Aldous Huxley
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Peter turned and approached the goddesses. Husky had narrow eyes and a sad mouth; it was a thin, tragic-looking face. Coo was rounder, pinker and whiter, bluer-eyed. Peter looked from one to the other and could not decide which was the more beautiful.
He lowered the writhing Pongo. "Here's your dog," was what he wanted to say. But the loveliness of these radiant creatures suddenly brought back all his self-consciousness and with his self-consciousness his stammer. "Here's your..." he began; but could not bring out the dog. D, for Peter, was always a difficult letter.
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For all common words beginning with a difficult letter Peter had a number of easier synonyms in readiness. Thus, he always called cats 'pussies,' not out of any affectation of childishness, but because p was more pronounceable than the impossible c. Coal he had to render in the vaguer form of 'fuel.' Dirt, with him, was always 'muck.'
In the discovery of synonyms he had become almost as ingenious as those Anglo-Saxon poets who, using alliteration instead of rhyme, were compelled, in their efforts to make (shall we say) the sea begin with the same letter as its waves or its billows, to call it the 'whale-road' or the 'bath of the swans.'
But Peter, who could not permit himself the full poetic license of his Saxon ancestors, was reduced sometimes to spelling the most difficult words to which there happened to be no convenient and prosaic equivalent. Thus, he was never quite sure whether he should call a cup a mug or a c, u, p. And since 'ovum' seemed to be the only synonym for egg, he was always reduced to talking of e, g, g' s.
At the present moment, it was the miserable little word 'dog' that was holding him up. Peter had several synonyms for dog. P being a slightly easier letter than d, he could, when not too nervous, say 'pup.' Or if the p's weren't coming easily, he could call the animal, rather facetiously and mock-heroically, a 'hound.' But the presence of the two goddesses was so unnerving that Peter found it as hopelessly impossible to pronounce a p or an h as a d. He hesitated painfully, trying to bring out in turn, first dog, then pup, then hound. His face became very red. He was in an agony.
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"Here's your whelp," he managed to say at last. The word, he was conscious, was a little too Shakespearean for ordinary conversation. But it was the only one which came.
"Thank you most awfully," said Coo.
"You were splendid, really splendid," said Husky. "But I'm afraid you're hurt."
"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.
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"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. "II 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.
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Husky turned back to her companion. Once more she shrugged her shoulders. "Vraiment, je ne sais pas," she whispered.
"Si on lui donnait une 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 school-boyishly 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.
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In the face of Husky's goodbye 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 goodbye.
"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. Goodbye, 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 toward the Serpentine.
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