CROME YELLOW

By Aldous Huxley

CHAPTER I. 

Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. Allthe 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 thetrain to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew whither, into thegreen 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 neatlyin the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must havesomething to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat andclosed his eyes. It was extremely hot. 

Oh, this journey! It was two hours cut clean out of his life; two hoursin which he might have done so much, so much--written the perfect poem, for example, or read the one illuminating book. Instead of which--hisgorge rose at the smell of the dusty cushions against which he wasleaning. 

Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be done inthat time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of hours, and whathad he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the precious minutes as thoughhis reservoir were inexhaustible. Denis groaned in the spirit, condemnedhimself utterly with all his works. What right had he to sit in thesunshine, to occupy corner seats in third-class carriages, to be alive?None, none, none. 

Misery and a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him. He wastwenty-three, and oh! so agonizingly conscious of the fact. 

The train came bumpingly to a halt. Here was Camlet at last. Denisjumped 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 ineither 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 theplatform, he ran up the train towards the van. 

"A bicycle, a bicycle!" he said breathlessly to the guard. He felthimself a man of action. The guard paid no attention, but continuedmethodically to hand out, one by one, the packages labelled to Camlet. "A bicycle!" Denis repeated. "A green machine, cross-framed, name ofStone. 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 havespoken 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 hisbicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into the country. Itwas part of the theory of exercise. One day one would get up at sixo'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon--anywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churchesand 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 feelthat the bicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really mightget up at six. 

Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camlet station, hefelt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, was good. The far-awayblue hills, the harvests whitening on the slopes of the ridge alongwhich his road led him, the treeless sky-lines that changed as hemoved--yes, they were all good. He was overcome by the beauty of thosedeeply embayed combes, scooped in the flanks of the ridge beneath him. Curves, curves: he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to findsome term in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves--no, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as though to scoopthe achieved expression out of the air, and almost fell off his bicycle. What was the word to describe the curves of those little valleys? Theywere as fine as the lines of a human body, they were informed with thesubtlety of art... 

Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe evase de seshanches: had one ever read a French novel in which that phrase didn'toccur? Some day he would compile a dictionary for the use of novelists. Galbe, gonfle, goulu: parfum, peau, pervers, potele, pudeur: vertu, volupte. 

But he really must find that word. Curves curves... Those little valleyshad the lines of a cup moulded round a woman's breast; they seemed thedinted imprints of some huge divine body that had rested on these hills. Cumbrous locutions, these; but through them he seemed to be gettingnearer to what he wanted. Dinted, dimpled, wimpled--his mind wandereddown echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever further andfurther from the point. He was enamoured with the beauty of words. 

Becoming once more aware of the outer world, he found himself on thecrest of a descent. The road plunged down, steep and straight, into aconsiderable valley. There, on the opposite slope, a little higher upthe valley, stood Crome, his destination. He put on his brakes; thisview of Crome was pleasant to linger over. The facade with its threeprojecting towers rose precipitously from among the dark trees of thegarden. 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, howaustere! The hill was becoming steeper and steeper; he was gainingspeed in spite of his brakes. He loosed his grip of the levers, and ina moment was rushing headlong down. Five minutes later he was passingthrough the gate of the great courtyard. The front door stood hospitablyopen. He left his bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. Hewould take them by surprise. 

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 thefamiliar pictures and furniture, at all the little untidy signs of lifethat lay scattered here and there. He was rather glad that they wereall out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though onewere exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would theexcavator reconstruct from these remains; how would he people theseempty chambers? There was the long gallery, with its rows of respectableand (though, of course, one couldn't publicly admit it) rather boringItalian primitives, its Chinese sculptures, its unobtrusive, datelessfurniture. There was the panelled drawing-room, where the hugechintz-covered arm-chairs stood, oases of comfort among the austereflesh-mortifying antiques. There was the morning-room, with its palelemon 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 wasthe dining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its greatmahogany table, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, itseighteenth-century pictures--family portraits, meticulous animalpaintings. What could one reconstruct from such data? There was much ofHenry Wimbush in the long gallery and the library, something of Anne, perhaps, in the morning-room. That was all. Among the accumulations often 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 hadthen!" he reflected, echoing the aged Swift. It was nearly six monthssince the book had been published; he was glad to think he would neverwrite anything of the same sort again. Who could have been reading it, he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he liked to think so. Perhaps, too, she hadat last recognised herself in the Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; theslim Hamadryad whose movements were like the swaying of a young tree inthe wind. "The Woman who was a Tree" was what he had called the poem. Hehad given her the book when it came out, hoping that the poem would tellher 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, swayinginto the little restaurant where they sometimes dined together inLondon--three quarters of an hour late, and he at his table, haggardwith anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she was damnable!

It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her boudoir. Itwas a possibility; he would go and see. Mrs. Wimbush's boudoir was inthe central tower on the garden front. A little staircase cork-screwedup 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 thedoor. 

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

Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and masculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large, square, middle-agedface, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the wholesurmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbableshade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thought of Wilkie Bard asthe cantatrice. 

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

Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a rowof pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the RoyalFamily, 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 atremendously amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and readyin his mind. It would be a pleasure to give it utterance. "To beginwith, " he said... 

But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush's question had been what thegrammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a littleconversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game. 

"You find me busy at my horoscopes, " she said, without even being awarethat she had interrupted him. 

A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptiveears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with saying "Oh?" rathericily. 

"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 toldhim 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"--shepaused an instant--"well, look at that four hundred on the GrandNational. That's the Stars. "

Denis would have liked to hear more about the Old Days. But he was toodiscreet and, still more, too shy to ask. There had been something ofa bust up; that was all he knew. Old Priscilla--not so old then, ofcourse, and sprightlier--had lost a great deal of money, dropped itin handfuls and hatfuls on every race-course in the country. She hadgambled too. The number of thousands varied in the different legends, but all put it high. Henry Wimbush was forced to sell some of hisPrimitives--a Taddeo da Poggibonsi, an Amico di Taddeo, and four or fivenameless Sienese--to the Americans. There was a crisis. For the firsttime in his life Henry asserted himself, and with good effect, itseemed. 

Priscilla's gay and gadding existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a ratherill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and theOccult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was akind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month bettingmoney. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopesof horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the starsdictated. She betted on football too, and had a large notebook in whichshe registered the horoscopes of all the players in all the teams ofthe League. The process of balancing the horoscopes of two elevens oneagainst the other was a very delicate and difficult one. A match betweenthe Spurs and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast andso complicated that it was not to be wondered at if she sometimes made amistake 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'veno idea how amusing and exciting life becomes when you do believe. Allthat happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. Itmakes 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 Daysa bit. I have the Stars... " She picked up the sheet of paper that waslying on the blotting-pad. "Inman's horoscope, " she explained. "(Ithought I'd like to have a little fling on the billiards championshipthis autumn. ) I have the Infinite to keep in tune with, " she waved herhand. "And then there's the next world and all the spirits, and one'sAura, and Mrs. Eddy and saying you're not ill, and the ChristianMysteries and Mrs. Besant. It's all splendid. One's never dull for amoment. 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 itlasted. But there wasn't much left of it afterwards. There's rather agood 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 bythe 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 Sundaypapers. He wrote about the Conduct of Life. He might even be the authorof "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 thebook. "Here's the passage I was thinking of. I marked it. I always markthe things I like. "

Holding the book almost at arm's length, for she was somewhatlong-sighted, and making suitable gestures with her free hand, she beganto 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; herorange coiffure nodded portentously. Denis looked at it, fascinated. Was it the Real Thing and henna, he wondered, or was it one of thoseComplete Transformations one sees in the advertisements?

"'What are Thrones and Sceptres?'"

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

"'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 HighSociety?'"

The voice, which had risen in tone, questioningly, from sentence tosentence, dropped suddenly and boomed reply. 

"'They are nothing. Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind, thinvapours of fever. The things that matter happen in the heart. Seen things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand times moresignificant. 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 shelet the pages flick back, one by one, from under her thumb. "And here'sthe 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 hasa Lotus Pool in his garden. It lies in a little dell embowered with wildroses and eglantine, among which the nightingale pours forth its amorousdescant all the summer long. Within the pool the Lotuses blossom, andthe birds of the air come to drink and bathe themselves in its crystalwaters... ' Ah, and that reminds me, " Priscilla exclaimed, shutting thebook with a clap and uttering her big profound laugh--"that reminds meof the things that have been going on in our bathing-pool since you werehere last. We gave the village people leave to come and bathe here inthe evenings. You've no idea of the things that happened. "

She leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper; every now andthen she uttered a deep gurgle of laughter. "... Mixed bathing... Saw themout of my window... Sent for a pair of field-glasses to make sure... Nodoubt 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 hoistedherself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the room, stridingbeneath the trailing silk. Denis followed her, faintly humming tohimself:

 "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. "

CHAPTER III. 

The terrace in front of the house was a long narrow strip of turf, bounded along its outer edge by a graceful stone balustrade. Two littlesummer-houses of brick stood at either end. Below the house the groundsloped very steeply away, and the terrace was a remarkably high one;from the balusters to the sloping lawn beneath was a drop of thirtyfeet. Seen from below, the high unbroken terrace wall, built likethe house itself of brick, had the almost menacing aspect of afortification--a castle bastion, from whose parapet one looked outacross airy depths to distances level with the eye. Below, in theforeground, hedged in by solid masses of sculptured yew trees, lay thestone-brimmed swimming-pool. Beyond it stretched the park, with itsmassive elms, its green expanses of grass, and, at the bottom of thevalley, the gleam of the narrow river. On the farther side of the streamthe land rose again in a long slope, chequered with cultivation. Lookingup the valley, to the right, one saw a line of blue, far-off hills. 

The tea-table had been planted in the shade of one of the littlesummer-houses, and the rest of the party was already assembled about itwhen Denis and Priscilla made their appearance. Henry Wimbush had begunto pour out the tea. He was one of those ageless, unchanging men on thefarther side of fifty, who might be thirty, who might be anything. Denishad known him almost as long as he could remember. In all those yearshis pale, rather handsome face had never grown any older; it waslike the pale grey bowler hat which he always wore, winter andsummer--unageing, calm, serenely without expression. 

Next him, but separated from him and from the rest of the world by thealmost impenetrable barriers of her deafness, sat Jenny Mullion. She wasperhaps thirty, had a tilted nose and a pink-and-white complexion, andwore her brown hair plaited and coiled in two lateral buns over herears. In the secret tower of her deafness she sat apart, looking down atthe world through sharply piercing eyes. What did she think of men andwomen and things? That was something that Denis had never been able todiscover. In her enigmatic remoteness Jenny was a little disquieting. Even now some interior joke seemed to be amusing her, for she wassmiling to herself, and her brown eyes were like very bright roundmarbles. 

On his other side the serious, moonlike innocence of Mary Bracegirdle'sface shone pink and childish. She was nearly twenty-three, but onewouldn't have guessed it. Her short hair, clipped like a page's, hung ina bell of elastic gold about her cheeks. She had large blue china eyes, whose expression was one of ingenuous and often puzzled earnestness. 

Next to Mary a small gaunt man was sitting, rigid and erect inhis chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinctbird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, his dark eye had theshining quickness of a robin's. But there was nothing soft or graciousor feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry andscaly look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movementswere marked by the lizard's disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; hisspeech was thin, fluty, and dry. Henry Wimbush's school-fellow and exactcontemporary, Mr. Scogan looked far older and, at the same time, farmore youthfully alive than did that gentle aristocrat with the face likea grey bowler. 

Mr. Scogan might look like an extinct saurian, but Gombauld wasaltogether and essentially human. In the old-fashioned natural historiesof the 'thirties he might have figured in a steel engraving as a type ofHomo Sapiens--an honour which at that time commonly fell to LordByron. Indeed, with more hair and less collar, Gombauld would havebeen completely Byronic--more than Byronic, even, for Gombauld was ofProvencal descent, a black-haired young corsair of thirty, with flashingteeth and luminous large dark eyes. Denis looked at him enviously. Hewas jealous of his talent: if only he wrote verse as well as Gombauldpainted pictures! Still more, at the moment, he envied Gombauld hislooks, his vitality, his easy confidence of manner. Was it surprisingthat Anne should like him? Like him?--it might even be something worse, Denis reflected bitterly, as he walked at Priscilla's side down the longgrass terrace. 

Between Gombauld and Mr. Scogan a very much lowered deck-chair presentedits back to the new arrivals as they advanced towards the tea-table. Gombauld was leaning over it; his face moved vivaciously; he smiled, helaughed, he made quick gestures with his hands. From the depths of thechair came up a sound of soft, lazy laughter. Denis started as he heardit. That laughter--how well he knew it! What emotions it evoked in him!He quickened his pace. 

In her low deck-chair Anne was nearer to lying than to sitting. Herlong, slender body reposed in an attitude of listless and indolentgrace. Within its setting of light brown hair her face had a prettyregularity that was almost doll-like. And indeed there were momentswhen she seemed nothing more than a doll; when the oval face, with itslong-lashed, pale blue eyes, expressed nothing; when it was no more thana lazy mask of wax. She was Henry Wimbush's own niece; that bowler-likecountenance was one of the Wimbush heirlooms; it ran in the family, appearing in its female members as a blank doll-face. But across thisdollish mask, like a gay melody dancing over an unchanging fundamentalbass, passed Anne's other inheritance--quick laughter, light ironicamusement, and the changing expressions of many moods. She was smilingnow as Denis looked down at her: her cat's smile, he called it, for novery good reason. The mouth was compressed, and on either side of ittwo tiny wrinkles had formed themselves in her cheeks. An infinityof slightly malicious amusement lurked in those little folds, in thepuckers about the half-closed eyes, in the eyes themselves, bright andlaughing between the narrowed lids. 

The preliminary greetings spoken, Denis found an empty chair betweenGombauld and Jenny and sat down. 

"How are you, Jenny?" he shouted to her. 

Jenny nodded and smiled in mysterious silence, as though the subject ofher health were a secret that could not be publicly divulged. 

"How's London been since I went away?" Anne inquired from the depth ofher chair. 

The moment had come; the tremendously amusing narrative was waiting forutterance. "Well, " said Denis, smiling happily, "to begin with... "

"Has Priscilla told you of our great antiquarian find?" Henry Wimbushleaned forward; the most promising of buds was nipped. 

"To begin with, " said Denis desperately, "there was the Ballet... "

"Last week, " Mr. Wimbush went on softly and implacably, "we dug up fiftyyards of oaken drain-pipes; just tree trunks with a hole bored throughthe middle. Very interesting indeed. Whether they were laid down by themonks in the fifteenth century, or whether... "

Denis listened gloomily. "Extraordinary!" he said, when Mr. Wimbush hadfinished; "quite extraordinary!" He helped himself to another sliceof cake. He didn't even want to tell his tale about London now; he wasdamped. 

For some time past Mary's grave blue eyes had been fixed upon him. "Whathave you been writing lately?" she asked. It would be nice to have alittle literary conversation. 

"Oh, verse and prose, " said Denis--"just verse and prose. "

"Prose?" Mr. Scogan pounced alarmingly on the word. "You've been writingprose?"

"Yes. "

"Not a novel?"

"Yes. "

"My poor Denis!" exclaimed Mr. Scogan. "What about?"

Denis felt rather uncomfortable. "Oh, about the usual things, you know. "

"Of course, " Mr. Scogan groaned. "I'll describe the plot for you. LittlePercy, the hero, was never good at games, but he was always clever. He passes through the usual public school and the usual university andcomes to London, where he lives among the artists. He is bowed down withmelancholy thought; he carries the whole weight of the universe uponhis shoulders. He writes a novel of dazzling brilliance; he dabblesdelicately in Amour and disappears, at the end of the book, into theluminous Future. "

Denis blushed scarlet. Mr. Scogan had described the plan of his novelwith an accuracy that was appalling. He made an effort to laugh. "You'reentirely wrong, " he said. "My novel is not in the least like that. " Itwas a heroic lie. Luckily, he reflected, only two chapters were written. He would tear them up that very evening when he unpacked. 

Mr. Scogan paid no attention to his denial, but went on: "Why willyou young men continue to write about things that are so entirelyuninteresting as the mentality of adolescents and artists? Professionalanthropologists might find it interesting to turn sometimes from thebeliefs of the Blackfellow to the philosophical preoccupations of theundergraduate. But you can't expect an ordinary adult man, like myself, to be much moved by the story of his spiritual troubles. And after all, even in England, even in Germany and Russia, there are more adults thanadolescents. As for the artist, he is preoccupied with problems thatare so utterly unlike those of the ordinary adult man--problems of pureaesthetics which don't so much as present themselves to people likemyself--that a description of his mental processes is as boring to theordinary reader as a piece of pure mathematics. A serious book aboutartists regarded as artists is unreadable; and a book about artistsregarded as lovers, husbands, dipsomaniacs, heroes, and the like isreally not worth writing again. Jean-Christophe is the stock artist ofliterature, just as Professor Radium of 'Comic Cuts' is its stock man ofscience. "

"I'm sorry to hear I'm as uninteresting as all that, " said Gombauld. 

"Not at all, my dear Gombauld, " Mr. Scogan hastened to explain. "As alover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinatingspecimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you'rea bore. "

"I entirely disagree with you, " exclaimed Mary. She was somehow alwaysout of breath when she talked. And her speech was punctuated by littlegasps. "I've known a great many artists, and I've always found theirmentality very interesting. Especially in Paris. Tschuplitski, forexample--I saw a great deal of Tschuplitski in Paris this spring... "

"Ah, but then you're an exception, Mary, you're an exception, " said Mr. Scogan. "You are a femme superieure. "

A flush of pleasure turned Mary's face into a harvest moon. 

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 come?" 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. 

CHAPTER V. 

Mr. Wimbush had taken them to see the sights of the Home Farm, and nowthey were standing, all six of them--Henry Wimbush, Mr. Scogan, Denis, Gombauld, Anne, and Mary--by the low wall of the piggery, looking intoone of the styes. 

"This is a good sow, " said Henry Wimbush. "She had a litter of fourteen. 

"Fourteen?" Mary echoed incredulously. She turned astonished blue eyestowards Mr. Wimbush, then let them fall onto the seething mass of elanvital that fermented in the sty. 

An immense sow reposed on her side in the middle of the pen. Her round, black belly, fringed with a double line of dugs, presented itself to theassault of an army of small, brownish-black swine. With a frantic greedthey tugged at their mother's flank. The old sow stirred sometimesuneasily or uttered a little grunt of pain. One small pig, the runt, the weakling of the litter, had been unable to secure a place at thebanquet. Squealing shrilly, he ran backwards and forwards, trying topush in among his stronger brothers or even to climb over their tightlittle black backs towards the maternal reservoir. 

"There ARE fourteen, " said Mary. "You're quite right. I counted. It'sextraordinary. "

"The sow next door, " Mr. Wimbush went on, "has done very badly. She onlyhad five in her litter. I shall give her another chance. If she does nobetter next time, I shall fat her up and kill her. There's the boar, "he pointed towards a farther sty. "Fine old beast, isn't he? But he'sgetting past his prime. He'll have to go too. "

"How cruel!" Anne exclaimed. 

"But how practical, how eminently realistic!" said Mr. Scogan. "In thisfarm we have a model of sound paternal government. Make them breed, make them work, and when they're past working or breeding or begetting, slaughter them. "

"Farming seems to be mostly indecency and cruelty, " said Anne. 

With the ferrule of his walking-stick Denis began to scratch the boar'slong bristly back. The animal moved a little so as to bring himselfwithin easier range of the instrument that evoked in him such delicioussensations; then he stood stock still, softly grunting his contentment. The mud of years flaked off his sides in a grey powdery scurf. 

"What a pleasure it is, " said Denis, "to do somebody a kindness. Ibelieve I enjoy scratching this pig quite as much as he enjoys beingscratched. If only one could always be kind with so little expense ortrouble... "

A gate slammed; there was a sound of heavy footsteps. 

"Morning, Rowley!" said Henry Wimbush. 

"Morning, sir, " old Rowley answered. He was the most venerable ofthe labourers on the farm--a tall, solid man, still unbent, with greyside-whiskers and a steep, dignified profile. Grave, weighty in hismanner, splendidly respectable, Rowley had the air of a great Englishstatesman of the mid-nineteenth century. He halted on the outskirts ofthe group, and for a moment they all looked at the pigs in a silencethat was only broken by the sound of grunting or the squelch of a sharphoof in the mire. Rowley turned at last, slowly and ponderously andnobly, as he did everything, and addressed himself to Henry Wimbush. 

"Look at them, sir, " he said, with a motion of his hand towards thewallowing swine. "Rightly is they called pigs. "

"Rightly indeed, " Mr. Wimbush agreed. 

"I am abashed by that man, " said Mr. Scogan, as old Rowley plodded offslowly and with dignity. "What wisdom, what judgment, what a sense ofvalues! 'Rightly are they called swine. ' Yes. And I wish I could, withas much justice, say, 'Rightly are we called men. '"

They walked on towards the cowsheds and the stables of the cart-horses. Five white geese, taking the air this fine morning, even as they weredoing, met them in the way. They hesitated, cackled; then, convertingtheir lifted necks into rigid, horizontal snakes, they rushed off indisorder, hissing horribly as they went. Red calves paddled in the dungand mud of a spacious yard. In another enclosure stood the bull, massive as a locomotive. He was a very calm bull, and his face wore anexpression of melancholy stupidity. He gazed with reddish-brown eyes athis visitors, chewed thoughtfully at the tangible memories of an earliermeal, swallowed and regurgitated, chewed again. His tail lashed savagelyfrom side to side; it seemed to have nothing to do with his impassivebulk. Between his short horns was a triangle of red curls, short anddense. 

"Splendid animal, " said Henry Wimbush. "Pedigree stock. But he's gettinga little old, like the boar. "

"Fat him up and slaughter him, " Mr. Scogan pronounced, with a delicateold-maidish precision of utterance. 

"Couldn't you give the animals a little holiday from producingchildren?" asked Anne. "I'm so sorry for the poor things. "

Mr. Wimbush shook his head. "Personally, " he said, "I rather like seeingfourteen pigs grow where only one grew before. The spectacle of so muchcrude life is refreshing. "

"I'm glad to hear you say so, " Gombauld broke in warmly. "Lots of life:that's what we want. I like pullulation; everything ought to increaseand multiply as hard as it can. "

Gombauld grew lyrical. Everybody ought to have children--Anne ought tohave them, Mary ought to have them--dozens and dozens. He emphasised hispoint by thumping with his walking-stick on the bull's leather flanks. Mr. Scogan ought to pass on his intelligence to little Scogans, andDenis to little Denises. The bull turned his head to see what washappening, regarded the drumming stick for several seconds, then turnedback again satisfied, it seemed, that nothing was happening. Sterilitywas odious, unnatural, a sin against life. Life, life, and still morelife. The ribs of the placid bull resounded. 

Standing with his back against the farmyard pump, a little apart, Denisexamined the group. Gombauld, passionate and vivacious, was its centre. The others stood round, listening--Henry Wimbush, calm and politebeneath his grey bowler; Mary, with parted lips and eyes that shone withthe indignation of a convinced birth-controller. Anne looked on throughhalf-shut eyes, smiling; and beside her stood Mr. Scogan, bolt uprightin an attitude of metallic rigidity that contrasted strangely with thatfluid grace of hers which even in stillness suggested a soft movement. 

Gombauld ceased talking, and Mary, flushed and outraged, opened hermouth to refute him. But she was too slow. Before she could utter aword Mr. Scogan's fluty voice had pronounced the opening phrases of adiscourse. There was no hope of getting so much as a word in edgeways;Mary had perforce to resign herself. 

"Even your eloquence, my dear Gombauld, " he was saying--"even youreloquence must prove inadequate to reconvert the world to a belief inthe delights of mere multiplication. With the gramophone, the cinema, and the automatic pistol, the goddess of Applied Science has presentedthe world with another gift, more precious even than these--the means ofdissociating love from propagation. Eros, for those who wish it, is nowan entirely free god; his deplorable associations with Lucina may bebroken at will. In the course of the next few centuries, who knows?the world may see a more complete severance. I look forward to itoptimistically. Where the great Erasmus Darwin and Miss Anna Seward, Swan of Lichfield, experimented--and, for all their scientific ardour, failed--our descendants will experiment and succeed. An impersonalgeneration will take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast stateincubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world withthe population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly fromflower to flower through a sunlit world. "

"It sounds lovely, " said Anne. 

"The distant future always does. "

Mary's china blue eyes, more serious and more astonished than ever, were fixed on Mr. Scogan. "Bottles?" she said. "Do you really think so?Bottles... "

CHAPTER VI. 

Mr. Barbecue-Smith arrived in time for tea on Saturday afternoon. He wasa short and corpulent man, with a very large head and no neck. In hisearlier middle age he had been distressed by this absence of neck, but was comforted by reading in Balzac's "Louis Lambert" that all theworld's great men have been marked by the same peculiarity, and for asimple and obvious reason: Greatness is nothing more nor less thanthe harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart;the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach oneanother; argal... It was convincing. 

Mr. Barbecue-Smith belonged to the old school of journalists. He sporteda leonine head with a greyish-black mane of oddly unappetising hairbrushed back from a broad but low forehead. And somehow he always seemedslightly, ever so slightly, soiled. In younger days he had gaily calledhimself a Bohemian. He did so no longer. He was a teacher now, a kindof prophet. Some of his books of comfort and spiritual teaching were intheir hundred and twentieth thousand. 

Priscilla received him with every mark of esteem. He had never been toCrome before; she showed him round the house. Mr. Barbecue-Smith wasfull of admiration. 

"So quaint, so old-world, " he kept repeating. He had a rich, ratherunctuous voice. 

Priscilla praised his latest book. "Splendid, I thought it was, " shesaid in her large, jolly way. 

"I'm happy to think you found it a comfort, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. 

"Oh, tremendously! And the bit about the Lotus Pool--I thought that sobeautiful. "

"I knew you would like that. It came to me, you know, from without. " Hewaved his hand to indicate the astral world. 

They went out into the garden for tea. Mr. Barbecue-Smith was dulyintroduced. 

"Mr. Stone is a writer too, " said Priscilla, as she introduced Denis. 

"Indeed!" Mr. Barbecue-Smith smiled benignly, and, looking up at Deniswith an expression of Olympian condescension, "And what sort of thingsdo you write?"

Denis was furious, and, to make matters worse, he felt himself blushinghotly. Had Priscilla no sense of proportion? She was putting them in thesame category--Barbecue-Smith and himself. They were both writers, theyboth used pen and ink. To Mr. Barbecue-Smith's question he answered, "Oh, nothing much, nothing, " and looked away. 

"Mr. Stone is one of our younger poets. " It was Anne's voice. He scowledat her, and she smiled back exasperatingly. 

"Excellent, excellent, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith, and he squeezed Denis'sarm encouragingly. "The Bard's is a noble calling. "

As soon as tea was over Mr. Barbecue-Smith excused himself; he had todo some writing before dinner. Priscilla quite understood. The prophetretired to his chamber. 

Mr. Barbecue-Smith came down to the drawing-room at ten to eight. He wasin a good humour, and, as he descended the stairs, he smiled to himselfand rubbed his large white hands together. In the drawing-room someonewas playing softly and ramblingly on the piano. He wondered who it couldbe. One of the young ladies, perhaps. But no, it was only Denis, who gotup hurriedly and with some embarrassment as he came into the room. 

"Do go on, do go on, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "I am very fond ofmusic. "

"Then I couldn't possibly go on, " Denis replied. "I only make noises. "

There was a silence. Mr. Barbecue-Smith stood with his back to thehearth, warming himself at the memory of last winter's fires. He couldnot control his interior satisfaction, but still went on smiling tohimself. At last he turned to Denis. 

"You write, " he asked, "don't you?"

"Well, yes--a little, you know. "

"How many words do you find you can write in an hour?"

"I don't think I've ever counted. "

"Oh, you ought to, you ought to. It's most important. "

Denis exercised his memory. "When I'm in good form, " he said, "I fancyI do a twelve-hundred-word review in about four hours. But sometimes ittakes me much longer. "

Mr. Barbecue-Smith nodded. "Yes, three hundred words an hour at yourbest. " He walked out into the middle of the room, turned round on hisheels, and confronted Denis again. "Guess how many words I wrote thisevening between five and half-past seven. "

"I can't imagine. "

"No, but you must guess. Between five and half-past seven--that's twoand a half hours. "

"Twelve hundred words, " Denis hazarded. 

"No, no, no. " Mr. Barbecue-Smith's expanded face shone with gaiety. "Tryagain. "

"Fifteen hundred. "

"No. "

"I give it up, " said Denis. He found he couldn't summon up much interestin Mr. Barbecue-Smith's writing. 

"Well, I'll tell you. Three thousand eight hundred. "

Denis opened his eyes. "You must get a lot done in a day, " he said. 

Mr. Barbecue-Smith suddenly became extremely confidential. He pulled upa stool to the side of Denis's arm-chair, sat down in it, and began totalk softly and rapidly. 

"Listen to me, " he said, laying his hand on Denis's sleeve. "You want tomake your living by writing; you're young, you're inexperienced. Let megive you a little sound advice. "

What was the fellow going to do? Denis wondered: give him anintroduction to the editor of "John o' London's Weekly", or tell himwhere he could sell a light middle for seven guineas? Mr. Barbecue-Smithpatted his arm several times and went on. 

"The secret of writing, " he said, breathing it into the young man'sear--"the secret of writing is Inspiration. "

Denis looked at him in astonishment. 

"Inspiration... " Mr. Barbecue-Smith repeated. 

"You mean the native wood-note business?"

Mr. Barbecue-Smith nodded. 

"Oh, then I entirely agree with you, " said Denis. "But what if onehasn't got Inspiration?"

"That was precisely the question I was waiting for, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "You ask me what one should do if one hasn't gotInspiration. I answer: you have Inspiration; everyone has Inspiration. It's simply a question of getting it to function. "

The clock struck eight. There was no sign of any of the other guests;everybody was always late at Crome. Mr. Barbecue-Smith went on. 

"That's my secret, " he said. "I give it you freely. " (Denis made asuitably grateful murmur and grimace. ) "I'll help you to find yourInspiration, because I don't like to see a nice, steady young man likeyou exhausting his vitality and wasting the best years of his life ina grinding intellectual labour that could be completely obviated byInspiration. I did it myself, so I know what it's like. Up till thetime I was thirty-eight I was a writer like you--a writer withoutInspiration. All I wrote I squeezed out of myself by sheer hard work. Why, in those days I was never able to do more than six-fifty words anhour, and what's more, I often didn't sell what I wrote. " He sighed. "We artists, " he said parenthetically, "we intellectuals aren't muchappreciated here in England. " Denis wondered if there was any method, consistent, of course, with politeness, by which he could dissociatehimself from Mr. Barbecue-Smith's "we. " There was none; and besides, it was too late now, for Mr. Barbecue-Smith was once more pursuing thetenor of his discourse. 

"At thirty-eight I was a poor, struggling, tired, overworked, unknownjournalist. Now, at fifty... " He paused modestly and made a littlegesture, moving his fat hands outwards, away from one another, andexpanding his fingers as though in demonstration. He was exhibitinghimself. Denis thought of that advertisement of Nestle's milk--the twocats on the wall, under the moon, one black and thin, the other white, sleek, and fat. Before Inspiration and after. 

"Inspiration has made the difference, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith solemnly. "It came quite suddenly--like a gentle dew from heaven. " He lifted hishand and let it fall back on to his knee to indicate the descent of thedew. "It was one evening. I was writing my first little book about theConduct of Life--'Humble Heroisms'. You may have read it; it has beena comfort--at least I hope and think so--a comfort to many thousands. I was in the middle of the second chapter, and I was stuck. Fatigue, overwork--I had only written a hundred words in the last hour, and Icould get no further. I sat biting the end of my pen and looking at theelectric light, which hung above my table, a little above and in frontof me. " He indicated the position of the lamp with elaborate care. "Haveyou ever looked at a bright light intently for a long time?" he asked, turning to Denis. Denis didn't think he had. "You can hypnotise yourselfthat way, " Mr. Barbecue-Smith went on. 

The gong sounded in a terrific crescendo from the hall. Still no sign ofthe others. Denis was horribly hungry. 

"That's what happened to me, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "I washypnotised. I lost consciousness like that. " He snapped his fingers. "When I came to, I found that it was past midnight, and I had writtenfour thousand words. Four thousand, " he repeated, opening his mouth verywide on the "ou" of thousand. "Inspiration had come to me. "

"What a very extraordinary thing, " said Denis. 

"I was afraid of it at first. It didn't seem to me natural. I didn'tfeel, somehow, that it was quite right, quite fair, I might almost say, to produce a literary composition unconsciously. Besides, I was afraid Imight have written nonsense. "

"And had you written nonsense?" Denis asked. 

"Certainly not, " Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied, with a trace of annoyance. "Certainly not. It was admirable. Just a few spelling mistakes andslips, such as there generally are in automatic writing. But the style, the thought--all the essentials were admirable. After that, Inspirationcame to me regularly. I wrote the whole of 'Humble Heroisms' like that. It was a great success, and so has everything been that I have writtensince. " He leaned forward and jabbed at Denis with his finger. "That'smy secret, " he said, "and that's how you could write too, if youtried--without effort, fluently, well. "

"But how?" asked Denis, trying not to show how deeply he had beeninsulted by that final "well. "

"By cultivating your Inspiration, by getting into touch with yourSubconscious. Have you ever read my little book, 'Pipe-Lines to theInfinite'?"

Denis had to confess that that was, precisely, one of the few, perhapsthe only one, of Mr. Barbecue-Smith's works he had not read. 

"Never mind, never mind, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "It's just a littlebook about the connection of the Subconscious with the Infinite. Getinto touch with the Subconscious and you are in touch with the Universe. Inspiration, in fact. You follow me?"

"Perfectly, perfectly, " said Denis. "But don't you find that theUniverse sometimes sends you very irrelevant messages?"

"I don't allow it to, " Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied. "I canalise it. Ibring it down through pipes to work the turbines of my conscious mind. "

"Like Niagara, " Denis suggested. Some of Mr. Barbecue-Smith's remarkssounded strangely like quotations--quotations from his own works, nodoubt. 

"Precisely. Like Niagara. And this is how I do it. " He leaned forward, and with a raised forefinger marked his points as he made them, beatingtime, as it were, to his discourse. "Before I go off into my trance, Iconcentrate on the subject I wish to be inspired about. Let us say I amwriting about the humble heroisms; for ten minutes before I go into thetrance I think of nothing but orphans supporting their little brothersand sisters, of dull work well and patiently done, and I focus my mindon such great philosophical truths as the purification and uplifting ofthe soul by suffering, and the alchemical transformation of leaden evilinto golden good. " (Denis again hung up his little festoon of quotationmarks. ) "Then I pop off. Two or three hours later I wake up again, andfind that inspiration has done its work. Thousands of words, comforting, uplifting words, lie before me. I type them out neatly on my machine andthey are ready for the printer. "

"It all sounds wonderfully simple, " said Denis. 

"It is. All the great and splendid and divine things of life arewonderfully simple. " (Quotation marks again. ) "When I have to do myaphorisms, " Mr. Barbecue-Smith continued, "I prelude my trance byturning over the pages of any Dictionary of Quotations or ShakespeareCalendar that comes to hand. That sets the key, so to speak; thatensures that the Universe shall come flowing in, not in a continuousrush, but in aphorismic drops. You see the idea?"

Denis nodded. Mr. Barbecue-Smith put his hand in his pocket and pulledout a notebook. "I did a few in the train to-day, " he said, turning overthe pages. "Just dropped off into a trance in the corner of my carriage. I find the train very conducive to good work. Here they are. " He clearedhis throat and read:

"The Mountain Road may be steep, but the air is pure up there, and it isfrom the Summit that one gets the view. "

"The Things that Really Matter happen in the Heart. "

It was curious, Denis reflected, the way the Infinite sometimes repeateditself. 

"Seeing is Believing. Yes, but Believing is also Seeing. If I believe inGod, I see God, even in the things that seem to be evil. "

Mr. Barbecue-Smith looked up from his notebook. "That last one, " hesaid, "is particularly subtle and beautiful, don't you think? WithoutInspiration I could never have hit on that. " He re-read the apophthegmwith a slower and more solemn utterance. "Straight from the Infinite, "he commented reflectively, then addressed himself to the next aphorism. 

"The flame of a candle gives Light, but it also Burns. "

Puzzled wrinkles appeared on Mr. Barbecue-Smith's forehead. "I don'texactly know what that means, " he said. "It's very gnomic. One couldapply it, of course to the Higher Education--illuminating, but provokingthe Lower Classes to discontent and revolution. Yes, I supposethat's what it is. But it's gnomic, it's gnomic. " He rubbed hischin thoughtfully. The gong sounded again, clamorously, it seemedimploringly: dinner was growing cold. It roused Mr. Barbecue-Smith frommeditation. He turned to Denis. 

"You understand me now when I advise you to cultivate your Inspiration. Let your Subconscious work for you; turn on the Niagara of theInfinite. "

There was the sound of feet on the stairs. Mr. Barbecue-Smith got up, laid his hand for an instant on Denis's shoulder, and said:

"No more now. Another time. And remember, I rely absolutely on yourdiscretion in this matter. There are intimate, sacred things that onedoesn't wish to be generally known. "

"Of course, " said Denis. "I quite understand. "

CHAPTER VII. 

At Crome all the beds were ancient hereditary pieces of furniture. Hugebeds, like four-masted ships, with furled sails of shining colouredstuff. Beds carved and inlaid, beds painted and gilded. Beds of walnutand oak, of rare exotic woods. Beds of every date and fashion from thetime of Sir Ferdinando, who built the house, to the time of his namesakein the late eighteenth century, the last of the family, but all of themgrandiose, magnificent. 

The finest of all was now Anne's bed. Sir Julius, son to Sir Ferdinando, had had it made in Venice against his wife's first lying-in. Earlyseicento Venice had expended all its extravagant art in the making ofit. The body of the bed was like a great square sarcophagus. Clusteringroses were carved in high relief on its wooden panels, and lusciousputti wallowed among the roses. On the black ground-work of the panelsthe carved reliefs were gilded and burnished. The golden roses twined inspirals up the four pillar-like posts, and cherubs, seated at the topof each column, supported a wooden canopy fretted with the same carvedflowers. 

Anne was reading in bed. Two candles stood on the little table besideher, in their rich light her face, her bare arm and shoulder took onwarm hues and a sort of peach-like quality of surface. Here and there inthe canopy above her carved golden petals shone brightly among profoundshadows, and the soft light, falling on the sculptured panel of the bed, broke restlessly among the intricate roses, lingered in a broad caresson the blown cheeks, the dimpled bellies, the tight, absurd littleposteriors of the sprawling putti. 

There was a discreet tap at the door. She looked up. "Come in, come in. "A face, round and childish, within its sleek bell of golden hair, peeredround the opening door. More childish-looking still, a suit of mauvepyjamas made its entrance. 

It was Mary. "I thought I'd just look in for a moment to saygood-night, " she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

Anne closed her book. "That was very sweet of you. "

"What are you reading?" She looked at the book. "Rather second-rate, isn't it?" The tone in which Mary pronounced the word "second-rate"implied an almost infinite denigration. She was accustomed in London toassociate only with first-rate people who liked first-rate things, andshe knew that there were very, very few first-rate things in the world, and that those were mostly French. 

"Well, I'm afraid I like it, " said Anne. There was nothing more to besaid. The silence that followed was a rather uncomfortable one. Maryfiddled uneasily with the bottom button of her pyjama jacket. Leaningback on her mound of heaped-up pillows, Anne waited and wondered whatwas coming. 

"I'm so awfully afraid of repressions, " said Mary at last, burstingsuddenly and surprisingly into speech. She pronounced the words onthe tail-end of an expiring breath, and had to gasp for new air almostbefore the phrase was finished. 

"What's there to be depressed about?"

"I said repressions, not depressions. "

"Oh, repressions; I see, " said Anne. "But repressions of what?"

Mary had to explain. "The natural instincts of sex... " she begandidactically. But Anne cut her short. 

"Yes, yes. Perfectly. I understand. Repressions! old maids and all therest. But what about them?"

"That's just it, " said Mary. "I'm afraid of them. It's always dangerousto repress one's instincts. I'm beginning to detect in myself symptomslike the ones you read of in the books. I constantly dream that I'mfalling down wells; and sometimes I even dream that I'm climbing upladders. It's most disquieting. The symptoms are only too clear. "

"Are they?"

"One may become a nymphomaniac of one's not careful. You've no idea howserious these repressions are if you don't get rid of them in time. "

"It sounds too awful, " said Anne. "But I don't see that I can doanything to help you. "

"I thought I'd just like to talk it over with you. "

"Why, of course; I'm only too happy, Mary darling. "

Mary coughed and drew a deep breath. "I presume, " she begansententiously, "I presume we may take for granted that an intelligentyoung woman of twenty-three who has lived in civilised society in thetwentieth century has no prejudices. "

"Well, I confess I still have a few. "

"But not about repressions. "

"No, not many about repressions; that's true. "

"Or, rather, about getting rid of repressions. "

"Exactly. "

"So much for our fundamental postulate, " said Mary. Solemnity wasexpressed in every feature of her round young face, radiated fromher large blue eyes. "We come next to the desirability of possessingexperience. I hope we are agreed that knowledge is desirable and thatignorance is undesirable. "

Obedient as one of those complaisant disciples from whom Socrates couldget whatever answer he chose, Anne gave her assent to this proposition. 

"And we are equally agreed, I hope, that marriage is what it is. "

"It is. "

"Good!" said Mary. "And repressions being what they are... "

"Exactly. "

"There would therefore seem to be only one conclusion. "

"But I knew that, " Anne exclaimed, "before you began. "

"Yes, but now it's been proved, " said Mary. "One must do thingslogically. The question is now... "

"But where does the question come in? You've reached your only possibleconclusion--logically, which is more than I could have done. All thatremains is to impart the information to someone you like--someone youlike really rather a lot, someone you're in love with, if I may expressmyself so baldly. "

"But that's just where the question comes in, " Mary exclaimed. "I'm notin love with anybody. "

"Then, if I were you, I should wait till you are. "

"But I can't go on dreaming night after night that I'm falling down awell. It's too dangerous. "

"Well, if it really is TOO dangerous, then of course you must dosomething about it; you must find somebody else. "

"But who?" A thoughtful frown puckered Mary's brow. "It must be somebodyintelligent, somebody with intellectual interests that I can share. And it must be somebody with a proper respect for women, somebody who'sprepared to talk seriously about his work and his ideas and about mywork and my ideas. It isn't, as you see, at all easy to find the rightperson. "

"Well" said Anne, "there are three unattached and intelligent men inthe house at the present time. There's Mr. Scogan, to begin with;but perhaps he's rather too much of a genuine antique. And there areGombauld and Denis. Shall we say that the choice is limited to the lasttwo?"

Mary nodded. "I think we had better, " she said, and then hesitated, witha certain air of embarrassment. 

"What is it?"

"I was wondering, " said Mary, with a gasp, "whether they really wereunattached. I thought that perhaps you might... You might... "

"It was very nice of you to think of me, Mary darling, " said Anne, smiling the tight cat's smile. "But as far as I'm concerned, they areboth entirely unattached. "

"I'm very glad of that, " said Mary, looking relieved. "We are nowconfronted with the question: Which of the two?"

"I can give no advice. It's a matter for your taste. "

"It's not a matter of my taste, " Mary pronounced, "but of their merits. We must weigh them and consider them carefully and dispassionately. "

"You must do the weighing yourself, " said Anne; there was still thetrace of a smile at the corners of her mouth and round the half-closedeyes. "I won't run the risk of advising you wrongly. "

"Gombauld has more talent, " Mary began, "but he is less civilised thanDenis. " Mary's pronunciation of "civilised" gave the word a special andadditional significance. She uttered it meticulously, in the very frontof her mouth, hissing delicately on the opening sibilant. So few peoplewere civilised, and they, like the first-rate works of art, were mostlyFrench. "Civilisation is most important, don't you think?"

Anne held up her hand. "I won't advise, " she said. "You must make thedecision. "

"Gombauld's family, " Mary went on reflectively, "comes from Marseilles. Rather a dangerous heredity, when one thinks of the Latin attitudetowards women. But then, I sometimes wonder whether Denis is altogetherserious-minded, whether he isn't rather a dilettante. It's verydifficult. What do you think?"

"I'm not listening, " said Anne. "I refuse to take any responsibility. "

Mary sighed. "Well, " she said, "I think I had better go to bed and thinkabout it. "

"Carefully and dispassionately, " said Anne. 

At the door Mary turned round. "Good-night, " she said, and wonderedas she said the words why Anne was smiling in that curious way. Itwas probably nothing, she reflected. Anne often smiled for no apparentreason; it was probably just a habit. "I hope I shan't dream of fallingdown wells again to-night, " she added. 

"Ladders are worse, " said Anne. 

Mary nodded. "Yes, ladders are much graver. "

CHAPTER VIII. 

Breakfast on Sunday morning was an hour later than on week-days, andPriscilla, who usually made no public appearance before luncheon, honoured it by her presence. Dressed in black silk, with a ruby cross aswell as her customary string of pearls round her neck, she presided. An enormous Sunday paper concealed all but the extreme pinnacle of hercoiffure from the outer world. 

"I see Surrey has won, " she said, with her mouth full, "by four wickets. The sun is in Leo: that would account for it!"

"Splendid game, cricket, " remarked Mr. Barbecue-Smith heartily to no onein particular; "so thoroughly English. "

Jenny, who was sitting next to him, woke up suddenly with a start. "What?" she said. "What?"

"So English, " repeated Mr. Barbecue-Smith. 

Jenny looked at him, surprised. "English? Of course I am. "

He was beginning to explain, when Mrs. Wimbush vailed her Sunday paper, and appeared, a square, mauve-powdered face in the midst of orangesplendours. "I see there's a new series of articles on the next worldjust beginning, " she said to Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "This one's called'Summer Land and Gehenna. '"

"Summer Land, " echoed Mr. Barbecue-Smith, closing his eyes. "SummerLand. A beautiful name. Beautiful--beautiful. "

Mary had taken the seat next to Denis's. After a night of carefulconsideration she had decided on Denis. He might have less talent thanGombauld, he might be a little lacking in seriousness, but somehow hewas safer. 

"Are you writing much poetry here in the country?" she asked, with abright gravity. 

"None, " said Denis curtly. "I haven't brought my typewriter. "

"But do you mean to say you can't write without a typewriter?"

Denis shook his head. He hated talking at breakfast, and, besides, hewanted to hear what Mr. Scogan was saying at the other end of the table. 

"... My scheme for dealing with the Church, " Mr. Scogan was saying, "isbeautifully simple. At the present time the Anglican clergy wear theircollars the wrong way round. I would compel them to wear, not only theircollars, but all their clothes, turned back to frantic--coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots--so that every clergyman should present to the worlda smooth facade, unbroken by stud, button, or lace. The enforcement ofsuch a livery would act as a wholesome deterrent to those intending toenter the Church. At the same time it would enormously enhance, whatArchbishop Laud so rightly insisted on, the 'beauty of holiness' in thefew incorrigibles who could not be deterred. "

"In hell, it seems, " said Priscilla, reading in her Sunday paper, "thechildren amuse themselves by flaying lambs alive. "

"Ah, but, dear lady, that's only a symbol, " exclaimed Mr. Barbecue-Smith, "a material symbol of a h-piritual truth. Lambssignify... "

"Then there are military uniforms, " Mr. Scogan went on. "When scarletand pipe-clay were abandoned for khaki, there were some who trembled forthe future of war. But then, finding how elegant the new tunic was, howclosely it clipped the waist, how voluptuously, with the lateralbustles of the pockets, it exaggerated the hips; when they realized thebrilliant potentialities of breeches and top-boots, they were reassured. Abolish these military elegances, standardise a uniform of sack-clothand mackintosh, you will very soon find that... "

"Is anyone coming to church with me this morning?" asked Henry Wimbush. No one responded. He baited his bare invitation. "I read the lessons, you know. And there's Mr. Bodiham. His sermons are sometimes worthhearing. "

"Thank you, thank you, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "I for one prefer toworship in the infinite church of Nature. How does our Shakespeare putit? 'Sermons in books, stones in the running brooks. '" He waved his armin a fine gesture towards the window, and even as he did so he becamevaguely, but none the less insistently, none the less uncomfortablyaware that something had gone wrong with the quotation. Something--whatcould it be? Sermons? Stones? Books?

CHAPTER IX. 

Mr. Bodiham was sitting in his study at the Rectory. Thenineteenth-century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted thelight grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the room wassombre. Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls, filled with rowupon row of those thick, heavy theological works which the second-handbooksellers generally sell by weight. The mantelpiece, the over-mantel, a towering structure of spindly pillars and little shelves, were brownand varnished. The writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were thechairs, so was the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns coveredthe floor. Everything was brown in the room, and there was a curiousbrownish smell. 

In the midst of this brown gloom Mr. Bodiham sat at his desk. He was theman in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron cheek-bones and anarrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran perpendicularlydown his cheeks; his nose was the iron beak of some thin, delicate birdof rapine. He had brown eyes, set in sockets rimmed with iron; roundthem the skin was dark, as though it had been charred. Dense wiry haircovered his skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His earswere very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were dark, iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke and especiallywhen he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like the grating of ironhinges when a seldom-used door is opened. 

It was nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church, hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solidrubber; the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. Theflail thumped on india-rubber, and as often as not the rubber slept. 

That morning he had preached, as he had often preached before, on thenature of God. He had tried to make them understand about God, whata fearful thing it was to fall into His hands. God--they thought ofsomething soft and merciful. They blinded themselves to facts; stillmore, they blinded themselves to the Bible. The passengers on the"Titanic" sang "Nearer my God to Thee" as the ship was going down. Didthey realise what they were asking to be brought nearer to? A white fireof righteousness, an angry fire... 

When Savonarola preached, men sobbed and groaned aloud. Nothing brokethe polite silence with which Crome listened to Mr. Bodiham--only anoccasional cough and sometimes the sound of heavy breathing. In thefront pew sat Henry Wimbush, calm, well-bred, beautifully dressed. Therewere times when Mr. Bodiham wanted to jump down from the pulpit andshake him into life, --times when he would have liked to beat and killhis whole congregation. 

He sat at his desk dejectedly. Outside the Gothic windows the earth waswarm and marvellously calm. Everything was as it had always been. Andyet, and yet... It was nearly four years now since he had preached thatsermon on Matthew xxiv. 7: "For nation shall rise up against nation, andkingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. " It was nearly four years. He had hadthe sermon printed; it was so terribly, so vitally important that allthe world should know what he had to say. A copy of the little pamphletlay on his desk--eight small grey pages, printed by a fount of type thathad grown blunt, like an old dog's teeth, by the endless champing andchamping of the press. He opened it and began to read it yet once again. 

"'For nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diversplaces. '

"Nineteen centuries have elapsed since Our Lord gave utterance to thosewords, and not a single one of them has been without wars, plagues, famines, and earthquakes. Mighty empires have crashed in ruin to theground, diseases have unpeopled half the globe, there have been vastnatural cataclysms in which thousands have been overwhelmed by floodand fire and whirlwind. Time and again, in the course of these nineteencenturies, such things have happened, but they have not brought Christback to earth. They were 'signs of the times' inasmuch as they weresigns of God's wrath against the chronic wickedness of mankind, but theywere not signs of the times in connection with the Second Coming. 

"If earnest Christians have regarded the present war as a true sign ofthe Lord's approaching return, it is not merely because it happens tobe a great war involving the lives of millions of people, not merelybecause famine is tightening its grip on every country in Europe, notmerely because disease of every kind, from syphilis to spotted fever, isrife among the warring nations; no, it is not for these reasons that weregard this war as a true Sign of the Times, but because in its originand its progress it is marked by certain characteristics which seemto connect it almost beyond a doubt with the predictions in ChristianProphecy relating to the Second Coming of the Lord. 

"Let me enumerate the features of the present war which most clearlysuggest that it is a Sign foretelling the near approach of the SecondAdvent. Our Lord said that 'this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preachedin all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the endcome. ' Although it would be presumptuous for us to say what degree ofevangelisation will be regarded by God as sufficient, we may at leastconfidently hope that a century of unflagging missionary work hasbrought the fulfilment of this condition at any rate near. True, thelarger number of the world's inhabitants have remained deaf to thepreaching of the true religion; but that does not vitiate the fact thatthe Gospel HAS been preached 'for a witness' to all unbelievers from thePapist to the Zulu. The responsibility for the continued prevalence ofunbelief lies, not with the preachers, but with those preached to. 

"Again, it has been generally recognised that 'the drying up of thewaters of the great river Euphrates, ' mentioned in the sixteenth chapterof Revelation, refers to the decay and extinction of Turkish power, andis a sign of the near approaching end of the world as we know it. Thecapture of Jerusalem and the successes in Mesopotamia are great stridesforward in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire; though it must beadmitted that the Gallipoli episode proved that the Turk still possessesa 'notable horn' of strength. Historically speaking, this drying up ofOttoman power has been going on for the past century; the last two yearshave witnessed a great acceleration of the process, and there can be nodoubt that complete desiccation is within sight. 

"Closely following on the words concerning the drying up of Euphratescomes the prophecy of Armageddon, that world war with which the SecondComing is to be so closely associated. Once begun, the world war canend only with the return of Christ, and His coming will be sudden andunexpected, like that of a thief in the night. 

"Let us examine the facts. In history, exactly as in St. John's Gospel, the world war is immediately preceded by the drying up of Euphrates, orthe decay of Turkish power. This fact alone would be enough to connectthe present conflict with the Armageddon of Revelation and therefore topoint to the near approach of the Second Advent. But further evidence ofan even more solid and convincing nature can be adduced. 

"Armageddon is brought about by the activities of three unclean spirits, as it were toads, which come out of the mouths of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. If we can identify these three powers of evilmuch light will clearly be thrown on the whole question. 

"The Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet can all be identified inhistory. Satan, who can only work through human agency, has used thesethree powers in the long war against Christ which has filled the lastnineteen centuries with religious strife. The Dragon, it has beensufficiently established, is pagan Rome, and the spirit issuing from itsmouth is the spirit of Infidelity. The Beast, alternatively symbolisedas a Woman, is undoubtedly the Papal power, and Popery is the spiritwhich it spews forth. There is only one power which answers to thedescription of the False Prophet, the wolf in sheep's clothing, theagent of the devil working in the guise of the Lamb, and that power isthe so-called 'Society of Jesus. ' The spirit that issues from the mouthof the False Prophet is the spirit of False Morality. 

"We may assume, then, that the three evil spirits are Infidelity, Popery, and False Morality. Have these three influences been the realcause of the present conflict? The answer is clear. 

"The spirit of Infidelity is the very spirit of German criticism. TheHigher Criticism, as it is mockingly called, denies the possibility ofmiracles, prediction, and real inspiration, and attempts to account forthe Bible as a natural development. Slowly but surely, during the lasteighty years, the spirit of Infidelity has been robbing the Germansof their Bible and their faith, so that Germany is to-day a nation ofunbelievers. Higher Criticism has thus made the war possible; for itwould be absolutely impossible for any Christian nation to wage war asGermany is waging it. 

"We come next to the spirit of Popery, whose influence in causing thewar was quite as great as that of Infidelity, though not, perhaps, soimmediately obvious. Since the Franco-Prussian War the Papal power hassteadily declined in France, while in Germany it has steadily increased. To-day France is an anti-papal state, while Germany possesses a powerfulRoman Catholic minority. Two papally controlled states, Germany andAustria, are at war with six anti-papal states--England, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, and Portugal. Belgium is, of course, a thoroughly papalstate, and there can be little doubt that the presence on the Allies'side of an element so essentially hostile has done much to hamper therighteous cause and is responsible for our comparative ill-success. Thatthe spirit of Popery is behind the war is thus seen clearly enough inthe grouping of the opposed powers, while the rebellion in the RomanCatholic parts of Ireland has merely confirmed a conclusion alreadyobvious to any unbiased mind. 

"The spirit of False Morality has played as great a part in this war asthe two other evil spirits. The Scrap of Paper incident is the nearestand most obvious example of Germany's adherence to this essentiallyunchristian or Jesuitical morality. The end is German world-power, andin the attainment of this end, any means are justifiable. It is the trueprinciple of Jesuitry applied to international politics. 

"The identification is now complete. As was predicted in Revelation, the three evil spirits have gone forth just as the decay of the Ottomanpower was nearing completion, and have joined together to make the worldwar. The warning, 'Behold, I come as a thief, ' is therefore meant forthe present period--for you and me and all the world. This war will leadon inevitably to the war of Armageddon, and will only be brought to anend by the Lord's personal return. 

"And when He returns, what will happen? Those who are in Christ, St. John tells us, will be called to the Supper of the Lamb. Those who arefound fighting against Him will be called to the Supper of the GreatGod--that grim banquet where they shall not feast, but be feasted on. 'For, ' as St. John says, 'I saw an angel standing in the sun; and hecried in a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst ofheaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the GreatGod; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, andthe flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that siton them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small andgreat. ' All the enemies of Christ will be slain with the sword of himthat sits upon the horse, 'and all the fowls will be filled with theirflesh. ' That is the Supper of the Great God. 

"It may be soon or it may, as men reckon time, be long; but sooner orlater, inevitably, the Lord will come and deliver the world from itspresent troubles. And woe unto them who are called, not to the Supperof the Lamb, but to the Supper of the Great God. They will realisethen, but too late, that God is a God of Wrath as well as a God ofForgiveness. The God who sent bears to devour the mockers of Elisha, the God who smote the Egyptians for their stubborn wickedness, willassuredly smite them too, unless they make haste to repent. But perhapsit is already too late. Who knows but that to-morrow, in a moment even, Christ may be upon us unawares, like a thief? In a little while, whoknows? The angel standing in the sun may be summoning the ravens andvultures from their crannies in the rocks to feed upon the putrefyingflesh of the millions of unrighteous whom God's wrath has destroyed. Beready, then; the coming of the Lord is at hand. May it be for all ofyou an object of hope, not a moment to look forward to with terror andtrembling. "

Mr. Bodiham closed the little pamphlet and leaned back in his chair. Theargument was sound, absolutely compelling; and yet--it was four yearssince he had preached that sermon; four years, and England was at peace, the sun shone, the people of Crome were as wicked and indifferentas ever--more so, indeed, if that were possible. If only he couldunderstand, if the heavens would but make a sign! But his questioningsremained unanswered. Seated there in his brown varnished chair under theRuskinian window, he could have screamed aloud. He gripped the arms ofhis chair--gripping, gripping for control. The knuckles of his handswhitened; he bit his lip. In a few seconds he was able to relax thetension; he began to rebuke himself for his rebellious impatience. 

Four years, he reflected; what were four years, after all? It mustinevitably take a long time for Armageddon to ripen to yeast itself up. The episode of 1914 had been a preliminary skirmish. And as for the warhaving come to an end--why, that, of course, was illusory. It was stillgoing on, smouldering away in Silesia, in Ireland, in Anatolia; thediscontent in Egypt and India was preparing the way, perhaps, for agreat extension of the slaughter among the heathen peoples. The Chineseboycott of Japan, and the rivalries of that country and America in thePacific, might be breeding a great new war in the East. The prospect, Mr. Bodiham tried to assure himself, was hopeful; the real, the genuineArmageddon might soon begin, and then, like a thief in the night... But, in spite of all his comfortable reasoning, he remained unhappy, dissatisfied. Four years ago he had been so confident; God's intentionseemed then so plain. And now? Now, he did well to be angry. And now hesuffered too. 

Sudden and silent as a phantom Mrs. Bodiham appeared, glidingnoiselessly across the room. Above her black dress her face was palewith an opaque whiteness, her eyes were pale as water in a glass, andher strawy hair was almost colourless. She held a large envelope in herhand. 

"This came for you by the post, " she said softly. 

The envelope was unsealed. Mechanically Mr. Bodiham tore it open. It contained a pamphlet, larger than his own and more elegant inappearance. "The House of Sheeny, Clerical Outfitters, Birmingham. " Heturned over the pages. The catalogue was tastefully and ecclesiasticallyprinted in antique characters with illuminated Gothic initials. Redmarginal lines, crossed at the corners after the manner of an Oxfordpicture frame, enclosed each page of type, little red crosses took theplace of full stops. Mr. Bodiham turned the pages. 

"Soutane in best black merino. Ready to wear; in all sizes. Clericalfrock coats. From nine guineas. A dressy garment, tailored by our ownexperienced ecclesiastical cutters. "

Half-tone illustrations represented young curates, some dapper, someRugbeian and muscular, some with ascetic faces and large ecstatic eyes, dressed in jackets, in frock-coats, in surplices, in clerical eveningdress, in black Norfolk suitings. 

"A large assortment of chasubles. 

"Rope girdles. 

"Sheeny's Special Skirt Cassocks. Tied by a string about the waist... Whenworn under a surplice presents an appearance indistinguishable from thatof a complete cassock... Recommended for summer wear and hot climates. "

With a gesture of horror and disgust Mr. Bodiham threw the catalogueinto the waste-paper basket. Mrs. Bodiham looked at him; her pale, glaucous eyes reflected his action without comment. 

"The village, " she said in her quiet voice, "the village grows worse andworse every day. "

"What has happened now?" asked Mr. Bodiham, feeling suddenly very weary. 

"I'll tell you. " She pulled up a brown varnished chair and sat down. Inthe village of Crome, it seemed, Sodom and Gomorrah had come to a secondbirth. 

CHAPTER X. 

Denis did not dance, but when ragtime came squirting out of the pianolain gushes of treacle and hot perfume, in jets of Bengal light, thenthings began to dance inside him. Little black nigger corpuscles jiggedand drummed in his arteries. He became a cage of movement, a walkingpalais de danse. It was very uncomfortable, like the preliminarysymptoms of a disease. He sat in one of the window-seats, glumlypretending to read. 

At the pianola, Henry Wimbush, smoking a long cigar through a tunnelledpillar of amber, trod out the shattering dance music with serenepatience. Locked together, Gombauld and Anne moved with a harmoniousnessthat made them seem a single creature, two-headed and four-legged. Mr. Scogan, solemnly buffoonish, shuffled round the room with Mary. Jennysat in the shadow behind the piano, scribbling, so it seemed, in abig red notebook. In arm-chairs by the fireplace, Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith discussed higher things, without, apparently, beingdisturbed by the noise on the Lower Plane. 

"Optimism, " said Mr. Barbecue-Smith with a tone of finality, speakingthrough strains of the "Wild, Wild Women"--"optimism is the opening outof the soul towards the light; it is an expansion towards and into God, it is a h-piritual self-unification with the Infinite. "

"How true!" sighed Priscilla, nodding the baleful splendours of hercoiffure. 

"Pessimism, on the other hand, is the contraction of the soul towardsdarkness; it is a focusing of the self upon a point in the Lower Plane;it is a h-piritual slavery to mere facts; to gross physical phenomena. "

"They're making a wild man of me. " The refrain sang itself over inDenis's mind. Yes, they were; damn them! A wild man, but not wildenough; that was the trouble. Wild inside; raging, writhing--yes, "writhing" was the word, writhing with desire. But outwardly he washopelessly tame; outwardly--baa, baa, baa. 

There they were, Anne and Gombauld, moving together as though they werea single supple creature. The beast with two backs. And he sat ina corner, pretending to read, pretending he didn't want to dance, pretending he rather despised dancing. Why? It was the baa-baa businessagain. 

Why was he born with a different face? Why WAS he? Gombauld had a faceof brass--one of those old, brazen rams that thumped against the wallsof cities till they fell. He was born with a different face--a woollyface. 

The music stopped. The single harmonious creature broke in two. Flushed, a little breathless, Anne swayed across the room to the pianola, laidher hand on Mr. Wimbush's shoulder. 

"A waltz this time, please, Uncle Henry, " she said. 

"A waltz, " he repeated, and turned to the cabinet where the rolls werekept. He trod off the old roll and trod on the new, a slave at themill, uncomplaining and beautifully well bred. "Rum; Tum; Rum-ti-ti;Tum-ti-ti... " The melody wallowed oozily along, like a ship movingforward over a sleek and oily swell. The four-legged creature, moregraceful, more harmonious in its movements than ever, slid across thefloor. Oh, why was he born with a different face?

"What are you reading?"

He looked up, startled. It was Mary. She had broken from theuncomfortable embrace of Mr. Scogan, who had now seized on Jenny for hisvictim. 

"What are you reading?"

"I don't know, " said Denis truthfully. He looked at the title page; thebook was called "The Stock Breeder's Vade Mecum. "

"I think you are so sensible to sit and read quietly, " said Mary, fixinghim with her china eyes. "I don't know why one dances. It's so boring. "

Denis made no reply; she exacerbated him. From the arm-chair by thefireplace he heard Priscilla's deep voice. 

"Tell me, Mr Barbecue-Smith--you know all about science, I know--" Adeprecating noise came from Mr. Barbecue-Smith's chair. "This Einsteintheory. It seems to upset the whole starry universe. It makes me soworried about my horoscopes. You see... "

Mary renewed her attack. "Which of the contemporary poets do you likebest?" she asked. Denis was filled with fury. Why couldn't this pest ofa girl leave him alone? He wanted to listen to the horrible music, towatch them dancing--oh, with what grace, as though they had been madefor one another!--to savour his misery in peace. And she came and puthim through this absurd catechism! She was like "Mangold's Questions":"What are the three diseases of wheat?"--"Which of the contemporarypoets do you like best?"

"Blight, Mildew, and Smut, " he replied, with the laconism of one who isabsolutely certain of his own mind. 

It was several hours before Denis managed to go to sleep that night. Vague but agonising miseries possessed his mind. It was not only Annewho made him miserable; he was wretched about himself, the future, lifein general, the universe. "This adolescence business, " he repeated tohimself every now and then, "is horribly boring. " But the fact that heknew his disease did not help him to cure it. 

After kicking all the clothes off the bed, he got up and sought reliefin composition. He wanted to imprison his nameless misery in words. Atthe end of an hour, nine more or less complete lines emerged from amongthe blots and scratchings. 

"I do not know what I desire When summer nights are dark and still, Whenthe wind's many-voiced quire Sleeps among the muffled branches. I longand know not what I will: And not a sound of life or laughter stanchesTime's black and silent flow. I do not know what I desire, I do notknow. "

He read it through aloud; then threw the scribbled sheet into thewaste-paper basket and got into bed again. In a very few minutes he wasasleep. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Mr. Barbecue-Smith was gone. The motor had whirled him away to thestation; a faint smell of burning oil commemorated his recent departure. A considerable detachment had come into the courtyard to speed him onhis way; and now they were walking back, round the side of the house, towards the terrace and the garden. They walked in silence; nobody hadyet ventured to comment on the departed guest. 

"Well?" said Anne at last, turning with raised inquiring eyebrows toDenis. 

"Well?" It was time for someone to begin. 

Denis declined the invitation; he passed it on to Mr Scogan. "Well?" hesaid. 

Mr. Scogan did not respond; he only repeated the question, "Well?"

It was left for Henry Wimbush to make a pronouncement. "A very agreeableadjunct to the week-end, " he said. His tone was obituary. 

They had descended, without paying much attention where they were going, the steep yew-walk that went down, under the flank of the terrace, tothe pool. The house towered above them, immensely tall, with the wholeheight of the built-up terrace added to its own seventy feet ofbrick facade. The perpendicular lines of the three towers soared up, uninterrupted, enhancing the impression of height until it becameoverwhelming. They paused at the edge of the pool to look back. 

"The man who built this house knew his business, " said Denis. "He was anarchitect. "

"Was he?" said Henry Wimbush reflectively. "I doubt it. The builder ofthis house was Sir Ferdinando Lapith, who flourished during the reign ofElizabeth. He inherited the estate from his father, to whom it had beengranted at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries; for Crome wasoriginally a cloister of monks and this swimming-pool their fish-pond. Sir Ferdinando was not content merely to adapt the old monasticbuildings to his own purposes; but using them as a stone quarry for hisbarns and byres and outhouses, he built for himself a grand new house ofbrick--the house you see now. "

He waved his hand in the direction of the house and was silent, severe, imposing, almost menacing, Crome loomed down on them. 

"The great thing about Crome, " said Mr. Scogan, seizing the opportunityto speak, "is the fact that it's so unmistakably and aggressively a workof art. It makes no compromise with nature, but affronts it andrebels against it. It has no likeness to Shelley's tower, in the'Epipsychidion, ' which, if I remember rightly--

"'Seems not now a work of human art, But as it were titanic, in theheart Of earth having assumed its form and grown Out of the mountain, from the living stone, Lifting itself in caverns light and high. '

"No, no, there isn't any nonsense of that sort about Crome. That thehovels of the peasantry should look as though they had grown out ofthe earth, to which their inmates are attached, is right, no doubt, andsuitable. But the house of an intelligent, civilised, and sophisticatedman should never seem to have sprouted from the clods. It should ratherbe an expression of his grand unnatural remoteness from the cloddishlife. Since the days of William Morris that's a fact which we in Englandhave been unable to comprehend. Civilised and sophisticated men havesolemnly played at being peasants. Hence quaintness, arts and crafts, cottage architecture, and all the rest of it. In the suburbs of ourcities you may see, reduplicated in endless rows, studiedly quaintimitations and adaptations of the village hovel. Poverty, ignorance, and a limited range of materials produced the hovel, which possessesundoubtedly, in suitable surroundings, its own 'as it were titanic'charm. We now employ our wealth, our technical knowledge, our richvariety of materials for the purpose of building millions of imitationhovels in totally unsuitable surroundings. Could imbecility go further?"

Henry Wimbush took up the thread of his interrupted discourse. "All thatyou say, my dear Scogan, " he began, "is certainly very just, very true. But whether Sir Ferdinando shared your views about architecture or if, indeed, he had any views about architecture at all, I very much doubt. In building this house, Sir Ferdinando was, as a matter of fact, preoccupied by only one thought--the proper placing of his privies. Sanitation was the one great interest of his life. In 1573 he evenpublished, on this subject, a little book--now extremely scarce--called, 'Certaine Priuy Counsels' by 'One of Her Maiestie's Most HonourablePriuy Counsels, F. L. Knight', in which the whole matter is treated withgreat learning and elegance. His guiding principle in arranging thesanitation of a house was to secure that the greatest possible distanceshould separate the privy from the sewage arrangements. Hence itfollowed inevitably that the privies were to be placed at the top of thehouse, being connected by vertical shafts with pits or channels in theground. It must not be thought that Sir Ferdinando was moved only bymaterial and merely sanitary considerations; for the placing of hisprivies in an exalted position he had also certain excellent spiritualreasons. For, he argues in the third chapter of his 'Priuy Counsels', the necessities of nature are so base and brutish that in obeying themwe are apt to forget that we are the noblest creatures of the universe. To counteract these degrading effects he advised that the privy shouldbe in every house the room nearest to heaven, that it should be wellprovided with windows commanding an extensive and noble prospect, and that the walls of the chamber should be lined with bookshelvescontaining all the ripest products of human wisdom, such as the Proverbsof Solomon, Boethius's 'Consolations of Philosophy', the apophthegmsof Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the 'Enchiridion' of Erasmus, and allother works, ancient or modern, which testify to the nobility of thehuman soul. In Crome he was able to put his theories into practice. Atthe top of each of the three projecting towers he placed a privy. Fromthese a shaft went down the whole height of the house, that is tosay, more than seventy feet, through the cellars, and into a series ofconduits provided with flowing water tunnelled in the ground on a levelwith the base of the raised terrace. These conduits emptied themselvesinto the stream several hundred yards below the fish-pond. The totaldepth of the shafts from the top of the towers to their subterraneanconduits was a hundred and two feet. The eighteenth century, withits passion for modernisation, swept away these monuments of sanitaryingenuity. Were it not for tradition and the explicit account of themleft by Sir Ferdinando, we should be unaware that these noble privieshad ever existed. We should even suppose that Sir Ferdinando builthis house after this strange and splendid model for merely aestheticreasons. "

The contemplation of the glories of the past always evoked in HenryWimbush a certain enthusiasm. Under the grey bowler his face workedand glowed as he spoke. The thought of these vanished privies movedhim profoundly. He ceased to speak; the light gradually died out of hisface, and it became once more the replica of the grave, polite hat whichshaded it. There was a long silence; the same gently melancholy thoughtsseemed to possess the mind of each of them. Permanence, transience--SirFerdinando and his privies were gone, Crome still stood. How brightlythe sun shone and how inevitable was death! The ways of God werestrange; the ways of man were stranger still... 

"It does one's heart good, " exclaimed Mr. Scogan at last, "to hear ofthese fantastic English aristocrats. To have a theory about priviesand to build an immense and splendid house in order to put it intopractise--it's magnificent, beautiful! I like to think of them all: theeccentric milords rolling across Europe in ponderous carriages, boundon extraordinary errands. One is going to Venice to buy La Bianchi'slarynx; he won't get it till she's dead, of course, but no matter; he'sprepared to wait; he has a collection, pickled in glass bottles, ofthe throats of famous opera singers. And the instruments of renownedvirtuosi--he goes in for them too; he will try to bribe Paganini to partwith his little Guarnerio, but he has small hope of success. Paganiniwon't sell his fiddle; but perhaps he might sacrifice one of hisguitars. Others are bound on crusades--one to die miserably among thesavage Greeks, another, in his white top hat, to lead Italians againsttheir oppressors. Others have no business at all; they are just givingtheir oddity a continental airing. At home they cultivate themselves atleisure and with greater elaboration. Beckford builds towers, Portlanddigs holes in the ground, Cavendish, the millionaire, lives in a stable, eats nothing but mutton, and amuses himself--oh, solely for his privatedelectation--by anticipating the electrical discoveries of half acentury. Glorious eccentrics! Every age is enlivened by their presence. Some day, my dear Denis, " said Mr Scogan, turning a beady bright regardin his direction--"some day you must become their biographer--'The Livesof Queer Men. ' What a subject! I should like to undertake it myself. "

Mr. Scogan paused, looked up once more at the towering house, thenmurmured the word "Eccentricity, " two or three times. 

"Eccentricity... It's the justification of all aristocracies. Itjustifies leisured classes and inherited wealth and privilege andendowments and all the other injustices of that sort. If you're to doanything reasonable in this world, you must have a class of people whoare secure, safe from public opinion, safe from poverty, leisured, notcompelled to waste their time in the imbecile routines that go by thename of Honest Work. You must have a class of which the members canthink and, within the obvious limits, do what they please. You must havea class in which people who have eccentricities can indulge them and inwhich eccentricity in general will be tolerated and understood. That'sthe important thing about an aristocracy. Not only is it eccentricitself--often grandiosely so; it also tolerates and even encourageseccentricity in others. The eccentricities of the artist and thenew-fangled thinker don't inspire it with that fear, loathing, anddisgust which the burgesses instinctively feel towards them. It is asort of Red Indian Reservation planted in the midst of a vast horde ofPoor Whites--colonials at that. Within its boundaries wild men disportthemselves--often, it must be admitted, a little grossly, a little tooflamboyantly; and when kindred spirits are born outside the pale itoffers them some sort of refuge from the hatred which the Poor Whites, en bons bourgeois, lavish on anything that is wild or out of theordinary. After the social revolution there will be no Reservations;the Redskins will be drowned in the great sea of Poor Whites. What then?Will they suffer you to go on writing villanelles, my good Denis? Willyou, unhappy Henry, be allowed to live in this house of the splendidprivies, to continue your quiet delving in the mines of futileknowledge? Will Anne... "

"And you, " said Anne, interrupting him, "will you be allowed to go ontalking?"

"You may rest assured, " Mr. Scogan replied, "that I shall not. I shallhave some Honest Work to do. "

CHAPTER XII. 

"Blight, Mildew, and Smut... " Mary was puzzled and distressed. Perhapsher ears had played her false. Perhaps what he had really said was, "Squire, Binyon, and Shanks, " or "Childe, Blunden, and Earp, " or even"Abercrombie, Drinkwater, and Rabindranath Tagore. " Perhaps. But thenher ears never did play her false. "Blight, Mildew, and Smut. " Theimpression was distinct and ineffaceable. "Blight, Mildew... " she wasforced to the conclusion, reluctantly, that Denis had indeed pronouncedthose improbable words. He had deliberately repelled her attempts toopen a serious discussion. That was horrible. A man who would not talkseriously to a woman just because she was a woman--oh, impossible!Egeria or nothing. Perhaps Gombauld would be more satisfactory. True, his meridional heredity was a little disquieting; but at least he wasa serious worker, and it was with his work that she would associateherself. And Denis? After all, what WAS Denis? A dilettante, anamateur... 

Gombauld had annexed for his painting-room a little disused granary thatstood by itself in a green close beyond the farm-yard. It was a squarebrick building with a peaked roof and little windows set high up in eachof its walls. A ladder of four rungs led up to the door; for the granarywas perched above the ground, and out of reach of the rats, on fourmassive toadstools of grey stone. Within, there lingered a faint smellof dust and cobwebs; and the narrow shaft of sunlight that came slantingin at every hour of the day through one of the little windows wasalways alive with silvery motes. Here Gombauld worked, with a kind ofconcentrated ferocity, during six or seven hours of each day. He waspursuing something new, something terrific, if only he could catch it. 

During the last eight years, nearly half of which had been spent in theprocess of winning the war, he had worked his way industriously throughcubism. Now he had come out on the other side. He had begun by paintinga formalised nature; then, little by little, he had risen from natureinto the world of pure form, till in the end he was painting nothing buthis own thoughts, externalised in the abstract geometrical forms ofthe mind's devising. He found the process arduous and exhilarating. Andthen, quite suddenly, he grew dissatisfied; he felt himself cramped andconfined within intolerably narrow limitations. He was humiliated tofind how few and crude and uninteresting were the forms he could invent;the inventions of nature were without number, inconceivably subtle andelaborate. He had done with cubism. He was out on the other side. Butthe cubist discipline preserved him from falling into excesses of natureworship. He took from nature its rich, subtle, elaborate forms, but hisaim was always to work them into a whole that should have the thrillingsimplicity and formality of an idea; to combine prodigious realismwith prodigious simplification. Memories of Caravaggio's portentousachievements haunted him. Forms of a breathing, living reality emergedfrom darkness, built themselves up into compositions as luminouslysimple and single as a mathematical idea. He thought of the "Call ofMatthew, " of "Peter Crucified, " of the "Lute players, " of "Magdalen. "He had the secret, that astonishing ruffian, he had the secret! Andnow Gombauld was after it, in hot pursuit. Yes, it would be somethingterrific, if only he could catch it. 

For a long time an idea had been stirring and spreading, yeastily, in his mind. He had made a portfolio full of studies, he had drawn acartoon; and now the idea was taking shape on canvas. A man fallen froma horse. The huge animal, a gaunt white cart-horse, filled the upperhalf of the picture with its great body. Its head, lowered towards theground, was in shadow; the immense bony body was what arrested the eye, the body and the legs, which came down on either side of the picturelike the pillars of an arch. On the ground, between the legs of thetowering beast, lay the foreshortened figure of a man, the head in theextreme foreground, the arms flung wide to right and left. A white, relentless light poured down from a point in the right foreground. Thebeast, the fallen man, were sharply illuminated; round them, beyond andbehind them, was the night. They were alone in the darkness, a universein themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture;the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of theirtrampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man, his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his armsoutstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of thehorse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intensedarkness; below, the space was closed in by the figure of the prostrateman. A central gulf of darkness surrounded by luminous forms... 

The picture was more than half finished. Gombauld had been at work allthe morning on the figure of the man, and now he was taking a rest--thetime to smoke a cigarette. Tilting back his chair till it touched thewall, he looked thoughtfully at his canvas. He was pleased, and at thesame time he was desolated. In itself, the thing was good; he knewit. But that something he was after, that something that would be soterrific if only he could catch it--had he caught it? Would he evercatch it?

Three little taps--rat, tat, tat! Surprised, Gombauld turned his eyestowards the door. Nobody ever disturbed him while he was at work; itwas one of the unwritten laws. "Come in!" he called. The door, which wasajar, swung open, revealing, from the waist upwards, the form of Mary. She had only dared to mount half-way up the ladder. If he didn't wanther, retreat would be easier and more dignified than if she climbed tothe top. 

"May I come in?" she asked. 

"Certainly. "

She skipped up the remaining two rungs and was over the threshold inan instant. "A letter came for you by the second post, " she said. "Ithought it might be important, so I brought it out to you. " Her eyes, her childish face were luminously candid as she handed him the letter. There had never been a flimsier pretext. 

Gombauld looked at the envelope and put it in his pocket unopened. "Luckily, " he said, "it isn't at all important. Thanks very much all thesame. "

There was a silence; Mary felt a little uncomfortable. "May I have alook at what you've been painting?" she had the courage to say at last. 

Gombauld had only half smoked his cigarette; in any case he wouldn'tbegin work again till he had finished. He would give her the fiveminutes that separated him from the bitter end. "This is the best placeto see it from, " he said. 

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at aloss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of aman and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but even aggressivelyin drawing. Trompe-l'oeil--there was no other word to describe thedelineation of that foreshortened figure under the trampling feet of thehorse. What was she to think, what was she to say? Her orientationswere gone. One could admire representationalism in the Old Masters. Obviously. But in a modern... ? At eighteen she might have done so. But now, after five years of schooling among the best judges, herinstinctive reaction to a contemporary piece of representation wascontempt--an outburst of laughing disparagement. What could Gombauld beup to? She had felt so safe in admiring his work before. But now--shedidn't know what to think. It was very difficult, very difficult. 

"There's rather a lot of chiaroscuro, isn't there?" she ventured atlast, and inwardly congratulated herself on having found a criticalformula so gentle and at the same time so penetrating. 

"There is, " Gombauld agreed. 

Mary was pleased; he accepted her criticism; it was a seriousdiscussion. She put her head on one side and screwed up her eyes. "I think it's awfully fine, " she said. "But of course it's a littletoo... Too... Trompe-l'oeil for my taste. " She looked at Gombauld, whomade no response, but continued to smoke, gazing meditatively all thetime at his picture. Mary went on gaspingly. "When I was in Paris thisspring I saw a lot of Tschuplitski. I admire his work so tremendously. Of course, it's frightfully abstract now--frightfully abstract andfrightfully intellectual. He just throws a few oblongs on to hiscanvas--quite flat, you know, and painted in pure primary colours. Buthis design is wonderful. He's getting more and more abstract every day. He'd given up the third dimension when I was there and was just thinkingof giving up the second. Soon, he says, there'll be just the blankcanvas. That's the logical conclusion. Complete abstraction. Painting'sfinished; he's finishing it. When he's reached pure abstraction he'sgoing to take up architecture. He says it's more intellectual thanpainting. Do you agree?" she asked, with a final gasp. 

Gombauld dropped his cigarette end and trod on it. "Tschuplitski'sfinished painting, " he said. "I've finished my cigarette. But I'm goingon painting. " And, advancing towards her, he put his arm round hershoulders and turned her round, away from the picture. 

Mary looked up at him; her hair swung back, a soundless bell of gold. Her eyes were serene; she smiled. So the moment had come. His arm wasround her. He moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, and she moved withhim. It was a peripatetic embracement. "Do you agree with him?" sherepeated. The moment might have come, but she would not cease to beintellectual, serious. 

"I don't know. I shall have to think about it. " Gombauld loosened hisembrace, his hand dropped from her shoulder. "Be careful going down theladder, " he added solicitously. 

Mary looked round, startled. They were in front of the open door. Sheremained standing there for a moment in bewilderment. The hand thathad rested on her shoulder made itself felt lower down her back; itadministered three or four kindly little smacks. Replying automaticallyto its stimulus, she moved forward. 

"Be careful going down the ladder, " said Gombauld once more. 

She was careful. The door closed behind her and she was alone in thelittle green close. She walked slowly back through the farmyard; she waspensive. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Henry Wimbush brought down with him to dinner a budget of printed sheetsloosely bound together in a cardboard portfolio. 

"To-day, " he said, exhibiting it with a certain solemnity, "to-day Ihave finished the printing of my 'History of Crome'. I helped to set upthe type of the last page this evening. "

"The famous History?" cried Anne. The writing and the printing of thisMagnum Opus had been going on as long as she could remember. All herchildhood long Uncle Henry's History had been a vague and fabulousthing, often heard of and never seen. 

"It has taken me nearly thirty years, " said Mr. Wimbush. "Twenty-fiveyears of writing and nearly four of printing. And now it's finished--thewhole chronicle, from Sir Ferdinando Lapith's birth to the death of myfather William Wimbush--more than three centuries and a half: a historyof Crome, written at Crome, and printed at Crome by my own press. "

"Shall we be allowed to read it now it's finished?" asked Denis. 

Mr. Wimbush nodded. "Certainly, " he said. "And I hope you will not findit uninteresting, " he added modestly. "Our muniment room is particularlyrich in ancient records, and I have some genuinely new light to throw onthe introduction of the three-pronged fork. "

"And the people?" asked Gombauld. "Sir Ferdinando and the rest ofthem--were they amusing? Were there any crimes or tragedies in thefamily?"

"Let me see, " Henry Wimbush rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I can onlythink of two suicides, one violent death, four or perhaps five brokenhearts, and half a dozen little blots on the scutcheon in the way ofmisalliances, seductions, natural children, and the like. No, on thewhole, it's a placid and uneventful record. "

"The Wimbushes and the Lapiths were always an unadventurous, respectablecrew, " said Priscilla, with a note of scorn in her voice. "If I were towrite my family history now! Why, it would be one long continuous blotfrom beginning to end. " She laughed jovially, and helped herself toanother glass of wine. 

"If I were to write mine, " Mr. Scogan remarked, "it wouldn't exist. After the second generation we Scogans are lost in the mists ofantiquity. "

"After dinner, " said Henry Wimbush, a little piqued by his wife'sdisparaging comment on the masters of Crome, "I'll read you an episodefrom my History that will make you admit that even the Lapiths, in theirown respectable way, had their tragedies and strange adventures. "

"I'm glad to hear it, " said Priscilla. 

"Glad to hear what?" asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her privateinterior world like a cuckoo from a clock. She received an explanation, smiled, nodded, cuckooed at last "I see, " and popped back, clapping shutthe door behind her. 

Dinner was eaten; the party had adjourned to the drawing-room. 

"Now, " said Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He put onhis round pince-nez, rimmed with tortoise-shell, and began cautiouslyto turn over the pages of his loose and still fragmentary book. He foundhis place at last. "Shall I begin?" he asked, looking up. 

"Do, " said Priscilla, yawning. 

In the midst of an attentive silence Mr. Wimbush gave a littlepreliminary cough and started to read. 

"The infant who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the name ofLapith was born in the year 1740. He was a very small baby, weighing notmore than three pounds at birth, but from the first he was sturdy andhealthy. In honour of his maternal grandfather, Sir Hercules Occam ofBishop's Occam, he was christened Hercules. His mother, like many othermothers, kept a notebook, in which his progress from month to month wasrecorded. He walked at ten months, and before his second year was outhe had learnt to speak a number of words. At three years he weighed buttwenty-four pounds, and at six, though he could read and write perfectlyand showed a remarkable aptitude for music, he was no larger and heavierthan a well-grown child of two. Meanwhile, his mother had borne twoother children, a boy and a girl, one of whom died of croup duringinfancy, while the other was carried off by smallpox before it reachedthe age of five. Hercules remained the only surviving child. 

"On his twelfth birthday Hercules was still only three feet and twoinches in height. His head, which was very handsome and nobly shaped, was too big for his body, but otherwise he was exquisitely proportioned, and, for his size, of great strength and agility. His parents, in thehope of making him grow, consulted all the most eminent physicians ofthe time. Their various prescriptions were followed to the letter, butin vain. One ordered a very plentiful meat diet; another exercise; athird constructed a little rack, modelled on those employed by the HolyInquisition, on which young Hercules was stretched, with excruciatingtorments, for half an hour every morning and evening. In the course ofthe next three years Hercules gained perhaps two inches. After that hisgrowth stopped completely, and he remained for the rest of his life apigmy of three feet and four inches. His father, who had built the mostextravagant hopes upon his son, planning for him in his imaginationa military career equal to that of Marlborough, found himself adisappointed man. 'I have brought an abortion into the world, ' he wouldsay, and he took so violent a dislike to his son that the boy daredscarcely come into his presence. His temper, which had been serene, was turned by disappointment to moroseness and savagery. He avoided allcompany (being, as he said, ashamed to show himself, the father of alusus naturae, among normal, healthy human beings), and took to solitarydrinking, which carried him very rapidly to his grave; for the yearbefore Hercules came of age his father was taken off by an apoplexy. Hismother, whose love for him had increased with the growth of his father'sunkindness, did not long survive, but little more than a year afterher husband's death succumbed, after eating two dozen of oysters, to anattack of typhoid fever. 

"Hercules thus found himself at the age of twenty-one alone in theworld, and master of a considerable fortune, including the estate andmansion of Crome. The beauty and intelligence of his childhood hadsurvived into his manly age, and, but for his dwarfish stature, he wouldhave taken his place among the handsomest and most accomplished youngmen of his time. He was well read in the Greek and Latin authors, aswell as in all the moderns of any merit who had written in English, French, or Italian. He had a good ear for music, and was no indifferentperformer on the violin, which he used to play like a bass viol, seatedon a chair with the instrument between his legs. To the music of theharpsichord and clavichord he was extremely partial, but the smallnessof his hands made it impossible for him ever to perform upon theseinstruments. He had a small ivory flute made for him, on which, whenever he was melancholy, he used to play a simple country air or jig, affirming that this rustic music had more power to clear and raise thespirits than the most artificial productions of the masters. From anearly age he practised the composition of poetry, but, though consciousof his great powers in this art, he would never publish any specimen ofhis writing. 'My stature, ' he would say, 'is reflected in my verses; ifthe public were to read them it would not be because I am a poet, but because I am a dwarf. ' Several MS. Books of Sir Hercules's poemssurvive. A single specimen will suffice to illustrate his qualities as apoet. 

"'In ancient days, while yet the world was young, Ere Abram fed hisflocks or Homer sung; When blacksmith Tubal tamed creative fire, AndJabal dwelt in tents and Jubal struck the lyre; Flesh grown corruptbrought forth a monstrous birth And obscene giants trod the shrinkingearth, Till God, impatient of their sinful brood, Gave rein to wrathand drown'd them in the Flood. Teeming again, repeopled Tellus bore Thelubber Hero and the Man of War; Huge towers of Brawn, topp'd with anempty Skull, Witlessly bold, heroically dull. Long ages pass'd and Mangrown more refin'd, Slighter in muscle but of vaster Mind, Smiled at hisgrandsire's broadsword, bow and bill, And learn'd to wield the Penciland the Quill. The glowing canvas and the written page Immortaliz'd hisname from age to age, His name emblazon'd on Fame's temple wall; ForArt grew great as Humankind grew small. Thus man's long progress step bystep we trace; The Giant dies, the hero takes his place; The Giant vile, the dull heroic Block: At one we shudder and at one we mock. Manlast appears. In him the Soul's pure flame Burns brightlier in a notinord'nate frame. Of old when Heroes fought and Giants swarmed, Men werehuge mounds of matter scarce inform'd; Wearied by leavening so vast amass, The spirit slept and all the mind was crass. The smaller carcaseof these later days Is soon inform'd; the Soul unwearied plays And likea Pharos darts abroad her mental rays. But can we think that Providencewill stay Man's footsteps here upon the upward way? Mankind inunderstanding and in grace Advanc'd so far beyond the Giants' race?Hence impious thought! Still led by GOD'S own Hand, Mankind proceedstowards the Promised Land. A time will come (prophetic, I descry Remoterdawns along the gloomy sky), When happy mortals of a Golden Age Willbackward turn the dark historic page, And in our vaunted race of Menbehold A form as gross, a Mind as dead and cold, As we in Giants see, in warriors of old. A time will come, wherein the soul shall be From allsuperfluous matter wholly free; When the light body, agile as a fawn's, Shall sport with grace along the velvet lawns. Nature's most delicateand final birth, Mankind perfected shall possess the earth. But ah, notyet! For still the Giants' race, Huge, though diminish'd, tramps theEarth's fair face; Gross and repulsive, yet perversely proud, Men oftheir imperfections boast aloud. Vain of their bulk, of all they stillretain Of giant ugliness absurdly vain; At all that's small they pointtheir stupid scorn And, monsters, think themselves divinely born. Sadis the Fate of those, ah, sad indeed, The rare precursors of the noblerbreed! Who come man's golden glory to foretell, But pointing Heav'nwardslive themselves in Hell. '

"As soon as he came into the estate, Sir Hercules set about remodellinghis household. For though by no means ashamed of his deformity--indeed, if we may judge from the poem quoted above, he regarded himself as beingin many ways superior to the ordinary race of man--he found the presenceof full-grown men and women embarrassing. Realising, too, that hemust abandon all ambitions in the great world, he determined to retireabsolutely from it and to create, as it were, at Crome a privateworld of his own, in which all should be proportionable to himself. Accordingly, he discharged all the old servants of the house andreplaced them gradually, as he was able to find suitable successors, by others of dwarfish stature. In the course of a few years he hadassembled about himself a numerous household, no member of which wasabove four feet high and the smallest among them scarcely two feet andsix inches. His father's dogs, such as setters, mastiffs, greyhounds, and a pack of beagles, he sold or gave away as too large and tooboisterous for his house, replacing them by pugs and King Charlesspaniels and whatever other breeds of dog were the smallest. Hisfather's stable was also sold. For his own use, whether riding ordriving, he had six black Shetland ponies, with four very choice piebaldanimals of New Forest breed. 

"Having thus settled his household entirely to his own satisfaction, itonly remained for him to find some suitable companion with whom to sharehis paradise. Sir Hercules had a susceptible heart, and had more thanonce, between the ages of sixteen and twenty, felt what it was to love. But here his deformity had been a source of the most bitter humiliation, for, having once dared to declare himself to a young lady of his choice, he had been received with laughter. On his persisting, she had pickedhim up and shaken him like an importunate child, telling him to run awayand plague her no more. The story soon got about--indeed, the young ladyherself used to tell it as a particularly pleasant anecdote--andthe taunts and mockery it occasioned were a source of the most acutedistress to Hercules. From the poems written at this period we gatherthat he meditated taking his own life. In course of time, however, helived down this humiliation; but never again, though he often fell inlove, and that very passionately, did he dare to make any advances tothose in whom he was interested. After coming to the estate and findingthat he was in a position to create his own world as he desired it, hesaw that, if he was to have a wife--which he very much desired, beingof an affectionate and, indeed, amorous temper--he must choose her ashe had chosen his servants--from among the race of dwarfs. But to finda suitable wife was, he found, a matter of some difficulty; for he wouldmarry none who was not distinguished by beauty and gentle birth. Thedwarfish daughter of Lord Bemboro he refused on the ground that besidesbeing a pigmy she was hunchbacked; while another young lady, an orphanbelonging to a very good family in Hampshire, was rejected by himbecause her face, like that of so many dwarfs, was wizened andrepulsive. Finally, when he was almost despairing of success, heheard from a reliable source that Count Titimalo, a Venetian nobleman, possessed a daughter of exquisite beauty and great accomplishments, whowas by three feet in height. Setting out at once for Venice, he wentimmediately on his arrival to pay his respects to the count, whom hefound living with his wife and five children in a very mean apartmentin one of the poorer quarters of the town. Indeed, the count was so farreduced in his circumstances that he was even then negotiating (so itwas rumoured) with a travelling company of clowns and acrobats, who hadhad the misfortune to lose their performing dwarf, for the sale of hisdiminutive daughter Filomena. Sir Hercules arrived in time to save herfrom this untoward fate, for he was so much charmed by Filomena's graceand beauty, that at the end of three days' courtship he made her aformal offer of marriage, which was accepted by her no less joyfullythan by her father, who perceived in an English son-in-law a rich andunfailing source of revenue. After an unostentatious marriage, at whichthe English ambassador acted as one of the witnesses, Sir Hercules andhis bride returned by sea to England, where they settled down, as itproved, to a life of uneventful happiness. 

"Crome and its household of dwarfs delighted Filomena, who felt herselfnow for the first time to be a free woman living among her equals ina friendly world. She had many tastes in common with her husband, especially that of music. She had a beautiful voice, of a powersurprising in one so small, and could touch A in alt without effort. Accompanied by her husband on his fine Cremona fiddle, which he played, as we have noted before, as one plays a bass viol, she would sing allthe liveliest and tenderest airs from the operas and cantatas of hernative country. Seated together at the harpsichord, they found that theycould with their four hands play all the music written for two handsof ordinary size, a circumstance which gave Sir Hercules unfailingpleasure. 

"When they were not making music or reading together, which they oftendid, both in English and Italian, they spent their time in healthfuloutdoor exercises, sometimes rowing in a little boat on the lake, butmore often riding or driving, occupations in which, because they wereentirely new to her, Filomena especially delighted. When she had becomea perfectly proficient rider, Filomena and her husband used often to gohunting in the park, at that time very much more extensive than it isnow. They hunted not foxes nor hares, but rabbits, using a pack ofabout thirty black and fawn-coloured pugs, a kind of dog which, when notoverfed, can course a rabbit as well as any of the smaller breeds. Fourdwarf grooms, dressed in scarlet liveries and mounted on white Exmoorponies, hunted the pack, while their master and mistress, in greenhabits, followed either on the black Shetlands or on the piebald NewForest ponies. A picture of the whole hunt--dogs, horses, grooms, andmasters--was painted by William Stubbs, whose work Sir Hercules admiredso much that he invited him, though a man of ordinary stature, to comeand stay at the mansion for the purpose of executing this picture. Stubbs likewise painted a portrait of Sir Hercules and his lady drivingin their green enamelled calash drawn by four black Shetlands. SirHercules wears a plum-coloured velvet coat and white breeches; Filomenais dressed in flowered muslin and a very large hat with pink feathers. The two figures in their gay carriage stand out sharply against a darkbackground of trees; but to the left of the picture the trees fall awayand disappear, so that the four black ponies are seen against a pale andstrangely lurid sky that has the golden-brown colour of thunder-cloudslighted up by the sun. 

"In this way four years passed happily by. At the end of that timeFilomena found herself great with child. Sir Hercules was overjoyed. 'If God is good, ' he wrote in his day-book, 'the name of Lapith will bepreserved and our rarer and more delicate race transmitted through thegenerations until in the fullness of time the world shall recognise thesuperiority of those beings whom now it uses to make mock of. ' On hiswife's being brought to bed of a son he wrote a poem to the same effect. The child was christened Ferdinando in memory of the builder of thehouse. 

"With the passage of the months a certain sense of disquiet began toinvade the minds of Sir Hercules and his lady. For the child was growingwith an extraordinary rapidity. At a year he weighed as much as Herculeshad weighed when he was three. 'Ferdinando goes crescendo, ' wroteFilomena in her diary. 'It seems not natural. ' At eighteen months thebaby was almost as tall as their smallest jockey, who was a man ofthirty-six. Could it be that Ferdinando was destined to become a man ofthe normal, gigantic dimensions? It was a thought to which neither ofhis parents dared yet give open utterance, but in the secrecy of theirrespective diaries they brooded over it in terror and dismay. 

"On his third birthday Ferdinando was taller than his mother and notmore than a couple of inches short of his father's height. 'To-day forthe first time' wrote Sir Hercules, 'we discussed the situation. Thehideous truth can be concealed no longer: Ferdinando is not one of us. On this, his third birthday, a day when we should have been rejoicing atthe health, the strength, and beauty of our child, we wept together overthe ruin of our happiness. God give us strength to bear this cross. '

"At the age of eight Ferdinando was so large and so exuberantly healthythat his parents decided, though reluctantly, to send him to school. He was packed off to Eton at the beginning of the next half. A profoundpeace settled upon the house. Ferdinando returned for the summerholidays larger and stronger than ever. One day he knocked down thebutler and broke his arm. 'He is rough, inconsiderate, unamenable topersuasion, ' wrote his father. 'The only thing that will teach himmanners is corporal chastisement. ' Ferdinando, who at this age wasalready seventeen inches taller than his father, received no corporalchastisement. 

"One summer holidays about three years later Ferdinando returned toCrome accompanied by a very large mastiff dog. He had bought it from anold man at Windsor who had found the beast too expensive to feed. Itwas a savage, unreliable animal; hardly had it entered the house when itattacked one of Sir Hercules's favourite pugs, seizing the creature inits jaws and shaking it till it was nearly dead. Extremely put out bythis occurrence, Sir Hercules ordered that the beast should be chainedup in the stable-yard. Ferdinando sullenly answered that the dog washis, and he would keep it where he pleased. His father, growing angry, bade him take the animal out of the house at once, on pain of his utmostdispleasure. Ferdinando refused to move. His mother at this momentcoming into the room, the dog flew at her, knocked her down, and ina twinkling had very severely mauled her arm and shoulder; in anotherinstant it must infallibly have had her by the throat, had not SirHercules drawn his sword and stabbed the animal to the heart. Turning onhis son, he ordered him to leave the room immediately, as being unfit toremain in the same place with the mother whom he had nearly murdered. Soawe-inspiring was the spectacle of Sir Hercules standing with one footon the carcase of the gigantic dog, his sword drawn and still bloody, socommanding were his voice, his gestures, and the expression of his facethat Ferdinando slunk out of the room in terror and behaved himselffor all the rest of the vacation in an entirely exemplary fashion. Hismother soon recovered from the bites of the mastiff, but the effect onher mind of this adventure was ineradicable; from that time forth shelived always among imaginary terrors. 

"The two years which Ferdinando spent on the Continent, making the GrandTour, were a period of happy repose for his parents. But even nowthe thought of the future haunted them; nor were they able to solacethemselves with all the diversions of their younger days. The LadyFilomena had lost her voice and Sir Hercules was grown too rheumaticalto play the violin. He, it is true, still rode after his pugs, but hiswife felt herself too old and, since the episode of the mastiff, toonervous for such sports. At most, to please her husband, she wouldfollow the hunt at a distance in a little gig drawn by the safest andoldest of the Shetlands. 

"The day fixed for Ferdinando's return came round. Filomena, sick withvague dreads and presentiments, retired to her chamber and her bed. Sir Hercules received his son alone. A giant in a brown travelling-suitentered the room. 'Welcome home, my son, ' said Sir Hercules in a voicethat trembled a little. 

"'I hope I see you well, sir. ' Ferdinando bent down to shake hands, thenstraightened himself up again. The top of his father's head reached tothe level of his hip. 

"Ferdinando had not come alone. Two friends of his own age accompaniedhim, and each of the young men had brought a servant. Not for thirtyyears had Crome been desecrated by the presence of so many members ofthe common race of men. Sir Hercules was appalled and indignant, but thelaws of hospitality had to be obeyed. He received the young gentlemenwith grave politeness and sent the servants to the kitchen, with ordersthat they should be well cared for. 

"The old family dining-table was dragged out into the light and dusted(Sir Hercules and his lady were accustomed to dine at a small tabletwenty inches high). Simon, the aged butler, who could only just lookover the edge of the big table, was helped at supper by the threeservants brought by Ferdinando and his guests. 

"Sir Hercules presided, and with his usual grace supported aconversation on the pleasures of foreign travel, the beauties of art andnature to be met with abroad, the opera at Venice, the singing of theorphans in the churches of the same city, and on other topics of asimilar nature. The young men were not particularly attentive to hisdiscourses; they were occupied in watching the efforts of the butler tochange the plates and replenish the glasses. They covered their laughterby violent and repeated fits of coughing or choking. Sir Herculesaffected not to notice, but changed the subject of the conversation tosport. Upon this one of the young men asked whether it was true, as hehad heard, that he used to hunt the rabbit with a pack of pug dogs. SirHercules replied that it was, and proceeded to describe the chase insome detail. The young men roared with laughter. 

"When supper was over, Sir Hercules climbed down from his chair and, giving as his excuse that he must see how his lady did, bade themgood-night. The sound of laughter followed him up the stairs. Filomenawas not asleep; she had been lying on her bed listening to the sound ofenormous laughter and the tread of strangely heavy feet on the stairsand along the corridors. Sir Hercules drew a chair to her bedsideand sat there for a long time in silence, holding his wife's hand andsometimes gently squeezing it. At about ten o'clock they were startledby a violent noise. There was a breaking of glass, a stamping of feet, with an outburst of shouts and laughter. The uproar continuing forseveral minutes, Sir Hercules rose to his feet and, in spite of hiswife's entreaties, prepared to go and see what was happening. Therewas no light on the staircase, and Sir Hercules groped his way downcautiously, lowering himself from stair to stair and standing for amoment on each tread before adventuring on a new step. The noise waslouder here; the shouting articulated itself into recognisable wordsand phrases. A line of light was visible under the dining-room door. SirHercules tiptoed across the hall towards it. Just as he approached thedoor there was another terrific crash of breaking glass and jangledmetal. What could they be doing? Standing on tiptoe he managed to lookthrough the keyhole. In the middle of the ravaged table old Simon, thebutler, so primed with drink that he could scarcely keep his balance, was dancing a jig. His feet crunched and tinkled among the broken glass, and his shoes were wet with spilt wine. The three young men sat round, thumping the table with their hands or with the empty wine bottles, shouting and laughing encouragement. The three servants leaning againstthe wall laughed too. Ferdinando suddenly threw a handful of walnuts atthe dancer's head, which so dazed and surprised the little man that hestaggered and fell down on his back, upsetting a decanter and severalglasses. They raised him up, gave him some brandy to drink, thumpedhim on the back. The old man smiled and hiccoughed. 'To-morrow, ' saidFerdinando, 'we'll have a concerted ballet of the whole household. ''With father Hercules wearing his club and lion-skin, ' added one of hiscompanions, and all three roared with laughter. 

"Sir Hercules would look and listen no further. He crossed the hall oncemore and began to climb the stairs, lifting his knees painfully highat each degree. This was the end; there was no place for him now in theworld, no place for him and Ferdinando together. 

"His wife was still awake; to her questioning glance he answered, 'Theyare making mock of old Simon. To-morrow it will be our turn. ' They weresilent for a time. 

"At last Filomena said, 'I do not want to see to-morrow. '

"'It is better not, ' said Sir Hercules. Going into his closet he wrotein his day-book a full and particular account of all the events of theevening. While he was still engaged in this task he rang for a servantand ordered hot water and a bath to be made ready for him at eleveno'clock. When he had finished writing he went into his wife's room, andpreparing a dose of opium twenty times as strong as that which shewas accustomed to take when she could not sleep, he brought it to her, saying, 'Here is your sleeping-draught. '

"Filomena took the glass and lay for a little time, but did not drinkimmediately. The tears came into her eyes. 'Do you remember the songs weused to sing, sitting out there sulla terrazza in the summer-time?' Shebegan singing softly in her ghost of a cracked voice a few bars fromStradella's 'Amor amor, non dormir piu. ' 'And you playing on the violin, it seems such a short time ago, and yet so long, long, long. Addio, amore, a rivederti. ' She drank off the draught and, lying back on thepillow, closed her eyes. Sir Hercules kissed her hand and tiptoed away, as though he were afraid of waking her. He returned to his closet, andhaving recorded his wife's last words to him, he poured into his baththe water that had been brought up in accordance with his orders. Thewater being too hot for him to get into the bath at once, he took downfrom the shelf his copy of Suetonius. He wished to read how Seneca haddied. He opened the book at random. 'But dwarfs, ' he read, 'he held inabhorrence as being lusus naturae and of evil omen. ' He winced as thoughhe had been struck. This same Augustus, he remembered, had exhibited inthe amphitheatre a young man called Lucius, of good family, who wasnot quite two feet in height and weighed seventeen pounds, but hada stentorian voice. He turned over the pages. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero: it was a tale of growing horror. 'Seneca his preceptor, he forced to kill himself. ' And there was Petronius, who had calledhis friends about him at the last, bidding them talk to him, not of theconsolations of philosophy, but of love and gallantry, while the lifewas ebbing away through his opened veins. Dipping his pen once more inthe ink he wrote on the last page of his diary: 'He died a Roman death. 'Then, putting the toes of one foot into the water and finding that itwas not too hot, he threw off his dressing-gown and, taking a razor inhis hand, sat down in the bath. With one deep cut he severed the arteryin his left wrist, then lay back and composed his mind to meditation. The blood oozed out, floating through the water in dissolving wreathsand spirals. In a little while the whole bath was tinged with pink. Thecolour deepened; Sir Hercules felt himself mastered by an invincibledrowsiness; he was sinking from vague dream to dream. Soon he was soundasleep. There was not much blood in his small body. "

CHAPTER XIV. 

For their after-luncheon coffee the party generally adjourned to thelibrary. Its windows looked east, and at this hour of the day it was thecoolest place in the whole house. It was a large room, fitted, duringthe eighteenth century, with white painted shelves of an elegant design. In the middle of one wall a door, ingeniously upholstered with rowsof dummy books, gave access to a deep cupboard, where, among a pile ofletter-files and old newspapers, the mummy-case of an Egyptian lady, brought back by the second Sir Ferdinando on his return from the GrandTour, mouldered in the darkness. From ten yards away and at a firstglance, one might almost have mistaken this secret door for a section ofshelving filled with genuine books. Coffee-cup in hand, Mr. Scoganwas standing in front of the dummy book-shelf. Between the sips hediscoursed. 

"The bottom shelf, " he was saying, "is taken up by an Encyclopaedia infourteen volumes. Useful, but a little dull, as is also Caprimulge's'Dictionary of the Finnish Language'. The 'Biographical Dictionary'looks more promising. 'Biography of Men who were Born Great', 'Biographyof Men who Achieved Greatness', 'Biography of Men who had GreatnessThrust upon Them', and 'Biography of Men who were Never Great at All'. Then there are ten volumes of 'Thom's Works and Wanderings', while the'Wild Goose Chase, a Novel', by an anonymous author, fills no lessthan six. But what's this, what's this?" Mr. Scogan stood on tiptoe andpeered up. "Seven volumes of the 'Tales of Knockespotch'. The 'Talesof Knockespotch', " he repeated. "Ah, my dear Henry, " he said, turninground, "these are your best books. I would willingly give all the restof your library for them. "

The happy possessor of a multitude of first editions, Mr. Wimbush couldafford to smile indulgently. 

"Is it possible, " Mr. Scogan went on, "that they possess nothing morethan a back and a title?" He opened the cupboard door and peeped inside, as though he hoped to find the rest of the books behind it. "Phooh!"he said, and shut the door again. "It smells of dust and mildew. Howsymbolical! One comes to the great masterpieces of the past, expectingsome miraculous illumination, and one finds, on opening them, onlydarkness and dust and a faint smell of decay. After all, what isreading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessiveself-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; onereads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Still--the 'Tales ofKnockespotch'... "

He paused, and thoughtfully drummed with his fingers on the backs of thenon-existent, unattainable books. 

"But I disagree with you about reading, " said Mary. "About seriousreading, I mean. "

"Quite right, Mary, quite right, " Mr. Scogan answered. "I had forgottenthere were any serious people in the room. "

"I like the idea of the Biographies, " said Denis. "There's room for usall within the scheme; it's comprehensive. "

"Yes, the Biographies are good, the Biographies are excellent, " MrScogan agreed. "I imagine them written in a very elegant Regencystyle--Brighton Pavilion in words--perhaps by the great Dr. Lemprierehimself. You know his classical dictionary? Ah!" Mr. Scogan raised hishand and let it limply fall again in a gesture which implied that wordsfailed him. "Read his biography of Helen; read how Jupiter, disguisedas a swan, was 'enabled to avail himself of his situation' vis-a-vis toLeda. And to think that he may have, must have written these biographiesof the Great! What a work, Henry! And, owing to the idiotic arrangementof your library, it can't be read. "

"I prefer the 'Wild Goose Chase', " said Anne. "A novel in sixvolumes--it must be restful. "

"Restful, " Mr. Scogan repeated. "You've hit on the right word. A 'WildGoose Chase' is sound, but a bit old-fashioned--pictures of clericallife in the fifties, you know; specimens of the landed gentry; peasantsfor pathos and comedy; and in the background, always the picturesquebeauties of nature soberly described. All very good and solid, but, likecertain puddings, just a little dull. Personally, I like much betterthe notion of 'Thom's Works and Wanderings'. The eccentric Mr. Thom ofThom's Hill. Old Tom Thom, as his intimates used to call him. He spentten years in Thibet organising the clarified butter industry on modernEuropean lines, and was able to retire at thirty-six with a handsomefortune. The rest of his life he devoted to travel and ratiocination;here is the result. " Mr. Scogan tapped the dummy books. "And now we cometo the 'Tales of Knockespotch'. What a masterpiece and what a great man!Knockespotch knew how to write fiction. Ah, Denis, if you could onlyread Knockespotch you wouldn't be writing a novel about the wearisomedevelopment of a young man's character, you wouldn't be describing inendless, fastidious detail, cultured life in Chelsea and Bloomsbury andHampstead. You would be trying to write a readable book. But then, alas!owing to the peculiar arrangement of our host's library, you never willread Knockespotch. "

"Nobody could regret the fact more than I do, " said Denis. 

"It was Knockespotch, " Mr. Scogan continued, "the great Knockespotch, who delivered us from the dreary tyranny of the realistic novel. Mylife, Knockespotch said, is not so long that I can afford to spendprecious hours writing or reading descriptions of middle-classinteriors. He said again, 'I am tired of seeing the human mind bogged ina social plenum; I prefer to paint it in a vacuum, freely and sportivelybombinating. '"

"I say, " said Gombauld, "Knockespotch was a little obscure sometimes, wasn't he?"

"He was, " Mr. Scogan replied, "and with intention. It made him seem evenprofounder than he actually was. But it was only in his aphorisms thathe was so dark and oracular. In his Tales he was always luminous. Oh, those Tales--those Tales! How shall I describe them? Fabulous charactersshoot across his pages like gaily dressed performers on the trapeze. There are extraordinary adventures and still more extraordinaryspeculations. Intelligences and emotions, relieved of all the imbecilepreoccupations of civilised life, move in intricate and subtle dances, crossing and recrossing, advancing, retreating, impinging. An immenseerudition and an immense fancy go hand in hand. All the ideas of thepresent and of the past, on every possible subject, bob up amongthe Tales, smile gravely or grimace a caricature of themselves, thendisappear to make place for something new. The verbal surface of hiswriting is rich and fantastically diversified. The wit is incessant. The... "

"But couldn't you give us a specimen, " Denis broke in--"a concreteexample?"

"Alas!" Mr. Scogan replied, "Knockespotch's great book is like the swordExcalibur. It remains struck fast in this door, awaiting the coming of awriter with genius enough to draw it forth. I am not even a writer, Iam not so much as qualified to attempt the task. The extraction ofKnockespotch from his wooden prison I leave, my dear Denis, to you. "

"Thank you, " said Denis. 

CHAPTER XV. 

"In the time of the amiable Brantome, " Mr. Scogan was saying, "everydebutante at the French Court was invited to dine at the King's table, where she was served with wine in a handsome silver cup of Italianworkmanship. It was no ordinary cup, this goblet of the debutantes;for, inside, it had been most curiously and ingeniously engraved with aseries of very lively amorous scenes. With each draught that the younglady swallowed these engravings became increasingly visible, and theCourt looked on with interest, every time she put her nose in the cup, to see whether she blushed at what the ebbing wine revealed. If thedebutante blushed, they laughed at her for her innocence; if she didnot, she was laughed at for being too knowing. "

"Do you propose, " asked Anne, "that the custom should be revived atBuckingham Palace?"

"I do not, " said Mr. Scogan. "I merely quoted the anecdote as anillustration of the customs, so genially frank, of the sixteenthcentury. I might have quoted other anecdotes to show that the customsof the seventeenth and eighteenth, of the fifteenth and fourteenthcenturies, and indeed of every other century, from the time of Hammurabionward, were equally genial and equally frank. The only century in whichcustoms were not characterised by the same cheerful openness was thenineteenth, of blessed memory. It was the astonishing exception. Andyet, with what one must suppose was a deliberate disregard of history, it looked upon its horribly pregnant silences as normal and natural andright; the frankness of the previous fifteen or twenty thousand yearswas considered abnormal and perverse. It was a curious phenomenon. "

"I entirely agree. " Mary panted with excitement in her effort to bringout what she had to say. "Havelock Ellis says... "

Mr. Scogan, like a policeman arresting the flow of traffic, held up hishand. "He does; I know. And that brings me to my next point: the natureof the reaction. "

"Havelock Ellis... "

"The reaction, when it came--and we may say roughly that it set ina little before the beginning of this century--the reaction was toopenness, but not to the same openness as had reigned in the earlierages. It was to a scientific openness, not to the jovial franknessof the past, that we returned. The whole question of Amour became aterribly serious one. Earnest young men wrote in the public prints thatfrom this time forth it would be impossible ever again to make a jokeof any sexual matter. Professors wrote thick books in which sex wassterilised and dissected. It has become customary for serious youngwomen, like Mary, to discuss, with philosophic calm, matters of whichthe merest hint would have sufficed to throw the youth of the sixtiesinto a delirium of amorous excitement. It is all very estimable, nodoubt. But still"--Mr. Scogan sighed. --"I for one should like to see, mingled with this scientific ardour, a little more of the jovial spiritof Rabelais and Chaucer. "

"I entirely disagree with you, " said Mary. "Sex isn't a laughing matter;it's serious. "

"Perhaps, " answered Mr. Scogan, "perhaps I'm an obscene old man. For Imust confess that I cannot always regard it as wholly serious. "

"But I tell you... " began Mary furiously. Her face had flushed withexcitement. Her cheeks were the cheeks of a great ripe peach. 

"Indeed, " Mr. Scogan continued, "it seems to me one of few permanentlyand everlastingly amusing subjects that exist. Amour is the one humanactivity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain. "

"I entirely disagree, " said Mary. There was a silence. 

Anne looked at her watch. "Nearly a quarter to eight, " she said. "Iwonder when Ivor will turn up. " She got up from her deck-chair and, leaning her elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, looked out over thevalley and towards the farther hills. Under the level evening light thearchitecture of the land revealed itself. The deep shadows, the brightcontrasting lights gave the hills a new solidity. Irregularities of thesurface, unsuspected before, were picked out with light and shade. The grass, the corn, the foliage of trees were stippled with intricateshadows. The surface of things had taken on a marvellous enrichment. 

"Look!" said Anne suddenly, and pointed. On the opposite side of thevalley, at the crest of the ridge, a cloud of dust flushed by thesunlight to rosy gold was moving rapidly along the sky-line. "It's Ivor. One can tell by the speed. "

The dust cloud descended into the valley and was lost. A horn with thevoice of a sea-lion made itself heard, approaching. A minute later Ivorcame leaping round the corner of the house. His hair waved in the windof his own speed; he laughed as he saw them. 

"Anne, darling, " he cried, and embraced her, embraced Mary, very nearlyembraced Mr. Scogan. "Well, here I am. I've come with incredulousspeed. " Ivor's vocabulary was rich, but a little erratic. "I'm not latefor dinner, am I?" He hoisted himself up on to the balustrade, andsat there, kicking his heels. With one arm he embraced a large stoneflower-pot, leaning his head sideways against its hard and lichenousflanks in an attitude of trustful affection. He had brown, wavy hair, and his eyes were of a very brilliant, pale, improbable blue. His headwas narrow, his face thin and rather long, his nose aquiline. In oldage--though it was difficult to imagine Ivor old--he might grow to havean Iron Ducal grimness. But now, at twenty-six, it was not the structureof his face that impressed one; it was its expression. That was charmingand vivacious, and his smile was an irradiation. He was forever moving, restlessly and rapidly, but with an engaging gracefulness. His frail andslender body seemed to be fed by a spring of inexhaustible energy. 

"No, you're not late. "

"You're in time to answer a question, " said Mr. Scogan. "We were arguingwhether Amour were a serious matter or no. What do you think? Is itserious?"

"Serious?" echoed Ivor. "Most certainly. "

"I told you so, " cried Mary triumphantly. 

"But in what sense serious?" Mr. Scogan asked. 

"I mean as an occupation. One can go on with it without ever gettingbored. "

"I see, " said Mr. Scogan. "Perfectly. "

"One can occupy oneself with it, " Ivor continued, "always andeverywhere. Women are always wonderfully the same. Shapes vary a little, that's all. In Spain"--with his free hand he described a series of amplecurves--"one can't pass them on the stairs. In England"--he put the tipof his forefinger against the tip of his thumb and, lowering his hand, drew out this circle into an imaginary cylinder--"In England they'retubular. But their sentiments are always the same. At least, I've alwaysfound it so. "

"I'm delighted to hear it, " said Mr. Scogan. 

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. "

CHAPTER XVII. 

Ivor brought his hands down with a bang on to the final chord of hisrhapsody. There was just a hint in that triumphant harmony that theseventh had been struck along with the octave by the thumb of the lefthand; but the general effect of splendid noise emerged clearly enough. Small details matter little so long as the general effect is good. And, besides, that hint of the seventh was decidedly modern. He turned roundin his seat and tossed the hair back out of his eyes. 

"There, " he said. "That's the best I can do for you, I'm afraid. "

Murmurs of applause and gratitude were heard, and Mary, her large chinaeyes fixed on the performer, cried out aloud, "Wonderful!" and gaspedfor new breath as though she were suffocating. 

Nature and fortune had vied with one another in heaping on IvorLombard all their choicest gifts. He had wealth and he was perfectlyindependent. He was good looking, possessed an irresistible charm ofmanner, and was the hero of more amorous successes than he could wellremember. His accomplishments were extraordinary for their number andvariety. He had a beautiful untrained tenor voice; he could improvise, with a startling brilliance, rapidly and loudly, on the piano. He was agood amateur medium and telepathist, and had a considerable first-handknowledge of the next world. He could write rhymed verses with anextraordinary rapidity. For painting symbolical pictures he had adashing style, and if the drawing was sometimes a little weak, thecolour was always pyrotechnical. He excelled in amateur theatricalsand, when occasion offered, he could cook with genius. He resembledShakespeare in knowing little Latin and less Greek. For a mind like his, education seemed supererogatory. Training would only have destroyed hisnatural aptitudes. 

"Let's go out into the garden, " Ivor suggested. "It's a wonderfulnight. "

"Thank you, " said Mr. Scogan, "but I for one prefer these still morewonderful arm-chairs. " His pipe had begun to bubble oozily every time hepulled at it. He was perfectly happy. 

Henry Wimbush was also happy. He looked for a moment over his pince-nezin Ivor's direction and then, without saying anything, returned tothe grimy little sixteenth-century account books which were now hisfavourite reading. He knew more about Sir Ferdinando's householdexpenses than about his own. 

The outdoor party, enrolled under Ivor's banner, consisted of Anne, Mary, Denis, and, rather unexpectedly, Jenny. Outside it was warm anddark; there was no moon. They walked up and down the terrace, and Ivorsang a Neapolitan song: "Stretti, stretti"--close, close--with somethingabout the little Spanish girl to follow. The atmosphere began topalpitate. Ivor put his arm round Anne's waist, dropped his headsideways onto her shoulder, and in that position walked on, singing ashe walked. It seemed the easiest, the most natural, thing in the world. Denis wondered why he had never done it. He hated Ivor. 

"Let's go down to the pool, " said Ivor. He disengaged his embrace andturned round to shepherd his little flock. They made their way along theside of the house to the entrance of the yew-tree walk that led down tothe lower garden. Between the blank precipitous wall of the house andthe tall yew trees the path was a chasm of impenetrable gloom. Somewherethere were steps down to the right, a gap in the yew hedge. Denis, whoheaded the party, groped his way cautiously; in this darkness, onehad an irrational fear of yawning precipices, of horrible spikedobstructions. Suddenly from behind him he heard a shrill, startled, "Oh!" and then a sharp, dry concussion that might have been the soundof a slap. After that, Jenny's voice was heard pronouncing, "I am goingback to the house. " Her tone was decided, and even as she pronounced thewords she was melting away into the darkness. The incident, whatever ithad been, was closed. Denis resumed his forward groping. From somewherebehind Ivor began to sing again, softly:

"Phillis plus avare que tendre Ne gagnant rien a refuser, Un jour exigeaa Silvandre Trente moutons pour un baiser. "

The melody drooped and climbed again with a kind of easy languor; thewarm darkness seemed to pulse like blood about them. 

"Le lendemain, nouvelle affaire: Pour le berger le troc fut bon... "

"Here are the steps, " cried Denis. He guided his companions over thedanger, and in a moment they had the turf of the yew-tree walk undertheir feet. It was lighter here, or at least it was just perceptiblyless dark; for the yew walk was wider than the path that had led themunder the lea of the house. Looking up, they could see between the highblack hedges a strip of sky and a few stars. 

"Car il obtint de la bergere... "

Went on Ivor, and then interrupted himself to shout, "I'm going to rundown, " and he was off, full speed, down the invisible slope, singingunevenly as he went:

"Trente baisers pour un mouton. "

The others followed. Denis shambled in the rear, vainly exhortingeveryone to caution: the slope was steep, one might break one's neck. What was wrong with these people, he wondered? They had become likeyoung kittens after a dose of cat-nip. He himself felt a certainkittenishness sporting within him; but it was, like all his emotions, rather a theoretical feeling; it did not overmasteringly seek to expressitself in a practical demonstration of kittenishness. 

"Be careful, " he shouted once more, and hardly were the words out of hismouth when, thump! there was the sound of a heavy fall in front ofhim, followed by the long "F-f-f-f-f" of a breath indrawn with pain andafterwards by a very sincere, "Oo-ooh!" Denis was almost pleased; he hadtold them so, the idiots, and they wouldn't listen. He trotted down theslope towards the unseen sufferer. 

Mary came down the hill like a runaway steam-engine. It was tremendouslyexciting, this blind rush through the dark; she felt she would neverstop. But the ground grew level beneath her feet, her speed insensiblyslackened, and suddenly she was caught by an extended arm and brought toan abrupt halt. 

"Well, " said Ivor as he tightened his embrace, "you're caught now, Anne. "

She made an effort to release herself. "It's not Anne. It's Mary. "

Ivor burst into a peal of amused laughter. "So it is!" he exclaimed. "Iseem to be making nothing but floaters this evening. I've already madeone with Jenny. " He laughed again, and there was something so jollyabout his laughter that Mary could not help laughing too. He did notremove his encircling arm, and somehow it was all so amusing and naturalthat Mary made no further attempt to escape from it. They walked alongby the side of the pool, interlaced. Mary was too short for him to beable, with any comfort, to lay his head on her shoulder. He rubbed hischeek, caressed and caressing, against the thick, sleek mass of herhair. In a little while he began to sing again; the night trembledamorously to the sound of his voice. When he had finished he kissed her. Anne or Mary: Mary or Anne. It didn't seem to make much difference whichit was. There were differences in detail, of course; but the generaleffect was the same; and, after all, the general effect was theimportant thing. 

Denis made his way down the hill. 

"Any damage done?" he called out. 

"Is that you, Denis? I've hurt my ankle so--and my knee, and my hand. I'm all in pieces. "

"My poor Anne, " he said. "But then, " he couldn't help adding, "it wassilly to start running downhill in the dark. "

"Ass!" she retorted in a tone of tearful irritation; "of course it was. "

He sat down beside on the grass, and found himself breathing the faint, delicious atmosphere of perfume that she carried always with her. 

"Light a match, " she commanded. "I want to look at my wounds. "

He felt in his pockets for the match-box. The light spurted and thengrew steady. Magically, a little universe had been created, a world ofcolours and forms--Anne's face, the shimmering orange of her dress, herwhite, bare arms, a patch of green turf--and round about a darkness thathad become solid and utterly blind. Anne held out her hands; both weregreen and earthy with her fall, and the left exhibited two or three redabrasions. 

"Not so bad, " she said. But Denis was terribly distressed, and hisemotion was intensified when, looking up at her face, he saw that thetrace of tears, involuntary tears of pain, lingered on her eyelashes. He pulled out his handkerchief and began to wipe away the dirt fromthe wounded hand. The match went out; it was not worth while to lightanother. Anne allowed herself to be attended to, meekly and gratefully. "Thank you, " she said, when he had finished cleaning and bandaging herhand; and there was something in her tone that made him feel that shehad lost her superiority over him, that she was younger than he, had become, suddenly, almost a child. He felt tremendously large andprotective. The feeling was so strong that instinctively he put hisarm about her. She drew closer, leaned against him, and so they sat insilence. Then, from below, soft but wonderfully clear through the stilldarkness, they heard the sound of Ivor's singing. He was going on withhis half-finished song:

"Le lendemain Phillis plus tendre, Ne voulant deplaire au berger, Futtrop heureuse de lui rendre Trente moutons pour un baiser. "

There was a rather prolonged pause. It was as though time were beingallowed for the giving and receiving of a few of those thirty kisses. Then the voice sang on:

"Le lendemain Phillis peu sage Aurait donne moutons et chien Pour unbaiser que le volage A Lisette donnait pour rien. "

The last note died away into an uninterrupted silence. 

"Are you better?" Denis whispered. "Are you comfortable like this?"

She nodded a Yes to both questions. 

"Trente moutons pour un baiser. " The sheep, the woolly mutton--baa, baa, baa... ? Or the shepherd? Yes, decidedly, he felt himself to bethe shepherd now. He was the master, the protector. A wave of courageswelled through him, warm as wine. He turned his head, and began to kissher face, at first rather randomly, then, with more precision, on themouth. 

Anne averted her head; he kissed the ear, the smooth nape that thismovement presented him. "No, " she protested; "no, Denis. "

"Why not?"

"It spoils our friendship, and that was so jolly. "

"Bosh!" said Denis. 

She tried to explain. "Can't you see, " she said, "it isn't... It isn'tour stunt at all. " It was true. Somehow she had never thought of Denisin the light of a man who might make love; she had never so much asconceived the possibilities of an amorous relationship with him. He wasso absurdly young, so... So... She couldn't find the adjective, but sheknew what she meant. 

"Why isn't it our stunt?" asked Denis. "And, by the way, that's ahorrible and inappropriate expression. "

"Because it isn't. "

"But if I say it is?"

"It makes no difference. I say it isn't. "

"I shall make you say it is. "

"All right, Denis. But you must do it another time. I must go in and getmy ankle into hot water. It's beginning to swell. "

Reasons of health could not be gainsaid. Denis got up reluctantly, andhelped his companion to her feet. She took a cautious step. "Ooh!" Shehalted and leaned heavily on his arm. 

"I'll carry you, " Denis offered. He had never tried to carry a woman, but on the cinema it always looked an easy piece of heroism. 

"You couldn't, " said Anne. 

"Of course I can. " He felt larger and more protective than ever. "Putyour arms round my neck, " he ordered. She did so and, stooping, hepicked her up under the knees and lifted her from the ground. Goodheavens, what a weight! He took five staggering steps up the slope, thenalmost lost his equilibrium, and had to deposit his burden suddenly, with something of a bump. 

Anne was shaking with laughter. "I said You couldn't, my poor Denis. "

"I can, " said Denis, without conviction. "I'll try again. "

"It's perfectly sweet of you to offer, but I'd rather walk, thanks. " Shelaid her hand on his shoulder and, thus supported, began to limp slowlyup the hill. 

"My poor Denis!" she repeated, and laughed again. Humiliated, he wassilent. It seemed incredible that, only two minutes ago, he shouldhave been holding her in his embrace, kissing her. Incredible. She washelpless then, a child. Now she had regained all her superiority; shewas once more the far-off being, desired and unassailable. Why had hebeen such a fool as to suggest that carrying stunt? He reached the housein a state of the profoundest depression. 

He helped Anne upstairs, left her in the hands of a maid, and came downagain to the drawing-room. He was surprised to find them all sittingjust where he had left them. He had expected that, somehow, everythingwould be quite different--it seemed such a prodigious time since he wentaway. All silent and all damned, he reflected, as he looked at them. Mr. Scogan's pipe still wheezed; that was the only sound. Henry Wimbush wasstill deep in his account books; he had just made the discovery that SirFerdinando was in the habit of eating oysters the whole summer through, regardless of the absence of the justifying R. Gombauld, in horn-rimmedspectacles, was reading. Jenny was mysteriously scribbling in her rednotebook. And, seated in her favourite arm-chair at the corner of thehearth, Priscilla was looking through a pile of drawings. One by one sheheld them out at arm's length and, throwing back her mountainous orangehead, looked long and attentively through half-closed eyelids. She worea pale sea-green dress; on the slope of her mauve-powdered decolletagediamonds twinkled. An immensely long cigarette-holder projected at anangle from her face. Diamonds were embedded in her high-piledcoiffure; they glittered every time she moved. It was a batch of Ivor'sdrawings--sketches of Spirit Life, made in the course of tranced toursthrough the other world. On the back of each sheet descriptive titleswere written: "Portrait of an Angel, 15th March '20;" "Astral Beingsat Play, 3rd December '19;" "A Party of Souls on their Way to a HigherSphere, 21st May '21. " Before examining the drawing on the obverse ofeach sheet, she turned it over to read the title. Try as she could--andshe tried hard--Priscilla had never seen a vision or succeeded inestablishing any communication with the Spirit World. She had to becontent with the reported experiences of others. 

"What have you done with the rest of your party?" she asked, looking upas Denis entered the room. 

He explained. Anne had gone to bed, Ivor and Mary were still in thegarden. He selected a book and a comfortable chair, and tried, as far asthe disturbed state of his mind would permit him, to compose himselffor an evening's reading. The lamplight was utterly serene; there was nomovement save the stir of Priscilla among her papers. All silent and alldamned, Denis repeated to himself, all silent and all damned... 

It was nearly an hour later when Ivor and Mary made their appearance. 

"We waited to see the moon rise, " said Ivor. 

"It was gibbous, you know, " Mary explained, very technical andscientific. 

"It was so beautiful down in the garden! The trees, the scent of theflowers, the stars... " Ivor waved his arms. "And when the moon came up, it was really too much. It made me burst into tears. " He sat down at thepiano and opened the lid. 

"There were a great many meteorites, " said Mary to anyone who wouldlisten. "The earth must just be coming into the summer shower of them. In July and August... "

But Ivor had already begun to strike the keys. He played the garden, the stars, the scent of flowers, the rising moon. He even put in anightingale that was not there. Mary looked on and listened with partedlips. The others pursued their occupations, without appearing to beseriously disturbed. On this very July day, exactly three hundred andfifty years ago, Sir Ferdinando had eaten seven dozen oysters. Thediscovery of this fact gave Henry Wimbush a peculiar pleasure. He hada natural piety which made him delight in the celebration of memorialfeasts. The three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the seven dozenoysters... He wished he had known before dinner; he would have orderedchampagne. 

On her way to bed Mary paid a call. The light was out in Anne's room, but she was not yet asleep. 

"Why didn't you come down to the garden with us?" Mary asked. 

"I fell down and twisted my ankle. Denis helped me home. "

Mary was full of sympathy. Inwardly, too, she was relieved to findAnne's non-appearance so simply accounted for. She had been vaguelysuspicious, down there in the garden--suspicious of what, she hardlyknew; but there had seemed to be something a little louche in the wayshe had suddenly found herself alone with Ivor. Not that she minded, ofcourse; far from it. But she didn't like the idea that perhaps she wasthe victim of a put-up job. 

"I do hope you'll be better to-morrow, " she said, and she commiseratedwith Anne on all she had missed--the garden, the stars, the scent offlowers, the meteorites through whose summer shower the earth was nowpassing, the rising moon and its gibbosity. And then they had had suchinteresting conversation. What about? About almost everything. Nature, art, science, poetry, the stars, spiritualism, the relations of thesexes, music, religion. Ivor, she thought, had an interesting mind. 

The two young ladies parted affectionately. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The nearest Roman Catholic church was upwards of twenty miles away. Ivor, who was punctilious in his devotions, came down early to breakfastand had his car at the door, ready to start, by a quarter to ten. It wasa smart, expensive-looking machine, enamelled a pure lemon yellow andupholstered in emerald green leather. There were two seats--three if yousqueezed tightly enough--and their occupants were protected fromwind, dust, and weather by a glazed sedan that rose, an eleganteighteenth-century hump, from the midst of the body of the car. 

Mary had never been to a Roman Catholic service, thought it would be aninteresting experience, and, when the car moved off through the greatgates of the courtyard, she was occupying the spare seat in the sedan. The sea-lion horn roared, faintlier, faintlier, and they were gone. 

In the parish church of Crome Mr. Bodiham preached on 1 Kings vi. 18:"And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops"--a sermon ofimmediately local interest. For the past two years the problem of theWar Memorial had exercised the minds of all those in Crome who hadenough leisure, or mental energy, or party spirit to think of suchthings. Henry Wimbush was all for a library--a library of localliterature, stocked with county histories, old maps of the district, monographs on the local antiquities, dialect dictionaries, handbooksof the local geology and natural history. He liked to think of thevillagers, inspired by such reading, making up parties of a Sundayafternoon to look for fossils and flint arrow-heads. The villagersthemselves favoured the idea of a memorial reservoir and water supply. But the busiest and most articulate party followed Mr. Bodiham indemanding something religious in character--a second lich-gate, forexample, a stained-glass window, a monument of marble, or, if possible, all three. So far, however, nothing had been done, partly because thememorial committee had never been able to agree, partly for the morecogent reason that too little money had been subscribed to carry out anyof the proposed schemes. Every three or four months Mr. Bodiham preacheda sermon on the subject. His last had been delivered in March; it washigh time that his congregation had a fresh reminder. 

"And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops. "

Mr. Bodiham touched lightly on Solomon's temple. From thence he passedto temples and churches in general. What were the characteristics ofthese buildings dedicated to God? Obviously, the fact of their, froma human point of view, complete uselessness. They were unpracticalbuildings "carved with knops. " Solomon might have built alibrary--indeed, what could be more to the taste of the world's wisestman? He might have dug a reservoir--what more useful in a parched citylike Jerusalem? He did neither; he built a house all carved with knops, useless and unpractical. Why? Because he was dedicating the work to God. There had been much talk in Crome about the proposed War Memorial. AWar Memorial was, in its very nature, a work dedicated to God. It was atoken of thankfulness that the first stage in the culminating world-warhad been crowned by the triumph of righteousness; it was at the sametime a visibly embodied supplication that God might not long delay theAdvent which alone could bring the final peace. A library, a reservoir?Mr. Bodiham scornfully and indignantly condemned the idea. These wereworks dedicated to man, not to God. As a War Memorial they were totallyunsuitable. A lich-gate had been suggested. This was an object whichanswered perfectly to the definition of a War Memorial: a useless workdedicated to God and carved with knops. One lich-gate, it was true, already existed. But nothing would be easier than to make a secondentrance into the churchyard; and a second entrance would need a secondgate. Other suggestions had been made. Stained-glass windows, a monumentof marble. Both these were admirable, especially the latter. It was hightime that the War Memorial was erected. It might soon be too late. At any moment, like a thief in the night, God might come. Meanwhile adifficulty stood in the way. Funds were inadequate. All should subscribeaccording to their means. Those who had lost relations in the war mightreasonably be expected to subscribe a sum equal to that which they wouldhave had to pay in funeral expenses if the relative had died while athome. Further delay was disastrous. The War Memorial must be built atonce. He appealed to the patriotism and the Christian sentiments of allhis hearers. 

Henry Wimbush walked home thinking of the books he would present to theWar Memorial Library, if ever it came into existence. He took the paththrough the fields; it was pleasanter than the road. At the firststile a group of village boys, loutish young fellows all dressed in thehideous ill-fitting black which makes a funeral of every English Sundayand holiday, were assembled, drearily guffawing as they smoked theircigarettes. They made way for Henry Wimbush, touching their caps as hepassed. He returned their salute; his bowler and face were one in theirunruffled gravity. 

In Sir Ferdinando's time, he reflected, in the time of his son, SirJulius, these young men would have had their Sunday diversions even atCrome, remote and rustic Crome. There would have been archery, skittles, dancing--social amusements in which they would have partaken as membersof a conscious community. Now they had nothing, nothing except Mr. Bodiham's forbidding Boys' Club and the rare dances and concertsorganised by himself. Boredom or the urban pleasures of the countymetropolis were the alternatives that presented themselves to these pooryouths. Country pleasures were no more; they had been stamped out by thePuritans. 

In Manningham's Diary for 1600 there was a queer passage, he remembered, a very queer passage. Certain magistrates in Berkshire, Puritanmagistrates, had had wind of a scandal. One moonlit summer night theyhad ridden out with their posse and there, among the hills, they hadcome upon a company of men and women, dancing, stark naked, among thesheepcotes. The magistrates and their men had ridden their horses intothe crowd. How self-conscious the poor people must suddenly have felt, how helpless without their clothes against armed and booted horsemen!The dancers were arrested, whipped, gaoled, set in the stocks; themoonlight dance is never danced again. What old, earthy, Panic rite cameto extinction here? he wondered. Who knows?--perhaps their ancestors haddanced like this in the moonlight ages before Adam and Eve were so muchas thought of. He liked to think so. And now it was no more. These wearyyoung men, if they wanted to dance, would have to bicycle six miles tothe town. The country was desolate, without life of its own, withoutindigenous pleasures. The pious magistrates had snuffed out for ever alittle happy flame that had burned from the beginning of time. 

"And as on Tullia's tomb one lamp burned clear, Unchanged for fifteenhundred year... "

He repeated the lines to himself, and was desolated to think of all themurdered past. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Henry Wimbush's long cigar burned aromatically. The "History of Crome"lay on his knee; slowly he turned over the pages. 

"I can't decide what episode to read you to-night, " he saidthoughtfully. "Sir Ferdinando's voyages are not without interest. Then, of course, there's his son, Sir Julius. It was he who suffered from thedelusion that his perspiration engendered flies; it drove him finally tosuicide. Or there's Sir Cyprian. " He turned the pages more rapidly. "OrSir Henry. Or Sir George... No, I'm inclined to think I won't read aboutany of these. "

"But you must read something, " insisted Mr. Scogan, taking his pipe outof his mouth. 

"I think I shall read about my grandfather, " said Henry Wimbush, "andthe events that led up to his marriage with the eldest daughter of thelast Sir Ferdinando. "

"Good, " said Mr. Scogan. "We are listening. "

"Before I begin reading, " said Henry Wimbush, looking up from thebook and taking off the pince-nez which he had just fitted to hisnose--"before their begin, I must say a few preliminary words about SirFerdinando, the last of the Lapiths. At the death of the virtuous andunfortunate Sir Hercules, Ferdinando found himself in possession of thefamily fortune, not a little increased by his father's temperance andthrift; he applied himself forthwith to the task of spending it, whichhe did in an ample and jovial fashion. By the time he was forty he hadeaten and, above all, drunk and loved away about half his capital, andwould infallibly have soon got rid of the rest in the same manner, ifhe had not had the good fortune to become so madly enamoured of theRector's daughter as to make a proposal of marriage. The young ladyaccepted him, and in less than a year had become the absolute mistressof Crome and her husband. An extraordinary reformation made itselfapparent in Sir Ferdinando's character. He grew regular and economicalin his habits; he even became temperate, rarely drinking more thana bottle and a half of port at a sitting. The waning fortune of theLapiths began once more to wax, and that in despite of the hard times(for Sir Ferdinando married in 1809 in the height of the NapoleonicWars). A prosperous and dignified old age, cheered by the spectacle ofhis children's growth and happiness--for Lady Lapith had already bornehim three daughters, and there seemed no good reason why she should notbear many more of them, and sons as well--a patriarchal decline into thefamily vault, seemed now to be Sir Ferdinando's enviable destiny. ButProvidence willed otherwise. To Napoleon, cause already of such infinitemischief, was due, though perhaps indirectly, the untimely and violentdeath which put a period to this reformed existence. 

"Sir Ferdinando, who was above all things a patriot, had adopted, fromthe earliest days of the conflict with the French, his own peculiarmethod of celebrating our victories. When the happy news reached London, it was his custom to purchase immediately a large store of liquor and, taking a place on whichever of the outgoing coaches he happened to lighton first, to drive through the country proclaiming the good news to allhe met on the road and dispensing it, along with the liquor, at everystopping-place to all who cared to listen or drink. Thus, after theNile, he had driven as far as Edinburgh; and later, when the coaches, wreathed with laurel for triumph, with cypress for mourning, weresetting out with the news of Nelson's victory and death, he sat throughall a chilly October night on the box of the Norwich 'Meteor' with anautical keg of rum on his knees and two cases of old brandy under theseat. This genial custom was one of the many habits which he abandonedon his marriage. The victories in the Peninsula, the retreat fromMoscow, Leipzig, and the abdication of the tyrant all went uncelebrated. It so happened, however, that in the summer of 1815 Sir Ferdinando wasstaying for a few weeks in the capital. There had been a succession ofanxious, doubtful days; then came the glorious news of Waterloo. It wastoo much for Sir Ferdinando; his joyous youth awoke again within him. Hehurried to his wine merchant and bought a dozen bottles of 1760 brandy. The Bath coach was on the point of starting; he bribed his way on tothe box and, seated in glory beside the driver, proclaimed aloud thedownfall of the Corsican bandit and passed about the warm liquid joy. They clattered through Uxbridge, Slough, Maidenhead. Sleeping Readingwas awakened by the great news. At Didcot one of the ostlers was somuch overcome by patriotic emotions and the 1760 brandy that he found itimpossible to do up the buckles of the harness. The night began to growchilly, and Sir Ferdinando found that it was not enough to take a nipat every stage: to keep up his vital warmth he was compelled to drinkbetween the stages as well. They were approaching Swindon. The coachwas travelling at a dizzy speed--six miles in the last half-hour--when, without having manifested the slightest premonitory symptom ofunsteadiness, Sir Ferdinando suddenly toppled sideways off his seatand fell, head foremost, into the road. An unpleasant jolt awakened theslumbering passengers. The coach was brought to a standstill; theguard ran back with a light. He found Sir Ferdinando still alive, butunconscious; blood was oozing from his mouth. The back wheels of thecoach had passed over his body, breaking most of his ribs and both arms. His skull was fractured in two places. They picked him up, but he wasdead before they reached the next stage. So perished Sir Ferdinando, a victim to his own patriotism. Lady Lapith did not marry again, butdetermined to devote the rest of her life to the well-being of her threechildren--Georgiana, now five years old, and Emmeline and Caroline, twins of two. "

Henry Wimbush paused, and once more put on his pince-nez. "So muchby way of introduction, " he said. "Now I can begin to read about mygrandfather. "

"One moment, " said Mr. Scogan, "till I've refilled my pipe. "

Mr. Wimbush waited. Seated apart in a corner of the room, Ivor wasshowing Mary his sketches of Spirit Life. They spoke together inwhispers. 

Mr. Scogan had lighted his pipe again. "Fire away, " he said. 

Henry Wimbush fired away. 

"It was in the spring of 1833 that my grandfather, George Wimbush, firstmade the acquaintance of the 'three lovely Lapiths, ' as they were alwayscalled. He was then a young man of twenty-two, with curly yellow hairand a smooth pink face that was the mirror of his youthful and ingenuousmind. He had been educated at Harrow and Christ Church, he enjoyedhunting and all other field sports, and, though his circumstances werecomfortable to the verge of affluence, his pleasures were temperate andinnocent. His father, an East Indian merchant, had destined him for apolitical career, and had gone to considerable expense in acquiring apleasant little Cornish borough as a twenty-first birthday gift for hisson. He was justly indignant when, on the very eve of George's majority, the Reform Bill of 1832 swept the borough out of existence. Theinauguration of George's political career had to be postponed. At thetime he got to know the lovely Lapiths he was waiting; he was not at allimpatient. 

"The lovely Lapiths did not fail to impress him. Georgiana, the eldest, with her black ringlets, her flashing eyes, her noble aquiline profile, her swan-like neck, and sloping shoulders, was orientally dazzling; andthe twins, with their delicately turned-up noses, their blue eyes, andchestnut hair, were an identical pair of ravishingly English charmers. 

"Their conversation at this first meeting proved, however, to be soforbidding that, but for the invincible attraction exercised by theirbeauty, George would never have had the courage to follow up theacquaintance. The twins, looking up their noses at him with an air oflanguid superiority, asked him what he thought of the latest Frenchpoetry and whether he liked the 'Indiana' of George Sand. But whatwas almost worse was the question with which Georgiana opened herconversation with him. 'In music, ' she asked, leaning forward andfixing him with her large dark eyes, 'are you a classicist or atranscendentalist?' George did not lose his presence of mind. He hadenough appreciation of music to know that he hated anything classical, and so, with a promptitude which did him credit, he replied, 'I am atranscendentalist. ' Georgiana smiled bewitchingly. 'I am glad, ' shesaid; 'so am I. You went to hear Paganini last week, of course. "Theprayer of Moses"--ah!' She closed her eyes. 'Do you know anything moretranscendental than that?' 'No, ' said George, 'I don't. ' He hesitated, was about to go on speaking, and then decided that after all it would bewiser not to say--what was in fact true--that he had enjoyed above allPaganini's Farmyard Imitations. The man had made his fiddle bray likean ass, cluck like a hen, grunt, squeal, bark, neigh, quack, bellow, andgrowl; that last item, in George's estimation, had almost compensatedfor the tediousness of the rest of the concert. He smiled with pleasureat the thought of it. Yes, decidedly, he was no classicist in music; hewas a thoroughgoing transcendentalist. 

"George followed up this first introduction by paying a call on theyoung ladies and their mother, who occupied, during the season, a smallbut elegant house in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square. Lady Lapithmade a few discreet inquiries, and having found that George's financialposition, character, and family were all passably good, she asked him todine. She hoped and expected that her daughters would all marry intothe peerage; but, being a prudent woman, she knew it was advisable toprepare for all contingencies. George Wimbush, she thought, would makean excellent second string for one of the twins. 

"At this first dinner, George's partner was Emmeline. They talked ofNature. Emmeline protested that to her high mountains were a feeling andthe hum of human cities torture. George agreed that the country was veryagreeable, but held that London during the season also had its charms. He noticed with surprise and a certain solicitous distress that MissEmmeline's appetite was poor, that it didn't, in fact, exist. Twospoonfuls of soup, a morsel of fish, no bird, no meat, and threegrapes--that was her whole dinner. He looked from time to time at hertwo sisters; Georgiana and Caroline seemed to be quite as abstemious. They waved away whatever was offered them with an expression of delicatedisgust, shutting their eyes and averting their faces from the proffereddish, as though the lemon sole, the duck, the loin of veal, the trifle, were objects revolting to the sight and smell. George, who thought thedinner capital, ventured to comment on the sisters' lack of appetite. 

"'Pray, don't talk to me of eating, ' said Emmeline, drooping like asensitive plant. 'We find it so coarse, so unspiritual, my sisters andI. One can't think of one's soul while one is eating. '

"George agreed; one couldn't. 'But one must live, ' he said. 

"'Alas!' Emmeline sighed. 'One must. Death is very beautiful, don't youthink?' She broke a corner off a piece of toast and began to nibbleat it languidly. 'But since, as you say, one must live... ' She made alittle gesture of resignation. 'Luckily a very little suffices to keepone alive. ' She put down her corner of toast half eaten. 

"George regarded her with some surprise. She was pale, but she lookedextraordinarily healthy, he thought; so did her sisters. Perhaps ifyou were really spiritual you needed less food. He, clearly, was notspiritual. 

"After this he saw them frequently. They all liked him, from Lady Lapithdownwards. True, he was not very romantic or poetical; but he was such apleasant, unpretentious, kind-hearted young man, that one couldn'thelp liking him. For his part, he thought them wonderful, wonderful, especially Georgiana. He enveloped them all in a warm, protectiveaffection. For they needed protection; they were altogether too frail, too spiritual for this world. They never ate, they were always pale, they often complained of fever, they talked much and lovingly of death, they frequently swooned. Georgiana was the most ethereal of all; of thethree she ate least, swooned most often, talked most of death, and wasthe palest--with a pallor that was so startling as to appear positivelyartificial. At any moment, it seemed, she might loose her precarioushold on this material world and become all spirit. To George the thoughtwas a continual agony. If she were to die... 

"She contrived, however, to live through the season, and that in spiteof the numerous balls, routs, and other parties of pleasure which, incompany with the rest of the lovely trio, she never failed to attend. Inthe middle of July the whole household moved down to the country. Georgewas invited to spend the month of August at Crome. 

"The house-party was distinguished; in the list of visitors figuredthe names of two marriageable young men of title. George had hoped thatcountry air, repose, and natural surroundings might have restored tothe three sisters their appetites and the roses of their cheeks. He wasmistaken. For dinner, the first evening, Georgiana ate only an olive, two or three salted almonds, and half a peach. She was as pale as ever. During the meal she spoke of love. 

"'True love, ' she said, 'being infinite and eternal, can only beconsummated in eternity. Indiana and Sir Rodolphe celebrated the mysticwedding of their souls by jumping into Niagara. Love is incompatiblewith life. The wish of two people who truly love one another is not tolive together but to die together. '

"'Come, come, my dear, ' said Lady Lapith, stout and practical. 'Whatwould become of the next generation, pray, if all the world acted onyour principles?'

"'Mamma!... ' Georgiana protested, and dropped her eyes. 

"'In my young days, ' Lady Lapith went on, 'I should have been laughedout of countenance if I'd said a thing like that. But then in my youngdays souls weren't as fashionable as they are now and we didn't thinkdeath was at all poetical. It was just unpleasant. '

"'Mamma!... ' Emmeline and Caroline implored in unison. 

"'In my young days--' Lady Lapith was launched into her subject;nothing, it seemed, could stop her now. 'In my young days, if you didn'teat, people told you you needed a dose of rhubarb. Nowadays... '

"There was a cry; Georgiana had swooned sideways on to Lord Timpany'sshoulder. It was a desperate expedient; but it was successful. LadyLapith was stopped. 

"The days passed in an uneventful round of pleasures. Of all the gayparty George alone was unhappy. Lord Timpany was paying his court toGeorgiana, and it was clear that he was not unfavourably received. George looked on, and his soul was a hell of jealousy and despair. Theboisterous company of the young men became intolerable to him; he shrankfrom them, seeking gloom and solitude. One morning, having broken awayfrom them on some vague pretext, he returned to the house alone. Theyoung men were bathing in the pool below; their cries and laughterfloated up to him, making the quiet house seem lonelier and more silent. The lovely sisters and their mamma still kept their chambers; they didnot customarily make their appearance till luncheon, so that the maleguests had the morning to themselves. George sat down in the hall andabandoned himself to thought. 

"At any moment she might die; at any moment she might become LadyTimpany. It was terrible, terrible. If she died, then he would dietoo; he would go to seek her beyond the grave. If she became LadyTimpany... Ah, then! The solution of the problem would not be so simple. If she became Lady Timpany: it was a horrible thought. But then supposeshe were in love with Timpany--though it seemed incredible that anyonecould be in love with Timpany--suppose her life depended on Timpany, suppose she couldn't live without him? He was fumbling his way alongthis clueless labyrinth of suppositions when the clock struck twelve. Onthe last stroke, like an automaton released by the turning clockwork, alittle maid, holding a large covered tray, popped out of the door thatled from the kitchen regions into the hall. From his deep arm-chairGeorge watched her (himself, it was evident, unobserved) with an idlecuriosity. She pattered across the room and came to a halt in front ofwhat seemed a blank expense of panelling. She reached out her hand and, to George's extreme astonishment, a little door swung open, revealingthe foot of a winding staircase. Turning sideways in order to get hertray through the narrow opening, the little maid darted in with a rapidcrab-like motion. The door closed behind her with a click. A minutelater it opened again and the maid, without her tray, hurried backacross the hall and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Georgetried to recompose his thoughts, but an invincible curiosity drew hismind towards the hidden door, the staircase, the little maid. It was invain he told himself that the matter was none of his business, that toexplore the secrets of that surprising door, that mysterious staircasewithin, would be a piece of unforgivable rudeness and indiscretion. It was in vain; for five minutes he struggled heroically with hiscuriosity, but at the end of that time he found himself standing infront of the innocent sheet of panelling through which the little maidhad disappeared. A glance sufficed to show him the position of thesecret door--secret, he perceived, only to those who looked witha careless eye. It was just an ordinary door let in flush with thepanelling. No latch nor handle betrayed its position, but an unobtrusivecatch sunk in the wood invited the thumb. George was astonished that hehad not noticed it before; now he had seen it, it was so obvious, almost as obvious as the cupboard door in the library with its linesof imitation shelves and its dummy books. He pulled back the catch andpeeped inside. The staircase, of which the degrees were made notof stone but of blocks of ancient oak, wound up and out of sight. A slit-like window admitted the daylight; he was at the foot of thecentral tower, and the little window looked out over the terrace; theywere still shouting and splashing in the pool below. 

"George closed the door and went back to his seat. But his curiositywas not satisfied. Indeed, this partial satisfaction had but whettedits appetite. Where did the staircase lead? What was the errand of thelittle maid? It was no business of his, he kept repeating--no businessof his. He tried to read, but his attention wandered. A quarter-pasttwelve sounded on the harmonious clock. Suddenly determined, Georgerose, crossed the room, opened the hidden door, and began to ascendthe stairs. He passed the first window, corkscrewed round, and cameto another. He paused for a moment to look out; his heart beatuncomfortably, as though he were affronting some unknown danger. Whathe was doing, he told himself, was extremely ungentlemanly, horriblyunderbred. He tiptoed onward and upward. One turn more, then half aturn, and a door confronted him. He halted before it, listened; he couldhear no sound. Putting his eye to the keyhole, he saw nothing but astretch of white sunlit wall. Emboldened, he turned the handle andstepped across the threshold. There he halted, petrified by what he saw, mutely gaping. 

"In the middle of a pleasantly sunny little room--'it is now Priscilla'sboudoir, ' Mr. Wimbush remarked parenthetically--stood a small circulartable of mahogany. Crystal, porcelain, and silver, --all the shiningapparatus of an elegant meal--were mirrored in its polished depths. Thecarcase of a cold chicken, a bowl of fruit, a great ham, deeply gashedto its heart of tenderest white and pink, the brown cannon ball ofa cold plum-pudding, a slender Hock bottle, and a decanter of claretjostled one another for a place on this festive board. And round thetable sat the three sisters, the three lovely Lapiths--eating!

"At George's sudden entrance they had all looked towards the door, andnow they sat, petrified by the same astonishment which kept George fixedand staring. Georgiana, who sat immediately facing the door, gazed athim with dark, enormous eyes. Between the thumb and forefinger of herright hand she was holding a drumstick of the dismembered chicken; herlittle finger, elegantly crooked, stood apart from the rest of her hand. Her mouth was open, but the drumstick had never reached its destination;it remained, suspended, frozen, in mid-air. The other two sisters hadturned round to look at the intruder. Caroline still grasped her knifeand fork; Emmeline's fingers were round the stem of her claret glass. For what seemed a very long time, George and the three sisters staredat one another in silence. They were a group of statues. Then suddenlythere was movement. Georgiana dropped her chicken bone, Caroline's knifeand fork clattered on her plate. The movement propagated itself, grewmore decisive; Emmeline sprang to her feet, uttering a cry. The wave ofpanic reached George; he turned and, mumbling something unintelligibleas he went, rushed out of the room and down the winding stairs. He cameto a standstill in the hall, and there, all by himself in the quiethouse, he began to laugh. 

"At luncheon it was noticed that the sisters ate a little more thanusual. Georgiana toyed with some French beans and a spoonful ofcalves'-foot jelly. 'I feel a little stronger to-day, ' she said to LordTimpany, when he congratulated her on this increase of appetite; 'alittle more material, ' she added, with a nervous laugh. Looking up, shecaught George's eye; a blush suffused her cheeks and she looked hastilyaway. 

"In the garden that afternoon they found themselves for a moment alone. 

"You won't tell anyone, George? Promise you won't tell anyone, ' sheimplored. 'It would make us look so ridiculous. And besides, eating ISunspiritual, isn't it? Say you won't tell anyone. '

"'I will, ' said George brutally. 'I'll tell everyone, unless... '

"'It's blackmail. '

"'I don't care, said George. 'I'll give you twenty-four hours todecide. '

"Lady Lapith was disappointed, of course; she had hoped for betterthings--for Timpany and a coronet. But George, after all, wasn't so bad. They were married at the New Year. 

"My poor grandfather!" Mr. Wimbush added, as he closed his book andput away his pince-nez. "Whenever I read in the papers about oppressednationalities, I think of him. " He relighted his cigar. "It wasa maternal government, highly centralised, and there were norepresentative institutions. "

Henry Wimbush ceased speaking. In the silence that ensued Ivor'swhispered commentary on the spirit sketches once more became audible. Priscilla, who had been dozing, suddenly woke up. 

"What?" she said in the startled tones of one newly returned toconsciousness; "what?"

Jenny caught the words. She looked up, smiled, nodded reassuringly. "It's about a ham, " she said. 

"What's about a ham?"

"What Henry has been reading. " She closed the red notebook lying onher knees and slipped a rubber band round it. "I'm going to bed, " sheannounced, and got up. 

"So am I, " said Anne, yawning. But she lacked the energy to rise fromher arm-chair. 

The night was hot and oppressive. Round the open windows the curtainshung unmoving. Ivor, fanning himself with the portrait of an AstralBeing, looked out into the darkness and drew a breath. 

"The air's like wool, " he declared. 

"It will get cooler after midnight, " said Henry Wimbush, and cautiouslyadded, "perhaps. "

"I shan't sleep, I know. "

Priscilla turned her head in his direction; the monumental coiffurenodded exorbitantly at her slightest movement. "You must make aneffort, " she said. "When I can't sleep, I concentrate my will: I say, 'I will sleep, I am asleep!' And pop! off I go. That's the power ofthought. "

"But does it work on stuffy nights?" Ivor inquired. "I simply cannotsleep on a stuffy night. "

"Nor can I, " said Mary, "except out of doors. "

"Out of doors! What a wonderful idea!" In the end they decided to sleepon the towers--Mary on the western tower, Ivor on the eastern. Therewas a flat expanse of leads on each of the towers, and you could get amattress through the trap doors that opened on to them. Under the stars, under the gibbous moon, assuredly they would sleep. The mattresses werehauled up, sheets and blankets were spread, and an hour later the twoinsomniasts, each on his separate tower, were crying their good-nightsacross the dividing gulf. 

On Mary the sleep-compelling charm of the open air did not work with itsexpected magic. Even through the mattress one could not fail to be awarethat the leads were extremely hard. Then there were noises: the owlsscreeched tirelessly, and once, roused by some unknown terror, all thegeese of the farmyard burst into a sudden frenzy of cackling. The starsand the gibbous moon demanded to be looked at, and when one meteoritehad streaked across the sky, you could not help waiting, open-eyed andalert, for the next. Time passed; the moon climbed higher and higher inthe sky. Mary felt less sleepy than she had when she first came out. She sat up and looked over the parapet. Had Ivor been able to sleep? shewondered. And as though in answer to her mental question, frombehind the chimney-stack at the farther end of the roof a white formnoiselessly emerged--a form that, in the moonlight, was recognisablyIvor's. Spreading his arms to right and left, like a tight-rope dancer, he began to walk forward along the roof-tree of the house. He swayedterrifyingly as he advanced. Mary looked on speechlessly; perhaps he waswalking in his sleep! Suppose he were to wake up suddenly, now! If shespoke or moved it might mean his death. She dared look no more, but sankback on her pillows. She listened intently. For what seemed an immenselylong time there was no sound. Then there was a patter of feet on thetiles, followed by a scrabbling noise and a whispered "Damn!" Andsuddenly Ivor's head and shoulders appeared above the parapet. One legfollowed, then the other. He was on the leads. Mary pretended to wake upwith a start. 

"Oh!" she said. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep, " he explained, "so I came along to see if youcouldn't. One gets bored by oneself on a tower. Don't you find it so?"

It was light before five. Long, narrow clouds barred the east, theiredges bright with orange fire. The sky was pale and watery. With themournful scream of a soul in pain, a monstrous peacock, flying heavilyup from below, alighted on the parapet of the tower. Ivor and Marystarted broad awake. 

"Catch him!" cried Ivor, jumping up. "We'll have a feather. " Thefrightened peacock ran up and down the parapet in an absurd distress, curtseying and bobbing and clucking; his long tail swung ponderouslyback and forth as he turned and turned again. Then with a flap and swishhe launched himself upon the air and sailed magnificently earthward, with a recovered dignity. But he had left a trophy. Ivor had hisfeather, a long-lashed eye of purple and green, of blue and gold. Hehanded it to his companion. 

"An angel's feather, " he said. 

Mary looked at it for a moment, gravely and intently. Her purple pyjamasclothed her with an ampleness that hid the lines of her body; she lookedlike some large, comfortable, unjointed toy, a sort of Teddy-bear--buta Teddy bear with an angel's head, pink cheeks, and hair like a bellof gold. An angel's face, the feather of an angel's wing... Somehow thewhole atmosphere of this sunrise was rather angelic. 

"It's extraordinary to think of sexual selection, " she said at last, looking up from her contemplation of the miraculous feather. 

"Extraordinary!" Ivor echoed. "I select you, you select me. What luck!"

He put his arm round her shoulders and they stood looking eastward. Thefirst sunlight had begun to warm and colour the pale light of the dawn. Mauve pyjamas and white pyjamas; they were a young and charming couple. The rising sun touched their faces. It was all extremely symbolic;but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is notsymbolical. Profound and beautiful truth!

"I must be getting back to my tower, " said Ivor at last. 

"Already?"

"I'm afraid so. The varletry will soon be up and about. "

"Ivor... " There was a prolonged and silent farewell. 

"And now, " said Ivor, "I repeat my tight-rope stunt. "

Mary threw her arms round his neck. "You mustn't, Ivor. It's dangerous. Please. "

He had to yield at last to her entreaties. "All right, " he said, "I'llgo down through the house and up at the other end. "

He vanished through the trap door into the darkness that still lurkedwithin the shuttered house. A minute later he had reappeared on thefarther tower; he waved his hand, and then sank down, out of sight, behind the parapet. From below, in the house, came the thin wasp-likebuzzing of an alarum-clock. He had gone back just in time. 

CHAPTER XX. 

Ivor was gone. Lounging behind the wind-screen in his yellow sedan hewas whirling across rural England. Social and amorous engagements of themost urgent character called him from hall to baronial hall, from castleto castle, from Elizabethan manor-house to Georgian mansion, overthe whole expanse of the kingdom. To-day in Somerset, to-morrow inWarwickshire, on Saturday in the West riding, by Tuesday morning inArgyll--Ivor never rested. The whole summer through, from thebeginning of July till the end of September, he devoted himself to hisengagements; he was a martyr to them. In the autumn he went back toLondon for a holiday. Crome had been a little incident, an evanescentbubble on the stream of his life; it belonged already to the past. Bytea-time he would be at Gobley, and there would be Zenobia's welcomingsmile. And on Thursday morning--but that was a long, long way ahead. Hewould think of Thursday morning when Thursday morning arrived. Meanwhilethere was Gobley, meanwhile Zenobia. 

In the visitor's book at Crome Ivor had left, according to hisinvariable custom in these cases, a poem. He had improvised itmagisterially in the ten minutes preceding his departure. Denis and Mr. Scogan strolled back together from the gates of the courtyard, whencethey had bidden their last farewells; on the writing-table in the hallthey found the visitor's book, open, and Ivor's composition scarcelydry. Mr. Scogan read it aloud:

"The magic of those immemorial kings, Who webbed enchantment on thebowls of night. Sleeps in the soul of all created things; In the bluesea, th' Acroceraunian height, In the eyed butterfly's auricular wingsAnd orgied visions of the anchorite; In all that singing flies andflying sings, In rain, in pain, in delicate delight. But much moremagic, much more cogent spells Weave here their wizardries about mysoul. Crome calls me like the voice of vesperal bells, Haunts like aghostly-peopled necropole. Fate tears me hence. Hard fate! since farfrom Crome My soul must weep, remembering its Home. "

"Very nice and tasteful and tactful, " said Mr. Scogan, when he hadfinished. "I am only troubled by the butterfly's auricular wings. Youhave 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 Ivorwanted to say that the wings were golden. "

"You make it luminously clear. "

"One suffers so much, " Denis went on, "from the fact that beautifulwords don't always mean what they ought to mean. Recently, for example, I had a whole poem ruined, just because the word 'carminative' didn'tmean what it ought to have meant. Carminative--it's admirable, isn'tit?"

"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 acold--quite useless, but not disagreeable. One poured it drop by dropout of narrow bottles, a golden liquor, fierce and fiery. On the labelwas a list of its virtues, and among other things it was described asbeing in the highest degree carminative. I adored the word. 'Isn't itcarminative?' I used to say to myself when I'd taken my dose. It seemedso wonderfully to describe that sensation of internal warmth, that glow, that--what shall I call it?--physical self-satisfaction whichfollowed the drinking of cinnamon. Later, when I discovered alcohol, 'carminative' described for me that similar, but nobler, more spiritualglow 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 LacrymaChristi, of Marsala, of Aleatico, of stout, of gin, of champagne, ofclaret, of the raw new wine of this year's Tuscan vintage--I comparedthem, I classified them. Marsala is rosily, downily carminative; ginpricks and refreshes while it warms. I had a whole table of carminationvalues. 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 withcarmen-carminis, still more vaguely with caro-carnis, and itsderivations, like carnival and carnation. Carminative--there was theidea of singing and the idea of flesh, rose-coloured and warm, witha suggestion of the jollities of mi-Careme and the masked holidays ofVenice. Carminative--the warmth, the glow, the interior ripeness wereall in the word. Instead of which... "

"Do come to the point, my dear Denis, " protested Mr. Scogan. "Do come tothe point. "

"Well, I wrote a poem the other day, " said Denis; "I wrote a poem aboutthe effects of love. "

"Others have done the same before you, " said Mr. Scogan. "There is noneed to be ashamed. "

"I was putting forward the notion, " Denis went on, "that the effectsof love were often similar to the effects of wine, that Eros couldintoxicate as well as Bacchus. Love, for example, is essentiallycarminative. 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. Everythingwas 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 hadnever actually looked up the word in a dictionary. Carminative had grownup with me from the days of the cinnamon bottle. It had always beentaken for granted. Carminative: for me the word was as rich in contentas some tremendous, elaborate work of art; it was a complete landscapewith figures. 

 'And passion carminative as wine... '

It was the first time I had ever committed the word to writing, and allat once I felt I would like lexicographical authority for it. A smallEnglish-German dictionary was all I had at hand. I turned up C, ca, car, carm. There it was: 'Carminative: windtreibend. ' Windtreibend!" herepeated. Mr. Scogan laughed. Denis shook his head. "Ah, " he said, "forme it was no laughing matter. For me it marked the end of a chapter, thedeath of something young and precious. There were the years--yearsof childhood and innocence--when I had believed that carminativemeant--well, carminative. And now, before me lies the rest of mylife--a day, perhaps, ten years, half a century, when I shall know thatcarminative 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 lovethem. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and peopleto understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literarymind. The spectacle of Mr. Gladstone finding thirty-four rhymes tothe 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 nefuis 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 ofmagic, the sense that words have power. The technical, verbal part ofliterature is simply a development of magic. Words are man's first andmost 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 andspirits from the elements. Their descendants, the literary men, stillgo 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 themost insipid statements become enormously significant. For example, Iproffer the constatation, 'Black ladders lack bladders. ' A self-evidenttruth, one on which it would not have been worth while to insist, hadI chosen to formulate it in such words as 'Black fire-escapes have nobladders, ' or, 'Les echelles noires manquent de vessie. ' But since Iput it as I do, 'Black ladders lack bladders, ' it becomes, for allits self-evidence, significant, unforgettable, moving. The creation byword-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, Imay add, what is that but literature? Half the world's greatest poetryis simply 'Les echelles noires manquent de vessie, ' translated intomagic significance as, 'Black ladders lack bladders. ' And you can'tappreciate words. I'm sorry for you. "

"A mental carminative, " said Mr. Scogan reflectively. "That's what youneed. "

CHAPTER XXI. 

Perched on its four stone mushrooms, the little granary stood two orthree feet above the grass of the green close. Beneath it there was aperpetual shade and a damp growth of long, luxuriant grasses. Here, inthe shadow, in the green dampness, a family of white ducks had soughtshelter from the afternoon sun. Some stood, preening themselves, somereposed with their long bellies pressed to the ground, as though thecool grass were water. Little social noises burst fitfully forth, andfrom time to time some pointed tail would execute a brilliant Lisztiantremolo. Suddenly their jovial repose was shattered. A prodigious thumpshook 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 thisnameless menace, and did not stay their flight till they were safely inthe farmyard. 

"Don't lose your temper, " Anne was saying. "Listen! You've frightenedthe 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 shesupported her cheek on her hand. Her long, slender body drooped intocurves of a lazy grace. She was smiling, and she looked at Gombauldthrough half-closed eyes. 

"Damn you!" Gombauld repeated, and stamped his foot again. He glared ather round the half-finished portrait on the easel. 

"Poor ducks!" Anne repeated. The sound of their quacking was faint inthe distance; it was inaudible. 

"Can't you see you make me lose my time?" he asked. "I can't work withyou dangling about distractingly like this. "

"You'd lose less time if you stopped talking and stamping your feet anddid a little painting for a change. After all, what am I dangling aboutfor, except to be painted?"

Gombauld made a noise like a growl. "You're awful, " he said, withconviction. "Why do you ask me to come and stay here? Why do you tell meyou'd like me to paint your portrait?"

"For the simple reasons that I like you--at least, when you're in a goodtemper--and that I think you're a good painter. "

"For the simple reason"--Gombauld mimicked her voice--"that you wantme to make love to you and, when I do, to have the amusement of runningaway. "

Anne threw back her head and laughed. "So you think it amuses me to haveto evade your advances! So like a man! If you only knew how gross andawful and boring men are when they try to make love and you don't wantthem to make love! If you could only see yourselves through our eyes!"

Gombauld picked up his palette and brushes and attacked his canvas withthe ardour of irritation. "I suppose you'll be saying next that youdidn't start the game, that it was I who made the first advances, andthat you were the innocent victim who sat still and never did anythingthat could invite or allure me on. "

"So like a man again!" said Anne. "It's always the same old story aboutthe woman tempting the man. The woman lures, fascinates, invites; andman--noble man, innocent man--falls a victim. My poor Gombauld! Surelyyou're not going to sing that old song again. It's so unintelligent, andI 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 simplyexternalising your own emotions? That's what you men are always doing;it's so barbarously naive. You feel one of your loose desires for somewoman, and because you desire her strongly you immediately accuse herof luring you on, of deliberately provoking and inviting the desire. Youhave the mentality of savages. You might just as well say that a plateof strawberries and cream deliberately lures you on to feel greedy. Inninety-nine cases out of a hundred women are as passive and innocent asthe strawberries and cream. "

"Well, all I can say is that this must be the hundredth case, " saidGombauld, without looking up. 

Anne shrugged her shoulders and gave vent to a sigh. "I'm at a loss toknow whether you're more silly or more rude. "

After painting for a little time in silence Gombauld began to speakagain. "And then there's Denis, " he said, renewing the conversation asthough it had only just been broken off. "You're playing the same gamewith him. Why can't you leave that wretched young man in peace?"

Anne flushed with a sudden and uncontrollable anger. "It's perfectlyuntrue about Denis, " she said indignantly. "I never dreamt of playingwhat 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 toosolemn. "I don't like to see a young man... "

"... Being whirled along the road to ruin, " said Anne, continuing hissentence for him. I admire your sentiments and, believe me, I sharethem. "

She was curiously irritated at what Gombauld had said about Denis. Ithappened to be so completely untrue. Gombauld might have some slightground for his reproaches. But Denis--no, she had never flirted withDenis. Poor boy! He was very sweet. She became somewhat pensive. 

Gombauld painted on with fury. The restlessness of an unsatisfieddesire, which, before, had distracted his mind, making work impossible, seemed now to have converted itself into a kind of feverish energy. Whenit was finished, he told himself, the portrait would be diabolic. He waspainting her in the pose she had naturally adopted at the first sitting. Seated sideways, her elbow on the back of the chair, her head andshoulders turned at an angle from the rest of her body, towards thefront, she had fallen into an attitude of indolent abandonment. He hademphasised the lazy curves of her body; the lines sagged as they crossedthe canvas, the grace of the painted figure seemed to be melting intoa kind of soft decay. The hand that lay along the knee was as limp asa glove. He was at work on the face now; it had begun to emerge on thecanvas, doll-like in its regularity and listlessness. It was Anne'sface--but her face as it would be, utterly unillumined by the inwardlights of thought and emotion. It was the lazy, expressionless maskwhich was sometimes her face. The portrait was terribly like; and at thesame time it was the most malicious of lies. Yes, it would be diabolicwhen it was finished, Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would thinkof it. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this sameafternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour was a drowsyone, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily on body and mind. Themeridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and hopelesspost-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and fearedunder the name of "accidie. " He felt, like Ernest Dowson, "a littleweary. " He was in the mood to write something rather exquisite andgentle and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the sametime--how should he put it?--a little infinite. He thought of Anne, oflove hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love, the hopeless kind--the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad moodof repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegantquatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:

"A brooding love which is at most The stealth of moonbeams when theyslide, Evoking colour's bloodless ghost, O'er some scarce-breathingbreast or side... "

when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked downfrom his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking, laughingtogether. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of sightthrough the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to thegreen close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. Hispleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violentemotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket andran downstairs. "The stealth of moonbeams, " indeed!

In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in wait. Denistried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan's eye glittered like the eye ofthe Ancient Mariner. 

"Not so fast, " he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with pointednails--"not so fast. I was just going down to the flower garden to takethe sun. We'll go together. "

Denis abandoned himself; Mr. Scogan put on his hat and they went out armin arm. On the shaven turf of the terrace Henry Wimbush and Mary wereplaying a solemn game of bowls. They descended by the yew-tree walk. It was here, thought Denis, here that Anne had fallen, here that hehad kissed her, here--and he blushed with retrospective shame at thememory--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 withyou, my dear Denis, when you're old enough to be sane or insane. Ina sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curiousestablishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don'texist. I am just Vox et praeterea nihil. "

Denis made no response; he was thinking of other things. "After all, "he said to himself--"after all, Gombauld is better looking than I, moreentertaining, more confident; and, besides, he's already somebody andI'm still only potential... "

"Everything that ever gets done in this world is done by madmen, " Mr. Scogan went on. Denis tried not to listen, but the tireless insistenceof Mr. Scogan's discourse gradually compelled his attention. "Men suchas I am, such as you may possibly become, have never achieved anything. We're too sane; we're merely reasonable. We lack the human touch, thecompelling enthusiastic mania. People are quite ready to listen to thephilosophers for a little amusement, just as they would listen to afiddler or a mountebank. But as to acting on the advice of the men ofreason--never. Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man ofreason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion andthe instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial andsupererogatory--reason. "

They entered the garden; at the head of one of the alleys stood a greenwooden bench, embayed in the midst of a fragrant continent of lavenderbushes. It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathedhot, dry perfume instead of air--it was here that Mr. Scogan elected tosit. He thrived on untempered sunlight. 

"Consider, for example, the case of Luther and Erasmus. " He took outhis pipe and began to fill it as he talked. "There was Erasmus, a manof reason if ever there was one. People listened to him at first--anew virtuoso performing on that elegant and resourceful instrument, theintellect; they even admired and venerated him. But did he move them tobehave as he wanted them to behave--reasonably, decently, or at least alittle less porkishly than usual? He did not. And then Luther appears, violent, passionate, a madman insanely convinced about matters in whichthere can be no conviction. He shouted, and men rushed to followhim. Erasmus was no longer listened to; he was reviled for hisreasonableness. Luther was serious, Luther was reality--like the GreatWar. Erasmus was only reason and decency; he lacked the power, being asage, to move men to action. Europe followed Luther and embarked ona century and a half of war and bloody persecution. It's a melancholystory. " Mr. Scogan lighted a match. In the intense light the flame wasall but invisible. The smell of burning tobacco began to mingle with thesweetly acrid smell of the lavender. 

"If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuadingthem in a maniacal manner. The very sane precepts of the founders ofreligions are only made infectious by means of enthusiasms which to asane man must appear deplorable. It is humiliating to find how impotentunadulterated sanity is. Sanity, for example, informs us that the onlyway in which we can preserve civilisation is by behaving decently andintelligently. Sanity appeals and argues; our rulers persevere in theircustomary porkishness, while we acquiesce and obey. The only hope is amaniacal crusade; I am ready, when it comes, to beat a tambourine withthe loudest, but at the same time I shall feel a little ashamed ofmyself. However"--Mr. Scogan shrugged his shoulders and, pipe in hand, made a gesture of resignation--"It's futile to complain that things areas they are. The fact remains that sanity unassisted is useless. Whatwe want, then, is a sane and reasonable exploitation of the forces ofinsanity. We sane men will have the power yet. " Mr. Scogan's eyes shonewith a more than ordinary brightness, and, taking his pipe out of hismouth, he gave vent to his loud, dry, and somehow rather fiendish laugh. 

"But I don't want power, " said Denis. He was sitting in limp discomfortat one end of the bench, shading his eyes from the intolerable light. Mr. Scogan, bolt upright at the other end, laughed again. 

"Everybody wants power, " he said. "Power in some form or other. The sortof power you hanker for is literary power. Some people want powerto persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power inpersecuting words, twisting them, moulding them, torturing them to obeyyou. But I divagate. "

"Do you?" asked Denis faintly. 

"Yes, " Mr. Scogan continued, unheeding, "the time will come. We menof intelligence will learn to harness the insanities to the service ofreason. We can't leave the world any longer to the direction of chance. We can't allow dangerous maniacs like Luther, mad about dogma, likeNapoleon, mad about himself, to go on casually appearing and turningeverything upside down. In the past it didn't so much matter; but ourmodern machine is too delicate. A few more knocks like the Great War, another Luther or two, and the whole concern will go to pieces. Infuture, the men of reason must see that the madness of the world'smaniacs is canalised into proper channels, is made to do useful work, like a mountain torrent driving a dynamo... "

"Making electricity to light a Swiss hotel, " said Denis. "You ought tocomplete the simile. "

Mr. Scogan waved away the interruption. "There's only one thing to bedone, " he said. "The men of intelligence must combine, must conspire, and seize power from the imbeciles and maniacs who now direct us. Theymust found the Rational State. "

The heat that was slowly paralysing all Denis's mental and bodilyfaculties, seemed to bring to Mr. Scogan additional vitality. He talkedwith an ever-increasing energy, his hands moved in sharp, quick, precisegestures, his eyes shone. Hard, dry, and continuous, his voice wenton sounding and sounding in Denis's ears with the insistence of amechanical noise. 

"In the Rational State, " he heard Mr. Scogan saying, "human beings willbe separated out into distinct species, not according to the colour oftheir eyes or the shape of their skulls, but according to the qualitiesof their mind and temperament. Examining psychologists, trained to whatwould now seem an almost superhuman clairvoyance, will test each childthat is born and assign it to its proper species. Duly labelled anddocketed, the child will be given the education suitable to members ofits species, and will be set, in adult life, to perform those functionswhich human beings of his variety are capable of performing. "

"How many species will there be?" asked Denis. 

"A great many, no doubt, " Mr. Scogan answered; "the classification willbe subtle and elaborate. But it is not in the power of a prophet to gointo details, nor is it his business. I will do more than indicate thethree main species into which the subjects of the Rational State will bedivided. "

He paused, cleared his throat, and coughed once or twice, evoking inDenis's mind the vision of a table with a glass and water-bottle, and, lying across one corner, a long white pointer for the lantern pictures. 

"The three main species, " Mr. Scogan went on, "will be these: theDirecting Intelligences, the Men of Faith, and the Herd. Among theIntelligences will be found all those capable of thought, those who knowhow to attain a certain degree of freedom--and, alas, how limited, evenamong the most intelligent, that freedom is!--from the mental bondage oftheir time. A select body of Intelligences, drawn from among those whohave turned their attention to the problems of practical life, willbe the governors of the Rational State. They will employ as theirinstruments of power the second great species of humanity--the men ofFaith, the Madmen, as I have been calling them, who believe in thingsunreasonably, with passion, and are ready to die for their beliefs andtheir desires. These wild men, with their fearful potentialities forgood or for mischief, will no longer be allowed to react casually toa casual environment. There will be no more Caesar Borgias, no moreLuthers and Mohammeds, no more Joanna Southcotts, no more Comstocks. Theold-fashioned Man of Faith and Desire, that haphazard creature of brutecircumstance, who might drive men to tears and repentance, or who mightequally well set them on to cutting one another's throats, will bereplaced by a new sort of madman, still externally the same, stillbubbling with a seemingly spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how verydifferent from the madman of the past! For the new Man of Faith will beexpending his passion, his desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagationof some reasonable idea. He will be, all unawares, the tool of somesuperior intelligence. "

Mr. Scogan chuckled maliciously; it was as though he were taking arevenge, in the name of reason, on enthusiasts. "From their earliestyears, as soon, that is, as the examining psychologists have assignedthem their place in the classified scheme, the Men of Faith will havehad their special education under the eye of the Intelligences. Mouldedby a long process of suggestion, they will go out into the world, preaching and practising with a generous mania the coldly reasonableprojects of the Directors from above. When these projects areaccomplished, or when the ideas that were useful a decade ago haveceased to be useful, the Intelligences will inspire a new generation ofmadmen with a new eternal truth. The principal function of the Men ofFaith will be to move and direct the Multitude, that third great speciesconsisting of those countless millions who lack intelligence and arewithout valuable enthusiasm. When any particular effort is required ofthe Herd, when it is thought necessary, for the sake of solidarity, thathumanity shall be kindled and united by some single enthusiastic desireor idea, the Men of Faith, primed with some simple and satisfying creed, will be sent out on a mission of evangelisation. At ordinary times, whenthe high spiritual temperature of a Crusade would be unhealthy, theMen of Faith will be quietly and earnestly busy with the great work ofeducation. In the upbringing of the Herd, humanity's almost boundlesssuggestibility will be scientifically exploited. Systematically, fromearliest infancy, its members will be assured that there is no happinessto be found except in work and obedience; they will be made to believethat they are happy, that they are tremendously important beings, andthat everything they do is noble and significant. For the lower speciesthe earth will be restored to the centre of the universe and man topre-eminence on the earth. Oh, I envy the lot of the commonality in theRational State! Working their eight hours a day, obeying their betters, convinced of their own grandeur and significance and immortality, theywill be marvellously happy, happier than any race of men has ever been. They will go through life in a rosy state of intoxication, from whichthey will never awake. The Men of Faith will play the cup-bearers atthis lifelong bacchanal, filling and ever filling again with the warmliquor that the Intelligences, in sad and sober privacy behind thescenes, will brew for the intoxication of their subjects. "

"And what will be my place in the Rational State?" Denis drowsilyinquired from under his shading hand. 

Mr. Scogan looked at him for a moment in silence. "It's difficult to seewhere you would fit in, " he said at last. "You couldn't do manual work;you're too independent and unsuggestible to belong to the larger Herd;you have none of the characteristics required in a Man of Faith. As forthe Directing Intelligences, they will have to be marvellously clear andmerciless and penetrating. " He paused and shook his head. "No, I can seeno place for you; only the lethal chamber. "

Deeply hurt, Denis emitted the imitation of a loud Homeric laugh. "I'mgetting sunstroke here, " he said, and got up. 

Mr. Scogan followed his example, and they walked slowly away down thenarrow path, brushing the blue lavender flowers in their passage. Denispulled a sprig of lavender and sniffed at it; then some dark leaves ofrosemary that smelt like incense in a cavernous church. They passed abed of opium poppies, dispetaled now; the round, ripe seedheads werebrown and dry--like Polynesian trophies, Denis thought; severed headsstuck on poles. He liked the fancy enough to impart it to Mr. Scogan. 

"Like Polynesian trophies... " Uttered aloud, the fancy seemed lesscharming and significant than it did when it first occurred to him. 

There was a silence, and in a growing wave of sound the whir of thereaping machines swelled up from the fields beyond the garden and thenreceded into a remoter hum. 

"It is satisfactory to think, " said Mr. Scogan, as they strolled slowlyonward, "that a multitude of people are toiling in the harvest fields inorder that we may talk of Polynesia. Like every other good thing in thisworld, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us beduly thankful for that, my dear Denis--duly thankful, " he repeated, andknocked the ashes out of his pipe. 

Denis was not listening. He had suddenly remembered Anne. She was withGombauld--alone with him in his studio. It was an intolerable thought. 

"Shall we go and pay a call on Gombauld?" he suggested carelessly. "Itwould be amusing to see what he's doing now. "

He laughed inwardly to think how furious Gombauld would be when he sawthem arriving. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Gombauld was by no means so furious at their apparition as Denis hadhoped and expected he would be. Indeed, he was rather pleased thanannoyed when the two faces, one brown and pointed, the other round andpale, appeared in the frame of the open door. The energy born of hisrestless irritation was dying within him, returning to its emotionalelements. A moment more and he would have been losing his temperagain--and Anne would be keeping hers, infuriatingly. Yes, he waspositively glad to see them. 

"Come in, come in, " he called out hospitably. 

Followed by Mr. Scogan, Denis climbed the little ladder and stepped overthe threshold. He looked suspiciously from Gombauld to his sitter, andcould learn nothing from the expression of their faces except that theyboth seemed pleased to see the visitors. Were they really glad, or werethey cunningly simulating gladness? He wondered. 

Mr. Scogan, meanwhile, was looking at the portrait. 

"Excellent, " he said approvingly, "excellent. Almost too true tocharacter, if that is possible; yes, positively too true. But I'msurprised to find you putting in all this psychology business. " Hepointed to the face, and with his extended finger followed the slackcurves of the painted figure. "I thought you were one of the fellows whowent in exclusively for balanced masses and impinging planes. "

Gombauld laughed. "This is a little infidelity, " he said. 

"I'm sorry, " said Mr. Scogan. "I for one, without ever having hadthe slightest appreciation of painting, have always taken particularpleasure in Cubismus. I like to see pictures from which nature has beencompletely banished, pictures which are exclusively the product of thehuman mind. They give me the same pleasure as I derive from a good pieceof reasoning or a mathematical problem or an achievement of engineering. Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it istoo large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless andincomprehensible. I am at home with the works of man; if I choose toset my mind to it, I can understand anything that any man has made orthought. That is why I always travel by Tube, never by bus if I canpossibly help it. For, travelling by bus, one can't avoid seeing, evenin London, a few stray works of God--the sky, for example, an occasionaltree, the flowers in the window-boxes. But travel by Tube and you seenothing but the works of man--iron riveted into geometrical forms, straight lines of concrete, patterned expanses of tiles. All is humanand the product of friendly and comprehensible minds. All philosophiesand all religions--what are they but spiritual Tubes bored through theuniverse! Through these narrow tunnels, where all is recognisably human, one travels comfortable and secure, contriving to forget that all roundand below and above them stretches the blind mass of earth, endlessand unexplored. Yes, give me the Tube and Cubismus every time; give meideas, so snug and neat and simple and well made. And preserve me fromnature, preserve me from all that's inhumanly large and complicated andobscure. I haven't the courage, and, above all, I haven't the time tostart wandering in that labyrinth. "

While Mr. Scogan was discoursing, Denis had crossed over to the fartherside of the little square chamber, where Anne was sitting, still in hergraceful, lazy pose, on the low chair. 

"Well?" he demanded, looking at her almost fiercely. What was he askingof her? He hardly knew himself. 

Anne looked up at him, and for answer echoed his "Well?" in another, alaughing key. 

Denis had nothing more, at the moment, to say. Two or three canvasesstood in the corner behind Anne's chair, their faces turned to the wall. He pulled them out and began to look at the paintings. 

"May I see too?" Anne requested. 

He stood them in a row against the wall. Anne had to turn round in herchair to look at them. There was the big canvas of the man fallen fromthe horse, there was a painting of flowers, there was a small landscape. His hands on the back of the chair, Denis leaned over her. From behindthe easel at the other side of the room Mr. Scogan was talking away. For a long time they looked at the pictures, saying nothing; or, rather, Anne looked at the pictures, while Denis, for the most part, looked atAnne. 

"I like the man and the horse; don't you?" she said at last, looking upwith an inquiring smile. 

Denis nodded, and then in a queer, strangled voice, as though it hadcost him a great effort to utter the words, he said, "I love you. "

It was a remark which Anne had heard a good many times before and mostlyheard with equanimity. But on this occasion--perhaps because they hadcome so unexpectedly, perhaps for some other reason--the words provokedin her a certain surprised commotion. 

"My poor Denis, " she managed to say, with a laugh; but she was blushingas she spoke. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

It was noon. Denis, descending from his chamber, where he had beenmaking an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing inparticular, found the drawing-room deserted. He was about to go out intothe garden when his eye fell on a familiar but mysterious object--thelarge red notebook in which he had so often seen Jenny quietly andbusily scribbling. She had left it lying on the window-seat. Thetemptation was great. He picked up the book and slipped off the elasticband that kept it discreetly closed. 

"Private. Not to be opened, " was written in capital letters on thecover. He raised his eyebrows. It was the sort of thing one wrote inone's Latin Grammar while one was still at one's preparatory school. 

 "Black is the raven, black is the rook, But blacker the thief who steals this book!"

It was curiously childish, he thought, and he smiled to himself. Heopened the book. What he saw made him wince as though he had beenstruck. 

Denis was his own severest critic; so, at least, he had always believed. He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into thepalpitating entrails of his own soul; he was Brown Dog to himself. His weaknesses, his absurdities--no one knew them better than he did. Indeed, in a vague way he imagined that nobody beside himself was awareof them at all. It seemed, somehow, inconceivable that he should appearto other people as they appeared to him; inconceivable that they everspoke of him among themselves in that same freely critical and, to bequite honest, mildly malicious tone in which he was accustomed to talkof them. In his own eyes he had defects, but to see them was a privilegereserved to him alone. For the rest of the world he was surely an imageof flawless crystal. It was almost axiomatic. 

On opening the red notebook that crystal image of himself crashed tothe ground, and was irreparably shattered. He was not his own severestcritic after all. The discovery was a painful one. 

The fruit of Jenny's unobtrusive scribbling lay before him. A caricatureof himself, reading (the book was upside-down). In the background adancing couple, recognisable as Gombauld and Anne. Beneath, the legend:"Fable of the Wallflower and the Sour Grapes. " Fascinated and horrified, Denis pored over the drawing. It was masterful. A mute, ingloriousRouveyre appeared in every one of those cruelly clear lines. Theexpression of the face, an assumed aloofness and superiority temperedby a feeble envy; the attitude of the body and limbs, an attitude ofstudious and scholarly dignity, given away by the fidgety pose of theturned-in feet--these things were terrible. And, more terrible still, was the likeness, was the magisterial certainty with which his physicalpeculiarities were all recorded and subtly exaggerated. 

Denis looked deeper into the book. There were caricatures of otherpeople: of Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith; of Henry Wimbush, of Anneand Gombauld; of Mr. Scogan, whom Jenny had represented in a light thatwas more than slightly sinister, that was, indeed, diabolic; of Mary andIvor. He scarcely glanced at them. A fearful desire to know the worstabout himself possessed him. He turned over the leaves, lingering atnothing that was not his own image. Seven full pages were devoted tohim. 

"Private. Not to be opened. " He had disobeyed the injunction; he hadonly got what he deserved. Thoughtfully he closed the book, and slid therubber band once more into its place. Sadder and wiser, he went out onto the terrace. And so this, he reflected, this was how Jenny employedthe leisure hours in her ivory tower apart. And he had thought her asimple-minded, uncritical creature! It was he, it seemed, who was thefool. He felt no resentment towards Jenny. No, the distressing thingwasn't Jenny herself; it was what she and the phenomenon of her redbook represented, what they stood for and concretely symbolised. Theyrepresented all the vast conscious world of men outside himself; theysymbolised something that in his studious solitariness he was apt not tobelieve in. He could stand at Piccadilly Circus, could watch thecrowds shuffle past, and still imagine himself the one fully conscious, intelligent, individual being among all those thousands. It seemed, somehow, impossible that other people should be in their way aselaborate and complete as he in his. Impossible; and yet, periodicallyhe would make some painful discovery about the external world and thehorrible reality of its consciousness and its intelligence. The rednotebook was one of these discoveries, a footprint in the sand. It putbeyond a doubt the fact that the outer world really existed. 

Sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, he ruminated this unpleasanttruth for some time. Still chewing on it, he strolled pensively downtowards the swimming-pool. A peacock and his hen trailed their shabbyfinery across the turf of the lower lawn. Odious birds! Their necks, thick and greedily fleshy at the roots, tapered up to the cruel inanityof their brainless heads, their flat eyes and piercing beaks. Thefabulists were right, he reflected, when they took beasts to illustratetheir tractates of human morality. Animals resemble men with all thetruthfulness of a caricature. (Oh, the red notebook!) He threw a pieceof stick at the slowly pacing birds. They rushed towards it, thinking itwas something to eat. 

He walked on. The profound shade of a giant ilex tree engulfed him. Likea great wooden octopus, it spread its long arms abroad. 

"Under the spreading ilex tree... "

He tried to remember who the poem was by, but couldn't. 

"The smith, a brawny man is he, With arms like rubber bands. "

Just like his; he would have to try and do his Muller exercises moreregularly. 

He emerged once more into the sunshine. The pool lay before him, reflecting in its bronze mirror the blue and various green of thesummer day. Looking at it, he thought of Anne's bare arms and seal-sleekbathing-dress, her moving knees and feet. 

"And little Luce with the white legs, And bouncing Barbary... "

Oh, these rags and tags of other people's making! Would he ever be ableto call his brain his own? Was there, indeed, anything in it that wastruly his own, or was it simply an education?

He walked slowly round the water's edge. In an embayed recess amongthe surrounding yew trees, leaning her back against the pedestal of apleasantly comic version of the Medici Venus, executed by some namelessmason of the seicento, he saw Mary pensively sitting. 

"Hullo!" he said, for he was passing so close to her that he had to saysomething. 

Mary looked up. "Hullo!" she answered in a melancholy, uninterestedtone. 

In this alcove hewed out of the dark trees, the atmosphere seemed toDenis agreeably elegiac. He sat down beside her under the shadow of thepudic goddess. There was a prolonged silence. 

At breakfast that morning Mary had found on her plate a picture postcardof Gobley Great Park. A stately Georgian pile, with a facade sixteenwindows wide; parterres in the foreground; huge, smooth lawns recedingout of the picture to right and left. Ten years more of the hard timesand Gobley, with all its peers, will be deserted and decaying. Fiftyyears, and the countryside will know the old landmarks no more. Theywill have vanished as the monasteries vanished before them. At themoment, however, Mary's mind was not moved by these considerations. 

On the back of the postcard, next to the address, was written, in Ivor'sbold, large hand, a single quatrain. 

"Hail, maid of moonlight! Bride of the sun, farewell! Like bright plumesmoulted in an angel's flight, There sleep within my heart's most mysticcell Memories of morning, memories of the night. "

There followed a postscript of three lines: "Would you mind asking oneof the housemaids to forward the packet of safety-razor blades I left inthe drawer of my washstand. Thanks. --Ivor. "

Seated under the Venus's immemorial gesture, Mary considered lifeand love. The abolition of her repressions, so far from bringing theexpected peace of mind, had brought nothing but disquiet, a new andhitherto unexperienced misery. Ivor, Ivor... She couldn't do without himnow. It was evident, on the other hand, from the poem on the back of thepicture postcard, that Ivor could very well do without her. He was atGobley now, so was Zenobia. Mary knew Zenobia. She thought of the lastverse of the song he had sung that night in the garden. 

"Le lendemain, Phillis peu sage Aurait donne moutons et chien Pour unbaiser que le volage A Lisette donnait pour rien. "

Mary shed tears at the memory; she had never been so unhappy in all herlife before. 

It was Denis who first broke the silence. "The individual, " he began ina soft and sadly philosophical tone, "is not a self-supporting universe. There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, whenhe is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universesbesides himself. "

He had contrived this highly abstract generalisation as a preliminaryto a personal confidence. It was the first gambit in a conversation thatwas to lead up to Jenny's caricatures. 

"True, " said Mary; and, generalising for herself, she added, "When oneindividual comes into intimate contact with another, she--or he, ofcourse, as the case may be--must almost inevitably receive or inflictsuffering. "

"One is apt, " Denis went on, "to be so spellbound by the spectacle ofone's own personality that one forgets that the spectacle presentsitself to other people as well as to oneself. "

Mary was not listening. "The difficulty, " she said, "makes itselfacutely felt in matters of sex. If one individual seeks intimate contactwith another individual in the natural way, she is certain to receive orinflict suffering. If on the other hand, she avoids contacts, she risksthe equally grave sufferings that follow on unnatural repressions. Asyou see, it's a dilemma. "

"When I think of my own case, " said Denis, making a more decided move inthe desired direction, "I am amazed how ignorant I am of other people'smentality in general, and above all and in particular, of their opinionsabout myself. Our minds are sealed books only occasionally opened tothe outside world. " He made a gesture that was faintly suggestive of thedrawing off of a rubber band. 

"It's an awful problem, " said Mary thoughtfully. "One has to have hadpersonal experience to realise quite how awful it is. "

"Exactly. " Denis nodded. "One has to have had first-hand experience. " Heleaned towards her and slightly lowered his voice. "This very morning, for example... " he began, but his confidences were cut short. The deepvoice of the gong, tempered by distance to a pleasant booming, floateddown from the house. It was lunch-time. Mechanically Mary rose to herfeet, and Denis, a little hurt that she should exhibit such a desperateanxiety for her food and so slight an interest in his spiritualexperiences, followed her. They made their way up to the house withoutspeaking. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

"I hope you all realise, " said Henry Wimbush during dinner, "that nextMonday is Bank Holiday, and that you will all be expected to help in theFair. "

"Heavens!" cried Anne. "The Fair--I had forgotten all about it. What anightmare! Couldn't you put a stop to it, Uncle Henry?"

Mr. Wimbush sighed and shook his head. "Alas, " he said, "I fear Icannot. I should have liked to put an end to it years ago; but theclaims of Charity are strong. "

"It's not charity we want, " Anne murmured rebelliously; "it's justice. "

"Besides, " Mr. Wimbush went on, "the Fair has become an institution. Letme see, it must be twenty-two years since we started it. It was a modestaffair then. Now... " he made a sweeping movement with his hand and wassilent. 

It spoke highly for Mr. Wimbush's public spirit that he still continuedto tolerate the Fair. Beginning as a sort of glorified churchbazaar, Crome's yearly Charity Fair had grown into a noisy thing ofmerry-go-rounds, cocoanut shies, and miscellaneous side shows--a realgenuine fair on the grand scale. It was the local St. Bartholomew, andthe people of all the neighbouring villages, with even a contingent fromthe county town, flocked into the park for their Bank Holiday amusement. The local hospital profited handsomely, and it was this fact alone whichprevented Mr. Wimbush, to whom the Fair was a cause of recurrent andnever-diminishing agony, from putting a stop to the nuisance whichyearly desecrated his park and garden. 

"I've made all the arrangements already, " Henry Wimbush went on. "Someof the larger marquees will be put up to-morrow. The swings and themerry-go-round arrive on Sunday. "

"So there's no escape, " said Anne, turning to the rest of the party. "You'll all have to do something. As a special favour you're allowedto choose your slavery. My job is the tea tent, as usual, AuntPriscilla... "

"My dear, " said Mrs. Wimbush, interrupting her, "I have more importantthings to think about than the Fair. But you need have no doubt that Ishall do my best when Monday comes to encourage the villagers. "

"That's splendid, " said Anne. "Aunt Priscilla will encourage thevillagers. What will you do, Mary?"

"I won't do anything where I have to stand by and watch other peopleeat. "

"Then you'll look after the children's sports. "

"All right, " Mary agreed. "I'll look after the children's sports. "

"And Mr. Scogan?"

Mr. Scogan reflected. "May I be allowed to tell fortunes?" he asked atlast. "I think I should be good at telling fortunes. "

"But you can't tell fortunes in that costume!"

"Can't I?" Mr. Scogan surveyed himself. 

"You'll have to be dressed up. Do you still persist?"

"I'm ready to suffer all indignities. "

"Good!" said Anne; and turning to Gombauld, "You must be our lightningartist, " she said. "'Your portrait for a shilling in five minutes. '"

"It's a pity I'm not Ivor, " said Gombauld, with a laugh. "I could throwin a picture of their Auras for an extra sixpence. "

Mary flushed. "Nothing is to be gained, " she said severely, "by speakingwith levity of serious subjects. And, after all, whatever your personalviews may be, psychical research is a perfectly serious subject. "

"And what about Denis?"

Denis made a deprecating gesture. "I have no accomplishments, " he said, "I'll just be one of those men who wear a thing in their buttonholes andgo about telling people which is the way to tea and not to walk on thegrass. "

"No, no, " said Anne. "That won't do. You must do something more thanthat. "

"But what? All the good jobs are taken, and I can do nothing but lisp innumbers. "

"Well, then, you must lisp, " concluded Anne. "You must write a poem forthe occasion--an 'Ode on Bank Holiday. ' We'll print it on Uncle Henry'spress and sell it at twopence a copy. "

"Sixpence, " Denis protested. "It'll be worth sixpence. "

Anne shook her head. "Twopence, " she repeated firmly. "Nobody will paymore than twopence. "

"And now there's Jenny, " said Mr Wimbush. "Jenny, " he said, raising hisvoice, "what will you do?"

Denis thought of suggesting that she might draw caricatures at sixpencean execution, but decided it would be wiser to go on feigning ignoranceof her talent. His mind reverted to the red notebook. Could it really betrue that he looked like that?

"What will I do, " Jenny echoed, "what will I do?" She frownedthoughtfully for a moment; then her face brightened and she smiled. "When I was young, " she said, "I learnt to play the drums. "

"The drums?"

Jenny nodded, and, in proof of her assertion, agitated her knifeand fork, like a pair of drumsticks, over her plate. "If there's anyopportunity of playing the drums... " she began. 

"But of course, " said Anne, "there's any amount of opportunity. We'llput you down definitely for the drums. That's the lot, " she added. 

"And a very good lot too, " said Gombauld. "I look forward to my BankHoliday. It ought to be gay. "

"It ought indeed, " Mr Scogan assented. "But you may rest assured that itwon't be. No holiday is ever anything but a disappointment. "

"Come, come, " protested Gombauld. "My holiday at Crome isn't being adisappointment. "

"Isn't it?" Anne turned an ingenuous mask towards him. 

"No, it isn't, " he answered. 

"I'm delighted to hear it. "

"It's in the very nature of things, " Mr. Scogan went on; "our holidayscan't help being disappointments. Reflect for a moment. What is aholiday? The ideal, the Platonic Holiday of Holidays is surely acomplete and absolute change. You agree with me in my definition?" Mr. Scogan glanced from face to face round the table; his sharp nose movedin a series of rapid jerks through all the points of the compass. Therewas no sign of dissent; he continued: "A complete and absolute change;very well. But isn't a complete and absolute change precisely the thingwe can never have--never, in the very nature of things?" Mr. Scoganonce more looked rapidly about him. "Of course it is. As ourselves, asspecimens of Homo Sapiens, as members of a society, how can we hope tohave anything like an absolute change? We are tied down by the frightfullimitation of our human faculties, by the notions which society imposeson us through our fatal suggestibility, by our own personalities. Forus, a complete holiday is out of the question. Some of us strugglemanfully to take one, but we never succeed, if I may be allowed toexpress myself metaphorically, we never succeed in getting farther thanSouthend. "

"You're depressing, " said Anne. 

"I mean to be, " Mr. Scogan replied, and, expanding the fingers of hisright hand, he went on: "Look at me, for example. What sort of a holidaycan I take? In endowing me with passions and faculties Nature has beenhorribly niggardly. The full range of human potentialities is inany case distressingly limited; my range is a limitation within alimitation. Out of the ten octaves that make up the human instrument, I can compass perhaps two. Thus, while I may have a certain amountof intelligence, I have no aesthetic sense; while I possess themathematical faculty, I am wholly without the religious emotions; whileI am naturally addicted to venery, I have little ambition and am notat all avaricious. Education has further limited my scope. Having beenbrought up in society, I am impregnated with its laws; not only shouldI be afraid of taking a holiday from them, I should also feel it painfulto try to do so. In a word, I have a conscience as well as a fear ofgaol. Yes, I know it by experience. How often have I tried to takeholidays, to get away from myself, my own boring nature, my insufferablemental surroundings!" Mr. Scogan sighed. "But always withoutsuccess, " he added, "always without success. In my youth I was alwaysstriving--how hard!--to feel religiously and aesthetically. Here, saidI to myself, are two tremendously important and exciting emotions. Lifewould be richer, warmer, brighter, altogether more amusing, if I couldfeel them. I try to feel them. I read the works of the mystics. Theyseemed to me nothing but the most deplorable claptrap--as indeed theyalways must to anyone who does not feel the same emotion as the authorsfelt when they were writing. For it is the emotion that matters. Thewritten work is simply an attempt to express emotion, which is in itselfinexpressible, in terms of intellect and logic. The mystic objectifiesa rich feeling in the pit of the stomach into a cosmology. For othermystics that cosmology is a symbol of the rich feeling. For theunreligious it is a symbol of nothing, and so appears merely grotesque. A melancholy fact! But I divagate. " Mr. Scogan checked himself. "So muchfor the religious emotion. As for the aesthetic--I was at even greaterpains to cultivate that. I have looked at all the right works of artin every part of Europe. There was a time when, I venture to believe, I knew more about Taddeo da Poggibonsi, more about the cryptic Amicodi Taddeo, even than Henry does. To-day, I am happy to say, I haveforgotten most of the knowledge I then so laboriously acquired; butwithout vanity I can assert that it was prodigious. I don't pretend, ofcourse, to know anything about nigger sculpture or the later seventeenthcentury in Italy; but about all the periods that were fashionable before1900 I am, or was, omniscient. Yes, I repeat it, omniscient. But didthat fact make me any more appreciative of art in general? It did not. Confronted by a picture, of which I could tell you all the known andpresumed history--the date when it was painted, the character of thepainter, the influences that had gone to make it what it was--I feltnone of that strange excitement and exaltation which is, as I aminformed by those who do feel it, the true aesthetic emotion. I feltnothing but a certain interest in the subject of the picture; or moreoften, when the subject was hackneyed and religious, I felt nothing buta great weariness of spirit. Nevertheless, I must have gone on lookingat pictures for ten years before I would honestly admit to myself thatthey merely bored me. Since then I have given up all attempts to takea holiday. I go on cultivating my old stale daily self in the resignedspirit with which a bank clerk performs from ten till six his dailytask. A holiday, indeed! I'm sorry for you, Gombauld, if you still lookforward to having a holiday. "

Gombauld shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps, " he said, "my standardsaren't as elevated as yours. But personally I found the war quite asthorough a holiday from all the ordinary decencies and sanities, all thecommon emotions and preoccupations, as I ever want to have. "

"Yes, " Mr. Scogan thoughtfully agreed. "Yes, the war was certainlysomething of a holiday. It was a step beyond Southend; it wasWeston-super-Mare; it was almost Ilfracombe. "

CHAPTER XXVI. 

A little canvas village of tents and booths had sprung up, just beyondthe boundaries of the garden, in the green expanse of the park. A crowdthronged its streets, the men dressed mostly in black--holiday best, funeral best--the women in pale muslins. Here and there tricolourbunting hung inert. In the midst of the canvas town, scarlet and goldand crystal, the merry-go-round glittered in the sun. The balloon-manwalked among the crowd, and above his head, like a huge, invertedbunch of many-coloured grapes, the balloons strained upwards. With ascythe-like motion the boat-swings reaped the air, and from the funnelof the engine which worked the roundabout rose a thin, scarcely waveringcolumn of black smoke. 

Denis had climbed to the top of one of Sir Ferdinando's towers, andthere, standing on the sun-baked leads, his elbows resting on theparapet, he surveyed the scene. The steam-organ sent up prodigiousmusic. The clashing of automatic cymbals beat out with inexorableprecision the rhythm of piercingly sounded melodies. The harmonies werelike a musical shattering of glass and brass. Far down in the bassthe Last Trump was hugely blowing, and with such persistence, suchresonance, that its alternate tonic and dominant detached themselvesfrom the rest of the music and made a tune of their own, a loud, monotonous see-saw. 

Denis leaned over the gulf of swirling noise. If he threw himself overthe parapet, the noise would surely buoy him up, keep him suspended, bobbing, as a fountain balances a ball on its breaking crest. Anotherfancy came to him, this time in metrical form. 

"My soul is a thin white sheet of parchment stretched Over a bubblingcauldron. "

Bad, bad. But he liked the idea of something thin and distended beingblown up from underneath. 

"My soul is a thin tent of gut... "

or better--

"My soul is a pale, tenuous membrane... "

That was pleasing: a thin, tenuous membrane. It had the right anatomicalquality. Tight blown, quivering in the blast of noisy life. It was timefor him to descend from the serene empyrean of words into the actualvortex. He went down slowly. "My soul is a thin, tenuous membrane... "

On the terrace stood a knot of distinguished visitors. There was oldLord Moleyn, like a caricature of an English milord in a French comicpaper: a long man, with a long nose and long, drooping moustaches andlong teeth of old ivory, and lower down, absurdly, a short covert coat, and below that long, long legs cased in pearl-grey trousers--legs thatbent unsteadily at the knee and gave a kind of sideways wobble ashe walked. Beside him, short and thick-set, stood Mr. Callamay, thevenerable conservative statesman, with a face like a Roman bust, andshort white hair. Young girls didn't much like going for motor drivesalone with Mr. Callamay; and of old Lord Moleyn one wondered why hewasn't living in gilded exile on the island of Capri among the otherdistinguished persons who, for one reason or another, find it impossibleto live in England. They were talking to Anne, laughing, the oneprofoundly, the other hootingly. 

A black silk balloon towing a black-and-white striped parachute provedto be old Mrs. Budge from the big house on the other side of the valley. She stood low on the ground, and the spikes of her black-and-whitesunshade menaced the eyes of Priscilla Wimbush, who towered over her--amassive figure dressed in purple and topped with a queenly toque onwhich the nodding black plumes recalled the splendours of a first-classParisian funeral. 

Denis peeped at them discreetly from the window of the morning-room. His eyes were suddenly become innocent, childlike, unprejudiced. Theyseemed, these people, inconceivably fantastic. And yet they reallyexisted, they functioned by themselves, they were conscious, theyhad minds. Moreover, he was like them. Could one believe it? But theevidence of the red notebook was conclusive. 

It would have been polite to go and say, "How d'you do?" But at themoment Denis did not want to talk, could not have talked. His soul was atenuous, tremulous, pale membrane. He would keep its sensibility intactand virgin as long as he could. Cautiously he crept out by a sidedoor and made his way down towards the park. His soul fluttered as heapproached the noise and movement of the fair. He paused for a moment onthe brink, then stepped in and was engulfed. 

Hundreds of people, each with his own private face and all of them real, separate, alive: the thought was disquieting. He paid twopence and sawthe Tatooed Woman; twopence more, the Largest Rat in the World. From thehome of the Rat he emerged just in time to see a hydrogen-filled balloonbreak loose for home. A child howled up after it; but calmly, a perfectsphere of flushed opal, it mounted, mounted. Denis followed it with hiseyes until it became lost in the blinding sunlight. If he could but sendhis soul to follow it!... 

He sighed, stuck his steward's rosette in his buttonhole, and started topush his way, aimlessly but officially, through the crowd. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Mr. Scogan had been accommodated in a little canvas hut. Dressed in ablack skirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchieftied round his black wig, he looked--sharp-nosed, brown, andwrinkled--like the Bohemian Hag of Frith's Derby Day. A placard pinnedto the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of"Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana. " Seated at a table, Mr. Scoganreceived his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movementof the finger that they were to sit down opposite him and to extendtheir hands for his inspection. He then examined the palm that waspresented him, using a magnifying glass and a pair of horn spectacles. He had a terrifying way of shaking his head, frowning and clicking withhis tongue as he looked at the lines. Sometimes he would whisper, asthough to himself, "Terrible, terrible!" or "God preserve us!" sketchingout the sign of the cross as he uttered the words. The clients who camein laughing grew suddenly grave; they began to take the witch seriously. She was a formidable-looking woman; could it be, was it possible, thatthere was something in this sort of thing after all? After all, theythought, as the hag shook her head over their hands, after all... Andthey waited, with an uncomfortably beating heart, for the oracle tospeak. After a long and silent inspection, Mr. Scogan would suddenlylook up and ask, in a hoarse whisper, some horrifying question, such as, "Have you ever been hit on the head with a hammer by a young man withred hair?" When the answer was in the negative, which it could hardlyfail to be, Mr. Scogan would nod several times, saying, "I was afraidso. Everything is still to come, still to come, though it can't bevery far off now. " Sometimes, after a long examination, he would justwhisper, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise, " and refuseto divulge any details of a future too appalling to be envisaged withoutdespair. Sesostris had a success of horror. People stood in a queueoutside the witch's booth waiting for the privilege of hearing sentencepronounced upon them. 

Denis, in the course of his round, looked with curiosity at this crowdof suppliants before the shrine of the oracle. He had a great desireto see how Mr. Scogan played his part. The canvas booth was a rickety, ill-made structure. Between its walls and its sagging roof were longgaping chinks and crannies. Denis went to the tea-tent and borrowed awooden bench and a small Union Jack. With these he hurried back to thebooth of Sesostris. Setting down the bench at the back of the booth, he climbed up, and with a great air of busy efficiency began to tie theUnion Jack to the top of one of the tent-poles. Through the crannies inthe canvas he could see almost the whole of the interior of the tent. Mr. Scogan's bandana-covered head was just below him; his terrifyingwhispers came clearly up. Denis looked and listened while the witchprophesied financial losses, death by apoplexy, destruction by air-raidsin the next war. 

"Is there going to be another war?" asked the old lady to whom he hadpredicted this end. 

"Very soon, " said Mr. Scogan, with an air of quiet confidence. 

The old lady was succeeded by a girl dressed in white muslin, garnishedwith pink ribbons. She was wearing a broad hat, so that Denis could notsee her face; but from her figure and the roundness of her bare armshe judged her young and pleasing. Mr. Scogan looked at her hand, thenwhispered, "You are still virtuous. "

The young lady giggled and exclaimed, "Oh, lor'!"

"But you will not remain so for long, " added Mr. Scogan sepulchrally. The young lady giggled again. "Destiny, which interests itself in smallthings no less than in great, has announced the fact upon your hand. "Mr. Scogan took up the magnifying-glass and began once more to examinethe white palm. "Very interesting, " he said, as though to himself--"veryinteresting. It's as clear as day. " He was silent. 

"What's clear?" asked the girl. 

"I don't think I ought to tell you. " Mr. Scogan shook his head; thependulous brass ear-rings which he had screwed on to his ears tinkled. 

"Please, please!" she implored. 

The witch seemed to ignore her remark. "Afterwards, it's not at allclear. The fates don't say whether you will settle down to married lifeand have four children or whether you will try to go on the cinemaand have none. They are only specific about this one rather crucialincident. "

"What is it? What is it? Oh, do tell me!"

The white muslin figure leant eagerly forward. 

Mr. Scogan sighed. "Very well, " he said, "if you must know, youmust know. But if anything untoward happens you must blame yourown curiosity. Listen. Listen. " He lifted up a sharp, claw-nailedforefinger. "This is what the fates have written. Next Sunday afternoonat six o'clock you will be sitting on the second stile on the footpaththat leads from the church to the lower road. At that moment a man willappear walking along the footpath. " Mr. Scogan looked at her hand againas though to refresh his memory of the details of the scene. "A man, " herepeated--"a small man with a sharp nose, not exactly good looking norprecisely young, but fascinating. " He lingered hissingly over the word. "He will ask you, 'Can you tell me the way to Paradise?' and you willanswer, 'Yes, I'll show you, ' and walk with him down towards the littlehazel copse. I cannot read what will happen after that. " There was asilence. 

"Is it really true?" asked white muslin. 

The witch gave a shrug of the shoulders. "I merely tell you what I readin your hand. Good afternoon. That will be sixpence. Yes, I have change. Thank you. Good afternoon. "

Denis stepped down from the bench; tied insecurely and crookedly to thetentpole, the Union Jack hung limp on the windless air. "If only I coulddo things like that!" he thought, as he carried the bench back to thetea-tent. 

Anne was sitting behind a long table filling thick white cups from anurn. A neat pile of printed sheets lay before her on the table. Denistook one of them and looked at it affectionately. It was his poem. Theyhad printed five hundred copies, and very nice the quarto broadsheetslooked. 

"Have you sold many?" he asked in a casual tone. 

Anne put her head on one side deprecatingly. "Only three so far, I'mafraid. But I'm giving a free copy to everyone who spends more than ashilling on his tea. So in any case it's having a circulation. "

Denis made no reply, but walked slowly away. He looked at the broadsheetin his hand and read the lines to himself relishingly as he walkedalong:

"This day of roundabouts and swings, Struck weights, shied cocoa-nuts, tossed rings, Switchbacks, Aunt Sallies, and all such small Highjinks--you call it ferial? A holiday? But paper noses Sniffed theartificial roses Of round Venetian cheeks through half Each carnivalyear, and masks might laugh At things the naked face for shame Wouldblush at--laugh and think no blame. A holiday? But Galba showedElephants on an airy road; Jumbo trod the tightrope then, And in thecircus armed men Stabbed home for sport and died to break Those dullimperatives that make A prison of every working day, Where all mustdrudge and all obey. Sing Holiday! You do not know How to be free. TheRussian snow flowered with bright blood whose roses spread Petals offading, fading red That died into the snow again, Into the virgin snow;and men From all ancient bonds were freed. Old law, old custom, and oldcreed, Old right and wrong there bled to death; The frozen air receivedtheir breath, A little smoke that died away; And round about them wherethey lay The snow bloomed roses. Blood was there A red gay flower andonly fair. Sing Holiday! Beneath the Tree Of Innocence and Liberty, Paper Nose and Red Cockade Dance within the magic shade That makes themdrunken, merry, and strong To laugh and sing their ferial song: 'Free, free... !' But Echo answers Faintly to the laughing dancers, 'Free'--andfaintly laughs, and still, Within the hollows of the hill, Faintlierlaughs and whispers, 'Free, ' Fadingly, diminishingly: 'Free, ' andlaughter faints away... Sing Holiday! Sing Holiday!"

He folded the sheet carefully and put it in his pocket. The thing hadits merits. Oh, decidedly, decidedly! But how unpleasant the crowdsmelt! He lit a cigarette. The smell of cows was preferable. He passedthrough the gate in the park wall into the garden. The swimming-pool wasa centre of noise and activity. 

"Second Heat in the Young Ladies' Championship. " It was the politevoice of Henry Wimbush. A crowd of sleek, seal-like figures in blackbathing-dresses surrounded him. His grey bowler hat, smooth, round, andmotionless in the midst of a moving sea, was an island of aristocraticcalm. 

Holding his tortoise-shell-rimmed pince-nez an inch or two in front ofhis eyes, he read out names from a list. 

"Miss Dolly Miles, Miss Rebecca Balister, Miss Doris Gabell... "

Five young persons ranged themselves on the brink. From their seats ofhonour at the other end of the pool, old Lord Moleyn and Mr. Callamaylooked on with eager interest. 

Henry Wimbush raised his hand. There was an expectant silence. "When Isay 'Go, ' go. Go!" he said. There was an almost simultaneous splash. 

Denis pushed his way through the spectators. Somebody plucked him by thesleeve; he looked down. It was old Mrs. Budge. 

"Delighted to see you again, Mr. Stone, " she said in her rich, huskyvoice. She panted a little as she spoke, like a short-winded lap-dog. It was Mrs. Budge who, having read in the "Daily Mirror" that theGovernment needed peach stones--what they needed them for she neverknew--had made the collection of peach stones her peculiar "bit" of warwork. She had thirty-six peach trees in her walled garden, as well asfour hot-houses in which trees could be forced, so that she was ableto eat peaches practically the whole year round. In 1916 she ate 4200peaches, and sent the stones to the Government. In 1917 the militaryauthorities called up three of her gardeners, and what with this and thefact that it was a bad year for wall fruit, she only managed to eat 2900peaches during that crucial period of the national destinies. In 1918she did rather better, for between January 1st and the date of theArmistice she ate 3300 peaches. Since the Armistice she had relaxed herefforts; now she did not eat more than two or three peaches a day. Herconstitution, she complained, had suffered; but it had suffered for agood cause. 

Denis answered her greeting by a vague and polite noise. 

"So nice to see the young people enjoying themselves, " Mrs. Budge wenton. "And the old people too, for that matter. Look at old Lord Moleynand dear Mr. Callamay. Isn't it delightful to see the way they enjoythemselves?"

Denis looked. He wasn't sure whether it was so very delightful afterall. Why didn't they go and watch the sack races? The two old gentlemenwere engaged at the moment in congratulating the winner of the race; itseemed an act of supererogatory graciousness; for, after all, she hadonly won a heat. 

"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" said Mrs. Budge huskily, and pantedtwo or three times. 

"Yes, " Denis nodded agreement. Sixteen, slender, but nubile, he said tohimself, and laid up the phrase in his memory as a happy one. Old Mr. Callamay had put on his spectacles to congratulate the victor, and LordMoleyn, leaning forward over his walking-stick, showed his long ivoryteeth, hungrily smiling. 

"Capital performance, capital, " Mr. Callamay was saying in his deepvoice. 

The victor wriggled with embarrassment. She stood with her hands behindher back, rubbing one foot nervously on the other. Her wet bathing-dressshone, a torso of black polished marble. 

"Very good indeed, " said Lord Moleyn. His voice seemed to come from justbehind his teeth, a toothy voice. It was as though a dog should suddenlybegin to speak. He smiled again, Mr. Callamay readjusted his spectacles. 

"When I say 'Go, ' go. Go!"

Splash! The third heat had started. 

"Do you know, I never could learn to swim, " said Mrs. Budge. 

"Really?"

"But I used to be able to float. "

Denis imagined her floating--up and down, up and down on a great greenswell. A blown black bladder; no, that wasn't good, that wasn't good atall. A new winner was being congratulated. She was atrociously stubbyand fat. The last one, long and harmoniously, continuously curved fromknee to breast, had been an Eve by Cranach; but this, this one was a badRubens. 

"... Go--go--go!" Henry Wimbush's polite level voice once more pronouncedthe formula. Another batch of young ladies dived in. 

Grown a little weary of sustaining a conversation with Mrs. Budge, Denis conveniently remembered that his duties as a steward called himelsewhere. He pushed out through the lines of spectators and made hisway along the path left clear behind them. He was thinking again thathis soul was a pale, tenuous membrane, when he was startled by hearinga thin, sibilant voice, speaking apparently from just above his head, pronounce the single word "Disgusting!"

He looked up sharply. The path along which he was walking passed underthe lee of a wall of clipped yew. Behind the hedge the ground slopedsteeply up towards the foot of the terrace and the house; for onestanding on the higher ground it was easy to look over the dark barrier. Looking up, Denis saw two heads overtopping the hedge immediately abovehim. He recognised the iron mask of Mr. Bodiham and the pale, colourlessface of his wife. They were looking over his head, over the heads of thespectators, at the swimmers in the pond. 

"Disgusting!" Mrs. Bodiham repeated, hissing softly. 

The rector turned up his iron mask towards the solid cobalt of the sky. "How long?" he said, as though to himself; "how long?" He lowered hiseyes again, and they fell on Denis's upturned curious face. There was anabrupt movement, and Mr. And Mrs. Bodiham popped out of sight behind thehedge. 

Denis continued his promenade. He wandered past the merry-go-round, through the thronged streets of the canvas village; the membrane ofhis soul flapped tumultuously in the noise and laughter. In a roped-offspace beyond, Mary was directing the children's sports. Little creaturesseethed round about her, making a shrill, tinny clamour; othersclustered about the skirts and trousers of their parents. Mary's facewas shining in the heat; with an immense output of energy she started athree-legged race. Denis looked on in admiration. 

"You're wonderful, " he said, coming up behind her and touching her onthe arm. "I've never seen such energy. "

She turned towards him a face, round, red, and honest as the settingsun; the golden bell of her hair swung silently as she moved her headand quivered to rest. 

"Do you know, Denis, " she said, in a low, serious voice, gasping alittle as she spoke--"do you know that there's a woman here who has hadthree children in thirty-one months?"

"Really, " said Denis, making rapid mental calculations. 

"It's appalling. I've been telling her about the Malthusian League. Onereally ought... "

But a sudden violent renewal of the metallic yelling announced the factthat somebody had won the race. Mary became once more the centre of adangerous vortex. It was time, Denis thought, to move on; he might beasked to do something if he stayed too long. 

He turned back towards the canvas village. The thought of tea wasmaking itself insistent in his mind. Tea, tea, tea. But the tea-tent washorribly thronged. Anne, with an unusual expression of grimness on herflushed face, was furiously working the handle of the urn; the brownliquid spurted incessantly into the proffered cups. Portentous, inthe farther corner of the tent, Priscilla, in her royal toque, wasencouraging the villagers. In a momentary lull Denis could hear herdeep, jovial laughter and her manly voice. Clearly, he told himself, this was no place for one who wanted tea. He stood irresolute at theentrance to the tent. A beautiful thought suddenly came to him; if hewent back to the house, went unobtrusively, without being observed, ifhe tiptoed into the dining-room and noiselessly opened the little doorsof the sideboard--ah, then! In the cool recess within he would findbottles and a siphon; a bottle of crystal gin and a quart of soda water, and then for the cups that inebriate as well as cheer... 

A minute later he was walking briskly up the shady yew-tree walk. Withinthe house it was deliciously quiet and cool. Carrying his well-filledtumbler with care, he went into the library. There, the glass on thecorner of the table beside him, he settled into a chair with a volume ofSainte-Beuve. There was nothing, he found, like a Causerie du Lundi forsettling and soothing the troubled spirits. That tenuous membrane of hishad been too rudely buffeted by the afternoon's emotions; it required arest. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Towards sunset the fair itself became quiescent. It was the hour for thedancing to begin. At one side of the village of tents a space had beenroped off. Acetylene lamps, hung round it on posts, cast a piercingwhite light. In one corner sat the band, and, obedient to its scrapingand blowing, two or three hundred dancers trampled across the dryground, wearing away the grass with their booted feet. Round this patchof all but daylight, alive with motion and noise, the night seemedpreternaturally dark. Bars of light reached out into it, and every nowand then a lonely figure or a couple of lovers, interlaced, would crossthe bright shaft, flashing for a moment into visible existence, todisappear again as quickly and surprisingly as they had come. 

Denis stood by the entrance of the enclosure, watching the swaying, shuffling crowd. The slow vortex brought the couples round and roundagain before him, as though he were passing them in review. Therewas Priscilla, still wearing her queenly toque, still encouraging thevillagers--this time by dancing with one of the tenant farmers. Therewas Lord Moleyn, who had stayed on to the disorganised, passoverishmeal that took the place of dinner on this festal day; he one-steppedshamblingly, his bent knees more precariously wobbly than ever, with aterrified village beauty. Mr. Scogan trotted round with another. Marywas in the embrace of a young farmer of heroic proportions; she waslooking up at him, talking, as Denis could see, very seriously. Whatabout? he wondered. The Malthusian League, perhaps. Seated in the corneramong the band, Jenny was performing wonders of virtuosity upon thedrums. Her eyes shone, she smiled to herself. A whole subterranean lifeseemed to be expressing itself in those loud rat-tats, those long rollsand flourishes of drumming. Looking at her, Denis ruefully rememberedthe red notebook; he wondered what sort of a figure he was cutting now. But the sight of Anne and Gombauld swimming past--Anne with her eyesalmost shut and sleeping, as it were, on the sustaining wings ofmovement and music--dissipated these preoccupations. Male and femalecreated He them... There they were, Anne and Gombauld, and a hundredcouples more--all stepping harmoniously together to the old tune of Maleand Female created He them. But Denis sat apart; he alone lacked hiscomplementary opposite. They were all coupled but he; all but he... 

Somebody touched him on the shoulder and he looked up. It was HenryWimbush. 

"I never showed you our oaken drainpipes, " he said. "Some of the oneswe dug up are lying quite close to here. Would you like to come and seethem?"

Denis got up, and they walked off together into the darkness. The musicgrew fainter behind them. Some of the higher notes faded out altogether. Jenny's drumming and the steady sawing of the bass throbbed on, tunelessand meaningless in their ears. Henry Wimbush halted. 

"Here we are, " he said, and, taking an electric torch out of his pocket, he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sections of tree trunk, scooped out into the semblance of pipes, which were lying forlornly in alittle depression in the ground. 

"Very interesting, " said Denis, with a rather tepid enthusiasm. 

They sat down on the grass. A faint white glare, rising from behind abelt of trees, indicated the position of the dancing-floor. The musicwas nothing but a muffled rhythmic pulse. 

"I shall be glad, " said Henry Wimbush, "when this function comes at lastto an end. "

"I can believe it. "

"I do not know how it is, " Mr. Wimbush continued, "but the spectacleof numbers of my fellow-creatures in a state of agitation moves in mea certain weariness, rather than any gaiety or excitement. The fact is, they don't very much interest me. They're aren't in my line. You followme? I could never take much interest, for example, in a collection ofpostage stamps. Primitives or seventeenth-century books--yes. They aremy line. But stamps, no. I don't know anything about them; they're notmy line. They don't interest me, they give me no emotion. It's ratherthe same with people, I'm afraid. I'm more at home with these pipes. "He jerked his head sideways towards the hollowed logs. "The trouble withthe people and events of the present is that you never know anythingabout them. What do I know of contemporary politics? Nothing. What do Iknow of the people I see round about me? Nothing. What they think ofme or of anything else in the world, what they will do in five minutes'time, are things I can't guess at. For all I know, you may suddenly jumpup and try to murder me in a moment's time. "

"Come, come, " said Denis. 

"True, " Mr. Wimbush continued, "the little I know about your past iscertainly reassuring. But I know nothing of your present, and neitheryou nor I know anything of your future. It's appalling; in livingpeople, one is dealing with unknown and unknowable quantities. One canonly hope to find out anything about them by a long series of the mostdisagreeable and boring human contacts, involving a terrible expenseof time. It's the same with current events; how can I find out anythingabout them except by devoting years to the most exhausting first-handstudy, involving once more an endless number of the most unpleasantcontacts? No, give me the past. It doesn't change; it's all therein black and white, and you can get to know about it comfortably anddecorously and, above all, privately--by reading. By reading I know agreat deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr. Johnson; a few weekshave made me thoroughly acquainted with these interesting characters, and I have been spared the tedious and revolting process of getting toknow them by personal contact, which I should have to do if they wereliving now. How gay and delightful life would be if one could get ridof all the human contacts! Perhaps, in the future, when machines haveattained to a state of perfection--for I confess that I am, likeGodwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, the perfectibilityof machinery--then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, likemyself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by thedelicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely securefrom any human intrusion. It is a beautiful thought. "

"Beautiful, " Denis agreed. "But what about the desirable human contacts, like love and friendship?"

The black silhouette against the darkness shook its head. "The pleasureseven of these contacts are much exaggerated, " said the polite levelvoice. "It seems to me doubtful whether they are equal to the pleasuresof private reading and contemplation. Human contacts have been so highlyvalued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishmentand because books were scarce and difficult to reproduce. The world, youmust remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes moreand more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of peoplewill discover that books will give them all the pleasures of sociallife and none of its intolerable tedium. At present people in searchof pleasure naturally tend to congregate in large herds and to make anoise; in future their natural tendency will be to seek solitude andquiet. The proper study of mankind is books. "

"I sometimes think that it may be, " said Denis; he was wondering if Anneand Gombauld were still dancing together. 

"Instead of which, " said Mr. Wimbush, with a sigh, "I must go and see ifall is well on the dancing-floor. " They got up and began to walk slowlytowards the white glare. "If all these people were dead, " Henry Wimbushwent on, "this festivity would be extremely agreeable. Nothing would bepleasanter than to read in a well-written book of an open-air ball thattook place a century ago. How charming! one would say; how prettyand how amusing! But when the ball takes place to-day, when one findsoneself involved in it, then one sees the thing in its true light. Itturns out to be merely this. " He waved his hand in the direction ofthe acetylene flares. "In my youth, " he went on after a pause, "Ifound myself, quite fortuitously, involved in a series of the mostphantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist could have made hisfortune out of them, and even if I were to tell you, in my bald style, the details of these adventures, you would be amazed at the romantictale. But I assure you, while they were happening--these romanticadventures--they seemed to me no more and no less exciting than anyother incident of actual life. To climb by night up a rope-ladder to asecond-floor window in an old house in Toledo seemed to me, while I wasactually performing this rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, asmuch to be taken for granted, as--how shall I put it?--as quotidian ascatching the 8. 52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Monday morning. Adventures and romance only take on their adventurous and romanticqualities at second-hand. Live them, and they are just a slice of lifelike the rest. In literature they become as charming as this dismal ballwould be if we were celebrating its tercentenary. " They had come tothe entrance of the enclosure and stood there, blinking in the dazzlinglight. "Ah, if only we were!" Henry Wimbush added. 

Anne and Gombauld were still dancing together. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

It was after ten o'clock. The dancers had already dispersed and thelast lights were being put out. To-morrow the tents would be struck, thedismantled merry-go-round would be packed into waggons and carted away. An expanse of worn grass, a shabby brown patch in the wide green of thepark, would be all that remained. Crome Fair was over. 

By the edge of the pool two figures lingered. 

"No, no, no, " Anne was saying in a breathless whisper, leaningbackwards, turning her head from side to side in an effort to escapeGombauld's kisses. "No, please. No. " Her raised voice had becomeimperative. 

Gombauld relaxed his embrace a little. "Why not?" he said. "I will. "

With a sudden effort Anne freed herself. "You won't, " she retorted. "You've tried to take the most unfair advantage of me. "

"Unfair advantage?" echoed Gombauld in genuine surprise. 

"Yes, unfair advantage. You attack me after I've been dancing for twohours, while I'm still reeling drunk with the movement, when I've lostmy head, when I've got no mind left but only a rhythmical body! It's asbad as making love to someone you've drugged or intoxicated. "

Gombauld laughed angrily. "Call me a White Slaver and have done withit. "

"Luckily, " said Anne, "I am now completely sobered, and if you try andkiss me again I shall box your ears. Shall we take a few turns round thepool?" she added. "The night is delicious. "

For answer Gombauld made an irritated noise. They paced off slowly, sideby side. 

"What I like about the painting of Degas... " Anne began in her mostdetached and conversational tone. 

"Oh, damn Degas!" Gombauld was almost shouting. 

From where he stood, leaning in an attitude of despair against theparapet of the terrace, Denis had seen them, the two pale figures ina patch of moonlight, far down by the pool's edge. He had seen thebeginning of what promised to be an endless passionate embracement, and at the sight he had fled. It was too much; he couldn't stand it. Inanother moment, he felt, he would have burst into irrepressible tears. 

Dashing blindly into the house, he almost ran into Mr. Scogan, who waswalking up and down the hall smoking a final pipe. 

"Hullo!" said Mr. Scogan, catching him by the arm; dazed and hardlyconscious of what he was doing or where he was, Denis stood there fora moment like a somnambulist. "What's the matter?" Mr. Scogan went on. "you look disturbed, distressed, depressed. "

Denis shook his head without replying. 

"Worried about the cosmos, eh?" Mr. Scogan patted him on the arm. "Iknow the feeling, " he said. "It's a most distressing symptom. 'What'sthe point of it all? All is vanity. What's the good of continuing tofunction if one's doomed to be snuffed out at last along with everythingelse?' Yes, yes. I know exactly how you feel. It's most distressing ifone allows oneself to be distressed. But then why allow oneself to bedistressed? After all, we all know that there's no ultimate point. Butwhat difference does that make?"

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

Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him. "Itmakes 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 allthe consolations of philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between histeeth and resumed his meditative pacing. "Under any circumstances, " herepeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true?And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burneditself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went tobed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep. 

Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silkpyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards onhis bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle which hehad left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. Helooked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, hisdry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind, and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He gotup, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the passage, and beganto mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants'quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right heopened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-darkcupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and oldleather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with hishands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads ofthe 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 wasover him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a momenthe was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourlesslandscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feetbelow. 

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

"What ARE you doing, Denis?" questioned a voice from somewhere veryclose behind him. 

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

"Are you ill?"

In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of thetower, he saw something he had not previously noticed--an oblongshape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that firstmemorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was asort of manifestation of fidelity. 

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

Denis laughed melodramatically. "What, indeed!" he said. If she hadn'twoken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of thetower; he was certain of that, now. 

"You hadn't got designs on me, I hope?" Mary inquired, jumping toorapidly to conclusions. 

"I didn't know you were here, " said Denis, laughing more bitterly andartificially than before. 

"What IS the matter, Denis?"

He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went onlaughing 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 runningher fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything, everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, hissuicide--as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He hadsolemnly promised never to think of self-destruction again. And now hissoul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathythat Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receivingsympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; itwas also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about hismiseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in returneverything, or very nearly everything, about her own. 

"Poor Mary!" He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessedthat Ivor wasn't precisely a monument of constancy. 

"Well, " she concluded, "one must put a good face on it. " She wanted tocry, but she wouldn't allow herself to be weak. There was a silence. 

"Do you think, " asked Denis hesitatingly--"do you really think thatshe... That Gombauld... "

"I'm sure of it, " Mary answered decisively. There was another longpause. 

"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 themost 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 firmself-possession. "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 thedarkness, 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 creakingstairs. His room was dark; the candle had long ago guttered toextinction. He got into bed and fell asleep almost at once. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

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

"Come in, " he mumbled, without opening his eyes. The latch clicked, ahand 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 youremember?"

"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 villagepost office. Satisfaction glowed within him as he returned. He had senta long telegram, which would in a few hours evoke an answer orderinghim 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 feltpleased with himself. It was with a whetted appetite that he came in tobreakfast. 

"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. "

"One is only happy in action, " Denis enunciated, thinking of thetelegram. 

He looked out of the window. Great florid baroque clouds floated highin the blue heaven. A wind stirred among the trees, and their shakenfoliage twinkled and glittered like metal in the sun. Everything seemedmarvellously beautiful. At the thought that he would soon be leavingall this beauty he felt a momentary pang; but he comforted himself byrecollecting how decisively he was acting. 

"Action, " he repeated aloud, and going over to the sideboard he helpedhimself 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 assaultsof Mr. Scogan, who showed an unappeased desire to go on talking aboutthe Universe. Secure behind the crackling pages, he meditated. Inthe light of this brilliant morning the emotions of last night seemedsomehow rather remote. And what if he had seen them embracing in themoonlight? 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 tobe aloof, disinterested, a mere friendly acquaintance. And even if heweren'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 at3. 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 makingarrangements for his own funeral. Train leaves Waterloo 3. 27. Noflowers... Mary was gone. No, he was blowed if he'd let himself behurried down to the Necropolis like this. He was blowed. The sight ofMr. Scogan looking out, with a hungry expression, from the drawing-roomwindow made him precipitately hoist the "Times" once more. For a longwhile he kept it hoisted. Lowering it at last to take another cautiouspeep at his surroundings, he found himself, with what astonishment!confronted by Anne's faint, amused, malicious smile. She was standingbefore him, --the woman who was a tree, --the swaying grace of hermovement arrested in a pose that seemed itself a movement. 

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked, when he had donegaping at her. 

"Oh, about half an hour, I suppose, " she said airily. "You were so verydeep in your paper--head over ears--I didn't like to disturb you. "

"You look lovely this morning, " Denis exclaimed. It was the first timehe 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, shethought, quite charming; and Gombauld's violent insistences were reallybecoming rather tiresome. "Why don't you wear white trousers?" sheasked. "I like you so much in white trousers. "

"They're at the wash, " Denis replied rather curtly. This white-trouserbusiness was all in the wrong spirit. He was just preparing a schemeto manoeuvre the conversation back to the proper path, when Mr. Scogansuddenly darted out of the house, crossed the terrace with clockworkrapidity, and came to a halt in front of the bench on which they wereseated. 

"To go on with our interesting conversation about the cosmos, " he began, "I become more and more convinced that the various parts of the concernare fundamentally discrete... But would you mind, Denis, moving a shadeto your right?" He wedged himself between them on the bench. "And ifyou 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 thetelegram arrived. Denis blushed guiltily as he took the orange envelopefrom the salver and tore it open. "Return at once. Urgent familybusiness. " 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 hispocket without saying anything about it? He looked up; Mary's large bluechina eyes were fixed upon him, seriously, penetratingly. He blushedmore 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 meansI shall have to go back to town at once. " He frowned at the telegramferociously. 

"But that's absurd, impossible, " cried Anne. She had been standing bythe window talking to Gombauld; but at Denis's words she came swayingacross 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. "Yousee, it's urgent family business, " he explained. 

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

"A mere coincidence, no doubt, " said Mary, brushing Mrs. Wimbush out ofthe conversation. "There's a very good train at 3. 27. " She looked at theclock on the mantelpiece. "You'll have nice time to pack. "

"I'll order the motor at once. " Henry Wimbush rang the bell. The funeralwas 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 abandonedhimself hopelessly, fatalistically to his destiny. This was what came ofaction, 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 andpack, " she said. 

Obediently Denis left the room. Never again, he said to himself, neveragain would he do anything decisive. Camlet, West Bowlby, Knipswich forTimpany, Spavin Delawarr; and then all the other stations; and then, finally, London. The thought of the journey appalled him. And what onearth was he going to do in London when he got there? He climbed wearilyup 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 tosee him go. Good-bye, good-bye. Mechanically he tapped the barometerthat hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left. Asudden smile lighted up his lugubrious face. 

"'It sinks and I am ready to depart, '" he said, quoting Landor with anexquisite aptness. He looked quickly round from face to face. Nobody hadnoticed. He climbed into the hearse.