Crome Yellow Read Online Free PDF Page A

op’ra, sing in op’ra,
    Sing in op-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.
    â€˜What have you been doing all this time?’ she asked.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this year?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he replied, still frigid and monosyllabic. She must have told him at least six times.
    â€˜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 racecourse 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 his life Henry asserted himself, and with good effect, it seemed.
    Priscilla’s gay and gadding existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-defined malady. Forconsolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscilla’s days were spent in casting the horoscopes of horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the Stars dictated. She betted on football too, and had a large notebook in which she registered the horoscopes of all the players in all the teams of the League. The process of balancing the horoscopes of two elevens one against the other was a very delicate and difficult one. A match between the Spurs and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast and so complicated that it was not to be wondered at if she sometimes made a mistake about the outcome.
    â€˜Such a pity you don’t believe in these things, Denis, such a pity,’ said Mrs Wimbush in her deep, distinct voice.
    â€˜I can’t say I feel it so.’
    â€˜Ah, that’s because you don’t know what it’s like to have faith. You’ve no idea how amusing and exciting life becomes when you do believe. All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. It makes life so jolly, you know. Here am I at Crome. Dull as ditchwater, you’d think; but no, I don’t find it so. I don’t regret the Old Days a bit. I have the Stars . . .’ She picked up the sheet of paper that was lying on the blotting-pad. ‘Inman’s horoscope,’ she explained. ‘(I thought I’d like to have a little fling on the billiards