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This gloom, this surrender to the dark waters which lap us about, is a modern invention. Perhaps, as Cruttendon said, we do not believe enough. Our fathers at any rate had something to demolish. So have we for the matter of that, thought Jacob, crumpling the Daily Mail in his hand.
"Well, Flanders, finished writing to your lady?" said Cruttendon, as Jacob came and took his seat beside them, holding in his hand an envelope addressed to Mrs. Flanders, near Scarborough, England. "Do you uphold Velasquez?" said Cruttendon. "By God, he does," said Mallinson. "He always gets like this," said Cruttendon irritably. Jacob looked at Mallinson with excessive composure.
He took up a book. "Now my good sir, are you going to settle down?" said Cruttendon. "That's a solid piece of work," said Jacob, standing a canvas on a chair. "Oh, that I did ages ago," said Cruttendon, looking over his shoulder. "You're a pretty competent painter in my opinion," said Jacob after a time.
Swollen iridescent pigeons were waddling round their feet. "Look at that woman's hat," said Cruttendon. "How do they come to think of it? ... No, Flanders, I don't think I could live like you. When one walks down that street opposite the British Museum what's it called? that's what I mean. It's all like that.
And when I say that ..." he squeezed the tail of an emaciated tube ... "Chardin was a great swell. ... He sells 'em to pay his dinner now. But wait till the dealers get hold of him. A great swell oh, a very great swell." "It's an awfully pleasant life," said Jacob, "messing away up here. Still, it's a stupid art, Cruttendon." He wandered off across the room. "There's this man, Pierre Louys now."
A man wheeled a trolley past Jacob's legs so near that he almost grazed them. When Jacob recovered his balance the other two were turning away, though Jinny looked over her shoulder, and Cruttendon, waving his hand, disappeared like the very great genius that he was. No Mrs.
"'Hang there like fruit my soul," Cruttendon and Jacob both began again at the same moment, and both burst out laughing. "Curse these flies," said Mallinson, flicking at his bald head. "What do they take me for?" "Something sweet-smelling," said Cruttendon. "Shut up, Cruttendon," said Jacob. "The fellow has no manners," he explained to Mallinson very politely.
That's Shakespeare, Cruttendon. I'm with you there. Shakespeare had more guts than all these damned frogs put together. 'Hang there like fruit my soul," he began quoting, in a musical rhetorical voice, flourishing his wine-glass. "The devil damn you black, you cream-faced loon!" he exclaimed as the wine washed over the rim.
Flanders was told none of this, though Jacob felt, it is safe to say, that nothing in the world was of greater importance; and as for Cruttendon and Jinny, he thought them the most remarkable people he had ever met being of course unable to foresee how it fell out in the course of time that Cruttendon took to painting orchards; had therefore to live in Kent; and must, one would think, see through apple blossom by this time, since his wife, for whose sake he did it, eloped with a novelist; but no; Cruttendon still paints orchards, savagely, in solitude.
And finally under the arc lamps in the Gare des Invalides, with one of those queer movements which are so slight yet so definite, which may wound or pass unnoticed but generally inflict a good deal of discomfort, Jinny and Cruttendon drew together; Jacob stood apart. They had to separate. Something must be said. Nothing was said.
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