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
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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-
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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
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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."
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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?"
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"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."
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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
