Crome Yellow (8 page)

‘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 if 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 civilized 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 civilized than Denis.' Mary's pronunciation of ‘civilized' 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 civilized, and they, like the first-rate works of art, were mostly French. ‘Civilization 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 tonight,' she added.

‘Ladders are worse,' said Anne.

Mary nodded. ‘Yes, ladders are much graver.'

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 front – coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots – so that every clergyman should present to the world a smooth façade, 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.'

‘In hell, it seems,' said Priscilla, reading in her Sunday paper, ‘the children amuse themselves by flaying lambs alive.'

‘Ah, but, dear lady, that's only a symbol,' exclaimed Mr Barbecue-Smith, ‘a material symbol of a h-piritual truth. Lambs signify . . .'

‘Then there are military uniforms,' Mr Scogan went on. ‘When scarlet and pipeclay were abandoned for khaki, there were some who trembled for the future of war. But then, finding how elegant the new tunic was, how closely it clipped the waist, how voluptuously, with the lateral bustles of the pockets, it exaggerated the hips; when they realized the brilliant potentialities of breeches and top-boots, they were reassured. Abolish these military elegances, standardize a uniform of sack-cloth and mackintosh, you will very soon find that . . .'

‘Is anyone coming to church with me this morning?' asked Henry Wimbush. No one responded. He baited his bare invitation. ‘I read the lessons, you know. And there's Mr Bodiham. His sermons are sometimes worth hearing.'

‘Thank you, thank you,' said Mr Barbecue-Smith. ‘I for one prefer to worship in the infinite church of Nature. How does our Shakespeare put it? “Sermons in books, stones in the running brooks.”' He waved his arm in a fine gesture towards the window, and even as he did so he became vaguely, but none the less insistently, none the less uncomfortably aware that something had gone wrong with the quotation. Something – what could it be? Sermons? Stones? Books?

MR BODIHAM WAS
sitting in his study at the Rectory. The nineteenth-century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted the light grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the room was sombre. Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls, filled with row upon row of those thick, heavy theological works which the second-hand booksellers generally sell by weight. The mantelpiece, the overmantel, a towering structure of spindly pillars and little shelves, were brown and varnished. The writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were the chairs, so was the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns covered the floor. Everything was brown in the room, and there was a curious brownish smell.

In the midst of this brown gloom Mr Bodiham sat at his desk. He was the man in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron cheek-bones and a narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran perpendicularly down his cheeks; his nose was the iron beak of some thin, delicate bird of rapine. He had brown eyes, set in sockets rimmed with iron; round them the skin was dark, as though it had been charred. Dense wiry hair covered his skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His ears were very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were dark, iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke and especially when he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like the grating of iron hinges when a seldom-used door is opened.

It was nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church, hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid rubber; the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr Bodiham at Crome. The flail thumped on india-rubber, and as often as not the rubber slept.

That morning he had preached, as he had often preached before, on the nature of God. He had tried to make them understand about God, what a fearful thing it is to fall into
His hands. God – they thought of something soft and merciful. They blinded themselves to facts; still more, they blinded themselves to the Bible. The passengers on the
Titanic
sang ‘Nearer my God to Thee' as the ship was going down. Did they realize what they were asking to be brought nearer to? A white fire of righteousness, an angry fire . . .

When Savonarola preached, men sobbed and groaned aloud. Nothing broke the polite silence with which Crome listened to Mr Bodiham – only an occasional cough and sometimes the sound of heavy breathing. In the front pew sat Henry Wimbush, calm, well-bred, beautifully dressed. There were times when Mr Bodiham wanted to jump down from the pulpit and shake him into life, – times when he would have liked to beat and kill his whole congregation.

He sat at his desk dejectedly. Outside the Gothic windows the earth was warm and marvellously calm. Everything was as it had always been. And yet, and yet . . . It was nearly four years now since he had preached that sermon on Matthew xxiv. 7: ‘For nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.' It was nearly four years. He had had the sermon printed; it was so terribly, so vitally important that all the world should know what he had to say. A copy of the little pamphlet lay on his desk – eight small grey pages, printed by a fount of type that had grown blunt, like an old dog's teeth, by the endless champing and champing of the press. He opened it and began to read it yet once again.