Crome Yellow (18 page)

‘George closed the door and went back to his seat. But his curiosity was not satisfied. Indeed, this partial satisfaction had but whetted its appetite. Where did the staircase lead? What was the errand of the little maid? It was no business of his, he kept repeating – no business of his. He tried to read, but his attention wandered. A quarter-past twelve sounded on the harmonious clock. Suddenly determined, George rose, crossed the room, opened the hidden door, and began to ascend the stairs. He passed the first window, corkscrewed round, and came to another. He paused for a moment to look out; his heart beat uncomfortably, as though he were affronting some unknown danger. What he was doing, he told himself, was extremely ungentlemanly, horribly underbred. He tiptoed onward and upward. One turn more, then half a turn, and a door confronted him. He halted before it, listened; he could hear no sound. Putting his eye to the keyhole, he saw nothing but a stretch of white sunlit wall. Emboldened, he turned the handle and stepped across the threshold. There he halted, petrified by what he saw, mutely gaping.

‘In the middle of a pleasantly sunny little room – “it is now Priscilla's boudoir,” Mr Wimbush remarked parenthetically – stood a small circular table of mahogany. Crystal, porcelain, and silver, – all the shining apparatus of an elegant meal – were mirrored in its polished depths. The carcase of a cold chicken, a bowl of fruit, a great ham, deeply gashed to its heart of tenderest white and pink, the brown cannon ball of a cold plum-pudding, a slender Hock bottle, and a decanter of claret jostled one another for a place on this festive board. And round the table sat the three sisters, the three lovely Lapiths – eating!

‘At George's sudden entrance they had all looked towards the door, and now they sat, petrified by the same astonishment which kept George fixed and staring. Georgiana, who sat immediately facing the door, gazed at him with dark,
enormous eyes. Between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand she was holding a drumstick of the dismembered chicken; her little finger, elegantly crooked, stood apart from the rest of her hand. Her mouth was open, but the drumstick had never reached its destination; it remained, suspended, frozen, in mid-air. The other two sisters had turned round to look at the intruder. Caroline still grasped her knife and fork; Emmeline's fingers were round the stem of her claret glass. For what seemed a very long time, George and the three sisters stared at one another in silence. They were a group of statues. Then suddenly there was movement. Georgiana dropped her chicken bone, Caroline's knife and fork clattered on her plate. The movement propagated itself, grew more decisive; Emmeline sprang to her feet, uttering a cry. The wave of panic reached George; he turned and, mumbling something unintelligible as he went, rushed out of the room and down the winding stairs. He came to a standstill in the hall, and there, all by himself in the quiet house, he began to laugh.

‘At luncheon it was noticed that the sisters ate a little more than usual. Georgiana toyed with some French beans and a spoonful of calves'-foot jelly. “I feel a little stronger to-day,” she said to Lord Timpany, when he congratulated her on this increase of appetite; “a little more material,” she added, with a nervous laugh. Looking up, she caught George's eye; a blush suffused her cheeks and she looked hastily away.

‘In the garden that afternoon they found themselves for a moment alone.

‘“You won't tell anyone, George? Promise you won't tell anyone,” she implored. “It would make us look so ridiculous. And besides, eating
is
unspiritual, isn't it? Say you won't tell anyone.”

‘“I will,” said George brutally. “I'll tell everyone, unless . . .”

‘“It's blackmail.”

‘“I don't care,” said George. “I'll give you twenty-four hours to decide.”

‘Lady Lapith was disappointed, of course; she had hoped for better things – for Timpany and a coronet. But George, after all, wasn't so bad. They were married at the New Year.

‘My poor grandfather!' Mr Wimbush added, as he closed
his book and put away his pince-nez. ‘Whenever I read in the papers about oppressed nationalities, I think of him.' He relighted his cigar. ‘It was a maternal government, highly centralized, and there were no representative institutions.'

Henry Wimbush ceased speaking. In the silence that ensued Ivor's whispered commentary on the spirit sketches once more became audible. Priscilla, who had been dozing, suddenly woke up.

‘What?' she said in the startled tones of one newly returned to consciousness; ‘what?'

Jenny caught the words. She looked up, smiled, nodded reassuringly. ‘It's about a ham,' she said.

‘What's about a ham?'

‘What Henry has been reading.' She closed the red notebook lying on her knees and slipped a rubber hand round it. ‘I'm going to bed,' she announced, and got up.

‘So am I,' said Anne, yawning. But she lacked the energy to rise from her arm-chair.

The night was hot and oppressive. Round the open windows the curtains hung unmoving. Ivor, fanning himself with the portrait of an Astral Being, looked out into the darkness and drew a breath.

‘The air's like wool,' he declared.

‘It will get cooler after midnight,' said Henry Wimbush, and cautiously added, ‘perhaps.'

‘I shan't sleep, I know.'

Priscilla turned her head in his direction; the monumental coiffure nodded exorbitantly at her slightest movement. ‘You must make an effort,' she said. ‘When I can't sleep, I concentrate my will: I say, “I will sleep, I am asleep!” And pop! off I go. That's the power of thought.'

‘But does it work on stuffy nights?' Ivor inquired. ‘I simply cannot sleep on a stuffy night.'

‘Nor can I,' said Mary, ‘except out of doors.'

‘Out of doors! What a wonderful idea!' In the end they decided to sleep on the towers – Mary on the western tower, Ivor on the eastern. There was a flat expanse of leads on each of the towers, and you could get a mattress through the trap doors that opened on to them. Under the stars, under the gibbous moon, assuredly they would sleep. The mattresses were hauled up, sheets and blankets were spread, and an
hour later the two insomniasts, each on his separate tower, were crying their good-nights across the dividing gulf.

On Mary the sleep-compelling charm of the open air did not work with its expected magic. Even through the mattress one could not fail to be aware that the leads were extremely hard. Then there were noises: the owls screeched tirelessly, and once, roused by some unknown terror, all the geese of the farmyard burst into a sudden frenzy of cackling. The stars and the gibbous moon demanded to be looked at, and when one meteorite had streaked across the sky, you could not help waiting, open-eyed and alert, for the next. Time passed; the moon climbed higher and higher in the sky. Mary felt less sleepy than she had when she first came out. She sat up and looked over the parapet. Had Ivor been able to sleep? she wondered. And as though in answer to her mental question, from behind the chimney-stack at the farther end of the roof a white form noiselessly emerged – a form that, in the moonlight, was recognizably Ivor's. Spreading his arms to right and left, like a tight-rope dancer, he began to walk forward along the roof-tree of the house. He swayed terrifyingly as he advanced. Mary looked on speechlessly; perhaps he was walking in his sleep! Suppose he were to wake up suddenly, now! If she spoke or moved it might mean his death. She dared look no more, but sank back on her pillows. She listened intently. For what seemed an immensely long time there was no sound. Then there was a patter of feet on the tiles, followed by a scrabbling noise and a whispered ‘Damn!' And suddenly Ivor's head and shoulders appeared above the parapet. One leg followed, then the other. He was on the leads. Mary pretended to wake up with a start.

‘Oh!' she said. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I couldn't sleep,' he explained, ‘so I came along to see if you couldn't. One gets bored by oneself on a tower. Don't you find it so?'

It was light before five. Long, narrow clouds barred the east, their edges bright with orange fire. The sky was pale and watery. With the mournful scream of a soul in pain, a monstrous peacock, flying heavily up from below, alighted on the parapet of the tower. Ivor and Mary started broad awake.

‘Catch him!' cried Ivor, jumping up. ‘We'll have a feather.' The frightened peacock ran up and down the parapet in an absurd distress, curtseying and bobbing and clucking; his long tail swung ponderously back and forth as he turned and turned again. Then with a flap and swish he launched himself upon the air and sailed magnificently earthward, with a recovered dignity. But he had left a trophy. Ivor had his feather, a long-lashed eye of purple and green, of blue and gold. He handed it to his companion.

‘An angel's feather,' he said.

Mary looked at it for a moment, gravely and intently. Her purple pyjamas clothed her with an ampleness that hid the lines of her body; she looked like some large, comfortable, unjointed toy, a sort of Teddy bear – but a Teddy bear with an angel's head, pink cheeks, and hair like a bell of gold. An angel's face, the feather of an angel's wing. . . . Somehow the whole atmosphere of this sunrise was rather angelic.

‘It's extraordinary to think of sexual selection,' she said at last, looking up from her contemplation of the miraculous feather.

‘Extraordinary!' Ivor echoed. ‘I select you, you select me. What luck!'

He put his arm round her shoulders and they stood looking eastward. The first sunlight had begun to warm and colour the pale light of the dawn. Mauve pyjamas and white pyjamas; they were a young and charming couple. The rising sun touched their faces. It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical. Profound and beautiful truth!

‘I must be getting back to my tower,' said Ivor at last.

‘Already?'

‘I'm afraid so. The varletry will soon be up and about.'

‘Ivor. . . .' There was a prolonged and silent farewell.

‘And now,' said Ivor, ‘I repeat my tight-rope stunt.'

Mary threw her arms round his neck. ‘You mustn't, Ivor. It's dangerous. Please.'

He had to yield at last to her entreaties. ‘All right,' he said, ‘I'll go down through the house and up at the other end.'

He vanished through the trap door into the darkness that
still lurked within the shuttered house. A minute later he had reappeared on the farther tower; he waved his hand, and then sank down, out of sight, behind the parapet. From below, in the house, came the thin wasp-like buzzing of an alarum-clock. He had gone back just in time.

IVOR WAS GONE.
Lounging behind the wind-screen in his yellow sedan he was whirling across rural England. Social and amorous engagements of the most urgent character called him from hall to baronial hall, from castle to castle, from Elizabethan manor-house to Georgian mansion, over the whole expanse of the kingdom. Today in Somerset, tomorrow in Warwickshire, on Saturday in the West Riding, by Tuesday morning in, Argyll – Ivor never rested. The whole summer through, from the beginning of July till the end of September, he devoted himself to his engagements; he was a martyr to them. In the autumn he went back to London for a holiday. Crome had been a little incident, an evanescent bubble on the stream of his life; it belonged already to the past. By tea-time he would be at Gobley, and there would be Zenobia's welcoming smile. And on Thursday morning – but that was a long, long way ahead. He would think of Thursday morning when Thursday morning arrived. Meanwhile there was Gobley, meanwhile Zenobia.

In the visitors' book at Crome Ivor had left, according to his invariable custom in these cases, a poem. He had improvised it magisterially in the ten minutes preceding his departure. Denis and Mr Scogan strolled back together from the gates of the courtyard, whence they had bidden their last farewells; on the writing-table in the hall they found the visitors' book, open, and Ivor's composition scarcely dry. Mr Scogan read it aloud:

‘Very nice and tasteful and tactful,' said Mr Scogan, when he had finished. ‘I am only troubled by the butterfly's auricular wings. You had a first-hand knowledge of the workings of a poet's mind, Denis; perhaps you can explain.'

‘What could be simpler,' said Denis. ‘It's a beautiful word, and Ivor wanted to say that the wings were golden.'

‘You make it luminously clear.'

‘One suffers so much,' Denis went on, ‘from the fact that beautiful words don't always mean what they ought to mean. Recently, for example, I had a whole poem ruined, just because the word “carminative” didn't mean what it ought to have meant. Carminative – it's admirable, isn't it?'

‘Admirable,' Mr Scogan agreed. ‘And what does it mean?'

‘It's a word I've treasured from my earliest infancy,' said Denis, ‘treasured and loved. They used to give me cinnamon when I had a cold – quite useless, but not disagreeable. One poured it drop by drop out of narrow bottles, a golden liquor, fierce and fiery. On the label was a list of its virtues, and among other things it was described as being in the highest degree carminative. I adored the word. “Isn't it carminative?” I used to say to myself when I'd taken my dose. It seemed so wonderfully to describe that sensation of internal warmth, that glow, that – what shall I call it? – physical self-satisfaction which followed the drinking of cinnamon. Later, when I discovered alcohol, “carminative” described for me that similar, but nobler, more spiritual glow which wine evokes not only in the body but in the soul as well. The carminative virtues of burgundy, of rum, of old brandy, of Lacryma Christi, of Marsala, of Aleatico, of stout, of gin, of champagne, of claret, of the raw new wine of this year's Tuscan vintage – I compared them. I classified them. Marsala is rosily, downily carminative; gin pricks and refreshes while it warms. I had a whole table of carmination values. And now' – Denis spread out his hands,
palm upwards, despairingly – ‘Now I know what carminative really means.'