Crome Yellow

  CHAPTER IV.

  Denis woke up next morning to find the sun shining, the sky serene. Hedecided to wear white flannel trousers--white flannel trousers and ablack jacket, with a silk shirt and his new peach-coloured tie. Andwhat shoes? White was the obvious choice, but there was something ratherpleasing about the notion of black patent leather. He lay in bed forseveral minutes considering the problem.

  Before he went down--patent leather was his final choice--he looked athimself critically in the glass. His hair might have been more golden,he reflected. As it was, its yellowness had the hint of a greenish tingein it. But his forehead was good. His forehead made up in height whathis chin lacked in prominence. His nose might have been longer, but itwould pass. His eyes might have been blue and not green. But his coatwas very well cut and, discreetly padded, made him seem robuster thanhe actually was. His legs, in their white casing, were long and elegant.Satisfied, he descended the stairs. Most of the party had alreadyfinished their breakfast. He found himself alone with Jenny.

  "I hope you slept well," he said.

  "Yes, isn't it lovely?" Jenny replied, giving two rapid little nods."But we had such awful thunderstorms last week."

  Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. Hemight talk for ever of care-charmer sleep and she of meteorology tillthe end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We areall parallel straight lines. Jenny was only a little more parallel thanmost.

  "They are very alarming, these thunderstorms," he said, helping himselfto porridge. "Don't you think so? Or are you above being frightened?"

  "No. I always go to bed in a storm. One is so much safer lying down."

  "Why?"

  "Because," said Jenny, making a descriptive gesture, "because lightninggoes downwards and not flat ways. When you're lying down you're out ofthe current."

  "That's very ingenious."

  "It's true."

  There was a silence. Denis finished his porridge and helped himselfto bacon. For lack of anything better to say, and because Mr. Scogan'sabsurd phrase was for some reason running in his head, he turned toJenny and asked:

  "Do you consider yourself a femme superieure?" He had to repeat thequestion several times before Jenny got the hang of it.

  "No," she said, rather indignantly, when at last she heard what Deniswas saying. "Certainly not. Has anyone been suggesting that I am?"

  "No," said Denis. "Mr. Scogan told Mary she was one."

  "Did he?" Jenny lowered her voice. "Shall I tell you what I think ofthat man? I think he's slightly sinister."

  Having made this pronouncement, she entered the ivory tower of herdeafness and closed the door. Denis could not induce her to say anythingmore, could not induce her even to listen. She just smiled at him,smiled and occasionally nodded.

  Denis went out on to the terrace to smoke his after-breakfast pipe andto read his morning paper. An hour later, when Anne came down, she foundhim still reading. By this time he had got to the Court Circular andthe Forthcoming Weddings. He got up to meet her as she approached, aHamadryad in white muslin, across the grass.

  "Why, Denis," she exclaimed, "you look perfectly sweet in your whitetrousers."

  Denis was dreadfully taken aback. There was no possible retort. "Youspeak as though I were a child in a new frock," he said, with a show ofirritation.

  "But that's how I feel about you, Denis dear."

  "Then you oughtn't to."

  "But I can't help it. I'm so much older than you."

  "I like that," he said. "Four years older."

  "And if you do look perfectly sweet in your white trousers, whyshouldn't I say so? And why did you put them on, if you didn't think youwere going to look sweet in them?"

  "Let's go into the garden," said Denis. He was put out; the conversationhad taken such a preposterous and unexpected turn. He had planned a verydifferent opening, in which he was to lead off with, "You look adorablethis morning," or something of the kind, and she was to answer, "DoI?" and then there was to be a pregnant silence. And now she had got infirst with the trousers. It was provoking; his pride was hurt.

  That part of the garden that sloped down from the foot of the terraceto the pool had a beauty which did not depend on colour so much as onforms. It was as beautiful by moonlight as in the sun. The silver ofwater, the dark shapes of yew and ilex trees remained, at all hours andseasons, the dominant features of the scene. It was a landscape in blackand white. For colour there was the flower-garden; it lay to one sideof the pool, separated from it by a huge Babylonian wall of yews. Youpassed through a tunnel in the hedge, you opened a wicket in a wall, andyou found yourself, startlingly and suddenly, in the world of colour.The July borders blazed and flared under the sun. Within its high brickwalls the garden was like a great tank of warmth and perfume and colour.

  Denis held open the little iron gate for his companion. "It's likepassing from a cloister into an Oriental palace," he said, and took adeep breath of the warm, flower-scented air. "'In fragrant volleys theylet fly...' How does it go?

  "'Well shot, ye firemen! Oh how sweet And round your equal fires domeet; Whose shrill report no ear can tell, But echoes to the eye andsmell...'"

  "You have a bad habit of quoting," said Anne. "As I never know thecontext or author, I find it humiliating."

  Denis apologized. "It's the fault of one's education. Things somehowseem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-madephrase about them. And then there are lots of lovely names andwords--Monophysite, Iamblichus, Pomponazzi; you bring them outtriumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the meremagical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education."

  "You may regret your education," said Anne; "I'm ashamed of my lack ofit. Look at those sunflowers! Aren't they magnificent?"

  "Dark faces and golden crowns--they're kings of Ethiopia. And I likethe way the tits cling to the flowers and pick out the seeds, while theother loutish birds, grubbing dirtily for their food, look up in envyfrom the ground. Do they look up in envy? That's the literary touch, I'mafraid. Education again. It always comes back to that." He was silent.

  Anne had sat down on a bench that stood in the shade of an old appletree. "I'm listening," she said.

  He did not sit down, but walked backwards and forwards in front of thebench, gesticulating a little as he talked. "Books," he said--"books.One reads so many, and one sees so few people and so little of theworld. Great thick books about the universe and the mind and ethics.You've no idea how many there are. I must have read twenty or thirtytons of them in the last five years. Twenty tons of ratiocination.Weighted with that, one's pushed out into the world."

  He went on walking up and down. His voice rose, fell, was silent amoment, and then talked on. He moved his hands, sometimes he waved hisarms. Anne looked and listened quietly, as though she were at a lecture.He was a nice boy, and to-day he looked charming--charming!

  One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas abouteverything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it.One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fitlife...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, eventhe most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideaseverything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was itsurprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy? Denis came toa halt in front of the bench, and as he asked this last question hestretched out his arms and stood for an instant in an attitude ofcrucifixion, then let them fall again to his sides.

  "My poor Denis!" Anne was touched. He was really too pathetic as hestood there in front of her in his white flannel trousers. "But does onesuffer about these things? It seems very extraordinary."

  "You're like Scogan," cried Denis bitterly. "You regard me as a specimenfor an anthropologist. Well, I suppose I am."

  "No, no," she protested, and drew in her skirt with a gesture thatindicated that he was to sit down beside her. He sat down. "Why can'tyou just take things for granted and as they com
e?" she asked. "It's somuch simpler."

  "Of course it is," said Denis. "But it's a lesson to be learntgradually. There are the twenty tons of ratiocination to be got rid offirst."

  "I've always taken things as they come," said Anne. "It seems soobvious. One enjoys the pleasant things, avoids the nasty ones. There'snothing more to be said."

  "Nothing--for you. But, then, you were born a pagan; I am tryinglaboriously to make myself one. I can take nothing for granted, I canenjoy nothing as it comes along. Beauty, pleasure, art, women--I haveto invent an excuse, a justification for everything that's delightful.Otherwise I can't enjoy it with an easy conscience. I make up a littlestory about beauty and pretend that it has something to do with truthand goodness. I have to say that art is the process by which onereconstructs the divine reality out of chaos. Pleasure is one of themystical roads to union with the infinite--the ecstasies of drinking,dancing, love-making. As for women, I am perpetually assuring myselfthat they're the broad highway to divinity. And to think that I'm onlyjust beginning to see through the silliness of the whole thing! It'sincredible to me that anyone should have escaped these horrors."

  "It's still more incredible to me," said Anne, "that anyone should havebeen a victim to them. I should like to see myself believing that menare the highway to divinity." The amused malice of her smile planted twolittle folds on either side of her mouth, and through their half-closedlids her eyes shone with laughter. "What you need, Denis, is a niceplump young wife, a fixed income, and a little congenial but regularwork."

  "What I need is you." That was what he ought to have retorted, thatwas what he wanted passionately to say. He could not say it. His desirefought against his shyness. "What I need is you." Mentally he shoutedthe words, but not a sound issued from his lips. He looked at herdespairingly. Couldn't she see what was going on inside him? Couldn'tshe understand? "What I need is you." He would say it, he would--hewould.

  "I think I shall go and bathe," said Anne. "It's so hot." Theopportunity had passed.