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Repetitions of the litter of books in the parlor lay all about over the floor; colored anatomical prints were nailed anyhow against the walls; rolled-up towels were scattered here, there, and everywhere in the wildest confusion, as if the room had been bombarded with them; and last, but by no means least remarkable among the other extraordinary objects in the bed-chamber, the stuffed figure of a large unshaven poodle-dog, stood on an old card-table, keeping perpetual watch over a pair of the philosopher's black breeches twisted round his forepaws.
The bar-room of the blazing Poodle-Dog was thronged with men men standing before the long, sloppy bar, men seated around rough tables, and men lounging here and there in groups about the heavily sanded floor. Uninterestedly glancing at these, Winston paused for an idle moment, his eyes fastened upon a whirling spectacle of dancers in the hall beyond.
There were long pack trains of women, quite cheerful, bent over under the weight of firewood or vegetables, many with babies tucked away in the folds of their garments; mincing dandified warriors with poodle-dog hair, skewers in their ears, their jewelery brought to a high polish a fatuous expression of self-satisfaction on their faces, carrying each a section of sugarcane which they now used as a staff but would later devour for lunch; bearers, under convoy of straight soldierly red-sashed Sudanese, transporting Government goods; wild-eyed staring shenzis from the forest, with matted hair and goatskin garments, looking ready to bolt aside at the slightest alarm; coveys of marvellous and giggling damsels, their fine-grained skin anointed and shining with red oil, strung with beads and shells, very coquettish and sure of their feminine charm; naked small boys marching solemnly like their elders; camel trains from far-off Abyssinia or Somaliland under convoy of white-clad turbaned grave men of beautiful features; donkey safaris in charge of dirty degenerate looking East Indians carrying trade goods to some distant post-all these and many more, going one way or the other, drew one side, at the sight of our white faces, to let us pass.
It is almost a total surrender to evil, and involves a daily and nightly association with vice which cannot but prove most repugnant to true womanhood. Surely, you do not know the true nature of this place?" "Then tell it to me." "I will, and without any mincing of words. The Gayety is a mere adjunct to the Poodle-Dog saloon and the gambling hell up-stairs.
I jumped back it was a poodle-dog, whose black eyes winked at me as if about to cry: a sort of appeal for sympathy shone in its glowing orbs. I was almost convulsed with laughter, it was so unexpected. When able to speak, I said, 'Pardon me, madam, for laughing; but I thought it was a baby. She replied indignantly, 'Oh, dear, no!
I know the rest of the country throws it up to New York a lot because of its Four Hundred, and that the ordinary small-town man gets so scornful when he talks of the idle and diamond-crusted rich, with their poodle-dog pastimes, that he lives in constant danger of stabbing his eyes with his nose. But I'm not that way; I'm interested.
"Well, perhaps he is," assented Lucina, easily. Then she asked advice as to this or that shade in the ears of the little poodle-dog which she was embroidering. "Lucina is as transparent as glass," her mother thought. "She could never speak of Lawrence Prescott in that way if she were in love with him, and there is no one else in town."
Occasionally the most casual notice, on my part, of some very unpromising object has smoothed the way for the relation of a long and interesting narrative. I first heard one of the most dramatic of the stories that will be presented in this book, merely through being carelessly inquisitive to know the history of a stuffed poodle-dog.
There was an unusually boisterous, quarrelsome crowd congregated in front of the Poodle-Dog, and she turned aside into the middle of the street in order to get past undisturbed. Some one called noisily for her to wait and have a drink, but she never glanced about, or gave slightest heed.
I made myself agreeable, affected immense interest in her affairs, and so got into her room. Such a place! A mere corner of it curtained off to make a bedroom. One chair, one stool, one saucepan on the fire. Before the hearth the most grotesquely hideous unshaven poodle-dog you ever saw; and on the stool a fair little girl plaiting dinner-mats. Such was the household furniture and all included.
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