Crome Yellow | Page 5

something of Anne, perhaps, in the
morning-room. That was all. Among the accumulations of ten generations the living had
left but few traces.
Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book of poems. What tact! He
picked it up and opened it. It was what the reviewers call "a slim volume." He read at
hazard:
"...But silence and the topless dark Vault in the lights of Luna Park; And Blackpool from
the nightly gloom Hollows a bright tumultuous tomb."
He put it down again, shook his head, and sighed. "What genius I had then!" he reflected,
echoing the aged Swift. It was nearly six months since the book had been published; he
was glad to think he would never write anything of the same sort again. Who could have
been reading it, he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he liked to think so. Perhaps, too, she had
at last recognised herself in the Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; the slim Hamadryad
whose movements were like the swaying of a young tree in the wind. "The Woman who

was a Tree" was what he had called the poem. He had given her the book when it came
out, hoping that the poem would tell her what he hadn't dared to say. She had never
referred to it.
He shut his eyes and saw a vision of her in a red velvet cloak, swaying into the little
restaurant where they sometimes dined together in London--three quarters of an hour late,
and he at his table, haggard with anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she was damnable!
It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her boudoir. It was a possibility;
he would go and see. Mrs. Wimbush's boudoir was in the central tower on the garden
front. A little staircase cork-screwed up to it from the hall. Denis mounted, tapped at the
door. "Come in." Ah, she was there; he had rather hoped she wouldn't be. He opened the
door.
Priscilla Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad rested on her knees and she was
thoughtfully sucking the end of a silver pencil.
"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."
"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm awfully sorry."
Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and masculine. Everything
about her was manly. She had a large, square, middle-aged face, with a massive
projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the whole surmounted by a lofty and elaborate
coiffure of a curiously improbable shade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thought
of Wilkie Bard as the cantatrice.
"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing in
op-pop-pop-pop-pop-popera."
Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a row of pearls. The
costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the Royal Family, made her look more
than ever like something on the Halls.
"What have you been doing all this time?" she asked.
"Well," said Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He had a tremendously
amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and ready in his mind. It would be a
pleasure to give it utterance. "To begin with," he said...
But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush's question had been what the grammarians call
rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a little conversational flourish, a gambit in the
polite game.
"You find me busy at my horoscopes," she said, without even being aware that she had
interrupted him.
A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptive ears. He contented

himself, by way of revenge, with saying "Oh?" rather icily.
"Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this year?"
"Yes," he replied, still frigid and mono-syllabic. She must have told him at least six
times.
"Wonderful, isn't it? Everything is in the Stars. In the Old Days, before I had the Stars to
help me, I used to lose thousands. Now"--she paused an instant--"well, look at that four
hundred on the Grand National. That's the Stars."
Denis would have liked to hear more about the Old Days. But he was too discreet and,
still more, too shy to ask. There had been something of a bust up; that was all he knew.
Old Priscilla--not so old then, of course, and sprightlier--had lost a great deal of money,
dropped it in handfuls and hatfuls on every race-course in the country. She had gambled
too. The number of thousands varied in the different legends, but all put it high. Henry
Wimbush was forced to sell some of his Primitives--a Taddeo da Poggibonsi, an Amico
di Taddeo, and four or five nameless Sienese--to the Americans. There was a crisis. For
the first time in