CROME YELLOW(克罗姆·耶娄)

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CROME YELLOW

By ALDOUS HUXLEY

CROME YELLOW

CHAPTER I.

Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the

trains--the few that there were--stopped at all the stations. Denis knew

the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr,

Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water.

Camlet was where he always 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 next station,

thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack and piled them neatly

in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have

something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat and

closed his eyes. It was extremely 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--written the perfect poem,

for example, or read the one illuminating book. Instead of which--his

gorge rose at the smell of the dusty cushions against which he was leaning.

Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be

done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of

hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the precious

minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible. Denis groaned in the

spirit, condemned himself utterly with all his works. What right had he

to sit in the sunshine, to occupy corner seats in third-class carriages, to be

alive? None, none, none.

Misery and a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him. He was

twenty-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 pile of baggage,

leaned out of the window and shouted for a porter, seized a bag in either

hand, and had to put them down again in order to open the door. When at

last he had safely bundled himself and his baggage on to the platform, he

ran up the train towards the van.

"A bicycle, a bicycle!" he said breathlessly to the guard. He felt

himself a man of action. The guard paid no attention, but continued

CROME YELLOW

methodically to hand out, one by one, the packages labelled to Camlet.

"A bicycle!" Denis repeated. "A green machine, cross-framed, name of

Stone. S-T-O-N-E."

"All in good time, sir," said the guard soothingly. He was a large,

stately man with a naval beard. One pictured him at home, drinking tea,

surrounded by a numerous family. It was in that tone that he must have

spoken to his children when they were tiresome. "All in good time, sir."

Denis's man of action collapsed, punctured.

He left his luggage to be called for later, and pushed off on his bicycle.

He always took his bicycle when he went into the country. It was part of

the theory of exercise. One day one would get up at six o'clock and

pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon--anywhere. And within

a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churches and Tudor

mansions to be seen in the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow

they never did get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that the bicycle

was there, and that one fine morning one really might get up at six.

Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camlet station, he

felt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, was good. The far-away

blue hills, the harvests whitening on the slopes of the ridge along which

his road led him, the treeless sky-lines that changed as he moved--yes,

they were all good. He was 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 some term

in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves-- no, that was

inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as though to scoop the

achieved expression out of the air, and almost fell off his bicycle. What

was the word to describe the curves of those little valleys? They were as

fine as the lines of a human body, they were informed with the subtlety of

art...

Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe evase de

ses hanches: had one ever read a French novel in which that phrase

didn't occur? Some day he would compile a dictionary for the use of

novelists. Galbe, gonfle, goulu: parfum, peau, pervers, potele, pudeur:

vertu, volupte.

CROME YELLOW

But he really must find that word. Curves curves...Those little

valleys had the lines of a cup moulded round a woman's breast; they

seemed the dinted imprints of some huge divine body that had rested on

these hills. Cumbrous locutions, these; but through them he seemed to be

getting nearer to what he wanted. Dinted, dimpled, wimpled--his mind

wandered down echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever

further and further from the point. He was enamoured with the beauty of

words.

Becoming once more aware of the outer world, he found himself on

the crest of a descent. The road plunged down, steep and straight, into a

considerable valley. There, on the opposite slope, a little higher up the

valley, stood Crome, his destination. He put on his brakes; this view of

Crome was pleasant to linger over. The facade with its three projecting

towers rose precipitously from among the dark trees of the garden. The

house basked in full sunlight; the old brick rosily glowed. How ripe and

rich it was, how superbly mellow! And at the same time, how austere!

The hill was becoming steeper and steeper; he was gaining speed in spite

of his brakes. He loosed his grip of the levers, and in a moment was

rushing headlong down. Five minutes later he was passing through the

gate of the great courtyard. The front door stood hospitably open. He

left his bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. He would take

them by surprise.

CROME YELLOW

CHAPTER II.

He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take. All was quiet;

Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking with pleasure at the

familiar pictures and furniture, at all the little untidy signs of life that lay

scattered here and there. He was rather glad that they were all out; it was

amusing to wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead,

deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would the excavator reconstruct from

these remains; how would he people these empty chambers? There was

the long gallery, with its rows of respectable and (though, of course, one

couldn't publicly admit it) rather boring Italian primitives, its Chinese

sculptures, its unobtrusive, dateless furniture. There was the panelled

drawing- room, where the huge chintz-covered arm-chairs stood, oases of

comfort among the austere flesh-mortifying antiques. There was the

morning-room, with its pale lemon walls, its painted Venetian chairs and

rococo tables, its mirrors, its modern pictures. There was the library, cool,

spacious, and dark, book-lined from floor to ceiling, rich in portentous

folios. There was the dining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its

great mahogany table, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, its

eighteenth-century pictures--family portraits, meticulous animal paintings.

What could one reconstruct from such data? There was much 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 left but few traces.

Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book of poems.

What tact! He picked it up and opened it. It was what the reviewers

call "a slim volume." He read at hazard:

"...But silence and the topless dark Vault in the lights of Luna Park;

And Blackpool from the nightly gloom Hollows a bright tumultuous

tomb."

He put it down again, shook his head, and sighed. "What genius I

had then!" he reflected, echoing the aged Swift. It was nearly six months

since the book had been published; he was glad to think he would never

write anything of the same sort again. Who could have been reading it,

CROME YELLOW

he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he liked to think so. Perhaps, too, she

had at last recognised herself in the Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; the

slim Hamadryad whose movements were like the swaying of a young tree

in the wind. "The Woman who was a Tree" was what he had called the

poem. He had given her the book when it came out, hoping that the

poem would tell her what he hadn't dared to say. She had never referred

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 dined together in London--

three quarters of an hour late, and he at his table, haggard with anxiety,

irritation, hunger. Oh, she was damnable!

It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her boudoir. 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. Denis mounted, tapped at the door. "Come in." Ah,

she was there; he had rather hoped she wouldn't be. He opened the door.

Priscilla Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad rested on

her knees and she was thoughtfully sucking the end of a silver pencil.

"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."

"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm awfully

sorry."

Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and

masculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large, square,

middle-aged face, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes,

the whole surmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously

improbable shade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thought of

Wilkie Bard as the cantatrice.

"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing in op-pop-

pop-pop-pop-popera."

Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a row

of pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the Royal

Family, made her look more than ever like something on the Halls.

"What have you been doing all this time?" she asked. "Well," said

Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He had a tremendously

CROME YELLOW

amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and ready in his mind.

It would be a pleasure to give it utterance. "To begin with," he said...

But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush's question had been what the

grammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a little

conversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game.

"You find me busy at my horoscopes," she said, without even being

aware that she had interrupted him.

A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptive

ears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with saying "Oh?" rather

icily.

"Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this

year?" "Yes," he replied, still frigid and mono-syllabic. She must have

told him at least six times.

"Wonderful, isn't it? Everything is in the Stars. In the Old Days,

before I had the Stars to help me, I used to lose thousands. Now"--she

paused an instant--"well, look at that four hundred on the Grand National.

That's the Stars."

Denis would have liked to hear more about the Old Days. But he was

too discreet and, still more, too shy to ask. There had been something of

a bust up; that was all he knew. Old Priscilla--not so old then, of course,

and sprightlier--had lost a great deal of money, dropped it in handfuls and

hatfuls on every race-course in the country. She had gambled too. The

number of thousands varied in the different legends, but all put it high.

Henry Wimbush was forced to sell some of his Primitives--a Taddeo da

Poggibonsi, an Amico di Taddeo, and four or five nameless Sienese--to the

Americans. There was a crisis. For the first time in his life Henry

asserted himself, and with good effect, it seemed.

Priscilla's gay and gadding existence had come to an abrupt end.

Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-

defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the

Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was a

kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting

money. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopes of

horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the stars dictated.

CROME YELLOW

She betted on football too, and had a large notebook in which she

registered the horoscopes of all the players in all the teams of the League.

The process of balancing the horoscopes of two elevens one against the

other was a very delicate and difficult one. A match between the Spurs

and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast and so complicated

that it was not to be wondered at if she sometimes made a mistake about

the outcome.

"Such a pity you don't believe in these things, Denis, such a pity," said

Mrs. Wimbush in her deep, distinct voice.

"I can't say I feel it so."

"Ah, that's because you don't know what it's like to have faith. You've

no idea how amusing and exciting life becomes when you do believe.

All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

It makes life so jolly, you know. Here am I at Crome. Dull as

ditchwater, you'd think; but no, I don't find it so. I don't regret the Old

Days a bit. I have the Stars..." She picked up the sheet of paper that was

lying on the blotting- pad. "Inman's horoscope," she explained. "(I

thought I'd like to have a little fling on the billiards championship this

autumn.) I have the Infinite to keep in tune with," she waved her hand.

"And then there's the next world and all the spirits, and one's Aura, and

Mrs. Eddy and saying you're not ill, and the Christian Mysteries and Mrs.

Besant. It's all splendid. One's never dull for a moment. I can't think

how I used to get on before--in the Old Days. Pleasure--running about,

that's all it was; just running about. Lunch, tea, dinner, theatre, supper

every day. It was fun, of course, while it lasted. But there wasn't much

left of it afterwards. There's rather a good thing about that in Barbecue-

Smith's new book. Where is it?"

She sat up and reached for a book that was lying on the little table by

the head of the sofa.

"Do you know him, by the way?" she asked.

"Who?"

"Mr. Barbecue-Smith."

Denis knew of him vaguely. Barbecue-Smith was a name in the

Sunday papers. He wrote about the Conduct of Life. He might even be

CROME YELLOW

the author of "What a Young Girl Ought to Know".

"No, not personally," he said.

"I've invited him for next week-end." She turned over the pages of

the book. "Here's the passage I was thinking of. I marked it. I always

mark the things I like."

Holding the book almost at arm's length, for she was somewhat long-

sighted, and making suitable gestures with her free hand, she began to read,

slowly, dramatically.

"'What are thousand pound fur coats, what are quarter million

incomes?'" She looked up from the page with a histrionic movement of

the head; her orange coiffure nodded portentously. Denis looked at it,

fascinated. Was it the Real Thing and henna, he wondered, or was it one

of those Complete Transformations one sees in the advertisements?

"'What are Thrones and Sceptres?'"

The orange Transformation--yes, it must be a Transformation-- bobbed

up again.

"'What are the gaieties of the Rich, the splendours of the Powerful,

what is the pride of the Great, what are the gaudy pleasures of High

Society?'"

The voice, which had risen in tone, questioningly, from sentence to

sentence, dropped suddenly and boomed reply.

"'They are nothing. Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind, thin

vapours of fever. The things that matter happen in the heart. Seen

things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand times more significant.

It is the unseen that counts in Life.'"

Mrs. Wimbush lowered the book. "Beautiful, isn't it?" she said.

Denis preferred not to hazard an opinion, but uttered a non- committal

"H'm."

"Ah, it's a fine book this, a beautiful book," said Priscilla, as she let the

pages flick back, one by one, from under her thumb. "And here's the

passage about the Lotus Pool. He compares the Soul to a Lotus Pool,

you know." She held up the book again and read. "'A Friend of mine

has a Lotus Pool in his garden. It lies in a little dell embowered with

wild roses and eglantine, among which the nightingale pours forth its

CROME YELLOW

amorous descant all the summer long. Within the pool the Lotuses

blossom, and the birds of the air come to drink and bathe themselves in its

crystal waters...' Ah, and that reminds me," Priscilla exclaimed, shutting

the book with a clap and uttering her big profound laugh--"that reminds

me of the things that have been going on in our bathing-pool since you

were here last. We gave the village people leave to come and bathe here

in the evenings. You've no idea of the things that happened."

She leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper; every now and

then she uttered a deep gurgle of laughter. "...mixed bathing...saw them

out of my window...sent for a pair of field- glasses to make sure...no doubt

of it..." The laughter broke out again. Denis laughed too. Barbecue-

Smith was tossed on the floor.

It's time we went to see if tea's ready," said Priscilla. She hoisted

herself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the room, striding

beneath the trailing silk. Denis followed her, faintly humming to

himself:

"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing in op-pop-

pop-pop-popera."

And then the little twiddly bit of accompaniment at the end: "ra-ra."

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CROMEYELLOW1CROMEYELLOWByALDOUSHUXLEYCROMEYELLOW2CHAPTERI.Alongthisparticularstretchoflinenoexpresshadeverpassed.Allthetrains--thefewthattherewere--stoppedatallthestations.Denisknewthenamesofthosestationsbyheart.Bole,Tritton,SpavinDelawarr,KnipswichforTimpany,WestBowlby,and,finally,Camlet-on-the-Wat...

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