Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley — Read

The blackamoors had left the platform at the end of the hall. The curtains looped up at either side had slid down, cutting it off from the rest of the room -- "making two worlds," Gumbril elegantly and allusively put it, "where only one grew before -- and one of them a better world," he added too philosophically, "because unreal. " There was the theatrical silence, the suspense. The curtains parted again.

On a narrow bed -- on a bier perhaps -- the corpse of a woman. The husband kneels beside it. At the foot stands the doctor, putting away his instruments. In a beribboned pink cradle reposes a monstrous baby. / The Husband / Margaret! Margaret! / The Doctor / She is dead. / The Husband / Margaret! / The Doctor / Of septicemia, I tell you. / The Husband / I wish that I too were dead! / The Doctor / But you won't tomorrow. / The Husband / Tomorrow! But I don't want to live to see tomorrow. / The Doctor / You will tomorrow. / The Husband / Margaret! Margaret! Wait for me there; I shall not fail to meet you in that hollow vale. / The Doctor / You will not be slow to survive her. / The Husband / Christ have mercy upon us! / The Doctor / You would do better to think of the child. / The Husband / Rising and standing menacingly over the cradle. Is that the monster? / The Doctor / No worse than others. / The Husband / Begotten in a night of immaculate pleasure, monster, may you live loveless, in dirt and impurity! / The Doctor / Conceived in lust and darkness, may your own impurity always seem heavenly, monster, in your own eyes! / The Husband / Murderer, slowly die all your life long! / The Doctor / The child must be fed. / The Husband / Fed? With what? / The Doctor / With milk. / The Husband / Her milk is cold in her breasts. / The Doctor / There are still cows. / The Husband / Tubercular shorthorns. Calling. Let Short-i'-the-horn be brought! / Voices (off) / Short-i'-the-horn! Short-i'-the-horn! Fadingly. Short-i'-the. / The Doctor / In nineteen hundred and twenty-one, twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and thirteen women died in childbirth. / The Husband / But none of them belonged to my harem. / The Doctor / Each of them was somebody's wife. / The Husband / Doubtless. But the people we don't know are only characters in the human comedy. We are the tragedians. / The Doctor / Not in the spectator's eyes. / The Husband / Do I think of the spectators? Ah, Margaret! Margaret! . / The Doctor / The twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and fourteenth. / The Husband / The only one! / The Doctor / But here comes the cow. / Short-i'-the-horn is led in by a Yokel. / The Husband / Ah, good Short-i'-the-horn! He pats the animal. She was tested last week, was she not? / The Yokel / Ay, sir. / The Husband / And found tubercular. No? / The Yokel / Even in the udders, may it please you. / The Husband / Excellent! Milk me the cow, sir, into this dirty wash-pot. / The Yokel / I will, sir. He milks the cow. / The Husband / Her milk -- her milk is cold already. All the woman in her chilled and curdled within her breasts. Ah, Jesus! what miraculous galactagogue will make it flow again? / The Yokel / The wash-pot is full, sir. / The Husband / Then take the cow away. / The Yokel / Come, Short-i'-the-horn; come up, good Short-i'-the-horn. He goes out with the cow. / The Husband / Pouring the milk into a long-tubed feeding-bottle. Here's for you, monster, to drink your own health in. He gives the bottle to the child. / Curtain.