When the curtain rose again it was on an aged Monster, with a black patch over the left side of his nose, no hair, no teeth, and sitting harmlessly behind the bars of an asylum.
The Monster: Asses, apes and dogs! Milton called them that; he should have known. Somewhere there must be men, however. The variations on Diabelli prove it. Brunelleschi’s dome is more than the magnification of Cléo de Mérode’s breast. Somewhere there are men with power, living reasonably. Like our mythical Greeks and Romans. Living cleanly. The images of the gods are their portraits. They walk under their own protection. (The Monster climbs on to a chair and stands in the posture of a statue.) Jupiter, father of gods, a man, I bless myself, I throw bolts at my own disobedience, I answer my own prayers, I pronounce oracles to satisfy the questions I myself propound. I abolish all tetters, poxes, blood-spitting, rotting of bones. With love I recreate the world from within. Europa puts an end to squalor, Leda does away with tyranny, Danae tempers stupidity. After establishing these reforms in the social sewer, I climb, I climb, up through the manhole, out of the manhole, beyond humanity. For the manhole, even the manhole, is dark; though not so dingy as the doghole it was before I altered it. Up through the manhole, towards the air. Up, up! (And the Monster, suiting the action to his words, climbs up the runged back of his chair and stands, by a miraculous feat of acrobacy, on the topmost bar.) I begin to see the stars through other eyes than my own. More than dog already, I become more than man. I begin to have inklings of the shape and sense of things. Upwards, upwards I strain, I peer, I reach aloft. (The balanced Monster reaches, strains and peers.) And I seize, I seize! (As he shouts these words, the Monster falls heavily, head foremost, to the floor. He lies there quite still. After a little time the door opens and the Doctor of the first scene enters with a Warder.)
The Warder: I heard a crash.
The Doctor (who has by this time become immensely old and has a beard like Father Thames): It looks as though you were right. (He examines the Monster.)
The Warder: He was for ever climbing on to his chair.
The Doctor: Well, he won’t any more. His neck’s broken.
The Warder: You don’t say so?
The Doctor: I do.
The Warder: Well, I never!
The Doctor: Have it carried down to the dissecting-room.
The Warder: I’ll send for the porters at once.
(Exeunt severally, and Curtain.)
“Well,” said Mrs. Viveash, “I’m glad that’s over.”
The music struck up again, saxophone and ’cello, with the thin draught of the violin to cool their ecstasies and the thumping piano to remind them of business. Gumbril and Mrs. Viveash slid out into the dancing crowd, revolving as though by force of habit.
“These substitutes for the genuine copulative article,” said Coleman to his disciple, “are beneath the dignity of hell-hounds like you and me.”
Charmed, the young man laughed; he was attentive as though at the feet of Socrates. Coleman had found him in a night club, where he had gone in search of Zoe, found him very drunk in the company of two formidable women fifteen or twenty years his senior, who were looking after him, half maternally out of pure kindness of heart, half professionally; for he seemed to be carrying a good deal of money. He was incapable of looking after himself. Coleman had pounced on him at once, claimed an old friendship which the youth was too tipsy to be able to deny, and carried him off. There was something, he always thought, peculiarly interesting about the spectacle of children tobogganing down into the cesspools.
“I like this place,” said the young man.
“Tastes differ!” Coleman shrugged his shoulders. “The German professors have catalogued thousands of people whose whole pleasure consists in eating dung.”
The young man smiled and nodded, rather vaguely. “Is there anything to drink here?” he asked.
“Too respectable,” Coleman answered, shaking his head.
“I think this is a bloody place,” said the young man.