishment. “My dear chap.” He shook him heartily by the hand.
Square-faced, with a wide mouth and an immense forehead, framed in copious and curly hair, Spiller looked like a Victorian celebrity. His friends declared that he might actually have been a Georgian celebrity but for the fact that he preferred talking to writing.
“Just up for the day,” explained Spiller. “I couldn’t stand another hour of the bloody country. Working all day. No company but my own. I find I bore myself to death.” He helped himself to whisky.
“Jesus! The great man! Ha, ha!” The professional drunkard covered his face with his hands and shuddered violently.
“Do you mean to say you came specially for this?” asked Gregory, waving his hand to indicate the party at large.
“Not specially. Incidentally. I heard that Hermione was giving a party, so I dropped in.”
“Why does one go to parties?” said Gregory, unconsciously assuming something of the embittered Byronic manner of the professional drunkard.
“To satisfy the cravings of the herd instinct.” Spiller replied to the rhetorical question without hesitation and with a pontifical air of infallibility. “Just as one pursues women to satisfy the cravings of the reproductive instinct.” Spiller had an impressive way of making everything he said sound very scientific; it all seemed to come straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Vague-minded Gregory found him most stimulating.
“You mean, one goes to parties just in order to be in a crowd?”
“Precisely,” Spiller replied. “Just to fee
l the warmth of the herd around one and sniff the smell of one’s fellow-humans.” He snuffed the thick, hot air.
“I suppose you must be right,” said Gregory. “It’s certainly very hard to think of any other reason.”
He looked round the room as though searching for other reasons. And surprisingly, he found one: Molly Voles. He had not seen her before; she must have only just arrived.
“I’ve got a capital idea for a new paper,” began Spiller.
“Have you?” Gregory did not show much curiosity. How beautiful her neck was, and those thin arms!
“Art, literature, and science,” Spiller continued. “The idea’s a really modern one. It’s to bring science into touch with the arts and so into touch with life. Life, art, science — all three would gain. You see the notion?”
“Yes,” said Gregory, “I see.” He was looking at Molly, hoping to catch her eye. He caught it at last, that cool and steady grey eye. She smiled and nodded.
“You like the idea?” asked Spiller.
“I think it’s splendid,” answered Gregory with a sudden warmth that astonished his interlocutor.
Spiller’s large severe face shone with pleasure. “Oh, I’m glad,” he said, “I’m very glad indeed that you like it so much.”
“I think it’s splendid,” said Gregory extravagantly. “Simply splendid.” She had seemed really glad to see him, he thought.
“I was thinking,” Spiller pursued, with a rather elaborate casualness of manner, “I was thinking you might like to help me start the thing. One could float it comfortably with a thousand pounds of capital.”
The enthusiasm faded out of Gregory’s face: it became blank in its clerical roundness. He shook his head. “If I had a thousand pounds,” he said regretfully. Damn the man! he was thinking. Setting me a trap like that.
“If,” repeated Spiller. “But, my dear fellow!” He laughed. “And besides, it’s a safe six per cent, investment. I can collect an extraordinarily strong set of contributors, you know.”