"It doesn't," Mr. Wilkinson grunted.
"Girl's voice, anyway.... I say, I wonder how old Prang's getting on!"
"I wonder!"
"He's gone back, hasn't he?" Dickie asked.
"Oh, a couple of months ago. Didn't Strong give him the push, Wilkie?"
"Don't suppose Strong ever did anything so vigorous," Mr. Wilkinson growled. "The only strong thing about Strong's his name. He's simply ruined that paper."
"I agree that it was at its best when Prang was doing the Indian notes."
"Oh, Prang knew what he wanted. Prang's all right in his way. But I tell you India's too far away. We want something at our own doors, and somebody made an example of that somebody knows. Now if Pratt had only been guided by me——"
"Hallo, here's Britomart Belchamber.—Why doesn't Amory come down, Brit? She's in, isn't she?"
"What?" said Miss Belchamber.
"Isn't Amory coming down?"
"She's gone out," said Miss Belchamber, adjusting her hair. "A min-ute ago," she added.
Walter Wyron said something about "Cool—with guests——," but Amory's going out was no reason why they should not finish tea in comfort. No doubt Amory would be back presently. Lauraconfided to Britomart that she hoped so, for the truth was that her kitchen range had gone wrong, and a man had said he was coming to look at it, but he hadn't turned up—these people never turned up when they said they would—and so she had thought it would be nice if they came and kept Amory company at supper....
"We've got some new cheese-bis-cuits," said Miss Belchamber ruminatively. "I like them. They make bone. I like to have bone made. The muscles can't act unless you have bone. That's why these bis-cuits are so good. Good-bye."
And Miss Belchamber, with a friendly general smile, went off to open her sweat-ducts by means of a hot bath and to close them again afterwards with a cold sponge.
Amory had not gone out this time to press amidst strange people and to look into strange and frightening eyes, various in colour as the pebbles of a beach, and tipped with arrow-heads of white as they turned. Almost for the first time in her life she wanted to be alone—quite alone, with her eyes on nobody and nobody's eyes on her. She did not reflect on this. She did not reflect on anything. She only knew that The Witan seemed to stifle her, and that when she had seen Mr. Wilkinson alight from his cab—and Mr. Brimby and Dickie come—and the Wyrons—with all the others no doubt following presently—it had come sharply upon her that these wearisomely familiar people used up all the air. The Witan without them was bad enough; TheWitan with them had become insupportable.
It was not the assassination of Sir Benjamin that had disturbed her. Since Cosimo's departure she had glanced at Indian news only a shade less perfunctorily than before, and she had turned from this particular announcement to the account of New Greek Society's production with hardly a change of boredom. No: it was everything in her life—everything. She felt used up. She thought that if anybody had spoken to her just then she could only have given the incoherent and petulant "Don't!" of a child who is interrupted at a game that none but he understands. She hated herself, yet hated more to be dragged out of herself; and as she made for the loneliest part of the Heath she wished that night would fall.
She had to all intents and purposes packed Cosimo off to India in order to have him out of the way. His presence had become as wearisome as that of the Wyrons and the rest of them. And that was as much as she had hitherto told herself. She had taken no resolution about Edgar Strong. But drifting is accelerated when an obstacle is removed, and her heart had frequently beaten rapidly at the thought that, merely by removing Cosimo, she had started a process that would presently bring her up against Edgar Strong. She had pleased and teased and frightened herself with the thought of what was to happen then. So many courses would be open to her. She might actually take the mad plunge from which she had hitherto shrunk. She might do the very opposite—stare at him, should hepropose it, and inform him that, some thousands of miles notwithstanding, she was still Cosimo's wife. She might pathetically urge on him that, now more than ever, she needed a friend and not a lover—or else that, now more than ever, she needed a lover and not a friend. She might say that nothing could be done until Cosimo came back—or that when Cosimo came back would be too late to do anything. Or she might....
Or she might....
Or she might....
Yet when all was said, Edgar and the "Novum's" offices were perilously near....
For it was not what she might do, but what he might do, that set her heart beating most rapidly of all. Her dangerous dreaming always ended in that. Here was no question of that trumpery subterfuge of the Wyrons. It struck her with extraordinary force and newness that she was what was called "a married woman." It was a familiar phrase; it was as familiar as those other phrases, "No, just living together," "Well, as long as there are no children," "LoveisLaw"—familiar as the air. Left to herself, the phrases might have remained both her dissipation and her safeguard.... But he? Would phrases content him? After she had tempted him as she knew she had tempted him? After that stern repression of himself in favour of his duty? Or would he ask her again what she thought he was made off?... It was always the man who was expected to take the decisive step. The woman simply—offered—and, if she was clever,did it in such a way that she could always deny it after the fact. If Edgar shouldnotstretch out his hand—well, in that case there would be no more to be said. But if he should?...
A little sound came from her closed lips.
Cosimo had been away for nearly three months, and had not yet said anything about returning; and Amory had smiled when, after many eager protestings that there was no reason (Love being Law) why he should go alone, he had after all funked taking his splendid turnip of a Britomart with him. Of course: when it had come to the point, he had lacked the courage. Amory could not help thinking that that lack was just a shade more contemptible than his philanderings. Courage!... Images of Cleopatra and the carpet rose in her mind again.... But the images were faint now. She had evoked them too often. Her available mental material had become stale. She needed a fresh impulse—a new experience——
But—she always got back to the same point—suppose Edgar should take her, not at her word, nor against her word, but with words, for once, left suddenly and entirely out of the question?...
Again the thumping heart——
It was almost worth the misery and loneliness for the sake of that painful and delicious thrill.
She was sitting on a bench under the palings of Ken Wood, watching a saffron sunset. A Prince Eadmond's girl in a little green Florentine cap passed. She reminded Amory of Britomart Belchamber, and Amory rose and took the root-grown path to theSpaniards Road and the West Heath. She intended to take a walk as far as Golders Green Park; but, as it happened, she did not get so far. A newsboy, without any sense of proportion whatever, was crying cheerfully, "Murder of a Guv'nor—Special!" This struck Amory. She thought she had read it once before that afternoon, but she bought another paper and turned to the paragraph. Yes, it was the same—and yet it was somehow different. It seemed—she could not tell why—a shade more important than it had done. Perhaps the newsboy's voice had made it sound more important: things did seem to come more personally home when they were spoken than when they were merely read. She hoped it was not very important; it might be well to make sure. She was not very far from home; her Timon-guests would still be there; somebody would be able to tell her all about it....
She walked back to The Witan again, and, still hatted and dressed, pushed at the studio door.
Nobody had left. Indeed, two more had come—young Mr. Raffinger of the McGrath, and a friend of his, a young woman from the Lambeth School of Art, who had Russianized her painting-blouse by putting a leather belt round it, and who told Amory she had wanted to meet her for such a long time, because she had done some designs for Suffrage Christmas Cards, and hoped Amory wouldn't mind her fearful cheek, but hoped she would look at them, and say exactly what she thought about them, and perhaps give her a tip or two, and, if it wasn't asking too much, introduce her to the ManumissionLeague, or to anybody else who might buy them.... Young Raffinger interrupted the flow of gush and apologetics.
"Oh, don't bother her just yet, Eileen. Let her read her cable first."
Amory turned quickly.—"What do you say? What cable?" she asked.
"There's a cable for you."
It lay on the uncleared tea-table, and everybody seemed to know all about the outside of it at all events. As it was not in the usual place for letters, perhaps it had been passed from hand to hand. Quite unaffectedly, they stood round in a ring while Amory opened it, with all their eyes on her. They most frightfully wanted to know what was in it, but of course it would have been rude to ask outright. So they merely watched, expectantly.
Then, as Amory stood looking at the piece of paper, Walter was almost rude. But in the circumstances everybody forgave him.
"Well?" he said; and then with ready tact he retrieved the solecism. "Hope it's good news, Amory?"
For all that there was just that touch ofschadenfreudein his tone that promised that he for one would do his best to bear up if it wasn't.
Amory was a little pale. It was the best of news, and yet she was a little pale. Perhaps she was faint because she had not had any tea.
"Cosimo's coming home," she said.
There was a moment's silence, and then the congratulations broke out.
"Oh, good!"
"Shall be glad to see the old boy!"
"Finished his work, I suppose?"
"Or perhaps it's something to do with this Collins business?"
It was Mr. Brimby who had made this last remark. Amory turned to him slowly.
"What is this Collins business?" she asked.
Mr. Brimby dropped his sorrowing head.
"Ah, poor fellow," he murmured. "I'm afraid he went to work on the wrong principles. Alittlemore conciliation ... but it's difficult to blame anybody in these cases. The System's at fault. Let us not be harsh. I quite agree with Wilkinson that the 'Pall Mall' to-night is very harsh."
"Cowardly," said Mr. Wilkinson grimly. "Rubbing it in because they have some sort of a show of a case. They're always mum enough on the other side."
Amory lifted her head.
"But you say this might have something to do with Cosimo's coming back. Tell me at once what's happened.—And put that telegram down, Walter. It's mine."
They had never heard Amory speak like this before. It was rather cool of her, in her own house, and quite contrary to the beautiful Chinese rule of politeness. And somehow her tone seemed, all at once, to dissipate a certain number of pretences that for the last hour or more they had been laboriously seeking to keep up. That, at any rate, was a relief. For a minute nobody seemed to want to answer Amory;then Mr. Wilkinson took it upon himself to do so—characteristically.
"Nothing's happened," he said, "—nothing that we haven't all been talking about for a year and more. What the devil—let's be plain for once. To look at you, anybody'd think you hadn't meant it! By God, ifI'dhad that paper of yours!... I told you at the beginning what Strong was—neither wanted to do things nor let 'em alone; butI'dhave shown you! I'd have had a dozen Prangs! But he didn't want one—and he didn't want to sack him—afraid all the time something 'ld happen, but daren't stop—doing too well out of it for that ... and now that it's happened, what's all the to-do about? You're always calling it War, aren't you? And itisWar, isn't it? Or only Brimby's sort of War—like everything else about Brimby?——"
Here somebody tried to interpose, but Mr. Wilkinson raised his voice almost to a shout.
"Isn't it? Isn't it?... Lookee here! A little fellow came here one Sunday, a little collier, and he said 'Wilkie knows!' And by Jimminy, Wilkie does know! I tell you it's everybody for himself in this world, and I'm out for anything that's going! (Yes, let's have a bit o' straight talk for a change!) War? Of course it's War! What do we all mean about street barricades and rifles if it isn't War? It's War when they fetch the soldiers out, isn't it? Or is that a bit more Brimby? And you can't have War without killing somebody, can you? I tell you we want it at home, not in India! I've stood at the dock gates waiting to be taken on, and I know—nofear! To hell with your shillyshallying! If Collins gets in the way, Collins must get out o' the way. We can't stop for Collins. I wish it had been here! I can just see myself jumping off a bridge with a director in my arms—the fat hogs! If I'd had that paper! There'd have been police round this house long ago, and then the fun would have started!... Me and Prang's the only two of all the bunch thatdoesknow what we want! And Prang's got his all right—my turn next—and I shan't ask Brimby to help me——"
Through a sort of singing in her ears Amory heard the rising cries of dissent that interrupted Mr. Wilkinson—"Oh no—hang it—Wilkinson's going too far!" But the noise conveyed little to her. Stupidly she was staring at the blue and yellow jets of the asbestos log, and weakly thinking what a silly imitation the thing was. She couldn't imagine however Cosimo had come to buy it. And then she heard Mr. Wilkinson repeating some phrase he had used before: "There'd have been police round this house and then the fun would have begun!" Police round The Witan, she thought? Why? It seemed very absurd to talk like that. Mr. Brimby was telling Mr. Wilkinson how absurd it was. But Mr. Brimby himself was rather absurd when you came to think of it....
Then there came another shouted outburst.—"Another Mutiny? Well, what about it? ItisWar, isn't it? Or is it only Brimby's sort of War?——"
Then Amory felt herself grow suddenly cold andresolved. Cosimo was coming back. Whether he had made India too hot to hold him, as now appeared just possible, she no longer cared, for at last she knew what she intended to do. Her guests were wrangling once more; let them wrangle; she was going to leave this house that Mr. Wilkinson apparently wanted to surround with police as a preliminary to the "fun." Edgar might still be at the office; if he was not, she would sleep at some hotel and find him in the morning. Then she would take her leap. She had hesitated far too long. She would not go and look at the twins for fear lest she should hesitate again....
Just such a sense of rest came over her as a swimmer feels who, having long struggled against a choppy stream, suddenly abandons himself to it and lets it bear him whither it will.
Unnoticed in the heat of the dispute, she crossed to the studio door. She thought she heard Laura call, "Can I come and help, Amory?" No doubt Laura thought she was going to see about supper. But she no longer intended to stay even for supper in this house of wrangles and envy and crowds and whispering and crookedness.
Her cheque-book and some gold were in her dressing-table drawer upstairs. She got them. Then she descended again, opened the front door, closed it softly behind her again, passed through the door in the privet hedge, and walked out on to the dark Heath.
Those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew that the problem of how to make the best of both worlds pressed with a peculiar hardship on him. The smaller rebel must have the whole of infinity for his soul to range in—and, for all the practical concern that man has with it, infinity may be defined as the condition in which the word of the weakest is as good as that of the wisest. Give him scope enough and Mr. Brimby cannot be challenged. There is no knowledge of which he says that it is too wonderful for him, that it is high and he cannot attain unto it.
But Edgar Strong knew a little more than Mr. Brimby. He bore his share of just such a common responsibility as is not too great for you or for me to understand. Between himself and Mr. Prang had been a long and slow and grim struggle, without a word about it having been said on either side; and it had not been altogether Edgar Strong's fault that in the end Mr. Prang had been one too many for him.
For, consistently with his keeping his three hundred a year (more than two-thirds of which by onemeans and another he had contrived to save), he did not see that he could have done much more than he had done. Things would have been far worse had he allowed Mr. Wilkinson to oust him. And now he knew that this was the "Novum's" finish. Whispers had reached him that behind important walls important questions were being asked, and a ponderous and slow-moving Department had approached another Body about certain finportations (Sir Joseph Deedes, Katie's uncle, knew all about these things). And this and that and the other were going on behind the scenes; and these deep mutterings meant, if they meant anything at all, that it was time Edgar Strong was packing up.
Fruit-farming was the line he fancied; oranges in Florida; and it would not take long to book passages—passages for two——
He had heard the news in the early afternoon, and had straightway sent off an express messenger to the person for whom the second passage was destined. Within an hour this person had run up the stairs, without having met anybody on a landing whom it had been necessary to ask whether Mr. So-and-So, the poster artist, had a studio in the building. Edgar Strong's occupation as she had entered had made words superfluous. He had been carrying armfuls of papers into the little room behind the office and thrusting them without examination on the fire. The girl had exchanged a few rapid sentences with him, had bolted out again, hailed a taxi, sought a Bank, done some business there on the stroke of four, and had driven thence to a shippingoffice. Edgar Strong, in Charing Cross Road, had continued to feed his fire. The whole place smelt of burning paper. A mountain of ashes choked the grate and spread out as far as the bed and the iron washstand in the corner.
The girl returned. From under the bed she pulled out a couple of bags. Into these she began to thrust her companion's clothes. Into a third and smaller bag she crammed her own dressing-gown and slippers, a comb and a couple of whalebone brushes, and other things. She had brought word that the boat sailed the day after to-morrow....
"There's the telephone—just answer it, will you?" Strong said, casting another bundle on the fire....
"Wyron," said the girl, returning.
"Never mind those boots; they're done; and you might get me a safety-razor; shall want it on the ship.... By the way—I think we'd better get married."
The girl laughed.—"All right," she said as she crammed a nightdress-case into the little bag....
Amory walked quickly down the East Heath. As she walked she could not help wondering what there had been to make such a fuss about. Indeed she had been making quite a bugbear of the thing she was now doing quite easily. What, after all, would it matter? Would a single one of the people she passed so hurriedly think her case in the least degree special? Had they not, each one of them, their own private and probably very similar affairs?Was there one of them of whom it could be said with certainty that he or she was not, at that very moment, bound on the same errand? She looked at the women. There was nothing to betray them, but it was quite as likely as not. Nor could they tell by looking at her. For that matter, the most resolute would hide it the most. And a person's life was his own. Nobody would give him another one when he had starved and denied the one he had. There might not be another one. Some people said that there was, and some that there wasn't. Meetings were held about that too, but so far they hadn't seemed to advance matters very much....
Nor was it the urge of passion that was now driving her forward at such a rate. She could not help thinking that she had been rather silly in her dreams about carpets and Nubians and those things. If Edgar was passionate, very well—she would deny him nothing; but in that case she would feel ever so slightly superior to Edgar. She rather wished that that was not so; she hoped that after all it might not be so; on the whole she would have preferred to be a little his inferior. She had not been inferior to Cosimo. They, she and Cosimo, had talked a good deal about equality, of course, but, after all, equality was a balance too nice for the present stressful stage of the struggle between man and woman; a theoretical equality if you liked, but in practice the thing became a slight temporary feminine preponderance, which would, no doubt, settle down in time. Virtually she had been Cosimo's master. She did not want to be Edgar's. Ratherthan be that he might—her tired sensibilities gave a brief flutter—he might even be a little cruel to her if he wished....
A Tottenham Court Road bus was just starting from the bottom of Pond Street. She ran to catch it. It moved forward again, with Amory sitting inside it, between a man in a white muffler and opera-hat and a flower-woman returning home with her empty baskets.
Many, many times Amory Pratt, abusing her fancy, had rehearsed the scene to which she was now so smoothly and rapidly approaching; but she rehearsed nothing now. It would suffice for her just to appear before Edgar; no words would be necessary; he would instantly understand. Of course (she reflected) he might have left the office when she got there; it was even reasonably probable that he would have left; it was not a press-night; twenty to one he would have left. But her thoughts went forward again exactly as if she had not just told herself this.... He would be there. She would go up to him and stand before him. As likely as not not a word would pass between them. She felt that she had used too many words in her life. She and her set had discussed subjects simply out of existence. Often, by the time they had finished talking, not one of them had known what they had been talking about. It had been sheer dissipation. Men, she had heard, took drinks like that, and by and by were unable to stand, and then made hideous exhibitions of themselves. Nobody could say exactly at what point they, the men, becameincapable, nor the point at which the others, Amory and her set, became word-sodden; in the one case the police (she had heard) made them walk a chalk-line; but there was no chalk-line for the others. Their paths were crooked as scribble....
But she was going straight at last—as straight as a pair of tram-lines could take her—and so far was she from wishing that the tram would go more slowly, that she would have hastened it had she been able.
The "Mother Shipton"—the Cobden Statue—Hampstead Road—the "Adam and Eve." At this last stopping-place she descended, crossed the road, and boarded a bus. She remembered that once before, when she had visited the office in a taxi, the cab had seemed to go at a terrifying speed; now the bus seemed to crawl. A fear took her that every stop might cause her to miss him by just a minute. She tapped with her foot. She looked almost angrily at those who got in or out. That flower-woman: why couldn't she have got out at the proper stopping-place, instead of upsetting everything with her baskets hardly a hundred yards further on?... Off again; she hoped to goodness that was the last delay. She had been stupid not to take a taxi after all.
She descended opposite the "Horse Shoe," not three minutes' walk from the "Novum's" offices. Then again she called herself stupid for not having sat where she was, since the bus would go straight past the door. But she could be there as soon as the bus if she walked quickly.——
The bus overtook her and beat her by twenty yards.
The bookseller's shutters were down, and in the window of the electric-fittings shop could be dimly seen a ventilating fan, a desk-lamp, and a switchboard or two. Amory turned in under the arch that led to the yard behind. Her eyes had gone up to the third floor almost before she had issued from the narrow alley——
Ah!... So she was not too late. There was a light.
Through the ground-floor cavern in which the sandwich-boards were stacked she had for the first time to slacken her pace; the floor was uneven, and the place was crowded with dim shadows. A man smoking a pipe over an evening paper turned as she entered, but, seeing her make straight for the stairs, he did not ask her her business. The winding wooden staircase was black as a flue. On the first landing she paused for a moment; the man with the pipe had, after all, challenged her, "Who is it you want, Miss?" he called from below.... But he did not follow her. A vague light from the landing window showed her the second flight of wedge-shaped wooden steps. She mounted them, and gained the corridor hung with the specimens of the poster-artist's work. Ahead along the passage a narrow shaft of light crossed the floor. She gave one more look behind, for fear the man below had, after all, followed her; she was determined, but that did not mean that she necessarily wished to be seen....
Her life was her own, to do what she liked with. Nobody would give her another one....
And Edgar might be cruel if he wished....
For one instant longer she hesitated. Then she pushed softly at the door from which the beam of light came.
The quietness of her approach was wasted after all. There was nobody in the office. The floor was untidy with scattered leaves of paper, and Edgar had carelessly left every drawer of his desk open; but that only meant that he could not be very far away. Probably he was in the waiting-room. She approached the door of it.
But, as she did so, some slight unfamiliarity about the place struck her. The first room of the three, or waiting-room, she knew, from having once or twice pushed at the first door of the passage and having had to pass through that ante-room. Of the third room she knew nothing save that it was used as a sort of general lumber-room. But the rooms seemed somehow to have got changed about. It was from this third room, and not from the waiting-room, that a bright light came, and the smell of charred paper. The door was partly open. Amory advanced to it.
As she did so somebody spoke.
For so slight a cause, the start that Amory gave was rather heartrending. She stopped dead. Her face had turned so chalky a white that the freckles upon it, which ordinarily scarcely showed, looked almost unwholesome.
In her mind she had given Edgar Strong leave tobe cruel to her, but not with this cruelty. The cruelty we choose is always another cruelty. Once a man, who miraculously survived a flogging, said that by comparison with the anguish of the second stroke that of the first was almost a sweetness; and after the third, and fourth, men, they say, have laughed. It happened so to Amory. The voices she heard were not loud; so much the worse, when a few ordinary, grunted, half expressions could so pierce her.
"——months ago, but I wasn't ready. I stayed on here for nobody's convenience but my own, I can tell you." It was Edgar who said this.
Then a woman's voice—
"I don't think this waistcoat's worth taking; I've patched and patched it——"
"Oh, chuck it under the bed. And I say—we've had nothing to eat. Make the cocoa, will you?"
"Just a minute till I finish this bag.—What'll Pratt say when he comes back?"
"As I shan't be here to hear him, it's hardly worth while guessing."
"Will Wilkinson take it over?"
"The 'Novum'?... I don't think there'll be any more 'Novum.' I suppose these London Indians will be holding a meeting. I don't like 'em, but let's be fair to them: most of 'em are all right. They've got to dissociate themselves from this Collins business somehow. But I expect some lunatic will go and move an amendment.... Well, it won't matter to us. We shall be well down the Channel by that time."
Then the girl gave a low laugh.—"Idothink you might buy me a trousseau, Ned—the way it's turned out——"
The man's voice grunted.
"I thought that would be the next. Give you something and you all want something else immediately.... Can't afford it, my dear. I've only pulled between three and four hundred out of this show, living here, paying myself space-rates and all the lot; and we shall want all that."
Again the low voice—very soft and low.
"But you'll be a little sorry to leave here, won't you—m'mmm?——" (This was the second stroke, by comparison with which the first had been sweet.)
Strong spoke brusquely.—"Look here, old girl—we've heaps of things to do to-night—lots of time before us—don't let's have any nonsense——"
"No-o-o?"——
Amory, besides hearing, might have seen; but she did not. Something had brought into her head her own words to Walter Wyron of an hour or two before, when Walter had picked up the cable announcing Cosimo's return: "Put that down, Walter; it's mine." This other, that was taking place in that inner room, was theirs. It would have been perfectly easy to strike them dumb by appearing, just for one moment, in the doorway of this—lumber-room; but she preferred not to do it. If she had, she felt that it would have been the remains of a woman they would have seen. There is not much catch in striking anybody dumb when theprocess involves their seeing—that. Much better to steal out quietly....
Noiselessly she turned her back to the half-open door. She tiptoed out into the corridor again. For a dozen yards she continued to tiptoe—in order to spare them; and then she found herself at the head of the steep stairs. She descended. She had not made a single sound. Down below the man was still reading the paper, and again he looked round. At another time Amory might have questioned him; but again she did not. There was nothing to learn. She knew.
It was the first thing she had ever really known.
Bowed with the strangeness of knowledge, she walked slowly out into Charing Cross Road.
She continued to walk slowly; the slowness was as remarkable as her haste had been. She had intended, had she missed Edgar, to go to an hotel; but home was hotel enough, hotel home. Home—home to a house without privacy—home to children of whom she was not much more than technically the mother—home to an asbestos log and to the absence of a husband that was at least as desirable as his presence: nothing else remained.
For her lack seemed total—so total as hardly to be a lack. She desired no one thing, and a desire for everything is an abuse of the term "desire." So she walked slowly, stopping now and then to look at a flagstone as if it had been a remarkable object. And as she walked she wondered how she had come to be as she was.
She could not see where her life had gone wrong. She did not remember any one point at which she had taken a false and crucial step. For example, she did not think this grey and harmonious totality of despondency had come of her marrying Cosimo. They were neither outstandingly suited nor unsuited to one another, and a thousand marriages preciselysimilar were made every day and turned out well enough. No; it could not be that she had expected too much of marriage. She had not courted disappointment that way.... (But stay: had the trouble come of her not expecting largely enough? Of her not having assumed enough? Of her not having said to Life, "Such and such I intend to have, and you shall provide it?" Would she have fared better then?)... And if Cosimo had brought her no wonder, neither had her babes. People were in the habit of saying astonishing things about the miracle of the babe at the breast, but Amory could only say that she had never experienced these things. She had wondered that she should not, when so many others apparently did, but the fact remained, that bearing had been an anguish and nursing an inconvenience. And so at the twins she had stopped.
Would it have been better had she not stopped? Would she have been happier with many children? Without children at all? Or unmarried? Or ought her painting to have been husband, home and children to her?...
It was a little late in the day to ask these questions now——
And yet there had been no reason for asking them earlier——
It had needed that, her first point of knowledge, to bring it home into her heart....
But do not suppose that she was in any pain. As a spinally-anaesthetized subject may have a quite poignant interest in the lopping off of one of his ownlimbs, and may even wonder that he feels no local pain, so she assisted at her own dismemberment. Home, husband, babes, her art—one after another she now seemed to see them go—or rather, seemed to see that they had long since gone. She saw this going, in retrospect. It was as if, though only degree by degree had the pleasant things of life ticked away from her, the escapement was now removed from her memory, allowing all with a buzz to run down to a dead stop. She could almost hear that buzz, almost see that soft rim of whizzing teeth....
Now all was stillness—stillness without pain. She knew now what Edgar Strong had been doing. She knew that he had been making use of her, pocketing Cosimo's money, using the "Novum's" office as his lodging, had had his bed there, his slippers in the fender, his kettle, his cocoa, his plates, his cups, his.... And she knew now that Edgar Strong was only one of those who had clustered like leeches about Cosimo.... She forgot how much Cosimo had said that from first to last it had all cost. She thought twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand pounds, all vanished between that first Ludlow experiment and that last piece of amateur sociology, three revolver shots in a man's back! As a price it was stiffish. She did not quite know what the provider of the money had had out of it all. At any rate she herself had this curious stilly state of painless but rather sickening knowledge. And knowledge, they say, is above rubies. So perhaps it was cheap after all....
But where had she gone wrong? Had she simply been born wrong? Would it have made any difference whatever she had done? Or had all this been appointed for her or ever her mother had conceived her?
She asked herself this as she passed Whitefield's Tabernacle; still walking slowly, she was well up Hampstead Road and still no answer had occurred to her. But somewhere near the gold-beater's arm on the right-hand side of the road a thought did strike her. She thought that she would not go home after all. This was not because to go home now would be inglorious; it was no attempt to keep up appearances; it was merely that she would have preferred anything to this horrible numbness. Pain would be better. It is at any rate a condition of pain that you must be alive to feel it, and she did not feel quite alive. This might be a dream from which she would presently wake, or a waking from which she would by and by drop off to sleep again. In either case it was more than she could bear for much longer, and, did she go home, she would have to bear it throughout the night—for days—until Cosimo came back—after that——
But where else to go, if not to The Witan? To Laura's? To Dickie's? That would be the same thing as going home: little enough change from spinal anaesthesia in that! They could not help. Of all her old associates, there was hardly one but might—that was to say if anything extraordinary ever happened to them, like suddenly getting to know something—there was hardly one of them butmight experience precisely this same hopeless perfection of wrongness, and fail to discover any one point at which it had all begun. It was rather to be hoped (Amory thought) that they never would get to know anything. They were happier as they were, in a self-contained and harmonious ignorance. Knowledge attained too late was rather dreadful; people ought to begin to get it fairly early or not at all. They ought to begin at about the age of Corin and Bonniebell....
A month ago the last person she would have gone to with a trouble would have been Dorothy Tasker. They had not a single view in common. Moreover, it would have been humiliating. But now that actually became, in a curious, reflex sort of way, a reason for going. She did not know that she actually wished to be humiliated; she did not think about it; but she had been looking at herself, and at people exactly like herself, for a long, long, long time, and, when you have looked at yourself too much you can sometimes actually find out something new about yourself by looking for a change at somebody else as little like you as can possibly be found. Amory had tried a good many things, but she had never tried this. It might be worth trying. She hesitated for one moment longer. This was when she feared that Dorothy might offer her, not the change from numbness to pain, but a sympathy and consolation that, something deep down within her told her, would not help her.... A little more quickly, but not much, she walked up Maiden Road. She turned into Fleet Road, and reached the tram-terminusbelow Hampstead Heath Station. Thence to Dorothy's was a bare five minutes. What she should say when she got to Dorothy's she did not trouble to think.
And at first it looked as if she would not be allowed to say anything at all to her, for when she rang the bell of the hall-floor flat Stan himself opened the door, looked at her with no great favour, and told her that Dorothy was not to be seen. From that Amory gathered that Dorothy was at least within.
Now when your need of a thing is very great, you are not to be put off by a young man who admits that his wife is at home, but tells you that she has some trifling affair—is in her dressing-gown perhaps, or has not made her hair tidy—that makes your call slightly inconvenient. Therefore Amory, in her need, did what the young man would no doubt have called "an infernally cheeky thing." She repeated her request once more, and then, seeing another refusal coming, waited for no further reply, but pushed past Stan and made direct for Dorothy's bedroom. Why she should have supposed that Dorothy would be in her bedroom she could not have told. She might equally well have been in the dining-room, or in the pond-room. But along the passage to the bedroom Amory walked, while Stan stared in stupefaction after her.
Dorothy was there. She had not gone to bed, but, early as it was, appeared to have been preparing to do so. Amory knew that because, though in Britomart Belchamber's case a dressing-gown andplaited hair might merely have meant that she wanted to listen to Walter Wyron's talk in looseness and comfort, or else that a plaster cast was to be taken, they certainly did not mean that in Dorothy's. And she supposed that differences of that kind were more or less what she had come to see.
Dorothy was gazing into the fire before which the youngest Bit had had his bath. Close to her own chair was drawn the chair that had evidently been lately occupied by Stan. The infant Bit's cot was in a corner of the room. At first Dorothy did not look up from the fire. Probably she supposed the person who was looking at her from the doorway to be Stan.
But as that person neither spoke nor advanced, she turned her head. The next moment a curious little sound had come from her lips. You see, in the first place, she had expected nobody less, and in the second place, she wholeheartedly shared many of her worldly old aunt's prejudices, among which was the monstrous one that established a connexion between recently-bibbed politicians in this country and revolver shots in another. And there was no doubt whatever that her presentable but brainless young husband had fostered this fallacious conviction. He might even have gone so far as to say that Amory herself was not altogether unresponsible....
And that, too, in a sense, was what Amory had come for.
The eyes of the two women met, Amory's at the door, Dorothy's startled ones looking over hershoulder; blue ones and shallow brook-brown ones; and then Dorothy half rose.
But whatever the first expression of her face had been, it hardly lasted for a quarter of an instant. Alarm instantly took its place. She had begun to get up as a person gets up who would ask another person what he is doing there. Now it was as if, though she did not yet know what it was, there was something to be done, something practical and with the hands, without a moment's delay.
"What's the matter?" she cried. "Cried" is written, but her exclamation actually gained in emphasis from the fact that, not to wake the Bit, she voiced it in a whisper.
For a moment Amory wondered why she should speak like that. Then it occurred to her that the face of a person under spinal anaesthesia might in itself be a reason. She had forgotten her face.
"May I come in?" she asked.
She took Dorothy's "Shut the door—and speak low, please—what do you want?" as an intimation that she might. Amory entered. But she was not asked to sit down. The man who runs with a fire-call, or fetches a doctor in the night, is not asked to sit down, and some urgency of that kind appeared to be Dorothy's conception of Amory's visit.
"What do you want?" she demanded again.
Amory herself felt foolish at her own reply. It was so futile, so piteous, so true. She stood as helpless as a Bit before Dorothy.
"I—I don't know," she said.
"What's the matter? What are you lookinglike that for? Has anything happened to Cosimo?"
"No. No. No. He's coming home. No. Nothing's happened."
"Can I be of use to you?" She was prepared to be that.
"No—yes—I don't know——"
Dorothy's eyes had hardened a little.—"Doyou want something—and if you don't—hadyou to come—to-night?"
Amory spoke quite quickly and eagerly.
"Oh yes—to-night—it had to be to-night—I had to come to-night——"
Dorothy's eyes grew harder still.
"Then I think I know what you mean.... I don't think we'll talk about it. There's really nothing to be said.—So——"
Amory was vaguely puzzled. Of Dorothy's relation to Sir Benjamin she knew nothing. Dorothy appeared to be waiting for her to go. That would mean back to The Witan. But she had come here expressly to avoid going back to The Witan. Again she spoke foolishly.
"Cosimo's coming back," she said.
"My aunt thought he might be," said Dorothy in an even voice.
"And I was going away—but I'm not now——"
"Oh?"
"May I sit down?"
She did so, with her doubled fists thrust between her knees and her head a little bowed. Then her eyes wandered sideways slowly round the room. Dorothy's blouse was thrown on the wide bed;from under the bed the baby Bit's bath peeped; and on the blouse lay Dorothy's hairbrushes.
Amory was thinking of another bed, a bed she had never seen, with portmanteaus on it, and a patched old waistcoat cast underneath it, and a girl busily packing at it, a girl whose voice she had heard pouting "You might buy me a trousseau—"
Dorothy also had sat down, but only on the edge of her chair. And she thought it would be best to speak a little more plainly.
"If you'll come to-morrow I shall know better what to say to you," she said. "You see, you've taken me by surprise. I didn't think you'd come, and I don't know now what you've come for. It isn't a thing to talk about, certainly not to-day. I should have liked to-day to myself. But if you feel that you must—will you come in again to-morrow?"
But Amory hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes were noting the appointments of the bedroom again. The time had been when she would at once have denounced the room as overcrowded and unhygienic. A cot, and a bed with two pillows ... in some respects her own plan was to be preferred. But this again was the kind of thing she had come to see, and she admitted that these things were more or less governed by what people could afford. From the kicked and scratched condition of the front of the chest of drawers she imagined that Dorothy's children must romp all over the flat. A parti-coloured ball lay under the cot where the baby slept. There was a rubber bath-doll near it. Thetwo older boys would be sleeping in the next room.
She spoke again.—"I was going away," she said, dully, "with somebody."
Once more Dorothy merely said "Oh?"
Then it occurred to Amory that perhaps Dorothy did not quite understand.
"I mean with—with somebody not my husband."
She had half expected that Dorothy would be shocked, or at least surprised; but she seemed to take it quite coolly. Dorothy, as a matter of fact, was not surprised in the very least. She too guessed at the futility of looking for a starting-point of things that grow by inevitable and infinitesimal degrees. It was rather sad, but not at all astonishing. On Amory's own premises, there was simply no reason why she shouldn't. So again she merely said "Oh?" and added after a moment, "But you're not?"
"No."
"How's that? Has what we've heard to-day made you change your mind?"
Again Amory was slightly puzzled; and at Dorothy's question she had, moreover, a sudden little hesitation.Wasit after all necessary that Dorothy should know everything? Would it not be sufficient, without going into details, to let Dorothy suppose she had changed her mind? It came to the same thing in the end.... Besides, Edgar Strong had not refused her that night. He had not even known of her presence in the office. Of the rest she would make a clean breast, but it was no good bothering Dorothy with that other....She was still plunged into a sort of stupor, but these reflections stirred ever so slightly under the surface of it....
Then "what we've heard to-day" struck her. She repeated the words.
"What we've heard to-day?"
"Oh, if you haven't heard.... I only mean about the murder of my uncle," said Dorothy coldly.
This was far more than Amory could take in. She reflected for a moment. Then, "What do you say, Dorothy?" she asked slowly.
"At least he wasn't my uncle really. I liked him better than any of my uncles."
"Do you mean Sir Benjamin Collins?"
It was as if Amory had not imagined that Sir Benjamin could by any possibility have been anybody's uncle.
"I called him uncle," said Dorothy, in a voice that she tried to keep steady. "Before I could say the word—I called him——." But she decided not to risk the baby-word she had used—"Unnoo"——
It seemed to Amory a remarkable little coincidence.
"I—I didn't know," she said stupidly.
"No."
"You—you mean you—knew him?——"
"Oh ... oh yes."
Amory said again that she hadn't known....
"Then why," Dorothy would have liked to cry aloud, "haveyou come, if it isn't to make matters worse by talking about it? That wouldn't have surprised me very much! I should have been quite prepared for you to apologize! It's the kind of thingyou would do. I don't think very much of you, you see"... But again that worse than frightened look on her visitor's face struck her sharply, and again a remark of her aunt's returned to her: "They puzzle their brains till their bodies suffer, and overwork their bodies till they're little better than fools." Suddenly she gave her sometime friend more careful attention.
"Amory—," she said all at once.
Amory had her fists between her knees again.—"What?" she said without looking up.
"You just said something about—going away. I want to ask you something. You haven't ...?"
The meaning was quite plain.
As if she had been galvanized, Amory looked sharply up.—"How dare——", she began.
But it was only a flash in the pan. Dorothy was looking into her eyes.
"You're telling me the truth?" She hated to ask the question.
"Yes," Amory mumbled, dropping her head again.
"Has Cosimo been unkind to you?"
"No."
"Nor neglected you?"
"No."
"Has—has anybody been unkind to you?" She could not speak of "somebody" by name.
Here Amory hesitated, and finally lied. It was rather a good sign that she did so. It meant returning animation....
"No," she said.
"Then whathashappened?"
"Nothing. That's what I asked myself. That's just it. Nothing. Nothing at all's happened."
Dorothy spoke in a low voice, as if to herself.—"I know," she murmured....
And, on the chance that she really did know, Amory clutched at the sleeve of Dorothy's dressing-gown almost excitedly.
"Yes, that's what I mean ... you do know?" she asked in a quick whisper.
"Yes—no—I'm not sure——"
"But youdoknow that—nothing happening, nothing at all, and everything happening—everything? That's what I mean—that's what I want to know—that's why I came——"
"Don't speak so loudly. Put your hands to the fire; they're like ice. Wait; I'll get you a shawl; you're shivering.... Now I want you to tell me some things...."
And, first wrapping her up and putting Stan's pillow behind her back, she began to question her.
What, again, was the purport of her questions? What of those of her aunt? What of those of a good many others in an age that is producing, and for some mysterious reason or other counts it a sign of progress to produce, innumerable Amorys—so many that, stretch out your hand where you will, and you will touch one?
All is guessing: but it will pass on the time if we hold a Meeting about it now. Everybody is agreed that the way to arrive at the best conclusions is tohold a Meeting, and this will be only one more Meeting added to the cloud of Meetings in which the "Novum" went up and out—the Meeting which, as Edgar Strong had prophesied, the loyal London Indians held (in the Imperial Institute) in order to dissociate themselves from the Collins affair (as Edgar Strong had also prophesied, Mr. Wilkinson moved an amendment, "That this Meeting declines to dissociate itself, etc. etc.")—the numerous secondary Meetings that arose out of that Meeting—the Meetings of the "Novum's" creditors (for Edgar Strong in his haste to be off had omitted to pay all the bills)—the Meetings at which (Cosimo Pratt having withdrawn his support) the Eden and the Suffrage Shop had to be reconstructed—the Meetings convened to talk about this, that and the other—as many of them as you like.
Let us too, then, hold a nice, jolly Meeting, in order to find out what was the matter with Amory—a Meeting with Mr. Brimby in the Chair, to tell us that there is a great deal to be said on both sides, and that no party has a monopoly of Truth, and that the words that ought always to be on our lips as we hurl ourselves into the thickest and hottest of the fray, whatever it may be, are "To know all is to forgive all."
But let us keep our Meeting as quiet as we can, for we shall have no end of a crowd of Meeting-lovers there if we don't. The Wyrons will of course have to be admitted, and Mr. Wilkinson, and Dickie Lemesurier, and a few of the older students of the McGrath; but we do not particularly want the others—thosewho feel that in a better and brighter world they would have been students of the McGrath, but, as matters stand, are merely young clerks who can draw a little, young salesmen who can write a little, young auctioneers with an instinct for the best in sculpture, young foremen who yearn to express themselves in music, young governesses (or a few of them) who have heard of the enormous sums of money to be made by playwriting, New Imperialists, amateur regenerators, social prophets after working-hours, and, in a word, all the people who have just heard that it is not true that Satan is yet bound up for his promised stretch of a thousand years. A terrible number of them will get in whether we wish it or not; but let the rest be our own little party; and you shall sit next to Britomart Belchamber, and I will stand by to open the windows in case we feel the need of a little fresh air.
So Mr. Brimby will open the proceedings. He will say the things above-mentioned, and presently, with emotion and his sense of the world's sorrow gaining on him, will come to the case of their dear friend Amory Pratt. Here, he will say, is a young woman, one of themselves, who does not know what is the matter with her—who does not know what has become of her joy—who cannot understand (if Mr. Brimby may be allowed to express himself a little poetically) why the bloom of her life has turned to an early rime. And so (Mr. Brimby will continue), knowing that if two heads are better than one, two hundred heads must be just one hundred times better still, their friend has submitted her case to theMeeting. He will beg them to approach that case sympathetically. Let the extremists of the one part (if there be any) balance the extremists of the other, leaving as an ideal and beautiful middle nullity those words he had used before, but did not apologize for using again—to know all is to forgive all. And with these few remarks (if we are lucky), Mr. Brimby will say no more, but will call upon their friend Mr. Walter Wyron to state his view of their friend's case.
Then Walter will get up, with his hands in the pockets of his knickers, and it will not be his fault if he does not get off an epigram or two of the "Love is Law" kind. But you will not fail to notice that Walter is not his ordinary jaunty self. The withdrawal of Cosimo's support is going to hit him rather hard, and glances will be exchanged, and one or two will whisper behind their hands, "Isn't Walter beginning to live a little on his reputation?" Still, Walter will contribute his quotum. We shall hear that, in his opinion, the Cause of Synthetic Protoplasm is making such vast strides to-day that we must revise every one of our estimates in the light of the most recent knowledge, having done which we shall probably find that what is really the matter with Amory is that, by comparison with the mechanical appliances of Loeb and Delage—appliances which he will take leave to call the Womb of the Workshop—their friend Amory is over-vitalized.
Then Mr. Wilkinson will spring to his feet. And Mr. Wilkinson also will be more than a little sore about Cosimo's cowardly backsliding. He will say first of all that their Chairman, as usual, is talkingout of his hat, and that anybody with a grain of sense knew that to know all was to have a contempt for all; and then he will point out that all the trouble had come of shillyshallying with the wrong policy. Under Strong's direction of the "Novum," he will say, Amory had been hitting the air to no purpose; whereas had he, Mr. Wilkinson, been allowed a chance, they would have had the proletariat armed with rifles by this, and Pratt's wife would have been atricoteuse, doing a bit of knitting conspiratoriably and domestically useful at one and the same time—would have worn a Phrygian cap, and carried a pike, and sung "A la Lanterne," and put a bit of fire into the men! That's what she ought to have done, and have had a bit of a run for her money, instead of shillyshallying about with that idiot Strong——
And then a maiden speech will be given us. Mr. Raffinger, of the McGrath, will get timidly but resolutely up, and we shall all applaud him when he says that the bad oldrégimeat the McGrath was at the bottom of all the mischief. The stupid old Professors of the past had tried to drill instruction into the students instead of allowing each one to do exactly as he pleased and so to find his own soul. Amory had been crushed under the cruel old Juggernaut of discipline. But that, happily, was a thing of the past at the McGrath. Now they went on the more enlightened principles laid down by Séguin, who cured a child of destructiveness by giving it a piece of priceless Venetian glass to play with, and when he broke it gave it another unique piece, andthen another, and another after that, and another, until by degrees the child learned,and would never have to unlearn(that was the important thing!) that it was very naughty to break valuable Venetian glass. (A "Hear hear" from Mr. Brimby, which will probably prove so disconcerting to young Mr. Raffinger that he will sit down as suddenly as if Mr. Wilkinson had discharged two bullets at him).
And then Laura Wyron will speak, saying tremulously that she can't understand why Amory isn't happy when she has those two lovely babies; but she is not happy, and never will be again, because she has turned her back on her art; and Britomart Belchamber (who will be hoisted to her feet because she has lived in the same house with Amory, and may have something interesting and intimate to say) will doubt whether Amory has always quite closed the sweat-ducts with a cold sponge; and then the crowd will rush in—the governess playwrights will say what they think, the clerk sculptors what they think, and everybody else what he or she thinks—and presently they will have strayed a little from the business in hand, and will be discussing Cubism, or Matriarchy, or Toe-posts, or the Revival of the Ballad, or Rufty Tufty, quite beyond Mr. Brimby's power to hale them back to the proper subject. And so the Meeting will have to be adjourned, and we shall all go again to-morrow night, when Mr. Wilkinson will be in the Chair, and there ought to be some fun——
But Edgar Strong will not be there, because he will be on the water, and Cosimo will not be there,because he will be anxiously counting what money remains to him, and Mr. Prang will not be there, because he will be under arrest in Bombay. But, except for these absences, it will be a perfectly ripping Meeting——
But none of these things were Dorothy's business. Instead, by the time she had finished her questioning of Amory, there was no thought at all in her breast, save only the pitiful desire to help. She saw before her an old young woman, more drained and disillusioned and with less to look forward to at thirty-odd than her aunt had at seventy. Her very presence in Dorothy's house that night was a confession of it. It was the last house she would willingly have gone to, and yet there she was, begging Dorothy to tell her what had happened to her. And there was nothing for Dorothy to say in reply....
She knew that Stan, in the dining-room, was waiting to come to bed, but he must wait; Dorothy had the fire to mend, and Amory's cold hands to chafe, and to get her something hot to drink, and a dozen other things to do that had never had a beginning either, yet there they were, mere helpful habit and nothing more. Presently she set a cup of hot soup to Amory's lips.
"Drink this," she said, "and when you're rested my husband will take you home."
But that did not happen either. Amory spoke very tiredly.
"I should like—I don't want to trouble you—anywherewould do—but I don't want to go home to-night——"
Dorothy made a swift and doubting mental calculation. Where could she put her?——
"I'm simply done up," muttered Amory closing her eyes.
"I'm afraid we could only give you a shakedown in the dining-room——"
"Yes—that would do——"
Dorothy went out to give Stan his orders. Stan swore. "Rather cool, one ofthatcrew coming here, to-night of all nights!" But Dorothy was peremptory.
"It isn't cool at all. You don't know anything about it. You'll find blankets in the chest in your dressing-room, and mind you don't wake Noel. Then get some cushions—I'll air a pillowcase—and then you must go up there and tell them where she is—they'll be anxious——"
"Shall I bring those twins of hers back with me while I'm about it?" Stan asked satirically. "May as well put the lot up."
When he heard Dorothy's reply he thought that his wife really had gone mad.
"I've arranged that," she said. "We shall be putting the twins up for a time at Ludlow by and by while she and her husband go away somewhere for a change. It's the least we can do. Don't stand gaping there, Stan——"
"Hm! May I ask what's up?"
"You may if you like, but I shan't tell you."
"Hm!... Well—it's a dog's life—but Isuppose it's no good my saying anything——"
"Not a bit."
So Amory was put to bed, most unhygienically, in Dorothy's dining-room; but in the middle of the night she woke, quite unable to remember where she was. There was a narrow opening between the drawn curtains; through it a glimmer of light shone on the Venetian blinds from the street-lamp outside; and without any other light Amory got out of her improvised couch. She felt her way along the wall to a switch, and then suddenly flooded the room with light.
Blinking, she looked around. She herself wore one of Dorothy's nightgowns. On Stan's armchair, near his pipe-rack, was her hat, and her clothing lay in a heap where she had stepped out of it. Dorothy's slippers lay by the fender, and Dorothy had been too occupied to remember to remove the photograph of Uncle Ben from the mantelpiece. It seemed to be watching Amory as she stood, only half awake, in her borrowed nightgown.
It was odd, the way things came about——
If you had asked Amory at six o'clock the evening before where she intended to spend the night, she would not have replied "In Dorothy Tasker's flat——"
But she felt frightfully listless, and the improvised bed was very warm——
She switched off the light and crept back.