Mr. Wellcome whistled and snapped his fingers to the waiter at the door.
For Mr. Wellcome never came empty-handed. The Belgian waiter approached with a tray, and it was now discovered that another tray chock-full of jingling glasses stood outside. Mr. Wellcome travelled for Perclay Barkins & Co., and knew butlers and wine-tasters and cellarmen and head-waiters, and was to be relied on for valuable information about vintages and bottling and tobacco-crops.—“Stand there, Whiskerino, by Miss Addams,” he commanded the waiter; and from the tray he began to toss into Miss Addams’s lap a number of articles.
“Thought you might find a use for these,” he said off-handedly. (They were packs of cards that had been used once in some Club or other.) “And you might as well have the latest multiple corkscrew as anybody else, I suppose, eh? Catch!—Now, friends and gentlemen all, oblige me by joining me in a smoke. The curtains, mother? Dash the curtains; Massey don’t get engaged every day, at least I hope he doesn’t; not that there’s any knowing what some of them does under the rose—ha, ha, ha!... Now, Sandys, help yourself. Here’s a cutter. Smoke half of it, and then throw t’other half away; there’s plenty more in the box.—Now, where’s Rainbow? Here you are; you’re my man;youknow a little bit of all right when you taste it; half a minute, and I’ll ask your opinion ofthis——”
Mr. Wellcome’s face became deeply serious as he stooped for a minute; then, as he stood upright againwith a bottle in his right hand and a liqueur glass in his left, it shone once more.
“Steady ...there!” He passed an exquisitely filled glass to Mr. Rainbow. “Warm it in your hands a minute first—this way—smell it—and now roll it slowly round the inside o’ yourmouth!——”
Had Mr. Rainbow been Cinquevalli balancing the billiard-balls every eye could not have been more intently on him.
“Mmmmmm!” he murmured ecstatically, lips closed, nostrils gently sniffing, eyes fondling the glass.
“Eh?” said Mr. Wellcome, winking to all and sundry, as much as to say, Hadn’t he told them so? “Eh? What? Spanish, should you say?Ishould think so! W. W. gives youhisword for that, worth something or worth nothing as the case may be!... Now, all! Rainbow’s only the taster, in case it was poison; you hold that tray steady, Antonionio; ladies first, I think, is the law ofpoliteness——”
And the tiny glasses, rich and deep as Amory’s hair, were passed round.
Never such a party had been given at Glenerne. The smell of the cigars and the brandy filled the air like some incense burned before the god of the naughty World; more witty things were said by loosened tongues than their owners could ever hope to remember. Fun? Oh, there was fun when Mr. Wellcome himself took matters in hand!... “Now, who says a flutter?” he said by and by, shuffling one of the packs of cards as only Mr. Wellcome could shuffle cards. “For love, Nellie—and forfeits——” But Nellie(Mrs. Deschamps) had already been fluttered by the Kissing Bee, and was in a mood too softened for cards; and, for fear the brandy should have affected anybody, another tray with strong coffee was passed round by Omar K, the red-fezzed boy from Smyrna with the face of the hue of a chocolate “shape.” They kept it up late; for once the “lights out at eleven” rule was suspended; and even Amory sat up quite a long time after she might without singularity have gone to bed. At last Mr. Wellcome rose. He for one had enjoyed himself just fair-to-middling, he said. The mats and rugs were left where they were, pushed back against the walls. Quite twenty voices downstairs in the hall sang that Mr. Wellcome was a jolly good fellow, and what remained of the Spanish brandy was brought downstairs for the two policemen who (nobody knew how) were presently discovered, smiling and with their helmets in their hands, just within the front door.—“Best respects, sir,” said one of them, and “Many of ’em,” said the other.
And so said all the rest.
TheFashion Studio that employed Miss Dorothy Lennard had originally been, and in a sense was still, the enterprise of a small printer; and Dorothy had been what Amory called “lucky” to get there. Had Amory herself wanted a post as an apprentice to fashion-drawing, she would have had to fill her folio with “specimens,” to sit with half a dozen other applicants in a waiting-room until it had pleased some manager or proprietor to touch a bell and to give orders that the prettiest one was to be admitted, and then, on her work or prettiness or both, to take her chance. But Dorothy had been enabled to skip all that. Even more than the wealthy Lennards and Taskers who stood in the background behind her, a certain blindness to higher things had given Dorothy an advantage from the start. She had, for example, quite unprincipled ways with men. Almost any one woman (Dorothy was in the habit of reasoning modestly) could turn any one man round her finger if she went the right way about it; and it seemed to her that the men knew that too. If they didn’t, why were they always trying to dodge the individual issue, and to say such fearfully solemn things about the abstraction of Womanhood itself? Dorothy thought shesaw the reason. It was that, in the lump, men could usually manage them. It was in detail that they hadn’t a chance.
Therefore Dorothy, having quite made up her mind who her printer-victim was to be, had not for a moment dreamed of writing him a letter and then waiting on him with a folio. Instead, she had cast about among cousins and so forth until she had found one who knew the sleeping-partner of the firm. Then, after some little consideration of ways and means, she had contrived to meet this sleeping-partner, this maker and unmaker of mere printers, not in the firm’s matchboarded office with the machines growling overhead, but at supper at an hotel. These things make all the difference to the consideration in which you are held.... She had hardly had to ask for her job. Machinating men, with their stories and drinks and cigars, can do a good deal, but Dorothy knew how to make of her guileless blue eyes a spiritualizing of mere drinks and stories and cigars. She had, too, ideas the verynaïvetéof which was likely to strike a man immersed in mere dull business routine. Meeting the printers’ sleeping-partner again, this time at a lunch that spread over into tea-time, she had been able to drop into his ears her own purely personal conviction (against which he would, no doubt, see any number of reasons: still, there it was)—her conviction that his fashion-business, as it stood, was not capable of very much further development. It was not her affair, she had said; that was merely how it struck her; but—she wondered whether the bandcouldbe induced to play the “ChansonTriste!”——
And so the printers’ catalogue-business had been turned topsy-turvy.
The printing-office was in Endell Street, and the printing was still done there; but the fashion-studio was there no longer. It was now in Oxford Street, not far from Manchester Square and the Wallace Collection. The single room on the top floor overlooked the vast interior square where, later, acres of glass roofs and flying bridges of iron were to arise; in a word, they had subrented part of the premises of Hallowell & Smith’s, the huge Ladies’ Emporium—and if you have never heard of Hallowell & Smith’s it is not Hallowell & Smith’s fault. A mutually profitable “dicker” that had something to do with Hallowell & Smith’s minor printing made the place cheap; and, though the firm’s Summer and Winter Catalogues were still drawn and printed elsewhere, nothing (it had seemed to Dorothy) would be lost by allowing Hallowell & Smith’s to discover presently that they had facilities for this kind of work actually on the spot.... This was the kind of hint she had dropped to the power behind the printer who had shown himself so fussy about the ice-pail and the music “by request.” She had no plan, but streams did seem to set in certain directions, and it was not much good going against them. They had not obtained the order for Hallowell’s Catalogues yet, but one thing at a time. Dorothy must learn her own part of the business first. She must practise her Fur-touch, graduating to Feathers, and so on to faces themselves. More might happen by and bye.
In one respect at least the change was not altogether for the better, for, bad as the rumble of the machines at Endell Street had been, Hallowell’s mammoth rebuilding, which included much throwing down of old walls amid eruptions of lime and dust, and the running day and night of a crane the top of which lost itself in the blue air, was worse. These activities shook the whole fabric of the place, playing the very deuce with Torchon and Valenciennes. But in every other respect the change was not only an improvement, but the Fashion Studio now stood in the full stream of general developments. It only needed a time-serving, and, for choice, a feminine mind, and there was no telling what might not happen.
To reach the upper room where the seven or eight girls worked, you had to pass from the lift along a long concrete-floored corridor and then through a large outer room that was one of the sitting-rooms of Hallowell’s “living-in” female employees. Of the fashion-drawing factory Miss Porchester was head. She herself went out in the mornings to shops and warehouses to sketch, sometimes taking as many as a dozen buses and cabs in the course of a single morning; and in the afternoon she returned with, the fruits of her wanderings—or, rather, with the seeds, for they were yet to grow and ripen marvellously. Fat Miss Benson took them in hand first. With a foot-rule by her side for checking, lest there should be too much even of a good thing, she roughed in those elongated and fish-like figures which, if you would see them in normal proportion, you mustsquint at aslant up the tilted page. Then Miss Hurst or blonde Miss Umpleby took over the drawing, further developing the Tea-gown or the Walking Costume, or the lady in her corsets riding in a motor car, or whatever it might be. From them it passed to Miss Smedley or Miss Cowan, who worked it up with lamp-black or Chinese-white or what not, for Miss Ruffell to put in the faces, large-eyed and soulful. Dorothy measured and squared the production, gave a last look to see that the fish-like ideal had not been lost in its progress from hand to hand and that there was nothing else that might start a young man on the downward path, and put a line round it if a line was needed. Pigtailed little Smithie affixed the protecting piece of tissue-paper. It was finished.
Miss Porchester, gaunt and dark, sat at a little table apart, where she could keep an eye on her staff. She kept the register of work done, and saw that the requisite “points” were properly emphasized—the new skirt “set” with a slight difference, the hat tilted an inch lower over one eyebrow than during the season before. She received the travellers, and taught her girls, if they must talk to one another as they worked, to do so without removing their eyes from their sheets of Bristol-board. Quite animated conversations would go on by the hour together without so much as a head moving; and Dorothy’s own blue eyes, which were never so wide open but that they could always open a little wider, would contract and dilate over her work as she talked as if they had contained a pulse.
Whatever Amory might think about it, the other girlstoo thought Dorothy lucky to have had a real art-training. They had not been to the McGrath.... And, quite apart from thecachetthis gave her, Dorothy herself certainly had a way with her. Miss Smedley, for example, was as old as Dorothy, but Miss Smedley, for no reason that could be described, always seemed to move in an atmosphere of kindlily-bestowed pity; but nobody would have dreamed of pitying Dorothy. It was very much the other way. As if they had known her methods with sleeping-partners (which they did not), they looked up to her. Her sayings were repeated, her mistakes covered up for her; and even Miss Porchester never gave her “one for herself.” She was the only one of the girls so exempted.
One morning at about the time Miss Geraldine Towers became engaged to Mr. Massey, the fashion-studio was able at last to draw a long breath of relief and to tell itself that the worst of the half-yearly rush was about over. The last page of the last Summer Catalogue had been sent off to Endell Street, and for a month or two only the normal trickle of odd jobs would be coming in. Even the rule about not moving your head as you talked had been relaxed, and only one cloud marred the general sense of release—the certainty that some of the girls would be “given a holiday” until the next rush began in the Autumn. The girls were discussing this that afternoon. Miss Porchester had gone to Endell Street; fat Miss Benson, her second in command, had passed through the adjoining sitting-room half an hour before, and was guessed to be talking on the stairs with Mr. Mooney, of Hallowell’s Handkerchief Department;and Dorothy also intended to take the risk of Miss Porchester’s inquiring for her and to fly off presently to Cheyne Walk.
“Oh,youneedn’t worry, Smithie,” said Miss Umpleby, her chair tilted back so that her primrose hair and clasped hands rested against the coats and jackets on the wall. “They always want somebody to run about and be useful. Hilda and I’ll be the ladies till August. We shall come back again with the Furs.”
Hilda Jeyes had her elbows on the table; she was munching an apple.
“It all comes of our being kept at the one thing, over and over again,” she declared. “Look at me: what am I? A Camisole Specialist! Why, if I was to be set to do Damask, or Mourning, or Boots, like Benny, I should no more know where to begin than I could fly! If only that girl on theDaily Specwould die! I’d be after her place in two twos, I promise you!”
“They never die when they’re on newspapers,” Miss Umpleby remarked, with the detached air of one who reminds her hearers of a well-known fact in mortality statistics. “Splendid thing for the health. I wonder the doctors don’t prescribe it.”
“And when they get married they stick to their jobs just the same,” another girl commented. (To be on the staff of a newspaper, it may be said, is the prize of the fashion-artist’s profession.)
“No ladies with one foot on a chair for theDaily Spec, like the one you began this morning,” Miss Umpleby remarked.
“Well, what chance have we here, I should like toknow, with one roughing out all the time, and another doing nothing but heads, and another the curly-cues! There isn’t one of us except Benny who could do a job right through!” Hilda Jeyes grumbled.
“Just so that we can turn the stuff out quicker!” somebody else joined in. “‘Holiday’s’ a good name for it, Idon’tthink!”
Miss Umpleby turned her eyes nonchalantly to the coats above her head. “Monte Carlo for me, I think,” she said. “Then I shall be able to put in those petticoat bodices with Casino backgrounds and do somebody else out of a job.”
Hilda Jeyes threw away the core of her apple. “You needn’t growl, anyway, Umpy. You are engaged.”
“So I am,” remarked Miss Umpleby, as if she had just remembered it. “I think I’ll ring my source of trouble up now.” She brought the chair down on to its fore-legs again. “Tell me if Benny comes. You can all listen if you like.—Hallo, Exchange!—One-six-double-one Hop!”
And at the telephone on Miss Porchester’s table she began a conversation in which the words “Carlton ... or the Savoy if you like ... Mentone ... I’ve a little time on my hands now,” recurred from time to time.
Dorothy herself had more than once thought that this sub-division of work was hard on the girls. Umpy lived with her mother near dotting Hill Gate Station, and was engaged to a boy who got thirty shillings a week as a clerk in the Russian Import trade; Benny and Hilda Jeyes shared cheap rooms somewhere in Bloomsbury; the others lunched on buns or brought bread-and-butteror sandwiches in paper, and would have had to spend an hour in looking for a dropped shilling had they been so fortunate as to possess a shilling to drop. All were at the mercy of the half-yearly rush and the intervals of idleness between. Dorothy had sometimes wondered whether she herself ought not to have sponged on her relations rather than keep one of these needy girls out of a place.... But she was a practical young woman, with more plans than theories, and eyes that did not carry over many of the dreams of the night into the working days; and beyond a certain point she refused to shoulder the responsibilities of a world she had had no hand in making. Up to that point—well, if (say, by and by) she were ever to “run” a studio of this kind, she would see that the work was not so sub-divided that her girls had no chance in the open market. And she would offer now and then a little inducement over and above wages, and would arrange for them to get quite good but shop-soiled things at a fair reduction, and would get them to take an interest in their work, and would stop Hilda sucking her brushes, and would have the brick taken out of that ventilation-pipe, and another set of wash-bowls, and would annex that adjoining room, and—and—well, anyway, if Catalogues had to be done like this, she would see that those who did them were no worse off with her than with anybody else, and perhaps a bit better.... And now she must get off to Cheyne Walk. She rose, and went for her hat and raincoat.
“You’re not off, are you, Lennie?” said Miss Umpleby. She had finished talking into the telephone.Her last words had been, “Mean old thing!... Well, will you treat me to eighteen-pennorth at the Finbec, then?... Fried plaice and chips?... All right....”
“Yes. Another stroke in my unfortunate family, tell Porchester. They came in a cab to fetch me. Good-bye....”
She sought the lift, descended, passed along the narrow alley to the side street, and caught an Oxford Street bus.
Her reason for leaving early was to warn Amory that guests might be expected at Cheyne Walk that evening. Going out to lunch that day she had met, coming away from the Wallace, a party of her old fellow-students of the McGrath. She had recognized them fifty yards away up Duke Street—tall Cosimo Pratt, without hat and with a grey flannel turned-down collar about his shapely throat, Walter Wyron in his snuff-coloured corduroys, Laura Beamish, Katie Deedes, and two or three other girls in clothes that (it seemed to Dorothy) looked as if a touch of opaque Chinese-white had somehow found its way into clear greens and russets and browns.—“Why, there’s Dorothy!” Walter Wyron had exclaimed, turning from the Peasant Industries Shop on the west side of the street. “Hi, Dorothy!...” (Half the street had turned to see who shouted so.) “Dorothy!...” (The other half of the street had turned.) “Come here and tell us how’s Fashions!...”
They had borne Dorothy off to a teashop to lunch.
Dorothy sometimes wished that they would find anewer joke than that about her occupation. It seemed to come virgin to them every time they met. It was not as if she had had any illusions about it. Moreover, when you came to think of it, Walter Wyron (much as Dorothy admired his decorative drawings in black and white), only published one of them every three or four months, and lived on his hundred and fifty a year the rest of the time. And handsome Cosimo Pratt had never published a drawing nor exhibited a painting in his life. Of course, even their failures were as much higher than Dorothy’s successes as the heavens are higher than the earth: but Miss Porchester would not have trusted one of them with a Summer or Winter Catalogue cover. In her secret heart Dorothy was rather glad that Amory had not accepted her own offer of a day or two before. Mercier was going to do it. And Mercier didn’t suppose it would be bought for the nation when it was done.
But for all that they had rather rubbed Dorothy’s job in at lunch that day, and, when they had tired of doing so directly, had continued to do so indirectly by asking, in altered tones, questions about Amory and what she was doing. When (they wanted to know)wasthat show of hers going to be?Whydidn’t she hurry Hamilton Dix up? Didn’t Amory know that that Harris girl was painting all her subjects and had one at the Essex Gallery now? A talent likeAmory’s!——
“You’d better come and ask her,” Dorothy had replied. “Why not all come round to-night? Cosimo, you’re quite near, and Laura could fetch herguitar——”
“No! Really?” Cosimo had broken out in his glad, rich voice. “I say, shall we all go?”
“I’m on,” Walter Wyron had cried eagerly.
“You could fetch your guitar, couldn’t you, Laura?”
“And Amory hasn’t heard Walter’s newrecitation——”
“Good. We’ll come.”
“Rather!”
And now Dorothy was hurrying to Cheyne Walk to help Amory to prepare.
She reached the room over the greengrocer’s shop at half-past four, and found Amory in a long pinafore, painting. “You needn’t knock off,” she said, when she had made her announcement; “I’ll go out and buy in.”
But whether it was that Amory was in difficulties with her work, or whether her pulse had suddenly bounded at the thought of a party really after her own heart, she threw down her palette.
“Oh no, rather not!” she cried. “I’ll come with you. Just half a minute; I’ll wash my brushes when we come back. How ripping!”
Joyously she snatched down from the hook her porringer hat; her eyes shone as she thrust the enamel-headed pins through it. She had not seen Cosimo for several weeks, the others for months and months, and she was pining, simply pining, for a party that a rational person could enjoy. So excited was she, and so full of the preparations for their guests, that she quite forgot their own dinner; it was Dorothy who stopped at the butcher’s for three-quarters of a pound of steak, and, at the confectioner’s remembered the Chelsea buns.At a wine-shop they bought a flask of Chianti, and at a grocer’s nuts, biscuits, and a box of dates. Walter and Cosimo could be relied on to provide cigarettes, and oranges and bananas were to be had at the shop downstairs. As the clock of Chelsea Church struck five they descended Oakley Street again, so laden with parcels that the disturbance of a single package or paper bag would have meant the spilling of the lot. For the oranges and bananas Amory went downstairs again. By the time she returned Dorothy had taken a brush and was making ready to sweep.
“Oh, please,” said Amory, “just a minute till I’ve put my canvas out of the way—and it won’t take me three minutes to clean my palette and wash mybrushes——”
She carried her wet canvas out on to the landing beyond the warped door.
If, while Dorothy swept, Amory lingered a little over her brush-washing and palette-cleaning, and then proceeded to make of the wasted paint a paper “butterfly,” she had this justification—that she swept as badly as she washed up. Moreover, she was already running over beforehand the heads of a really elevating talk she wanted to have with Cosimo on the subject of Eugenics. Cosimo was the kind of man you could talk to sanely and sensibly about these things; he could discuss them with her in the proper inquiring spirit, and without either mock modesty or a thought behind. He despised mock modesty and the thought behind as much as Amory herself despised them; he had frequently said so. That, with the knowledge that she herself was by a good dealthe cleverer of the two, seemed to Amory the really satisfactory relation. They were “the best of pals.” Amory liked the expression. It was so unlike Glenerne and the leers about the aquarium corner.
Therefore, as Dorothy, sweeping, asked her how her aunt’s engagement-party had gone off, she replied with an almost indulgent laugh. Dorothy wouldn’t believe (she said) how absurd her aunt could be. Dorothy, burrowing with the broom into a corner, laughed too.
“All aunts are, my dear. (Mind your foot.) Don’t talk to me about aunts. I’ve got some, thanks. (Sorry, and I’m afraid I shall sweep all the dust on you if you stand there.) Our latest is a frightful row between Aunt Emmie, that’s the one in Calcutta, and Aunt Eliza, the one in Wales. All about some diamonds everybody’d forgotten all about, but some stupid old busybody of a bank-manager must go and turn them up, and Aunt Emmie says grandfather gave them toher, and Aunt Eliza says he gave them toher, and ... well, there you are. The less said about those diamonds the better in a family like ours,Ishould have said. (Oh dear, Amory,dostand somewhere else!) Cousin Clara says they’re pretty sure to be the wages of somebody’s sin. Talk about your one aunt! I’ve a dozen, half of ’em not quite right in their heads ... (Amory, if you don’t move I shall hit you with the brush!)...”
Amory moved, finished her “butterfly,” and began to cut it out with a pair of scissors.
“I’ll unpack the bananas,” she said, as Dorothy laid the broom aside.
Deftly she unpacked the bananas; skilfully she tookthe oranges from their tissue-paper, dropping the tissue-paper on the floor. She arranged them on a large apple-green dish, which she set on the gate-legged table; and then she stood back surveying the colour and grouping while Dorothy peppered and salted and prepared to cook the three-quarters of a pound of steak. She turned the dish this way and that, seeking fresh lights to put it in. Amory’s work was never done. Often she was busiest when she seemed most idle.Shecould not say to eye and brain, as Dorothy could say to mere hands, “It is finished now ... you may rest....” It was not finished even when Dorothy had set the table, cooked the steak, and made all ready for serving. There were the yellow bananas and the glowing oranges to paint in her mind, on the white cloth now instead of on the oaken board....
They dined and cleared away, and, while Dorothy washed up, Amory replaced the dish of fruit on the table, set out the biscuits and cakes on the Persian Rose plates, and made of all, with the flask of Chianti, another still-life group. Then she disposed the chairs as if by happy accident, and poked the fire. The casement looking over the river became an oblong of dim blue; the fire burnt up, and glowed on the black and sagging old ceiling; and Amory hoped that the people overhead were going to be quiet to-night.
Then, at a little after eight, there came from outside, somewhere beyond the Pier Hotel, the sound of a baritone voice. It was Walter Wyron, singing “The Raggle-taggle Gipsies.” Amory started up.
“Here they come!” she cried, clapping her hands.
And she ran down the stairs to meet them.
Amoryliked people to be one thing or the other; that was the real reason why she loathed and abhorred Glenerne. She had had ripping times amid the naphtha-lights of the Saturday night street-markets and at Bank Holiday merry-go-rounds and cocoanut-shies; and, of course, when Van Eeden on Dreams came up for discussion, or Galton on Heredity, or Pater on the Renaissance, or the clear-eyed Weiniger on the Relation of the Sexes, she was again entirely at home. On the heights or in the depths she felt the real throb of Humanity’s heart. But those dreadful middle grades! Those terrible estate-agents and booking-clerks and bank-cashiers and brewers’ travellers of whom the world seemed to be so full! As so many phenomena in the science of vision—solid objects for colour to possess and light to fall upon—she admitted they had their uses; but she was entirely uninterested in them otherwise. Of all the fine things Cosimo had done in the past, she thought he had done nothing finer nor more full of profound meaning than when he had once given a crossing-sweeper a shilling, taken the broom from his hand, and for an hour swept the crossing himself. It took true nobility to do that. Mr. Geake could not have done it, nor Mr. Wellcome, nor the egregious young man in the green knitted waistcoat who had advised her to takecare of her eyes, and had then told her that the Crystal Palace was a “funny place to go for a squeeze”—Mr. Edmondson.
All talking at once, Amory and her half-dozen guests trooped back up the narrow stairs.
“Well, here we are——” they announced themselves.
“Donkey’s years since we’ve seen you,Amory——”
“How are you?”
“How’s Life and Work?”
“This is Bielby, Amory ... don’t suppose you know him ... we just brought himalong——”
“You should see the view from here in the day-time, Bielby ...stunning!——”
“Chuck your things down ... mind Laura’sguitar——”
They threw their hats and coats and cloaks into the window-seat, and filled the room as they stood talking, laughing and straightening their hair. Amory asked Cosimo for a match, and approached the two candles that stood in the brass sticks on the gate-legged table.
“Oh, don’t light up!” three or four broke out at once; “the firelight’s so jolly!”
“No?”
“Positively sinful to spoil this effect!——”
“Pull the chairs up round the fire—the floor’ll do forme——”
“Me too——”
“I’ll lean against your knees, Dorothy——”
“Oh, now I’ve left my handkerchief in my pocket! Lend me yours,Cosimo——”
“Well, Amory——!”
They settled about the hearth, Cosimo Pratt with his shoulder-blades against Dorothy’s knees, Walter Wyron propping up Laura Beamish, Katie Deedes and Mr. Bielby on chairs, Dickie Lemesurier with the firelight shining on her peacock-feather yoke at one end of the fender, Amory curled up against the coal-box at the other.
“I say—Amory’s hair!——” Walter Wyron broke rapturously out, as Amory settled into her place.
“Quite unpaintable, Walter,” said Laura Beamish, peering over the edge of her hand.
“Suppose so—butisn’tit Venetian!——”
“Just put that green plate with the oranges in herlap——”
“Oh ... magnificent!”
It did indeed make an astonishing glow.
“Well,” said Cosimo Pratt presently, when each had applied his or her adjective to Amory’s appearance, “and how’s Jellies and Mrs. ’Ill, Amory?”
You would not now have known Amory for the same girl who had conversed with Mr. Edmondson on the progress of illustrated journalism and statelily inclined her head when the awful Mr. Wellcome had offered her a liqueur-glass of the famous old Spanish brandy. She gave a low rippling laugh. She snuggled contentedly up against the coal-box.
“What! hasn’t Dorothy told you?” she ejaculated. If Dorothy hadn’t told, that was really rather nice of Dorothy.
“No,” said Cosimo, turning his huge black-coffee-coloured eyes on her, all anticipation.
“Jellies is engaged!” Amory announced, with another low laugh.
Cosimo started dramatically. “No!”
Amory nodded. She could always rely on Cosimo.
“You don’t say so! Oh,dotell me! Do you think——” a short pause, “—he’s worthy of her?”
“Just look at Cosimo’s face!” bubbled Laura Beamish. It bore an expression of the deepest mock gravity.
“Dotell me!” Cosimo implored....
Mrs. ’Ill was the woman who came in twice a week to do up the studio; Jellies (so called because she worked at the Jelly Factory across the river) was her daughter. Cosimo spoke again, in tragic tones.
“At least tell me whether he’s ‘in’ or ‘out’!” he begged.
“Bielby’s out of this; tell Bielby, Amory,” several voices said at once; and Amory’s pretty golden eyes sought Mr. Bielby. She explained.
Jellie’s fiancé (she said) was ‘in’—in prison. It had been (said Amory), oh, so killing! He had snatched a jacket from outside a second-hand clothes’ shop, and had run away with it and had put it on: but he had not had time to remove the wooden hanger—Mr. Bielby knew those wooden hangers they hang coats on?—well, he’d not had time to remove the hanger before a policeman had collared him, and there he had been, swearing the coat was his, with the wire hook sticking up at the back of his neck! Fancy—just fancy!—the psychological situation! Really, somebody ought to write to William James about it!—’Orris (’Orris Jackman his name was—after orris-root, Amory supposed)vowing that he’d bought the coat weeks ago, and then the policeman putting his finger through the hook and hauling him away!...
“And Mrs. ’Ill——” Amory rippled on to Mr.Bielby——
“Oh yes—tell him about Mrs. ’Ill and the Creek!” they cried.
“Mrs. ’Ill, you see, Mr. Bielby, keeps what she calls a Creek—that’s acrèche! (Wemustall go and see it one of these days!) It’s in the World’s End Passage, next door to a fried fish shop, and there are twenty babies, and the woman at the fried fish shop keeps an eye on them when Mrs. ’Ill comes in here on Wednesdays and Saturdays, that is, unless Jellies happens to be out ofwork——”
“But the hens are the best, Amory—tell him about the hens——” they prompted.
With that Amory was fairly launched. Mrs. ’Ill (she said) not only took charge of other people’s babies; she kept hens also, in a sort of back scullery, and at tea-time they sat in her lap and ate winkles off her plate, and she said she felt towards them just as if they were her own! Hens and babies—Figurez vous!—And there was always a christening party or something at the Creek, to which the hens went too, and—(theymustlisten to this!)—at one party they’d had, last Christmas, nobody’d been to bed for two nights, and Mrs. ’Ill had explained that they’d had to cut it short because of ’Ill having been dead only aweek!——
“Oh, but about ’Ill—he hasn’t heard about’Ill——”
“Well, her name isn’t ’Ill at all, you see. Thatdidn’t come out till her husband died. His real name was Berry, or Barry, or something, and he signed the register ‘Barry’ when he was married. But it seems he’d been in the Army and deserted, and was afraid of being caught, so he called himself Hill. But (here’s Westermarck for you!) when his first baby was going to be born his conscience seems to have been troubled (it would make a lovely psychological story, Mrs. ’Ill with the child and Mr. ’Ill with the conscience), and so he made a sort of bet with himself, that if it was a boy he’d give himself up, and if it was a girl he’d just go on being Mr. ’Ill and a deserter. And of course it was Jellies, and so Mrs. ’Ill’s Mrs. ’Ill....”
There was nothing of the snob about Amory. These were the people among whom she had moved during her painting of Saturday night scenes and street markets, and she did not pretend that they were not. And she had an undeniable gift for such narrations. Laura Beamish, who tried to cap her with some story of a Charing Cross flower-girl and a black eye, fell by comparison quite flat; and even Katie Deedes’s tale of her mother’s entrée-cook did not gain quite the same applause. And Walter Wyron’s, about the ex-sergeant who had looked after his father’s house-boat, was an old one. Yes, Amory liked people to be one thing or the other.
But she did not tell any stories about Mr. Wellcome and Mr. Geake.
From these and similar stories to the larger issues of Democracy was but a step, and as Dorothy rose and opened the flask of Chianti, the step was taken. TheFabian Nursery and the S.D.F. came all in the stride.... The space within the fender became half full of banana-skins and orange peel; the fire-light shone up on the eager faces; and Amory, in the half-shadow by the coal-box, fed her eyes on effects.
What ripping drawing there was in Dickie Lemesurier’s neck as it issued from its square-cut, peacock’s-feather-embroidered frame! What a perfectly glorious colour Walter’s snuff-coloured corduroys took in the glow (only glaze on glaze of burnt-sienna could ever get it!) And how stunning was the shadow of Cosimo’s hand over his handsome chin as he put the cigarette into his mouth!... Cosimo’s hair clung like tendrils about his temples and over the back of his soft grey collar; Amory had made at one time and another a dozen drawings of his splendid throat; she hoped to make a dozen more. She was very proud of having Cosimo for a friend. He set down appearances at their proper value, no more. He was quite free from those stupid old-fashioned prejudices that, in so arrogantly setting apart certain subjects as undiscussable between young men and young women, had so delayed the real freedom that, for all that, was coming. She laughed as Cosimo, who had just put a lump of coal on the fire with his fingers, asked Dorothy whether he might wipe them on her stockings, and made some remark about Spring Novelties when Dorothy said that he might not. It was only Cosimo. Everybody understood. There was just that touch of gentle womanliness in Cosimo (Amory thought) that perfects and finishes a man.
In watching Cosimo and the others, but especiallyCosimo, Amory had a little disregarded the conversation. She was recalled to it by a sudden exclamation from KatieDeedes—
“Oh no—carnations for Dickie, and just green leaves forAmory——”
“Late ones, slightly turning,” Laura Beamish suggested, peering critically over her hand again as she strove to compass a mental image of Amory wearing the leaves.
“Or green grapes,” Walter Wyron suggested, peering also.
“Amory, do take down your hair!” they suddenly implored.
Amory grumbled sweetly. It was such a bother to put it up again, she said. But Cosimo, starting from his seat against Dorothy’s knees, cried, “Oh yes, Amory!” and took a fresh place by her feet. “With the firelight through it it should be just unbelievable!” he cried excitedly.... So Amory’s hands went to the great red-gold fir cone; she shook down the heavy plaits; and Cosimo’s fingers parted and disposed them.
“How’s that? Wait—just a minute—it wants just one touch—there!” he said, drawing back.
Cries of admiration broke out. Amory was as hidden by it as a weeping elm is hidden by its leaves.
“Oh—green leaves, most decidedly!” cried Walter Wyron with conviction. “Amory, you reallymustpaint yourself so—none of us could do it—whata sonnet Rossetti would have written!”
“OrSwinburne——”
“OrBaudelaire——!”
“OrVerlaine!”
Rapt they gazed for some moments longer....
“Green leaves for Amory, then, and carnations for Dickie.... What’s Dorothy?”
“Oh, Dot’s a tea-rose——”
“Periwinkle, to go with her eyes——”
“‘Pervenche’ they always call it in the Catalogues, don’t they, Dot? Must have superior terms for Catalogues!”
“And amethyst earrings——”
“No, pearls——”
“I say amethyst!”
“I say pearls!”
“Pooh! Pearls are obviously Laura’s wear!”
“Laura! My dear chap! Why, what were emeralds made for if they weren’t made for Laura?...”
At this point the party split up into two cliques, Amory turning to Cosimo again, and Walter and the others continuing their semi-symbolistic pastime.
Amory had not yet told Cosimo that she intended presently to make this room her home. Cosimo was leaning against her knees now, and had tied two strands of her hair together in a loose knot on his breast; and when she spoke to him he turned up his fine face so that she saw it upside down. When Cosimo had removed into his studio near the Vestry Hall seven or eight months ago, Amory had spent whole days with him, reading aloud passages from one or other of her Association volumes while he had papered and distempered and hung his curtains, and nothing had ever been so jolly; and so she told him now of her own approachingchange. He twisted half round within the loop of hair.
“Give you a hand? Rather! By Jove, with your view you ought to be able to make this place perfectly ripping! How are you thinking of doing your windows?”
Amory had known that he would be enthusiastic. She began to say something about muslin, but Cosimo shook his handsome tendrilled head peremptorily. He loosed himself from the bond of hair and faced round, cross-legged, before her.
“Oh no, you mustn’t dream of having muslin! I know somethingfarbetter than that! There’s a remnant-sale at Peter Hardy’s, and they have some shop-soiled casement-cloth at one-four-three double width, all colours;that’syour stuff! Oh, decidedly!... Then stencil it—something like Dickie’s yoke there, only a broader treatment, of course—and there you are! They’ll take down and put up again in a couple of jiffs, and you have to put muslin up wet, and it catches every bit of dust, and only washes about twice—oh no: the casement-cloth by all means!... Now, what furniture have you got?...”
He entered wholeheartedly into her plans; he was so handsome and intuitive, so big and tall, yet so almost femininely sympathetic. Amory could have hugged him, there was so little of the mere superior blatant male about him.... They plunged into a discussion—or rather Cosimo plunged into a harangue—on the most satisfactory way of staining floors....
Dorothy had been talking to Mr. Bielby, the young man who had been “just brought along,” and had discovered that he was still at the McGrath. Suddenly she gave a laugh and a call to Laura Beamish.
“I say, Laura! Mr. Jowett’s still just the same as ever, Mr. Bielby says,” she said.
Walter Wyron broke into a laugh. “Jowett? ’Pon my word, I’d almost forgotten poor old Jowett! Immortelle’shisflower, I should say! What’s Jowett’s latest, Bielby?”
Mr. Bielby related the “latest” of the Painting Professor through whose hands so many students had passed, all so different and all so exactly alike, that he had been driven to find what peace of mind he could in a saturnine resignation. Walter Wyron laughed again.
“Dear old Jowett! But he seems to be getting a bit below his game. He used to get off better ones than that. Do you remember him on the womanly woman, Dickie?”
“I remember his looking at my life-drawing and asking me if I couldn’t sew,” Dickie Lemesurier replied, bridling still at the recollection.
“And he told me my drawing was the best in the class, and that didn’t mean it was worth the time I’d spent on it,” Walter chuckled. “The joke is that poor old Jowett can say such funny things and never dream that they’re funny!”
“Why, he didn’t think tremendously of Amory herself!” said Katie Deedes indignantly.
“And still,” Laura remarked with dreamy irony, “I suppose weoughtto hide our abashed heads really—but somehow or other we go onpainting——”
“—still survive——”
“—bear up——”
“—quite happy in our ignorance——”
“Curiously blind all the world must be exceptJowett——”
“Rather dreadful to know you’re the only wise manleft——”
“Funny old stick!... But it’s only a posereally——”
“That exactly describes it——”
“Certainly the immortelle for Jowett!”...
But the party proper had not begun yet: Walter had not recited, and Laura Beamish’s guitar still lay in its case in the window-seat. Katie Deedes, who always kept a sort of tally of the good things said and awarded marks (as it were) to the sayers, had not thought of striking her balance yet.
“Give Dickie another cigarette, Cosimo, and then do let’s have a song, Laura!” Amory exclaimed; and Walter Wyron jumped up to get Laura’s instrument. It had long, many-coloured streamers of ribbon, which Walter disposed likeserpentinsabout Laura as she sat, and Laura, turning pegs and tenderly strumming, asked what she should sing.
“Oh, ‘The Trees they do Grow High!’” said Amory quickly; “and then ‘The Sweet Primeroses’ and ‘The Clouded Yellow Butterfly,’ please!—Do stop wriggling against my knees, Cosimo—and oh, how exquisite!—look,the moon’s just coming in at the window!”
And Laura’s voice rose on the tender strumming as if a light and fluty sound planed over the intervals between chord and chord.
“Lovely!” Amory murmured.... “Please, that verse again, about the ribbon, Laura!”