In her low deck-chair Anne was nearer to lying than to sitting. Her long, slender body reposed in an attitude of listless and indolent grace. Within its setting of light brown hair her face had a pretty regularity that was almost doll-like. And indeed there were moments when she seemed nothing more than a doll; when the oval face, with its long-lashed, pale blue eyes, expressed nothing; when it was no more than a lazy mask of wax. She was Henry Wimbush’s own niece; that bowler-like countenance was one of the Wimbush heirlooms; it ran in the family, appearing in its female members as a blank doll-face. But across this dollish mask, like a gay melody dancing over an unchanging fundamental bass, passed Anne’s other inheritance—quick laughter, light ironic amusement, and the changing expressions of many moods. She was smiling now as Denis looked down at her: her cat’s smile, he called it, for no very good reason. The mouth was compressed, and on either side of it two tiny wrinkles had formed themselves in her cheeks. An infinity of slightly malicious amusement lurked in those little folds, in the puckers about the half-closed eyes, in the eyes themselves, bright and laughing between the narrowed lids.
The preliminary greetings spoken, Denis found an empty chair between Gombauld and Jenny and sat down.
“How are you, Jenny?” he shouted to her.
Jenny nodded and smiled in mysterious silence, as though the subject of her health were a secret that could not be publicly divulged.
“How’s London been since I went away?” Anne inquired from the depth of her chair.
The moment had come; the tremendously amusing narrative was waiting for utterance. “Well,” said Denis, smiling happily, “to begin with …”
“Has Priscilla told you of our great antiquarian find?” Henry Wimbush leaned forward; the most promising of buds was nipped.
“To begin with,” said Denis desperately, “there was the Ballet …”
“Last week,” Mr. Wimbush went on softly and implacably, “we dug up fifty yards of oaken drainpipes; just tree trunks with a hole bored through the middle. Very interesting indeed. Whether they were laid down by the monks in the fifteenth century, or whether …”
Denis listened gloomily. “Extraordinary!” he said, when Mr. Wimbush had finished; “quite extraordinary!” He helped himself to another slice of cake. He didn’t even want to tell his tale about London now; he was damped.
For some time past Mary’s grave blue eyes had been fixed upon him. “What have you been writing lately?” she asked. It would be nice to have a little literary conversation.
“Oh, verse and prose,” said Denis—“just verse and prose.”
“Prose?” Mr. Scogan pounced alarmingly on the word. “You’ve been writing prose?”
“Yes.”
“Not a novel?”
“Yes.”
“My poor Denis!” exclaimed Mr. Scogan. “What about?”
Denis felt rather uncomfortable. “Oh, about the usual things, you know.”
“Of course,” Mr. Scogan groaned. “I’ll describe the plot for you. Little Percy, the hero, was never good at games, but he was always clever. He passes through the usual public school and the usual university and comes to London, where he lives among the artists. He is bowed down with melancholy thought; he carries the whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. He writes a novel of dazzling brilliance; he dabbles delicately in Amour and disappears, at the end of the book, into the luminous Future.”
Denis blushed scarlet. Mr. Scogan had described the plan of his novel with an accuracy that was appalling. He made an effort to laugh. “You’re entirely wrong,” he said. “My novel is not in the least like that.” It was a heroic lie. Luckily, he reflected, only two chapters were written. He would tear them up that very evening when he unpacked.
Mr. Scogan paid no attention to his denial, but went on: “Why will you young men continue to write about things that are so entirely uninteresting as the mentality of adolescents and artists? Professional anthropologists might find it interesting to turn sometimes from the beliefs of the Blackfellow to the philosophical preoccupations of the undergraduate. But you can’t expect an ordinary adult man, like myself, to be much moved by the story of his spiritual troubles. And after all, even in England, even in Germany and Russia, there are more adults than adolescents. As for the artist, he is preoccupied with problems that are so utterly unlike those of the ordinary adult man—problems of pure aesthetics which don’t so much as present themselves to people like myself—that a description of his mental processes is as boring to the ordinary reader as a piece of pure mathematics. A serious book about artists regarded as artists is unreadable; and a book about artists regarded as lovers, husbands, dipsomaniacs, heroes, and the like is really not worth writing again. Jean-Christophe is the stock artist of literature, just as Professor Radium of ‘Comic Cuts’ is its stock man of science.”
“I’m sorry to hear I’m as uninteresting as all that,” said Gombauld.
“Not at all, my dear Gombauld,” Mr. Scogan hastened to explain. “As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I’ve no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you’re a bore.”
“I entirely disagree with you,” exclaimed Mary. She was somehow always out of breath when she talked. And her speech was punctuated by little gasps. “I’ve known a great many artists, and I’ve always found their mentality very interesting. Especially in Paris. Tschuplitski, for example—I saw a great deal of Tschuplitski in Paris this spring …”
“Ah, but then you’re an exception, Mary, you’re an exception,” said Mr. Scogan. “You are a femme supérieure.”
A flush of pleasure turned Mary’s face into a harvest moon.
IV
Denis woke up next morning to
