Lizard World (22 page)

      
’Twas at this juncture that the amiable Viscount did plunge his plump hand into the pocket of his silken waistcoat, declaring that he had yet one precious property the which, he said, any roguish blade would be right well pleased to enter in possession of. Thereupon, opening his hand, he discovered to this crew of sparks and harlots crowded round about, neither an unexampled diamond nor a pearl but a seeming-ordinary locket. This he had no sooner unlatch’d, than he disclos’d therein the portrait in miniature of a lady, the singular and most sweetly innocent beauties whereof this fat peacock did now, with most ungentlemanly language and after the manner of a common pimp peddling his wares, straightways commence to dissert upon and recommend. Indeed tho’ I did abominate the inflammatory encomiums with which he did besmut the beauties of that angelic face, I could scare forbear from protest when he did now cry up her silken amplitude of bosom in which, said he, the lily and the rose did vie to lend the greater colour and and the more ambrosial sweetness. But moreover than this, said he, a hundredfold more sweeter and more juicier still were the charms which this mere locket did not disclose, but which were treasured up in a very paradise of flesh, in the vaults of virgin ripeness. Considering that she was, he concluded, his lady’s cousin, but lately orphaned and from henceforth his utterest dependent and his ward, she was (he gave his solemn assurance) full as much at his absolute disposal as the bitches in his kennel or the stud-mares which did service as he chose.

  
   
Alas, would that I had not borne witness to this unhallow’d wager, the most shocking baseness and shameless lewdness whereof I could as little countenance as prevent. Strange it was, tho’ I could never enough sicken at and despise him, yet I was fain to hope that Chommeley now might win. Not, to be sure, that I would presume to complain of my misfortunate master -- who, as I have told, was no more in his proper mind than a dog in the delirium of the rabies. Natheless, I could not chuse but shudder for so tender a virgin abandon’d to the lusts of his distemper. But this my trepidation notwithstanding, far too soon the fateful cards were dealt. I scarce need add that Chommeley did not win, a circumstance whereat I was most exceeding scandaliz’d and aggrieved. This despicable Viscount, likewise, took it mighty ill -- not, assuredly, because he scrupled in the least at the ravishment of a maiden but because he vexed at the forfeit of his ring. But the others of this crew of coxcombs and strumpets did find the prospect of this poor maid’s defilement so excessive divertising that they did now each outdo the other in their wanton embraces and their sallies of most indecent raillery.

      
It would, forsooth, have been bad enough if only they had remained content with their own drunken and lascivious enjoyments. But not sufficiently amused by keeping such comportment to themselves, they now were pleased to see what manner of sport they might find out by drawing me -- with wine and pipes of smoke and harlots’ kisses -- into the inebrious and most sinful circle of their pleasures. Altho’ it is hardly to be wondred at that I did not readily tolerate such usage, yet was I made to swallow down an immensity of drink whilst these strumpets did think themselves at perfect liberty to offer the most impudent and infamous familiarities to my person. But so far was my soul proof against all such bestial blandishments, that these wantons, at the last, had no other recourse than to force me to partake of Spanish Fly. ’Twas indeed then -- and only then -- that my animal spirits were, I regret to say, most mutinously roused up by an over-winding of the bodily engine quite beyond my power to undo.

      
Tho’ I had heard it said that devils do oftentimes take upon them the loathsome bodies and appearances of flyes, I had never until then credited the truth of it. For no sooner had I been enforced to gulp down a tincture of this vile insect, than I did perceive myself o’ertaken by an itching so infernally peremptory and lewd that I could not in the leastwise doubt that the very Fiend himself had seized upon me of a purpose to tempt me to my utter shame and ruin. Not that I could very well chuse but blush at and entirely abominate such lewdness. Indeed I scarce know whether I did burn more hotly from the working of this damnable potion or from my blushing abundancy of shame. But this my crimson humiliation notwithstanding, I could no more gainsay the riot of my animal spirits than hold back a skittish stallion from a gallop. These harlots, to be sure, were nowise backward to assail my breeches and find out my shameful plight -- a most unavoidably mechanical effect which they did think so excellent a sport that methought they would never have done with laughing.

      
Tho’ the lot them are long since dead of pox, I confess I cannot ev’n now without a blush call to remembrance the faces of those laughing jades. In more particular, I mind me of a certain coaxing and wanton-eyed minx -- one Charity Flower by name -- and never, forsooth, was a flower more beauteous and more poisonous withal. Indeed, sin did never present itself with balmier and more nectarous allurements. She it was who most especially did toy with me whilst this set of silken gallants were pleased to jest and rudely egg me on. Out of a proper regard for delicacy I shall not herein repeat these most unseemly exhortations. Nor (save to say that her licentious arts were, no doubt, most admirably suited to the house of evil fame wherein she gave herself for hire) shall I describe to what extremities of gymnastic provocation this shameless female, prone upon that gaming-table, did now resort.

      
’Twas at this juncture, alas, that a number of these sparks, no longer content merely to goad me on and break their undecent jests at my expence, did most ungentlemanly seize upon my person and commence to thrust me toward this most utterly abandoned female. I confess that I cannot, with scrupulous candor, assert that I was not now somewhat fevered and upstirred. But those who would presume to cast aspersions on my honour would please to remind that my animal spirits had, in my own despight, been overheated both by this vile potion and by a quite exceeding quantity of drink. But moreover than this, never were a depraved harlot’s ivory posteriours, raven tresses, pearly limbs and roseate bosom more ingeniously entangled for the impudent ostentation of her most private wares. Indeed I must fairly own that I might well presently have fallen into sin, had I not ever conceived an inextirpable horror of the pox.

      
Thus it was that I did now wrest me from the clutches of my captors and hasten toward the stairs -- a most wondrous deliverance for which I did thank Almighty God, albeit my good success was greeted by a chorus of derision and revilement. Yet was the burning indignity of their hoots, whilst I stumbled down the stairs, but the least part of my heated discomposure. For, as I have told, the animal spirits had been so chymically overheated that the porous substance of my brain, surcharged with these subtle engines of the blood, had begotten utterly monstrous thoughts which did now run in wild disorder, feverish and pell-mell. Thus -- overmuch vexed and discomposed in my mind, a-reeling and a-stumbling -- was I at length come downstairs and out of doors beneath a purple vault of stars.

      
As Monsieur Descartes hath indeed most excellently observed, the machine of the body is so absolute an automaton that, not-withstanding a contrary and exceeding rigorous volition of the soul, the eye-lids will oftentimes wink quite entirely of themselves. So now, alas, in despight of my soul’s unheeded protestations, did my feet walk quite of their own accord across the court-yard. Yea, so peremptory was the fever coursing thro’ the cavities of my brain that my soul, aghast yet helpless, could scarce do more than wonder whither and for what purpose they were tending. Indeed I do have some muddy remembrance that, amongst the benumbed and dizzy whirl of my conceptions, I had a thought that perchance I meant to saddle up my horse.

      
In point of fact, full soon did the fetor of the beasts apprise me that I was come, maugre my will, into the mirksome foulness of the stable. I do also have some exceeding turbid recollection of the darkling flanks of horses and that I had never in my life before heard such a buzzing abundancy of flies. But elsewise so wholly and unwillingly had I been driven from the possession of my proper mind that I verily knew not wherefore I was come -- nor aught else save this lewd and febrile agitation of my blood burning most hotly like a brand the which, alas, I could not chuse but yearn to slake. Moreover -- I know not how -- the overwound machine of my body, a-racing of itself like a disordered clock which hath lost all time and measure, did, as it were, chime in my brain such a discord of unreasoning fancies that I gan now to confuse this burning in my blood with my thirsting for the secrets of chirurgery. And yet, perchance, I might e’en now have scaped my utterly abominable shame, had I not, on a sudden, thro’ the darken’d door-stead to the kennel, chanced to see the very most faintest glimmering of a lanthorn.

      
Certain it is that my feet must, in my own despight, have walked me thither. For I do indeed have some dim and singularly distasteful remembrance of stumbling, amidst a multitude of dogs a-slumbering in the straw, upon a mound of something cushion-like and rancid, which I did think at first a heap of soil’d rags -- but did presently discern to be the rump of Frobin’s daughter. The key to the dungeon, alas, was ty’d by a piece of rope-twine about this wretch’s middle. I do verily believe that I purposed no greater mischief than to take it. For so fired was my brain with thinking on the limitless potentialities of engraftment, that I could not chuse but thirst to haste me back again to the dungeon and find out what other wonders of chirurgery might yet lie pent up in its depths. But, alas, I did not take account of the riot of the animal spirits in the impetuous crisis of the feaver. Nay, I reckon’d not that my mere and blameless touch would, like a spark to tinder, quite mechanically give rise to a most explosive conflagration no more in my humble power to control than the sudden paroxysm of a sneeze. Indeed the spirits of my blood did now so mutinously overthrow the lawful governance of my soul, that the bones and sinews of my body quite entirely of themselves -- like the automatical wheel-work of a clock -- did have their vile way. But neither my immortal soul nor my free will took part in this most lewd and disgustful copulation. Therefore, as it may well be supposed, I simply cannot acknowledge or vouchsafe the honour of my good name to whatever race of degenerous abominations might be laid at my door hereafter. I have nothing, at this present, more to add -- save that (with a certain faith in the mercy of Almighty God) I do hereby at last fully and penitently confess that, amidst the drowsy eyes and lolling tongues of dogs and the intolerable buzzing of the flies, I did indeed most shamefully beget the whelp of this poor creature and my sin.

 
Chapter X.

    
In which Annabel wishes her Husband would die

 
and the Dentist entertains a hideous suspicion.

It was
obvious that, however much those perfectly horrible people from the sanitarium dowsed him with disinfectant and perfume, there was simply no way to annihilate that smell of rotting meat. But it was not (Annabel kept on telling herself as she buried her nose in the pillow and gagged at his stench) as if she had never before shared a bed with an ugly and disgusting old man. All right, then, yes, she did have to admit that this one was ever so much worse than the others. But, then again, this one owned a publishing house, a stag magazine and a tabloid -- and she had never before hit such a jackpot of silver tea services, private planes and diamond chokers. And hadn’t she always told herself that she would, if she had to, put up with the scratching of their grizzled chins and the bad breath and nightmarish tongues of their slobbering kisses, yes, and even their age-spotted hands crawling like tarantulas up her thighs and fumbling at the hooks of her bra, if only these repulsive old animals would give her just exactly everything she wanted?

      
Now covering her ears with the pillow and pulling herself just as far as she possibly could to her own side of the bed, she still couldn’t avoid hearing the whistling, gurgling rhythm of his wheeze. And when she thought that every night from now on she would be lying here just exactly like this -- and how ecstatically, deliriously happy she had been, how absolutely positive he would die -- all she wanted to do was cry and kick and scream. But it was really much too disappointing to think about that now: how dead he’d looked when he’d fallen over in his chair, how the grim doctor had called her in to see the x-ray -- and there was that grinning skull and all those wonderful white speckles on the film, looking just like mold spots on some seriously rotted fruit. She had had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing.

      
But then, just when she’d gone to Bergdorf’s and bought her black veil and dress and taken out his will and consulted with her lawyer -- and everything had seemed so full of the promise of an open grave -- it had all quite mysteriously unravelled. It was that sneaky little lawyer Fong who was to blame -- all those phone calls from the kitchen she wasn’t supposed to hear. A lot of nonsense about surgery she didn’t understand -- and the next thing she knew that creep from the sanitarium had taken him away. Well, all those stitches on his head didn’t make him look much worse. At least, thank God, he was now -- except for his interminable wheezing and the blinking of those buzzard eyes -- altogether paralyzed. At least now she would be spared the horrors of the bedroom. Who would have thought that anyone so very old would insist on all those hideous positions?