Crome Yellow Read online

  The gong sounded in a terrific crescendo from the hall. Still no sign of the others. Denis was horribly hungry.

  “That’s what happened to me,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. “I was hypnotised. I lost consciousness like that.” He snapped his fingers. “When I came to, I found that it was past midnight, and I had written four thousand words. Four thousand,” he repeated, opening his mouth very wide on the “ou” of thousand. “Inspiration had come to me.”

  “What a very extraordinary thing,” said Denis.

  “I was afraid of it at first. It didn’t seem to me natural. I didn’t feel, somehow, that it was quite right, quite fair, I might almost say, to produce a literary composition unconsciously. Besides, I was afraid I might have written nonsense.”

  “And had you written nonsense?” Denis asked.

  “Certainly not,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied, with a trace of annoyance. “Certainly not. It was admirable. Just a few spelling mistakes and slips, such as there generally are in automatic writing. But the style, the thought — all the essentials were admirable. After that, Inspiration came to me regularly. I wrote the whole of ‘Humble Heroisms’ like that. It was a great success, and so has everything been that I have written since.” He leaned forward and jabbed at Denis with his finger. “That’s my secret,” he said, “and that’s how you could write too, if you tried — without effort, fluently, well.”

  “But how?” asked Denis, trying not to show how deeply he had been insulted by that final “well.”

  “By cultivating your Inspiration, by getting into touch with your Subconscious. Have you ever read my little book, ‘Pipe-Lines to the Infinite’?”

  Denis had to confess that that was, precisely, one of the few, perhaps the only one, of Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s works he had not read.

  “Never mind, never mind,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. “It’s just a little book about the connection of the Subconscious with the Infinite. Get into touch with the Subconscious and you are in touch with the Universe. Inspiration, in fact. You follow me?”

  “Perfectly, perfectly,” said Denis. “But don’t you find that the Universe sometimes sends you very irrelevant messages?”

  “I don’t allow it to,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied. “I canalise it. I bring it down through pipes to work the turbines of my conscious mind.”

  “Like Niagara,” Denis suggested. Some of Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s remarks sounded strangely like quotations — quotations from his own works, no doubt.

  “Precisely. Like Niagara. And this is how I do it.” He leaned forward, and with a raised forefinger marked his points as he made them, beating time, as it were, to his discourse. “Before I go off into my trance, I concentrate on the subject I wish to be inspired about. Let us say I am writing about the humble heroisms; for ten minutes before I go into the trance I think of nothing but orphans supporting their little brothers and sisters, of dull work well and patiently done, and I focus my mind on such great philosophical truths as the purification and uplifting of the soul by suffering, and the alchemical transformation of leaden evil into golden good.” (Denis again hung up his little festoon of quotation marks.) “Then I pop off. Two or three hours later I wake up again, and find that inspiration has done its work. Thousands of words, comforting, uplifting words, lie before me. I type them out neatly on my machine and they are ready for the printer.”

  “It all sounds wonderfully simple,” said Denis.

  “It is. All the great and splendid and divine things of life are wonderfully simple.” (Quotation marks again.) “When I have to do my aphorisms,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith continued, “I prelude my trance by turning over the pages of any Dictionary of Quotations or Shakespeare Calendar that comes to hand. That sets the key, so to speak; that ensures that the Universe shall come flowing in, not in a continuous rush, but in aphorismic drops. You see the idea?”

  Denis nodded. Mr. Barbecue-Smith put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a notebook. “I did a few in the train to-day,” he said, turning over the pages. “Just dropped off into a trance in the corner of my carriage. I find the train very conducive to good work. Here they are.” He cleared his throat and read:

  “The Mountain Road may be steep, but the air is pure up there, and it is from the Summit that one gets the view.”

  “The Things that Really Matter happen in the Heart.”

  It was curious, Denis reflected, the way the Infinite sometimes repeated itself.

  “Seeing is Believing. Yes, but Believing is also Seeing. If I believe in God, I see God, even in the things that seem to be evil.”

  Mr. Barbecue-Smith looked up from his notebook. “That last one,” he said, “is particularly subtle and beautiful, don’t you think? Without Inspiration I could never have hit on that.” He re-read the apophthegm with a slower and more solemn utterance. “Straight from the Infinite,” he commented reflectively, then addressed himself to the next aphorism.

  “The flame of a candle gives Light, but it also Burns.”

  Puzzled wrinkles appeared on Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s forehead. “I don’t exactly know what that means,” he said. “It’s very gnomic. One could apply it, of course to the Higher Education — illuminating, but provoking the Lower Classes to discontent and revolution. Yes, I suppose that’s what it is. But it’s gnomic, it’s gnomic.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The gong sounded again, clamorously, it seemed imploringly: dinner was growing cold. It roused Mr. Barbecue-Smith from meditation. He turned to Denis.

  “You understand me now when I advise you to cultivate your Inspiration. Let your Subconscious work for you; turn on the Niagara of the Infinite.”

  There was the sound of feet on the stairs. Mr. Barbecue-Smith got up, laid his hand for an instant on Denis’s shoulder, and said:

  “No more now. Another time. And remember, I rely absolutely on your discretion in this matter. There are intimate, sacred things that one doesn’t wish to be generally known.”

  “Of course,” said Denis. “I quite understand.”

  Chapter VII.

  * * *

  At Crome all the beds were ancient hereditary pieces of furniture. Huge beds, like four-masted ships, with furled sails of shining coloured stuff. Beds carved and inlaid, beds painted and gilded. Beds of walnut and oak, of rare exotic woods. Beds of every date and fashion from the time of Sir Ferdinando, who built the house, to the time of his namesake in the late eighteenth century, the last of the family, but all of them grandiose, magnificent.

  The finest of all was now Anne’s bed. Sir Julius, son to Sir Ferdinando, had had it made in Venice against his wife’s first lying-in. Early seicento Venice had expended all its extravagant art in the making of it. The body of the bed was like a great square sarcophagus. Clustering roses were carved in high relief on its wooden panels, and luscious putti wallowed among the roses. On the black ground-work of the panels the carved reliefs were gilded and burnished. The golden roses twined in spirals up the four pillar-like posts, and cherubs, seated at the top of each column, supported a wooden canopy fretted with the same carved flowers.

  Anne was reading in bed. Two candles stood on the little table beside her, in their rich light her face, her bare arm and shoulder took on warm hues and a sort of peach-like quality of surface. Here and there in the canopy above her carved golden petals shone brightly among profound shadows, and the soft light, falling on the sculptured panel of the bed, broke restlessly among the intricate roses, lingered in a broad caress on the blown cheeks, the dimpled bellies, the tight, absurd little posteriors of the sprawling putti.

  There was a discreet tap at the door. She looked up. “Come in, come in.” A face, round and childish, within its sleek bell of golden hair, peered round the opening door. More childishlooking still, a suit of mauve pyjamas made its entrance.

  It was Mary. “I thought I’d just look in for a moment to say good-night,” she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Anne closed her book. “That was very sweet of you.”

&nb
sp; “What are you reading?” She looked at the book. “Rather secondrate, isn’t it?” The tone in which Mary pronounced the word “second-rate” implied an almost infinite denigration. She was accustomed in London to associate only with first-rate people who liked first-rate things, and she knew that there were very, very few first-rate things in the world, and that those were mostly French.

  “Well, I’m afraid I like it,” said Anne. There was nothing more to be said. The silence that followed was a rather uncomfortable one. Mary fiddled uneasily with the bottom button of her pyjama jacket. Leaning back on her mound of heaped-up pillows, Anne waited and wondered what was coming.

  “I’m so awfully afraid of repressions,” said Mary at last, bursting suddenly and surprisingly into speech. She pronounced the words on the tail-end of an expiring breath, and had to gasp for new air almost before the phrase was finished.

  “What’s there to be depressed about?”

  “I said repressions, not depressions.”

  “Oh, repressions; I see,” said Anne. “But repressions of what?”

  Mary had to explain. “The natural instincts of sex...” she began didactically. But Anne cut her short.

  “Yes, yes. Perfectly. I understand. Repressions! old maids and all the rest. But what about them?”

  “That’s just it,” said Mary. “I’m afraid of them. It’s always dangerous to repress one’s instincts. I’m beginning to detect in myself symptoms like the ones you read of in the books. I constantly dream that I’m falling down wells; and sometimes I even dream that I’m climbing up ladders. It’s most disquieting. The symptoms are only too clear.”

  “Are they?”

  “One may become a nymphomaniac of one’s not careful. You’ve no idea how serious these repressions are if you don’t get rid of them in time.”

  “It sounds too awful,” said Anne. “But I don’t see that I can do anything to help you.”

  “I thought I’d just like to talk it over with you.”

  “Why, of course; I’m only too happy, Mary darling.”

  Mary coughed and drew a deep breath. “I presume,” she began sententiously, “I presume we may take for granted that an intelligent young woman of twenty-three who has lived in civilised society in the twentieth century has no prejudices.”

  “Well, I confess I still have a few.”

  “But not about repressions.”

  “No, not many about repressions; that’s true.”

  “Or, rather, about getting rid of repressions.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So much for our fundamental postulate,” said Mary. Solemnity was expressed in every feature of her round young face, radiated from her large blue eyes. “We come next to the desirability of possessing experience. I hope we are agreed that knowledge is desirable and that ignorance is undesirable.”

  Obedient as one of those complaisant disciples from whom Socrates could get whatever answer he chose, Anne gave her assent to this proposition.

  “And we are equally agreed, I hope, that marriage is what it is.”

  “It is.”

  “Good!” said Mary. “And repressions being what they are...”

  “Exactly.”

  “There would therefore seem to be only one conclusion.”

  “But I knew that,” Anne exclaimed, “before you began.”

  “Yes, but now it’s been proved,” said Mary. “One must do things logically. The question is now...”

  “But where does the question come in? You’ve reached your only possible conclusion — logically, which is more than I could have done. All that remains is to impart the information to someone you like — someone you like really rather a lot, someone you’re in love with, if I may express myself so baldly.”

  “But that’s just where the question comes in,” Mary exclaimed. “I’m not in love with anybody.”

  “Then, if I were you, I should wait till you are.”

  “But I can’t go on dreaming night after night that I’m falling down a well. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Well, if it really is TOO dangerous, then of course you must do something about it; you must find somebody else.”

  “But who?” A thoughtful frown puckered Mary’s brow. “It must be somebody intelligent, somebody with intellectual interests that I can share. And it must be somebody with a proper respect for women, somebody who’s prepared to talk seriously about his work and his ideas and about my work and my ideas. It isn’t, as you see, at all easy to find the right person.”

  “Well” said Anne, “there are three unattached and intelligent men in the house at the present time. There’s Mr. Scogan, to begin with; but perhaps he’s rather too much of a genuine antique. And there are Gombauld and Denis. Shall we say that the choice is limited to the last two?”

  Mary nodded. “I think we had better,” she said, and then hesitated, with a certain air of embarrassment.

  “What is it?”

  “I was wondering,” said Mary, with a gasp, “whether they really were unattached. I thought that perhaps you might...you might...”

  “It was very nice of you to think of me, Mary darling,” said Anne, smiling the tight cat’s smile. “But as far as I’m concerned, they are both entirely unattached.”

  “I’m very glad of that,” said Mary, looking relieved. “We are now confronted with the question: Which of the two?”

  “I can give no advice. It’s a matter for your taste.”

  “It’s not a matter of my taste,” Mary pronounced, “but of their merits. We must weigh them and consider them carefully and dispassionately.”

  “You must do the weighing yourself,” said Anne; there was still the trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth and round the half-closed eyes. “I won’t run the risk of advising you wrongly.”

  “Gombauld has more talent,” Mary began, “but he is less civilised than Denis.” Mary’s pronunciation of “civilised” gave the word a special and additional significance. She uttered it meticulously, in the very front of her mouth, hissing delicately on the opening sibilant. So few people were civilised, and they, like the first-rate works of art, were mostly French. “Civilisation is most important, don’t you think?”

  Anne held up her hand. “I won’t advise,” she said. “You must make the decision.”

  “Gombauld’s family,” Mary went on reflectively, “comes from Marseilles. Rather a dangerous heredity, when one thinks of the Latin attitude towards women. But then, I sometimes wonder whether Denis is altogether serious-minded, whether he isn’t rather a dilettante. It’s very difficult. What do you think?”

  “I’m not listening,” said Anne. “I refuse to take any responsibility.”

  Mary sighed. “Well,” she said, “I think I had better go to bed and think about it.”

  “Carefully and dispassionately,” said Anne.

  At the door Mary turned round. “Good-night,” she said, and wondered as she said the words why Anne was smiling in that curious way. It was probably nothing, she reflected. Anne often smiled for no apparent reason; it was probably just a habit. “I hope I shan’t dream of falling down wells again to-night,” she added.

  “Ladders are worse,” said Anne.

  Mary nodded. “Yes, ladders are much graver.”

  Chapter VIII.

  * * *

  Breakfast on Sunday morning was an hour later than on week-days, and Priscilla, who usually made no public appearance before luncheon, honoured it by her presence. Dressed in black silk, with a ruby cross as well as her customary string of pearls round her neck, she presided. An enormous Sunday paper concealed all but the extreme pinnacle of her coiffure from the outer world.

  “I see Surrey has won,” she said, with her mouth full, “by four wickets. The sun is in Leo: that would account for it!”

  “Splendid game, cricket,” remarked Mr. Barbecue-Smith heartily to no one in particular; “so thoroughly English.”

  Jenny, who was sitting next to him, woke up suddenly with a
start. “What?” she said. “What?”

  “So English,” repeated Mr. Barbecue-Smith.

  Jenny looked at him, surprised. “English? Of course I am.”

  He was beginning to explain, when Mrs. Wimbush vailed her Sunday paper, and appeared, a square, mauve-powdered face in the midst of orange splendours. “I see there’s a new series of articles on the next world just beginning,” she said to Mr. Barbecue-Smith. “This one’s called ‘Summer Land and Gehenna.’”

  “Summer Land,” echoed Mr. Barbecue-Smith, closing his eyes. “Summer Land. A beautiful name. Beautiful — beautiful.”

  Mary had taken the seat next to Denis’s. After a night of careful consideration she had decided on Denis. He might have less talent than Gombauld, he might be a little lacking in seriousness, but somehow he was safer.

  “Are you writing much poetry here in the country?” she asked, with a bright gravity.

  “None,” said Denis curtly. “I haven’t brought my typewriter.”

  “But do you mean to say you can’t write without a typewriter?”

  Denis shook his head. He hated talking at breakfast, and, besides, he wanted to hear what Mr. Scogan was saying at the other end of the table.

  “...My scheme for dealing with the Church,” Mr. Scogan was saying, “is beautifully simple. At the present time the Anglican clergy wear their collars the wrong way round. I would compel them to wear, not only their collars, but all their clothes, turned back to frantic — coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots — so that every clergyman should present to the world a smooth facade, unbroken by stud, button, or lace. The enforcement of such a livery would act as a wholesome deterrent to those intending to enter the Church. At the same time it would enormously enhance, what Archbishop Laud so rightly insisted on, the ‘beauty of holiness’ in the few incorrigibles who could not be deterred.”