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CHAPTER XX.
Ivor was gone. Lounging behind the wind-screen in his yellow sedan he
was whirling across rural England. Social and amorous engagements of the
most urgent character called him from hall to baronial hall, from castle
to castle, from Elizabethan manor-house to Georgian mansion, over
the whole expanse of the kingdom. To-day in Somerset, to-morrow in
Warwickshire, on Saturday in the West riding, by Tuesday morning in
Argyll—Ivor never rested. The whole summer through, from the
beginning of July till the end of September, he devoted himself to his
engagements; he was a martyr to them. In the autumn he went back to
London for a holiday. Crome had been a little incident, an evanescent
bubble on the stream of his life; it belonged already to the past. By
tea-time he would be at Gobley, and there would be Zenobia's welcoming
smile. And on Thursday morning—but that was a long, long way ahead. He
would think of Thursday morning when Thursday morning arrived. Meanwhile
there was Gobley, meanwhile Zenobia.
In the visitor's book at Crome Ivor had left, according to his
invariable custom in these cases, a poem. He had improvised it
magisterially in the ten minutes preceding his departure. Denis and Mr.
Scogan strolled back together from the gates of the courtyard, whence
they had bidden their last farewells; on the writing-table in the hall
they found the visitor's book, open, and Ivor's composition scarcely
dry. Mr. Scogan read it aloud:
"The magic of those immemorial kings, Who webbed enchantment on the
bowls of night. Sleeps in the soul of all created things; In the blue
sea, th' Acroceraunian height, In the eyed butterfly's auricular wings
And orgied visions of the anchorite; In all that singing flies and
flying sings, In rain, in pain, in delicate delight. But much more
magic, much more cogent spells Weave here their wizardries about my
soul. Crome calls me like the voice of vesperal bells, Haunts like a
ghostly-peopled necropole. Fate tears me hence. Hard fate! since far
from Crome My soul must weep, remembering its Home."
"Very nice and tasteful and tactful," said Mr. Scogan, when he had
finished. "I am only troubled by the butterfly's auricular wings. You
have 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 Ivor
wanted to say that the wings were golden."
"You make it luminously clear."
"One suffers so much," Denis went on, "from the fact that beautiful
words don't always mean what they ought to mean. Recently, for example,
I had a whole poem ruined, just because the word 'carminative' didn't
mean what it ought to have meant. Carminative—it's admirable, isn't
it?"
"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 a
cold—quite useless, but not disagreeable. One poured it drop by drop
out of narrow bottles, a golden liquor, fierce and fiery. On the label
was a list of its virtues, and among other things it was described as
being in the highest degree carminative. I adored the word. 'Isn't it
carminative?' I used to say to myself when I'd taken my dose. It seemed
so wonderfully to describe that sensation of internal warmth, that glow,
that—what shall I call it?—physical self-satisfaction which
followed the drinking of cinnamon. Later, when I discovered alcohol,
'carminative' described for me that similar, but nobler, more spiritual
glow 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 Lacryma
Christi, of Marsala, of Aleatico, of stout, of gin, of champagne, of
claret, of the raw new wine of this year's Tuscan vintage—I compared
them, I classified them. Marsala is rosily, downily carminative; gin
pricks and refreshes while it warms. I had a whole table of carmination
values. 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 with
carmen-carminis, still more vaguely with caro-carnis, and its
derivations, like carnival and carnation. Carminative—there was the
idea of singing and the idea of flesh, rose-coloured and warm, with
a suggestion of the jollities of mi-Careme and the masked holidays of
Venice. Carminative—the warmth, the glow, the interior ripeness were
all in the word. Instead of which..."
"Do come to the point, my dear Denis," protested Mr. Scogan. "Do come to
the point."
"Well, I wrote a poem the other day," said Denis; "I wrote a poem about
the effects of love."
"Others have done the same before you," said Mr. Scogan. "There is no
need to be ashamed."
"I was putting forward the notion," Denis went on, "that the effects
of love were often similar to the effects of wine, that Eros could
intoxicate as well as Bacchus. Love, for example, is essentially
carminative. 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. Everything
was 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 had
never actually looked up the word in a dictionary. Carminative had grown
up with me from the days of the cinnamon bottle. It had always been
taken for granted. Carminative: for me the word was as rich in content
as some tremendous, elaborate work of art; it was a complete landscape
with figures.
'And passion carminative as wine...'
It was the first time I had ever committed the word to writing, and all
at once I felt I would like lexicographical authority for it. A small
English-German dictionary was all I had at hand. I turned up C, ca,
car, carm. There it was: 'Carminative: windtreibend.' Windtreibend!" he
repeated. Mr. Scogan laughed. Denis shook his head. "Ah," he said, "for
me it was no laughing matter. For me it marked the end of a chapter, the
death of something young and precious. There were the years—years
of childhood and innocence—when I had believed that carminative
meant—well, carminative. And now, before me lies the rest of my
life—a day, perhaps, ten years, half a century, when I shall know that
carminative 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 love
them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people
to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary
mind. The spectacle of Mr. Gladstone finding thirty-four rhymes to
the 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 ne
fuis 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 of
magic, the sense that words have power. The technical, verbal part of
literature is simply a development of magic. Words are man's first and
most 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 and
spirits from the elements. Their descendants, the literary men, still
go 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 the
most insipid statements become enormously significant. For example, I
proffer the constatation, 'Black ladders lack bladders.' A self-evident
truth, one on which it would not have been worth while to insist, had
I chosen to formulate it in such words as 'Black fire-escapes have no
bladders,' or, 'Les echelles noires manquent de vessie.' But since I
put it as I do, 'Black ladders lack bladders,' it becomes, for all
its self-evidence, significant, unforgettable, moving. The creation by
word-power of something out of nothing—what is that but magic? And, I
may add, what is that but literature? Half the world's greatest poetry
is simply 'Les echelles noires manquent de vessie,' translated into
magic significance as, 'Black ladders lack bladders.' And you can't
appreciate words. I'm sorry for you."
"A mental carminative," said Mr. Scogan reflectively. "That's what you
need."
CHAPTER XXI.
Perched on its four stone mushrooms, the little granary stood two or
three feet above the grass of the green close. Beneath it there was a
perpetual shade and a damp growth of long, luxuriant grasses. Here, in
the shadow, in the green dampness, a family of white ducks had sought
shelter from the afternoon sun. Some stood, preening themselves, some
reposed with their long bellies pressed to the ground, as though the
cool grass were water. Little social noises burst fitfully forth, and
from time to time some pointed tail would execute a brilliant Lisztian
tremolo. Suddenly their jovial repose was shattered. A prodigious thump
shook 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 this
nameless menace, and did not stay their flight till they were safely in
the farmyard.
"Don't lose your temper," Anne was saying. "Listen! You've frightened
the 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 she
supported her cheek on her hand. Her long, slender body drooped into
curves of a lazy grace. She was smiling, and she looked at Gombauld
through half-closed eyes.
"Damn you!" Gombauld repeated, and stamped his foot again. He glared at
her round the half-finished portrait on the easel.
"Poor ducks!" Anne repeated. The sound of their quacking was faint in
the distance; it was inaudible.
"Can't you see you make me lose my time?" he asked. "I can't work with
you dangling about distractingly like this."
"You'd lose less time if you stopped talking and stamping your feet and
did a little painting for a change. After all, what am I dangling about
for, except to be painted?"
Gombauld made a noise like a growl. "You're awful," he said, with
conviction. "Why do you ask me to come and stay here? Why do you tell me
you'd like me to paint your portrait?"
"For the simple reasons that I like you—at least, when you're in a good
temper—and that I think you're a good painter."
"For the simple reason"—Gombauld mimicked her voice—"that you want
me to make love to you and, when I do, to have the amusement of running
away."
Anne threw back her head and laughed. "So you think it amuses me to have
to evade your advances! So like a man! If you only knew how gross and
awful and boring men are when they try to make love and you don't want
them to make love! If you could only see yourselves through our eyes!"
Gombauld picked up his palette and brushes and attacked his canvas with
the ardour of irritation. "I suppose you'll be saying next that you
didn't start the game, that it was I who made the first advances, and
that you were the innocent victim who sat still and never did anything
that could invite or allure me on."
"So like a man again!" said Anne. "It's always the same old story about
the woman tempting the man. The woman lures, fascinates, invites; and
man—noble man, innocent man—falls a victim. My poor Gombauld! Surely
you're not going to sing that old song again. It's so unintelligent, and
I 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 simply
externalising your own emotions? That's what you men are always doing;
it's so barbarously naive. You feel one of your loose desires for some
woman, and because you desire her strongly you immediately accuse her
of luring you on, of deliberately provoking and inviting the desire. You
have the mentality of savages. You might just as well say that a plate
of strawberries and cream deliberately lures you on to feel greedy. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred women are as passive and innocent as
the strawberries and cream."
"Well, all I can say is that this must be the hundredth case," said
Gombauld, without looking up.
Anne shrugged her shoulders and gave vent to a sigh. "I'm at a loss to
know whether you're more silly or more rude."
After painting for a little time in silence Gombauld began to speak
again. "And then there's Denis," he said, renewing the conversation as
though it had only just been broken off. "You're playing the same game
with him. Why can't you leave that wretched young man in peace?"
Anne flushed with a sudden and uncontrollable anger. "It's perfectly
untrue about Denis," she said indignantly. "I never dreamt of playing
what 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 too
solemn. "I don't like to see a young man..."
"...being whirled along the road to ruin," said Anne, continuing his
sentence for him. I admire your sentiments and, believe me, I share
them."
She was curiously irritated at what Gombauld had said about Denis. It
happened to be so completely untrue. Gombauld might have some slight
ground for his reproaches. But Denis—no, she had never flirted with
Denis. Poor boy! He was very sweet. She became somewhat pensive.
Gombauld painted on with fury. The restlessness of an unsatisfied
desire, which, before, had distracted his mind, making work impossible,
seemed now to have converted itself into a kind of feverish energy. When
it was finished, he told himself, the portrait would be diabolic. He was
painting her in the pose she had naturally adopted at the first sitting.
Seated sideways, her elbow on the back of the chair, her head and
shoulders turned at an angle from the rest of her body, towards the
front, she had fallen into an attitude of indolent abandonment. He had
emphasised the lazy curves of her body; the lines sagged as they crossed
the canvas, the grace of the painted figure seemed to be melting into
a kind of soft decay. The hand that lay along the knee was as limp as
a glove. He was at work on the face now; it had begun to emerge on the
canvas, doll-like in its regularity and listlessness. It was Anne's
face—but her face as it would be, utterly unillumined by the inward
lights of thought and emotion. It was the lazy, expressionless mask
which was sometimes her face. The portrait was terribly like; and at the
same time it was the most malicious of lies. Yes, it would be diabolic
when it was finished, Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would think
of it.
CHAPTER XXII.
For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this same
afternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour was a drowsy
one, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily on body and mind. The
meridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and hopeless
post-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and feared
under the name of "accidie." He felt, like Ernest Dowson, "a little
weary." He was in the mood to write something rather exquisite and
gentle and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the same
time—how should he put it?—a little infinite. He thought of Anne, of
love hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love,
the hopeless kind—the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad mood
of repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegant
quatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:
"A brooding love which is at most The stealth of moonbeams when they
slide, Evoking colour's bloodless ghost, O'er some scarce-breathing
breast or side..."
when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked down
from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking, laughing
together. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of sight
through the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to the
green close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. His
pleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violent
emotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket and
ran downstairs. "The stealth of moonbeams," indeed!
In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in wait. Denis
tried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan's eye glittered like the eye of
the Ancient Mariner.
"Not so fast," he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with pointed
nails—"not so fast. I was just going down to the flower garden to take
the sun. We'll go together."
Denis abandoned himself; Mr. Scogan put on his hat and they went out arm
in arm. On the shaven turf of the terrace Henry Wimbush and Mary were
playing a solemn game of bowls. They descended by the yew-tree walk.
It was here, thought Denis, here that Anne had fallen, here that he
had kissed her, here—and he blushed with retrospective shame at the
memory—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 with
you, my dear Denis, when you're old enough to be sane or insane. In
a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious
establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don't
exist. 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, more
entertaining, more confident; and, besides, he's already somebody and
I'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 insistence
of Mr. Scogan's discourse gradually compelled his attention. "Men such
as 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, the
compelling enthusiastic mania. People are quite ready to listen to the
philosophers for a little amusement, just as they would listen to a
fiddler or a mountebank. But as to acting on the advice of the men of
reason—never. Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of
reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.
For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and
the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and
supererogatory—reason."
They entered the garden; at the head of one of the alleys stood a green
wooden bench, embayed in the midst of a fragrant continent of lavender
bushes. It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed
hot, dry perfume instead of air—it was here that Mr. Scogan elected to
sit. He thrived on untempered sunlight.
"Consider, for example, the case of Luther and Erasmus." He took out
his pipe and began to fill it as he talked. "There was Erasmus, a man
of reason if ever there was one. People listened to him at first—a
new virtuoso performing on that elegant and resourceful instrument, the
intellect; they even admired and venerated him. But did he move them to
behave as he wanted them to behave—reasonably, decently, or at least a
little less porkishly than usual? He did not. And then Luther appears,
violent, passionate, a madman insanely convinced about matters in which
there can be no conviction. He shouted, and men rushed to follow
him. Erasmus was no longer listened to; he was reviled for his
reasonableness. Luther was serious, Luther was reality—like the Great
War. Erasmus was only reason and decency; he lacked the power, being a
sage, to move men to action. Europe followed Luther and embarked on
a century and a half of war and bloody persecution. It's a melancholy
story." Mr. Scogan lighted a match. In the intense light the flame was
all but invisible. The smell of burning tobacco began to mingle with the
sweetly acrid smell of the lavender.
"If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuading
them in a maniacal manner. The very sane precepts of the founders of
religions are only made infectious by means of enthusiasms which to a
sane man must appear deplorable. It is humiliating to find how impotent
unadulterated sanity is. Sanity, for example, informs us that the only
way in which we can preserve civilisation is by behaving decently and
intelligently. Sanity appeals and argues; our rulers persevere in their
customary porkishness, while we acquiesce and obey. The only hope is a
maniacal crusade; I am ready, when it comes, to beat a tambourine with
the loudest, but at the same time I shall feel a little ashamed of
myself. However"—Mr. Scogan shrugged his shoulders and, pipe in hand,
made a gesture of resignation—"It's futile to complain that things are
as they are. The fact remains that sanity unassisted is useless. What
we want, then, is a sane and reasonable exploitation of the forces of
insanity. We sane men will have the power yet." Mr. Scogan's eyes shone
with a more than ordinary brightness, and, taking his pipe out of his
mouth, 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 discomfort
at 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 sort
of power you hanker for is literary power. Some people want power
to persecute other human beings; you expend your *** for power in
persecuting words, twisting them, moulding them, torturing them to obey
you. But I divagate."
"Do you?" asked Denis faintly.
"Yes," Mr. Scogan continued, unheeding, "the time will come. We men
of intelligence will learn to harness the insanities to the service of
reason. We can't leave the world any longer to the direction of chance.
We can't allow dangerous maniacs like Luther, mad about dogma, like
Napoleon, mad about himself, to go on casually appearing and turning
everything upside down. In the past it didn't so much matter; but our
modern machine is too delicate. A few more knocks like the Great War,
another Luther or two, and the whole concern will go to pieces. In
future, the men of reason must see that the madness of the world's
maniacs 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 to
complete the simile."
Mr. Scogan waved away the interruption. "There's only one thing to be
done," he said. "The men of intelligence must combine, must conspire,
and seize power from the imbeciles and maniacs who now direct us. They
must found the Rational State."
The heat that was slowly paralysing all Denis's mental and bodily
faculties, seemed to bring to Mr. Scogan additional vitality. He talked
with an ever-increasing energy, his hands moved in sharp, quick, precise
gestures, his eyes shone. Hard, dry, and continuous, his voice went
on sounding and sounding in Denis's ears with the insistence of a
mechanical noise.
"In the Rational State," he heard Mr. Scogan saying, "human beings will
be separated out into distinct species, not according to the colour of
their eyes or the shape of their skulls, but according to the qualities
of their mind and temperament. Examining psychologists, trained to what
would now seem an almost superhuman clairvoyance, will test each child
that is born and assign it to its proper species. Duly labelled and
docketed, the child will be given the education suitable to members of
its species, and will be set, in adult life, to perform those functions
which 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 will
be subtle and elaborate. But it is not in the power of a prophet to go
into details, nor is it his business. I will do more than indicate the
three main species into which the subjects of the Rational State will be
divided."
He paused, cleared his throat, and coughed once or twice, evoking in
Denis'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: the
Directing Intelligences, the Men of Faith, and the Herd. Among the
Intelligences will be found all those capable of thought, those who know
how to attain a certain degree of freedom—and, alas, how limited, even
among the most intelligent, that freedom is!—from the mental bondage of
their time. A select body of Intelligences, drawn from among those who
have turned their attention to the problems of practical life, will
be the governors of the Rational State. They will employ as their
instruments of power the second great species of humanity—the men of
Faith, the Madmen, as I have been calling them, who believe in things
unreasonably, with passion, and are ready to die for their beliefs and
their desires. These wild men, with their fearful potentialities for
good or for mischief, will no longer be allowed to react casually to
a casual environment. There will be no more Caesar Borgias, no more
Luthers and Mohammeds, no more Joanna Southcotts, no more Comstocks. The
old-fashioned Man of Faith and Desire, that haphazard creature of brute
circumstance, who might drive men to tears and repentance, or who might
equally well set them on to cutting one another's throats, will be
replaced by a new sort of madman, still externally the same, still
bubbling with a seemingly spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how very
different from the madman of the past! For the new Man of Faith will be
expending his passion, his desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagation
of some reasonable idea. He will be, all unawares, the tool of some
superior intelligence."
Mr. Scogan chuckled maliciously; it was as though he were taking a
revenge, in the name of reason, on enthusiasts. "From their earliest
years, as soon, that is, as the examining psychologists have assigned
them their place in the classified scheme, the Men of Faith will have
had their special education under the eye of the Intelligences. Moulded
by a long process of suggestion, they will go out into the world,
preaching and practising with a generous mania the coldly reasonable
projects of the Directors from above. When these projects are
accomplished, or when the ideas that were useful a decade ago have
ceased to be useful, the Intelligences will inspire a new generation of
madmen with a new eternal truth. The principal function of the Men of
Faith will be to move and direct the Multitude, that third great species
consisting of those countless millions who lack intelligence and are
without valuable enthusiasm. When any particular effort is required of
the Herd, when it is thought necessary, for the sake of solidarity, that
humanity shall be kindled and united by some single enthusiastic desire
or idea, the Men of Faith, primed with some simple and satisfying creed,
will be sent out on a mission of evangelisation. At ordinary times, when
the high spiritual temperature of a Crusade would be unhealthy, the
Men of Faith will be quietly and earnestly busy with the great work of
education. In the upbringing of the Herd, humanity's almost boundless
suggestibility will be scientifically exploited. Systematically, from
earliest infancy, its members will be assured that there is no happiness
to be found except in work and obedience; they will be made to believe
that they are happy, that they are tremendously important beings, and
that everything they do is noble and significant. For the lower species
the earth will be restored to the centre of the universe and man to
pre-eminence on the earth. Oh, I envy the lot of the commonality in the
Rational State! Working their eight hours a day, obeying their betters,
convinced of their own grandeur and significance and immortality, they
will be marvellously happy, happier than any race of men has ever been.
They will go through life in a rosy state of intoxication, from which
they will never awake. The Men of Faith will play the cup-bearers at
this lifelong bacchanal, filling and ever filling again with the warm
liquor that the Intelligences, in sad and sober privacy behind the
scenes, will brew for the intoxication of their subjects."
"And what will be my place in the Rational State?" Denis drowsily
inquired from under his shading hand.
Mr. Scogan looked at him for a moment in silence. "It's difficult to see
where 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 for
the Directing Intelligences, they will have to be marvellously clear and
merciless and penetrating." He paused and shook his head. "No, I can see
no place for you; only the lethal chamber."
Deeply hurt, Denis emitted the imitation of a loud Homeric laugh. "I'm
getting sunstroke here," he said, and got up.
Mr. Scogan followed his example, and they walked slowly away down the
narrow path, brushing the blue lavender flowers in their passage. Denis
pulled a sprig of lavender and sniffed at it; then some dark leaves of
rosemary that smelt like incense in a cavernous church. They passed a
bed of *** poppies, dispetaled now; the round, ripe seedheads were
brown and dry—like Polynesian trophies, Denis thought; severed heads
stuck on poles. He liked the fancy enough to impart it to Mr. Scogan.
"Like Polynesian trophies..." Uttered aloud, the fancy seemed less
charming 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 the
reaping machines swelled up from the fields beyond the garden and then
receded into a remoter hum.
"It is satisfactory to think," said Mr. Scogan, as they strolled slowly
onward, "that a multitude of people are toiling in the harvest fields in
order that we may talk of Polynesia. Like every other good thing in this
world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however,
it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us be
duly thankful for that, my dear Denis—duly thankful," he repeated, and
knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
Denis was not listening. He had suddenly remembered Anne. She was with
Gombauld—alone with him in his studio. It was an intolerable thought.
"Shall we go and pay a call on Gombauld?" he suggested carelessly. "It
would be amusing to see what he's doing now."
He laughed inwardly to think how furious Gombauld would be when he saw
them arriving.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Gombauld was by no means so furious at their apparition as Denis had
hoped and expected he would be. Indeed, he was rather pleased than
annoyed when the two faces, one brown and pointed, the other round and
pale, appeared in the frame of the open door. The energy born of his
restless irritation was dying within him, returning to its emotional
elements. A moment more and he would have been losing his temper
again—and Anne would be keeping hers, infuriatingly. Yes, he was
positively glad to see them.
"Come in, come in," he called out hospitably.
Followed by Mr. Scogan, Denis climbed the little ladder and stepped over
the threshold. He looked suspiciously from Gombauld to his sitter, and
could learn nothing from the expression of their faces except that they
both seemed pleased to see the visitors. Were they really glad, or were
they cunningly simulating gladness? He wondered.
Mr. Scogan, meanwhile, was looking at the portrait.
"Excellent," he said approvingly, "excellent. Almost too true to
character, if that is possible; yes, positively too true. But I'm
surprised to find you putting in all this psychology business." He
pointed to the face, and with his extended finger followed the slack
curves of the painted figure. "I thought you were one of the fellows who
went 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 had
the slightest appreciation of painting, have always taken particular
pleasure in Cubismus. I like to see pictures from which nature has been
completely banished, pictures which are exclusively the product of the
human mind. They give me the same pleasure as I derive from a good piece
of reasoning or a mathematical problem or an achievement of engineering.
Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is
too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and
incomprehensible. I am at home with the works of man; if I choose to
set my mind to it, I can understand anything that any man has made or
thought. That is why I always travel by Tube, never by bus if I can
possibly help it. For, travelling by bus, one can't avoid seeing, even
in London, a few stray works of God—the sky, for example, an occasional
tree, the flowers in the window-boxes. But travel by Tube and you see
nothing but the works of man—iron riveted into geometrical forms,
straight lines of concrete, patterned expanses of tiles. All is human
and the product of friendly and comprehensible minds. All philosophies
and all religions—what are they but spiritual Tubes bored through the
universe! Through these narrow tunnels, where all is recognisably human,
one travels comfortable and secure, contriving to forget that all round
and below and above them stretches the blind mass of earth, endless
and unexplored. Yes, give me the Tube and Cubismus every time; give me
ideas, so snug and neat and simple and well made. And preserve me from
nature, preserve me from all that's inhumanly large and complicated and
obscure. I haven't the courage, and, above all, I haven't the time to
start wandering in that labyrinth."
While Mr. Scogan was discoursing, Denis had crossed over to the farther
side of the little square chamber, where Anne was sitting, still in her
graceful, lazy pose, on the low chair.
"Well?" he demanded, looking at her almost fiercely. What was he asking
of her? He hardly knew himself.
Anne looked up at him, and for answer echoed his "Well?" in another, a
laughing key.
Denis had nothing more, at the moment, to say. Two or three canvases
stood 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 her
chair to look at them. There was the big canvas of the man fallen from
the 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 behind
the 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 at
Anne.
"I like the man and the horse; don't you?" she said at last, looking up
with an inquiring smile.
Denis nodded, and then in a ***, strangled voice, as though it had
cost 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 mostly
heard with equanimity. But on this occasion—perhaps because they had
come so unexpectedly, perhaps for some other reason—the words provoked
in her a certain surprised commotion.
"My poor Denis," she managed to say, with a laugh; but she was blushing
as she spoke.
CHAPTER XXIV.
It was noon. Denis, descending from his chamber, where he had been
making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in
particular, found the drawing-room deserted. He was about to go out into
the garden when his eye fell on a familiar but mysterious object—the
large red notebook in which he had so often seen Jenny quietly and
busily scribbling. She had left it lying on the window-seat. The
temptation was great. He picked up the book and slipped off the elastic
band that kept it discreetly closed.
"Private. Not to be opened," was written in capital letters on the
cover. He raised his eyebrows. It was the sort of thing one wrote in
one'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. He
opened the book. What he saw made him wince as though he had been
struck.
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 the
palpitating 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 aware
of them at all. It seemed, somehow, inconceivable that he should appear
to other people as they appeared to him; inconceivable that they ever
spoke of him among themselves in that same freely critical and, to be
quite honest, mildly malicious tone in which he was accustomed to talk
of them. In his own eyes he had defects, but to see them was a privilege
reserved to him alone. For the rest of the world he was surely an image
of flawless crystal. It was almost axiomatic.
On opening the red notebook that crystal image of himself crashed to
the ground, and was irreparably shattered. He was not his own severest
critic after all. The discovery was a painful one.
The fruit of Jenny's unobtrusive scribbling lay before him. A caricature
of himself, reading (the book was upside-down). In the background a
dancing 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, inglorious
Rouveyre appeared in every one of those cruelly clear lines. The
expression of the face, an assumed aloofness and superiority tempered
by a feeble envy; the attitude of the body and limbs, an attitude of
studious and scholarly dignity, given away by the fidgety pose of the
turned-in feet—these things were terrible. And, more terrible still,
was the likeness, was the magisterial certainty with which his physical
peculiarities were all recorded and subtly exaggerated.
Denis looked deeper into the book. There were caricatures of other
people: of Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith; of Henry Wimbush, of Anne
and Gombauld; of Mr. Scogan, whom Jenny had represented in a light that
was more than slightly sinister, that was, indeed, diabolic; of Mary and
Ivor. He scarcely glanced at them. A fearful desire to know the worst
about himself possessed him. He turned over the leaves, lingering at
nothing that was not his own image. Seven full pages were devoted to
him.
"Private. Not to be opened." He had disobeyed the injunction; he had
only got what he deserved. Thoughtfully he closed the book, and slid the
rubber band once more into its place. Sadder and wiser, he went out on
to the terrace. And so this, he reflected, this was how Jenny employed
the leisure hours in her ivory tower apart. And he had thought her a
simple-minded, uncritical creature! It was he, it seemed, who was the
fool. He felt no resentment towards Jenny. No, the distressing thing
wasn't Jenny herself; it was what she and the phenomenon of her red
book represented, what they stood for and concretely symbolised. They
represented all the vast conscious world of men outside himself; they
symbolised something that in his studious solitariness he was apt not to
believe in. He could stand at Piccadilly Circus, could watch the
crowds 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 as
elaborate and complete as he in his. Impossible; and yet, periodically
he would make some painful discovery about the external world and the
horrible reality of its consciousness and its intelligence. The red
notebook was one of these discoveries, a footprint in the sand. It put
beyond a doubt the fact that the outer world really existed.
Sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, he ruminated this unpleasant
truth for some time. Still chewing on it, he strolled pensively down
towards the swimming-pool. A peacock and his hen trailed their shabby
finery across the turf of the lower lawn. Odious birds! Their necks,
thick and greedily fleshy at the roots, tapered up to the cruel inanity
of their brainless heads, their flat eyes and piercing beaks. The
fabulists were right, he reflected, when they took beasts to illustrate
their tractates of human morality. Animals resemble men with all the
truthfulness of a caricature. (Oh, the red notebook!) He threw a piece
of stick at the slowly pacing birds. They rushed towards it, thinking it
was something to eat.
He walked on. The profound shade of a giant ilex tree engulfed him. Like
a 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 more
regularly.
He emerged once more into the sunshine. The pool lay before him,
reflecting in its bronze mirror the blue and various green of the
summer day. Looking at it, he thought of Anne's bare arms and seal-sleek
bathing-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 able
to call his brain his own? Was there, indeed, anything in it that was
truly his own, or was it simply an education?
He walked slowly round the water's edge. In an embayed recess among
the surrounding yew trees, leaning her back against the pedestal of a
pleasantly comic version of the Medici Venus, executed by some nameless
mason of the seicento, he saw Mary pensively sitting.
"Hullo!" he said, for he was passing so close to her that he had to say
something.
Mary looked up. "Hullo!" she answered in a melancholy, uninterested
tone.
In this alcove hewed out of the dark trees, the atmosphere seemed to
Denis agreeably elegiac. He sat down beside her under the shadow of the
pudic goddess. There was a prolonged silence.
At breakfast that morning Mary had found on her plate a picture postcard
of Gobley Great Park. A stately Georgian pile, with a facade sixteen
windows wide; parterres in the foreground; huge, smooth lawns receding
out of the picture to right and left. Ten years more of the hard times
and Gobley, with all its peers, will be deserted and decaying. Fifty
years, and the countryside will know the old landmarks no more. They
will have vanished as the monasteries vanished before them. At the
moment, however, Mary's mind was not moved by these considerations.
On the back of the postcard, next to the address, was written, in Ivor's
bold, large hand, a single quatrain.
"Hail, maid of moonlight! Bride of the sun, farewell! Like bright plumes
moulted in an angel's flight, There sleep within my heart's most mystic
cell Memories of morning, memories of the night."
There followed a postscript of three lines: "Would you mind asking one
of the housemaids to forward the packet of safety-razor blades I left in
the drawer of my washstand. Thanks.—Ivor."
Seated under the Venus's immemorial gesture, Mary considered life
and love. The abolition of her repressions, so far from bringing the
expected peace of mind, had brought nothing but disquiet, a new and
hitherto unexperienced misery. Ivor, Ivor...She couldn't do without him
now. It was evident, on the other hand, from the poem on the back of the
picture postcard, that Ivor could very well do without her. He was at
Gobley now, so was Zenobia. Mary knew Zenobia. She thought of the last
verse of the song he had sung that night in the garden.
"Le lendemain, Phillis peu sage Aurait donne moutons et chien Pour un
baiser que le volage A Lisette donnait pour rien."
Mary shed tears at the memory; she had never been so unhappy in all her
life before.
It was Denis who first broke the silence. "The individual," he began in
a soft and sadly philosophical tone, "is not a self-supporting universe.
There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when
he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes
besides himself."
He had contrived this highly abstract generalisation as a preliminary
to a personal confidence. It was the first gambit in a conversation that
was to lead up to Jenny's caricatures.
"True," said Mary; and, generalising for herself, she added, "When one
individual comes into intimate contact with another, she—or he, of
course, as the case may be—must almost inevitably receive or inflict
suffering."
"One is apt," Denis went on, "to be so spellbound by the spectacle of
one's own personality that one forgets that the spectacle presents
itself to other people as well as to oneself."
Mary was not listening. "The difficulty," she said, "makes itself
acutely felt in matters of sex. If one individual seeks intimate contact
with another individual in the natural way, she is certain to receive or
inflict suffering. If on the other hand, she avoids contacts, she risks
the equally grave sufferings that follow on unnatural repressions. As
you see, it's a dilemma."
"When I think of my own case," said Denis, making a more decided move in
the desired direction, "I am amazed how ignorant I am of other people's
mentality in general, and above all and in particular, of their opinions
about myself. Our minds are sealed books only occasionally opened to
the outside world." He made a gesture that was faintly suggestive of the
drawing off of a rubber band.
"It's an awful problem," said Mary thoughtfully. "One has to have had
personal experience to realise quite how awful it is."
"Exactly." Denis nodded. "One has to have had first-hand experience." He
leaned towards her and slightly lowered his voice. "This very morning,
for example..." he began, but his confidences were cut short. The deep
voice of the gong, tempered by distance to a pleasant booming, floated
down from the house. It was lunch-time. Mechanically Mary rose to her
feet, and Denis, a little hurt that she should exhibit such a desperate
anxiety for her food and so slight an interest in his spiritual
experiences, followed her. They made their way up to the house without
speaking.
CHAPTER XXV.
"I hope you all realise," said Henry Wimbush during dinner, "that next
Monday is Bank Holiday, and that you will all be expected to help in the
Fair."
"Heavens!" cried Anne. "The Fair—I had forgotten all about it. What a
nightmare! Couldn't you put a stop to it, Uncle Henry?"
Mr. Wimbush sighed and shook his head. "Alas," he said, "I fear I
cannot. I should have liked to put an end to it years ago; but the
claims 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. Let
me see, it must be twenty-two years since we started it. It was a modest
affair then. Now..." he made a sweeping movement with his hand and was
silent.
It spoke highly for Mr. Wimbush's public spirit that he still continued
to tolerate the Fair. Beginning as a sort of glorified church
bazaar, Crome's yearly Charity Fair had grown into a noisy thing of
merry-go-rounds, cocoanut shies, and miscellaneous side shows—a real
genuine fair on the grand scale. It was the local St. Bartholomew, and
the people of all the neighbouring villages, with even a contingent from
the county town, flocked into the park for their Bank Holiday amusement.
The local hospital profited handsomely, and it was this fact alone which
prevented Mr. Wimbush, to whom the Fair was a cause of recurrent and
never-diminishing agony, from putting a stop to the nuisance which
yearly desecrated his park and garden.
"I've made all the arrangements already," Henry Wimbush went on. "Some
of the larger marquees will be put up to-morrow. The swings and the
merry-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 allowed
to choose your slavery. My job is the tea tent, as usual, Aunt
Priscilla..."
"My dear," said Mrs. Wimbush, interrupting her, "I have more important
things to think about than the Fair. But you need have no doubt that I
shall do my best when Monday comes to encourage the villagers."
"That's splendid," said Anne. "Aunt Priscilla will encourage the
villagers. What will you do, Mary?"
"I won't do anything where I have to stand by and watch other people
eat."
"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 at
last. "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 lightning
artist," 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 throw
in a picture of their Auras for an extra sixpence."
Mary flushed. "Nothing is to be gained," she said severely, "by speaking
with levity of serious subjects. And, after all, whatever your personal
views 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 and
go about telling people which is the way to tea and not to walk on the
grass."
"No, no," said Anne. "That won't do. You must do something more than
that."
"But what? All the good jobs are taken, and I can do nothing but lisp in
numbers."
"Well, then, you must lisp," concluded Anne. "You must write a poem for
the occasion—an 'Ode on Bank Holiday.' We'll print it on Uncle Henry's
press 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 pay
more than twopence."
"And now there's Jenny," said Mr Wimbush. "Jenny," he said, raising his
voice, "what will you do?"
Denis thought of suggesting that she might draw caricatures at sixpence
an execution, but decided it would be wiser to go on feigning ignorance
of her talent. His mind reverted to the red notebook. Could it really be
true that he looked like that?
"What will I do," Jenny echoed, "what will I do?" She frowned
thoughtfully 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 knife
and fork, like a pair of drumsticks, over her plate. "If there's any
opportunity of playing the drums..." she began.
"But of course," said Anne, "there's any amount of opportunity. We'll
put 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 Bank
Holiday. It ought to be gay."
"It ought indeed," Mr Scogan assented. "But you may rest assured that it
won't be. No holiday is ever anything but a disappointment."
"Come, come," protested Gombauld. "My holiday at Crome isn't being a
disappointment."
"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 holidays
can't help being disappointments. Reflect for a moment. What is a
holiday? The ideal, the Platonic Holiday of Holidays is surely a
complete and absolute change. You agree with me in my definition?" Mr.
Scogan glanced from face to face round the table; his sharp nose moved
in a series of rapid jerks through all the points of the compass. There
was no sign of dissent; he continued: "A complete and absolute change;
very well. But isn't a complete and absolute change precisely the thing
we can never have—never, in the very nature of things?" Mr. Scogan
once more looked rapidly about him. "Of course it is. As ourselves, as
specimens of *** Sapiens, as members of a society, how can we hope to
have anything like an absolute change? We are tied down by the frightful
limitation of our human faculties, by the notions which society imposes
on us through our fatal suggestibility, by our own personalities. For
us, a complete holiday is out of the question. Some of us struggle
manfully to take one, but we never succeed, if I may be allowed to
express myself metaphorically, we never succeed in getting farther than
Southend."
"You're depressing," said Anne.
"I mean to be," Mr. Scogan replied, and, expanding the fingers of his
right hand, he went on: "Look at me, for example. What sort of a holiday
can I take? In endowing me with passions and faculties Nature has been
horribly niggardly. The full range of human potentialities is in
any case distressingly limited; my range is a limitation within a
limitation. Out of the ten octaves that make up the human instrument,
I can compass perhaps two. Thus, while I may have a certain amount
of intelligence, I have no aesthetic sense; while I possess the
mathematical faculty, I am wholly without the religious emotions; while
I am naturally addicted to venery, I have little ambition and am not
at all avaricious. Education has further limited my scope. Having been
brought up in society, I am impregnated with its laws; not only should
I be afraid of taking a holiday from them, I should also feel it painful
to try to do so. In a word, I have a conscience as well as a fear of
gaol. Yes, I know it by experience. How often have I tried to take
holidays, to get away from myself, my own boring nature, my insufferable
mental surroundings!" Mr. Scogan sighed. "But always without
success," he added, "always without success. In my youth I was always
striving—how hard!—to feel religiously and aesthetically. Here, said
I to myself, are two tremendously important and exciting emotions. Life
would be richer, warmer, brighter, altogether more amusing, if I could
feel them. I try to feel them. I read the works of the mystics. They
seemed to me nothing but the most deplorable claptrap—as indeed they
always must to anyone who does not feel the same emotion as the authors
felt when they were writing. For it is the emotion that matters. The
written work is simply an attempt to express emotion, which is in itself
inexpressible, in terms of intellect and logic. The mystic objectifies
a rich feeling in the pit of the stomach into a cosmology. For other
mystics that cosmology is a symbol of the rich feeling. For the
unreligious it is a symbol of nothing, and so appears merely grotesque.
A melancholy fact! But I divagate." Mr. Scogan checked himself. "So much
for the religious emotion. As for the aesthetic—I was at even greater
pains to cultivate that. I have looked at all the right works of art
in every part of Europe. There was a time when, I venture to believe,
I knew more about Taddeo da Poggibonsi, more about the cryptic Amico
di Taddeo, even than Henry does. To-day, I am happy to say, I have
forgotten most of the knowledge I then so laboriously acquired; but
without vanity I can assert that it was prodigious. I don't pretend, of
course, to know anything about *** sculpture or the later seventeenth
century in Italy; but about all the periods that were fashionable before
1900 I am, or was, omniscient. Yes, I repeat it, omniscient. But did
that 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 and
presumed history—the date when it was painted, the character of the
painter, the influences that had gone to make it what it was—I felt
none of that strange excitement and exaltation which is, as I am
informed by those who do feel it, the true aesthetic emotion. I felt
nothing but a certain interest in the subject of the picture; or more
a great weariness of spirit. Nevertheless, I must have gone on looking
at pictures for ten years before I would honestly admit to myself that
they merely bored me. Since then I have given up all attempts to take
a holiday. I go on cultivating my old stale daily self in the resigned
spirit with which a bank clerk performs from ten till six his daily
task. A holiday, indeed! I'm sorry for you, Gombauld, if you still look
forward to having a holiday."
Gombauld shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps," he said, "my standards
aren't as elevated as yours. But personally I found the war quite as
thorough a holiday from all the ordinary decencies and sanities, all the
common emotions and preoccupations, as I ever want to have."
"Yes," Mr. Scogan thoughtfully agreed. "Yes, the war was certainly
something of a holiday. It was a step beyond Southend; it was
Weston-super-Mare; it was almost Ilfracombe."
End of Chapter �