Crome Yellow

  CHAPTER XVI.

  The ladies had left the room and the port was circulating. Mr. Scoganfilled his glass, passed on the decanter, and, leaning back in hischair, looked about him for a moment in silence. The conversationrippled idly round him, but he disregarded it; he was smiling at someprivate joke. Gombauld noticed his smile.

  "What's amusing you?" he asked.

  "I was just looking at you all, sitting round this table," said Mr.Scogan.

  "Are we as comic as all that?"

  "Not at all," Mr. Scogan answered politely. "I was merely amused by myown speculations."

  "And what were they?"

  "The idlest, the most academic of speculations. I was looking at you oneby one and trying to imagine which of the first six Caesars you wouldeach resemble, if you were given the opportunity of behaving like aCaesar. The Caesars are one of my touchstones," Mr. Scogan explained."They are characters functioning, so to speak, in the void. Theyare human beings developed to their logical conclusions. Hence theirunequalled value as a touchstone, a standard. When I meet someonefor the first time, I ask myself this question: Given the Caesareanenvironment, which of the Caesars would this person resemble--Julius,Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero? I take each trait ofcharacter, each mental and emotional bias, each little oddity, andmagnify them a thousand times. The resulting image gives me hisCaesarean formula."

  "And which of the Caesars do you resemble?" asked Gombauld.

  "I am potentially all of them," Mr. Scogan replied, "all--with thepossible exception of Claudius, who was much too stupid to be adevelopment of anything in my character. The seeds of Julius's courageand compelling energy, of Augustus's prudence, of the libidinousness andcruelty of Tiberius, of Caligula's folly, of Nero's artistic genius andenormous vanity, are all within me. Given the opportunities, I mighthave been something fabulous. But circumstances were against me. I wasborn and brought up in a country rectory; I passed my youth doing agreat deal of utterly senseless hard work for a very little money. Theresult is that now, in middle age, I am the poor thing that I am. Butperhaps it is as well. Perhaps, too, it's as well that Denis hasn'tbeen permitted to flower into a little Nero, and that Ivor remains onlypotentially a Caligula. Yes, it's better so, no doubt. But it wouldhave been more amusing, as a spectacle, if they had had the chance todevelop, untrammelled, the full horror of their potentialities. It wouldhave been pleasant and interesting to watch their tics and foibles andlittle vices swelling and burgeoning and blossoming into enormous andfantastic flowers of cruelty and pride and lewdness and avarice. TheCaesarean environment makes the Caesar, as the special food and thequeenly cell make the queen bee. We differ from the bees in so far that,given the proper food, they can be sure of making a queen every time.With us there is no such certainty; out of every ten men placed in theCaesarean environment one will be temperamentally good, or intelligent,or great. The rest will blossom into Caesars; he will not. Seventy andeighty years ago simple-minded people, reading of the exploits of theBourbons in South Italy, cried out in amazement: To think that suchthings should be happening in the nineteenth century! And a few yearssince we too were astonished to find that in our still more astonishingtwentieth century, unhappy blackamoors on the Congo and the Amazon werebeing treated as English serfs were treated in the time of Stephen.To-day we are no longer surprised at these things. The Black and Tansharry Ireland, the Poles maltreat the Silesians, the bold Fascistislaughter their poorer countrymen: we take it all for granted. Since thewar we wonder at nothing. We have created a Caesarean environment and ahost of little Caesars has sprung up. What could be more natural?"

  Mr. Scogan drank off what was left of his port and refilled the glass.

  "At this very moment," he went on, "the most frightful horrors are takingplace in every corner of the world. People are being crushed, slashed,disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes decay withthe rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air at therate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for threeseconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; butdo we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not.We feel sympathy, no doubt; we represent to ourselves imaginatively thesufferings of nations and individuals and we deplore them. But, afterall, what are sympathy and imagination? Precious little, unless theperson for whom we feel sympathy happens to be closely involved in ouraffections; and even then they don't go very far. And a good thing too;for if one had an imagination vivid enough and a sympathy sufficientlysensitive really to comprehend and to feel the sufferings of otherpeople, one would never have a moment's peace of mind. A reallysympathetic race would not so much as know the meaning of happiness.But luckily, as I've already said, we aren't a sympathetic race. Atthe beginning of the war I used to think I really suffered, throughimagination and sympathy, with those who physically suffered. But aftera month or two I had to admit that, honestly, I didn't. And yet Ithink I have a more vivid imagination than most. One is always alone insuffering; the fact is depressing when one happens to be the sufferer,but it makes pleasure possible for the rest of the world."

  There was a pause. Henry Wimbush pushed back his chair.

  "I think perhaps we ought to go and join the ladies," he said.

  "So do I," said Ivor, jumping up with alacrity. He turned to Mr. Scogan."Fortunately," he said, "we can share our pleasures. We are not alwayscondemned to be happy alone."