CHAPTER I
Along this particular stretch of line no express had
ever passed. All the
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,
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 neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his
seat and closed his eyes. It was
extremely hot.
Oh, this
journey! It was two hours cut clean out
of his life; two hours in which he might have done so much, so much - written
the perfect poem, for example, or read the one illuminating book. Instead of which - his
gorge rose at the smell of the dusty cushions against which he was leaning.
Two
hours. One hundred and twenty minutes.
Anything might be done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had
had hundreds of hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the
precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible. Denis groaned in the spirit, condemned
himself utterly with all his works. What
right had he to sit in the sunshine, to occupy corner seats in third-class
carriages, to be alive? None, none, none.
Misery and
a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him.
He was twenty-three, and oh! so agonizingly
conscious of the fact.
The train
came bumpingly to a halt. Here was Camlet at last. Denis jumped 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 in either 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 the platform, he ran up the train
towards the van.
'A bicycle,
a bicycle!' he said breathlessly to the guard.
He felt himself a man of action.
The guard paid no attention, but continued methodically to hand out, one
by one, the packages labelled to Camlet.
'A bicycle!' Denis repeated. 'A green machine,
cross-framed, name of Stone. 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 have spoken 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 his bicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into
the country. It was part of the theory
of exercise. One day one would get up at
six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon - anywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles there
were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seen in the course of an
afternoon's excursion. Somehow they
never did get seen, and that one fine morning one really might get up at six.
Once at the
top of the long hill which led up from Camlet station, he felt his spirits
mounting. The world, he found, was
good. The far-away blue hills, the
harvests whitening on the slopes of the ridge along which his road led him, the
treeless skylines that changed as he moved - yes, they were all good. He was overcome by the beauty of those deeply
embayed combes, scooped in the flanks of the ridge
beneath him. Curves, curves: he repeated
the word slowly, trying as he did so to find some term in which to give
expression to his appreciation. Curves - no, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as though to
scoop the achieved expression out of the air, and almost fell off his bicycle. What was the word to describe the curves of
those little valleys? They were as fine
as the lines of a human body, they were informed with
the subtlety of art....
Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe évasé de ses
hanches: had one ever read a French novel in
which the phrase didn't occur? Some day
he would compile a dictionary for the use of novelists. Galbe, gonflé, goulu: parfum, peau, pervers,
potelé, pudeur: vertu, volupté.
But he
really must find that word. Curves, curves....
Those little valleys had the lines of a cup moulded round a woman's breast;
they seemed the dinted imprints of some huge divine body that had rested on
these hills. Cumbrous locutions, these;
but through them he seemed to be getting nearer to what he wanted. Dinted, dimpled, wimpled - his mind wandered
down echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever further and further
from the point. He was enamoured with the
beauty of words.
Becoming
once more aware of the outer world, he found himself on the crest of a
descent. The road plunged down, steep
and straight, into a considerable valley.
There, on the opposite slope, a little higher up the valley, stood Crome, his destination.
He put on his brakes; this view of Crome was
pleasant to linger over. The façade with
its three projecting towers rose precipitously from among the dark trees of the
garden. 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, how austere! The hill was becoming steeper and steeper; he
was gaining speed in spite of his brakes.
He loosed his grip of the levers, and in a moment was rushing headlong
down. Five minutes later he was passing
through the gate of the great courtyard.
The front door stood hospitably open.
He left his bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. He would take them by surprise.