I did but ask him, in a quite general way, how the
cottage could be better. He said that it ought to have a porch--`but
porches tumble in.' He was too young an artist to accept quite meekly
the limits imposed by his material. He pointed along the lower edge of
the roof: `It ought to stick out,' he said, meaning that it wanted
eaves. I told him not to worry about that: it was the sand's fault,
not his. `What really is a pity,' I said, `is that your house can't
last for ever.' He was tracing now on the roof, with the edge of his
spade, a criss-cross pattern, to represent tiles, and he seemed to
have forgotten my presence and my kindness. `Aren't you sorry,' I
asked, raising my voice rather sharply, `that the sea is coming in?'
He glanced at the sea. `Yes.' He said this with a lack of emphasis
that seemed to me noble though insincere.
The strain of talking in words of not more than three syllables had
begun to tell on me. I bade the artist good-bye, wandered away up the
half-dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, and opened the
morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt
it a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English
polity is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally....
Merely from within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of
unrestful Labour in any one land are interplicated with its nerves in
any other, so vibrantly? News of the dismissal of an erring workman in
Timbuctoo is enough nowadays to make us apprehensive of vast and
dreadful effects on our own immediate future.
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