Crome Yellow

  At this point the somnambulist suddenly woke up. “What?” he said, blinking and frowning at his interlocutor. “What?” Then breaking away he dashed up the stairs, two steps at a time.

  Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him. “It makes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the same, always, under whatever circumstances — under whatever circumstances,” he added, raising his voice to a shout. But Denis was already far out of hearing, and even if he had not been, his mind to-night was proof against all the consolations of philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between his teeth and resumed his meditative pacing. “Under any circumstances,” he repeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true? And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burned itself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went to bed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep.

  Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silk pyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards on his bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle which he had left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. He looked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, his dry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind, and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He got up, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the passage, and began to mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants’ quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right he opened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitchdark cupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and old leather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with his hands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads of the western tower. He found the ladder, and set his feet on the rungs; noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his head; the moonlit sky was over him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a moment he was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourless landscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feet below.

  Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to look at the moon? Was it to commit suicide? As yet he hardly knew. Death — the tears came into his eyes when he thought of it. His misery assumed a certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind of exaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything, however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop was sheer there and uninterrupted. A good leap, and perhaps one might clear the narrow terrace and so crash down yet another thirty feet to the sun-baked ground below. He paused at the corner of the tower, looking now down into the shadowy gulf below, now up towards the rare stars and the waning moon. He made a gesture with his hand, muttered something, he could not afterwards remember what; but the fact that he had said it aloud gave the utterance a peculiarly terrible significance. Then he looked down once more into the depths.

  “What ARE you doing, Denis?” questioned a voice from somewhere very close behind him.

  Denis uttered a cry of frightened surprise, and very nearly went over the parapet in good earnest. His heart was beating terribly, and he was pale when, recovering himself, he turned round in the direction from which the voice had come.

  “Are you ill?”

  In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of the tower, he saw something he had not previously noticed — an oblong shape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that first memorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was a sort of manifestation of fidelity.

  “It gave me a fright,” she went on, “to wake up and see you waving your arms and gibbering there. What on earth were you doing?”

  Denis laughed melodramatically. “What, indeed!” he said. If she hadn’t woken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of the tower; he was certain of that, now.

  “You hadn’t got designs on me, I hope?” Mary inquired, jumping too rapidly to conclusions.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” said Denis, laughing more bitterly and artificially than before.

  “What IS the matter, Denis?”

  He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went on laughing in the same frightful and improbable tone.

  An hour later he was reposing with his head on Mary’s knees, and she, with an affectionate solicitude that was wholly maternal, was running her fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything, everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, his suicide — as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He had solemnly promised never to think of selfdestruction again. And now his soul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathy that Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receiving sympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; it was also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about his miseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in return everything, or very nearly everything, about her own.

  “Poor Mary!” He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessed that Ivor wasn’t precisely a monument of constancy.

  “Well,” she concluded, “one must put a good face on it.” She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be weak. There was a silence.

  “Do you think,” asked Denis hesitatingly —“do you really think that she...that Gombauld...”

  “I’m sure of it,” Mary answered decisively. There was another long pause.

  “I don’t know what to do about it,” he said at last, utterly dejected.

  “You’d better go away,” advised Mary. “It’s the safest thing, and the most sensible.”

  “But I’ve arranged to stay here three weeks more.”

  “You must concoct an excuse.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “I know I am,” said Mary, who was recovering all her firm selfpossession. “You can’t go on like this, can you?”

  “No, I can’t go on like this,” he echoed.

  Immensely practical, Mary invented a plan of action. Startlingly, in the darkness, the church clock struck three.

  “You must go to bed at once,” she said. “I’d no idea it was so late.”

  Denis clambered down the ladder, cautiously descended the creaking stairs. His room was dark; the candle had long ago guttered to extinction. He got into bed and fell asleep almost at once.

  Chapter XXX.

  * * *

  Denis had been called, but in spite of the parted curtains he had dropped off again into that drowsy, dozy state when sleep becomes a sensual pleasure almost consciously savoured. In this condition he might have remained for another hour if he had not been disturbed by a violent rapping at the door.

  “Come in,” he mumbled, without opening his eyes. The latch clicked, a hand seized him by the shoulder and he was rudely shaken.

  “Get up, get up!”

  His eyelids blinked painfully apart, and he saw Mary standing over him, bright-faced and earnest.

  “Get up!” she repeated. “You must go and send the telegram. Don’t you remember?”

  “O Lord!” He threw off the bed-clothes; his tormentor retired.

  Denis dressed as quickly as he could and ran up the road to the village post office. Satisfaction glowed within him as he returned. He had sent a long telegram, which would in a few hours evoke an answer ordering him back to town at once — on urgent business. It was an act performed, a decisive step taken — and he so rarely took decisive steps; he felt pleased with himself. It was with a whetted appetite that he came in to breakfast.

  “Good-morning,” said Mr. Scogan. “I hope you’re better.”

  “Better?”

  “You were rather worried about the cosmos last night.”

  Denis tried to laugh away the impeachment. “Was I?” he lightly asked.

  “I wish,” said Mr. Scogan, “that I had nothing worse to prey on my mind. I should be a happy man.�
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  “One is only happy in action,” Denis enunciated, thinking of the telegram.

  He looked out of the window. Great florid baroque clouds floated high in the blue heaven. A wind stirred among the trees, and their shaken foliage twinkled and glittered like metal in the sun. Everything seemed marvellously beautiful. At the thought that he would soon be leaving all this beauty he felt a momentary pang; but he comforted himself by recollecting how decisively he was acting.

  “Action,” he repeated aloud, and going over to the sideboard he helped himself to an agreeable mixture of bacon and fish.

  Breakfast over, Denis repaired to the terrace, and, sitting there, raised the enormous bulwark of the “Times” against the possible assaults of Mr. Scogan, who showed an unappeased desire to go on talking about the Universe. Secure behind the crackling pages, he meditated. In the light of this brilliant morning the emotions of last night seemed somehow rather remote. And what if he had seen them embracing in the moonlight? Perhaps it didn’t mean much after all. And even if it did, why shouldn’t he stay? He felt strong enough to stay, strong enough to be aloof, disinterested, a mere friendly acquaintance. And even if he weren’t strong enough...

  “What time do you think the telegram will arrive?” asked Mary suddenly, thrusting in upon him over the top of the paper.

  Denis started guiltily. “I don’t know at all,” he said.

  “I was only wondering,” said Mary, “because there’s a very good train at 3.27, and it would be nice if you could catch it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Awfully nice,” he agreed weakly. He felt as though he were making arrangements for his own funeral. Train leaves Waterloo 3.27. No flowers...Mary was gone. No, he was blowed if he’d let himself be hurried down to the Necropolis like this. He was blowed. The sight of Mr. Scogan looking out, with a hungry expression, from the drawing-room window made him precipitately hoist the “Times” once more. For a long while he kept it hoisted. Lowering it at last to take another cautious peep at his surroundings, he found himself, with what astonishment! confronted by Anne’s faint, amused, malicious smile. She was standing before him, — the woman who was a tree, — the swaying grace of her movement arrested in a pose that seemed itself a movement.

  “How long have you been standing there?” he asked, when he had done gaping at her.

  “Oh, about half an hour, I suppose,” she said airily. “You were so very deep in your paper — head over ears — I didn’t like to disturb you.”

  “You look lovely this morning,” Denis exclaimed. It was the first time he had ever had the courage to utter a personal remark of the kind.

  Anne held up her hand as though to ward off a blow. “Don’t bludgeon me, please.” She sat down on the bench beside him. He was a nice boy, she thought, quite charming; and Gombauld’s violent insistences were really becoming rather tiresome. “Why don’t you wear white trousers?” she asked. “I like you so much in white trousers.”

  “They’re at the wash,” Denis replied rather curtly. This whitetrouser business was all in the wrong spirit. He was just preparing a scheme to manoeuvre the conversation back to the proper path, when Mr. Scogan suddenly darted out of the house, crossed the terrace with clockwork rapidity, and came to a halt in front of the bench on which they were seated.

  “To go on with our interesting conversation about the cosmos,” he began, “I become more and more convinced that the various parts of the concern are fundamentally discrete...But would you mind, Denis, moving a shade to your right?” He wedged himself between them on the bench. “And if you would shift a few inches to the left, my dear Anne...Thank you. Discrete, I think, was what I was saying.”

  “You were,” said Anne. Denis was speechless.

  They were taking their after luncheon coffee in the library when the telegram arrived. Denis blushed guiltily as he took the orange envelope from the salver and tore it open. “Return at once. Urgent family business.” It was too ridiculous. As if he had any family business! Wouldn’t it be best just to crumple the thing up and put it in his pocket without saying anything about it? He looked up; Mary’s large blue china eyes were fixed upon him, seriously, penetratingly. He blushed more deeply than ever, hesitated in a horrible uncertainty.

  “What’s your telegram about?” Mary asked significantly.

  He lost his head, “I’m afraid,” he mumbled, “I’m afraid this means I shall have to go back to town at once.” He frowned at the telegram ferociously.

  “But that’s absurd, impossible,” cried Anne. She had been standing by the window talking to Gombauld; but at Denis’s words she came swaying across the room towards him.

  “It’s urgent,” he repeated desperately.

  “But you’ve only been here such a short time,” Anne protested.

  “I know,” he said, utterly miserable. Oh, if only she could understand! Women were supposed to have intuition.

  “If he must go, he must,” put in Mary firmly.

  “Yes, I must.” He looked at the telegram again for inspiration. “You see, it’s urgent family business,” he explained.

  Priscilla got up from her chair in some excitement. “I had a distinct presentiment of this last night,” she said. “A distinct presentiment.”

  “A mere coincidence, no doubt,” said Mary, brushing Mrs. Wimbush out of the conversation. “There’s a very good train at 3.27.” She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “You’ll have nice time to pack.”

  “I’ll order the motor at once.” Henry Wimbush rang the bell. The funeral was well under way. It was awful, awful.

  “I am wretched you should be going,” said Anne.

  Denis turned towards her; she really did look wretched. He abandoned himself hopelessly, fatalistically to his destiny. This was what came of action, of doing something decisive. If only he’d just let things drift! If only...

  “I shall miss your conversation,” said Mr. Scogan.

  Mary looked at the clock again. “I think perhaps you ought to go and pack,” she said.

  Obediently Denis left the room. Never again, he said to himself, never again would he do anything decisive. Camlet, West Bowlby, Knipswich for Timpany, Spavin Delawarr; and then all the other stations; and then, finally, London. The thought of the journey appalled him. And what on earth was he going to do in London when he got there? He climbed wearily up the stairs. It was time for him to lay himself in his coffin.

  The car was at the door — the hearse. The whole party had assembled to see him go. Good-bye, good-bye. Mechanically he tapped the barometer that hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left. A sudden smile lighted up his lugubrious face.

  “’It sinks and I am ready to depart,’” he said, quoting Landor with an exquisite aptness. He looked quickly round from face to face. Nobody had noticed. He climbed into the hearse.