And Bean, there isn't a Bean like you in all the world, either.
I have lost a whole day, remembering and musing. This would have been rather bad if this book were written to an order from a publisher. For one reason or another publishers are always in a hurry. But then they belong to the higher orders of animals. A simple Tommyius subterraneus has plenty of time.
Yet perhaps you have not. Therefore I hasten to return to the nice sounds I used to extract out of an unhappy horn. It is intentionally that I used the word "extract," which will remind you of a toothache. So did my blowing the horn. It was pitiful, yet heroic. For, in truth, I had no wish to make a living out of these horny studies. It was all for the sake of the charming Mitzi. Had I but been in possession of her fleshy lips!
I notice that this last sentence has a double sense. On the one hand it means that I have thin lips and therefore enjoyed great difficulties in producing any sounds on the horn. But on the other hand that sentence also informs you of my ardent desire to call Mitzi' s red lips my own. I had fallen in love with her from the first day, from the very moment when in the railway carriage I had been attracted by the handsome contours of ... of ... of the reverse of the medal. I had now arrived at that state when the very name Mitzi would strike my brain with a glowing emotion, when I liked to forget all other things and to occupy myself solely with her, remembering the evenness of the outline of her figure, her feminine daintiness, her slim, narrow feet. Yet, I had no experience of women, my feelings were intense, but my thoughts were vague, my love was a formless abstraction, and Mitzi a perceptible fact. In truth, I did not know that I was in love, and some time had to pass before I realized it.
In the meantime I used my breath in blowing the horn. Nevertheless I did not gain Mr. Doblana's confidence. His intercourse with his daughter seemed to be restricted to the utmost necessary, and I was unable to find out with what offence he was reproaching her. Still, if I did not learn his secret—for it was evidently a secret—I had occasion to study his character.
After about a dozen lessons he allowed that I was hopeless as a horn-player. He strongly advised me to give it up. But having once tasted my money (or, to render unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, the money of Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., Insurance Brokers, London, E.C.), and having found it savoury and palatable, he decided on having another helping of it.
"Mr. Cooper," he said—he always pronounced my name with a hyphen between the two o's, associating it probably by some mysterious etymology with the origin of Cooperative societies—"Mr. Cooper, you have talent only as a composer; but I am afraid that you will profit very little by the lessons you take with Hammer. He is a genius and, poor devil, I do not grudge him the little money you will let him earn; however, I venture to say that you would benefit more by studying with a more practical man like me. Of course, it could not be the same figure..."
Now, as he did not know what I was paying Hammer, these last words could only refer to his own lessons, the famous attempts at teaching me the horn, and this was already twice the cost of Hammer's lessons. But it was true that I improved little with the organist's loose and obscure explanations which, indeed, were more fascinating than serviceable; and I was only too glad to be relieved from the torture I inflicted upon myself and the neighbourhood. Besides, had I not the duty, as it were, of cultivating my friendship with Mr. Doblana?