"You know what I mean. Alec's simply a troglodyte. He doesn't belong to to-day. It's all very flattering, of course, but he simply can't forget what things were like when I was a girl. They never dreamed of letting us travel without a maid; why, we actually had to sit still in the carriage till the footman had opened our own front door. Alec doesn't realise that the world's moved on since then. And you could have put it all on a proper footing with three words!"
"'It?'"
"Yes, his coming here. All that fuss! I think he's perfectly delightful. And I know those Somerset Trehernes if they're the Edward Trehernes of Witton Regis. And I expect his painting's clever too. He looks as if he had all the gifts.... Now I make you answerable for Alec, George. That he's not simply stupid and unreasonable, I mean. I don't mean that he's not perfectly right to ask the usual questions, but Jennie's got to be considered too. She's quite old enough to know her own mind. Now I'm going to them. Are you coming?"
"I'll come along in a few minutes," I replied.
III
My intelligence with regard to painting is simply that of the ordinary man. I seldom speculate on the relation between one art and another. True, I have read my Browning, and have wondered whether he really knew what he was talking about when he spoke of a man "finding himself" in one medium, and starting again all unprejudiced and anew in another. It sounds rather of a piece with much more art talk we heard when we were young.
But Derwent Rose was only fallaciously young. He had time at his disposal in a sense that neither Browning nor you nor I ever had. And it seemed to me significant of the state of his memory that he should have turned his back on words and taken up paint instead. For the burden of his age was lifted from him, and he was advancing on his youth with a high and exhilarating sense of adventure. Now words had been the greatest concern of his "A," or Age Memory, and words, it must be admitted, have arrogated to themselves the lion's share of this strange faculty that we call remembering. Had he now found a means of expression more closely in correspondence with the untrodden ground ahead? In other words, was he a kind of alembical meeting-ground where the arts interpenetrated and became transmuted?... I hazard it merely as a conjecture in passing, and leave you to judge. Let us pass to that visit we paid to St Briac to see his sketches.
Alec was not with us. The Kings, Queens and Knaves of the bridge-table were pictures enough for him. So I accompanied Madge and Jennie. Jennie's bosom lifted as we approached the wide spaces of the links—but then the St Briac air is admittedly fresher than the tepid medium that is canalised, so to speak, in the streets and lanes of Dinard. It was afternoon, and the shed at the terminus was a bustle of moving luggage, friends meeting friends, parties going into Dinard to return by the seven o'clock tram. We crossed the road to his glass-fronted hotel. There was no need to ask for him. Evidently he had been watching from his window. He stood at the gate, once more in blouse and corduroys.
"Tea first, I think, and the works of art afterwards," he greeted us cheerfully. "Where's Mr Aird? Oh, what a pity! This way—straight through the kitchen—I thought it would be nicer outside——"