CHAPTER SEVEN
I succeeded in giving Fox what his journal wanted; I got the atmosphereof Churchill and his house, in a way that satisfied the people for whomit was meant. His house was a pleasant enough place, of the sort wherethey do you well, but not nauseously well. It stood in a tranquilcountryside, and stood there modestly. Architecturally speaking, it wasgently commonplace; one got used to it and liked it. And Churchillhimself, when one had become accustomed to his manner, one liked verywell--very well indeed. He had a dainty, dilettante mind, delicatelybalanced, with strong limitations, a fantastic temperament for a personin his walk of life--but sane, mind you, persistent. After a time, Iamused myself with a theory that his heart was not in his work, thatcircumstance had driven him into the career of politics and ironicalfate set him at its head. For myself, I had an intense contempt for thepolitical mind, and it struck me that he had some of the same feeling.He had little personal quaintnesses, too, a deference, a modesty, anopen-mindedness.
I was with him for the greater part of his weekend holiday; hung,perforce, about him whenever he had any leisure. I suppose he found metiresome--but one has to do these things. He talked, and I talked;heavens, how we talked! He was almost always deferential, I almostalways dogmatic; perhaps because the conversation kept on my own ground.Politics we never touched. I seemed to feel that if I broached them, Ishould be checked--politely, but very definitely. Perhaps he actuallycontrived to convey as much to me; perhaps I evolved the idea that if Iwere to say:
"What do you think about the 'Greenland System'"--he would answer:
"I try not to think about it," or whatever gently closuring phrase hismind conceived. But I never did so; there were so many other topics.
He was then writing his _Life of Cromwell_ and his mind was very full ofhis subject. Once he opened his heart, after delicately sounding me forsigns of boredom. It happened, by the merest chance--one of those blindchances that inevitably lead in the future--that I, too, was obsessed atthat moment by the Lord Oliver. A great many years before, when I was ayearling of tremendous plans, I had set about one of those gloriousnovels that one plans--a splendid thing with Old Noll as the hero or theheavy father. I had haunted the bookstalls in search of local colour andhad wonderfully well invested my half-crowns. Thus a company ofseventeenth century tracts, dog-eared, coverless, but very gloriousunder their dust, accompany me through life. One parts last with thoserelics of a golden age, and during my late convalescence I had rereadmany of them, the arbitrary half-remembered phrases suggesting all sortsof scenes--lamplight in squalid streets, trays full of weather-beatenbooks. So, even then, my mind was full of Mercurius Rusticus. Mr.Churchill on Cromwell amused me immensely and even excited me. It waslife, this attending at a self-revelation of an impossible temperament.It did me good, as he had said of my pseudo-sister. It was fantastic--asfantastic as herself--and it came out more in his conversation than inthe book itself. I had something to do with that, of course. But imaginethe treatment accorded to Cromwell by this delicate, negative,obstinately judicial personality. It was the sort of thing one wants toget into a novel. It was a lesson to me--in temperament, in point ofview; I went with his mood, tried even to outdo him, in the hope ofspurring him to outdo himself. I only mention it because I did it sowell that it led to extraordinary consequences.
We were walking up and down his lawn, in the twilight, after his Sundaysupper. The pale light shone along the gleaming laurels and dwelt uponthe soft clouds of orchard blossoms that shimmered above them. It dwelt,too, upon the silver streaks in his dark hair and made his face seemmore pallid, and more old. It affected me like some intense piece ofirony. It was like hearing a dying man talk of the year after next. Ihad the sense of the unreality of things strong upon me. Why shouldnightingale upon nightingale pour out volley upon volley of song for thedelight of a politician whose heart was not in his task of keeping backthe waters of the deluge, but who grew animated at the idea of damningone of the titans who had let loose the deluge?
About a week after--or it may have been a fortnight--Churchill wrote tome and asked me to take him to see the Jenkins of my Jenkins story. Itwas one of those ordeals that one goes through when one has tried toadvance one's friends. Jenkins took the matter amiss, thought it was adisplay of insulting patronage on the part of officialism. He wasreluctant to show his best work, the forgotten masterpieces, the thingsthat had never sold, that hung about on the faded walls and rotted incellars. He would not be his genial self; he would not talk. Churchillbehaved very well--I think he understood.
Jenkins thawed before his gentle appreciations. I could see the changeoperating within him. He began to realise that this incredible visitfrom a man who ought to be hand and glove with Academicians wassomething other than a spy's encroachment. He was old, you mustremember, and entirely unsuccessful. He had fought a hard fight and hadbeen worsted. He took his revenge in these suspicions.
We younger men adored him. He had the ruddy face and the archaic silverhair of the King of Hearts; and a wonderful elaborate politeness that hehad inherited from his youth--from the days of Brummell. And, whilst allhis belongings were rotting into dust, he retained an extraordinarilyyouthful and ingenuous habit of mind. It was that, or a little of it,that gave the charm to my Jenkins story.
It was a disagreeable experience. I wished so much that the perennialhopefulness of the man should at last escape deferring and I was afraidthat Churchill would chill before Jenkins had time to thaw. But, as Ihave said, I think Churchill understood. He smiled his kindly,short-sighted smile over canvas after canvas, praised the right thing ineach, remembered having seen this and that in such and such a year, andJenkins thawed.
He happened to leave the room--to fetch some studies, to hurry up thetea or for some such reason. Bereft of his presence the place suddenlygrew ghostly. It was as if the sun had died in the sky and left us inthat nether world where dead, buried pasts live in a grey, shadowlesslight. Jenkins' palette glowed from above a medley of stained rags onhis open colour table. The rush-bottom of his chair resembled awind-torn thatch.
"One can draw morals from a life like that," I said suddenly. I wasthinking rather of Jenkins than of the man I was talking to.
"Why, yes," he said, absently, "I suppose there are men who haven't theknack of getting on."
"It's more than a knack," I said, with unnecessary bitterness. "It's atemperament."
"I think it's a habit, too. It may be acquired, mayn't it?"
"No, no," I fulminated, "it's precisely because it can't be acquiredthat the best men--the men like ..." I stopped suddenly, impressed bythe idea that the thing was out of tone. I had to assert myself morethan I liked in talking to Churchill. Otherwise I should havedisappeared. A word from him had the weight of three kingdoms andseveral colonies behind it, and I was forced to get that out of my headby making conversation a mere matter of temperament. In that I was thestronger. If I wanted to say a thing, I said it; but he was hampered bya judicial mind. It seemed, too, that he liked a dictatorialinterlocutor, else he would hardly have brought himself into contactwith me again. Perhaps it was new to him. My eye fell upon a couple ofmasks, hanging one on each side of the fireplace. The room was full of aprofusion of little casts, thick with dust upon the shoulders, the hair,the eyelids, on every part that projected outward.
"By-the-bye," I said, "that's a death-mask of Cromwell."
"Ah!" he answered, "I knew there _was_...."
He moved very slowly toward it, rather as if he did not wish to bring itwithin his field of view. He stopped before reaching it and pivottedslowly to face me.
"About my book," he opened suddenly, "I have so little time." Hisbriskness dropped into a half complaint, like a faintly suggested avowalof impotence. "I have been at it four years now. It struck me--youseemed to coincide so singularly with my ideas."
His speech came wavering to a close, but he recommenced itapologetically--as if he wished me to help him out.
"I went to see Smithson the publisher abo
ut it, and he said he had noobjection...."
He looked appealingly at me. I kept silence.
"Of course, it's not your sort of work. But you might try.... Yousee...." He came to a sustained halt.
"I don't understand," I said, rather coldly, when the silence becameembarrassing. "You want me to 'ghost' for you?"
"'Ghost,' good gracious no," he said, energetically; "dear me, no!"
"Then I really don't understand," I said.
"I thought you might see your ... I wanted you to collaborate with me.Quite publicly, of course, as far as the epithet applies."
"To collaborate," I said slowly. "You...."
I was looking at a miniature of the Farnese Hercules--I wondered what itmeant, what club had struck the wheel of my fortune and whirled it intothis astounding attitude.
"Of course you must think about it," he said.
"I don't know," I muttered; "the idea is so new. It's so little in myline. I don't know what I should make of it."
I talked at random. There were so many thoughts jostling in my head. Itseemed to carry me so much farther from the kind of work I wanted to do.I did not really doubt my ability--one does not. I rather regarded it aswork upon a lower plane. And it was a tremendous--an incrediblytremendous--opportunity.
"You know pretty well how much I've done," he continued. "I've got agood deal of material together and a good deal of the actual writing isdone. But there is ever so much still to do. It's getting beyond me, asI said just now."
I looked at him again, rather incredulously. He stood before me, a thinparallelogram of black with a mosaic of white about the throat. Theslight grotesqueness of the man made him almost impossibly real in hisabstracted earnestness. He so much meant what he said that he ignoredwhat his hands were doing, or his body or his head. He had taken a verysmall, very dusty book out of a little shelf beside him, and wasabsently turning over the rusty leaves, while he talked with his headbent over it. What was I to him, or he to me?
"I could give my Saturday afternoons to it," he was saying, "wheneveryou could come down."
"It's immensely kind of you," I began.
"Not at all, not at all," he waived. "I've set my heart on doing it and,unless you help me, I don't suppose I ever shall get it done."
"But there are hundreds of others," I said.
"There may be," he said, "there may be. But I have not come acrossthem."
I was beset by a sudden emotion of blind candour.
"Oh, nonsense, nonsense," I said. "Don't you see that you are offeringme the chance of a lifetime?"
Churchill laughed.
"After all, one cannot refuse to take what offers," he said. "Besides,your right man to do the work might not suit me as a collaborator."
"It's very tempting," I said.
"Why, then, succumb," he smiled.
I could not find arguments against him, and I succumbed as Jenkinsre-entered the room.