He said, languidly—almost protestingly, “What am I to do about the Duc de Mersch?”
Miss Churchill turned swiftly, almost apprehensively, toward him. She uttered my name and he gave the slightest of starts of annoyance—a start that meant, “Why wasn’t I warned before?” This irritated me; I knew well enough what were his relations with de Mersch, and the man took me for a little eavesdropper, I suppose. His attitudes were rather grotesque, of the sort that would pass in a person of his eminence. He stuck his eyeglasses on the end of his nose, looked at me shortsightedly, took them off and looked again. He had the air of looking down from an immense height—of needing a telescope.
“Oh, ah … Mrs. Granger’s son, I presume. … I wasn’t aware. …” The hesitation of his manner made me feel as if we never should get anywhere—not for years and years.
“No,” I said, rather brusquely, “I’m only from the Hour.”
He thought me one of Fox’s messengers then, said that Fox might have written: “Have saved you the trouble, I mean … or. …”
He had the air of wishing to be amiable, of wishing, even, to please me by proving that he was aware of my identity.
“Oh,” I said, a little loftily, “I haven’t any message, I’ve only come to interview you.” An expression of dismay sharpened the lines of his face.
“To. …” he began, “but I’ve never allowed—” He recovered himself sharply, and set the glasses vigorously on his nose; at last he had found the right track. “Oh, I remember now,” he said, “I hadn’t looked at it in that way.”
The whole thing grated on my self-love and I became, in a contained way, furiously angry. I was impressed with the idea that the man was only a puppet in the hands of Fox and de Mersch, and that lot. And he gave himself these airs of enormous distance. I, at any rate, was clean-handed in the matter; I hadn’t any axe to grind.
“Ah, yes,” he said, hastily, “you are to draw my portrait—as Fox put it. He sent me your Jenkins sketch. I read it—it struck a very nice note. And so—.” He sat himself down on a preposterously low chair, his knees on a level with his chin. I muttered that I feared he would find the process a bore.
“Not more for me than for you,” he answered, seriously—“one has to do these things.”
“Why, yes,” I echoed, “one has to do these things.” It struck me that he regretted it—regretted it intensely; that he attached a bitter meaning to the words.
“And … what is the procedure?” he asked, after a pause. “I am new to the sort of thing.” He had the air, I thought, of talking to some respectable tradesman that one calls in only when one is in extremis—to a distinguished pawnbroker, a man quite at the top of a tree of inferior timber.
“Oh, for the matter of that, so am I,” I answered. “I’m supposed to get your atmosphere, as Callan put it.”
“Indeed,” he answered, absently, and then, after a pause, “You know Callan?” I was afraid I should fall in his estimation.
“One has to do these things,” I said; “I’ve just been getting his atmosphere.”
He looked again at the letter in his hand, smoothed his necktie and was silent. I realised that I was in the way, but I was still so disturbed that I forgot how to phrase an excuse for a momentary absence.
“Perhaps, …” I began.
He looked at me attentively.
“I mean, I think I’m in the way,” I blurted out.
“Well,” he answered, “it’s quite a small matter. But, if you are to get my atmosphere, we may as well begin out of doors.” He hesitated, pleased with his witticism; “Unless you’re tired,” he added.
“I will go and get ready,” I said, as if I were a lady with bonnet-strings to tie. I was conducted to my room, where I kicked my heels for a decent interval. When I descended, Mr. Churchill was lounging about the room with his hands in his trouser-pockets and his head hanging limply over his chest. He said, “Ah!” on seeing me, as if he had forgotten my existence. He paused for a long moment, looked meditatively at himself in the glass over the fireplace, and then grew brisk. “Come along,” he said.
We took a longish walk through a lush home-country meadow land. We talked about a number of things, he opening the ball with that infernal Jenkins sketch. I was in the stage at which one is sick of the thing, tired of the bare idea of it—and Mr. Churchill’s laboriously kind phrases made the matter no better.
“You know who Jenkins stands for?” I asked. I wanted to get away on the side issues.
“Oh, I guessed it was ⸻” he answered. They said that Mr. Churchill was an enthusiast for the school of painting of which Jenkins was the last exponent. He began to ask questions about him. Did he still paint? Was he even alive?
“I once saw several of his pictures,” he reflected. “His work certainly appealed to me … yes, it appealed to me. I meant at the time … but
