Crome Yellow | Page 7

among which the nightingale pours forth its amorous descant all the
summer long. Within the pool the Lotuses blossom, and the birds of the air come to drink
and bathe themselves in its crystal waters...' Ah, and that reminds me," Priscilla
exclaimed, shutting the book with a clap and uttering her big profound laugh--"that
reminds me of the things that have been going on in our bathing-pool since you were here
last. We gave the village people leave to come and bathe here in the evenings. You've no
idea of the things that happened."
She leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper; every now and then she uttered a
deep gurgle of laughter. "...mixed bathing...saw them out of my window...sent for a pair
of field- glasses to make sure...no doubt of it..." The laughter broke out again. Denis
laughed too. Barbecue-Smith was tossed on the floor.
It's time we went to see if tea's ready," said Priscilla. She hoisted herself up from the sofa
and went swishing off across the room, striding beneath the trailing silk. Denis followed
her, faintly humming to himself:
"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-popera."
And then the little twiddly bit of accompaniment at the end: "ra-ra."

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 little summer-houses of brick stood at either
end. Below the house the ground sloped very steeply away, and the terrace was a
remarkably high one; from the balusters to the sloping lawn beneath was a drop of thirty
feet. Seen from below, the high unbroken terrace wall, built like the house itself of brick,
had the almost menacing aspect of a fortification--a castle bastion, from whose parapet
one looked out across airy depths to distances level with the eye. Below, in the
foreground, hedged in by solid masses of sculptured yew trees, lay the stone-brimmed
swimming-pool. Beyond it stretched the park, with its massive elms, its green expanses
of grass, and, at the bottom of the valley, the gleam of the narrow river. On the farther
side of the stream the land rose again in a long slope, chequered with cultivation.
Looking up 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 little summer-houses, and the
rest of the party was already assembled about it when Denis and Priscilla made their
appearance. Henry Wimbush had begun to pour out the tea. He was one of those ageless,
unchanging men on the farther side of fifty, who might be thirty, who might be anything.
Denis had known him almost as long as he could remember. In all those years his pale,
rather handsome face had never grown any older; it was like the pale grey bowler hat

which he always wore, winter and summer-- unageing, calm, serenely without
expression.
Next him, but separated from him and from the rest of the world by the almost
impenetrable barriers of her deafness, sat Jenny Mullion. She was perhaps thirty, had a
tilted nose and a pink- and-white complexion, and wore her brown hair plaited and coiled
in two lateral buns over her ears. In the secret tower of her deafness she sat apart, looking
down at the world through sharply piercing eyes. What did she think of men and women
and things? That was something that Denis had never been able to discover. In her
enigmatic remoteness Jenny was a little disquieting. Even now some interior joke seemed
to be amusing her, for she was smiling to herself, and her brown eyes were like very
bright round marbles.
On his other side the serious, moonlike innocence of Mary Bracegirdle's face shone pink
and childish. She was nearly twenty-three, but one wouldn't have guessed it. Her short
hair, clipped like a page's, hung in a 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 in his chair. In appearance
Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was
beaked, his dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there was nothing soft or
gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly
look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the
lizard's disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin, fluty, and dry.
Henry Wimbush's school-fellow and exact contemporary, Mr. Scogan looked far older
and, at the same time, far more youthfully alive than