Chapter 8 - Page 2

arbitrary half-remembered phrases suggesting all sorts
of scenes--lamplight in squalid streets, trays full of weather-beaten
books. So, even then, my mind was full of Mercurius Rusticus. Mr.
Churchill on Cromwell amused me immensely and even excited me. It was
life, 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--as
fantastic as herself--and it came out more in his conversation than in
the book itself. I had something to do with that, of course. But imagine
the treatment accorded to Cromwell by this delicate, negative,
obstinately judicial personality. It was the sort of thing one wants to
get into a novel. It was a lesson to me--in temperament, in point of
view; I went with his mood, tried even to outdo him, in the hope of
spurring him to outdo himself. I only mention it because I did it so
well that it led to extraordinary consequences.

We were walking up and down his lawn, in the twilight, after his Sunday
supper. The pale light shone along the gleaming laurels and dwelt upon
the soft clouds of orchard blossoms that shimmered above them. It dwelt,
too, upon the silver streaks in his dark hair and made his face seem
more pallid, and more old. It affected me like some intense piece of
irony. It was like hearing a dying man talk of the year after next. I
had the sense of the unreality of things strong upon me. Why should
nightingale upon nightingale pour out volley upon volley of song for the
delight of a politician whose heart was not in his task of keeping back
the waters of the deluge, but who grew animated at the idea of damning
one of the titans who had let loose the deluge?

About a week after--or it may have been a fortnight--Churchill wrote to
me and asked me to take him to see the Jenkins of my Jenkins story. It
was one of those ordeals that one goes through when one has tried to
advance one's friends. Jenkins took the matter amiss, thought it was a
display of insulting patronage on the part of officialism. He was
reluctant to show his best work, the forgotten masterpieces, the things
that had never sold, that hung about on the faded walls and rotted in
cellars. He would not be his genial self; he would not talk. Churchill
behaved very well--I think he understood.

Jenkins thawed before his gentle appreciations. I could see the change
operating within him. He began to realise that this incredible visit
from a man who ought to be hand and glove with Academicians was
something other than a spy's encroachment. He was old, you must
remember, and entirely unsuccessful. He had fought a hard fight and had
been worsted. He took his revenge in these suspicions.

We younger men adored him. He had the ruddy face and