“It’s that—that’s not right,” said Jinny Carslake.
“No,” said Cruttendon decidedly. “Can’t be done.”
He took the canvas off the chair and stood it on the floor with its back to them.
“Sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Carslake comes from your part of the world, Flanders. From Devonshire. Oh, I thought you said Devonshire. Very well. She’s a daughter of the church too. The black sheep of the family. Her mother writes her such letters. I say—have you one about you? It’s generally Sundays they come. Sort of church-bell effect, you know.”
“Have you met all the painter men?” said Jinny. “Was Mallinson drunk? If you go to his studio he’ll give you one of his pictures. I say, Teddy. …”
“Half a jiff,” said Cruttendon. “What’s the season of the year?” He looked out of the window.
“We take a day off on Sundays, Flanders.”
“Will he …” said Jinny, looking at Jacob. “You …”
“Yes, he’ll come with us,” said Cruttendon.
And then, here is Versailles. Jinny stood on the stone rim and leant over the pond, clasped by Cruttendon’s arms or she would have fallen in. “There! There!” she cried. “Right up to the top!” Some sluggish, sloping-shouldered fish had floated up from the depths to nip her crumbs. “You look,” she said, jumping down. And then the dazzling white water, rough and throttled, shot up into the air. The fountain spread itself. Through it came the sound of military music far away. All the water was puckered with drops. A blue air-ball gently bumped the surface. How all the nurses and children and old men and young crowded to the edge, leant over and waved their sticks! The little girl ran stretching her arms towards her air-ball, but it sank beneath the fountain.
Edward Cruttendon, Jinny Carslake, and Jacob Flanders walked in a row along the yellow gravel path; got on to the grass; so passed under the trees; and came out at the summerhouse where Marie Antoinette used to drink chocolate. In went Edward and Jinny, but Jacob waited outside, sitting on the handle of his walking-stick. Out they came again.
“Well?” said Cruttendon, smiling at Jacob.
Jinny waited; Edward waited; and both looked at Jacob.
“Well?” said Jacob, smiling and pressing both hands on his stick.
“Come along,” he decided; and started off. The others followed him, smiling.
And then they went to the little café in the by-street where people sit drinking coffee, watching the soldiers, meditatively knocking ashes into trays.
“But he’s quite different,” said Jinny, folding her hands over the top of her glass. “I don’t suppose you know what Ted means when he says a thing like that,” she said, looking at Jacob. “But I do. Sometimes I could kill myself. Sometimes he lies in bed all day long—just lies there. … I don’t want you right on the table”; she waved her hands. Swollen iridescent pigeons were waddling round their feet.
“Look at that woman’s hat,” said Cruttendon. “How do they come to think of it? … No, Flanders, I don’t think I could live like you. When one walks down that street opposite the British Museum—what’s it called?—that’s what I mean. It’s all like that. Those fat women—and the man standing in the middle of the road as if he were going to have a fit …”
“Everybody feeds them,” said Jinny, waving the pigeons away. “They’re stupid old things.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Jacob, smoking his cigarette. “There’s St. Paul’s.”
“I mean going to an office,” said Cruttendon.
“Hang it all,” Jacob expostulated.
“But you don’t count,” said Jinny, looking at Cruttendon. “You’re mad. I mean, you just think of painting.”
“Yes, I know. I can’t help it. I say, will King George give way about the peers?”
“He’ll jolly well have to,” said Jacob.
“There!” said Jinny. “He really knows.”
“You see, I would if I could,” said Cruttendon, “but I simply can’t.”
“I think I could,” said Jinny. “Only, it’s all the people one dislikes who do it. At home, I mean. They talk of nothing else. Even people like my mother.”
“Now if I came and lived here—” said Jacob. “What’s my share, Cruttendon? Oh, very well. Have it your own way. Those silly birds, directly one wants them—they’ve flown away.”
And finally under the arc lamps in the Gare des Invalides, with one of those queer movements which are so slight yet so definite, which may wound or pass unnoticed but generally inflict a good deal of discomfort, Jinny and Cruttendon drew together; Jacob stood apart. They had to separate. Something must be said. Nothing was said. A man wheeled a trolley past Jacob’s legs so near that he almost grazed them. When Jacob recovered his balance the other two were turning away, though Jinny looked over her shoulder, and Cruttendon, waving his hand, disappeared like the very great genius that he was.
No—Mrs. Flanders was told none of this, though Jacob felt, it is safe to say, that nothing in the world was of greater importance; and as for Cruttendon and Jinny, he thought them the most remarkable people he had ever met—being of course unable to foresee how it fell out in the course of time that Cruttendon took to painting orchards; had therefore to live in Kent; and must, one would think, see through apple blossom by this time, since his wife, for whose sake he did it, eloped with a novelist; but no; Cruttendon still paints orchards, savagely, in solitude. Then Jinny Carslake, after her affair with Lefanu the American painter, frequented Indian philosophers, and now you find her in pensions in Italy cherishing a little jeweller’s box containing ordinary pebbles picked off the road. But if you look at them steadily, she says, multiplicity becomes unity, which is somehow the secret of life, though it does not prevent her from following the macaroni as it goes round the table, and sometimes, on spring nights, she makes the strangest confidences to shy young Englishmen.
Jacob had nothing to hide from his mother. It was only that he could make no sense himself of his extraordinary excitement, and as for writing it down—
“Jacob’s letters are so like
