"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.
"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?