Crome Yellow Read online

  Mr. Scogan drank off what was left of his port and refilled the glass.

  At this very moment,” he went on, “the most frightful horrors are taking place in every corner of the world. People are being crushed, slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air at the rate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for three seconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; but do we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not. We feel sympathy, no doubt; we represent to ourselves imaginatively the sufferings of nations and individuals and we deplore them. But, after all, what are sympathy and imagination? Precious little, unless the person for whom we feel sympathy happens to be closely involved in our affections; and even then they don’t go very far. And a good thing too; for if one had an imagination vivid enough and a sympathy sufficiently sensitive really to comprehend and to feel the sufferings of other people, one would never have a moment’s peace of mind. A really sympathetic race would not so much as know the meaning of happiness. But luckily, as I’ve already said, we aren’t a sympathetic race. At the beginning of the war I used to think I really suffered, through imagination and sympathy, with those who physically suffered. But after a month or two I had to admit that, honestly, I didn’t. And yet I think I have a more vivid imagination than most. One is always alone in suffering; the fact is depressing when one happens to be the sufferer, but it makes pleasure possible for the rest of the world.”

  There was a pause. Henry Wimbush pushed back his chair.

  “I think perhaps we ought to go and join the ladies,” he said.

  “So do I,” said Ivor, jumping up with alacrity. He turned to Mr. Scogan. “Fortunately,” he said, “we can share our pleasures. We are not always condemned to be happy alone.”

  Chapter XVII.

  * * *

  Ivor brought his hands down with a bang on to the final chord of his rhapsody. There was just a hint in that triumphant harmony that the seventh had been struck along with the octave by the thumb of the left hand; but the general effect of splendid noise emerged clearly enough. Small details matter little so long as the general effect is good. And, besides, that hint of the seventh was decidedly modern. He turned round in his seat and tossed the hair back out of his eyes.

  “There,” he said. “That’s the best I can do for you, I’m afraid.”

  Murmurs of applause and gratitude were heard, and Mary, her large china eyes fixed on the performer, cried out aloud, “Wonderful!” and gasped for new breath as though she were suffocating.

  Nature and fortune had vied with one another in heaping on Ivor Lombard all their choicest gifts. He had wealth and he was perfectly independent. He was good looking, possessed an irresistible charm of manner, and was the hero of more amorous successes than he could well remember. His accomplishments were extraordinary for their number and variety. He had a beautiful untrained tenor voice; he could improvise, with a startling brilliance, rapidly and loudly, on the piano. He was a good amateur medium and telepathist, and had a considerable first-hand knowledge of the next world. He could write rhymed verses with an extraordinary rapidity. For painting symbolical pictures he had a dashing style, and if the drawing was sometimes a little weak, the colour was always pyrotechnical. He excelled in amateur theatricals and, when occasion offered, he could cook with genius. He resembled Shakespeare in knowing little Latin and less Greek. For a mind like his, education seemed supererogatory. Training would only have destroyed his natural aptitudes.

  “Let’s go out into the garden,” Ivor suggested. “It’s a wonderful night.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Scogan, “but I for one prefer these still more wonderful arm-chairs.” His pipe had begun to bubble oozily every time he pulled at it. He was perfectly happy.

  Henry Wimbush was also happy. He looked for a moment over his pince-nez in Ivor’s direction and then, without saying anything, returned to the grimy little sixteenth-century account books which were now his favourite reading. He knew more about Sir Ferdinando’s household expenses than about his own.

  The outdoor party, enrolled under Ivor’s banner, consisted of Anne, Mary, Denis, and, rather unexpectedly, Jenny. Outside it was warm and dark; there was no moon. They walked up and down the terrace, and Ivor sang a Neapolitan song: “Stretti, stretti” — close, close — with something about the little Spanish girl to follow. The atmosphere began to palpitate. Ivor put his arm round Anne’s waist, dropped his head sideways onto her shoulder, and in that position walked on, singing as he walked. It seemed the easiest, the most natural, thing in the world. Denis wondered why he had never done it. He hated Ivor.

  “Let’s go down to the pool,” said Ivor. He disengaged his embrace and turned round to shepherd his little flock. They made their way along the side of the house to the entrance of the yewtree walk that led down to the lower garden. Between the blank precipitous wall of the house and the tall yew trees the path was a chasm of impenetrable gloom. Somewhere there were steps down to the right, a gap in the yew hedge. Denis, who headed the party, groped his way cautiously; in this darkness, one had an irrational fear of yawning precipices, of horrible spiked obstructions. Suddenly from behind him he heard a shrill, startled, “Oh!” and then a sharp, dry concussion that might have been the sound of a slap. After that, Jenny’s voice was heard pronouncing, “I am going back to the house.” Her tone was decided, and even as she pronounced the words she was melting away into the darkness. The incident, whatever it had been, was closed. Denis resumed his forward groping. From somewhere behind Ivor began to sing again, softly:

  “Phillis plus avare que tendre Ne gagnant rien a refuser, Un jour exigea a Silvandre Trente moutons pour un baiser.”

  The melody drooped and climbed again with a kind of easy languor; the warm darkness seemed to pulse like blood about them.

  “Le lendemain, nouvelle affaire: Pour le berger le troc fut bon...”

  “Here are the steps,” cried Denis. He guided his companions over the danger, and in a moment they had the turf of the yew-tree walk under their feet. It was lighter here, or at least it was just perceptibly less dark; for the yew walk was wider than the path that had led them under the lea of the house. Looking up, they could see between the high black hedges a strip of sky and a few stars.

  “Car il obtint de la bergere...”

  Went on Ivor, and then interrupted himself to shout, “I’m going to run down,” and he was off, full speed, down the invisible slope, singing unevenly as he went:

  “Trente baisers pour un mouton.”

  The others followed. Denis shambled in the rear, vainly exhorting everyone to caution: the slope was steep, one might break one’s neck. What was wrong with these people, he wondered? They had become like young kittens after a dose of cat-nip. He himself felt a certain kittenishness sporting within him; but it was, like all his emotions, rather a theoretical feeling; it did not overmasteringly seek to express itself in a practical demonstration of kittenishness.

  “Be careful,” he shouted once more, and hardly were the words out of his mouth when, thump! there was the sound of a heavy fall in front of him, followed by the long “F-f-f-f-f” of a breath indrawn with pain and afterwards by a very sincere, “Oo-ooh!” Denis was almost pleased; he had told them so, the idiots, and they wouldn’t listen. He trotted down the slope towards the unseen sufferer.

  Mary came down the hill like a runaway steam-engine. It was tremendously exciting, this blind rush through the dark; she felt she would never stop. But the ground grew level beneath her feet, her speed insensibly slackened, and suddenly she was caught by an extended arm and brought to an abrupt halt.

  “Well,” said Ivor as he tightened his embrace, “you’re caught now, Anne.”

  She made an effort to release herself. “It’s not Anne. It’s Mary.”

  Ivor burst into a peal of amused laughter. “So it is!” he exclaimed. “I seem to be making
nothing but floaters this evening. I’ve already made one with Jenny.” He laughed again, and there was something so jolly about his laughter that Mary could not help laughing too. He did not remove his encircling arm, and somehow it was all so amusing and natural that Mary made no further attempt to escape from it. They walked along by the side of the pool, interlaced. Mary was too short for him to be able, with any comfort, to lay his head on her shoulder. He rubbed his cheek, caressed and caressing, against the thick, sleek mass of her hair. In a little while he began to sing again; the night trembled amorously to the sound of his voice. When he had finished he kissed her. Anne or Mary: Mary or Anne. It didn’t seem to make much difference which it was. There were differences in detail, of course; but the general effect was the same; and, after all, the general effect was the important thing.

  Denis made his way down the hill.

  “Any damage done?” he called out.

  “Is that you, Denis? I’ve hurt my ankle so — and my knee, and my hand. I’m all in pieces.”

  “My poor Anne,” he said. “But then,” he couldn’t help adding, “it was silly to start running downhill in the dark.”

  “Ass!” she retorted in a tone of tearful irritation; “of course it was.”

  He sat down beside on the grass, and found himself breathing the faint, delicious atmosphere of perfume that she carried always with her.

  “Light a match,” she commanded. “I want to look at my wounds.”

  He felt in his pockets for the match-box. The light spurted and then grew steady. Magically, a little universe had been created, a world of colours and forms — Anne’s face, the shimmering orange of her dress, her white, bare arms, a patch of green turf — and round about a darkness that had become solid and utterly blind. Anne held out her hands; both were green and earthy with her fall, and the left exhibited two or three red abrasions.

  “Not so bad,” she said. But Denis was terribly distressed, and his emotion was intensified when, looking up at her face, he saw that the trace of tears, involuntary tears of pain, lingered on her eyelashes. He pulled out his handkerchief and began to wipe away the dirt from the wounded hand. The match went out; it was not worth while to light another. Anne allowed herself to be attended to, meekly and gratefully. “Thank you,” she said, when he had finished cleaning and bandaging her hand; and there was something in her tone that made him feel that she had lost her superiority over him, that she was younger than he, had become, suddenly, almost a child. He felt tremendously large and protective. The feeling was so strong that instinctively he put his arm about her. She drew closer, leaned against him, and so they sat in silence. Then, from below, soft but wonderfully clear through the still darkness, they heard the sound of Ivor’s singing. He was going on with his half-finished song:

  “Le lendemain Phillis plus tendre, Ne voulant deplaire au berger, Fut trop heureuse de lui rendre Trente moutons pour un baiser.”

  There was a rather prolonged pause. It was as though time were being allowed for the giving and receiving of a few of those thirty kisses. Then the voice sang on:

  “Le lendemain Phillis peu sage Aurait donne moutons et chien Pour un baiser que le volage A Lisette donnait pour rien.”

  The last note died away into an uninterrupted silence.

  “Are you better?” Denis whispered. “Are you comfortable like this?”

  She nodded a Yes to both questions.

  “Trente moutons pour un baiser.” The sheep, the woolly mutton — baa, baa, baa...? Or the shepherd? Yes, decidedly, he felt himself to be the shepherd now. He was the master, the protector. A wave of courage swelled through him, warm as wine. He turned his head, and began to kiss her face, at first rather randomly, then, with more precision, on the mouth.

  Anne averted her head; he kissed the ear, the smooth nape that this movement presented him. “No,” she protested; “no, Denis.”

  “Why not?”

  “It spoils our friendship, and that was so jolly.”

  “Bosh!” said Denis.

  She tried to explain. “Can’t you see,” she said, “it isn’t...it isn’t our stunt at all.” It was true. Somehow she had never thought of Denis in the light of a man who might make love; she had never so much as conceived the possibilities of an amorous relationship with him. He was so absurdly young, so...so...she couldn’t find the adjective, but she knew what she meant.

  “Why isn’t it our stunt?” asked Denis. “And, by the way, that’s a horrible and inappropriate expression.”

  “Because it isn’t.”

  “But if I say it is?”

  “It makes no difference. I say it isn’t.”

  “I shall make you say it is.”

  “All right, Denis. But you must do it another time. I must go in and get my ankle into hot water. It’s beginning to swell.”

  Reasons of health could not be gainsaid. Denis got up reluctantly, and helped his companion to her feet. She took a cautious step. “Ooh!” She halted and leaned heavily on his arm.

  “I’ll carry you,” Denis offered. He had never tried to carry a woman, but on the cinema it always looked an easy piece of heroism.

  “You couldn’t,” said Anne.

  “Of course I can.” He felt larger and more protective than ever. “Put your arms round my neck,” he ordered. She did so and, stooping, he picked her up under the knees and lifted her from the ground. Good heavens, what a weight! He took five staggering steps up the slope, then almost lost his equilibrium, and had to deposit his burden suddenly, with something of a bump.

  Anne was shaking with laughter. “I said You couldn’t, my poor Denis.”

  “I can,” said Denis, without conviction. “I’ll try again.”

  “It’s perfectly sweet of you to offer, but I’d rather walk, thanks.” She laid her hand on his shoulder and, thus supported, began to limp slowly up the hill.

  “My poor Denis!” she repeated, and laughed again. Humiliated, he was silent. It seemed incredible that, only two minutes ago, he should have been holding her in his embrace, kissing her. Incredible. She was helpless then, a child. Now she had regained all her superiority; she was once more the far-off being, desired and unassailable. Why had he been such a fool as to suggest that carrying stunt? He reached the house in a state of the profoundest depression.

  He helped Anne upstairs, left her in the hands of a maid, and came down again to the drawing-room. He was surprised to find them all sitting just where he had left them. He had expected that, somehow, everything would be quite different — it seemed such a prodigious time since he went away. All silent and all damned, he reflected, as he looked at them. Mr. Scogan’s pipe still wheezed; that was the only sound. Henry Wimbush was still deep in his account books; he had just made the discovery that Sir Ferdinando was in the habit of eating oysters the whole summer through, regardless of the absence of the justifying R. Gombauld, in horn-rimmed spectacles, was reading. Jenny was mysteriously scribbling in her red notebook. And, seated in her favourite arm-chair at the corner of the hearth, Priscilla was looking through a pile of drawings. One by one she held them out at arm’s length and, throwing back her mountainous orange head, looked long and attentively through half-closed eyelids. She wore a pale sea-green dress; on the slope of her mauve-powdered decolletage diamonds twinkled. An immensely long cigaretteholder projected at an angle from her face. Diamonds were embedded in her high-piled coiffure; they glittered every time she moved. It was a batch of Ivor’s drawings — sketches of Spirit Life, made in the course of tranced tours through the other world. On the back of each sheet descriptive titles were written: “Portrait of an Angel, 15th March ‘20;” “Astral Beings at Play, 3rd December ‘19;” “A Party of Souls on their Way to a Higher Sphere, 21st May ‘21.” Before examining the drawing on the obverse of each sheet, she turned it over to read the title. Try as she could — and she tried hard — Priscilla had never seen a vision or succeeded in establishing any communication with the Spirit World. She had to be content with the reporte
d experiences of others.

  “What have you done with the rest of your party?” she asked, looking up as Denis entered the room.

  He explained. Anne had gone to bed, Ivor and Mary were still in the garden. He selected a book and a comfortable chair, and tried, as far as the disturbed state of his mind would permit him, to compose himself for an evening’s reading. The lamplight was utterly serene; there was no movement save the stir of Priscilla among her papers. All silent and all damned, Denis repeated to himself, all silent and all damned...

  It was nearly an hour later when Ivor and Mary made their appearance.

  “We waited to see the moon rise,” said Ivor.

  “It was gibbous, you know,” Mary explained, very technical and scientific.

  “It was so beautiful down in the garden! The trees, the scent of the flowers, the stars...” Ivor waved his arms. “And when the moon came up, it was really too much. It made me burst into tears.” He sat down at the piano and opened the lid.

  “There were a great many meteorites,” said Mary to anyone who would listen. “The earth must just be coming into the summer shower of them. In July and August...”

  But Ivor had already begun to strike the keys. He played the garden, the stars, the scent of flowers, the rising moon. He even put in a nightingale that was not there. Mary looked on and listened with parted lips. The others pursued their occupations, without appearing to be seriously disturbed. On this very July day, exactly three hundred and fifty years ago, Sir Ferdinando had eaten seven dozen oysters. The discovery of this fact gave Henry Wimbush a peculiar pleasure. He had a natural piety which made him delight in the celebration of memorial feasts. The three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the seven dozen oysters...He wished he had known before dinner; he would have ordered champagne.

  On her way to bed Mary paid a call. The light was out in Anne’s room, but she was not yet asleep.

  “Why didn’t you come down to the garden with us?” Mary asked.