The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Crome Yellow

Author: Aldous Huxley

Posting Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #1999]
Release Date: December, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROME YELLOW ***

Produced by Sue Asscher

CROME YELLOW

By Aldous Huxley

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