文档介绍：CROME YELLOW
CROME YELLOW
By ALDOUS HUXLEY
1
CROME YELLOW
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, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water.
Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently
onward, goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.
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. W