But Amory did not look up from the slippered foot she had again begun to warm.—“Oh, I shouldn’t go,” she said absently.
“You mean me to go by myself?” said Cosimo, the joy vanishing again.
Then it was that Amory returned to the temporarily relinquished subject again.
“Well ...”, she said, with a return of the quiet and wan but brave smile, “... I’ve nothing to do with that. I shouldn’t set detectives to watch you. I was speaking for the moment purely from the point of view of the ‘Novum’s’ policy.—But I see what you mean.”
But Cosimo didn’t mean that at all. He interposed eagerly, anxiously.
“Youdojump to conclusions!”—he began.
“MydearCosimo,” she put up her hand, “I’m doing nothing of the kind. As I said, the other isn’t my affair. Oh, I do wish you’d believe that I was perfectly calm about it! As Emerson said, soul ought to speak from the top of Olympus or something, and, except that I want you to be happy, it’s a matter of indifference to me who you go with. Do try to see that, Cosimo. Let’s try to behave like civilized beings. We agreed long ago that sex was only a matter of accident. Don’t let’s make it so hatefully pivotal. After all, what practical difference would it make?”
But this was too much for Cosimo. He must have Britomart down and take his chance, that was all. At the worst, he did not see how Amory could be so unreasonable that a hand-pat or a hair-stroke or two could not be put before her in the proper light.
Unfortunately, the trouble was, not that she made a fuss, but that she made so little fuss....
Again he moved towards the door.
But Miss Belchamber herself, as it happened, saved him the trouble of fetching her. Their hands were at the door at the same moment, his inside, hers outside. She entered. She was wrapped in the large black-and-gold Chinese dressing-gown Cosimo had given her for a Christmas present, and there were pantofles on her bare feet, and her hair hung down her back in two enormous yellow plaits. She was eating a large piece of cake.
“I’ve left the hot water tap running,” she announced. “I hadn’t gone to bed. Does anybody else want a bath? I like lots of hot baths. I came down for a piece of cake.”
She crossed to the sofa, crammed the last piece of cake into her mouth, dusted the crumbs from her fingers, tucked the dressing-gown close under her, and with her fingers began softly to perform the motions ofpétrissageupon herself in the region of theerectors spinae. As she did so she again spoke, placidly and syllabically.
“I made a mistake,” she said. “Father’s forty-six. Next June. And I shall go to Walter’s new Lecture. He’s in the guard’s van. I mean the van-guard. And Prince Ead-mond’s is in the van-guard too. Especially Miss Miles. She says the Saturn-alia is a time of great li-cen-tiousness and dancing. Are they going to start it soon?”
Cosimo was nervous again. He cleared his throat.—“Britomart—,” he began; but Miss Belchamber went on.
“I hope they are. Walter says it would be a very good thing. I shall dance ‘Rufty Tufty.’ And ‘The Black Nag.’ I love ‘The Black Nag.’ That’s why I’mhaving a hot bath. Hot baths open the pores, or sweat-ducts. Then you close them again with a cold sponge. I always close them again with a cold sponge.”
Cosimo cleared his throat again and had another try.—“Listen, Britomart—we were talking aboutyou——”
Miss Belchamber looked complacently at her crossed Parian-marble ankles. Then she raised one of them, and her fingers explored the common tendon of the soleus and gastrocnemius.
“The soleus,” she said, “acts when the knee-joint is flexed. In ‘Rufty Tufty’ it acts. Both of them, of course. And the manage-ment of the breath is very important. It would be a very good thing if every-body opened their windows and took a hun-dred deep breaths before the Saturn-alia begins. I shall, and I shall make Corin and Bonniebell. Or won’t they be able to go if it’s very late? If it’s after their bedtime I could bring them away early and then go back. I am so looking forward to it.”
Cosimo made a third attempt.—“Britomart—”, he said gravely.
“What?” said Miss Belchamber.
“I want to tell you about a rather important discussion we’ve beenhaving——”
“Then shall I go and turn the tap off? The water will run cold. Then the sweat-ducts would have to be closed before they are opened, and that’s wrong.”
But this time Amory had moved towards the door. Cosimo, and not she, had wanted Miss Belchamber down, and now that he had got her he might amuse her. She thought he looked extremely foolish, but that was hislookout; she was going to bed. It seemed an entirely satisfactory moment in which to do so. She had managed better than she had hoped. The question of the fund had been satisfactorily raised, and it was obvious that the “Novum” would gain by having somebody on the spot, somebody perhaps less biassed than Mr. Prang, to advise upon its Indian policy. At the door she turned her nasturtium-coloured head.
“You might think over what I’ve been saying,” she said. “We can talk of it again in a day or two. Especially my second suggestion, that about the ‘Novum.’ That seems to me very well worth considering. Good night.”
And she passed out, leaving Cosimo plucking his lip irresolutely, and Miss Britomart Belchamber deeply interested in the common tendon of the other soleus and gastrocnemius.
Itwas on an afternoon in May, and the window of Dorothy’s flat overlooking the pond was wide open. Ruffles of wind chased one another from moment to moment across the water, and the swans, guarding their cygnets, policed the farther bank, where dogs ran barking. The two elder Bits played in the narrow strip of garden below; again the frieze of the room was a soft net of rippling light; and the brightness of the sun—or so Ruth Mossop declared—had put the fire out.
Ruth was alone in the flat. As she passed between the pond-room and the kitchen, re-lighting the fire, “sweeping in,” and preparing tea, she sang cheerfully to herself, “A few more years shall roll, a few more sorrows come.” Ruth considered that the sorrows would probably come by means of the youngest Bit. He ought (she said) to have been a little girl. Then, in after years, he might have been a bit of comfort to his mother. Boys, in Ruth’s experience, were rarely that.
As she put the cakes for tea into the oven of the stove there came a milk-call from below. Ruth leaned out of the lift-window, and there ensued a conversation with the white-jacketed milk-boy.
“Saw your guv’nor last night,” the boy grinned.
“Where’s that cream I ordered, and that quart of nursery milk? You can’t mind your business for thinking of picture palaces.”
“Keep your ’air on; coming up now.—I say, they put ’is ’ead under a steam-’ammer. I said it was a dummy, but Gwen said it wasn’t.Wasit ’im?”
“You mind your own interference, young man, and leave others to mind theirs; you ought to have something better to do with your threepences than collecting cigarette cards and taking girls to the pictures.”
“It was in ‘Bullseye Bill: A Drarmer of Love an’ ‘Ate’—‘Scoundrel, ’ow dare you speak those words to a pure wife an’ mother on the very threshold of the ‘Ouse of——’”
“That’s enough, young man—we don’t want language Taken in Vain here—and you can tell ’em at your place we’re leaving soon.”
“Butwasthat ’im in the long whiskers at the end, when the powder magazine blew up?”
But Ruth, taking her cans, shut down the window and returned to the kitchen.
“‘Then O, my Lord, prepare——’” she crooned as she gave a peep into the oven and then clanged the door to again, “‘My soul for that blest day——’”
They were leaving soon. Already the sub-letting of the flat was in an agent’s hands, and soon Stan would be braving the perils of his career no longer. Dorothy had unfolded her idea to her aunt, and Lady Tasker had raised no objection, provided Dorothy could raise the money by bringing Aunt Eliza into line.
“It’s as good as Maypoles and Village Players anyway,” she had said, “and I’m getting too old to run about as I have done.—By the way, is it true that Cosimo Pratt’s gone to India?”
Dorothy had replied that it was true.
“Hm! What for? To dance round another Maypole?”
“I don’t know, auntie. I’ve seen very little of them.”
“Has she gone?”
“No.”
“No more babies yet, I suppose?”
“No.”
“Well ... you’d better see your Aunt Eliza. She’s got all the money that’s left.—But I don’t see how you’re going to get any very much out of Tony and Tim.”
“Oh, I’ll see they don’t impose on me as they’ve been imposing on you!... So I may move that billiard-table, and alter the gun-room?”
“Yes, if you pay for it.”
“Thanks—you are a dear!...”
By what arts Dorothy had contrived to lay Aunt Eliza under contribution doesn’t matter very much here. Among themselves the Lennards and Taskers might quarrel, but they presented an unbroken front to the world—and Dorothy, for Aunt Eliza’s special benefit, managed to make the world in some degree a party to her project. That is to say, that a paragraph had appeared in certain newspapers, announcing that an experiment of considerable interest, etc., the expenses of which were already guaranteed, and so forth, was about to be tried in the County of Shropshire, where “The Brear,“the residence of the late Sir Noel Tasker, was already in course of alteration. And so on, in Dorothy’s opinion, neither too much nor too little for her design.... It had been a public committance of the family, and it had worked the oracle with Aunt Eliza. Rather than have a public squabble about it, she had come in with her thousand, the work was now well advanced, and the venerable sinner who had recited the poems printed by Cosimo Pratt’s Village Press was in charge of the job. Dorothy, hurriedly weaning the youngest Bit, had run down to Ludlow for the express purpose of announcing to him that itwasa job, and not an aesthetic jollification.
Moreover, at that time she had half a hundred other matters to attend to; for Stan, escaping from powder-magazines as the last inch of fuse sputtered, and fervently hoping that the man had made no mistake about the length of stroke of the Nasmyth hammer under which he put his devoted head, could give her little help. Besides her own approachingdéménagement, she had much of the care of that of her aunt. As Stan’s earnings were barely sufficient for the current expenses of the household, she still had to turn to odds and ends of her old advertisement work. She had—Quis custodiet?—the nurse to look after, and the tradesmen, and letters, and callers, and Ruth. In short, a simple inversion of her aunt’s dictum about the Pratts—“Too much money and not enough to do”—would have fitted Dorothy’s case to a nicety.
Therefore, as another burden more or less would make little difference to one already so burdened, Dorothyhad added still further to her cares. Ever since that day when Lady Tasker had come bare-headed out of her house and had spoken to Amory Pratt outside the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dorothy had had her sometime friend constantly on her mind. She had spoken of her to her aunt, who had again shown herself deplorably illiberal and incisive.
“I don’t pretend to understand the modern young woman,” she had remarked carelessly. “Half of ’em seem to upset their bodies with too much study, and the other half to play hockey till they’re little better than fools. I suppose it’s all right, and that somebody knows what they’re about.... I often wonder what they’d have done, though, if it hadn’t been for Sappho and Madame Curie.... By the way,” she had gone irrelevantly on without a break, “does shewantany more children besides those twins?”...
Nevertheless, Dorothy had had Amory so much on her mind that twice since Cosimo’s departure for India she had been up to The Witan in search of her. After all, if anybody was to blame for anything it was Cosimo. But on neither occasion had Amory been at home. Dorothy had left messages, to which she had received no reply; and so she had gone a third time—had gone, as it happened, on that very afternoon when Ruth sang “A few more years shall roll” as she made the hot cakes for tea. This time she had persuaded Katie Deedes to come with her—for Katie had left the Eden, was out of a job, and for the time being had afternoon hours to spare.
But again they had failed to find Amory, and Dorothyand Katie took a turn round the Heath before returning to the flat for tea. As they walked along the hawthorn hedge that runs towards Parliament Hill and South Hill Park they talked. Kites were flying on the Hill; the Highgate Woods and the white spire showed like a pale pastel in the Spring sunshine; and from the prows of a score of prams growing babies leaned out like the figure-heads of ships.
“That’s where Billie was born,” said Dorothy, nodding towards the backs of the houses that make the loop of South Hill Park.
Katie only said “Oh?” She too had caught the uneasiness about Amory. And what Katie thought was very soon communicated.
“You see, Dot,” she broke suddenly out, “you’ve no idea of what a—what a funny lot they are really.... No, I haven’t told you—I haven’t told youhalf! It’s everything they do. Why, the nurse practised for months and months at a school where they washed a celluloid baby—I’m not joking—she did—a life-sized one—they did it in class, and dressed it, and put it to sleep—as ifthatwould be any good at all with a real one!... And really—I’m not prudish, as you know, Dot—but the way they used to sit about, in a dressing-gown or a nightgown or anything—I don’t mean when there was abigcrowd there, of course, but just a few of them—Walter, and Mr. Brimby, and Edgar Strong—and all of them going quite red in the face with puremindedness! At any rate, I never didthinkthat was quite the thing!”
She spoke with great satisfaction of the point of theNew Law she had not broken. It seemed to make up for those she had.
“And those casts and paintings and things about—it’s all right being an artist, of course, but if I ever got married,Ishouldn’t like casts and paintings of me about for everybody to see likethat!——”
“Oh, just look at that hawthorn!” Dorothy interrupted.
“Yes, lovely.—And Walter talking about Dionysus, and what Lycurgus thought would be a very good way of preventing jealousy, and a lot more about Greeks and Romans and Patagonians and Esquimaux! Do you know, Dot, I don’t believe they know anything at all about it—notreallyknow, I mean! I don’t see how they can! One man might know a little bit about a part of it, and another man a little bit about another part—and that would be rather a lot, seeing how long ago it all is—but Walter knows itall! At any rate nobody can contradict him. But what does it matter to us to-day, Dorothy? Whatdoesit matter?... Of course I don’t mean they’re wicked. But—but—in some ways I can’t help thinking it would be better tobewicked as long as you didn’t say anything aboutit——!”
“Oh, I don’t think they’re wicked,” said Dorothy placidly. But the ’vert went eagerly on.
“That’s just it!” she expounded. “Walter says ‘wicked’s’ only a relative term. If you face the truth boldly, all the time, lots of things wouldn’t be wicked at all, he says. And I believe he’s really awfully devoted to Laura—in his way—though he does talk about these things with Britomart Belchamber sitting there inher nightgown. But it’s always thesame bitof truth they face boldly. They never think of going in for astronomy—or crystal-what-is-it—crystallography—or something chilly—and face thatboldly——”
Dorothy laughed.—“You absurd girl!”
“—but no. It’s always whether people wear clothes because they’re modest or whether they’re modest because they wear clothes, or something like that.—And Walter begins it—and then Laura chimes in, and then Cosimo, and then Amory, and then Dickie—and when they’ve said it all on Monday they say it again on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and every day—and I don’t know what they’ve decided evenyet——”
“Well, here we are,” Dorothy said as she reached her own door. “Let’s have some tea.... Mr. Miller hasn’t been in yet, has he, Ruth?”
“No, m’m.”
“Well, we’ll have tea now, and you can make some fresh when he comes. And keep some cakes hot.”
Mr. Miller’s visit that afternoon had to do with a care so trifling that Dorothy merely took it in her stride. She had not found—she knew that she would never find—the “Idee” that Mr. Miller wanted; but if no Idees except real ones were ever called Idees we should be in a very bad way in this world. She knew that there is always a middling chance that if you state a pseudo-Idee solemnly enough, and trick it out with circumstance enough, and set people talking enough about it, it will prove just as serviceable as the genuine article; and she was equally familiar, as we have seen, with that beautiful and compensating Law by which quick andoriginal minds are refused money when they are producing of their best but overwhelmed with it when their brains have become as dry as baked sponges. She had given Mr. Miller quite good Idees in the past; she had no objection to being paid over again for them now; and if they really had been new ones they would have been of no use to Mr. Miller for at least ten years to come. That is why the art of advertisement is so comparatively advanced. Any other art would have taken twenty years.
Therefore, as she remembered the exceeding flimsiness of the one poor Idee she had, she had resolved that Mr. Miller’s eyes should be diverted as much as possible from the central lack, and kept to the bright irrelevancies with which she would adorn it. The Idee was that of the Litmus Layette ... but here we may as well skip a few of Katie’s artless betrayals of her former friends, and come to the moment when Mr. Miller, with his Edward the Sixth shoulders, appeared, bowed, was introduced to Katie, bowed again, sat down, and was regaled with hot cakes and conversation.—He had risen and bowed again, by the way, when Dorothy, for certain reasons of policy, had mentioned Katie’s relationship to the great Sir Joseph Deedes, and Katie had told of a stand-up fight she had had with her uncle’s Marshal about admittance to his lordship’s private room.
“Well, now, that’s something I’ve learned to-day,” Mr. Miller magnanimously admitted, sitting down again. “So your English Judges have Marshals! I was under the impression that that was a military title, like Marshal Macmann and Field-Marshal Sir EvelynWood. Well now.... And how might Judge Deedes’ Marshal be dressed, Miss Deedes?”
“Not ‘Judge’ Deedes,” said Katie smiling. “That’s a County Court Judge.” And she explained. Mr. Miller opened his eyes wide.
“Is that so-o-o? Well now, if that isn’t interessting! That’s noos. He’s a Honourable with a ‘u’ in it, and a Sir, and you call him his Lordship, and he’s Mister Justice Deedes! Ain’t that English!... Now let me see if I’m on the track of it. ‘Your Worship’—that’s a Magistrate. ‘Your Honour’—that’s the other sort of Judge. And ‘My Lord’—that’s Miss Deedes’ uncle. And an English Judge has a Marshal.... Do you recollect our Marshals, Mrs.Stan?——”
Building (as it now appeared) even better than he knew, Mr. Miller had, in the past, granted the rank of Marshal to Messrs. Hallowell and Smiths’ shopwalkers.
Dorothy’s reason for thus flagrantly introducing Sir Joseph’s name wasthis:—
Katie had left the Eden, and she herself was presently off to Ludlow. Thus there was the possible reversion of a job of sorts going a-begging. Katie might as well have it as anybody else. Dorothy had strictly enjoined upon her impulsive friend that on no account was she to contradict or disclaim anything she, Dorothy, might choose to say on her behalf to Mr. Miller; and she intended that the credit, such as it was, of the last Idee she even intended to propose to Mr. Miller—the Litmus Layette—should be Katie’s start. Once started she would have to look after herself.
So when Mr. Miller passed from the subject of Hallowelland Smiths’ Marshals to that of his long-hoped-for Idee, Dorothy was ready for him. Avoiding the weak spot, she enlarged on the tradition—very different from a mere superstition—that, in Layettes, blue stood always for a boy and pink for a girl.
“You see,” she said, “this is England when all’s said, and we’refrightfully conservative. Don’t condemn it just because it wouldn’t go in New York.... You’ve heard of the Willyhams, of course?” she broke off suddenly to ask.
“I cann’t say I have, Mrs. Stan. But I’m sitting here. Tell me. They’re a Fam’ly, I presoom?”
“Yes. Upshire’s their title. Now that title’s descended in the female line ever since Charles the First. Ever since then the Willyham Layettes have been pink as a matter of course. And now, not a month ago, there was a boy, and they had to rush off and get blue at the very last moment.... Let me see, your children are little girls, aren’t they?” she again interrupted herself to say.
“Three little goils, Mrs. Stan, with black-and-white check frocks and large black bows in their hair.”
“Well, and mine are boys. Blue for me and pink for you. But we’ll come to that in a moment.—The thing that really strikes me as extraordinary is that in all these ages, with all the countless babies that have been born, we don’t knowyetwhich it’s going to be!... And I don’t think we ever shall. Now just think what that means—not just to a Royal House, with a whole succession depending on it, and crowns and dynasties and things—but toeverywoman! You see thetremendousinterest they take in it at once!—But I don’t know whether a man can ever understandthat——”
She paused.
“Go on, Mrs. Stan—I want the feminine point of voo,” said Mr. Miller.—“The man ain’t broken Post Toasties yet that has more reverence for motherhood than what Ihave——”
“I know,” said Dorothy bashfully. “But it isn’t the same—being a father. It’s—it’s different. It’s not the same. I doubt whetheranyman knows what it means to us as we wait and wonder—and wait and wonder—day after day—day afterday——”
Here she dropped her eyes. Here also Mr. Miller dropped his head.
“It isn’t the same—being a father—it’s different,” Dorothy was heard to murmur.
Mr. Miller breathed something about the holiest spot on oith.
“So you see,” Dorothy resumed presently, hoping that Mr. Miller did not see. “It’s the nearest subject of all to us. The very first question we ask one another is, ‘Do you hope it’s a little boy or a little girl?’ And as it’s impossible to tell, it’s impossible for us to make our preparations. Lady Upshire doesn’t know one bit more about it than the poorest woman in the streets. And this is an age that boasts of its Science!”
“Well,” said Mr. Miller, giving it consideration, “that’s ver-ry true. I ain’t a knocker; I don’t want to get knocking our men of science; but it’s a fact they cann’t tell. I recollect Mrs. Miller saying tome——”
“Yes—look at it from Mrs. Miller’s point ofview——”
“I remember Mrs. Miller using the ver-ry woids you’ve just used, Mrs. Stan. (I hope this don’t jolt Miss Deedes too much; it’s ver-ry interessting). And that’s one sure thing, that it ain’t a cinch for Mrs. Bradley Martin any more than what it is for any poor lady stenographer at so many dallars per. But—if you’ll pardon me putting the question in that form—where’s thepoint, Mrs. Stan? What’s the reel prapasition?”
This being precisely what Dorothy was rather carefully avoiding, again she smiled bashfully and dropped her head, as if once more calling on those profound reserves of Mr. Miller’s veneration for motherhood. These even profounder reserves, of Mr. Miller’s veneration for dallars, were too much to the point altogether.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t understand,” she sighed.
“But,” said Mr. Miller earnestly, “give me something to get a hold of, Mrs. Stan. I ain’t calling the psychological prapasition down any; a business man has to be psychologist all the time; but he wants it straight. Straight psychology. The feminine point of voo, but practical. It ain’t for Harvard. It’s for Hallowell and Smith’s.”
“Well,” said Dorothy, “it’s Miss Deedes’ idea really—and it would never have occurred to her if it hadn’t been for Lady Upshire—would it, Katie?”
“No,” said Katie.
“Very well. Suppose Lady Upshire had had the Litmus Layette. All she would have had to do would have been to take the ribbons out—the work of a moment—thepink ribbons—dip them in the preparation—and there they’d have been, ready for immediate use. And blue ones would be dipped in the other solution and of course they’d have turned pink.... You see, you can’t alter the baby, but you can alter the ribbons. And it isn’t only ribbons. A woolly jacket—or a pram-rug—or socks—or anything—I think it’s an exceedingly clever Idea of MissDeedes!——”
Mr. Miller gave it attention. Then he looked up.
“Would it woik?” he asked.
“Well,” said Dorothy ... “it works in chemistry. But that’s not the principal thing. It’s its value as an advertisement that’s the real thing. Think of the window-dressing!—Blue and pink, changing before people’s very eyes!—Just think how—I mean, it interestseverywoman! They’d stand in front of the window, and think—but you’re a man. Mrs. Miller would understand.... Anyhow, you would get crowds of people, and that’s what you want—crowds of people—that’s its advertisement-value.—And then when you got them inside it would be like having the hooks at one end of the shop and the eyes at the other—a hook’s no good without an eye, so they have to walk past half a mile of counters, and you sell them all sort of things on the way.Ithink there’s a great deal in it!”
“It’s a Stunt,” Mr. Miller conceded, as if in spite of himself he must admit thus much. “It’s soitainly a Stunt. But I’m not sure it’s a reel Idee.”
“That,” said Dorothy with conviction, “would depend entirely in your own belief in it. If you did it as thoroughly as you’ve done lots of otherthings——”
“It’s soitainly a Stunt, Miss Deedes,” Mr. Miller mused....
He was frowningly meditating on the mystic differences between a Stunt and an Idee, and was perhaps wondering how the former would demean itself if he took the risk of promoting it to the dignity of the latter, when the bell was heard to ring. A moment later Ruth opened the door.
“Lady Tasker,” she said.
Lady Tasker entered a little agitatedly, with an early edition of the “Globe” crumpled in her hand.
Lady Taskernever missed the “Globe’s”By the Waycolumn, and there was a curious, mocking, unpleasant By-the-Way-ishness about the announcement she made as she entered. There is a special psychological effect, in the Harvard and not in the Hallowell and Smith’s sense, when you come unexpectedly in print upon news that affects yourself. The multiplicity of newspapers notwithstanding, revelation still hits the ear less harshly than it does the eye; telling is still private and intimate, type a trumpeting to all the world at once. Dorothy looked at the pink page Lady Tasker had thrust into her hand as if it also, like the Litmus Layette, had turned blue before her eyes.
“NotSir Benjamin who used to come and see father!” she said, dazed.
Lady Tasker had had time, on her way to the flat, to recover a little.
“There’s only one Sir Benjamin Collins that I know of,” she answered curtly.
“But—but—itcan’tbe!——”
Of course there was no reason in the world why it couldn’t. Quite on the contrary, there was that best of all reasons why it could—it had happened. Threebullet-wounds are three undeniable reasons. It was the third, the brief account said, that had proved fatal.
“They say the finest view in Asia’s Bombay from the stern of a steamer,” said Lady Tasker, with no expression whatever. “I think your friend Mr. Cosimo Pratt will be seeing it before very long.”
But Dorothy was white.TheirSir Benjamin!... Why, as a little girl she had called him “Uncle Ben!” He had not been an uncle really, of course, but she had called him that. She could remember the smell of his cigars, and the long silences as he had played chess with her father, and his hands with the coppery hair on them, and his laugh, and the way the markhor at the Zoo had sniffed at his old patoo-coat, just as cats now sniffed at her own set of civet furs. And she had married him one day in the nursery, when she had been about ten, and he had taken her to the Pantomime that afternoon for a Honeymoon—and then, when she had really married Stan, he had given her the very rugs that were on her bedroom floor at this moment.
And, if this pink paper was to be believed, an Invisible Man had shot at him three times, and at the third shot had killed him.
She had not heard her aunt’s words about Cosimo. She had been standing with her hand in Mr. Miller’s, having put it there when he had risen to take himself off and forgotten to withdraw it again. Then Mr. Miller had gone, and Dorothy had stood looking stupidly at her aunt.
“What did you say?” she said. “You said something about Cosimo Pratt.”
“Don’t you go, Katie; I want to talk to you presently.—Sit down, Dot.—Get her a drink of water.”
Dorothy sat heavily down and put out one hand for the paper again.—“What did you say?” she asked once more.
“Never mind just now. Put your head back and close your eyes for a minute.”...
That was the rather unpleasant, By-the-Way part of it. For of course it was altogether By-the-Way when you looked at the matter broadly. Amory could have explained this with pellucid clearness. The murder of a Governor?... Of course, if you happened to have known that Governor, and to have married him in a child’s game when you were ten and he forty, and to have gone on writing letters to him telling him all the news about your babies, and to have had letters back from him signed “Uncle Ben”—well, nobody would think it unnatural of you to be a little shocked at the news of his assassination; but Amory could easily have shown that that shock, when you grew a little calmer and came to think clearly about it, would be only a sort of extension of your own egotism. Governors didn’t really matter one bit more because you were fond of them. Everybody had somebody fond of them. Why, then, make a disproportionate fuss about a single (and probably corrupt) official, when thousands suffered gigantic wrongs? The desirable thing was to look at these things broad-mindedly, and not selfishly. It was selfish, selfish and egotistical, to expect the whole March of Progress to stop because you happenedto be fond of somebody (who probably hadn’t been one bit better than he ought to have been). These pompous people of the official classes were always bragging about their readiness to lay down their lives for their country; very well; they had no right to grumble when they were taken at their word. Ruskin had expressed much the same thought rather finely when he had said that a soldier wasn’t paid for killing, but for being killed. Some people seemed to want it both ways—to go on drawing their money while they were alive, and then to have an outcry raised when they got shot. In strict justice they ought to have been, not merely shot, but blown from the mouths of guns; but of course neither Amory nor anybody else wanted to go quite so far as that.... Nevertheless, perspective was needed—perspective, and vision of such scope that you had a clear mental picture, not of misguided individuals, who must die some time or other and might as well do so in the discharge of what it pleased them to call their “duty,” but of millions of our gentle and dark-skinned brothers, waiting in rows with baskets on their heads (and making simply ripping friezes) while the Banks paid in pennies, and then holding lots of righteous and picturesque Meetings, all about Tyrant England and throwing off the Yoke. Amory would have conceded that she had never had an Uncle Ben; but if she had had fifty Uncle Bens she would still have hoped to keep some small sense of proportion about these things.
But that again only showed anybody who was anybody how hopelessly behind the noble movements of hertime Dorothy was. The sense of proportion never entered her head. She gave a little shiver, even though the day was warm, and then that insufferable old aunt of hers, who might be a “Lady” but had no more tact than to interfere with people’s liberty in the street, praised her gently when she came round a bit, and said she was taking it very bravely, when the truth was that she really ought to have condemned her for her absurd weakness and lack of the sense of relative values. No, there would have been no doubt at all about it in Amory’s mind: that it was these people, who talked so egregiously about “firm rule,” who were the real sentimentalists, and the others of the New Imperialism, with their real grasp of the true and humane principles of government, who were the downright practical folk....
All this fuss about a single Governor, of whom Mr. Prang himself had said (and there was no gentler soul living than Mr. Prang) that his extortions had been a byword and his obstinacy proof positive of his innateweakness!——
But Amory was not in the pond-room that day, and so Dorothy’s sickly display of emotion went unchecked. The nurse herded the Bits together, but they were not admitted for their usual tea-time romp. Indeed, Dorothy said presently, “Do you mind if I leave you for a few minutes with Katie, auntie?” She went into her bedroom and did not return. Of all his “nieces” she had been his favourite; her foot caught in one of his Kabuli mats as she entered the bedroom. She lay down on her bed. She longed for Stan to come and put his arms about her.
He came in before Lady Tasker had finished her prolonged questioning of Katie. Aunt Grace told him where Dorothy was. Then she and Katie left together.
The newspapers showed an excellent sense of proportion about the incident. In the earlier evening editions the death of Sir Benjamin was nicely balanced by the 4.30 winners; and then a popular actor’s amusing replies in the witness-box naturally overshadowed everything else. And, to anticipate a little, on the following day the “Times” showed itself to be, as usual, hopelessly in the wrong. Indeed there were those who considered that this journal made a deplorable exhibition of itself. For it had no more modesty nor restraint than to use the harsh word “murder,” without any “alleged” about it, which was, of course, a flagrant prejudging of the case. Nobody denied that at a first glance appearanceswerea little against the gentle and dusky brother, who had been seized with the revolver still in his hand; but that was no reason why a bloated capitalist rag should thus undermine the principles of elementary justice. It ought to have made it all the more circumspect.... But anybody who was anybody knew exactly what was at the bottom of it all. The “Times” was seeking a weapon against the Government. The staff was no doubt secretly glad that it had happened, and was gloating, and already calculating its effect on an impending by-election.... Besides, there was the whole ethical question of capital punishment. It would not bring Sir Benjamin back to life to try this man, find him guilty, and do him barbarously to death in the name of the Law. That would only be two deadinstead of one. The proper way would be to hold an inquiry, with the dusky instrument of justice (whose faith in his mission must have been very great since he had taken such risks for it) not presiding, perhaps, but certainly called as an important witness to testify to the Wrongness of the Conditions.... Besides, an assassination is a sort of half-negligible outbreak, regrettable certainly, for which excuse can sometimes be found: but this other would be deliberate, calculated, measured, and in flat violation of the most cardinal of all the principles on which a great Empire should be based—the principle of Mercy stiffened with exactly the right modicum of Justice....
And besides....
And besides....
And besides....
And when all is said, India is a long way off.
The publication of the news produced a curious sort of atmosphere at The Witan that afternoon. Everybody seemed desirous of showing everybody else that they were unconcerned, and yet an observer might have fancied that they overdid it ever such a little. At about the time when Lady Tasker left Dorothy with Stan, Mr. Wilkinson drove up in a cab to the green door in the privet hedge and asked for Amory. He was told that she had given word that she did not want to see anybody. But in the studio he found Mr. Brimby and Dickie Lemesurier, and the three were presently joined by Laura and Walter Wyron. A quorum of five callers never hesitated to make themselves at home at The Witan. They lighted the asbestos log, Walter foundCosimo’s cigarettes, and Dickie said she was sure Amory wouldn’t mind if she rang for tea. When they had made themselves quite comfortable, they began to chat about a number of things, not the murder.
“Seen Strong?” Mr. Brimby asked Mr. Wilkinson.
Mr. Wilkinson was at his most morose and truculent.
“No,” he said. “I called at the office, but he was out. Doesn’t put in very much time there, it seems to me. Perhaps he’s at the Party’s Meeting.”
“How is it you aren’t there, by the way?”
Mr. Wilkinson made a little sound of contempt.
“Bah! All talk. Day in and day out, talk, talk, talk. I want action. The leadership’s all wrong. Want a man. I keep my seat because if I cleared out they’d be no better than a lot of tame Liberal cats, but I’ve no use for’em——”
It was whispered that the members of the Party had no use for Mr. Wilkinson, and very little for one another; but it doesn’t do to give ear to everything that is whispered.
Then Mr. Brimby appeared suddenly to recollect something.
“Ah yes!... Action. Speaking of action, I suppose you’ve seen this Indian affair in to-night’s papers?”
Mr. Wilkinson was still fuming.
“That Governor? Yes, I saw it.... But it’s too far away. Thousands of miles too far away. We want something nearer home. A paper that calls a spade a spade for one thing.... Anybody heard from Pratt this week?”
They discussed Cosimo’s latest letter, and then Mr.Brimby said, “By the way—how will this affect him?”
“How will what affect him?”
“This news, to-night. Collins.”
“Oh!... Why should it affect him at all? Don’t see why it should. The ‘Pall Mall’ has a filthy article on it to-night. That paper’s getting as bad as the ‘Times.’”
Here Walter Wyron intervened.—“By the way, whoisthis man Collins? Just pass me ‘Who’s Who,’ Laura.”
They looked Sir Benjamin up in “Who’s Who,” and then somebody suggested that their party wasn’t complete without Edgar Strong. “I’ll telephone him,” said Walter; “perhaps he’ll be back by this.”—The telephone was in the hall, and Walter went out. Dickie told Laura how well Walter was looking. Laura replied, Yes, he was very well indeed; except for a slight cold, which anybody was lucky to escape in May, he had never been better; which was wonderful, considering the work he got through.—Then Walter returned. Strong had not yet come in, but his typist had said he’d be back soon.—“Didn’t know it ran to a typist,” Walter remarked, helping himself to more tea.
“It doesn’t,” Mr. Wilkinson grunted.
“Girl’s voice, anyway.... I say, I wonder how old Prang’s getting on!”
“I wonder!”
“He’s gone back, hasn’t he?” Dickie asked.
“Oh, a couple of months ago. Didn’t Strong give him the push, Wilkie?”
“Don’t suppose Strong ever did anything so vigorous,”Mr. Wilkinson growled. “The only strong thing about Strong’s his name. He’s simply ruined that paper.”
“I agree that it was at its best when Prang was doing the Indian notes.”
“Oh, Prang knew what he wanted. Prang’s all right in his way. But I tell you India’s too far away. We want something at our own doors, and somebody made an example of that somebody knows. Now if Pratt had only been guided byme——”
“Hallo, here’s Britomart Belchamber.—Why doesn’t Amory come down, Brit? She’s in, isn’t she?”
“What?” said Miss Belchamber.
“Isn’t Amory coming down?”
“She’s gone out,” said Miss Belchamber, adjusting her hair. “A min-ute ago,” she added.
Walter Wyron said something about “Cool—with guests——,” but Amory’s going out was no reason why they should not finish tea in comfort. No doubt Amory would be back presently. Laura confided to Britomart that she hoped so, for the truth was that her kitchen range had gone wrong, and a man had said he was coming to look at it, but he hadn’t turned up—these people never turned up when they said they would—and so she had thought it would be nice if they came and kept Amory company at supper....
“We’ve got some new cheese-bis-cuits,” said Miss Belchamber ruminatively. “I like them. They make bone. I like to have bone made. The muscles can’t act unless you have bone. That’s why these bis-cuits are so good. Good-bye.”
And Miss Belchamber, with a friendly general smile, went off to open her sweat-ducts by means of a hot bath and to close them again afterwards with a cold sponge.
Amory had not gone out this time to press amidst strange people and to look into strange and frightening eyes, various in colour as the pebbles of a beach, and tipped with arrow-heads of white as they turned. Almost for the first time in her life she wanted to be alone—quite alone, with her eyes on nobody and nobody’s eyes on her. She did not reflect on this. She did not reflect on anything. She only knew that The Witan seemed to stifle her, and that when she had seen Mr. Wilkinson alight from his cab—and Mr. Brimby and Dickie come—and the Wyrons—with all the others no doubt following presently—it had come sharply upon her that these wearisomely familiar people used up all the air. The Witan without them was bad enough; The Witan with them had become insupportable.
It was not the assassination of Sir Benjamin that had disturbed her. Since Cosimo’s departure she had glanced at Indian news only a shade less perfunctorily than before, and she had turned from this particular announcement to the account of New Greek Society’s production with hardly a change of boredom. No: it was everything in her life—everything. She felt used up. She thought that if anybody had spoken to her just then she could only have given the incoherent and petulant “Don’t!” of a child who is interrupted at a game that none but he understands. She hated herself, yet hated more to be dragged out of herself; and as shemade for the loneliest part of the Heath she wished that night would fall.
She had to all intents and purposes packed Cosimo off to India in order to have him out of the way. His presence had become as wearisome as that of the Wyrons and the rest of them. And that was as much as she had hitherto told herself. She had taken no resolution about Edgar Strong. But drifting is accelerated when an obstacle is removed, and her heart had frequently beaten rapidly at the thought that, merely by removing Cosimo, she had started a process that would presently bring her up against Edgar Strong. She had pleased and teased and frightened herself with the thought of what was to happen then. So many courses would be open to her. She might actually take the mad plunge from which she had hitherto shrunk. She might do the very opposite—stare at him, should he propose it, and inform him that, some thousands of miles notwithstanding, she was still Cosimo’s wife. She might pathetically urge on him that, now more than ever, she needed a friend and not a lover—or else that, now more than ever, she needed a lover and not a friend. She might say that nothing could be done until Cosimo came back—or that when Cosimo came back would be too late to do anything. Or she might....
Or she might....
Or she might....
Yet when all was said, Edgar and the “Novum’s” offices were perilously near....
For it was not what she might do, but what he might do, that set her heart beating most rapidly of all. Herdangerous dreaming always ended in that. Here was no question of that trumpery subterfuge of the Wyrons. It struck her with extraordinary force and newness that she was what was called “a married woman.” It was a familiar phrase; it was as familiar as those other phrases, “No, just living together,” “Well, as long as there are no children,” “LoveisLaw”—familiar as the air. Left to herself, the phrases might have remained both her dissipation and her safeguard.... But he? Would phrases content him? After she had tempted him as she knew she had tempted him? After that stern repression of himself in favour of his duty? Or would he ask her again what she thought he was made of?... It was always the man who was expected to take the decisive step. The woman simply—offered—and, if she was clever, did it in such a way that she could always deny it after the fact. If Edgar shouldnotstretch out his hand—well, in that case there would be no more to be said. But if he should?...
A little sound came from her closed lips.
Cosimo had been away for nearly three months, and had not yet said anything about returning; and Amory had smiled when, after many eager protestings that there was no reason (Love being Law) why he should go alone, he had after all funked taking his splendid turnip of a Britomart with him. Of course: when it had come to the point, he had lacked the courage. Amory could not help thinking that that lack was just a shade more contemptible than his philanderings. Courage!... Images of Cleopatra and the carpet rose inher mind again.... But the images were faint now. She had evoked them too often. Her available mental material had become stale. She needed a fresh impulse—a newexperience——
But—she always got back to the same point—suppose Edgar should take her, not at her word, nor against her word, but with words, for once, left suddenly and entirely out of the question?...
Again the thumping heart——
It was almost worth the misery and loneliness for the sake of that painful and delicious thrill.
She was sitting on a bench under the palings of Ken Wood, watching a saffron sunset. A Prince Eadmond’s girl in a little green Florentine cap passed. She reminded Amory of Britomart Belchamber, and Amory rose and took the root-grown path to the Spaniards Road and the West Heath. She intended to take a walk as far as Golders Green Park; but, as it happened, she did not get so far. A newsboy, without any sense of proportion whatever, was crying cheerfully, “Murder of a Guv’nor—Special!” This struck Amory. She thought she had read it once before that afternoon, but she bought another paper and turned to the paragraph. Yes, it was the same—and yet it was somehow different. It seemed—she could not tell why—a shade more important than it had done. Perhaps the newsboy’s voice had made it sound more important: things did seem to come more personally home when they were spoken than when they were merely read. She hoped it was not very important; it might be well to make sure. She was notvery far from home; her Timon-guests would still be there; somebody would be able to tell her all about it....
She walked back to The Witan again, and, still hatted and dressed, pushed at the studio door.
Nobody had left. Indeed, two more had come—young Mr. Raffinger of the McGrath, and a friend of his, a young woman from the Lambeth School of Art, who had Russianized her painting-blouse by putting a leather belt round it, and who told Amory she had wanted to meet her for such a long time, because she had done some designs for Suffrage Christmas Cards, and hoped Amory wouldn’t mind her fearful cheek, but hoped she would look at them, and say exactly what she thought about them, and perhaps give her a tip or two, and, if it wasn’t asking too much, introduce her to the Manumission League, or to anybody else who might buy them.... Young Raffinger interrupted the flow of gush and apologetics.
“Oh, don’t bother her just yet, Eileen. Let her read her cable first.”
Amory turned quickly.—“What do you say? What cable?” she asked.
“There’s a cable for you.”
It lay on the uncleared tea-table, and everybody seemed to know all about the outside of it at all events. As it was not in the usual place for letters, perhaps it had been passed from hand to hand. Quite unaffectedly, they stood round in a ring while Amory opened it, with all their eyes on her. They most frightfully wanted to know what was in it, but of course it wouldhave been rude to ask outright. So they merely watched, expectantly.
Then, as Amory stood looking at the piece of paper, Walter was almost rude. But in the circumstances everybody forgave him.
“Well?” he said; and then with ready tact he retrieved the solecism. “Hope it’s good news, Amory?”
For all that there was just that touch ofschadenfreudein his tone that promised that he for one would do his best to bear up if it wasn’t.
Amory was a little pale. It was the best of news, and yet she was a little pale. Perhaps she was faint because she had not had any tea.
“Cosimo’s coming home,” she said.
There was a moment’s silence, and then the congratulations broke out.
“Oh, good!”
“Shall be glad to see the old boy!”
“Finished his work, I suppose?”
“Or perhaps it’s something to do with this Collins business?”
It was Mr. Brimby who had made this last remark. Amory turned to him slowly.
“What is this Collins business?” she asked.
Mr. Brimby dropped his sorrowing head.
“Ah, poor fellow,” he murmured. “I’m afraid he went to work on the wrong principles. Alittlemore conciliation ... but it’s difficult to blame anybody in these cases. The System’s at fault. Let us not be harsh. I quite agree with Wilkinson that the ‘Pall Mall’ to-night is very harsh.”
“Cowardly,” said Mr. Wilkinson grimly. “Rubbing it in because they have some sort of a show of a case. They’re always mum enough on the other side.”
Amory lifted her head.
“But you say this might have something to do with Cosimo’s coming back. Tell me at once what’s happened.—And put that telegram down, Walter. It’s mine.”
They had never heard Amory speak like this before. It was rather cool of her, in her own house, and quite contrary to the beautiful Chinese rule of politeness. And somehow her tone seemed, all at once, to dissipate a certain number of pretences that for the last hour or more they had been laboriously seeking to keep up. That, at any rate, was a relief. For a minute nobody seemed to want to answer Amory; then Mr. Wilkinson took it upon himself to do so—characteristically.
“Nothing’s happened,” he said, “—nothing that we haven’t all been talking about for a year and more. What the devil—let’s be plain for once. To look at you, anybody’d think you hadn’t meant it! By God, ifI’dhad that paper of yours!... I told you at the beginning what Strong was—neither wanted to do things nor let ’em alone; butI’dhave shown you! I’d have had a dozen Prangs! But he didn’t want one—and he didn’t want to sack him—afraid all the time something ’ld happen, but daren’t stop—doing too well out of it for that ... and now that it’s happened, what’s all the to-do about? You’re always calling it War, aren’t you? And itisWar, isn’t it? Or only Brimby’s sort of War—like everything else aboutBrimby?——”
Here somebody tried to interpose, but Mr. Wilkinson raised his voice almost to a shout.
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it?... Lookee here! A little fellow came here one Sunday, a little collier, and he said ‘Wilkie knows!’ And by Jimminy, Wilkie does know! I tell you it’s everybody for himself in this world, and I’m out for anything that’s going! (Yes, let’s have a bit o’ straight talk for a change!) War? Of course it’s War! What do we all mean about street barricades and rifles if it isn’t War? It’s War when they fetch the soldiers out, isn’t it? Or is that a bit more Brimby? And you can’t have War without killing somebody, can you? I tell you we want it at home, not in India! I’ve stood at the dock gates waiting to be taken on, and I know—no fear! To hell with your shillyshallying! If Collins gets in the way, Collins must get out o’ the way. We can’t stop for Collins. I wish it had been here! I can just see myself jumping off a bridge with a director in my arms—the fat hogs! If I’d had that paper! There’d have been police round this house long ago, and then the fun would have started!... Me and Prang’s the only two of all the bunch thatdoesknow what we want! And Prang’s got his all right—my turn next—and I shan’t ask Brimby to helpme——”
Through a sort of singing in her ears Amory heard the rising cries of dissent that interrupted Mr. Wilkinson—“Oh no—hang it—Wilkinson’s going too far!” But the noise conveyed little to her. Stupidly she was staring at the blue and yellow jets of the asbestos log, and weakly thinking what a silly imitation the thingwas. She couldn’t imagine however Cosimo had come to buy it. And then she heard Mr. Wilkinson repeating some phrase he had used before: “There’d have been police round this house and then the fun would have begun!” Police round The Witan, she thought? Why? It seemed very absurd to talk like that. Mr. Brimby was telling Mr. Wilkinson how absurd it was. But Mr. Brimby himself was rather absurd when you came to think of it....
Then there came another shouted outburst.—“Another Mutiny? Well, what about it? ItisWar, isn’t it? Or is it only Brimby’s sort ofWar?——”
Then Amory felt herself grow suddenly cold and resolved. Cosimo was coming back. Whether he had made India too hot to hold him, as now appeared just possible, she no longer cared, for at last she knew what she intended to do. Her guests were wrangling once more; let them wrangle; she was going to leave this house that Mr. Wilkinson apparently wanted to surround with police as a preliminary to the “fun.” Edgar might still be at the office; if he was not, she would sleep at some hotel and find him in the morning. Then she would take her leap. She had hesitated far too long. She would not go and look at the twins for fear lest she should hesitate again....
Just such a sense of rest came over her as a swimmer feels who, having long struggled against a choppy stream, suddenly abandons himself to it and lets it bear him whither it will.
Unnoticed in the heat of the dispute, she crossed to the studio door. She thought she heard Laura call,“Can I come and help, Amory?” No doubt Laura thought she was going to see about supper. But she no longer intended to stay even for supper in this house of wrangles and envy and crowds and whispering and crookedness.
Her cheque-book and some gold were in her dressing-table drawer upstairs. She got them. Then she descended again, opened the front door, closed it softly behind her again, passed through the door in the privet hedge, and walked out on to the dark Heath.
Thosewho knew Edgar Strong the best knew that the problem of how to make the best of both worlds pressed with a peculiar hardship on him. The smaller rebel must have the whole of infinity for his soul to range in—and, for all the practical concern that man has with it, infinity may be defined as the condition in which the word of the weakest is as good as that of the wisest. Give him scope enough and Mr. Brimby cannot be challenged. There is no knowledge of which he says that it is too wonderful for him, that it is high and he cannot attain unto it.
But Edgar Strong knew a little more than Mr. Brimby. He bore his share of just such a common responsibility as is not too great for you or for me to understand. Between himself and Mr. Prang had been a long and slow and grim struggle, without a word about it having been said on either side; and it had not been altogether Edgar Strong’s fault that in the end Mr. Prang had been one too many for him.
For, consistently with his keeping his three hundred a year (more than two-thirds of which by one means and another he had contrived to save), he did not see that he could have done much more than he had done.Things would have been far worse had he allowed Mr. Wilkinson to oust him. And now he knew that this was the “Novum’s” finish. Whispers had reached him that behind important walls important questions were being asked, and a ponderous and slow-moving Department had approached another Body about certain finportations (Sir Joseph Deedes, Katie’s uncle, knew all about these things). And this and that and the other were going on behind the scenes; and these deep mutterings meant, if they meant anything at all, that it was time Edgar Strong was packing up.
Fruit-farming was the line he fancied; oranges in Florida; and it would not take long to book passages—passages fortwo——
He had heard the news in the early afternoon, and had straightway sent off an express messenger to the person for whom the second passage was destined. Within an hour this person had run up the stairs, without having met anybody on a landing whom it had been necessary to ask whether Mr. So-and-So, the poster artist, had a studio in the building. Edgar Strong’s occupation as she had entered had made words superfluous. He had been carrying armfuls of papers into the little room behind the office and thrusting them without examination on the fire. The girl had exchanged a few rapid sentences with him, had bolted out again, hailed a taxi, sought a Bank, done some business there on the stroke of four, and had driven thence to a shipping office. Edgar Strong, in Charing Cross Road, had continued to feed his fire. The whole place smelt of burning paper. A mountain of ashes choked the grateand spread out as far as the bed and the iron washstand in the corner.
The girl returned. From under the bed she pulled out a couple of bags. Into these she began to thrust her companion’s clothes. Into a third and smaller bag she crammed her own dressing-gown and slippers, a comb and a couple of whalebone brushes, and other things. She had brought word that the boat sailed the day after to-morrow....
“There’s the telephone—just answer it, will you?” Strong said, casting another bundle on the fire....
“Wyron,” said the girl, returning.
“Never mind those boots; they’re done; and you might get me a safety-razor; shall want it on the ship.... By the way—I think we’d better get married.”
The girl laughed.—“All right,” she said as she crammed a nightdress-case into the little bag....
Amory walked quickly down the East Heath. As she walked she could not help wondering what there had been to make such a fuss about. Indeed she had been making quite a bugbear of the thing she was now doing quite easily. What, after all, would it matter? Would a single one of the people she passed so hurriedly think her case in the least degree special? Had they not, each one of them, their own private and probably very similar affairs? Was there one of them of whom it could be said with certainty that he or she was not, at that very moment, bound on the same errand? She looked at the women. There was nothing to betray them, but it was quite as likely as not. Nor could they tell by lookingat her. For that matter, the most resolute would hide it the most. And a person’s life was his own. Nobody would give him another one when he had starved and denied the one he had. There might not be another one. Some people said that there was, and some that there wasn’t. Meetings were held about that too, but so far they hadn’t seemed to advance matters very much....
Nor was it the urge of passion that was now driving her forward at such a rate. She could not help thinking that she had been rather silly in her dreams about carpets and Nubians and those things. If Edgar was passionate, very well—she would deny him nothing; but in that case she would feel ever so slightly superior to Edgar. She rather wished that that was not so; she hoped that after all it might not be so; on the whole she would have preferred to be a little his inferior. She had not been inferior to Cosimo. They, she and Cosimo, had talked a good deal about equality, of course, but, after all, equality was a balance too nice for the present stressful stage of the struggle between man and woman; a theoretical equality if you liked, but in practice the thing became a slight temporary feminine preponderance, which would, no doubt, settle down in time. Virtually she had been Cosimo’s master. She did not want to be Edgar’s. Rather than be that he might—her tired sensibilities gave a brief flutter—he might even be a little cruel to her if he wished....
A Tottenham Court Road bus was just starting from the bottom of Pond Street. She ran to catch it. It moved forward again, with Amory sitting insideit, between a man in a white muffler and opera-hat and a flower-woman returning home with her empty baskets.
Many, many times Amory Pratt, abusing her fancy, had rehearsed the scene to which she was now so smoothly and rapidly approaching; but she rehearsed nothing now. It would suffice for her just to appear before Edgar; no words would be necessary; he would instantly understand. Of course (she reflected) he might have left the office when she got there; it was even reasonably probable that he would have left; it was not a press-night; twenty to one he would have left. But her thoughts went forward again exactly as if she had not just told herself this.... He would be there. She would go up to him and stand before him. As likely as not not a word would pass between them. She felt that she had used too many words in her life. She and her set had discussed subjects simply out of existence. Often, by the time they had finished talking, not one of them had known what they had been talking about. It had been sheer dissipation. Men, she had heard, took drinks like that, and by and by were unable to stand, and then made hideous exhibitions of themselves. Nobody could say exactly at what point they, the men, became incapable, nor the point at which the others, Amory and her set, became word-sodden; in the one case the police (she had heard) made them walk a chalk-line; but there was no chalk-line for the others. Their paths were crooked as scribble....
But she was going straight at last—as straight as a pair of tram-lines could take her—and so far was shefrom wishing that the tram would go more slowly, that she would have hastened it had she been able.
The “Mother Shipton”—the Cobden Statue—Hampstead Road—the “Adam and Eve.” At this last stopping-place she descended, crossed the road, and boarded a bus. She remembered that once before, when she had visited the office in a taxi, the cab had seemed to go at a terrifying speed; now the bus seemed to crawl. A fear took her that every stop might cause her to miss him by just a minute. She tapped with her foot. She looked almost angrily at those who got in or out. That flower-woman: why couldn’t she have got out at the proper stopping-place, instead of upsetting everything with her baskets hardly a hundred yards further on?... Off again; she hoped to goodness that was the last delay. She had been stupid not to take a taxi after all.