But, though she might now wish to keep Walter Wyron out of it all, that did not necessarily mean that Walter would be kept out. Thisex-officiospecialist on the (preferably female) heart, this professional rectifier of unfortunate marriages, had not done a number of years' platform-work without having discovered the peculiar beauties of theargumentum ad hominem, and it was one of his practices to enforce his arguments with "Take the case of Brit here"—or "Let's get down to the concrete: suppose Amory—" And these descents to the particular had always a curiously accusatory effect. Walter, interrupting Amory's meditation, broke into one of them now.
"But my dear chap,"—this was to Cosimo,"—I can't imagine what's come over all of you to-night! First Amory, now you! You're usually quicker than this! Let's take a case.—Brit here——"
One sterno-mastoid majestically turned the caryatid's head. Again Miss Belchamber's grand thorax worked as if somebody had put a penny into the slot.
"What?" she said.
"Quiet, Brit; I'm only using you as an illustration.—Suppose Brit here was to develop a passion for somebody—Cosimo, say; yes, Cosimo'll do capitally; awfully good instance of the cant that's commonly talked about 'treachery' and 'under his own roof' and all the rest of it—as if a roof wasn't a roof and it hadn't got to be under somebody's—unless they went out on the Heath!—Well, suppose it was to happen to Cosimo and Brit; what then? We're civilized, I hope. We're a little above the animals, I venture to think. Amory wouldn't fly at Brit's eyes, and Brit's father wouldn't come round with a razor to cut Cosimo's throat. In fact——"
"My fa-ther al-ways uses a safety-razor," said Miss Belchamber with a reminiscent air.
"Don't interrupt, Brit.—I was going to say that the world's got past all that. Nor Brit wouldn't fly at Amory, nor Cosimo kick the old josser out of the house—though we should be much more ready to condone that part of it if they did—if it was only to get quits with the past a bit——"
"My fa-ther's forty-five," Miss Belchamber announced, as the interesting result of an interesting mental process of computation. "Next June," she added.
"More interruptions from the back of the hall.—In fact, I'm not sure thatwouldn'tbe entirely defensible—Brit going for Amory and Cosimo kicking the old dodderer out, I mean. That's the justification of thecrime passionel. It's the Will to Live. And by Live I mean Love. It's the old saying, that kissing lips have no conscience. Or Jove laughs at lovers' oaths. Quite right. It's the New Greek Spirit. But for all that we're modern and rational about these things. If Strong here wanted to take Laura from me I should simply say, 'All you've got to do, my dear chap, is to table your reasons, and if they're stronger than mine you take her.' See?"
At that Edgar Strong, like Britomart, looked up. He spoke for the first time.—"What's that you're saying?" he asked.
"I don't suppose you'd want her, but suppose you did...."
Mr. Strong dropped his eyes to his plate again.—"Ah, yes," he said. "Ellen Key's got something about that." And he relapsed into silence again.
It sounded to Amory idiotic. Walter was so evidently "trying" it on them in order to see how it would go down with an audience afterwards. She wouldn't have scratched Britomart's eyes out for Cosimo,—but she coloured a little, and bit her lip, at the thought that somebody might want to come between herself and Edgar.... But perhaps that was what Walter meant—real affinities, as distinct from the ordinary vapid assumptions about marriages being made in Heaven. If so, she agreed with him—not that she was much fonder of himon that account. She wished he would keep his personalities for Cosimo and Britomart, and leave herself and Edgar alone.—Walter went on.
"And then, when you've got your New Greek Certificate, so to speak, it's plainly the duty of everybody else, not to put obstacles in your way and to threaten you with razors and cutting off supplies, but to sink their personal feelings and to do everything they can to help you. And without snivelling either. I shouldn't snivel, I hope, if anybody took Laura, and she wouldn't if anybody took me——"
Here Laura interposed softly.—"I don't want any one to take you, dear," she said.
Walter turned sharply.
"Eh?... Now you've put me off my argument.... What was I saying?... Haven't I told you you mustneverdo that, Laura?... No, it's quite gone.... You see ..."
Laura murmured that she was very sorry....
"No, it's gone," said Walter, almost cheerfully, as if not sorry that for once the worth of what he had been about to say should be measured by the sense of loss. "So since Laura wishes it I'll shut up."
He passed up his plate for a second helping of trifle.
By this time Amory was perhaps rather glad that she had had the Wyrons after all. That about people not putting obstacles in the way was quite neat. "A plain duty," he had said. She hoped Cosimo'd heard that, and would remember it when she raised the subject of the fund. And so far was she herself from putting obstacles inhisway that,although she could have sent Britomart Belchamber packing with her wages at any moment, she had not done so. That, as Walter had said, would only have been another way of flying at her eyes.... Besides, Amory had been far too deeply occupied to formulate definitely her charges against Cosimo and Britomart. For all she knew it might have gone much, much further than she had thought. Sometimes, when Amory took breakfast in her own room, she did not see Cosimo until the evening, and Britomart too had heaps of time on her hands when she had finished with Corin and Bonniebell. Cosimo must not tell her that the "Life and Work" occupied him during every minute of his time....
Then, presently, she was sorry again that the Wyrons had been asked, for Walter had suddenly remembered the thread of his discourse, and, in continuing it, had been almost rude to Laura. She wondered whether he would have turned with a half angry "Why, what's the matter?" had Laura cried. Perhaps it was really a good thing the Wyrons hadn't any children, for this kind of thing would certainly have been a bad example for them. She herself was never rude to Cosimo before Corin and Bonniebell. She was always markedly polite. There were excuses to be made for Passion, but none for rudeness.
By this time Edgar Strong had finished his last piece of cheese and was wiping his lips with his napkin. Then he looked at his watch, and for the second time during the course of the meal spoke.
"Look here, Cosimo, I've got to be off presently,and we haven't settled about those advertisements yet. And there's something else I want to say to you too. Could we hurry coffee up? Where do we have it? In the studio, I suppose? Or do the others go into the studio and you and Walter and I have ours here?"
"We might as well all go into the studio," said Cosimo, rising; and they left the sombre room and sought the studio, all except Miss Belchamber, who went upstairs.
The sight of the innumerable cigarette-ends about the asbestos log reminded Walter of Mr. Crabtree again; and for a minute or two—that is to say during the time that Walter, taking her aside, told her of the quiet but penetrating side-light Mr. Crabtree had innocently shed on Mr. Wilkinson's scheme for some new paper or other that Cosimo was to finance—Amory was once more glad that the Wyrons had come. But the next moment, as Walter loitered away and Laura came and sat softly down beside her, she was sorry again. Laura was gently crying. That struck Amory as stupid. As if she hadn't enough great troubles of her own, without burdening herself with the Wyrons' trivial ones!
So, as she had nothing really helpful to say to Laura, she left her, and sat down on the footstool she had occupied on the day when Edgar Strong had said that he liked the casts and had asked her whether she had read something or other—she forgot what.
Edgar was talking in low tones to Cosimo, and Amory thought she heard the name of Mr. Prang. Then Cosimo, who always thought more Imperiallywith a map before him, got out the large atlas, and the two of them bent over it together. Walter joined them, and, after an interlude that appeared to be about the Lectures' advertisement, Walter strolled away again and joined Laura. Amory heard an "Eh?" and a moment later the word "touchy," and Walter went off to the window with his hands in the pockets of his knickers, whistling. Edgar took not the least notice of Amory's eyes intently fixed upon him. He continued to talk to Cosimo. Walter, who was examining a Japanese print, called over his shoulder, "This a new one, Amory? What is it—Utamaro?" Then he walked up to where Laura sat again. He was speaking in an undertone to her: "Rubbish ... take on like that ... better clear off then"; and a moment later, seeing Edgar Strong buttoning up his coat, he called out, "Wait a minute, Strong—we're going down too—get your hat, Laura——"
Five minutes later Cosimo Pratt and his wife were alone.
It was the first time they had been so for nearly a fortnight. Indeed, for weeks the departure of the last visitor had been the signal for their own good-night, Cosimo going his way, she hers. There had never been anything even remotely approaching a "scene" to account for this. It had merely happened so.
Therefore, finding himself alone with his wife in the studio again, Cosimo yawned and stretched his arms above his head.
"Ah-h-h!... You going to bed?"
As he would hardly be likely to take himself off before she had answered his question, Amory did not reply at once. She sat down on the footstool and stretched her hands out to the asbestos log. Then, after a minute, and without looking up, she broke one of their tacitly accepted rules by asking a direct question.
"What were you and Edgar Strong discussing?" she asked.
He yawned again.—"Oh, the Bookshop advertisement—and advertisements generally. It begins to look as if we should have to be less exclusive about these things. Strong tells me that it's unheard-of for a paper to refuse any advertisement it can get."
"I mean when you got out the atlas."
"Oh—India, of course. The Indian policy. Strong isn't altogether satisfied about Prang. He seems to think he might get us into trouble."
"How? Why?" Amory said, her eyes reflectively on the purring gas-jets.
"Can't make out. Some fancy of his. The policy hasn't changed, and Prang hasn't changed. I wonder whether Wilkinson's right when he says Strong's put his hand to the plough but is now ...ah!That reminds me!—Were you here when that preposterous fellow—what's his name—Crabtree—rather let the cat out of the bag about Wilkinson?"
"You mean about another paper? No. But Walter said something about it."
"Yes, by Jove! He seems to have it all cut-and-dried! Crabtree seems to think I knew all about it. Of course I did know that Wilkinson had a scheme,but I'd no idea he was jumping ahead at that rate. I don't want two papers. One's getting rather serious."
Still without looking at her husband, Amory said, "How, serious?"
"Why, the expense. I'm not sure that we didn't take the wrong line about the advertisements. Anyway, something will have to be done. Thirty pounds a week is getting too stiff. I'm seriously thinking of selling out from the Eden and the Bookshop. Do you know that with one thing and another we're down more than three thousand pounds this year?"
Amory was surprised; but she realized instinctively that that was not the moment to show her surprise. Were she to show it, the moment would not be opportune for the raising of the subject of the fund, and she wanted to raise that subject. And she wanted to raise it in connexion with Cosimo and Britomart Belchamber. She continued to gaze at the log. The servants, she thought, might have taken the opportunity of dinner to sweep up the litter of cigarette-ends that surrounded it; and then she had a momentary fancy. It was, that the domestic relations that existed between herself and Cosimo were a thing that, like that mechanical substitute for a more generous fire, could be turned off and on as it were by the mere touching of a tap. She wondered what made her think of that....
Cosimo had taken out his penknife and was scraping his nails, moodily running over items of disbursement as he scraped; and then the silence fell between them again.
It was Amory who broke it, and in doing so she turned her head for the first time. She gave her husband a look that meant that, though he might talk about expenses, she also had a subject.
"Walter was excessively stupid to-night," she said abruptly.
He said "Oh?" and went on scraping.
"At the best he's never a model of tact, but I thought he rather overstepped the mark at dinner."
Again he said "Oh?" and added, "What about?"
"His manners. His ideas are all right, I suppose, but I'm getting rather tired of his platform-tricks."
"His habit of illustration and so on?"
"And his want of tact generally. In fact I'm not sure it isn't more than that. In a strange house it would have been simply afaux pas, but he knows us well enough, and the arrangement between us. He might at any rate wait till he's called in."
Cosimo started on another nail.—"What arrangement?" he said.
Again Amory gave him that look that might have told him that, though he might think that only a lot of money had gone, she knew that something far more vital had gone with it.
"Do you mean that you didn't hear what he was saying about you and Britomart Belchamber?"
"Yes, I heard that, of course. Of course I heard it."
"Well?"
"Well!"
And this time their eyes met in a long look....
Cosimo had only himself to thank for whathappened to him then. After all, you cannot watch a superb piece of female mechanism playing "Catching of Quails," and openly admire the way in which it can shut up like a clasp-knife and fold itself upon itself like a multiple lever, and pretend to be half in love with it lest sharp eyes should see that you are actually half in love with it, and take it for walks, and discuss Walter's Lectures with it, and tell it frequently how different things might have been had you been ten years younger, and warn it to be a good girl because of dangerous young men, and stroke its hair, and tell it what beautiful eyes it has, and kiss its hand from time to time, and walk with your arm protectingly about its waist, and so on and so forth, day after day—you cannot, after all, do these things and be entirely unflurried when your ever-so-slightly tiresome wife reminds you that, be it only by way of illustration, a young expert in such matters has coupled your name with that of the passive object of your philanderings. Nor can you reasonably be surprised when that wife gives you a long look, that doesn't reproach you for anything except for your stupidity or hypocrisy if you pretend not to understand, and then resumes her meditative gazing into a patent asbestos fire. Appearancesarefor the moment against you. You cannothelp for one moment seeing it as it must have appeared all the time to somebody else. Of course you know that you are in the right really, and the other person entirely wrong, and that with a little reasonableness on that other person's part you could make this perfectly clear; but youarerathertrapped, you know it, and the state of mind in which you find yourself is called by people who aren't anybody in particular "flurry."
Which is perhaps rather a long way of saying that Cosimo was suddenly and entirely disconcerted.
And his flurry included a certain crossness and impatience with Amory. She was—could be—only pretending. She knew perfectly well that there was nothing really. The least exercise of her imagination must have told her that to press Britomart Belchamber's hand, for example, was the most innocent of creature-comforts. Why, he had pressed it with Amory herself there; he had said, jokingly, and Amory had heard him, that it was a desirable hand to press, and he had pressed it. And so with Britomart's dancing of "Rufty Tufty." Amory, who, like Cosimo, had had an artist's training, ought to be the last person to deny that any eye so trained did not see a hundred beauties where eyes uneducated saw one only. And that of course meant chaste beauties. Such admiration was an exercise in analysis, not in amorousness.... No, it was far more likely that Amory was getting at him. She was smiling, a melancholy and indifferent little smile, at the asbestos log. She had no right to smile like that. It made him feel beastly. It made him so that he didn't know what to say....
But she continued to smile, and when Cosimo did at last speak he hated himself for stammering.
"But—but—but—oh, come, Amory, thisisabsurd! You're—you're tired! Me and Britomart! Oh, c-c-come!——"
And then it occurred to him that this was a ridiculous answer, and that the proper answer to have made would have been simply to laugh. He did laugh.
"Ha, ha, ha! By Jove, for the moment you almost took me in! You really did get a rise out of me that time! Congratulations.—And I admit it is rather cool of Walter to pounce on the first name that occurs to him and make use of it in that way. Deuced cool when you come to think of it. It seems to me——"
But again that quite calm and unreproaching look silenced him. There was a loftiness and serenity about it that reminded him of the Amory of four or five years before. And she spoke almost with a note of wonder at him in her tone.
"My dear Cosimo," she said very patiently, "what is the matter? You look at me as if I had accused you of something. Nothing was further from my thoughts. I suppose, when you examine it, it's a matter for congratulation, not accusation at all. As Walter said, I don't want to fly at anybody's eyes. We foresaw this, and provided for it, you know."
At this cool taking for granted of a preposterous thing Cosimo's stammer became a splutter.—"But—but—but—," he broke out: but Amory held up her hand.
"I raise no objection. I've no right to. What earthly right have I, when I concurred before ever we were married?"
"Concurred!... My dear girl, concurred inwhat? Really this is the most ridiculous situation I was ever in!"
Amory raised her brows.—"Oh?... I don't see anything ridiculous about it. It received my sanction when Britomart stopped in the house, and I haven't changed my mind. As I say, we foresaw it, and provided for it."
"'It!'" Cosimo could only pipe—one little note, high and thin as that of a piccolo. Amory continued.
"I'm not asking a single question about it. I'm not even curious. I didn't become your property when we married, and you're not mine. Our souls are our own, both of us. I think we were very wise to foresee it quite at the beginning.—And don't think I'm jealous. Perfectly truly, I wish you every happiness. Britomart's a very pretty girl, and nobody can say she's always making a display of her cleverness, like some of them. I respect your privacy, and want you to do the best you can with your life."
The piccolo note changed to that of a bassoon.—"Amory—listen to me."
"No. I'dverymuch rather not hear anything about it. As Walter said, LifeisLove, and I only mentioned this at all to-night because there is one quite small practical detail that doesn't seem to me entirely satisfactory."
She understood Cosimo to ask what that was.
"This: You ought to be fair to her. I know you'll forgive my mentioning anything so vulgar, but it is—about money. She can't be expected tothink of such things herself just now,"—there were whole honeymoons in the reasonable little nod Amory gave,"—and soImention it. It's my place to do so. For us all just to dip our hands into a common purse doesn't seem to me very satisfactory. She's rights too that I shouldn't dream of disputing. And don't think I'm assuming more than there actually is. I only mean that I don't see why, in certain events, you shouldn't, et cetera; that's all I mean. You see?... But I admit that for everybody's sake I should like things put on a proper footing without loss of time."
Cosimo had begun to wander up and down among the saddlebag chairs. His slender fingers rested aimlessly on the backs of them from time to time. Amory thought that he was about to try the remaining notes within the compass of his voice, but instead he suddenly straightened himself. He appeared to have come to a resolution. He strode towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Amory asked.
"I'm going to fetch Britomart," he replied shortly. "This is preposterous."
But again he hesitated, as perhaps Amory surmised he might. His offer, if it meant anything, ought to have meant that his conscience was so clear that Amory might catechize Britomart to her heart's content; but therehadbeen those hair-strokings and hand-pattings, and—and—and Britomart, as Amory had said, was "not always making a display of her cleverness." She might, indeed, let fall something even more disconcerting than the rest—
Cosimo was trying a bluff—
In a word, between fetching Britomart and not fetching her, Amory had her husband by the short hairs.
She mused.—"Just a moment," she said.
And then she rose from the footstool, put one hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, and with the other drew up her skirt an inch or two and stretched out her slipper to the log.
"It really isn't necessary to fetch Britomart," she said after a moment, looking up. "Fetch her if you prefer it, of course, but first I want to say something else—something quite different."
That it was something quite different seemed to be a deep relief to Cosimo. He returned from the door again.
"What's that?" he said.
"It's different," Amory said slowly, "but related. Let me think a moment how to put it.... You were speaking a few minutes ago of selling out from the Eden and the Suffrage Shop. If I understand you, things aren't going altogether well."
"They aren't," said Cosimo, almost grimly.
"And then," Amory continued, "there's Mr. Prang. Neither you nor Strong seem very satisfied about him."
"It's Strong who isn't satisfied. I've no complaints to make about Prang."
"Well, I've been thinking about that too, and I've had an idea. I'm not sure that after all Strong mayn't be right. I admit Prang states a case as well as it could be stated; the question is whetherit's quite the case wewantstated. His case is ours to a large extent, but perhaps not altogether. And as matters stand we're in his hands about India, simply because he knows more about it than we do. You see what I mean?"
"Not quite," said Cosimo.
"No? Well, let me tell you what I've been thinking...."
Those people who are nobodys, and have not had the enormous advantage of being taken by the hand by the somebodys, are under a misconception about daring and original ideas. The ideas seem original and daring to them because the processes behind them are hidden. The inferior mind does not realize of itself that every sudden and miraculous blooming is already an old story to somebody.
But Cosimo occupied a sort of intermediary position between the sources of inspiration and the flat levels of popular understanding. Remember, he was in certain ways one of the public; but at the same time he was the author of the "Life and Work." He took his Amory, so to speak, nascent. Therefore, when she gave utterance to a splendour, he credited himself with just that measure of participation in it that causes us humbler ones, when we see the airman's spiral, to fancy our own hands upon the controls, or, when we read a great book, to sun ourselves in the flattering delusion that we do not merely read, but, in some mysterious sense, participate in the writing of it also.
And so the words which Amory spoke now—words which would have caused you or me to give agasp of admiration—affected him less extraordinarily.
"Why don't you go to India and see for yourself?" she said.
Nevertheless, Cosimo was not altogether unaffected. Even to his accustomed ear it was rather stupendous, and, if he hadn't been again uneasily wondering whether he dared risk having Britomart down when Amory should return to the former subject again, might have been more stupendous still. He resumed his walk along the saddlebag chairs, and, when at last he did speak, did not mar a high occasion with too much vulgar demonstrativeness.
"That's an idea," he said simply.
"You see, Mr. Chamberlain went to South Africa," Amory replied, as simply.
"Yes," said Cosimo thoughtfully.... "It's certainly an idea."
"And you know how people have been getting at the 'Novum' lately, and even suggesting that Prang was merely a pen-name for Wilkinson himself."
"Yes, yes."
"Well, if you went, for six months, say, or even three, nobody'd be able to say after that that you didn't know all about it."
"No," Cosimo replied.
"The stupid people go. Why not the people with eyes and minds?"
"Exactly," said Cosimo, resuming his walk.
Then, as if he had been a mere you or a simple me, the beauty of the idea did begin to work a little in him. He walked for a space longer, and then,turning, said almost with joy, "I say, Amory—would youliketo go?"
But Amory did not look up from the slippered foot she had again begun to warm.—"Oh, I shouldn't go," she said absently.
"You mean me to go by myself?" said Cosimo, the joy vanishing again.
Then it was that Amory returned to the temporarily relinquished subject again.
"Well ...," she said, with a return of the quiet and wan but brave smile, "... I've nothing to do with that. I shouldn't set detectives to watch you. I was speaking for the moment purely from the point of view of the 'Novum's' policy.—But I see what you mean."
But Cosimo didn't mean that at all. He interposed eagerly, anxiously.
"Youdojump to conclusions!"—he began.
"MydearCosimo," she put up her hand, "I'm doing nothing of the kind. As I said, the other isn't my affair. Oh, I do wish you'd believe that I was perfectly calm about it! As Emerson said, soul ought to speak to soul from the top of Olympus or something, and, except that I want you to be happy, it's a matter of indifference to me who you go with. Do try to see that, Cosimo. Let's try to behave like civilized beings. We agreed long ago that sex was only a matter of accident. Don't let's make it so hatefully pivotal. After all, what practical difference would it make?"
But this was too much for Cosimo. He must have Britomart down and take his chance, that wasall. At the worst, he did not see how Amory could be so unreasonable that a hand-pat or a hair-stroke or two could not be put before her in the proper light.
Unfortunately, the trouble was, not that she made a fuss, but that she made so little fuss....
Again he moved towards the door.
But Miss Belchamber herself, as it happened, saved him the trouble of fetching her. Their hands were at the door at the same moment, his inside, hers outside. She entered. She was wrapped in the large black-and-gold Chinese dressing-gown Cosimo had given her for a Christmas present, and there were pantofles on her bare feet, and her hair hung down her back in two enormous yellow plaits. She was eating a large piece of cake.
"I've left the hot water tap running," she announced. "I hadn't gone to bed. Does anybody else want a bath? I like lots of hot baths. I came down for a piece of cake."
She crossed to the sofa, crammed the last piece of cake into her mouth, dusted the crumbs from her fingers, tucked the dressing-gown close under her, and with her fingers began softly to perform the motions ofpétrissageupon herself in the region of theerectors spinae. As she did so she again spoke, placidly and syllabically.
"I made a mistake," she said. "Father's forty-six. Next June. And I shall go to Walter's new Lecture. He's in the guard's van. I mean the van-guard. And Prince Ead-mond's is in the van-guard too. Especially Miss Miles. She saysthe Saturn-alia is a time of great li-cen-tiousness and dancing. Are they going to start it soon?"
Cosimo was nervous again. He cleared his throat.—"Britomart—," he began; but Miss Belchamber went on.
"I hope they are. Walter says it would be a very good thing. I shall dance 'Rufty Tufty.' And 'The Black Nag.' I love 'The Black Nag.' That's why I'm having a hot bath. Hot baths open the pores, or sweat-ducts. Then you close them again with a cold sponge. I always close them again with a cold sponge."
Cosimo cleared his throat again and had another try.—"Listen, Britomart—we were talking about you——"
Miss Belchamber looked complacently at her crossed Parian-marble ankles. Then she raised one of them, and her fingers explored the common tendon of the soleus and gastrocnemius.
"The soleus," she said, "acts when the knee-joint is flexed. In 'Rufty Tufty' it acts. Both of them, of course. And the manage-ment of the breath is very im-portant. It would be a very good thing if every-body opened their windows and took a hun-dred deep breaths before the Saturn-alia begins. I shall, and I shall make Corin and Bonniebell. Or won't they be able to go if it's very late? If it's after their bedtime I could bring them away early and then go back. I am so looking forward to it."
Cosimo made a third attempt.—"Britomart—", he said gravely.
"What?" said Miss Belchamber.
"I want to tell you about a rather important discussion we've been having——"
"Then shall I go and turn the tap off? The water will run cold. Then the sweat-ducts would have to be closed before they are opened, and that's wrong."
But this time Amory had moved towards the door. Cosimo, and not she, had wanted Miss Belchamber down, and now that he had got her he might amuse her. She thought he looked extremely foolish, but that was his look-out; she was going to bed. It seemed an entirely satisfactory moment in which to do so. She had managed better than she had hoped. The question of the fund had been satisfactorily raised, and it was obvious that the "Novum" would gain by having somebody on the spot, somebody perhaps less biassed than Mr. Prang, to advise upon its Indian policy. At the door she turned her nasturtium-coloured head.
"You might think over what I've been saying," she said. "We can talk of it again in a day or two. Especially my second suggestion, that about the 'Novum.' That seems to me very well worth considering. Good night."
And she passed out, leaving Cosimo plucking his lip irresolutely, and Miss Britomart Belchamber deeply interested in the common tendon of the other soleus and gastrocnemius.
It was on an afternoon in May, and the window of Dorothy's flat overlooking the pond was wide open. Ruffles of wind chased one another from moment to moment across the water, and the swans, guarding their cygnets, policed the farther bank, where dogs ran barking. The two elder Bits played in the narrow strip of garden below; again the frieze of the room was a soft net of rippling light; and the brightness of the sun—or so Ruth Mossop declared—had put the fire out.
Ruth was alone in the flat. As she passed between the pond-room and the kitchen, re-lighting the fire, "sweeping in," and preparing tea, she sang cheerfully to herself "A few more years shall roll, a few more sorrows come." Ruth considered that the sorrows would probably come by means of the youngest Bit. He ought (she said) to have been a little girl. Then, in after years, he might have been a bit of comfort to his mother. Boys, in Ruth's experience, were rarely that.
As she put the cakes for tea into the oven of thestove there came a milk-call from below. Ruth leaned out of the lift-window, and there ensued a conversation with the white-jacketed milk-boy.
"Saw your guv'nor last night," the boy grinned.
"Where's that cream I ordered, and that quart of nursery milk? You can't mind your business for thinking of picture palaces."
"Keep your 'air on; coming up now.—I say, they put 'is 'ead under a steam-'ammer. I said it was a dummy, but Gwen said it wasn't.Wasit 'im?"
"You mind your own interference, young man, and leave others to mind theirs; you ought to have something better to do with your threepences than collecting cigarette cards and taking girls to the pictures."
"It was in 'Bullseye Bill: A Drarmer of Love an' 'Ate'—'Scoundrel, 'ow dare you speak those words to a pure wife an' mother on the very threshold of the 'Ouse of——'"
"That's enough, young man—we don't want language Taken in Vain here—and you can tell 'em at your place we're leaving soon."
"Butwasthat 'im in the long whiskers at the end, when the powder magazine blew up?"
But Ruth, taking her cans, shut down the window and returned to the kitchen.
"'Then O, my Lord, prepare——'" she crooned as she gave a peep into the oven and then clanged the door to again, "'My soul for that blest day——'"
They were leaving soon. Already the sub-letting of the flat was in an agent's hands, and soon Stan would be braving the perils of his career no longer.Dorothy had unfolded her idea to her aunt, and Lady Tasker had raised no objection, provided Dorothy could raise the money by bringing Aunt Eliza into line.
"It's as good as Maypoles and Village Players anyway," she had said, "and I'm getting too old to run about as I have done.—By the way, is it true that Cosimo Pratt's gone to India?"
Dorothy had replied that it was true.
"Hm! What for? To dance round another Maypole?"
"I don't know, auntie. I've seen very little of them."
"Has she gone?"
"No."
"No more babies yet, I suppose?"
"No."
"Well ... you'd better see your Aunt Eliza. She's got all the money that's left.—But I don't see how you're going to get any very much out of Tony and Tim."
"Oh, I'll see they don't impose on me as they've been imposing on you!... So I may move that billiard-table, and alter the gun-room?"
"Yes, if you pay for it."
"Thanks—you are a dear!..."
By what arts Dorothy had contrived to lay Aunt Eliza under contribution doesn't matter very much here. Among themselves the Lennards and Taskers might quarrel, but they presented an unbroken front to the world—and Dorothy, for Aunt Eliza's special benefit, managed to make the world in some degreea party to her project. That is to say, that a paragraph had appeared in certain newspapers, announcing that an experiment of considerable interest, etc., the expenses of which were already guaranteed, and so forth, was about to be tried in the County of Shropshire, where "The Brear," the residence of the late Sir Noel Tasker, was already in course of alteration. And so on, in Dorothy's opinion, neither too much nor too little for her design.... It had been a public committance of the family, and it had worked the oracle with Aunt Eliza. Rather than have a public squabble about it, she had come in with her thousand, the work was now well advanced, and the venerable sinner who had recited the poems printed by Cosimo Pratt's Village Press was in charge of the job. Dorothy, hurriedly weaning the youngest Bit, had run down to Ludlow for the express purpose of announcing to him that it was a job, and not an aesthetic jollification.
Moreover, at that time she had half a hundred other matters to attend to; for Stan, escaping from powder-magazines as the last inch of fuse sputtered, and fervently hoping that the man had made no mistake about the length of stroke of the Nasmyth hammer under which he put his devoted head, could give her little help. Besides her own approachingdéménagement, she had much of the care of that of her aunt. As Stan's earnings were barely sufficient for the current expenses of the household, she still had to turn to odds and ends of her old advertisement work. She had—Quis custodiet?—the nurse to look after, and the tradesmen, and letters,and callers, and Ruth. In short, a simple inversion of her aunt's dictum about the Pratts—"Too much money and not enough to do"—would have fitted Dorothy's case to a nicety.
Therefore, as another burden more or less would make little difference to one already so burdened, Dorothy had added still further to her cares. Ever since that day when Lady Tasker had come bareheaded out of her house and had spoken to Amory Pratt outside the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dorothy had had her sometime friend constantly on her mind. She had spoken of her to her aunt, who had again shown herself deplorably illiberal and incisive.
"I don't pretend to understand the modern young woman," she had remarked carelessly. "Half of 'em seem to upset their bodies with too much study, and the other half to play hockey till they're little better than fools. I suppose it's all right, and that somebody knows what they're about.... I often wonder what they'd have done, though, if it hadn't been for Sappho and Madame Curie.... By the way," she had gone irrelevantly on without a break, "does shewantany more children besides those twins?"...
Nevertheless, Dorothy had had Amory so much on her mind that twice since Cosimo's departure for India she had been up to The Witan in search of her. After all, if anybody was to blame for anything it was Cosimo. But on neither occasion had Amory been at home. Dorothy had left messages, to which she had received no reply; and so she had gone a third time—had gone, as it happened, on that veryafternoon when Ruth sang "A few more years shall roll" as she made the hot cakes for tea. This time she had persuaded Katie Deedes to come with her—for Katie had left the Eden, was out of a job, and for the time being had afternoon hours to spare.
But again they had failed to find Amory, and Dorothy and Katie took a turn round the Heath before returning to the flat for tea. As they walked along the hawthorn hedge that runs towards Parliament Hill and South Hill Park they talked. Kites were flying on the Hill; the Highgate Woods and the white spire showed like a pale pastel in the Spring sunshine; and from the prows of a score of prams growing babies leaned out like the figureheads of ships.
"That's where Billie was born," said Dorothy, nodding towards the backs of the houses that make the loop of South Hill Park.
Katie only said "Oh?" She too had caught the uneasiness about Amory. And what Katie thought was very soon communicated.
"You see, Dot," she broke suddenly out, "you've no idea of what a—what a funny lot they are really.... No, I haven't told you—I haven't told youhalf! It's everything they do. Why, the nurse practised for months and months at a school where they washed a celluloid baby—I'm not joking—she did—a life-sized one—they did it in class, and dressed it, and put it to sleep—as ifthatwould be any good at all with a real one!... And really—I'm not prudish, as you know, Dot—but the way they used to sit about, in a dressing-gown or anightgown or anything—I don't mean when there was abigcrowd there, of course, but just a few of them—Walter, and Mr. Brimby, and Edgar Strong—and all of them going quite red in the face with puremindedness! At any rate, I never did thinkthatwas quite the thing!"
She spoke with great satisfaction of the point of the New Law she had not broken. It seemed to make up for those she had.
"And those casts and paintings and things about—it's all right being an artist, of course, but if I ever got married,Ishouldn't like casts and paintings of me about for everybody to see like that!——"
"Oh, just look at that hawthorn!" Dorothy interrupted.
"Yes, lovely.—And Walter talking about Dionysus, and what Lycurgus thought would be a very good way of preventing jealousy, and a lot more about Greeks and Romans and Patagonians and Esquimaux! Do you know, Dot, I don't believe they know anything at all about it—notreallyknow, I mean! I don't see how they can! One man might know a little bit about a part of it, and another man a little bit about another part—and that would be rather a lot, seeing how long ago it all is—but Walter knows itall! At any rate nobody can contradict him. But what does it matter to us to-day, Dorothy? Whatdoesit matter?... Of course I don't mean they're wicked. But—but—in some ways I can't help thinking it would be better tobewicked as long as you didn't say anything about it——!"
"Oh, I don't think they're wicked," said Dorothy placidly. But the 'vert went eagerly on.
"That's just it!" she expounded. "Walter says 'wicked's' only a relative term. If you face the truth boldly, all the time, lots of things wouldn't be wicked at all, he says. And I believe he's really awfully devoted to Laura—in his way—though he does talk about these things with Britomart Belchamber sitting there in her nightgown. But it's always thesame bitof truth they face boldly. They never think of going in for astronomy—or crystal-what-is-it—crystallography—or something chilly—and face that boldly——"
Dorothy laughed.—"You absurd girl!"
"—but no. It's always whether people wear clothes because they're modest or whether they're modest because they wear clothes, or something like that.—And Walter begins it—and then Laura chimes in, and then Cosimo, and then Amory, and then Dickie—and when they've said it all on Monday they say it again on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and every day—and I don't know what they've decided even yet——"
"Well, here we are," Dorothy said as she reached her own door. "Let's have some tea.... Mr. Miller hasn't been in yet, has he, Ruth?"
"No, m'm."
"Well, we'll have tea now, and you can make some fresh when he comes. And keep some cakes hot."
Mr. Miller's visit that afternoon had to do with a care so trifling that Dorothy merely took it in her stride. She had not found—she knew that shewould never find—the "Idee" that Mr. Miller wanted; but if no Idees except real ones were ever called Idees we should be in a very bad way in this world. She knew that there is always a middling chance that if you state a pseudo-Idee solemnly enough, and trick it out with circumstance enough, and set people talking enough about it, it will prove just as serviceable as the genuine article; and she was equally familiar, as we have seen, with that beautiful and compensating Law by which quick and original minds are refused money when they are producing of their best but overwhelmed with it when their brains have become as dry as baked sponges. She had given Mr. Miller quite good Idees in the past; she had no objection to being paid over again for them now; and if they really had been new ones they would have been of no use to Mr. Miller for at least ten years to come. That is why the art of advertisement is so comparatively advanced. Any other art would have taken twenty years.
Therefore, as she remembered the exceeding flimsiness of the one poor Idee she had, she had resolved that Mr. Miller's eyes should be diverted as much as possible from the central lack, and kept to the bright irrelevancies with which she would adorn it. The Idee was that of the Litmus Layette ... but here we may as well skip a few of Katie's artless betrayals of her former friends, and come to the moment when Mr. Miller, with his Edward the Sixth shoulders, appeared, bowed, was introduced to Katie, bowed again, sat down, and was regaled with hot cakes and conversation. He had risen and bowed again, bythe way, when Dorothy, for certain reasons of policy, had mentioned Katie's relationship to the great Sir Joseph Deedes, and Katie had told of a stand-up fight she had had with her uncle's Marshal about admittance to his lordship's private room.
"Well, now, that's something I've learned to-day," Mr. Miller magnanimously admitted, sitting down again. "So your English Judges have Marshals! I was under the impression that that was a military title, like Marshal Macmann and Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. Well now.... And how might Judge Deedes' Marshal be dressed, Miss Deedes?"
"Not 'Judge' Deedes," said Katie smiling. "That's a County Court Judge." And she explained. Mr. Miller opened his eyes wide.
"Is that so-o-o? Well now, if that isn't interesting! That's noos. He's a Honourable with a 'u' in it, and a Sir, and you call him his Lordship, and he's Mister Justice Deedes! Ain't that English!... Now let me see if I'm on the track of it. 'Your Worship'—that's a Magistrate. 'Your Honour'—that's the other sort of Judge. And 'My Lord'—that's Miss Deedes' uncle. And an English Judge has a Marshal.... Do you recollect our Marshals, Mrs. Stan?——"
Building (as it now appeared) even better than he knew, Mr. Miller had, in the past, granted the rank of Marshal to Messrs. Hallowell and Smiths' shopwalkers.
Dorothy's reason for thus flagrantly introducing Sir Joseph's name was this:—
Katie had left the Eden, and she herself waspresently off to Ludlow. Thus there was the possible reversion of a job of sorts going a-begging. Katie might as well have it as anybody else. Dorothy had strictly enjoined upon her impulsive friend that on no account was she to contradict or disclaim anything she, Dorothy, might choose to say on her behalf to Mr. Miller; and she intended that the credit, such as it was, of the last Idee she even intended to propose to Mr. Miller—the Litmus Layette—should be Katie's start. Once started she would have to look after herself.
So when Mr. Miller passed from the subject of Hallowell and Smiths' Marshals to that of his long-hoped-for Idee, Dorothy was ready for him. Avoiding the weak spot, she enlarged on the tradition—very different from a mere superstition—that, in Layettes, blue stood always for a boy and pink for a girl.
"You see," she said, "this is England when all's said, and we'refrightfully conservative. Don't condemn it just because it wouldn't go in New York.... You've heard of the Willyhams, of course?" she broke off suddenly to ask.
"I cann't say I have, Mrs. Stan. But I'm sitting here. Tell me. They're a Fam'ly, I presoom?"
"Yes. Upshire's their title. Now that title's descended in the female line ever since Charles the First. Ever since then the Willyham Layettes have been pink as a matter of course. And now, not a month ago, there was a boy, and they had to rush off and get blue at the very last moment.... Let me see, your children are little girls, aren't they?" she again interrupted herself to say.
"Three little goils, Mrs. Stan, with black-and-white check frocks and large black bows in their hair."
"Well, and mine are boys. Blue for me and pink for you. But we'll come to that in a moment.—The thing that really strikes me as extraordinary is that in all these ages, with all the countless babies that have been born, we don't knowyetwhich it's going to be!... And I don't think we ever shall. Now just think what that means—not just to a Royal House, with a whole succession depending on it, and crowns and dynasties and things—but toeverywoman! You see thetremendousinterest they take in it at once!—But I don't know whether a man can ever understand that——"
She paused.
"Go on, Mrs. Stan—I want the feminine point of voo," said Mr. Miller.—"The man ain't broken Post Toasties yet that has more reverence for motherhood than what I have——"
"I know," said Dorothy bashfully. "But it isn't the same—being a father. It's—it's different. It's not the same. I doubt whetheranyman knows what it means to us as we wait and wonder—and wait and wonder—day after day—day after day——"
Here she dropped her eyes. Here also Mr. Miller dropped his head.
"It isn't the same—being a father—it's different," Dorothy was heard to murmur.
Mr. Miller breathed something about the holiest spot on oith.
"So you see," Dorothy resumed presently, hoping that Mr. Miller did not see. "It's the nearestsubject of all to us. The very first question we ask one another is, 'Do you hope it's a little boy or a little girl?' And as it's impossible to tell, it's impossible for us to make our preparations. Lady Upshire doesn't know one bit more about it than the poorest woman in the streets. And this in an age that boasts of its Science!"
"Well," said Mr. Miller, giving it consideration, "that's ver-ry true. I ain't a knocker; I don't want to get knocking our men of science; but it's a fact they cann't tell. I recollect Mrs. Miller saying to me——"
"Yes—look at it from Mrs. Miller's point of view——"
"I remember Mrs. Miller using the ver-ry woids you've just used, Mrs. Stan. (I hope this don't jolt Miss Deedes too much; it's ver-ry interessting). And that's one sure thing, that it ain't a cinch for Mrs. Bradley Martin any more than what it is for any poor lady stenographer at so many dallars per. But—if you'll pardon me putting the question in that form—where's thepoint, Mrs. Stan? What's the reel prapasition?"
This being precisely what Dorothy was rather carefully avoiding, again she smiled bashfully and dropped her head, as if once more calling on those profound reserves of Mr. Miller's veneration for motherhood. These even profounder reserves, of Mr. Miller's veneration for dallars, were too much to the point altogether.
"I was afraid you wouldn't understand," she sighed.
"But," said Mr. Miller earnestly, "give me something to get a hold of, Mrs. Stan. I ain't calling the psychological prapasition down any; a business man has to be psychologist all the time; but he wants it straight. Straight psychology. The feminine point of voo, but practical. It ain't for Harvard. It's for Hallowell and Smith's."
"Well," said Dorothy, "it's Miss Deedes' idea really—and it would never have occurred to her if it hadn't been for Lady Upshire—would it Katie?"
"No," said Katie.
"Very well. Suppose Lady Upshire had had the Litmus Layette. All she would have had to do would have been to take the ribbons out—the work of a moment—the pink ribbons—dip them in the preparation—and there they'd have been, ready for immediate use. And blue ones would be dipped in the other solution and of course they'd have turned pink.... You see, you can't alter the baby, but you can alter the ribbons. And it isn't only ribbons. A woolly jacket—or a pram-rug—or socks—or anything—I think it's an exceedingly clever Idea of Miss Deedes!——"
Mr. Miller gave it attention. Then he looked up.
"Would it woik?" he asked.
"Well," said Dorothy ... "it works in chemistry. But that's not the principal thing. It's its value as an advertisement that's the real thing. Think of the window-dressing!—Blue and pink, changing before people's very eyes!—Just think how—I mean, it interestseverywoman! They'd stand in front of the window, and think—but you're a man.Mrs. Miller would understand.... Anyhow, you would get crowds of people, and that's what you want—crowds of people—that's its advertisement-value.—And then when you got them inside it would be like having the hooks at one end of the shop and the eyes at the other—a hook's no good without an eye, so they have to walk past half a mile of counters, and you sell them all sort of things on the way.Ithink there's a great deal in it!"
"It's a Stunt," Mr. Miller conceded, as if in spite of himself he must admit thus much. "It's soitainly a Stunt. But I'm not sure it's a reel Idee."
"That," said Dorothy with conviction, "would depend entirely in your own belief in it. If you did it as thoroughly as you've done lots of other things——"
"It's soitainly a Stunt, Miss Deedes," Mr. Miller mused....
He was frowningly meditating on the mystic differences between a Stunt and an Idee, and was perhaps wondering how the former would demean itself if he took the risk of promoting it to the dignity of the latter, when the bell was heard to ring. A moment later Ruth opened the door.
"Lady Tasker," she said.
Lady Tasker entered a little agitatedly, with an early edition of the "Globe" crumpled in her hand.
Lady Tasker never missed the "Globe's"By the Waycolumn, and there was a curious, mocking, unpleasant By-the-Way-ishness about the announcement she made as she entered. There is a special psychological effect, in the Harvard and not in the Hallowell and Smith's sense, when you come unexpectedly in print upon news that affects yourself. The multiplicity of newspapers notwithstanding, revelation still hits the ear less harshly than it does the eye; telling is still private and intimate, type a trumpeting to all the world at once. Dorothy looked at the pink page Lady Tasker had thrust into her hand as if it also, like the Litmus Layette, had turned blue before her eyes.
"NotSir Benjamin who used to come and see father!" she said, dazed.
Lady Tasker had had time, on her way to the flat, to recover a little.
"There's only one Sir Benjamin Collins that I know of," she answered curtly.
"But—but—itcan'tbe!——"
Of course there was no reason in the world why it couldn't. Quite on the contrary, there was thatbest of all reasons why it could—it had happened. Three bullet-wounds are three undeniable reasons. It was the third, the brief account said, that had proved fatal.
"They say the finest view in Asia's Bombay from the stern of a steamer," said Lady Tasker, with no expression whatever. "I think your friend Mr. Cosimo Pratt will be seeing it before very long."
But Dorothy was white.TheirSir Benjamin!... Why, as a little girl she had called him "Uncle Ben!" He had not been an uncle really, of course, but she had called him that. She could remember the smell of his cigars, and the long silences as he had played chess with her father, and his hands with the coppery hair on them, and his laugh, and the way the markhor at the Zoo had sniffed at his old patoo-coat, just as cats now sniffed at her own set of civet furs. And she had married him one day in the nursery, when she had been about ten, and he had taken her to the Pantomime that afternoon for a Honeymoon—and then, when she had really married Stan, he had given her the very rugs that were on her bedroom floor at this moment.
And, if this pink paper was to be believed, an Invisible Man had shot at him three times, and at the third shot had killed him.
She had not heard her aunt's words about Cosimo. She had been standing with her hand in Mr. Miller's, having put it there when he had risen to take himself off and forgotten to withdraw it again. Then Mr. Miller had gone, and Dorothy had stood looking stupidly at her aunt.
"What did you say?" she said. "You said something about Cosimo Pratt."
"Don't you go, Katie; I want to talk to you presently.—Sit down, Dot.—Get her a drink of water."
Dorothy sat heavily down and put out one hand for the paper again.—"What did you say?" she asked once more.
"Never mind just now. Put your head back and close your eyes for a minute."...
That was the rather unpleasant, By-the-Way part of it. For of course it was altogether By-the-Way when you looked at the matter broadly. Amory could have explained this with pellucid clearness. The murder of a Governor?... Of course, if you happened to have known that Governor, and to have married him in a child's game when you were ten and he forty, and to have gone on writing letters to him telling him all the news about your babies, and to have had letters back from him signed "Uncle Ben"—well, nobody would think it unnatural of you to be a little shocked at the news of his assassination; but Amory could easily have shown that that shock, when you grew a little calmer and came to think clearly about it, would be only a sort of extension of your own egotism. Governors didn't really matter one bit more because you were fond of them. Everybody had somebody fond of them. Why, then, make a disproportionate fuss about a single (and probably corrupt) official, when thousands suffered gigantic wrongs? The desirable thing was to look at thesethings broad-mindedly, and not selfishly. It was selfish, selfish and egotistical, to expect the whole March of Progress to stop because you happened to be fond of somebody (who probably hadn't been one bit better than he ought to have been). These pompous people of the official classes were always bragging about their readiness to lay down their lives for their country; very well; they had no right to grumble when they were taken at their word. Ruskin had expressed much the same thought rather finely when he had said that a soldier wasn't paid for killing, but for being killed. Some people seemed to want it both ways—to go on drawing their money while they were alive, and then to have an outcry raised when they got shot. In strict justice they ought to have been, not merely shot, but blown from the mouths of guns; but of course neither Amory nor anybody else wanted to go quite so far as that.... Nevertheless, perspective was needed—perspective, and vision of such scope that you had a clear mental picture, not of misguided individuals, who must die some time or other and might as well do so in the discharge of what it pleased them to call their "duty," but of millions of our gentle and dark-skinned brothers, waiting in rows with baskets on their heads (and making simply ripping friezes) while the Banks paid in pennies, and then holding lots of righteous and picturesque Meetings, all about Tyrant England and throwing off the Yoke. Amory would have conceded that she had never had an Uncle Ben; but if she had had fifty Uncle Bens she would still havehoped to keep some small sense of proportion about these things.
But that again only showed anybody who was anybody how hopelessly behind the noble movements of her time Dorothy was. The sense of proportion never entered her head. She gave a little shiver, even though the day was warm, and then that insufferable old aunt of hers, who might be a "Lady" but had no more tact than to interfere with people's liberty in the street, praised her gently when she came round a bit, and said she was taking it very bravely, when the truth was that she really ought to have condemned her for her absurd weakness and lack of the sense of relative values. No, there would have been no doubt at all about it in Amory's mind: that it was these people, who talked so egregiously about "firm rule," who were the real sentimentalists, and the others of the New Imperialism, with their real grasp of the true and humane principles of government, who were the downright practical folk....
All this fuss about a single Governor, of whom Mr. Prang himself had said (and there was no gentler soul living than Mr. Prang) that his extortions had been a byword and his obstinacy proof positive of his innate weakness!——
But Amory was not in the pond-room that day, and so Dorothy's sickly display of emotion went unchecked. The nurse herded the Bits together, but they were not admitted for their usual tea-time romp. Indeed, Dorothy said presently, "Do you mind if I leave you for a few minutes with Katie,auntie?" She went into her bedroom and did not return. Of all his "nieces" she had been his favourite; her foot caught in one of his Kabuli mats as she entered the bedroom. She lay down on her bed. She longed for Stan to come and put his arms about her.
He came in before Lady Tasker had finished her prolonged questioning of Katie. Aunt Grace told him where Dorothy was. Then she and Katie left together.
The newspapers showed an excellent sense of proportion about the incident. In the earlier evening editions the death of Sir Benjamin was nicely balanced by the 4.30 winners; and then a popular actor's amusing replies in the witness-box naturally overshadowed everything else. And, to anticipate a little, on the following day the "Times" showed itself to be, as usual, hopelessly in the wrong. Indeed there were those who considered that this journal made a deplorable exhibition of itself. For it had no more modesty nor restraint than to use the harsh word "murder," without any "alleged" about it, which was, of course, a flagrant pre-judging of the case. Nobody denied that at a first glance appearanceswerea little against the gentle and dusky brother, who had been seized with the revolver still in his hand; but that was no reason why a bloated capitalist rag should thus undermine the principles of elementary justice. It ought to have made it all the more circumspect.... But anybody who was anybody knew exactly what was at the bottom of it all. The "Times" was seeking a weapon againstthe Government. The staff was no doubt secretly glad that it had happened, and was gloating, and already calculating its effect on an impending by-election.... Besides, there was the whole ethical question of capital punishment. It would not bring Sir Benjamin back to life to try this man, find him guilty, and do him barbarously to death in the name of the Law. That would only be two dead instead of one. The proper way would be to hold an inquiry, with the dusky instrument of justice (whose faith in his mission must have been very great since he had taken such risks for it) not presiding, perhaps, but certainly called as an important witness to testify to the Wrongness of the Conditions.... Besides, an assassination is a sort of half-negligible outbreak, regrettable certainly, for which excuse can sometimes be found: but this other would be deliberate, calculated, measured, and in flat violation of the most cardinal of all the principles on which a great Empire should be based—the principle of Mercy stiffened with exactly the right modicum of Justice....
And besides....
And besides....
And besides....
And when all is said, India is a long way off.
The publication of the news produced a curious sort of atmosphere at The Witan that afternoon. Everybody seemed desirous of showing everybody else that they were unconcerned, and yet an observer might have fancied that they overdid it ever such a little. At about the time when Lady Tasker leftDorothy with Stan, Mr. Wilkinson drove up in a cab to the green door in the privet hedge and asked for Amory. He was told that she had given word that she did not want to see anybody. But in the studio he found Mr. Brimby and Dickie Lemesurier, and the three were presently joined by Laura and Walter Wyron. A quorum of five callers never hesitated to make themselves at home at The Witan. They lighted the asbestos log, Walter found Cosimo's cigarettes, and Dickie said she was sure Amory wouldn't mind if she rang for tea. When they had made themselves quite comfortable, they began to chat about a number of things, not the murder.
"Seen Strong?" Mr. Brimby asked Mr. Wilkinson.
Mr. Wilkinson was at his most morose and truculent.
"No," he said. "I called at the office, but he was out. Doesn't put in very much time there, it seems to me. Perhaps he's at the Party's Meeting."
"How is it you aren't there, by the way?"
Mr. Wilkinson made a little sound of contempt.
"Bah! All talk. Day in and day out, talk, talk, talk. I want action. The leadership's all wrong. Want a man. I keep my seat because if I cleared out they'd be no better than a lot of tame Liberal cats, but I've no use for 'em——"
It was whispered that the members of the Party had no use for Mr. Wilkinson, and very little for one another; but it doesn't do to give ear to everything that is whispered.
Then Mr. Brimby appeared suddenly to recollect something.
"Ah yes!... Action. Speaking of action, I suppose you've seen this Indian affair in to-night's papers?"
Mr. Wilkinson was still fuming.
"That Governor? Yes, I saw it.... But it's too far away. Thousands of miles too far away. We want something nearer home. A paper that calls a spade a spade for one thing.... Anybody heard from Pratt this week?"
They discussed Cosimo's latest letter, and then Mr. Brimby said, "By the way—how will this affect him?"
"How will what affect him?"
"This news, to-night. Collins."
"Oh!... Why should it affect him at all? Don't see why it should. The 'Pall Mall' has a filthy article on it to-night. That paper's getting as bad as the 'Times.'"
Here Walter Wyron intervened.—"By the way, whoisthis man Collins? Just pass me 'Who's Who,' Laura."
They looked Sir Benjamin up in "Who's Who," and then somebody suggested that their party wasn't complete without Edgar Strong. "I'll telephone him," said Walter; "perhaps he'll be back by this."—The telephone was in the hall, and Walter went out. Dickie told Laura how well Walter was looking. Laura replied, Yes, he was very well indeed; except for a slight cold, which anybody was lucky to escape in May, he had never been better; which was wonderful, considering the work he got through.—Then Walter returned. Strong had not yetcome in, but his typist had said he'd be back soon.—"Didn't know it ran to a typist," Walter remarked, helping himself to more tea.