At the gate of the Horse Guards the mounted sentries looked as though they were stuffed. Near the cenotaph a middle-aged lady was standing with raised eyes, murmuring a prayer over the Kodak with which she proposed to take a snapshot of the souls of the nine hundred thousand dead. A Sikh with a black beard and a pale mauve turban emerged from Grindley’s as they passed. The time, according to Big Ben, was twenty-seven minutes past eleven. In the library of the House of Lords was there a dozing marquess? A charabanc disgorged Americans at the door of Westminster Abbey. Looking back through the little porthole in the hood, they were able to see that the hospital was still urgently in need of funds.
John Bidlake’s house was in Grosvenor Road, overlooking the river.
“Pimlico,” said Philip meditatively, as they approached the house. He laughed. “Do you remember that absurd song your father used always to quote?”
“ ‘To Pimlico then let us go,’ ” Elinor chanted.
“ ‘One verse omitted here.’ You mustn’t forget that.” They both laughed, remembering John Bidlake’s comments.
“ ‘One verse omitted here.’ It’s omitted in all the anthologies. I’ve never been able to discover what happened when they’d got to Pimlico. It’s kept me wondering for years, feverishly. Nothing like Bowdlerism for heating the imagination.”
“Pimlico,” Philip repeated. Old Bidlake, he was thinking, had made of Pimlico a sort of Rabelaisian Olympus. He liked the phrase. But “Gargantuan” would be better for public use than “Rabelaisian.” For those who had never read him, Rabelais connoted nothing but smut. Gargantuan Olympus, then. They had at least heard rumours that Gargantua was large.
But the John Bidlake they found sitting by the stove in his studio was not at all Olympian, seemed less instead of more than life size. He suffered himself to be kissed by his daughter, limply shook hands with Philip.
“Good to see you again,” he said. But there was no resonance in his voice; the undertone of jovial thunders and jovial laughters was absent. He spoke without gusto. His eyes were without lustre, and bloodshot. He looked thin and grey.
“How are you, Father?” Elinor was surprised and distressed. She had never seen her father like this before.
“Not well,” he answered, shaking his head, “not well. Something wrong with my insides.” The old lion suddenly and recognizably roared. “Making us go through life with a barrowful of tripes! I’ve always resented God’s practical jokes.” The roar became plaintive. “I don’t know what’s happening to mine now. Something very unpleasant.” It degenerated almost into a whine. “I feel wretched.” Lengthily, the old man described his symptoms.
“Have you seen a doctor?” Elinor asked, when he had finished.
He shook his head. “Don’t believe in them. They never do one any good.” The truth was that he had a superstitious terror of doctors. Birds of evil omen—he hated to see them in the house.
“But you really ought.” She tried to persuade him.
“All right,” he at last consented grumblingly. “Let the quacks come.” But secretly he was rather relieved. He had been wanting to see the doctor for some time now; but his superstition had been stronger hitherto than his desire. The ill-omened medicine man was now to come, but not on his invitation; on Elinor’s. The responsibility was not his; not on him, therefore, would fall the bad luck. Old Bidlake’s private religion was obscurely complicated.
They began to talk of other things. Now that he knew he could consult a doctor in safety, John Bidlake felt better and more cheerful.
“I’m worried about him,” said Elinor, as they drove away.
Philip nodded. “Being seventy-three’s no joke. He’s begun to look his age.”
What a head! he was thinking. He wished he could paint. Literature couldn’t render it. One could describe it, of course, down to the last wrinkle. But where would one be then? Nowhere. Descriptions are slow. A face is instantaneously perceived. A word, a single phrase—that was what was needed. “The glory that was Greece, grown old.” That, for example, would give you something of the man. Only of course it wouldn’t do. Quotations have something facetiously pedantic about them. “A statue in parchment” would be better. “The parchment statue of what had once been Achilles was sitting, crumpled, near the stove.” That was getting nearer the mark. No long-winded description. But for anyone who had ever seen a cast of the Discobolos, handled a vellum-bound book, heard of Achilles, John Bidlake was in that sentence visible. And for those who had never seen a Greek statue or read about Achilles in a book with a crinkly sheepskin cover? Well, presumably they could go to the devil.
“All the same,” he thought, “it’s too literary. Too much culture.”
Elinor broke the silence. “I wonder how I shall find Everard, now that he’s become such a great man.” With her mind’s eye she saw the keen face, the huge but agile body. Swiftness and violence. And he was in love with her. Did she like the man? Or did she detest him?
“I wonder if he’s started pinching people’s ears, like Napoleon?” Philip laughed. “Anyhow, it’s only a matter of time.”
“All the same,” said Elinor, “I like him.” Philip’s mockery had answered her question for her.
“So do I. But mayn’t I laugh at what I like?”
“You certainly laugh at me. Is that because you like me?”
He took her hand and kissed it. “I adore you, and I never laugh at you. I take you perfectly seriously.”
Elinor looked at him, unsmiling. “You make me desperate sometimes. What would you do, if I went off with another man? Would you care two pins?”
“I should be perfectly wretched.”
“Would you?” She looked at him. Philip was smiling; he was a thousand miles away. “I’ve a good mind to make the experiment,” she added, frowning. “But would you be wretched? I’d like to be certain before I began.”
“And who’d be your fellow experimenter?”
“Ah, that’s the trouble. Most other men are so impossible.”
“What
