Crome Yellow

  In the visitor’s 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 visitor’s book, open, and Ivor’s composition scarcely dry. Mr. Scogan read it aloud:

  “The magic of those immemorial kings, Who webbed enchantment on the bowls of night. Sleeps in the soul of all created things; In the blue sea, th’ Acroceraunian height, In the eyed butterfly’s auricular wings And orgied visions of the anchorite; In all that singing flies and flying sings, In rain, in pain, in delicate delight. But much more magic, much more cogent spells Weave here their wizardries about my soul. Crome calls me like the voice of vesperal bells, Haunts like a ghostly-peopled necropole. Fate tears me hence. Hard fate! since far from Crome My soul must weep, remembering its Home.”

  “Very nice and tasteful and tactful,” said Mr. Scogan, when he had finished. “I am only troubled by the butterfly’s auricular wings. You have 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, palms upwards, despairingly —“now I know what carminative really means.”

  “Well, what DOES it mean?” asked Mr. Scogan, a little impatiently.

  “Carminative,” said Denis, lingering lovingly over the syllables, “carminative. I imagined vaguely that it had something to do with carmen-carminis, still more vaguely with caro-carnis, and its derivations, like carnival and carnation. Carminative — there was the idea of singing and the idea of flesh, rose-coloured and warm, with a suggestion of the jollities of mi-Careme and the masked holidays of Venice. Carminative — the warmth, the glow, the interior ripeness were all in the word. Instead of which...”

  “Do come to the point, my dear Denis,” protested Mr. Scogan. “Do come to the point.”

  “Well, I wrote a poem the other day,” said Denis; “I wrote a poem about the effects of love.”

  “Others have done the same before you,” said Mr. Scogan. “There is no need to be ashamed.”

  “I was putting forward the notion,” Denis went on, “that the effects of love were often similar to the effects of wine, that Eros could intoxicate as well as Bacchus. Love, for example, is essentially carminative. It gives one the sense of warmth, the glow.

  ‘And passion carminative as wine...’

  was what I wrote. Not only was the line elegantly sonorous; it was also, I flattered myself, very aptly compendiously expressive. Everything was in the word carminative — a detailed, exact foreground, an immense, indefinite hinterland of suggestion.

  ‘And passion carminative as wine...’

  I was not ill-pleased. And then suddenly it occurred to me that I had never actually looked up the word in a dictionary. Carminative had grown up with me from the days of the cinnamon bottle. It had always been taken for granted. Carminative: for me the word was as rich in content as some tremendous, elaborate work of art; it was a complete landscape with figures.

  ‘And passion carminative as wine...’

  It was the first time I had ever committed the word to writing, and all at once I felt I would like lexicographical authority for it. A small English-German dictionary was all I had at hand. I turned up C, ca, car, carm. There it was: ‘Carminative: windtreibend.’ Windtreibend!” he repeated. Mr. Scogan laughed. Denis shook his head. “Ah,” he said, “for me it was no laughing matter. For me it marked the end of a chapter, the death of something young and precious. There were the years — years of childhood and innocence — when I had believed that carminative meant — well, carminative. And now, before me lies the rest of my life — a day, perhaps, ten years, half a century, when I shall know that carminative means windtreibend.

  ‘Plus ne suis ce que j’ai ete Et ne le saurai jamais etre.’

  It is a realisation that makes one rather melancholy.”

  “Carminative,” said Mr. Scogan thoughtfully.

  “Carminative,” Denis repeated, and they were silent for a time. “Words,” said Denis at last, “words — I wonder if you can realise how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind. The spectacle of Mr. Gladstone finding thirty-four rhymes to the name ‘Margot’ seems to you rather pathetic than anything else. Mallarme’s envelopes with their versified addresses leave you cold, unless they leave you pitiful; you can’t see that

  ‘Apte a ne point te cabrer, hue! Poste et j’ajouterai, dia! Si tu ne fuis onze-bis Rue Balzac, chez cet Heredia,’

  is a little miracle.”

  “You’re right,” said Mr. Scogan. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t feel it to be magical?”

  “No.”

  “That’s the test for the literary mind,” said Denis; “the feeling of magic, the sense that words have power. The technical, verbal part of literature is simply a development of magic. Words are man’s first and most grandiose invention. With language he created a whole new universe; what wonder if he loved words and attributed power to them! With fitted, harmonious words the magicians summoned rabbits out of empty hats and spirits from the elements. Their descendants, the literary men, still go on with the process, morticing their verbal formulas together, and, before the power of the finished spell, trembling with delight and awe. Rabbits out of empty hats? No, their spells are more subtly powerful, for they evoke emotions out of empty minds. Formulated by their art the most insipid statements become enormously significant. For example, I proffer the constatation, ‘Black ladders lack bladders.’ A self-evident truth, one on which it would not have been worth while to insist, had I chosen to formulate it in such words as ‘Black fire-escapes have no bladders,’ or, ‘Les echelles noires manquent de vessie.’ But since I put it as I do, ‘Black ladders lack bladders,’ it becomes, for all its self-evidence, significant, unforgettable, moving. The creation by word-power of something out of nothing — what is that but magic? And, I may add, what is that but literature? Half the world’s greatest poetry is simply ‘Les echelles noires manquent de vessie,’ translated into magic significance as, ‘Black ladders lack bladders.’ And you can’t appreciate words. I’m sorry for y
ou.”

  “A mental carminative,” said Mr. Scogan reflectively. “That’s what you need.”

  Chapter XXI.

  * * *

  Perched on its four stone mushrooms, the little granary stood two or three feet above the grass of the green close. Beneath it there was a perpetual shade and a damp growth of long, luxuriant grasses. Here, in the shadow, in the green dampness, a family of white ducks had sought shelter from the afternoon sun. Some stood, preening themselves, some reposed with their long bellies pressed to the ground, as though the cool grass were water. Little social noises burst fitfully forth, and from time to time some pointed tail would execute a brilliant Lisztian tremolo. Suddenly their jovial repose was shattered. A prodigious thump shook the wooden flooring above their heads; the whole granary trembled, little fragments of dirt and crumbled wood rained down among them. With a loud, continuous quacking the ducks rushed out from beneath this nameless menace, and did not stay their flight till they were safely in the farmyard.

  “Don’t lose your temper,” Anne was saying. “Listen! You’ve frightened the ducks. Poor dears! no wonder.” She was sitting sideways in a low, wooden chair. Her right elbow rested on the back of the chair and she supported her cheek on her hand. Her long, slender body drooped into curves of a lazy grace. She was smiling, and she looked at Gombauld through half-closed eyes.

  “Damn you!” Gombauld repeated, and stamped his foot again. He glared at her round the half-finished portrait on the easel.

  “Poor ducks!” Anne repeated. The sound of their quacking was faint in the distance; it was inaudible.

  “Can’t you see you make me lose my time?” he asked. “I can’t work with you dangling about distractingly like this.”

  “You’d lose less time if you stopped talking and stamping your feet and did a little painting for a change. After all, what am I dangling about for, except to be painted?”

  Gombauld made a noise like a growl. “You’re awful,” he said, with conviction. “Why do you ask me to come and stay here? Why do you tell me you’d like me to paint your portrait?”

  “For the simple reasons that I like you — at least, when you’re in a good temper — and that I think you’re a good painter.”

  “For the simple reason” — Gombauld mimicked her voice —“that you want me to make love to you and, when I do, to have the amusement of running away.”

  Anne threw back her head and laughed. “So you think it amuses me to have to evade your advances! So like a man! If you only knew how gross and awful and boring men are when they try to make love and you don’t want them to make love! If you could only see yourselves through our eyes!”

  Gombauld picked up his palette and brushes and attacked his canvas with the ardour of irritation. “I suppose you’ll be saying next that you didn’t start the game, that it was I who made the first advances, and that you were the innocent victim who sat still and never did anything that could invite or allure me on.”

  “So like a man again!” said Anne. “It’s always the same old story about the woman tempting the man. The woman lures, fascinates, invites; and man — noble man, innocent man — falls a victim. My poor Gombauld! Surely you’re not going to sing that old song again. It’s so unintelligent, and I always thought you were a man of sense.”

  “Thanks,” said Gombauld.

  “Be a little objective,” Anne went on. “Can’t you see that you’re simply externalising your own emotions? That’s what you men are always doing; it’s so barbarously naive. You feel one of your loose desires for some woman, and because you desire her strongly you immediately accuse her of luring you on, of deliberately provoking and inviting the desire. You have the mentality of savages. You might just as well say that a plate of strawberries and cream deliberately lures you on to feel greedy. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred women are as passive and innocent as the strawberries and cream.”

  “Well, all I can say is that this must be the hundredth case,” said Gombauld, without looking up.

  Anne shrugged her shoulders and gave vent to a sigh. “I’m at a loss to know whether you’re more silly or more rude.”

  After painting for a little time in silence Gombauld began to speak again. “And then there’s Denis,” he said, renewing the conversation as though it had only just been broken off. “You’re playing the same game with him. Why can’t you leave that wretched young man in peace?”

  Anne flushed with a sudden and uncontrollable anger. “It’s perfectly untrue about Denis,” she said indignantly. “I never dreamt of playing what you beautifully call the same game with him.” Recovering her calm, she added in her ordinary cooing voice and with her exacerbating smile, “You’ve become very protective towards poor Denis all of a sudden.”

  “I have,” Gombauld replied, with a gravity that was somehow a little too solemn. “I don’t like to see a young man...”

  “...being whirled along the road to ruin,” said Anne, continuing his sentence for him. I admire your sentiments and, believe me, I share them.”

  She was curiously irritated at what Gombauld had said about Denis. It happened to be so completely untrue. Gombauld might have some slight ground for his reproaches. But Denis — no, she had never flirted with Denis. Poor boy! He was very sweet. She became somewhat pensive.

  Gombauld painted on with fury. The restlessness of an unsatisfied desire, which, before, had distracted his mind, making work impossible, seemed now to have converted itself into a kind of feverish energy. When it was finished, he told himself, the portrait would be diabolic. He was painting her in the pose she had naturally adopted at the first sitting. Seated sideways, her elbow on the back of the chair, her head and shoulders turned at an angle from the rest of her body, towards the front, she had fallen into an attitude of indolent abandonment. He had emphasised the lazy curves of her body; the lines sagged as they crossed the canvas, the grace of the painted figure seemed to be melting into a kind of soft decay. The hand that lay along the knee was as limp as a glove. He was at work on the face now; it had begun to emerge on the canvas, doll-like in its regularity and listlessness. It was Anne’s face — but her face as it would be, utterly unillumined by the inward lights of thought and emotion. It was the lazy, expressionless mask which was sometimes her face. The portrait was terribly like; and at the same time it was the most malicious of lies. Yes, it would be diabolic when it was finished, Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would think of it.

  Chapter XXII.

  * * *

  For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this same afternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour was a drowsy one, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily on body and mind. The meridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and hopeless post-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and feared under the name of “accidie.” He felt, like Ernest Dowson, “a little weary.” He was in the mood to write something rather exquisite and gentle and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the same time — how should he put it? — a little infinite. He thought of Anne, of love hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love, the hopeless kind — the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad mood of repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegant quatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:

  “A brooding love which is at most The stealth of moonbeams when they slide, Evoking colour’s bloodless ghost, O’er some scarce-breathing breast or side...”

  when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked down from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking, laughing together. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of sight through the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to the green close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. His pleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violent emotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket and ran downstairs. “The stealth of moonbeams,” indeed!

/>   In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in wait. Denis tried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan’s eye glittered like the eye of the Ancient Mariner.

  “Not so fast,” he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with pointed nails —“not so fast. I was just going down to the flower garden to take the sun. We’ll go together.”

  Denis abandoned himself; Mr. Scogan put on his hat and they went out arm in arm. On the shaven turf of the terrace Henry Wimbush and Mary were playing a solemn game of bowls. They descended by the yew-tree walk. It was here, thought Denis, here that Anne had fallen, here that he had kissed her, here — and he blushed with retrospective shame at the memory — here that he had tried to carry her and failed. Life was awful!

  “Sanity!” said Mr. Scogan, suddenly breaking a long silence. “Sanity — that’s what’s wrong with me and that’s what will be wrong with you, my dear Denis, when you’re old enough to be sane or insane. In a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don’t exist. I am just Vox et praeterea nihil.”