Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley [read along books txt] 📗

Beings at Play, 3rd December ’19;” “A Party of Souls on their Way to a Higher Sphere, 21st May ’21.” Before examining the drawing on the obverse of each sheet, she turned it over to read the title. Try as she could⁠—and she tried hard⁠—Priscilla had never seen a vision or succeeded in establishing any communication with the Spirit World. She had to be content with the reported experiences of others.

“What have you done with the rest of your party?” she asked, looking up as Denis entered the room.

He explained. Anne had gone to bed, Ivor and Mary were still in the garden. He selected a book and a comfortable chair, and tried, as far as the disturbed state of his mind would permit him, to compose himself for an evening’s reading. The lamplight was utterly serene; there was no movement save the stir of Priscilla among her papers. All silent and all damned, 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 and scientific.

“It was so beautiful down in the garden! The trees, the scent of the flowers, 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 the piano and opened the lid.

“There were a great many meteorites,” said Mary to anyone who would listen. “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 a nightingale that was not there. Mary looked on and listened with parted lips. The others pursued their occupations, without appearing to be seriously disturbed. On this very July day, exactly three hundred and fifty years ago, Sir Ferdinando had eaten seven dozen oysters. The discovery of this fact gave Henry Wimbush a peculiar pleasure. He had a natural piety which made him delight in the celebration of memorial feasts. The three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the seven dozen oysters⁠ ⁠… He wished he had known before dinner; he would have ordered champagne.

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 find Anne’s nonappearance so simply accounted for. She had been vaguely suspicious, down there in the garden⁠—suspicious of what, she hardly knew; but there had seemed to be something a little louche in the way she had suddenly found herself alone with Ivor. Not that she minded, of course; far from it. But she didn’t like the idea that perhaps she was the victim of a put-up job.

“I do hope you’ll be better tomorrow,” she said, and she commiserated with Anne on all she had missed⁠—the garden, the stars, the scent of flowers, the meteorites through whose summer shower the earth was now passing, the rising moon and its gibbosity. And then they had had such interesting conversation. What about? About almost everything. Nature, art, science, poetry, the stars, spiritualism, the relations of the sexes, music, religion. Ivor, she thought, had an interesting mind.

The two young ladies parted affectionately.

XVIII

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

Mary had never been to a Roman Catholic service, thought it would be an interesting experience, and, when the car moved off through the great gates 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 6:18: “And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops”⁠—a sermon of immediately local interest. For the past two years the problem of the War Memorial had exercised the minds of all those in Crome who had enough leisure, or mental energy, or party spirit to think of such things. Henry Wimbush was all for a library⁠—a library of local literature, stocked with county histories, old maps of the district, monographs on the local antiquities, dialect dictionaries, handbooks of the local geology and natural history. He liked to think of the villagers, inspired by such reading, making up parties of a Sunday afternoon to look for fossils and flint arrowheads. The villagers themselves favoured the idea of a memorial reservoir and water supply. But the busiest and most articulate party followed Mr. Bodiham in demanding something religious in character⁠—a second lich-gate, for example, a stained-glass window, a monument of marble, or, if possible, all three. So far, however, nothing had been done, partly because the memorial committee had never been able to agree, partly for the more cogent reason that too little money had been subscribed to carry out any of the proposed schemes. Every three or four months Mr. Bodiham preached a sermon on the subject. His last had been delivered in March; it was high 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 passed to temples and churches in general. What were the characteristics of these buildings dedicated to