Aching as she was for Cosimo’s return, she was still a little displeased with him. To be sure, he told her, in those rather perfunctory letters, how horribly he missed her, but somehow she did not feel that his sense of loss was quite as great as her own. She resented his staying so long away. It hardly rose to her conception of their past beautiful friendship. Of course his uncle was dead, but his uncle would still be dead if Cosimo stayed away another couple of months, making four in all, and Amory still waiting and waiting.... Well, he mustn’t think that she was going to ask him to come back, though he never returned at all. She would continue to forward his letters, adding a patient little note of her own once in a while. Indeed, had it not been that Cosimo understood her art, she would hardly have done as much as that for him....
Then, still sitting on the edge of Cosimo’s deserted bed, she remembered the richly comical interpretation that Dorothy and the plumber, the chimney-sweep and Glenerne, had put upon Cosimo’s wellnigh perfect understanding of her art. And that recollection led to another—that of the “stage-kiss” Cosimo had given her when Mr. Wellcome had thrust them into one another’s arms. She remembered that she had been—she hardly knew how to put it—say a little disappointed in Cosimo about that. Hitherto she had not asked herself the reason of this, but she thought she saw it now. Cosimo, for once, had not done the proper thing at all. The proper way to fool those inquisitive, stupid people to the top of their bent would have been to give her arealkiss, not a mock one. As likely as not that clumsy caress had seemed the shyness of a real lover. No; the proper way to throw dust in their eyes would have been to take her face deliberately between his hands, turn it up, and plant the ridiculous emblem fairly and squarely on her mouth.Then, when they had found themselves alone again, they could have laughed together at Glenerne and its folly. Cosimo had not played the game.
And she felt the slight disappointment in him that night especially, for, reaching North Side an hour or two before, she had suddenly left the pavement and struck across the Common towards the “Plough.” It was a coldish night, and not, from the point of view of the phenomena she had passed on the Common, to be compared with any warm evening in the Spring; nevertheless she had seen enough to give an exquisitely ironical point to this obsession of bodily contacts thatseemed to engage the world. Simply, they had been kissing everywhere, and Cosimo certainly ought to have been there to exchange with her humorous Olympian comments on the screaming absurdity of it all. Perhaps—Amory was not sure—but perhaps, merely as part of the general joke—as a sort of recognition of their surroundings—a sort of politeness (if you cared to put it in that way)—as a doing in Rome as Rome does, and on Clapham Common as Clapham Common does, Amory might have let him kiss her too.... And then they would have come back here or to Cheyne Walk, to laugh together as he cleared supper away and she braided her inordinate hair. To taste the full savour of folly you yourself must have been a fool too—just once. Perhaps—Amory was not quite certain—it was a Law....
But Cosimo had not been a fool even once....
But Amory was almost too fagged out even for resentment. She could only weakly wish, as she rested her aching back on Cosimo’s bed, that even with his few imperfections he was there. For one thing, twice that very night she had been frightened on the Common by the approach of men. Hating herself for doing anything so unmasculine, she had clutched her skirts and almost made a run for it. To the turning heads of women in the streets, who apparently found something amusing in her demonstratively serviceable Portia hat and her obviously sensible square-toed, flat-heeled shoes, she had long been accustomed; but such alarms as she had felt when Mr. Jowett had turned up his moustache to show the growth of it were only the beginning of herinstinctive shrinkings from the rough physique of men. They were not Antinöuses on Clapham Common. She preferred masculinity sublimated, so to speak—purified by the processes of art. Anything else—a caress of Cosimo’s, for example—would have owed its bearableness largely to the philosophic or ironic meaning behind.
She continued to wish that Cosimo was there. Then they would have talked quite a lot about those things.
She had not noticed that the glaring incandescent across the yard had been extinguished and that the studio was now pitch-dark. She wished that before he had left Cosimo had not removed the linen cases from his pillows; the striped ticking tickled her cheek. But she was too tired to move. Some time ago a clock had struck a quarter-past something; a quarter-past eleven she supposed; she decided that when it struck half-past she would get up. That would not be for five minutes yet. She closed her eyes.
She did not immediately realize what it was that caused her to open them again when she did. She only knew that some sound had caused her alarm, and that, a moment later, she was sitting up with a fluttering heart on Cosimo’s bed. She would have called out, but suddenly, at a repetition of the sound, she dared not. Nor dared she move. She put her hand to her breast. Her tiny face had gone white.
Somebody was fumbling softly at the door.
Never in her life had Amory fainted, but she wellnigh did so now. She knew that there were other men in this block of studios; had she been observed to come in and not seen to depart again? It was possible, andburglars also were possible. Instantaneously it had flashed into her mind that the latch was an ordinary one and that it had closed of itself behind her—she remembered to have heard its click—otherwise she would have been defenceless. Terror seized her. It was not her own restraint that prevented her from giving a shrill scream. She had no voice with which to scream....
Then suddenly whoever was at the door was heard to depart again. As the sound of steps died away Amory fell back on Cosimo’s bed.
And as she dared not go out, there was nothing for her to do but to remain where she was.
She simply dared not go out now.
So she lay, hardly closing her eyes once, until the side window became a leaden oblong. Then, slowly and laggardly, Cosimo’s chest of drawers, his washstand, his little bureau, and his row of boots crept into dim shape out of the shadows. The sheet over his arm-chair ceased to be a grey crouching figure, the easel with the duster over it to be a criminal hanging in chains. Soon the milk-carts would be coming round, and thepostman——
But she would not wait to see whether any letters came forhim——
Cold and stiff, at last she rose. Her feet were leaden, and she neither knew nor cared what anybody might think who saw her coming out into the street at that hour of the morning. She groped for the latch of the front door, and closed the door behind her. Ten minutes later she reached her own studio, dead-beat.
But there, too, somebody—the same somebody—awaited her. She had cast herself wearily into the low window-seat and was watching the sullen day-break over the river, when from behind the curtain that enscreened her bed there came a creak and a heavy sigh. For all her fatigue she sprang up as a skip-jack springs up when its piece of cobbler’s wax yields. Itcouldonly be one person.
She ran across the room and flung the curtain aside.
At the same moment Cosimo opened his eyes.
“Urro!” he grunted.
Then he sat sluggishly up.
“Hullo! It’s you. Wherever have you been?” he muttered.
“However did you get in here?” Amory demanded almost sharply.
“Put my hand through that stupid old door and slipped the latch, of course. You ought to get that door seen to, Amory; anybody could get in. But where on earth have you been all night? I came for my key, and then went to my place to see if you were there—went twice, in fact—but I thought you’d be coming in, so I waited and went to sleep. What time is it? By jove, it’s cold.”
Cosimo had lain down dressed on her bed, but his hair—this was the first thing Amory noticed about him—was less disarranged than it might have been. It no longer clung about his head in tendrils. He had had it cut quite short. But Amory did not comment upon the change. She had come to a sudden resolution. She did not intend to tell Cosimo that she had spent thenight lying on his bed. So when presently he asked her again where she had been she assumed a brightness that, haggard as it was, was still a feat when her exhaustion was considered. She laughed.
“Oh, I’ve been out looking for subjects. I’ve found one—a ripper—Covent Garden Market. But oh, I’msotired!”
“But surely you haven’t been there all night, my dear girl?” Cosimo expostulated.
“There and other places. Why not?... Do be an angel and light the fire, Cosimo.”
And as Cosimo rose, stretched himself, and took off his coat, she stole a covert look at his cut hair again. It seemed to her to be not impossible that that might be an index of other changes also.
Valuableas were the qualities that had placed Dorothy’s friend, Mr. Miller, high in the estimation of Hallowells’, they entailed one defect that was more valuable than all of them put together. Resolution, hard work, and singleness of purpose had given him an enviable position in the most humorous job of the age; but these would have availed him comparatively little had there not been in that part of him where his sense of humour should have resided, a void that approached as near to a vacuum as nature permits. It was to that void that Mr. Miller really owed his success.
For you simply cannot do these things with your tongue in your cheek. Had Mr. Miller not been able to make, with perfect belief in them, statements that anybody else would have had to laugh in the middle of, he would not have been the Man of Ideas he was. In the ordinary run of his business smart young men came to Mr. Miller with notions and devices for this and that; he bought them, paid for them at the current rates, merely because he had to have them; but they were not what he really wanted. What he really wanted let him explain for himself.
The moment you were shown into his room youwere aware that you were in the presence of no funny man. Suppose you had the good fortune not to be “turned down” at once as a mere “smartie,” Mr. Miller would take trouble with you. He would frankly admit that he and his fellows had only themselves to thank for the disrepute into which their craft had fallen; and bold would have been the advertising freebooter or mere space-broker who had held up his head before Mr. Miller’s righteous anger.
“We’ve overdone it,” he would sorrowfully admit. “We want noo blood—noo blood, noo idees, and belief in the reel dignity of our work. If you’ve got them, sit right down and let’s have a look at them; if you haven’t, you’re a busy man and so am I, and I keep my door plain inside and pretty in the passage where it looks best from. Now show.”
Let us assume that you showed and that Mr. Miller found you worth still more trouble. He might then address you asfollows:—
“Too smart. Smartness took the full count the fall before last; we’re pushing these funny stunts underground where they belong. And that other idee—too noisy. Shouting don’t go any more to-day. N. G.—— Now you’re an Englishman, and cann’t be expected to see these things in their reel perspective; but you’ve assets right here in this country without these vodeville acts. It ain’t my business to put you wise, but I’ll tell you this: neither noise nor smartness is good enough for Hallowell and Smiths’. Look out o’ that window. You see that edifice. That edifice isn’t going up to be run like the one next door to it.It’s a noo edifice, and it’s going to be run on noo methods. You think your methods are noo. You think again. You think quite a lot. Then when it’s hit you good and hard, ring me up and I’ll make another date with you. You got the right look, and there might be business done between you and I yet. The door closes itself. If you hear a hiss that ain’t me, but the piston. I hope you found the elevator-man courteous in his manner. You did? That’s one of the things there’s going to be at Hallowells’—etiquette. But unobtroosive. Not sticking out a foot on each side. You didn’t observe it sticking out, did you? So. Good morning.”
Mr. Miller had looked up in an etymological dictionary the meaning of the word “gospel,” and had found that it meant “good tidings”; and that, he said, was exactly what advertisement meant too. He had looked up other words also—Valour, Hero, Dignity, Gentleman—and he was for restoring their dimmed lustre. And since he saw things in their true perspective, he saw also the only way in which that could be done. To cut the cackle and come (like Mr. Wellcome) to the horses, he proposed to do it by a putting of the founts of honour to purposes of irrigation. Commerce had vulgarized itself; dignity must therefore be restored to it from where dignity was to be had in quantities sufficient if necessary to throw at the birds—from above. One day Mr. Miller, passing a more than usually ingenious advertisement in a shop window, had stated his point of view in twenty words. “Look at that!” he had exclaimed to his companion. “Now I say theman who invented that was a live wire. He connects. You feel the man. But what does the British public know about him? If he’d rescued a comrade under fire he’d have got your V.C. for it, and everybody’d have known all there was to him; but you stop a hundred people on this sidewalk and ask ’em his name, and if a single one of ’em can tell you then the drinks are on me!”
It is true that Mr. Miller did not say that he wanted the Cross bestowed (as it were) For Value instead of For Valour, but that was the direction in which his thoughts strayed. Before his perspective had become quite so clear he had tried to get permission for the Royal Standard to float over Hallowells’ new premises (the Union Jack having become common trade property, and so of no more value to one emporium than to another); and though he had failed, it was still better to have failed in such an attempt than to have succeeded in the funny stunts that had been pushed underground the fall before last. It remained an ideal for commerce to lift up its eyes to.
In the business sense, though in none other, Mr. Miller had paid a good deal of court to Dorothy Lennard—or perhaps less at first to Dorothy than to Lady Tasker’s niece. Nominally Dorothy was still “third hand” in the fashion studio; but Miss Benson had been wise enough to leave her free to do pretty much as she liked (without that freedom the studio would never have got Hallowells’ catalogue, nor have become what to all intents and purposes it now was—one of Hallowells’ departments), and Dorothy’s intimacy with Mr. Millerhad ripened quickly after the famous buying of Glenister’s picture, “Sir Walter and the Cloak,” at the Academy more than a year before. Dorothy had gone round the Exhibition with Mr. Miller, and had seen him stop long before the picture and presently return to it.
“Now that’s what I call a picture, Miss Lennard,” he had said at last. “A reel thoughtful bit of art. I don’t care whether you call it pre-Raphaelite or whatever you call it—you as a lady-artist can put it all over me there—but speaking as a plain man of business I say that picture just appeals to me. It calls me. I feel it. It’s got meaning. There’s your Raleigh, look. And there’s your Queen Bess. And I ask you to observe the chivalrous spirit of it. That’s the reel old-world English courtesy. That’s the thing that hasn’t got to be let die. Hallowells’ has got to pitch its key up to that. It’s got to be as if there was a puddle in front of the Grand Entrance every day, and every lady-shopper was a Queen, and Hallowells’ was”—Mr. Miller had made a low, sweeping gesture with both his arms—“spreading its Cloak. That’s the deportment I want for our Hosts. Where do they keep the Sales Department here?”
And, that an object-lesson should be ever before his Departmental Hosts’ eyes, Mr. Miller had bought the picture.
How Hallowells’ had contrived, during the past two years, with an army of painters and gilders, carpenters and shopfitters, plasterers and electricians and inspectors and engineers swarming all over the place, thatbusiness should be “carried on as usual during rebuilding” was nothing short of a modern miracle; but so it had been. And the gradual rising of the visible edifice had been accompanied, course by course and tier by tier, by bright palatial uprearings in Mr. Miller’s busy brain. If the weather should hold for another month, all was expected to be ready for the Grand Inauguration in the spring; and even if the weather did not hold, the impression had somehow got about that the weather must be a mightier power even than had been supposed to be able to postpone an event of such magnitude.... But all this is ancient history now. London knows its Hallowells’ and the wonders that the man who held its Portfolio of Publicity (for surely he was entitled to a seat in the Cabinet of the World’s Commerce) called forth. It has accepted the Hallowell touch. It knows that its shopwalkers rank as Marshals and its head-salesmen as Hosts. It knows that the employé who would win his spurs at Hallowells’ must fast and keep his vigil before the picture of Sir Walter and the Cloak. The funny stunthastaken the full count. Mr. Millerhascorrected the perspective of things.... Therefore pass we on to how Dorothy Lennard had now and then a voice in certain of the tertiary wonders of the organization and how into the vast complexity she had contrived to drag the name of Mr. Hamilton Dix.
Mr. Dix had come into the concern over the pictorial advertising. Of Dorothy as an ex-student of the McGrath Mr. Miller had presently come to think almost as much as he did of Dorothy the niece of Lady Tasker;and he had taken her word about Mr. Dix. “Couldn’t your posters and things be made somehow a bit more—important?” Dorothy had suggested one day. “Tell me how,” Mr. Miller had instantly replied—“tell us how; you’ve grasped the idee! You don’t suppose we could enlist the patronage of our president of the Royal Academy, do you?” (Mr. Miller had lately begun to speak of “our” Royal Standard and “our” House of Peers.) Thereupon Dorothy had given a light, rapid sketch of Sir Edward Pointer, not so much disdaining as debarred by his official position from superintending Hallowells’ pictorial advertising; and she had suggested Mr. Hamilton Dix instead. “Is he a live wire?” Mr. Miller had demanded. “No push about him, I mean, no noise, not always forcing himself forward, but the reel solid dignity? If he ain’t excloosive and hard to get, he’s no good to us! He ain’t a ‘Sir,’ is he?”
“No.”
“Nor an ‘Honourable,’ with a ‘u’ in it?”
“No, he’s just plain Mr. Dix.”
“And what place does he take among our critics of art? Is he a one-cent paper man or two cents? I ain’t calling your friend down at all, Miss Lennard, but we can’t afford any but what he’s the very top-tip-top.”
“I think he’d do really well.”
“Then let him name his figure and buy him in.... And now tell me what’s the difficulty about Mr. Stanhope Tasker.”
For a moment Dorothy’s composure was a littleshaken. She smiled and blushed both at once. Mr. Stanhope Tasker was her second cousin, and Mr. Miller’s next words explained how Lady Tasker’s nephew had come to be at Hallowells’.
“I hope he ain’t afraid he won’t be able to hold the job down. Between you and I, Miss Lennard, it don’t matter a rusty nail whether he do or he don’t. He’s here tolookgood; if he does that he fills the bill from A to Zee. Why, walking up our Bond Street only this morning brought it home to me good and hard. ‘Here they are,’ says I, ‘ten of ’em in as many minutes, the reel high-grade goods, with centuries of blue blood in the very way they wear their pantaloons—Sir Walters from ’way back, all with their names spelt one way and pronounced another—the genu-i-ne all-wool article; but can I get ’em? I cann’t. And that’s what Mr. Stan is, if I might call him that without familiarity. Now just you tell me, Miss Lennard, what’s the bother?”
Again Dorothy had bitten her lip, grown pink, and laughed. “Leave him to me. I’ll keep him for you if I can.”
“But great snakes (pardon me) whatdothese gentlemen want? They fix their own honorarium (has that got a ‘u’ in it?)—a captain in our army don’t get as much by a half—we don’t ask ’em to get shot—they don’t handle goods—they just stand around—it would cipher out at a dollar a smile and a few ‘This way pleases’—andthe rank of marshal.”
“But you just said that if they weren’t hard to get they were no good to you.”
“Hard—hard’s the word! That’s a fact! But we got to have ’em. Selling ladies’ goods has got to be made just as noble as killing their husbands and sweethearts on a field of battle. Itisas noble. In a properly organized community there ought to be a Distinguished Salesmanship Order just as there’s a Distinguished Service Order for our military classes. And Mr. Stan’s only asked to graduate for the Distinguished Smiling Order, if I may take the liberty of saying so.”
“Well, perhaps he’ll do better after the Inauguration.”
“You think that?” Mr. Miller had questioned eagerly. “You think he’ll be all right on the night, so to say? Well now, if I thought that it would be a weight off my mind. I hope you’ll assist me, Miss Lennard. And thank you very much for your assistance about Mr. Dix. It’s a fact that if these people were easy to get everybody’d be getting ’em. Pardon me, afteryou——”
And they had parted, but not before Dorothy had wondered whether Mr. Miller’s intelligent look, when he had asked her to help him in the difficulty with Mr. Stan, had meant anything.
If you had asked Dorothy Lennard how it was that her Cousin Stanhope had come to find himself at Hallowell and Smiths’, she would probably have answered you only half candidly. You would have had to guess (as the chances were that Mr. Miller had guessed) the rest. Poor Stan, she would have told you, so far frankly, was a perfect darling, but he had no brains.Successively he had been ploughed for the army, had tried six months in the city, had spent a year in Canada, three months in a motor works, two months more in hawking from club to club a really brilliant idea for a weekly comic paper, and finally, when at the end of every natural asset he possessed, saving only his good looks, had come upon a piece of Mr. Miller’s own publicity—a column article in an evening paper on “The Disappearance of the Slur of Trade.” Stan had been much impressed by the new field thus thrown open. Chancing to meet Dorothy at about that time, for the first time since they had been children, he had spoken of the new opening, and Dorothy had offered there and then to introduce him to the writer of the article. From the first moment Stanhope had shown a willingness to be introduced to anybody whomsoever by Dorothy; and perhaps Mr. Miller had less hope than Dorothy supposed that Mr. Stan now hung about the premises for any reason at all except that Dorothy was to be seen there.... It was a case of love among the ruins, or whatever the upset may be called that is the result, not of demolition, but of rebuilding; and now, when the two were not meeting one another in halls full of trestles and plasterers’ buckets or on passages down which they had to retreat as counters and glass screens and heavy fittings came along, Dorothy, in Miss Benson’s absence, was fighting with Miss Umpleby for possession of the telephone, and talking with the bewildered marshal through a hundred and fifty yards of party-wall and fireproof floor, ceilings and lift-wells and cornices and plate-glass.... Unless an aunt orsomebody died, Dorothy supposed that when they got married she would have to keep him.
Having decided that Mr. Miller’s solemn articles on the “Art of the Poster” and the “Academy of the Hoardings” might as well be written by Mr. Hamilton Dix as by anybody else, Dorothy Lennard was not such a fool as to receive that handy critic in the fashion studio on the upper floor. Instead she asked Mr. Miller when he would be out, and borrowed his office—his fourth office since the building had been in progress, and, though not yet his permanent one, still an oasis of upholstery and quietness in a waste of concrete and ladders and new paint and half-hung walls. She also ordered cut flowers, whisky and soda, and tea. She had not forgotten her promise to Amory, that she would, if it was possible, obtain some mitigation of the Crozier contract.
Mr. Dix, for his part, accustomed to shedding the lustre of his name at ordinary space rates, was prepared to be as lustrous as anybody liked when money was flowing as it flowed about the new Hallowells’. He knocked at the door that was plain inside but ornamental without at four o’clock of a Friday afternoon early in January, and Dorothy had all in readiness for him. Before showing Mr. Dix the proofs of the posters on which for many months past Hallowells’ had been spending money like water (they were bound together at the top edge and set, like a huge book of wallpaper patterns, on a special easel so as to be conveniently turned over), she gave him an outline of the general scheme and the part it was hoped he wouldconsent to play in it; and from the outset Mr. Dix liked this young woman’s attitude. For Croziers’ he was not much more than a pen; at Hallowells’, if the bashful and deferential manner in which he found himself received meant anything, he would be a Berenson or a Cavalcaselle at the very least, and really well paid for it at that. She was a comely young woman, too, and appeared to know what she was talking about.... Ah! She had been at the McGrath! (Dorothy had negligently dropped the name of Toulouse-Lautrec.) That explained it! Mr. Dix had thought she spoke with some inside knowledge! A good school, the McGrath. Mr. Dix knew Professor Jowett quite well: a capable master, very, but shockingly given over to a habit of cynicism, especially about the poor critics. By the way, had Miss Lennard ever known a Miss Towers there?...
Dorothy had only mentioned the McGrath in order to give Mr. Dix an opportunity of mentioning Miss Towers; but Miss Towers could wait a bit. It would be better to get Mr. Dix to commit himself to magnanimous generalities before coming to a specific case. Therefore as she gave him tea she told him how lucky Hallowells’ thought themselves to be able to get his services. When (she said) Mr. Miller had first asked her whether she thought he would be approachable about mere posters she had shaken her head; but now that she had seen him (Dorothy slowly lifted her great blue eyes) she was glad she had asked him. Wasn’t it odd, how afraid you were of the pretentious and mediocre people, and not at all of the really big men?(At this point Mr. Dix had begun really to bask.) But of course nothing but the best was good enough for Hallowells’. Not (she went on) that they pretended for a moment to be anything but tradespeople, with no views on art at all; but theydidbelieve this, that while an inferior writer mightseemto be just as good, only one thing really paid the best, and that was—the best. That was why they had sent for Mr. Dix. They wanted the incorruptible man. As for what Mr. Dix would see fit to do now that they had got him, that rested entirely with Mr. Dix. It was not for Hallowells’ to say what they wanted, but for Mr. Dix to give them what he thought best for them. And as for the posters themselves....
“But suppose we look at them,” said Dorothy.
They looked at the posters, and Dorothy gave Mr. Dix a whisky and soda and a cigar. And at that point the curtain went down, so to speak, on the first act. Mr. Dix declined for the moment to commit himself; with an hour or two in which to think the matter over he might (he said) be able to come to a conclusion. He understood that time pressed; it was half-past five now. Could—couldMiss Lennard possibly dine with him at eight o’clock? He might perhaps say at once that he thought the subject a fascinating one. As Miss Lennard had so truly said, only the mediocre mind thought these things beneath its dignity; in fact—— But if Miss Lennard would give him the pleasure, they could talk about that later. She would? That was charming of her. He would be round with a taxi, then, at twenty minutes to eight.
For the second time the scene was set in the Trocadero Grill. Mr. Dix pointed out that the decoration, garish in detail, nevertheless took its place in theensemble; and Dorothy’s eyes widened, and she said that she hoped he would say that, in those very words, in one of his articles—she had thought that very thing so many times herself, but had lacked the knowledge to express it: she supposed that was where the genius came in. Didn’t Mr. Dix think (she wanted to know) that geniuswasjust that—the power of expressing what everybody had thought in terms they had never thought of? Given genius as a text, he is a poor critic who cannot talk for an hour without a break; and, as Mr. Dix slowly consumed liqueur brandy as he talked, Dorothy became very beautiful to him. He became tender, not to say mushy. He vowed that the sentimental point of view was something to be proud, not ashamed, of. He spoke of the struggles of poor artists, of the temptations that beset poor critics when they were asked to sell the truth for gold; and Dorothy said that it must be awful, but that it would be a comfort to her thenceforward, whenever she heard such dreadful tales, to know that one man at least understood. Was the Miss Towers of whom he had spoken one of those unfortunate ones? She had heard (she said) of aMr.Towers, a painter, but that could not be the same....
“The same—the very same!” Mr. Dix laughed, while the curls shook on his head; and he told the story of his early mistake....
“And she has actually signed a contract with thesehard-hearted dealers, whoever they are, and can’t sell her own work?” Dorothy sighed meltingly. “Poor thing! And can nothing be done to help her?”
“What a large soft heart you have, Miss Lennard!” murmured Mr. Dix, squegeeing her, so to speak, with his gelatinous eyes; they really might have been of the same substance as printing-machine rollers.
“Poor child!” Dorothy sighed compassionately. “Really, I feel like going round and seeing these horrible people myself! They couldn’t eat me, could they?”
Mr. Dix looked as if he could have eaten Miss Lennard, without sugar.
“Poor dear! But, I’m sure they couldn’t resistyou, Mr. Dix—not if you said the beautiful things to them you’ve been saying tome——”
If they could, they could have done more than Mr. Dix could Dorothy.
“Dohelp the poor child!” Dorothy pleaded. “Half the trouble in the world seems to me to come of goodness and power being in the wrong hands, Mr. Dix.”...
Again she lifted the large baby eyes....
“I’m sure you will....”
And the worst feature about the whole immoral transaction was that she did not ask, but conferred a favour—the favour of showing Mr. Hamilton Dix what a sympathetic, chivalrous, and large-hearted person Mr. Hamilton Dix could be.
Nowthat Cosimo was back in town again for the second time (he had stayed a week the first time, and had then departed again for Christmas, coming back the first week in the New Year) his manner puzzled Amory a little. Sometimes he seemed changed, sometimes (barring the hair) exactly as before. Sometimes he told Amory all about his business, and sometimes seemed more than ordinarily interested in hers—almost as if he had her a little on his mind and would have liked to be rid of some responsibility. Then, hardly more than three weeks after the previous cutting, he got his hair cut again. It was cooler so, he said—this on a distinctly raw January day.
The cutting altered his appearance surprisingly. Amory thought the change very much for the worse. The tendrilled clusters had “massed” so beautifully before; she had sometimes given them a light touch or two with her fingers, taking an æsthetic delight in the way they “came.” He had reminded her a little of the Antinöus. But now he reminded her of nothing save of a young human animal of the opposite sex. He wore starched white collars too, and went about in a hat.... On the other hand, he mended Amory’s door so that it was no longer possible to intrude a hand andto slip the latch. It wasn’t the thing, he said. What did it matter? Amory asked; but Cosimo only replied that he didn’t like the idea at all.
The door, however, gave way again; and this time Cosimo made a thorough job of it, taking it from its hinges and laying it on the floor while he screwed a stout batten on the back that remedied its warping once for all. This was late on a Saturday evening; in order to bring the bent door flush with the batten Amory had to sit down on one end of it; and the lamp stood on the floor between them as Cosimo, kneeling, screwed. The lamp was not so near, however, as to be a source of danger if Amory (as she had so often done before) took down her hair. She did take it down. Cosimo, the top of his cropped head turned to Amory, continued to screw.
“There!” he said at last. “I think that’ll make you safe, Amory.”
“Thanks most awfully, Cosimo,” Amory replied quietly.
“I’ve intended to do that ever since that night you were out at Covent Garden,” Cosimo continued. “If I could have got in, anybody else could, of course. Anyway, you’re all right now. You can get up.”
“Thanks,” said Amory again.... “I’m sure I don’t know what I’m safe from,” she added. “Jellies’ young man might burgle me, I suppose; but he’s ‘in’ again.”
“No! Really?” said Cosimo, so eagerly that Amory wondered whether he was glad to change the subject. “Isay! What is it this time?”
“Oh, they found no fewer than ten bicycles in his place, all bright green, newly enamelled. And he isn’t a cycle dealer. I suppose they drew conclusions.”
“By Jove!” Cosimo exclaimed. “When was that?”...
Amory was quite sure that that too was part of the change in Cosimo. He wanted to be on a topic that was—like the mended door—“safe.” He had risen on his knees and straightened his back; Amory had thought he was about to rise altogether; but she herself did not move, and he sat down again, cross-legged, on the other end of the door. He asked further questions about Jellies, Orris, and the ten bicycles. Amory, shaking back her thick, raw-gold mane, answered him quite freely; and then Cosimo returned to the subject of the door again.
“It ought to have new hinges too, really,” he grunted, “but I suppose it’s too late to get them to-night. Look how rusty that one is.”
Amory leaned forward, and together they inspected the hinge. Then she gave a little laugh. It was almost a reckless little laugh.
“Oh, it will do,” she said lightly. “I shouldn’t bother about it. Leave it till to-morrow. You can just prop it up for to-night.”
“Prop it up!” repeated Cosimo. “Oh no. Wouldn’t do at all.”
Then, all at once, apparently, Amory saw. She laughed again.
“Oh!... Good gracious, Cosimo, how ridiculousyou are! Why, I thought you were joking at first! As if anybody but you ever came up here nowadays—and even you only once in awhile!” Then, with another reckless little laugh, she added, “Why, what difference could a door make?”
“A good deal, or else why have ’em?” Cosimo retorted. He did not seem comfortable.
“Quite so: why?” Amory replied. “What a strange idea! Really, I never knew you confuse Accidentals and Essentials so before! Why, if a person’s made up his mind to do a thing, how will a door stop it? And if it won’t, why a door? You know as well as I do that these things happenwithin ourselves. Besides, I thought we’d arrived at our conclusions.”
“Of course, so we have,” said Cosimo apologetically. “I know we’ve got quite down to fundamentals. Still, there’s no actualharmin having a hinge.”
Amory shook her head slowly. The lamp on the floor shone tiny in either brook-brown eye. Somehow Cosimo felt as uncomfortable as a guilty dog under those eyes.
“You’ve changed, Cosimo,” she said. “Something’s changed you.... Why,” she suddenly made a soft little appeal and held out both hands—“why don’t you tell me what it is?”
Cosimo appeared not to notice her hands. His own fumbled with a screw.
“I haven’t changed, Amory, really—really I haven’t,” he protested.
“You have, Cosimo,” Amory replied, her head criticallya little on one side. “You mayn’t know it, but you’re becoming—ordinary.”
“Oh!” Cosimo broke out, revolted. “Ordinary—Cosimo!——”
“I’m not reproaching you,” Amory continued. “I suppose that if you examine it, it’s nothing to be ashamed of—I mean that ‘ashamed’ isn’t quite the word. But words are only symbols after all; it’s the thing that matters.”
“Of course,” Cosimo agreed quickly. “You don’t think I’ve changed my mind about that, I hope, Amory? We came to the conclusion that words were only symbols years ago.”
But again Amory made her tender little appeal. Her fingers touched Cosimo’s hand lightly for a moment.
“Won’t you tell me, Cosimo? You see, it’s purely a matter of our intellectual identity. That’s been such a beautiful thing. Hasn’t it been a beautiful thing?” The fingers rested on his hand.
“Don’t say ‘been,’ Amory—it is,” Cosimo interrupted.
“Such a precious thing. Isn’t it Emerson who says that at bottom all friendship is based on equality of intellectual understanding? It’s a mingling of minds, Cosimo. When we use the same words we mean the same things by them, and—oh, how rare that is! Of course, I know your uncle’s dead, and that may have upset you, and you’ve all sorts of business about property and so on on your mind, but I can’t believe that accounts for all of it. I know you too well, you see!Or is it”—she gave a little start, as at a quite new surmise—“I don’t believe it can be, but is it—that you findmechanged?”
Cosimo protested that Amory had not changed in the least. Neither of them had changed. A person might change from prejudice and intolerance to the larger view, but nobody in their senses thought of changing back again.
“Because if we have, either of us,” Amory continued, looking fearlessly before her, “I think we ought to face the fact. There can’t be two opinions about that. Whatever else we do, Cosimo, don’t let’s muddle. I simply couldn’t bear to sloven along, keeping up a pretence of friendship that was simply an intellectual hypocrisy. Either we still think the same about the great basic facts of Life, or we don’t; but don’t in either case let’s be cowards about it. If I’m to go forward alone, I’d much, much rather know it. No doubt it’ll be strange at first, but I shall get used to it, I suppose.”
She might have found it a little difficult to tell Cosimo exactly what it was she was so brave about, but unflinchingly brave about something she certainly seemed to be. With both hands she cast back her hair, showing her dauntless brow; her chin was held high above the bluebell-stalk of a throat, the lids were dropped over the shallow, gold-flecked eyes. As if she saw before her the bleak prospect of years to come without the intellectual companionship of Cosimo, the corners of her mouth gave a momentary twitch, but were instantly courageous again; and she reopened theeyes. They were full of sorrow and resolve. Cosimohadchanged....
“Amory,” he pleaded, “don’t look like that.” This time he touched her hand.
“Like what?” she asked, without emotion.
“As if—it’s so ridiculous—as if it wasn’t all your fancy. You’re a bit run down, that’s all that’s the matter with you.”
“I have felt better,” she admitted, closing the eyes again and passing her finger-tips over the lids.
“Look here—can I get you something—knock a chemist up or anything?”
“No, thank you, Cosimo.”
“But—but—I’m really worried about you,dear——”
“You mustn’t worry, Cosimo. These things have to be faced.”
“But, my dear girl!...Whatthings? I assure you it’s pure fancy! Look here,” he said resolutely, “tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself this past week, and I’ll bet I can tell you what’s the matter with you! In the first place, have you had proper meals?”
“All I wanted, thank you.”
“That means eggs, I expect. You haven’t a headache, have you?”
“Only quite a slight one. No, please don’t brush my hair; if you wouldn’t mind getting me a drink of waterinstead——”
“But,” said Cosimo presently, bending solicitously over her with the water he had fetched, “I used tobe able to stroke your headaches away. Do let metry——”
“No, thank you so awfully much, Cosimo—I don’t think it would do this one any good—and I really think you ought to be going now. I shall go to bed.”
“Is it made?”
“I don’t know. Would you mind giving me a hand up? I expect I shall be all right again in themorning——”
He helped her weary but enduring form to the curtained corner where the bed lay. Then he looked anxiously at her. He stood irresolute.
“I’ll put you a jug of water by your side, shall I?”
“Yes, please, and Tchekoff—the little bookthere——”
“Oh, come, reading in bed’s the very worst thing you can do!”
“Perhaps Tchekoff’ll buck me up. Heisstimulating. You haven’t read him? You should. I feel I need him to-night. Thank Heaven, one can always have the companionship of these men through their works.... When are you going away again? I suppose you’ll be giving up the studio in March? I shall go out for a long walk to-morrow by myself. I’ll prop the door up after you, but it really didn’t matter; there’s nothing anybody would come for. Thank you so much for mending it, though, and for the glass of water. I’m quite all right now. Good night,Cosimo——”
She had crossed the floor again. They held the tottering door up between them. “Stupid not to havewaited till Monday,” Cosimo was muttering; “look here, shall I try to fix it up again as it was? Afraid the screwholes wouldn’t hold, though; they’ll have to be plugged.... Then put something heavy against it inside—your chest of drawers or something—won’t you?”
“Oh, very well, if you wish.”
“I was a fool not to wait till Monday.... You’re all right?”
“Perfectly.”
“I shall come round in the morning to see how you are.... Good night.” He was peering round the edge of the door.
“Good night.”
Cosimo left slowly. He felt a brute. He couldn’t have told why, but it seemed to him that, by comparison with this brave girl, who preferred the sharpest pains of knowledge to the lethargy of ignorance, and would have the truth though it were a blade in her lonely breast, he was inferior and a coward. But for all that, Amory had been quite wrong in thinking he had changed. He had not. He still thought Amory splendid. And not only that: he hadn’t quite realized before how very pretty she was. He had known she was pretty, but not how pretty; perhaps she hadn’t been quite so pretty before?... And now Cosimo came to think of it, he had been noticing lately whether girls were pretty or not. Somehow Pattie Wynn-Jenkins had got him into the way of it. Pattie, whose father’s plantation adjoined the western boundary of the grazing that was now Cosimo’s own, was prettyherself, and seemed to raise the question.... Still, Cosimo hadnotchanged. He could admire Pattie without in the least taking away from the devotion he owed to Amory. And as for anything else than mere prettiness, Pattie wasn’t in it. Pattie would never have dreamed of reading Weiniger and Tchekoff. Just at present she cared for nothing in the world so much as how she should reduce her golf handicap. It was hard to call a girl so pretty as Pattie a fool, but, not to mince matters, that was about the long and the short of it....
And, on the whole, Cosimo was rather glad that Amory didn’t suspect there was such a girl as Pattie in existence.
Cosimo half expected to find Amory still in bed when he went round to Cheyne Walk at ten o’clock on the following morning; but she was dressed and ready for going out. He was lucky, she said, to have caught her; she would have been off in another five minutes.—“Off where?” Cosimo asked. Oh, Amory didn’t know.—“All right, come along,” he said.
But when she turned her eyes slowly round to his he saw that the night had only set higher their clear courage. Again he could not have told why he felt guilty.
“Do you think it would be wise?” she asked gravely.
“Why not?” he asked, taken aback anew.
“Oh, very well,” she answered indifferently. “I’m ready.”
Many times they had walked together in thedirection of Earl’s Court and Brook Green, but never in such a silence as this. Yet on Amory’s part it was a calm and cheery silence. It was so calm and cheery that uneasily Cosimo fell to wondering whether Amory had not been right and he had not, after all, changed without knowing it. These geniuses were terrible people: there was never any telling what they did not see. As they passed through Hammersmith, Cosimo longed to break out, “Ihaven’tchanged, Amory—you’dknowI thought more of you than ever if you’d seen the pretty but awfully stupid sort of girl I’ve been seeing while I’ve been away—everything we’ve agreed a self-respecting woman can’t be any longer: a mere man’s toy, a chattel, property, on sale just as much as if she was in an Oriental slave-market, economically dependent, hopelessly apathetic to everything that’s fine and feminist and new——” He knew that Amory would have called that “facing the facts.” But something, he knew not what, held him back. Oh, it was none of the things you might have thought—that Amory might make more of it than there had been (indeed, there had been nothing), nor that he realized that the whole truth can never be told, and that the more you explain the more there remains still to be explained, nor that hypocrisy and lack of candour are not without their poor uses when all is said and done. Cosimo would have denied these obsolescent propositions one by one.... So he concluded that he could not be very well either. That must be the reason for his reticence. Pattie’s company must have put him a little out of accord with the finer things. Pattie in Shropshire, too,seemed a thought less pretty than did Amory by his side that Sunday morning. If Amory were only a little differently dressed she might be incomparably pretty, as she was already incomparably clever....
But suddenly Amory broke the silence. It was as they approached Ravenscourt Park.
“Cosimo,” she said slowly—“I’ve been wonderingagain——”
He waited for her to continue. As she delayed to do so, he said, “What, Amory?”
“I’ve been wondering again—why you don’t marry Dorothy.”
When Amory had said this same thing before, Cosimo had laughed, and with beautiful tact had replied that Dorothy would never have married him: but there was something of the still, of the rapt, about Amory that morning that would have made a laugh an offence. Instead, he said, almost reproachfully, “Oh,—Amory!”
“Why don’t you?” she continued dreamily. “I hope it’s not that mere settling down of opinion that is fatal to real vitality of thought. Anidée fixeisn’t anidéeat all; it’s a Law that in course of time thoughts become petrified. Then they’ve got to be got fluid again. Are you sure that you haven’t got Dorothy wrongly classified?”
She looked earnestly at him.
“But——” he began, but Amory interrupted him gently.
“Let’s face the facts about Dorothy without prejudice,” she said. “First, I know she’s mixed up with perfectly impossible people, but you mustn’t forgetthat she was with us at the McGrath. Her work’s impossible too, poor dear Dot, but search where you will, Cosimo, you won’t find a betterappreciatorthan she is. It would only need a little encouragement of that side of her nature and a little suppression of the other and Dorothy would be an almost ideal wife for an advanced and fine-thinking man. It’s merely her Environment that doesn’t give her a chance. Of course, from the point of view of Eugenics, those people of hers may be a littleepuisées; intermarried too much: but she doesn’t show it—she may be a throw-back. And it isn’t a drawback any longer that Dorothy’s rather fond of her own way. Equality of Opportunity is admitted nowadays, and in another ten years the conception of woman as property will be quite dead. And think how much worse you might do, Cosimo! Suppose you got hold of a mere doll!... Cosimo,” she added earnestly, “it would be—hell!”
Cosimo quailed inwardly, nor could he, in the face of Amory’s earnestness, dissemble his quailing with a laugh. “But,” he protested by and by, “I—I don’twantDorothy, Amory!”
“I only ask you to ask yourself whether that isn’t anidée fixe.”
“I really don’t think it’s anidée fixe,” Cosimo returned, after further examination of it. “And besides,you’verather spoiled me for the companionship of—of anybody who comesalong——”
“It has been beautiful,” said Amory, with a detached air, “and it will be more beautiful still to look back on. I don’t conceal from you, Cosimo, that quitethe most precious and significant part of my life has been shared with you.”
He broke out almost angrily—“The past tense again, Amory! Really, I—I don’t know what’s come over you!”
“You mean that you’d miss me a little too?”
“Miss you!——” This time he did give a little mirthless laugh.
“Then,” Amory went on presently, “there’s something else to remember. Dorothy’s used to me. We are friends. Another girl might not be. You see how much I care who you marry, Cosimo, and why.”
“But—but—whatever’s put it into your head that I want to marry at all?” Cosimo cried, stopping and looking blankly at her.
She, too, looked at him; then she moved slowly forward again.
“Ah, you’re at the very heart of the feminist Movement there, if you only knew it, Cosimo,” she replied. “A man has only his intelligence; a woman has intelligenceandher intuitions as well.”
“You mean you’ve an intuition I want to get married?” Cosimo broke out. “Iswear——”
“Oh, Cosimo, what’s the good of swearing? That’s merely like that antiquated old Service again, when you promise to love and honour and all the time you’re absolutely in the dark. You may not want to at this moment. But you don’t know that to-morrow somebody may not want to marry you. I only want it to be the right person—chum of mine,” she added softly.
As she put her hand on his arm Cosimo had a little brotherly warming.
He was not aware—or if he had been aware, he had forgotten—that Amory’s Aunt Jerry and Mr. Massey lived on Chiswick Mall, hardly a stone’s-throw from where they were. They were passing the “Doves” when suddenly Amory exclaimed, “Why, we’re quite near to Aunt Jerry’s. Shall we go in to lunch?”
Her quick tone seemed a change from the past tense and broodings about his marriage, and he welcomed it eagerly. Moreover, to call on the Masseys would recall enlivening thoughts of that merry wedding day when Mr. Wellcome had got slightly drunk and had passed round the toothpicks. It would be the very thing to take Amory out of herself.
“Ripping idea!” said Cosimo enthusiastically. “Which is the house?”
“The one you’re walking past now,” said Amory, putting her hand on the knob of a tall wrought-iron gate. “I don’t suppose Aunt Jerry’s been to church.”
They walked up a narrow flagged path and Amory rang an old bell by the side of a torch-extinguisher. Already Aunt Jerry had waved her hand from the drawing-room window of the first floor. The door was opened, and they were admitted.
“We’ve asked ourselves to lunch, Cosimo and I,” said Amory, kissing her aunt where she sat by the window. “May we stay?”
Aunt Jerry affected a severity.
“I’m not so sure, after the disgraceful time you’ve thought fit to stop away,” she replied. “I’m verycross with both of you. If you’d left it one week longer, Cosimo—you see I haven’t forgotten I was to call you Cosimo—I really don’t think George would have had you in the house. But I forgive you now you are here. George will be back from church presently. Go and take your things off, child, and Cosimo will talk to me. You know the little room—or is it so long since you were here that you’ve forgotten?”
There were hyacinth bulbs in the glasses of Aunt Jerry’s rounded bow-window, and a canary in a white and gilt cage; and to Amory the house seemed furnished consonantly with the age of its owners, that is to say, its chairs and tables were not old enough in style to be antique and not new enough to be anything but what doubtless some of them were—second-hand. But the panelling was pleasant, and the airy view up the river delightful. Aunt Jerry pointed out the view to Cosimo at once; she sat there all day, she said, but it was almost as good as being out of doors. There was no need to ask why she sat there, watching her swelling hyacinths and listening to the trilling of her bird. Amory expected to be made a cousin early in April.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Aunt Jerry to Cosimo. “Mrs. Deschamps is coming; George will meet her after church; and Miss Crebbin (do you remember Miss Crebbin?)—she’s bringingheryoung man. But I ought to say that our lunch is really our dinner on Sundays because of the girls’ afternoon off. Well, and now tell me how you are.”
She was fresh as a rose, and talked as if she andCosimo had been old friends. Cosimo remembered the joke of Mrs. ’Ill, the plumber, Mr. Wellcome, and the chimney-sweep. Only for a moment had Aunt Jerry glanced at Cosimo’s suit of tweeds. She had heard of Cosimo’s bereavement, but, after all, a loss can be felt as deeply in tweeds as in anything else, and the glance had seemed to admit that perhaps it wasn’t altogether a bad thing that the old custom of extravagant funerals, often at the expense of the needs of the living, was dying out. “We must all go sometime,” her short silence seemed to say, “and those who follow us must take up the burdens we leave.” Perhaps it was not all burden either. Aunt Jerry had forgotten the precise number of acres, but she remembered that Cosimo was now “eligible.”
Aunt Jerry was telling Cosimo how all at sea Amory had seemed during the past weeks, when Mr. Massey arrived with Mrs. Deschamps. They were followed a few minutes later by Miss Crebbin andheryoung man, a Mr. Allport. And Mrs. Deschamps, too, greeted Cosimo as quite an old friend.
“I shall never, never forget that wedding day, Mr. Pratt!” she exclaimed vivaciously. “That cake—the wretches! But they’re always up to something, scaring you out of your wits with a jam-splash on the tablecloth or a spill of ink on your book—you’ve seen them, Mr. Pratt; they’re a penny, and I’ve had dreadful turns with them! But I simply cannotcall you ‘Mr. Pratt.’ It isn’t like Glenerne here. I admit it’s best to be on the safe side there, but at Oasthouse View we’re a family party—aren’t we, George? And don’t I comeon Sundays till you’re sick of the sight of me and say, ‘Here’s that nuisance of a Nellie again?’ He needn’t shake his head,” the bright little widow continued to Cosimo; “Geraldine thinks we go to church together, but really I’m making love to him—aren’t I, George?”
“Yes—yes, yes, yes,” Mr. Massey hissed softly over his teeth, entering into the joke and smiling amiably about him.
And Mrs. Deschamps confided to Cosimo in a stage whisper that it was already arranged that she was to be “Number Two.”
They lunched in the panelled room beneath Aunt Jerry’s drawing-room, Amory and Cosimo on one side of the table facing Miss Crebbin andheryoung man on the other. Cosimo presently became aware that this was a quite amusing variation of the joke of Jellies, Dorothy, the plumber, etc. It lacked the boisterousness of that day when Mr. Wellcome had thrust him into Amory’s arms, but it had a subtle flavour of its own. Cosimo had only one uneasiness, which was that Amory was perhaps not well enough in health to extract the last particle of savour from all this taking-for-granted. She sat next to Mr. Allport, but said little. She ate hungrily of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and quite agreed when Mr. Allport said what “an A1 little pitch Oasthouse View was.” Then Mr. Allport talked water-rates and gas-fittings to Mr. Massey. He could be seen making mental notes of fixtures and furniture against the day when he andhisyoung woman should set up together for themselves. He seemed, too, to be advising Cosimo also to be picking up wrinkles ingood time. Cosimo was secretly glad that Mr. Wellcome was not there. His robustiousness would have spoiled the quiet and artistic character of the comedy.
And again he hoped that Amory was not missing anything.
Then the ladies ascended to the drawing-room again, and Mr. Massey, who knew perfectly well everything that the sideboard did and did not contain, pretended to be in doubt, and “thought thereoughtto be a little port somewhere.” He found it, and the three men sat, Mr. Allport again talking of cupboards and drains, but obviously thinking that ... but let Cosimo and Amory tell the rest.
“My—dear!” Amory broke out when, at half-past three, they passed the “Doves” again. “Did youever!”
Cosimo’s light fears that Amory might have missed the delicate comedy had been wasted; Amory was quite her old self again. That, Cosimo thought, was the good meal of roast beef. She bubbled freely, and caught at Cosimo’s arm.
“My—dear! Ifonlyyou could have heard the priceless things that were said upstairs!”
Cosimo was wondrously bucked by the change in her.
“Oh, this is torture—do tell me!” he implored.
“Oh, it’s beyond words—I don’t know where to begin! Aunt Jerry—and that incredible Deschamps woman—and that doll of a girl who’s going to love, honour, obey, and all the rest of it!... Have the poor dears aninklingof what it all really means?”
“You mean——?” said Cosimo tentatively.
“Of course I do—the stupid institution of the Family again! Did George say anything to you? No, I suppose he wouldn’t; high-and-mighty man again; quite too superior; hopes that as long as he says nothing he’ll be taken for wise, as somebody says. But Aunt Jerry’s got it all—oh, perfection hardly describes it!” Lightly she threw up her hands and allowed them to drop again.
“Notthe old conceptions, of the father as the head of the Family and so on?” Cosimo said incredulously.
“Yes!”
“No!—Parental Despotism?”
“Despotism!”
“Notcorporal punishment!”
“Cor-por-al punishment!”
“No Justice for children?”
“Love and Authority instead!”
“And woman as the mere plaything of man?”
“The mere plaything of man!”
“Property?”
“A chattel!”
“Woman’s place at home with her children?”
“C’est ça!”
“By—Jove!”
Cosimo whistled.
“Yes, I thought I should surprise you,” said Amory, with quiet satisfaction.
“Surprise!—I’m thunderstruck!”
“You didn’t know you’d been lunching in a regular museum of it all, did you?”
“A museum? A catacomb!”
“You wouldn’t suppose that we lived in this Year of Grace, would you?”
“About 1100,Ishould have said.”
“Oh no,” Amory interrupted, “under Feudalism it would have been all right. It would have been proper to their stage of development. But—to-day! Or rather next April, I shouldsay——!”
“The hands of the clock are to be set back in April?”
“So the doctor says. I dare say his rule-of-thumb carries him as far as that.”
“Awful impostors, doctors.”
Then Amory spoke slowly and impressively.—“What I want to know is, how much longercanIndividualism last? We heard that American lady last year; would you have thought itpossiblethat the system could have survived such a slashing attack? Whenwillpeople begin to have even a rudimentary conception of the function of the State in these matters? Whenwillthey see, for instance, that when a dispute arises between a parent and a child the case is exactly like any other dispute, with the plaintiff on one side and the defendant on the other? If the parent’s the plaintiff, how can he speak for the defendant as well? Why, it’s making him judge and executioner and all the lot!... And those, Cosimo,” she went on, with still deeper gravity, into which contempt crept, “are my aunt’s and uncle’s ideas! Violence, harshness, and repression. Russianizing the Home, instead of abolishing it altogether, or only allowing it under the very strictest inspection, in such cases as when a parent has really proved his fitness for Child-culture! TheHome!... Oh, whenwillthe dawn come?” She turned up the pretty eyes to the sky; she spoke passionately. “Aunt Jerry fit to be a Mother of the Race! Why,” she broke out witheringly—“has she (to begin with the very elements) a notion of what to feed a child on? Does she know what a proteid is? Does she know what albumen is? Has she as much as seen a bit of yeast under the microscope? (I have; a girl once showed me.) Doesn’t she choose her very feeding-bottles out of these awful circulars of Dorothy’s or whose ever they are? And the clothes she showed us!... Ribbons, pink if it’s a girl and blue if it’s a boy! This hateful insistence on sex from the very beginning! From before the beginning!... And the pride of these people in their ignorance and conceit! Bursting with it!”...
Cosimo was awed. But he was glad, too, that there was no more talk about the end of their friendship. Amory was incomparable. Never had he honoured her so. It was almost a pity she painted, so magnificent a lecturer was lost in her. Not that just at present she was painting very much. She was doing better than painting. With all the strength of which she was capable she was resolutelynotpainting. She was laying strong and enduring foundations. There would be time enough for pinnacles by and by.
“And then,” Amory continued, more quietly, but even more stingingly, “in what spirit do they undertake this enormous responsibility? From the highest motive known to Ethics you’d think, wouldn’t you—the sense of Duty to Mankind? Yes, you’d think so.You wouldn’t think they’d regard it as a mere personal gratification, would you? You wouldn’t think they thought they’d accounted for it all when they said they were ‘in love,’ would you? But it is so, Cosimo. That’s exactly their mental development. They are exactly as advanced as the animals. Neither more nor less.... Mind you, I don’t deny what’s called ‘love’ altogether. I suppose it does serve some such purpose as the perfume does to the flower. The perfume attracts insects, and insects do fertilize some flowers. So love has its place. But what I want to know is, is it going to be allowed to supplant plain reason and common sense? I say no. There ought to be a State Mating-season. They can do it about fishing and game; why not about love? Because everything’s in the hands of men, and men think more about fishing and game than they do about these things. Oh, if only a Woman would arise! We should soon see all this altered!”...
“Well, you know I’m heart and soul with you about that, Amory,” Cosimo said, a little uneasily, as if he personally might be included in her arraignment of his sex.
“You!” said Amory, with an intellectually affectionate look of her golden eyes.... “If it weren’t for you, Cosimo, I should despair altogether. Nobody else understands me—nobody. The others—well, take a man like Hamilton Dix, who might be supposed to have higher interests: really, it’s as much as I’ve been able to do sometimes to keep him from pawing me! And once he did kiss my hand.... Cosimo”—shelifted the golden eyes almost bashfully, and then dropped them again—“I said last night that there ought perhaps to be an end of our friendship. Not an end, I mean, because I should always respect you and honour your views. And I still think it might be best. But—I don’t know whether I should have the strength to do it, Cosimo. I ought to, but—I’m only a woman in some things. I know they aren’t the real things, and it’s only because my sex has been downtrodden and we’ve been denied our opportunities; but we do have transmitted fears from those barbarous times when you used to drag us about by the hair. So I don’t know whether I should really have the strength,Cosimo——”