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 the archaic silver hair of the King of Hearts; and a wonderful elaborate politeness that he had inherited from his youth—­from the days of Brummell.  And, whilst all his belongings were rotting into dust, he retained an extraordinarily youthful 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 perennial hopefulness of the man should at last escape deferring and I was afraid that Churchill would chill before Jenkins had time to thaw.  But, as I have said, I think Churchill understood.  He smiled his kindly, short-sighted smile over canvas after canvas, praised the right thing in each, remembered having seen this and that in such and such a year, and Jenkins thawed.

He happened to leave the room—­to fetch some studies, to hurry up the tea or for some such reason.  Bereft of his presence the place suddenly grew ghostly.  It was as if the sun had died in the sky and left us in that nether world where dead, buried pasts live in a grey, shadowless light.  Jenkins’ palette glowed from above a medley of stained rags on his open colour table.  The rush-bottom of his chair resembled a wind-torn thatch.

“One can draw morals from a life like that,” I said suddenly.  I was thinking rather of Jenkins than of the man I was talking to.

“Why, yes,” he said, absently, “I suppose there are men who haven’t the knack of getting on.”

“It’s more than a knack,” I said, with unnecessary bitterness.  “It’s a temperament.”

“I think it’s a habit, too.  It may be acquired, mayn’t it?”