excitement. It is all very estimable, no doubt. But still"--Mr. Scogan
sighed.--"I for one should like to see, mingled with this scientific ardour, a
little more of the jovial spirit of Rabelais and Chaucer."
"I entirely disagree with you," said Mary. "Sex isn't a laughing
matter; it's serious."
"Perhaps," answered Mr. Scogan, "perhaps I'm an obscene old man.
For I must confess that I cannot always regard it as wholly serious."
"But I tell you..." began Mary furiously. Her face had flushed with
excitement. Her cheeks were the cheeks of a great ripe peach.
"Indeed," Mr. Scogan continued, "it seems to me one of few
permanently and everlastingly amusing subjects that exist. Amour is the
one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure
preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain."
"I entirely disagree," said Mary. There was a silence.
Anne looked at her watch. "Nearly a quarter to eight," she said. "I
wonder when Ivor will turn up." She got up from her deck- chair and,
leaning her elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, looked out over the
valley and towards the farther hills. Under the level evening light the
architecture of the land revealed itself. The deep shadows, the bright
contrasting lights gave the hills a new solidity. Irregularities of the
surface, unsuspected before, were picked out with light and shade. The
grass, the corn, the foliage of trees were stippled with intricate shadows.
The surface of things had taken on a marvellous enrichment.
"Look!" said Anne suddenly, and pointed. On the opposite side of the
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valley, at the crest of the ridge, a cloud of dust flushed by the sunlight to
rosy gold was moving rapidly along the sky-line. "It's Ivor. One can tell
by the speed."
The dust cloud descended into the valley and was lost. A horn with
the voice of a sea-lion made itself heard, approaching. A minute later
Ivor came leaping round the corner of the house. His hair waved in the
wind of his own speed; he laughed as he saw them.
"Anne, darling," he cried, and embraced her, embraced Mary, very
nearly embraced Mr. Scogan. "Well, here I am. I've come with
incredulous speed." Ivor's vocabulary was rich, but a little erratic. "I'm
not late for dinner, am I?" He hoisted himself up on to the balustrade,
and sat there, kicking his heels. With one arm he embraced a large stone
flower-pot, leaning his head sideways against its hard and lichenous flanks
in an attitude of trustful affection. He had brown, wavy hair, and his eyes
were of a very brilliant, pale, improbable blue. His head was narrow, his
face thin and rather long, his nose aquiline. In old age-- though it was
difficult to imagine Ivor old--he might grow to have an Iron Ducal
grimness. But now, at twenty-six, it was not the structure of his face that
impressed one; it was its expression. That was charming and vivacious,
and his smile was an irradiation. He was forever moving, restlessly and
rapidly, but with an engaging gracefulness. His frail and slender body
seemed to be fed by a spring of inexhaustible energy.
"No, you're not late."
"You're in time to answer a question," said Mr. Scogan. "We were
arguing whether Amour were a serious matter or no. What do you think?
Is it serious?"
"Serious?" echoed Ivor. "Most certainly."
"I told you so," cried Mary triumphantly.
"But in what sense serious?" Mr. Scogan asked.
"I mean as an occupation. One can go on with it without ever getting
bored."
"I see," said Mr. Scogan. "Perfectly."
"One can occupy oneself with it," Ivor continued, "always and
everywhere. Women are always wonderfully the same. Shapes vary a
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little, that's all. In Spain"--with his free hand he described a series of
ample curves--"one can't pass them on the stairs. In England"--he put the
tip of his forefinger against the tip of his thumb and, lowering his hand,
drew out this circle into an imaginary cylinder--"In England they're
tubular. But their sentiments are always the same. At least, I've always
found it so."
"I'm delighted to hear it," said Mr. Scogan.
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CHAPTER XVI.
The ladies had left the room and the port was circulating. Mr. Scogan
filled his glass, passed on the decanter, and, leaning back in his chair,
looked about him for a moment in silence. The conversation rippled idly
round him, but he disregarded it; he was smiling at some private joke.
Gombauld noticed his smile.
"What's amusing you?" he asked.
"I was just looking at you all, sitting round this table," said Mr.
Scogan.
"Are we as comic as all that?"
"Not at all," Mr. Scogan answered politely. "I was merely amused by
my own speculations."
"And what were they?"
"The idlest, the most academic of speculations. I was looking at you
one by one and trying to imagine which of the first six Caesars you would
each resemble, if you were given the opportunity of behaving like a
Caesar. The Caesars are one of my touchstones," Mr. Scogan explained.
"They are characters functioning, so to speak, in the void. They are
human beings developed to their logical conclusions. Hence their
unequalled value as a touchstone, a standard. When I meet someone for
the first time, I ask myself this question: Given the Caesarean
environment, which of the Caesars would this person resemble-- Julius,
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero? I take each trait of
character, each mental and emotional bias, each little oddity, and magnify
them a thousand times. The resulting image gives me his Caesarean
formula."
"And which of the Caesars do you resemble?" asked Gombauld.
"I am potentially all of them," Mr. Scogan replied, "all--with the
possible exception of Claudius, who was much too stupid to be a
development of anything in my character. The seeds of Julius's courage
and compelling energy, of Augustus's prudence, of the libidinousness and
cruelty of Tiberius, of Caligula's folly, of Nero's artistic genius and
enormous vanity, are all within me. Given the opportunities, I might have
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been something fabulous. But circumstances were against me. I was
born and brought up in a country rectory; I passed my youth doing a great
deal of utterly senseless hard work for a very little money. The result is
that now, in middle age, I am the poor thing that I am. But perhaps it is
as well. Perhaps, too, it's as well that Denis hasn't been permitted to
flower into a little Nero, and that Ivor remains only potentially a Caligula.
Yes, it's better so, no doubt. But it would have been more amusing, as a
spectacle, if they had had the chance to develop, untrammelled, the full
horror of their potentialities. It would have been pleasant and interesting
to watch their tics and foibles and little vices swelling and burgeoning and
blossoming into enormous and fantastic flowers of cruelty and pride and
lewdness and avarice. The Caesarean environment makes the Caesar, as
the special food and the queenly cell make the queen bee. We differ from
the bees in so far that, given the proper food, they can be sure of making a
queen every time. With us there is no such certainty; out of every ten
men placed in the Caesarean environment one will be temperamentally
good, or intelligent, or great. The rest will blossom into Caesars; he will
not. Seventy and eighty years ago simple-minded people, reading of the
exploits of the Bourbons in South Italy, cried out in amazement: To think
that such things should be happening in the nineteenth century! And a
few years since we too were astonished to find that in our still more
astonishing twentieth century, unhappy blackamoors on the Congo and the
Amazon were being treated as English serfs were treated in the time of
Stephen. To-day we are no longer surprised at these things. The Black
and Tans harry Ireland, the Poles maltreat the Silesians, the bold Fascisti
slaughter their poorer countrymen: we take it all for granted. Since the
war we wonder at nothing. We have created a Caesarean environment
and a host of little Caesars has sprung up. What could be more natural?"
Mr. Scogan drank off what was left of his port and refilled the glass.
At this very moment," he went on, "the most frightful horrors are
taking place in every corner of the world. People are being crushed,
slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes
decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air
at the rate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for three
84
seconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; but do
we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not.
We feel sympathy, no doubt; we represent to ourselves imaginatively the
sufferings of nations and individuals and we deplore them. But, after all,
what are sympathy and imagination? Precious little, unless the person
for whom we feel sympathy happens to be closely involved in our
affections; and even then they don't go very far. And a good thing too; for
if one had an imagination vivid enough and a sympathy sufficiently
sensitive really to comprehend and to feel the sufferings of other people,
one would never have a moment's peace of mind. A really sympathetic
race would not so much as know the meaning of happiness. But luckily,
as I've already said, we aren't a sympathetic race. At the beginning of the
war I used to think I really suffered, through imagination and sympathy,
with those who physically suffered. But after a month or two I had to
admit that, honestly, I didn't. And yet I think I have a more vivid
imagination than most. One is always alone in suffering; the fact is
depressing when one happens to be the sufferer, but it makes pleasure
possible for the rest of the world."
There was a pause. Henry Wimbush pushed back his chair.
"I think perhaps we ought to go and join the ladies," he said.
"So do I," said Ivor, jumping up with alacrity. He turned to Mr.
Scogan. "Fortunately," he said, "we can share our pleasures. We are
not always condemned to be happy alone."
85
CHAPTER XVII.
Ivor brought his hands down with a bang on to the final chord of his
rhapsody. There was just a hint in that triumphant harmony that the
seventh had been struck along with the octave by the thumb of the left
hand; but the general effect of splendid noise emerged clearly enough.
Small details matter little so long as the general effect is good. And,
besides, that hint of the seventh was decidedly modern. He turned round
in his seat and tossed the hair back out of his eyes.
"There," he said. "That's the best I can do for you, I'm afraid."
Murmurs of applause and gratitude were heard, and Mary, her large
china eyes fixed on the performer, cried out aloud, "Wonderful!" and
gasped for new breath as though she were suffocating.
Nature and fortune had vied with one another in heaping on Ivor
Lombard all their choicest gifts. He had wealth and he was perfectly
independent. He was good looking, possessed an irresistible charm of
manner, and was the hero of more amorous successes than he could well
remember. His accomplishments were extraordinary for their number
and variety. He had a beautiful untrained tenor voice; he could improvise,
with a startling brilliance, rapidly and loudly, on the piano. He was a
good amateur medium and telepathist, and had a considerable first-hand
knowledge of the next world. He could write rhymed verses with an
extraordinary rapidity. For painting symbolical pictures he had a dashing
style, and if the drawing was sometimes a little weak, the colour was
always pyrotechnical. He excelled in amateur theatricals and, when
occasion offered, he could cook with genius. He resembled Shakespeare
in knowing little Latin and less Greek. For a mind like his, education
seemed supererogatory. Training would only have destroyed his natural
aptitudes.
"Let's go out into the garden," Ivor suggested. "It's a wonderful
night."
"Thank you," said Mr. Scogan, "but I for one prefer these still more
wonderful arm-chairs." His pipe had begun to bubble oozily every time
he pulled at it. He was perfectly happy.
86
Henry Wimbush was also happy. He looked for a moment over his
pince-nez in Ivor's direction and then, without saying anything, returned to
the grimy little sixteenth-century account books which were now his
favourite reading. He knew more about Sir Ferdinando's household
expenses than about his own.
The outdoor party, enrolled under Ivor's banner, consisted of Anne,
Mary, Denis, and, rather unexpectedly, Jenny. Outside it was warm and
dark; there was no moon. They walked up and down the terrace, and
Ivor sang a Neapolitan song: "Stretti, stretti"--close, close--with
something about the little Spanish girl to follow. The atmosphere began
to palpitate. Ivor put his arm round Anne's waist, dropped his head
sideways onto her shoulder, and in that position walked on, singing as he
walked. It seemed the easiest, the most natural, thing in the world. Denis
wondered why he had never done it. He hated Ivor.
"Let's go down to the pool," said Ivor. He disengaged his embrace
and turned round to shepherd his little flock. They made their way along
the side of the house to the entrance of the yew- tree walk that led down to
the lower garden. Between the blank precipitous wall of the house and
