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CROME YELLOWByALDOUS HUXLEYCHAPTER I.Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed.All the trains--the few that there were--stopped at all thestations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart.Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, WestBowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where healways got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward,goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.They were snorting out of West Bowlby now. It was the nextstation, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack andpiled them neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futileproceeding. But one must have something to do. When he hadfinished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. It wasextremely hot.Oh, this journey! It was two hours cut clean out of his life;two hours in which he might have done so much, so much--writtenthe perfect poem, for example, or read the one illuminating book.Instead of which--his gorge rose at the smell of the dustycushions against which he was leaning.Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might bedone in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundredsof hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt theprecious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.Denis groaned in the spirit, condemned himself utterly with allhis works. What right had he to sit in the sunshine, to occupycorner seats in third-class carriages, to be alive? None, none,none.Misery and a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him. He wastwenty-three, and oh! so agonizingly conscious of the fact.The train came bumpingly to a halt. Here was Camlet at last.Denis jumped up, crammed his hat over his eyes, deranged his pileof baggage, leaned out of the window and shouted for a porter,seized a bag in either hand, and had to put them down again inorder to open the door. When at last he had safely bundledhimself and his baggage on to the platform, he ran up the traintowards the van."A bicycle, a bicycle!" he said breathlessly to the guard. Hefelt himself a man of action. The guard paid no attention, butcontinued methodically to hand out, one by one, the packageslabelled to Camlet. "A bicycle!" Denis repeated. "A greenmachine, cross-framed, name of Stone. S-T-O-N-E.""All in good time, sir," said the guard soothingly. He was alarge, stately man with a naval beard. One pictured him at home,drinking tea, surrounded by a numerous family. It was in thattone that he must have spoken to his children when they weretiresome. "All in good time, sir." Denis's man of actioncollapsed, punctured.He left his luggage to be called for later, and pushed off on hisbicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into thecountry. It was part of the theory of exercise. One day onewould get up at six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, orStratford-on-Avon--anywhere. And within a radius of twenty milesthere were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seenin the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow they neverdid get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that thebicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might getup at six.Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camletstation, he felt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, wasgood. The far-away blue hills, the harvests whitening on theslopes of the ridge along which his road led him, the treelesssky-lines that changed as he moved--yes, they were all good. Hewas overcome by the beauty of those deeply embayed combes,scooped in the flanks of the ridge beneath him. Curves, curves:he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to find someterm in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves--no, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, asthough to scoop the achieved expression out of the air, andalmost fell off his bicycle. What was the word to describe thecurves of those little valleys? They were as fine as the linesof a human body, they were informed with the subtlety of art...Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe evasede ses hanches: had one ever read a French novel in which thatphrase didn't occur? Some day he would compile a dictionary forthe use of novelists. Galbe, gonfle, goulu: parfum, peau,pervers, potele, pudeur: vertu, volupte.But he really must find that word. Curves curves...Those littlevalleys had the lines of a cup moulded round a woman's breast;they seemed the dinted imprints of some huge divine body that hadrested on these hills. Cumbrous locutions, these; but throughthem he seemed to be getting nearer to what he wanted. Dinted,dimpled, wimpled--his mind wandered down echoing corridors ofassonance and alliteration ever further and further from thepoint. He was enamoured with the beauty of words.Becoming once more aware of the outer world, he found himself onthe crest of a descent. The road plunged down, steep andstraight, into a considerable valley. There, on the oppositeslope, a little higher up the valley, stood Crome, hisdestination. He put on his brakes; this view of Crome waspleasant to linger over. The facade with its three projectingtowers rose precipitously from among the dark trees of thegarden. The house basked in full sunlight; the old brick rosilyglowed. How ripe and rich it was, how superbly mellow! And atthe same time, how austere! The hill was becoming steeper andsteeper; he was gaining speed in spite of his brakes. He loosedhis grip of the levers, and in a moment was rushing headlongdown. Five minutes later he was passing through the gate of thegreat courtyard. The front door stood hospitably open. He lefthis bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. He wouldtake them by surprise.CHAPTER II.He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take. All wasquiet; Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking withpleasure at the familiar pictures and furniture, at all thelittle untidy signs of life that lay scattered here and there.He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing towander through the house as though one were exploring a dead,deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would the excavatorreconstruct from these remains; how would he people these emptychambers? There was the long gallery, with its rows ofrespectable and (though, of course, one couldn't publicly admitit) rather boring Italian primitives, its Chinese sculptures, itsunobtrusive, dateless furniture. There was the panelled drawing-room, where the huge chintz-covered arm-chairs stood, oases ofcomfort among the austere flesh-mortifying antiques. There wasthe morning-room, with its pale lemon walls, its painted Venetianchairs and rococo tables, its mirrors, its modern pictures.There was the library, cool, spacious, and dark, book-lined fromfloor to ceiling, rich in portentous folios. There was thedining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its great mahoganytable, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, itseighteenth-century pictures--family portraits, meticulous animalpaintings. What could one reconstruct from such data? There wasmuch of Henry Wimbush in the long gallery and the library,something of Anne, perhaps, in the morning-room. That was all.Among the accumulations of ten generations the living had leftbut few traces.Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book ofpoems. What tact! He picked it up and opened it. It was whatthe reviewers call "a slim volume." He read at hazard:"...But silence and the topless darkVault in the lights of Luna Park;And Blackpool from the nightly gloomHollows a bright tumultuous tomb."He put it down again, shook his head, and sighed. "What genius Ihad then!" he reflected, echoing the aged Swift. It was nearlysix months since the book had been published; he was glad tothink he would never write anything of the same sort again. Whocould have been reading it, he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he likedto think so. Perhaps, too, she had at last recognised herself inthe Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; the slim Hamadryad whosemovements were like the swaying of a young tree in the wind."The Woman who was a Tree" was what he had called the poem. Hehad given her the book when it came out, hoping that the poemwould tell her what he hadn't dared to say. She had neverreferred to it.He shut his eyes and saw a vision of her in a red velvet cloak,swaying into the little restaurant where they sometimes dinedtogether in London--three quarters of an hour late, and he at histable, haggard with anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she wasdamnable!It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in herboudoir. It was a possibility; he would go and see. Mrs.Wimbush's boudoir was in the central tower on the garden front.A little staircase cork-screwed up to it from the hall. Denismounted, tapped at the door. "Come in." Ah, she was there; hehad rather hoped she wouldn't be. He opened the door.Priscilla Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad restedon her knees and she was thoughtfully sucking the end of a silverpencil."Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming.""Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'mawfully sorry."Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep andmasculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large,square, middle-aged face, with a massive projecting nose andlittle greenish eyes, the whole surmounted by a lofty andelaborate coiffure of a curiously improbable shade of orange.Looking at he... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]