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GRAY YOUTH
OLIVER ONIONS
 

NOVELS BY OLIVER ONIONS

 

In ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE
THE DEBIT ACCOUNT
THE Story oF LOvuIE

Gray YOUTH

 

 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
NEW YORK

 

 
GRAY YOUTH

THE STORY OF A VERY MODERN COURTSHIP
AND A VERY MODERN MARRIAGE

BY

OLIVER QNIONS, pred

Author of ‘In Accordance with the Evidence,’’
‘‘The Debit Account.”’

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
NEW YORK
Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton |
Copyright, 1913,

By Georce H. Dornan Company

 

Copyright, 1914,
By Georce H. Doran CoMPANY
TO
MARY STEWART
, PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Gray Youth is published in
England in two volumes under
the titles: The Two Kisses and
A Crooked Mile.
CONTENTS

BOOK ONE: A VERY MODERN COURTSHIP—

PART I
CHAPTER
ARGUMENT . .. .
I Curyne Wax
IL’ Tue Surprise Party
III Tue Fasuion Strupio
IV Tue McGratu
V Pounps anp SHILuncs
VI Wowman’s WHoLE EXISTENCE .
VII Tue Voice raat BreatHep O’Er EDEN .
PART II
I Pence.
II A Damsex Errant .
OI “Bustness as Usuau”
IV “It ravut qu’ uNE Porte—” .
V_ Bownp anp Free .
‘PART III
I Tue Leave .
II “ Barrace”
TIT EprraatraMium

THE TWO KISSES

Entre’ ACTE . 1. ww ew ew
vii

PAGE

11
18
33
52
67
83
99

. 120

. 142
. 160
. 176
. 191
. 215

. 2438
. 263
. 287
. 314
vili

CONTENTS

BOOK TWO: A VERY MODERN MARRIAGE—

A CROOKED MILE

CHAPTER

I
II
Til
IV
Vv
Vi

II
Ill
IV

VI

II
Til
IV

Tue WIiTan

PART I

Tue Ponp-Room .

THE ‘‘Novum’”’

THe Stone WALL

THREE SHIPS .
Po.icy

PART IT

Tue PIGEON Pair .

THe ’VERT

Tur ImMPERIALISTS

THe OUTSIDERS
““House Fuiw’’

Tue Sout Storm .

Litmus

By tae Way .
Dr Trop
Gray YOUTH .
TAILPIECE

PART III

PAGE

. 321
. 337
. 352
. 369
. 3893
. 414

. 435
. 447
. 463
. 485
. 503
. 524

. 553
. 568
. 588
. 598
. 620
BOOK ONE
A VERY MODERN COURTSHIP
BOOK ONE
A VERY MODERN COURTSHIP

PART I
ARGUMENT

GIRL of seventeen, with a knitted tam-o’-shanter
cap and a thick cable of red-bronze hair hanging
down her back, walked along a gallery of the Louvre,
looking for her aunt. The eyes that turned whenever
she heard a footfall or, passing a statue or case, saw a
fresh vista before her, were of a light brown, with just
such a hint of gold in their irises as you see when some
opals are turned and catch a different light; and they
were confused and overfilled with the treasures on
which they had rested. She was an art-student, and
must return to London on the morrow in order to re-
sume her studies at the McGrath.

It was her first visit to Paris, and she had spent the
whole of her three weeks at the Cluny and the Luxem-
bourg, at the Louvre and Versailles. Now, drenched
and sated with beauty, she still could not bear to leave
it all. A few minutes before, passing through the Salon
Carré, where an elderly lady had been copying the En-
tombment, she had wished that she too might be old and
white-haired if only age might so enlarge her capacity

for loveliness, that even youth would be well lost for it.
ll
12 THE TWO KISSES

Already she loved the highest when she saw it, and,
being an artist, she needs must attempt it too.

The girl found her aunt near the spot where the
Antin6dus stands on its pedestal, and walked along by
her side, neither speaking nor listening to the elder
lady’s remarks on the objects they passed. They did not
seem to her to be worth listening to. She knew that
for her aunt art had reached its comble on the day when
the late Sir Noél Paton had affixed his signature to
“The Man with the Muckrake,” and she had got out of
the way of trying to explain that much’ water had flowed
under London Bridge and many students flowed through
the McGrath since that time. Besides, she did not want
to talk. She wanted this last high hour in the Louvre
as much as might be to herself. She wanted to taste
the full emotion of it, not even analysing it, if only for
once analysis would cry a truce. At the end of the
gallery they turned and walked back again.

It was as they passed the Antinéus for the second
time that the girl felt her young bosom rise almost pain-
fully. She could not have told why, without premed-
itation, she suddenly lingered, so that her aunt passed
a little ahead. She watched her disappear behind some
plinth or pedestal or other, and then stopped opposite
the marble bust.

There was no knowing when she might find herself in
this wonderful place again, and it seemed to her that her
farewell of it now required some symbol. She gave a
furtive glance round. Neither visitor nor gardien was
to be seen, and again something seemed to rise in her
throat. Noiselessly she stole to the pedestal. For a
ARGUMENT 13

moment she wondered whether she dared; the next in-
stant she had risen,—in her low-heeled brown shoes she
was hardly more than five feet high,—she had risen on,
tiptoe.

She crushed her lips against the Antindus’s marble
cheek.

What it was she really kissed she had no idea. They
say that male artists have been known to kiss the pallid
mask of the Girl said to have been found in the Seine,
but probably they have kissed, not the senseless plas-
ter, but some more glowing inner image. But the girl
thought of no young man, Greek and dead or modern
and alive. Perhaps by her act she set young men
expressly aside, adoring the imperishable expression
instead. It was the first kiss she had ever given.
There was no sex-impulse in it, and yet it was a ges-
ture of sex. She would not have known what other
gesture to employ.

With a fluttering heart and a heightened colour she
rejoined her aunt, and on the following day returned to
London. For days after that a nameless wistfulness
still lingered in her shallow brook-brown eyes.

A fortnight after her return they gave a fancy-dress
dance at the McGrath, and the girl made one of a sup-
per-party of a dozen or more who, during the interval,
in one of the smaller painting-rooms, settled on the
floor in a wide ring, with plates of sandwiches and jelly
and cakes and blancmange making a rapidly disappear-
ing parterre of food in the middle. The ring was as
noisy as a merry-go-round of painted horses on a Bank
Holiday, and they played Hunt-the-Slipper, and per-
14 THE TWO KISSES

haps in the scuffling there was a little crude hand-
holding—though nobody held the girl’s hand. Then
they went back again to dance in the Antique Room,
where the tall casts, the “ Discobolus” and the “ Glad-
iator,” the “ Germanicus” and the great writhe of the
“ Laocotn,” had been wheeled back against the walls,
and stood, like so many sightless servitors, holding wraps
and shawls and the fans and oddments that had been
put down on their plinths. The girl danced again.

She was dressed this time as a porcelain shepherdess,
in a hooped skirt of tender pink with tiny sprigs of
green sown throughout it. She had borrowed the dress
from one of the other girls. At supper, sitting in the
ring, she had resembled a rose-peony that had been
taken by its stalk and pressed down on the floor.
About the slender hyacinth-stalk of her neck was a
black velvet ribbon with a locket, and the thick mass of
her hair peeped over the shoulders of her partners like
an irregular knob of bronze lustre. Her shallow rib-
boned hat was on ‘‘Homer’s” head, between the
“ Gladiator ” and the “ Greek Slave.”

Some time during the later part of the evening,
she was induced by a young man in evening-dress, with
restrained manners but a hardy eye, to descend the
stairs, and, passing the hall-porter’s little glass box and
pushing at the outer swing-doors, to take a walk in the
courtyard of the School. The McGrath is only part
of a larger institution. In the forecourt are grass
plots enclosed by low swinging chains, and, tall and
dim, with many broad steps and Corinthian columns,
the pediment of the great main portico towers over the
ARGUMENT 15

court on the eastern side. The girl and her cavalier
crossed the grass plots, ascended the steps, and stood
within the gloom of the pillars.

There, without warning, the young man suddenly
stooped and kissed her.

She knew that these things happened, and daily;
but tears of misery and revulsion and shame started
into her eyes. It seemed—she did not know what—
a soilure,. a coarseness, a bringing down of some lovely
and to-be-dreamed-of thing to mere brutal demonstra-
tion. The young man was not even one of her com-
panions of the McGrath; he was a medical student, he
had told her, and so perhaps naturally insensible to
the finer emotions. With a sudden pained “Oh!”
she started from him, her hands crushed with horror
against her pretty cheeks and mouth. ‘She thought she
heard him say, “ Why, what’s the matter?” but she
was not sure; she was sure of nothing in this mo-
ment but of her own sense of miserable outrage.
She left the young man calling softly behind her, ran
quickly down the steps, and reached the dancing-room
again,

Near the door as she entered two men stood, looking
on. Both were men of forty-four or forty-five, and one
of them was Jowett, the McGrath Professor of Paint-
ing. His companion had just asked him a question;
he tugged at a ragged and grey-streaked moustache be-
fore replying.

“Art students? What becomes of ’em? God
knows! You might as well ask what becomes of peo-
ple who eat their meals in restaurants or little girls
16 THE TWO KISSES

who learn to play the piano. They aren’t a class.
Perhaps one in a thousand or fifteen hundred comes to
something, but the rest—well, what this place really
is, if you want to know, is a sort of day nursery for the
children of the well-to-do middle class.”

“You mean they marry and then drop it?” the
other asked.

Jowett tugged again at the unkempt moustache.
He spoke patiently and wearily.

“Oh yes; and co-educate their offspring; and by
and by I suppose we shall have evolved a sort of inter-
mediate sex, half women who make a hash of doing
men’s work, and half men who put flowers in their hair
and talk about music. It always seems to me that
these girls ought to be sewing or baking, and the men
drinking beer and singing limericks in a canteen.—
There’s a girl, now: ”

The small creature dressed as a shepherdess had just
run past. The eyes of both men followed her. Jowett
continued.

“Miss Amory Towers. She’s the pick of ’em; one
of the clever ones, I mean; and as far as my experience
takes me, that means she’s just a little too clever for a
woman and not nearly clever enough to make a really
satisfactory man. But, of course, she’s young, and I
may be wrong. ... I put her straight into the Life
when she came here, but what she really needs is some-
body to put her into Life in another sense. But I
doubt if anybody here’ll do it. These fellows don’t
see other men enough; too much squiring these young
women about.—Eh? Harm in it? Not a ha’porth;

 
ARGUMENT 17

__they’re too dashed blameless altogether. Sometimes
it’s positively unnatural; it seems to me to raise the
very questions it’s supposed to suppress. Probably
these youngsters will grow up to be fifty, and then dis-
cover all the follies they’ve had the chance to commit
and haven’t committed, and then they’ll go about
preaching doctrines about it all. Really, they scare
me sometimes. I’m not naturally gross, but they do
drive a fellow. z

But here the other interrupted him... “ Hallo,
your little shepherdess seems to be going early.”

Amory Towers, her tiny figure wrapped in a hood
and cloak and her young heart one unhappy ache to
know the meaning of these two first kisses of her life,
was hurrying away.

 
‘ I
CHEYNE WALK

[° Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, there used to stand, and
may stand yet, a tenement of which the ground
floor was a small “lock-up” greengrocer’s shop, and
the remaining portions either dwelling-rooms or else
rooms that, like the shop, were left at night and re-
turned to again the next morning. The narrow entry
to the right of the shop had once been white-washed,
but was now so discoloured that the street boys had
ceased to scribble on its walls the names of horses
and other matters. It wds full of the smell of apples and
oranges and of the more suspect odour of earth and
bruised rinds and decaying outer leaves, and there was
usually a cat or two about, licking up the last splash
left by the milkman’s can. ‘When a new milkman took
the round he was lucky if he did not come down all-
fours at the bottom of the narrow winding staircase
that turned off sharp to the right. The staircase itself
was as black as the inside of a pair of bellows, and a
piece of paper at the foot of it bore two names:

Miss Dorotuy Lennarp
Miss Amory Towsrs

These were followed by the words: “ First Floor:

if Out, leave Parcels at Shop.”
18
CHEYNE WALK 19

The landing of the first floor was slightly less black
than the staircase itself, but the grey half-light filtered
through, not from any window, but from the unhinged
side of the door of the room rented by Miss Lennard
and Miss Towers. As if the landing had been damp
and the room beyond warm (which possibly was the
case), this door, which was of thin matchboarding,
warped inwards quite two inches at the top, and, in-
deed, seemed to be held only by the fastening in the
middle. When the door happened to be locked the
glimpse through this crack was always productive of
a slight annoyance. It was as if Miss Dorothy Len-
nard or Miss Amory Towers was nearly in, or not
quite gone away, or in any case must be returning in a
few minutes. People often waited for quite a long
time before finally giving up hope.

Early on an April afternoon some years ago there
walked quickly into the entry and ran confidently up
the dark stairs a tall young woman in a large black
picture-hat and a long tea-coloured silk raincoat. On
the first landing she pushed at the door with her foot.
There was a short succession of flapping and shot-like
sounds (for if the door skellowed inwards at the top
it stuck correspondingly at the bottom), and then the
door started open and the young woman entered.

“ Amory!” she called loudly. ‘Where are you?”

The last words were superfluous, since (unless she
had climbed out of the long front casement and on to
the gutter) it was not possible for Miss Towers to be
in hiding in the room. And out of the square aperture
at the back, that commanded a view of washing, weeds,
20 THE TWO KISSES

discarded bottles, the greengrocer’s “ empties” and the
back gardens of the west side of Oakley Street, she
could not as much as have got her head. Nor did Miss
Lennard wait for an answer. Down the chimney op-
posite the door there came a dense yellow cauliflower of
smoke; Miss Lennard hastily closed the door again;
and then, first looking for a moment this way and that,
she strode to a black-and-white desk near the long case-
ment and began to turn over the litter upon it. This,
which was a foot and more high, consisted of magazines
and ladies’ journals and tracing-paper and proofs, and
it was surmounted, first, by a plate with a couple of
bananas and a half-eaten bunch of grapes upon it, and
secondly, by a glass of water, clear above, cloudy in the
middle, and with a thick reddish sediment at the bot-
tom. As she sought, Miss Lennard popped three or
four grapes into her large O of a mouth, throwing the
skins towards the fireplace, from which another opaque
yellow cauliflower poured, though this time not quite
so far out into the room. She had removed her gloves;
her hands were large and firm and waxen and without
rings; and one or other of them found its way of itself
to the grapes while the other continued its search.

The smoking of the chimney had blackened the ceil-
ing, which bellied downwards in the middle like the
under side of a giant’s mattress; and it had also
dimmed the surfaces of such of the brighter objects of
furniture as the cheap working-room contained—the
picture-glasses, the gate-legged table, a bowl full of
dead daffodils, and some crockery. But Miss Len-
nard and Miss Towers frequently said that it was not
CHEYNE WALK 21

for the inside of the room, but for the sake of the views
from the long lattice in front, that they had chosen the
place. These were for ever changing and charming.
From a standpoint just within the door you looked over
the Embankment Gardens and saw, through trees,
lighters following the bullying tugs, or barges, their
sails reefed to the sprits, resembling tall attenuated
figures in the act of grasping punting-poles. Placing
yourself in the middle of the worn floor you saw,
crossed out as it were by the middle lattice, the Chelsea
Jelly Factory and other buildings across the river.
And standing quite by the fireplace you saw the lacy
lines of the Suspension Bridge and the low grey-green
trees of Battersea Park. As the chimney emitted more
yellow curds, Miss Lennard, with an “ Ugh!” opened
the middle section of this window. The papers among
which she had been searching were instantly whisked
across the floor.

“ Bother the thing!” she muttered. “ How stupid
if it’s at Oxford Street all the time! . . . I say, Amory,
have you seen that Doubleday thing? You know—
the Chemisettes. I was sure I’d left it here.”

The door had rattled again, and Miss Amory Towers
had entered.

Miss Towers did not answer at once. From a
brown pudding-bowl of a hat with a silken cord round
it, she drew out two enamel-headed hatpins, and hung
the hat on a hook. Its removal showed her rich hair
no longer in a plait, but wreathed round and round her
head and interplaited until it resembled a vividly
painted fir cone. She wore a peacock’s-neck-coloured
22 THE TWO KISSES

blouse with several necklaces of iridescent shells at the
collar; a roughened leather belt encircled the waist that
would have been large had she herself not been so small;
and, while the breeze from the open window rippled
in Dorothy’s tea-coloured raincoat, it hardly stirred
the folds of Amory’s heavier skirt of dusty-looking
brown. velvet.

She moved to the window. “TI haven’t touched your
things,” she said.

Then she stood, half leaning against the embrasure,
gazing moodily across the river.

Certainly she was fetchingly pretty. As if you had
looked at her through one of the very weak reducing-
‘glasses illustrators use in order to see how their work
will diminish, so her features had.not only a special
smallness, but somehow a special brightness of their
own as well. The slight neck was white as a bluebell
stalk; the faint flower-like stippling that never quite
broke through into avowed freckles reminded you of a
rubbed old miniature that might have been painted,
not on ivory, but on a lamina of pale gold; and her in-
ordinate hair lighted up the whole casement angle.
But.she was perturbed about something. She watched
a string of lighters drift down with the tide, and then,
without turning her head, said, “‘ Dorothy ”

Dorothy, who had been once more searching among
the scattered papers, rose from her knees. She held
a piece of paper in her hand. “Got it!” she cried
triumphantly. “TI knew Id left it here. . . . What?”

““Have you heard about Aunt Jerry?”

‘‘ Thank goodness I haven’t trailed all the way from

 
CHEYNE WALK : 23

Oxford Street for nothing! ... Aunt Jerry? No.
What about her?”

“She’s going to be married.”

Ordinarily Dorothy Lennard’s blue eyes were wide,
receptive rounds; in moments of surprise they always
seemed to open to twice their size. They did so now.”

“No! ... Oh, my dear, do tell me, quick.”

“Mr. Massey, at the boarding-house.”

“Mr. ? Not the safety-valve?” she cried.

ce Yes.”

“My—dear! ... But he’s forty if he’s a day,”
Dorothy exclaimed.

“He’s forty-three. Aunt Jerry’s thirty-eight.”

“ Oh, but she’s such a darling! Have they told peo-
ple yet? May I write her a note? When are they
going to be married?” Miss Lennard came as near
to asking the three questions all in one as was physically
possible.

“Write if you like. They’re getting married in
July. I call it re

But instead of saying what she called it Amory
turned impatiently to the window again. She was bit-
ing the corner of her upper lip.

“Why,” said Dorothy, checked in her glee, “ what’s
the matter?”

But Amory did not speak. She had been about to
say, if a thing so obvious needed to be said, that it was
ridiculous (to say the least) for people of thirty-eight
and forty-three to be thinking about marriage; but that
was not all. There were other things, that, since
Dorothy could not understand them even if she did

 

 
24 THE TWO KISSES

say them, were perhaps not worth wasting breath over.
Not that Dorothy was actually dull; but for all that
Amory had almost ceased to hope that Dorothy would
ever grasp her, Amory’s, true position. Their circum-
stances were so very different. Of course Amory was
ready to concede that Dorothy, like herself, did con-
trive to live on what she earned; she earned from thirty
to thirty-five shillings a week as a fashion artist; but
it was one thing to make do on that, with people be-
hind you to catch you when you stumbled, and quite
another to have (as Amory had under her godmother’s
will) a scanty thirteen pounds a quarter, to sell a sketch
or a picture once in a blue moon, and to know that
that is all the help you need look forward to. Dorothy
would quickly have found out the difference had it
‘been she, Amory, who had had the people with houses
in town and places up and down the country, and her-
self, Dorothy, who had been the daughter of a poor and
clever Cambridge practitioner who had died before he
had managed to get on his feet, and had left his daugh-
ter to live with the only relative she had in the world
in a hateful boarding-house in Shepherd’s Bush! And
it was all very fine for Dorothy to joke about it, and
to say that the fewer relatives she had the luckier she
was. There was no getting away from it: these things
did give a confidence to Dorothy’s stride, and an as-
surance to her glance, and an expectation of success to
her eyes.

Therefore Amory. did. not answer when her friend
asked her what was the matter.

But Dorothy, after a moment’s cogitation, contrived,
CHEYNE WALK 25

though probably by accident, to hit on what was the ~
matter for herself.

““T must write to her at once,” she said. “In July
—so soon! I am glad! I do hope they'll be happy!
.. . And what'll you do? Go on living at the board-
ing-house ?”’

Ah! (Amory thought), so Dorothy did see it from
somebody’s point of view besides Aunt Jerry’s! She
moved one shoulder petulantly.

“ Aunt Jerry paid the bills there,” she said.

“Do you mean that you’ll go and live with them
when they’re married?” Dorothy asked.

“No, I don’t,” said Amory with marked brevity.
Dorothy hadn’t seen her aunt and Mr. Massey together
or she wouldn’t have asked that. And one of them
was thirty-eight and the other forty-three! Talk about
the loves of the valetudinarians! ©

“Well, what will you do?” Dorothy asked again.

Again Amory turned to the window. She spoke
with her back to Dorothy.

“What can I do? What is there left? Come and
live here, as far as I can see,” she replied.

“Oh,” cried Dorothy at once, struck with the idea,
“thatll be jolly!”

(Jolly! With that warped door and that chimney!
Jolly! Amory almost laughed.)

“Oh yes, very jolly,” she said, tossing the adorable
little head.

But Dorothy caught the tone in which she said it.

“ Oh, I don’t suppose it will be if you’re determined
it shan’t, but don’t I just wish J had your talent and
26 THE TWO KISSES

chances!” she replied cheerfully. “My hat, wouldn’t
I swap! Why, think of what all the cerities—Hamil-
ton Dix at any rate—are saying about you! You're
going to have a show all on your own ”

“Hm! If I ever do! Don’t forget it’s been put
off three times already.”

“Well, but each time it couldn’t be helped, and
yow’re going ahead working all the time, and it'll be a
tremendous leg-up for you when it does come. You
ought to have my job, my dear, in the middle of a cat-
alogue rush, or when you’ve drawn the lingerie ladies
as like fishes as ever they can be, and you get letters
complaining that you’re starting young men on the
downward path—youw’d come back to your pictures
thankfully enough then, J can tell you! The fact is
you don’t know what you do want... . Now I’m go-
ing to make a cup of tea and then I must fly back; I
only came for that Doubleday thing. Have some?”

She crossed to the sink, emptied the leaves from the
teapot on to the heap that already choked the trap, and
filled the kettle and set it on the fire.

It always annoyed Amory when Dorothy told her
that she didn’t know really what she did want, for she
always did know—at any rate for the time being. True,
she had worked in various styles in the past; to an un-
intelligent watcher she might even have seemed vac-
illating and changeable: but after all, what better
course could a student follow than that? Youth was
the time for bold experiment. Settled convictions too
early arrived at were things to be distrusted. And
there were indications that she really had “ found her-

 
CHEYNE WALK 27

self” at last. She had swept aside, quite a long time
ago, her earlier efforts of the days of the McGrath; she
had outgrown, too, the Meunier-like figures, all muscle
and hammers and leather aprons, that had first at-
tracted Mr. Hamilton Dix’s attention; and all round |
that Cheyne Walk room were stacked the canvases of
her latest and (she hoped) her finally settled phase—
her Saturday night street-markets, her ‘ character
studies”? worked up from sketches made in White-
chapel and Shoreditch, her scenes sketched in alleys
and courts and during long waits in gallery-queues.
Therefore she was a little annoyed with Dorothy now.
... Dorothy was clearing the table and cutting
bread-and-butter. Amory continued to look out of
the window.

Then, while Dorothy still prepared tea, she moved
from the window and walked to the little shelf of books.
that occupied the recess on the farther side of the fire-
place. She took down a volume protected by a stout
brown paper wrapper and began to read as she stood.
Still reading, she sidled slowly back to the window,
where the light was better, and mechanically turned
the page. She could. always pick up a book and lose
herself at a moment’s notice like this. If at such times
she was spoken to, she usually gave an “Eh?” or a
“Yes—no, I mean,” and continued to read. She
considered it to be evidence of her powers of mental
concentration.

The book she was reading now was the first volume
of The Golden Bough. Such a book, of course, was
far too expensive for her to buy; therefore, in order
28 THE TWO KISSES

that she might read it and its kind, she subscribed to a
sort of private Association which was composed of her-
self and a dozen or so of her old friends of the McGrath.
They bought the books as they were published, passed
them (protected by the brown paper covers) from one
to another, and after a time sold them back to the book-
seller again at diminished (but still quite good) prices.
None but rather expensive and abstruse books were
thus bought; had The Golden Bough been procurable
in the Bohn Library the Association would have felt
that something of its choiceness had gone; and Amory
hoped, when she had got through The Golden Bough,
to be the next in rotation for certain of the Tudor
Translations, and she did wish Laura Beamish would
hurry up with Apuleius and the Golden Ass. These
things contributed to breadth of outlook. It had for
too long been a justly-founded reproach against artists
that they had no general culture. Amory felt that, of
all people, an artist certainly could not know too much;
and what an artist knows will go, sooner or later, into
his or her art. . . . She was still deep in The Golden
Bough wea Dorothy called, “ a along,
Amory

Reluctantly Amory laid aside the book and sat down
at the little gate-legged table.

As the two girls took tea they talked of Miss Ger-
aldine Towers’s engagement, of Amory’s own plans after
the wedding, of the Exhibition that for various reasons
Mr. Hamilton Dix had repeatedly postponed, and of
one thing and another. Then Dorothy rose. She must
get back to the fashion studio in Oxford Street.

 
CHEYNE WALK 29

“You're going to work, I suppose?” she said, as
she tucked the Doubleday thing into her belt and ad-
justed her hat before the little kitchen mirror.

Amory yawned. That was another thing Dorothy
never seemed really to grasp—that while she, Dorothy,
might sit down to her absurd attenuated fashion figures
as it were with the striking of a clock, Amory’s work
was rather different. Dorothy, of course, always pro-
fessed to admire Amory’s painting enormously; in a
sense she had no choice but to do so, unless she wished
to write herself down an out-and-out fool: but she never
really understood, in spite of the pains Amory had
taken with her. It was rather pathetic. .. . Amory
yawned again.

“ Oh, I don’t suppose I shall do very much. This
about Aunt Jerry’s put me quite off. And ’’—she
grimaced slightly— there’s to-night. They’re having
a party, or a celebration, or something at our boarding-
house. I expect that'll be rather ghastly. Want to
come and see?”

But Dorothy only laughed.

“To-night? A party? Me? I shall be lucky if
I get away by eleven. ... And oh, I say, Amory,”
—her tone changed suddenly, and all at once she seemed
embarrassed,—“ I nearly forgot—there’s something—
it had almost slipped out of my head-—I hope you won’t
mind my suggesting it a

It was part of Amory’s cleverness, helped of course
by her wide reading, that she often knew what people
were going to say almost before they knew it them-
selves. She knew what Dorothy was going to say now.

 
30 THE TWO KISSES

And it was not true that Dorothy had nearly forgotten ;
that was merely false delicacy and a roundabout way
of approaching the subject. Amory smiled.

“You see,” Dorothy went on, “ there’s a job of sorts
going—not a fashion—not exactly a fashion, that is—
more like a painting—and I think the price.could be
screwed up to fifteen pounds for it—Mercier would get
twenty-five; but then he’s Mercier. So I wondere ”
She paused diffidently.

It was not the first time she had tried to put work
into Amory’s way. And Amory knew that she was
perfectly right in refusing it; it was Dorothy who did
not know that the commercially acceptable thing is
separate in kind, and not a dilution of a different ex-
cellence. Dorothy, by rising, might in time attain to
the heights of the great Mercier, who did “ Doubleday
Spring Covers,” but Amory, stooping, would only have
stooped for nothing. She lifted her golden eyes to her
friend. She was half amused at the success of her
guess, and half sensible of Dorothy’s well-meaningness
and kindness of heart.

“Tt’s awfully good of you—but you know I simply
shouldn’t know how to begin,” she said. “I think
perhaps I’d better stick to my own job.”

“Not if I gave you tips?” said Dorothy, almost
wistfully.

“Tm afraid not.”

Dorothy openly admired her. The two girls had
been at the McGrath together, and Dorothy’s admira-
tion was the homage that artistic vice (fashion-draw-

 
CHEYNE WALK 31

ing) paid to artistic virtue (street-markets and an im-
pending one-man-show).

“Tsay, Amory, you are plucky!” she exclaimed.

Amory: knew that she was not plucky in the least,
but it did not displease her to let it go at that. She
murmured something about “ Absurd!” and Dorothy,
with a wave, was off. Amory heard her step in the
entry below; then the sound died away on Cheyne
Walk.

Left alone, Amory set on the kettle again for washing-
up; then, until it should boil, she looked anew round
the room in which, for all she could see to the contrary,
she would soon be living. And tea had now put her
into a rather better humour. After all, it might not
beso bad. Not that it was not all very fine for Dorothy
to talk; anybody could talk lightly about living over
greengrocers’ shops who had people who rode in cars
with tea-baskets and bridge-tables inside them and lived
in houses with eight-foot baths and electric lights in
the wardrobes so that they could see which frocks they
were taking down; nevertheless, it might not be so bad.
Cosimo Pratt would help her. Cosimo was go good at
arranging things. If anybody could make this single
dingy room with the lovely view comfortable, Cosimo
could. And Cosimo, unlike Dorothy, really did under-
stand her painting... .

She did not pick up The Golden Bough again; in-
stead, she stood in front of a photograph of the Gio-
conda that was pinned to the plaster wall. It was one
of a row—a Rembrandt, a Corot, the Infante, and
32 THE TWO KISSES

others—which she had bought in Paris four years be
fore. She had Pater’s description of the Gioconda by
heart, as also she had that of Richard Jeffries of th
Accroupie underneath it; and she was murmuring th
passage, when, with a great burst of steam, the kettl
boiled over. She set about her washing-up.

It was a task she loathed. All domestic work shi
loathed. In pouring the boiling water on to the cup:
and saucers, with the kettle held out at arm’s length
so that she should not splash herself, she got hold of the
hot part of the handle; and when she had run colc
water on to the utensils she dipped her fingers into ¢
scalding cup in a corner of the tin that had not beer
cooled. The butter on the plates was horrid, and in
stead of the proper drying-cloth she got hold of a paint
ing-rag, with turps on it. A knife-handle came off ir
the boiling water, and, incautiously drawing too neal
the sink, she splashed the brown velvet skirt after all

It was as she was washing her greasy hands after
wards that she became conscious of a vague and familia
odour. From what part of the house it came she did
not know—perhaps from the greengrocer’s downstairs.
perhaps from the rooms overhead. It came up the pipe.
and it was the smell of water in which cabbage hac
been. boiled.

Hitherto it had not been worth complaining about,
but now, if she really was coming to live in this room,
something would have to be done. What it was that
would have to be done—well, she would ask Cosimo.
II
THE SURPRISE PARTY

66 LENERNE,”’ the boarding-house between

Brook Green and Goldhawk Road in which
Amory lived with her aunt, was really two large houses
thrown into one; and, besides sheltering its twenty-odd
guests, it served as a sort of academy for the teaching of
English to foreign waiters. These came—German,
Swiss, Danish, Belgian, even Turkish—without a word
of our tongue, gave their services for several months;in
return for their food, and a year or so later were to
be found in the restaurants of Frith and Old Compton
Streets and the brasseries of Leicester Square, as Eng-
lish as you please. Perhaps in the manner of food
they came off better than did the guests themselves,
for, while the establishment provided four set meals
a day, you had to sit down to all of these unless you
would go slightly hungry. Miss one and you never
quite caught up again.

But you forgot this slight nearness to the knuckle
in the fullness with which Miss Addams’s advertise-
ment in The Shepherd’s Bush Times—the one that be-
gan “Young Musical Society”—was redeemed.
Every night there was something “on”; if it was not
a whist drive or singing it was an impromptu dance in

the large double drawing-room on the first floor, or
33
34 THE TWO KISSES

charades, or a semi-private rehearsal by the Glenerne
contingent of the Goldhawk Amateur Dramatic Society.
The esprit de pension was very strong; it was as if
a vow of loyalty to Miss Addams’s cruets had been
taken.

The walls of the drawing-room were trophied with
the photographs of former guests; these stood, framed
or unframed, in groves on the mantelpiece (indeed,
when Christmas came round with its cards, it was im-
possible to open a door without bringing whole castles
of photographs and pasteboard greetings down into the
fender) ; and, ranged on one special little whatnot be-
tween the Nottingham lace curtains and Millais’s
framed and glazed supplement of “ Little Miss Muffet,”
were Miss Addams’s “ grand-children ”—the offspring
of the three or four gentlemen or ladies who, at one
time and another, had left the boarding-house to get
married. About these translated ones something of the
legendary, even of the grandiose, had grown up; and
one particular chair in the dining-room, that on Miss
Addams’s right hand, was still known as “‘ Mr. Well-
come’s chair.”

At half-past eight on the evening of the day on which
Amory had told Dorothy of her aunt’s engagement a
suppressed gaiety pervaded the whole boarding-house.
Dinner was over, and in the little greenhouse that pro-
longed the hall at the expense of the narrow back gar-
den a few of the men were still smoking; but the draw-
ing-room upstairs was filled with a twittering of antici-
pation of the guests knew not what. Except that it
was to be in honour of Miss Towers’s engagement, Miss
THE SURPRISE PARTY 35

Addams had refused to tell what the evening’s enter-
tainment was to be. But even those who had missed
dinner had been told that that night Mr. Massey had
been promoted to Mr. Wellcome’s chair, vice Mr. Ed-
mondson, Glenerne’s youngest gentleman, who hitherto
had occupied it in order to settle a disputed point of
precedence between Mr. Rainbow and Mr. Massey
himself.

So, until Miss Addams should deign to declare her-
self, it seemed as if whist or dancing might break out
at any moment. Mr. Sandys, of the Lille Road Branch
of the East Midlands Bank, seemed loaded with song
on a hair-trigger, and had already cleared his throat
once or twice; little Mrs. Deschamps, who played the ac-
companiments, needed but a look to remove her rings,
set them in a neat row along the piano-top, give the
stool a twirl, and ask Mr. Geake, the Estate Agent, to
turn over for her; and young Mr. Edmondson, who was
a booking-clerk, moved here and there, humorously com-
plaining that it was a bit thick, his being ousted
from Mr. Wellcome’s chair like that. He did not cease
to pester Miss Addams to tell her little mystery. Miss
Addams, huge and pyramidal in her black satin, only
smiled over her tatting (she smiled frequently—the ex-
pression caused her slight moustache to pass for the
shadow of a dimple), and told him to wait and see.

“You know how you can get your place back again
—after July,” she said demurely.

Miss Geraldine Towers and Mr. Massey were not
in the room, and their absence had already given rise
to several of the rallies of wit that were characteristic
36 THE TWO KISSES

of Glenerne. For instance, when the little widow, Mrs,
Deschamps, had asked Amory with an air of great in-
nocence where her aunt was, and Amory had replied
that she thought she was writing letters, a ventrilo-
quial voice, that might or might not have been that of
Mr. Sandys, had been heard to ask whether Mr. Massey
was licking the stamps; and again, when Mrs. Des-
champs had asked Mr. Geake whether he would be so
good as to fetch her book for her (it was on the chair
by the aquarium), Mr. Geake had given the widow an
intelligent look and had replied that he rather thought
the corner by the aquarium was No Thoroughfare.
Mrs. Deschamps had given a little apologetic cough and
had said, How stupid of her! and young Mr. Edmond-
son, whose conversation was frequently a good deal be-
yond his years, had raised a laugh by stroking his
smooth lip and saying that he supposed it was only
Human Nature after all.

Amory was sitting on a painted three-legged stool
under a standard lamp, listlessly turning over the pages
of a magazine. She hated this place and these people,
and only ironically had she asked Dorothy that after-
noon whether she would not like to come to this party.
And she almost hated her aunt, who was probably still
sitting in the little bead-curtained recess on the landing
where the cloudy aquarium stood. It seemed to her
that if Aunt Jerry must get engaged at thirty-eight,
she might at least have done so without giving occa-
sion for this kind of vulgar and familiar comment.
But she supposed that that was what the “ Young
Musical Society” of Miss Addams’s advertisement
THE SURPRISE PARTY 37

really meant: gouty flirtations, ping-pong in middle
age, having your toes trodden on during scratch dances
by stout and breathless partners, and Progressive Whist,
with twenty-five-years-old stories told between the
deals. Amory’s pretty mouth curled: she saw it all
with merciless clearness. Glenerne seemed to her to
be half ancients trying to be young, and half young
people quickly getting old before their time. Oh, that
terrible and affable Mr. Edmondson—that awful Mr.
Geake—that impossible bank clerk, whatever his name
was! And the place itself! These Nottingham lace
curtains, with the dreary joke of the artificial spiders
crawling upon them, and the macramé-hung mantel-
pieces, and the Japanese joy-bells tinkling on the chan-
delier, when, with plain brown or green paper, and a
stencilled frieze in two colours, and a Japanese print
or two put just in the right places, and a few chosen
books here and there, even Glenerne might have been
made quite passable! . . . She was glad she was going
to Cheyne Walk. She would at least-be among her own
people and her own surroundings there!

She wished herself in Cheyne Walk at that mo-
ment when Mr. Edmondson walked up to her where she
sat, It never seemed to occur to Mr. Edmondson that
his company might not be at all times desirable, and she
almost shrank from him as she found her great fir-cone
of red-gold hair only an inch or two from his green
knitted waistcoat. At a greater distance, she sometimes
glanced at this waistcoat with interest, as if, in this
place where the old became young again at the expense
of their juniors, she expected Mr. Edmondson to become
38 THE TWO KISSES

visibly stouter from day to day. Mr. Edmondson spoke
now with idiotic cheerfulness.

“Looking at pictures, eh?” he said parentally,
“Don’t you get a bit fed-up with ’em after a whole
day of it?”

“No,” said Amory.

“Don’t you, really! Well, I must say illusterated:
papers have made great strides this last few years,,
Who’d ha’ thought of a Daily Spec a few years ago?
And we think nothing about it now. I see ’em out 0’
my little window once the morning rush slacks off a bit
—the bookstall’s just opposight—they chuck their
ha’pennies down one after another—‘ Spec!’ they say
—never think twice about it.”

“Oh?” said Amory. Mr. Edmondson might have
been the historian of modern journalism, looking back.
He continued. ;

“?*Uge circulation it must have; why, I’ve known
’em get through as many as thirty-eight quires in a
single morning at our place alone; somebody must;
make some money out of it! I forget what their divvy
is—But I wonder you don’t get fed-up with pictures
for all that. Ill be like me dealing out tickets in-
stead of cards for whist.”

“ Almost the same,” said Amory.

Mr. Edmondson looked at her for a moment suspi-
ciously, as if he thought she was getting at him. Not
very long before, Mr. Edmondson would have resented
being got at by girls, especially in his green waistcoat}:
but he had grown soberer and more tolerant since then.
He went avuncularly on.
THE SURPRISE PARTY 39

“What d’you suppose Miss Addams is going to
spring on us? I guessed French blind-man’s: bluff for
a start, with word-making and whist to cool off a bit
on: but Mrs. D. says forfeits. ... What, are you
off?”

“Yes, I’ve a letter to write.”

“‘ That’s the style: business before pleasure. I hope
you write in a good light always: nothing worse for the
_ eyes than writing in a bad light. It’s no good wishing
you had your eyesight back again when it’s gone: the
thing is to take care of it while you’re young. I saw
a bit in the paper the other day—it was about reading
in bed. ye

But Amory fled.

As she dropped the portiére of the drawing-room
door behind her she encountered her aunt on the land-
ing. She stopped. She was very angry with her
aunt; she felt that her aunt was making of her, too, a
laughing-stock. She turned her shallow brook-brown
eyes, but hardly her head, as she spoke.

“T do think ” she began impetuously, and
stopped. She stopped out of the sense that these things
ought not to have to be said. In making it necessary
for Amory to remark on them at all her aunt. was put-
ting her into a false position.

Miss Geraldine Towers had her hand on the knob of
the door. She smiled, but did not turn the knob.

“What, dear?” she asked amiably.

“T do think you needn’t set them all talking the way
you do. You might think of me a bit. Really, it’s
rather much sometimes.”

 

 
40 THE TWO KISSES

For a moment Miss Towers turned pink, then she
laughed. She was plump and personable; her new way
of doing her hair had taken ten years off her age and
if her high lace collar was rather tight and did cut her
a little under her second chin, well, we all have our
troubles, and there are worse ones than plumpness. She
straightened her wisteria-coloured satin blouse so that
the waist above the tailor-made fawn skirt looked its
smallest, and tilted her laughing head back so that it
seemed to rock on the two points of her collar-whale-
bones as if they had been gimballs.

“My dear,” she broke out, “don’t be so absurdly
solemn! Try to enjoy yourself; you’ll never be younger
than you are now! And I do wish you wouldn’t go
about in those sad art-colours always. You look like a
sparrow having a dust-bath. They may be all right for
pictures, but it isn’t as if you sat in a frame all day.
Good gracious, anybody’d think you were eighty to see
you sometimes! Laugh and the world laughs with you,
my dear. Come inside, and don’t be silly; we’re going.
to have great fun.”

But again Amory turned away.

More than once she had had a wild wonder whether
that trip to Paris had not had something to do with her
aunt’s preposterous rejuvenescence; but no, it was
hardly possible that while she herself had wandered in
the museums Aunt Jerry had given herself to secret and
wicked pleasures. No, it was the boarding-house and
the young musical society again. That clever adver-
tisement had really made Aunt Jerry think that she was
young. . . . It did not occur to Amory that perhaps
THE SURPRISE PARTY 41

these ancient ones, of forty or fifty or more, had earned
a rest. It did not occur to her that life might have
bruised and scarred them, and that they laughed a little
loudly and stridently for fear of worse, and that there
was hardly one of them whose eyes had not rested on
sadder and more sordid and tragic scenes than her own
had ever seen. She saw them, as it were, in the flat, as
a mere human pattern, and when she was bored with it,
Glenerne was a thing to be shut up like one of its own
photograph albums. Their manners offended her, and
she inquired no further. . . . In the meantime, how-
ever, flirtatious little Mrs. Deschamps would sit in a
corner with anybody, and her aunt entered into an en-
gagement at an age when she really might have been
expected to be thinking of. serious things, and the what-
not in the corner, with its photographs of Glenerne’s
grandchildren, was a source of mirth that seemed never
to run dry, and if Amory must be misunderstood, well,
it was better to be misunderstood than to be understood
by these terrible people.

Amory went to her room and took down a volume of
Pater.

But she had hardly opened the book when there came
a tap at her door, and, in response to her “ Come in,”
her aunt’s middle-aged fiancé entered.

Dorothy Lennard had called Mr. Massey the safety-
valve because he always seemed to use three times as
many “s’s” in his conversation as anybody else. These
escaped over a neat little row of very white lower teeth
like those of a bulldog. The dark hair that grew up
the sides of his head always reminded Amory of the
42 THE TWO KISSES

elastics of an old pair of boots, and his cropped dark
moustache did not interfere with his perpetual gentle
hissing. He wore gold glasses and a closely-buttoned
frock-coat; he was an educational bookseller in St.
Mark’s Road; and it had now been known for some
hours in the boarding-house that he, a man of some sub-
stance, had been moved to come to Glenerne first of all
by the sight of Miss Geraldine Towers shaking the
crumb-tray out of the window to feed the birds.

“My dear Amory,” said Mr. Massey, “ Geraldine
has asked me to come and see whether you won’t join
the rest of us in our little celebration. I need not say
that it would be pleasant if you would. assist.”

Without (she thought) too open an appearance of
resignation, Amory closed her book again. She sup-
posed she must... . . “ All right, if you like,”. she said,
without fervour.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Massey gratefully. ‘I was
sure you would not absent yourself—And since I am
here, I wonder whether I might say a word for which
oceasion has not hitherto presented itself?”

Amory was silent, noting the educational bookseller’s
periods. He continued.

“Tt is perhaps a little too early to speak of it, but it
might set your mind at rest. When Geraldine and I
are married, in July if all be well, I do not want you
to feel that any difference to yourself will be made.
Your home, if you wish it, will still be with us.”

Amory broke out a little quickly, as if not to leave it
for a moment in doubt that she was properly grateful,
“ Oh, thank you so very much, Mr. Massey- en

 
THE SURPRISE PARTY 43

 

““George—or Uncle George ” said Mr. Massey
gently.

“Uncle George—and I do hope you won’t think me
horrid—but I thought of living in my studio——”

Mr. Massey made a little calming gesture with his
hands, as if~to say that all should be exactly as she
pleased. He nodded several times.

“T understand; your art; you know best; don’t think
I wish to put the least constraint on you. I only want
to assure you that your aunt’s house is always at your
disposal,” he said kindly.

“Thank you so much,” said Amory hurriedly; and
there was a sudden pause.

“Tt will probably,” Mr. Massey went on deliber-
atively, as if he passed a succession of desirable dwell-
ings in mental review, “be on the Mall. Yes, Chis-
wick Mall. One sees such sweet sketches there, espe-
cially of sunsets. But in case you do elect to occupy
your studio, there will be a little business we shall have
to arrange. It may even include a little money. But
we can talk of that later—Shall we join the others, my
dear?”

He was genuinely fond of her. When she touched
her hair before the little whitedraped glass he dis-
creetly turned his back, almost as if he wished to re-
assure Amory about any stray jest she might have heard.
about the aquarium corner; and then after a moment he
punctiliously gave Amory his arm. They returned to
the drawing-room,

Perhaps Miss Addams herself had become a little anx-
ious about her promised surprise, and had decided to

°
44 THE TWO KISSES

make sure of something else in case it failed her, for
they had begun to dance. Every boarder was there,
including M. Criqui, the Frenchman; and, ranged in-
separably against the wall, were the three Indians whose
faces resembled olives with white moving eyes. Mats
and rugs had been pushed back to the walls; M. Criqui
“turned” for Mrs. Deschamps; Mr. Edmondson was
waltzing with pretty Miss Crebbin, the typist; and Mr.
Sandys danced with Miss Swan, of the Preparatory
School near the tram terminus. The window looking
on to the back garden was open; the screen of pock-
marked coloured glass had been drawn in front of the
fire; and the pictures on the walls moved slightly in the
draughts. Mr. Geake had placed himself on point-duty
near the folding-doors, and was shepherding couples
past the awkward place; and from a group of men who
conspired out on the landing came sudden bursts of
laughter from time to time. Mr. Massey, the hero of

the occasion, left Amory, and moved here and there,
patting backs, touching elbows, and ever and anon
beaming with mild delight about him and rubbing his
hands.

The waltz ended, and another began; and Mr. Ed-
mondson, who seemed to have shaken off his seriousness
and to have lapsed into youth again, came up to Amory
and asked her whether he might have the pleasure.
Amory, resolved to go through it now that she was here,
placed her hand on his arm. ‘ Might as well have one
of these while there’s any left,” he said genially, snatch-
ing a paper fan from the mantelpiece as they passed;
““T wonder what those blighters are up to!” He indi-
THE SURPRISE PARTY 45

cated the group that conspired near the door. .
“You ain’t interested in football, I.s’pose? Tm going
to the Final at the Palace on Saturday—special leave,
what oh!—Donkins ’ll take my place—and it won’t
half be a squeeze, I give you my word! Funny place
to go for a squeeze, eh, Miss Amory ?”

Mr. Edmondson was now quite the Mr. Edmondson
of the green waistcoat, not to be got at by girls if he
knew it.

And still the inscrutable Miss Addams, with her eye
drifting a little more frequently towards the door, gave
no sign.

“Here, I say, come orf it!” Mr. Edmondson
grinned as he and Amory passed M. Criqui and Mrs.
Deschamps for the fourth time. They were talking
French. “No taking advantage, Criqui! . . . I don’t
call that playing the game,” he continued to Amory.
“ But you talk French, of course?”

“A little,” said Amory.

“Hanged if I can make out half what them blighters
say,” Mr. Edmondson continued cheerfully. “ In Eng-
lish, I mean. One of ’em came up this morning—8.45
—right in the thick. ‘ To-tnm-co-croad!’ he says, just
like that; and if I don’t give him a brief for Tott-n-m
C’t Road and the right change before you can say knife
T’ve got Aspinall down on me like a cartload o’ bricks.
It ain’t no tea-party, my job ain’t, not in the thick, you
take my word for it! Chap tried to ring a bad two-bob
on me this morning; broke in two in the clip—you’ve
seen the clips we use, haven’t you? What, you haven’t ?
Just you notice some time !—Broke in two—like that—
46 THE TWO KISSES

and him barging there with twenty people behind shout-
ing ‘Hurry up’ and prodding him with their sticks and
brollies. Oh, it’s a pinch, I don’t think!”

But still Miss Addams’s surprise didn’t come. After
that waltz Mrs. Deschamps flatly refused to play again
until she had had a dance, and so Miss Crebbin, the
typist, played, to calls of “New ribbon, Miss C !
Mind the visible writing!” Then Mrs. Deschamps sat,
first by the door, where she told M. Criqui that all
Frenchmen had such dreadful reputations, and next at
the open window at the back, where she asked him what
“Tn the Spring a Young Man’s Fancy ” was in French,
and then disappeared altogether. Aunt Geraldine,
laughing, moved everywhere, with Mr. Massey follow-
ing her with his hands clasped behind his back, and if
she had to show her half-hoop of diamonds once she
had to do so a dozen times. Then Mrs. Deschamps
came back, crying over her shoulder, ‘If you tell, M.
Criqui, Pll never speak to you again!” but M. Criqui
did tell, of how Mrs. Deschamps, venturing into the
greenliouse downstairs that was used as a smoking-room,
had been detained almost by force until she had smoked
half a cigarette.

Nor was it Miss Addams’s surprise even when one
of the group of men who. had been conspiring by the door
handed an envelope to Mrs. Deschamps. “A note for
you, Mrs. D.,” he said, and Mrs. Deschamps turned it
backwards and forwards and said she wondered who it
could be from. She tore the envelope open and then
fell back with a shriek, while the circle of men about
her roared and slapped one another on the shoulders.

 
THE SURPRISE PARTY 47

A small object had leapt from the envelope with an
angry buzz, and now lay still on the floor.

“The Kissing Bee!” shouted elderly Mr. Rainbow,
making a reckless attempt to assume the voice of a Lud-
gate Hill hawker.

“ Causes ’eaps o’ fun and roars o’ laughter!” Mr.
Beeton, of the cycle-works, ering.

“Don’t go ’ome wifaht it!

“One penny!

“ Knocks the jam-splosh and the spill of ink silly, eh,
what ?”

“Here, let’s have a look—where do you get
7em 2 ”

“ Oh, you wretches!’ pouted Mrs. Deschamps.

And then, in the very midst of the hubbub, Miss Ad-
dams’s surprise was upon them. A Belgian waiter
stood in one of the doorways. He held himself more
erect than usual against the wall; save that the tips of
his fingers were turned in to prevent his too loose cuffs
from falling too far down, his attitude would have been
that of perfect “ attention.”

“ Mis-tairr Ooell-come! ” he announced.

A shout went up that stirred the dust on the chande-
liers. Stout, red-faced, rubbing his hands, and (in flat
violation of Miss Addams’s rule) puffing a gigantic
cigar, Mr. Wellcome himself stood in the doorway,
frowning humorously on the group that twisted with
laughter about Mrs. Deschamps.

“ Now, now, now, now, now—what’s all this about?”
Mr. Wellcome cried with mock severity.

Acclamations broke forth.

 

 

 
48 THE TWO KISSES

“Wellcome, by Jove! ” cried Mr. Rainbow, in a sort
of glad consternation. :

“Bravo!” shouted Mr. Geake. “It’s old Well-
come!”

“ Come in out o’ the wet!”

“Welcome, Wellcome! ”

“ Hooray!”

Mr. Wellcome came in, crossed straight to Miss Ad-
dams, kissed her without a moment’s hesitation (only
remarking, “ When the cat’s away—eh?”), slapped his
hands loudly together, and then, turning his head half
a dozen times this way and that, cried, “ Well, and how
are we all, eh?”

They cheered him again.

“* And now where’s Massey and the blushing one?”
Mr. Wellcome demanded ; and when he had found them
and shaken hands with them he almost doubled the
scholastic stationer in two with the blow he gave him
between the shoulder-blades. He gave a “‘ Ha, ha, ha!”
of amazing volume.

“Done it now, my boy!” he cried. “ Nasty things,
actions for Breach! Twopence on the bus from High
Street to the Broadway now! Well, well, we all do it,
even the flies on the sugar-basin! Congrats, congrats.
—Now, Mrs. Deschamps! Damme, I must have a kiss
from you too, if it was only for the sake of old times !—
Where’s Mrs. W. ? Tut-tut, you ought to know
better than to ask; ask Massey, he knows—or he will
one of these days! . . . Well, now we're all here let’s
get on with the Prayer Meeting. Phtt!”

 
THE SURPRISE PARTY 49

Mr. Wellcome whistled and snapped his fingers to the
waiter at the door.

For Mr. Wellcome never came empty-handed. The
Belgian waiter approached with a tray, and it was now
discovered that another tray chock-full of jingling
glasses stood outside. Mr. Wellcome travelled for Per-
clay Barkins & Co., and knew butlers and wine-tasters
and cellarmen and head-waiters, and was to be relied on
for valuable information about vintages and bottling
and tobacco-crops.—“ Stand there, Whiskerino, by Miss
Addams,” he commanded the waiter; and from the tray
he began to toss into Miss Addams’s lap a number of
articles.

“Thought you might find a use for these,” he said
off-handedly. (They were packs of cards that had been
used once in some Club or other.) “ And you might
as well have the latest multiple corkscrew.as anybody
else, I suppose, eh? Catch!—Now, friends and gentle-
men all, oblige me by joining mein a smoke. The cur-
tains, mother? Dash the curtains; Massey don’t get
engaged every day, at least I hope he doesn’t; not that
there’s any knowing what some of them does under the
rose—ha, ha, ha! ... Now, Sandys, help yourself.
Here’s a cutter. Smoke half of it, and then throw
tother half away; there’s plenty more in the box.—
Now, where’s Rainbow? Here you are; youre my
man; you know a little bit of all right when you taste
it; half a minute, and I'll ask your opinion of this——”

Mr. Wellcome’s face became deeply serious as he
stooped for a minute; then, as he stood upright again
50 THE TWO KISSES

with a bottle in his right hand and a liqueur glass in his
left, it shone once more.

“Steady ... there!” He passed an exquisitely
filled glass to Mr. Rainbow. “Warm it in your hands
a minute first—this way—smell it—and now roll it
slowly round the inside o’ your mouth! dd

Had Mr. Rainbow been Cinquevalli balancing the
billiard-balls every eye could not have been more in-
‘tently on him.

“Mmmmmm!” he murmured ecstatically, lips
closed, nostrils gently sniffing, eyes fondling the glass.

“Eh?” said Mr. Wellcome, winking to all and sun-
dry, as much as to say, Hadn’t he told them so? “ Eh?
What? Spanish, should you say? J should think
so! W. W. gives you Ais word for that, worth some-
thing or worth nothing as the case may be! . . . Now,
all! Rainbow’s only the taster, in case it was poison;
you hold that tray steady, Antonionio; ladies first, I
think, is the law of politeness e?

And the tiny glasses, rich and deep as Amory’s hair,
were passed round.

Never such a party had been given at Glenerne. The
smell of the cigars and the brandy filled the air like
some incense burned before the god of the naughty
World; more witty things were said by loosened tongues
than their owners could ever hope to remember. Fun?
Oh, there was fun when Mr. Wellcome himself took
matters in hand! ... “ Now, who says a flutter?”
he said by and by, shuffling one of the packs of
cards as only Mr. Wellcome could shuffle cards.
“For love, Nellie—and forfeits——”’ But Nellie

 

 
THE SURPRISE PARTY 51

(Mrs. Deschamps) had already been fluttered by
the Kissing Bee, and was in a mood too softened
for cards; and, for fear the brandy should have
affected anybody, another tray with strong coffee
was passed round by Omar K, the red-fezzed boy from
Smyrna with the face of the hue of a chocolate “ shape.”
They kept it up late; for once the “ lights out at eleven ”
rule was suspended; and even Amory sat up quite a
long time after she might without singularity have gone
to bed. At last Mr. Wellcome rose. He for one had
enjoyed himself just fair-to-middling, he said. The
mats and rugs were left where they were, pushed back
against the walls. Quite twenty voices downstairs in
the hall sang that Mr. Wellcome was a jolly good fellow,
and what remained of the Spanish brandy was brought
downstairs for the two policemen who (nobody knew
how) were presently discovered, smiling and with their
helmets in their hands, just within the front door—
“ Best respects, sir,” said one of them, and “ Many of
?em,”’ said the other.
And so said all the rest.
IIT
THE FASHION STUDIO

fees Fashion Studio that employed Miss Dorothy
Lennard had originally been, and in a sense was
still, the enterprise of a small printer; and Dorothy had
been what Amory called “lucky” to get there. Had
.Amory herself wanted a post as an apprentice to fashion-
drawing, she would have had to fill her folio with “speci-
mens,” to sit with half a dozen other applicants in a
waiting-room until it had pleased some manager or pro-
prietor to touch a bell and to give orders that the pretti-
est one. was to be admitted, and then, on her work or
prettiness or both, to take her chance. But Dorothy
had been enabled to skip all that. Even more than the
wealthy Lennards and Taskers who stood in the back-
ground behind her, a certain blindness to higher things
had given Dorothy an advantage from the start. She
had, for example, quite unprincipled ways with men.
Almost any one woman (Dorothy was in the habit of
reasoning modestly) could turn any one man round her
finger if she went the right way about it; and it seemed
to her that the men knew that too. If they didn’t, why
were they always trying to dodge the individual issue,
and to say such fearfully solemn things about the ab-
straction of Womanhood itself? Dorothy thought she

52
THE FASHION STUDIO 53

saw the reason. It was that, in the lump, men could
usually manage them. It was in detail that they hadn’t
a chance,

Therefore Dorothy, having quite made up her mind
who her printer-victim was to be, had not for a moment
dreamed of writing him a letter and then waiting on
him with a folio. Instead, she had cast about among
cousins and so forth until she had found one who knew
the sleeping-partner of the firm. Then, after some little
consideration of ways and means, she had contrived to
meet this sleeping-partner, this maker and unmaker of
mere printers, not in the firm’s matchboarded office with
the machines growling overhead, but at supper at an
hotel. These things make all the difference to the con-
sideration in which you are held. . . . She had hardly
had to ask for her job. Machinating men, with their
stories and drinks and cigars, can do a good deal, but
Dorothy knew how to make of her guileless blue eyes a
spiritualizing of mere drinks and stories and cigars.
She had, too, ideas the very naiveté of which was likely
to strike a man immersed in mere dull business routine.
Meeting the printers’ sleeping-partner again, this time
at a lunch that spread over into tea-time, she had been
able to drop into his:ears her own purely personal con-
viction (against which he would, no doubt, see any num-
ber of reasons: still, there it was)—her conviction that
his fashion-business, as it stood, was not capable of very.
much further development. It was not her affair, she
had said; that was merely how it struck her; but—she
wondered whether the band could be induced to play the
“ Chanson Triste! ”

 
54 THE TWO KISSES

And so the printers’ catalogue-business had been
turned topsy-turvy.

The printing-office was in Endell Street, and the print-
ing was still done there; but the fashion-studio was there
no longer. It was now in Oxford Street, not far from
Manchester Square and the Wallace Collection. The
single room on the top floor overlooked the vast interior
square where, later, acres of glass roofs and flying
bridges of iron were to arise; in a word, they had sub-
rented part of the premises of Hallowell & Smith’s, the
huge Ladies’ Emporium—and if you have never heard
of Hallowell & Smith’s it is not Hallowell & Smith’s
fault. A mutually profitable “ dicker ” that had some-
thing to do with Hallowell & Smith’s minor printing
made the place cheap; and, though the firm’s Summer
and Winter Catalogues were still drawn and printed
elsewhere, nothing (it had seemed to Dorothy) would
be lost by allowing Hallowell & Smith’s to discover pres-
ently that they had facilities for this kind of work actu-
ally on the spot. . . . This was the kind of hint she had
dropped to the power behind the printer who had shown
himself so fussy about the ice-pail and the music “ by
request.” She had no plan, but streams did seem to set
in certain directions, and it was not much good going
against them. They had not obtained the order for
Hallowell’s Catalogues yet, but one thing at a time.
Dorothy must learn her own part of the business first.
She must practise her Fur-touch, graduating to Feath-
ers, and so on to faces themselves. More might happen
by and bye.
THE FASHION STUDIO 55

In one respect at least the change was not altogether
for the better, for, bad as the rumble of the machines at
Endell Street had been, Hallowell’s mammoth rebuild-
ing, which included much throwing down of old walls
amid eruptions of lime and dust, and the running day
and night of a crane the top of which lost itself in the
blue air, was worse. These activities shook the whole
fabric of the place, playing the very deuce with Torchon
and Valenciennes. But in every other respect the
change was not only an improvement, but the Fashion
Studio now stood in the full stream of general develop-
ments. It only needed a time-serving, and, for choice,
a feminine mind, and there was no telling what might
not happen.

To reach the upper room where the seven or eight
girls worked, you had to pass from the lift along a long
concrete-floored corridor and then through a large outer
room that was one of the sitting-rooms of Hallowell’s
“ living-in ” female employees. Of the fashion-draw-
ing factory Miss Porchester was head. She herself
went out in the mornings to shops and warehouses to
sketch, sometimes taking as many as a dozen buses and
cabs in the course of a single morning; and in the after-
noon she returned with the fruits of her wanderings—
or, rather, with the seeds, for they were yet to grow and
ripen marvellously. Fat Miss Benson took them in
hand first. With a foot-rule by her side for checking,
lest there should be too much even of a good thing, she
roughed in those elongated and fish-like figures which,
if you would see them in normal proportion, you must
56 THE TWO KISSES

squint at aslant up the tilted page. Then Miss Hurst
or blonde Miss Umpleby took over the drawing, further
developing the Tea-gown or the Walking Costume, or
the lady in her corsets riding in a motor car, or what-
ever it might be. From them it passed to Miss Smed-
ley or Miss Cowan, who worked it up with lamp-black or
Chinese-white or what not, for Miss Ruffell to put in
the faces, large-eyed and soulful. Dorothy measured
and squared the production, gave a last look to see that
the fish-like ideal had not been lost in its progress from
hand to hand and that there was nothing else that might
start a young man on the downward path, and put a line
round it if a line was needed. Pigtailed little Smithie
affixed the protecting piece of tissue-paper. It was
finished.

Miss Porchester, gaunt and dark, sat at a little table
apart, where she could keep an eye on her staff. She
kept the register of work done, and saw that the requi-
site “ points ” were properly emphasized—the new skirt
“set? with a slight difference, the hat tilted an inch
lower over one eyebrow than during the season before.
She received the travellers, and taught her girls, if they
must talk to one another as they worked, to do so with-
out removing their eyes from their sheets of Bristol-
board. Quite animated conversations would go on by
the hour together without so much as a head moving;
and Dorothy’s own blue eyes, which were never so wide
open but that they could always open a little wider,
would contract and dilate over her work as she talked
as if they had contained a pulse.

Whatever Amory might think about it, the other girls
THE FASHION STUDIO 57

too thought Dorothy lucky to have had a real art-train-
ing. They had not been to the McGrath. ... And,
quite apart from the cachet this gave her, Dorothy her-
self certainly had a way with her. Miss Smedley, for
example, was as old as Dorothy, but Miss Smedley, for
no reason that could be described, always seemed to
move in an atmosphere of kindlily-bestowed pity; but
nobody would have dreamed of pitying Dorothy. It
was very much the other way. As if they had known
her methods with sleeping-partners (which they did
not), they looked up to her. Her sayings were re-
peated, her mistakes covered up for her; and even Miss
Porchester never gave her “ one for herself.” She was
the only one of the girls so exempted.

One morning at about the time Miss Geraldine Tow-
ers became engaged to Mr. Massey, the fashion-studio
was able at last to draw a long breath of relief and to
tell itself that the worst of the half-yearly rush was
about over. The last page of the last Summer Cata-
logue had been sent off to Endell Street, and for a month
or two only the normal trickle of odd jobs would be com-
ing in. Even the rule about not moving your head as
you talked had been relaxed, and only one cloud marred
the general sense of release—the certainty that some of
the girls would be “ given a holiday” until the next
rush began in the Autumn. The girls were discussing
this that afternoon. Miss Porchester had gone to En-
dell Street; fat Miss Benson, her second in command,
had passed through the adjoining sitting-room half an
hour before, and was guessed to be talking on the stairs
with Mr. Mooney, of Hallowell’s Handkerchief Depart-
58 THE TWO KISSES

ment; and Dorothy also intended to take the risk of Miss
Porchester’s inquiring for her and to fly off presently to
Cheyne Walk.

“Oh, you needn’t worry, Smithie,” said Miss Um-
pleby, her chair tilted back so that her primrose hair
and clasped hands rested against the coats and jackets
on the wall. “They always want somebody to run
about and be useful. Hilda and I’ll be the ladies till
August. We shall come back again with the Furs.”

Hilda Jeyes had her elbows on the table; she was
munching an apple.

“ Tt all comes of our being kept at the one thing, over
and over again,” she declared. “ Look at me: what am
I? A Camisole Specialist! Why, if I was to be set to
do Damask, or Mourning, or Boots, like Benny, I should
no more know where to begin than I could fly! If only
that girl on the Daily Spec would die! Id be after her
place in two twos, I promise you!”

“ They never die when they’re on newspapers,” Miss
Umpleby remarked, with the detached air of one who
reminds her hearers of a well-known fact in mortality
statistics. “Splendid thing for the health. I wonder
the doctors don’t prescribe it.”

“* And when they get married they stick to their jobs
just the same,” another girl commented. (To be on the
staff of a newspaper, it may be said, is the prize of the
fashion-artist’s profession. )

“No ladies with one foot on a chair for the Daily
Spec, like the one you began this morning,” Miss Um-
pleby remarked.

“Well, what chance have we here, I should like to
THE FASHION STUDIO 59

know, with one roughing out all the time, and another
doing nothing but heads, and another the curly-cues!
There isn’t one of us except Benny who could do a job
right through!” Hilda Jeyes grumbled.

“ Just so that we can turn the stuff out quicker!”
somebody else joined in. “‘ Holiday’s’ a good name
for it, I don’t think!”

Miss Umpleby turned her eyes nonchalantly to the
coats above her head. ‘ Monte Carlo for me, I think,”
she said. “ Then I shall be able to put in those petti-
coat bodices with Casino backgrounds and do somebody
else out of a job.”

Hilda Jeyes threw away the core of her apple.
“ You needn’t growl, anyway, Umpy. You are engaged.”

“So I am,” remarked Miss Umpleby, as if she had
just remembered it. “I think I'll ring my source of
trouble up now.” She brought the chair down on to its
fore-legs again. “ Tell me if Benny comes. You can
all listen if you like—Hallo, Exchange!—One-six-
double-one Hop!”

And at the telephone on Miss Porchester’s table she
began a conversation in which the words “ Carlton .
or the Savoy if you like... Mentone... I’vea lit-
tle time on my hands now,” recurred from time to time.

Dorothy herself had more than once thought that this
sub-division of work was hard on the girls. Umpy lived
with her mother near Notting Hill Gate Station, and
was engaged to a boy who got thirty shillings a week as
a clerk in the Russian Import trade; Benny and Hilda
Jeyes shared cheap rooms somewhere in Bloomsbury ;
the others lunched on buns or brought bread-and-butter
60 THE TWO KISSES

or sandwiches in paper, and would have had to spend
an hour in looking for a dropped shilling had they been
so fortunate as to possess a shilling to drop. All were at
the mercy of the half-yearly rush and the intervals of
idleness between. Dorothy had sometimes wondered
whether she herself ought not to have sponged on her
relations rather than keep one of these needy girls out
of a place. . . . But she was a practical young woman,
with more plans than theories, and eyes that did not
carry over many of the dreams of the night into the
working days; and beyond a certain point she refused
to shoulder the responsibilities of a world she had had
no hand in making. Up to that point—well, if (say,
by and by) she were ever to “run” a studio of this
‘kind, she would see that the work was not so sub-divided
that her girls had no chance in the open market. And
she would offer now and then a little inducement over
and above wages, and would arrange for them to get
quite good but shop-soiled things at a fair reduction, and
would get them to take an interest in their work, and
would stop Hilda sucking her brushes, and would have
the brick taken out of that ventilation-pipe, and another
set of wash-bowls, and would annex that adjoining room,
and—and—well, anyway, if Catalogues had to be done
like this, she would see that those who did them were
no worse off with her than with anybody else, and per-
haps a bit better... . And now she must get off to
Cheyne Walk. She rose, and went for her hat and rain-
coat.

“You're not off, are you, Lennie?” said Miss Um-
pleby. She had finished talking into the telephone.
THE FASHION STUDIO 61

Her last words had been, ‘‘ Mean old thing! . . . Well,
will you treat me to eighteen-pennorth at the Fin-
bec, then? ... Fried plaice and chips? ... All
right... .”

“Yes. Another stroke in my unfortunate family,
tell Porchester. They came in a cab to fetch me.
Good-bye . . .”

She sought the lift, descended, passed along the nar-
row alley to the side street, and caught an Oxford Street
bus.

Her reason for leaving early was to warn Amory that
guests might be expected at Cheyne Walk that evening.
Going out to lunch that day she had met, coming away
from the Wallace, a party of her old fellow-students of
the McGrath. She had recognized them fifty yards
away up Duke Street—tall Cosimo Pratt, without hat
and with a grey flannel turned-down collar about his
shapely throat, Walter Wyron in his snuff-coloured cor-
duroys, Laura Beamish, Katie Deedes, and two or three
other girls in clothes that (it seemed to Dorothy) looked
as if a touch of opaque Chinese-white had somehow
found its way into clear greens and russets and browns.
—“ Why, there’s Dorothy!” Walter Wyron had ex-
claimed, turning from the Peasant Industries Shop on
the west side of the street. “Hi, Dorothy! .. .”
(Half the street had turned to see who shouted so.)
“Dorothy! ...” (The other half of the street had
turned.) ‘Come here and tell us how’s Fash-
AOHGE Aga?

They had borne Dorothy off to a teashop to lunch.

Dorothy sometimes wished that they would find a
62 THE TWO KISSES

newer joke than that about her occupation. It seemed,
to come virgin to them every time they met. It was not
as if she had had any illusions about it. Moreover,
when you came to think of it, Walter Wyron (much as
Dorothy admired his decorative drawings in black and
white), only published one of them every three or four
months, and lived on his hundred and fifty a year the
rest of the time. And handsome Cosimo Pratt had
never published a drawing nor exhibited a painting in
his life. Of course, even their failures were as much
higher than Dorothy’s successes as the heavens are
higher than the earth: but Miss Porchester would not
have trusted one of them with a Summer or Winter
Catalogue cover. In her secret heart Dorothy was
rather glad that Amory had not accepted her own offer
of a day or two before. Mercier was going to do it.
And Mercier didn’t suppose it would be bought for the
nation when it was done. _

But for all that they had rather rubbed Dorothy’s
job in at lunch that day, and, when they had tired of
doing so directly, had continued to do so indirectly by
asking, in altered tones, questions about Amory and
what she was doing. -When (they wanted to know) was
that show of hers going to be? Why didn’t she hurry
Hamilton Dix up? Didn’t Amory know that that Har-
ris girl was painting all her subjects and had one at
the Essex Gallery now? A talent like Amory’s!

“You'd better come and ask her,” Dorothy had re-
plied. ‘“ Why not all come round to-night? Cosimo,
you’re quite near, and Laura could fetch her gui-
tar 2

 

 
THE FASHION STUDIO 63

“No! Really?” Cosimo had broken out in his glad,
rich voice. ‘TI say, shall we all go?”

“T’m on,” Walter Wyron had cried eagerly.

“You could fetch your guitar, couldn’t you, Laura?”

“And Amory hasn’t heard Walter’s new recita-
tion: ”

“Good. We'll come.”

“ Rather! ”

And now Dorothy was hurrying to Cheyne Walk to
help Amory to prepare.

She reached the room over the greengrocer’s shop at
half-past four, and found Amory in a long pinafore,
painting. “‘ You needn’t knock off,” she said, when she
had made her announcement; “ T’ll go out and buy in.”

But whether it was that Amory was in difficulties
with her work, or whether her pulse had suddenly
bounded at the thought of a party really after her own
heart, she threw down her palette.

“Oh no, rather not!” she cried. “ll come with
you. Just half a minute; I’Jl wash my brushes when
we come back. How ripping!”

Joyously she snatched down from the hook her por-
ringer hat; her eyes shone as she thrust the enamel-
headed pins through it. She had not seen Cosimo for
several weeks, the others for months and months, and
she was pining, simply pining, for a party that a ra-
tional person could enjoy. So excited was she, and so
full of the preparations for their guests, that she quite
forgot their own dinner; it was Dorothy who stopped
at the butcher’s for three-quarters of a pound of steak,
and, at the confectioner’s remembered the Chelsea buns.

 
64 THE TWO KISSES

At a wine-shop they bought a flask of Chianti, and at a
grocer’s nuts, biscuits, and a box of dates. Walter
and Cosimo could be relied on to provide cigarettes, and
oranges and bananas were to be had at the shop down-
stairs. As the clock of Chelsea Church struck five they
descended Oakley Street again, so laden with parcels
that the disturbance of a single package or paper bag
would have meant the spilling of the lot. For the
oranges and bananas Amory went downstairs again.
By the time she returned Dorothy had taken a brush and
was making ready to sweep.

“Oh, please,” said Amory, “ just a minute till I’ve
put my canvas out of the way—and it won’t take me
three minutes to clean my palette and wash my
brushes of

She carried her wet canvas out on to the landing be-
yond the warped door.

If, while Dorothy swept, Amory lingered a little over
her brush-washing and palette-cleaning, and then pro-
ceeded to make of the wasted paint a paper “ butterfly,”
she had this justification—that she swept as badly as
she washed up. Moreover, she was already running
over beforehand the heads of a really elevating talk she
wanted to have with Cosimo on the subject of Eugenics.
Cosimo was the kind of man you could talk to sanely and
sensibly about these things; he could discuss them with
her in the proper inquiring spirit, and without either
mock modesty or a thought behind. He despised
mock modesty and the thought behind as much as Amory
herself despised them ; he had frequently said so. That,
with the knowledge that she herself was by a good deal

 
THE FASHION STUDIO 65

the cleverer of the two, seemed to Amory the really satis-
factory relation. They were “the best of pals.”
Amory liked the expression. It was so unlike Glenerne
and the leers about the aquarium corner.

Therefore, as Dorothy, sweeping, asked her how her
aunt’s engagement-party had gone off, she replied with
an almost indulgent laugh. Dorothy wouldn’t believe
(she said) how absurd her- aunt could be. Dorothy,
burrowing with the broom into a corner, laughed too.

“ All aunts are, my dear. (Mind your foot.) Don’t
talk to me about aunts. I’ve got some, thanks. (Sorry,
and I’m afraid I shall sweep all the dust on you if you
stand there.) Our latest is a frightful row between
Aunt Emmie, that’s the one in Calcutta, and Aunt Eliza,
the one in Wales. All about some diamonds every-
body’d forgotten all about, but some stupid old busy-
body of a bank-manager must go and turn them up, and
Aunt Emmie says grandfather gave them to her, and
Aunt Eliza says he gave them to her, and... well,
there you are. The less said about those diamonds the
better in a family like ours, J should have said. (Oh
dear, Amory, do stand somewhere else!) Cousin Clara
says they’re pretty sure to be the wages of somebody’s
sin. Talk about your one aunt! I’ve a dozen, half of
’em not quite right in their heads . . . (Amory, if you
don’t move I shall hit you with the brush!) .. .”

Amory moved, finished her “ butterfly,” and began
to cut it out with a pair of scissors.

“ T’ll unpack the bananas,” she said, as Dorothy laid
the broom aside.

Deftly she unpacked the bananas; skilfully she took
66 THE TWO KISSES

the oranges from their tissue-paper, dropping the tissue-
paper on the floor. She arranged them on a large apple-
green dish, which she set on the gate-legged table;
and then she stood back surveying the colour and
grouping while Dorothy peppered and salted and
prepared to cook the three-quarters of a pound of steak.
She turned the dish this way and that, seeking fresh
lights to put it in. Amory’s work was never done.
Often she was busiest when she seemed most idle. She
could not say to eye and brain, as Dorothy could say to
mere hands, “It is finished now... you may
rest... .” It was not finished even when Dorothy
had set the table, cooked the steak, and made all ready
for serving. There were the yellow bananas and the
glowing oranges to paint in her mind, on the white cloth
now instead of on the oaken board... .

They dined and cleared away, and, while Dorothy
washed up, Amory replaced the dish of fruit on the
table, set out the biscuits and cakes on the Persian Rose
plates, and made of all, with the flask of Chianti, an-
other still-life group. Then she disposed the chairs as
if by happy accident, and poked the fire. The case-
ment looking over the river became an oblong of dim
‘blue; the fire burnt up, and glowed on the black and
sagging old ceiling; and Amory hoped that the people
overhead were going to be quiet to-night.

Then, at a little after eight, there came from outside,
somewhere beyond the Pier Hotel, the sound of a bari-
tone voice. It was Walter Wyron, singing “The
Raggle-taggle Gipsies.” Amory started up.

“ Here they come!” she cried, clapping her hands.

And she ran down the stairs to meet them.
IV

THE MCGRATH

MORY liked people to be one thing or the other;

that was the real reason why she loathed and ab-
horred Glenerne. She had had ripping times amid the
naphtha-lights of the Saturday night street-markets and
at Bank Holiday merry-go-rounds and cocoanut-shies ;
and, of course, when Van Eeden on Dreams came up for
discussion, or Galton on Heredity, or Pater on the Re-
naissance, or the clear-eyed Weiniger on the Relation of
the Sexes, she was again entirely at home. On the
heights or in the depths she felt the real throb of Hu-
manity’s heart. But those dreadful middle grades!
Those terrible estate-agents and booking-clerks and
bank-cashiers and brewers’ travellers of whom the world
seemed to be so full! As so many phenomena in the
science of vision—solid objects for colour to possess and
light to fall upon—she admitted they had their uses; but
she was entirely uninterested in them otherwise. Of
all the fine things Cosimo had done in the past, she
thought he had done nothing finer nor more full of pro-
found meaning than when he had once given a crossing-
sweeper a shilling, taken the broom from his hand, and
for an hour swept the crossing himself. It took true
nobility to do that. Mr. Geake could not have done it,
nor Mr. Wellcome, nor the egregious young man in the

green knitted waistcoat who had advised her to take
67
68 THE TWO KISSES

care of her eyes, and had then told her that the Crystal
Palace was a “ funny place to go for a squeeze ”—Mr.
Edmondson.

All talking at once, Amory and her half-dozen guests
trooped back up the narrow stairs.

“‘ Well, here we are” they announced themselves.

“ Donkey’s years since we’ve seen you, Amory: 4

“How are you?” °

“ How’s Life and Work?”

“This is Bielby, Amory ... don’t suppose you
know him . . . we just brought him along v

“You should see the view from here in the day-time,
Bielby . . . stunning! ?

“Chuck your things down... mind Laura’s gui-
tar——”

They threw their hats and coats and cloaks into the
window-seat, and filled the room as they stood talking,
laughing and straightening their hair. Amory asked
Cosimo for a match, and approached the two candles.
that stood in the brass sticks on the gate-legged table.

“Oh, don’t light up!” three or four broke out at
once; “the firelight’s so jolly!”

“ No? 29

“Positively sinful to spoil this effect!

“Pull the chairs up round the fire—the floor’ll do
for me——”

“ Me too e

“Tl lean against your knees, Dorothy- 2

“Oh, now I’ve left my handkerchief in my pocket!
Lend me yours, Cosimo——”

“Well, Amory: le

 

 

 

?

 

 

 

 

 
THE McGRATH 69

They settled about the hearth, Cosimo Pratt with his
shoulder-blades against Dorothy’s knees, Walter Wyron
propping up Laura Beamish, Katie Deedes and Mr.
Bielby on chairs, Dickie Lemesurier with the firelight
shining on her peacock-feather yoke at one end of the
fender, Amory curled up against the coal-box at the
other.

“T say—Amory’s hair! ”” ‘Walter Wyron broke
rapturously out, as Amory settled into her place.

“Quite unpaintable, Walter,” said Laura Beamish,
peering over the edge of her hand.

“ Suppose so—but isn’t it Venetian !

“Just put that green plate with the oranges in her
lap 2?

“Oh... magnificent!”

It did indeed make an astonishing glow.

“Well,” said Cosimo Pratt presently, when each had
applied his or her adjective to Amory’s appearance,
“and how’s Jellies and Mrs. ’Ill, Amory?”

You would not now have known Amory for the same
girl who had conversed with Mr. Edmondson on the
progress of illustrated journalism and statelily inclined
her head when the awful Mr. Wellcome had offered her
a liqueur-glass of the famous old Spanish brandy. She
gave a low rippling laugh. She snuggled contentedly
up against the coal-box.

“What! hasn’t Dorothy told you?” she ejaculated.
If Dorothy hadn’t told, that was really rather nice of
Dorothy.

“No,” said Cosimo, turning his huge black-coffee-
coloured eyes on her, all anticipation.

 

”

 

 
70 THE TWO KISSES

“Jellies is engaged!” Amory announced, with an-
other low laugh.

Cosimo started dramatically. “No!”

Amory nodded. She could always rely on Cosimo.

“You don’t say so! Oh, do tell me! Do you
think ”? 4 short pause, ‘—he’s worthy of her?”

“ Just look at Cosimo’s face!” bubbled Laura Beam-
ish. It bore an expression of the deepest mock gravity.

“ Do tell me!” Cosimo implored. . . .

Mrs. ’Ill was the woman who came in twice a week
to do up the studio; Jellies (so called because she worked
at the Jelly Factory across the river) was her daughter.
Cosimo spoke again, in tragic tones.

“ At least tell me whether he’s ‘in’ or ‘out’!” he
begged.

“ Bielby’s out of this; tell Bielby, Amory,” several
voices said at once; and Amory’s pretty golden eyes
sought Mr. Bielby. She explained.

Jellie’s fiancé (she said) was ‘in’—in prison. It
had been (said Amory), oh, so killing! He had
snatched a jacket from outside a second-hand clothes’
shop, and had run away with it and had put it on: but
he had not had time to remove the wooden hanger—Mr.
Bielby knew those wooden hangers they hang coats on?
—well, he’d not had time to remove the hanger before a
policeman had collared him, and there he had been,
swearing the coat was his, with the wire hook sticking
up at the back of his neck! Fancy—just fancy !—the
psychological situation! Really, somebody ought to
write to William James about it!—Orris (’Orris Jack-
man his name was—after orris-root, Amory supposed)

 
THE McGRATH 71

vowing that he’d bought the coat weeks ago, and then
the policeman putting his finger through the hook and
hauling him away! ...

“ And Mrs. ’"III——” Amory rippled on to Mr. Biel-
by——

“ Oh yes—tell him about Mrs. ’Ill and the Creek! ”
they cried.

“ Mrs. "Ill, you see, Mr. Bielby, keeps what she calls
a Creek—that’s a créche! (We must all go and see it
one of these days!) It’s in the World’s End Passage,
next door to a fried fish shop, and there are twenty
babies, and the woman at the fried fish shop keeps an
eye on them when Mrs. ’Ill comes in here on Wednes-
days and Saturdays, that is, unless Jellies happens to be
out of wor ”

“But the hens are the best, Amory—tell him about
the hens ” they prompted.

With that Amory was fairly launched. Mrs. ’Ill
(she said) not only took charge of other people’s babies ;
she kept hens also, in a sort of back scullery, and at tea-
time they sat in her lap and ate winkles off. her plate,
and she said she felt towards them just as if they were
her own! Hens and babies—Figurez vous!—And
there was always a christening party or something at
the Creek, to which the hens went too, and—(they must
listen to this !)—at one party they’d had, last Christmas,
nobody’d been to bed for two nights, and Mrs. ’Ill had
explained that they’d had to cut it short because of ’Ill
having been dead only a week!

“Oh, but about ’I1l1—he hasn’t heard about ’II1 2

“Well, her name isn’t Il at all, you see. That

 

 

 

 
72 THE TWO KISSES

didn’t come out till her husband died. His real name
was Berry, or Barry, or something, and he signed the
register ‘ Barry’ when he was married. But it seems
he’d been in the Army and deserted, and was afraid of
being caught, so he called himself Hill. But (here’s
Westermarck for you!) when his first baby was going
to be born his conscience seems to have been troubled
(it would make a lovely psychological story, Mrs. "Ill
with the child and Mr. ’Ill with the conscience), and so
he made a sort of bet with himself, that if it was a boy
he’d give himself up, and if it was a girl he’d just go on
being Mr. "Ill and a deserter. And of course it was
Jellies, and so Mrs. ’IIl’s Mrs, Ill . . .”

There was nothing of the snob about Amory. These
were the people among whom she had moved during her
painting of Saturday night scenes and street markets,
and she did not pretend that they were not. And she
had an undeniable gift for such narrations. Laura
Beamish, who tried to cap her with some story of a
Charing Cross flower-girl and a black eye, fell by com-
parison quite flat; and even Katie Deedes’s tale of her
mother’s entrée-cook did not gain quite the same ap-
plause. And Walter Wyron’s, about the ex-sergeant
who had looked after his father’s house-boat, was an old
one. Yes, Amory liked people to be one thing or the
other.

But she did not tell any stories about Mr. Wellcome
and Mr. Geake.

From these and similar stories to the larger issues of
Democracy was but a step, and as Dorothy rose and
opened the flash of Chianti, the step was taken. The
THE McGRATH 73

Fabian Nursery and the S.D.F. came all in the stride.
. . . The space within the fender became half full of
banana-skins and orange peel; the fire-light shone up
on the eager faces; and Amory, in the half-shadow by
the coal-box, fed her eyes on effects.

What ripping drawing there was in Dickie Leme-
surier’s neck as it issued from its square-cut, peacock’s-
feather-embroidered frame! What a perfectly glorious
colour Walter’s snuff-coloured corduroys took in the glow
(only glaze on glaze of burnt-sienna could ever get it!)
And how stunning was the shadow of Cosimo’s hand over
his handsome chin as he put the cigarette into his mouth!
. . . Cosimo’s hair clung like tendrils about his temples
and over the back of his soft grey collar; Amory had
made at one time and another a dozen drawings of his
splendid throat; she hoped to make a dozen more. She
was very proud of having Cosimo for a friend. He set
down appearances at their proper value, no more. He
was quite free from those stupid old-fashioned preju-
dices that, in so arrogantly setting apart certain sub-
jects as -undiscussable between young men and young
women, had so delayed the real freedom that, for all
that, was coming. She laughed as Cosimo, who had
just put a lump of coal on the fire with his fingers,
asked Dorothy whether he might wipe them on her
stockings, and made some remark about Spring Novel-
ties when Dorothy said that he might not. It was only
Cosimo. Everybody understood. There was just that
touch of gentle womanliness in Cosimo (Amory thought)
that perfects and finishes a man.

In watching Cosimo and the others, but especially
74 THE TWO KISSES

Cosimo, Amory had a little disregarded the conversa-
tion. She was recalled to it by a sudden exclamation
from Katie Deedes—

“Oh no—carnations for Dickie, and just green leaves
for Amory a

“Late ones, slightly turning,’ Laura Beamish sug-
gested, peering critically over her hand again as she
strove to compass a mental image of Amory wearing the
leaves.

“Or green grapes,” Walter Wyron suggested, peer-
ing also.

“ Amory, do take down your hair!” they suddenly
implored.

Amory grumbled sweetly. It was such a bother to
put it up again, she said. But Cosimo, starting from
his seat against Dorothy’s knees, cried, ‘Oh yes,
Amory!” and took a fresh place by her feet. “ With
the firelight through it it should be just unbelievable! ”
he cried excitedly. . . . So Amory’s hands went to the
great red-gold fir cone; she shook down the heavy plaits;
and Cosimo’s fingers parted and disposed them.

“ How’s that? Wait—just a minute—it wants just
one touch—there! ” he said, drawing back.

Cries of admiration broke out. Amory was as hid-
den by it as a weeping elm is hidden by its leaves.

“Oh—green leaves, most decidedly!” cried Walter
Wyron with conviction. ‘Amory, you really must
paint yourself so—none of us could do it—what a son-
net Rossetti would have written! ”

“ Or Swinburne——”

“ Or Baudelaire——!”

 
THE McGRATH %5

“Or Verlaine! ”

Rapt they gazed for some moments longer. . . .

“Green leaves for Amory, then, and carnations for
Dickie. . . . What’s Dorothy?”

“Oh, Dot’s a tea-rose——”

“ Periwinkle, to go with her eyes

“ © Pervenche’ they always call it in the Catalogues,
don’t they, Dot? Must have superior terms for Cata-

”

 

 

logues! ”
“ And amethyst earrings 2
“No, pearls——”

“T say amethyst!”

“T say pearls!”

“Pooh! Pearls are obviously Laura’s wear!”

“Laura! My dear chap! Why, what were em-
eralds made for if they weren’t made for Laura? . . .”

At this point the party split up into two cliques,
Amory turning to Cosimo again, and Walter and the
others continuing their semi-symbolistic pastime.

Amory had not yet told Cosimo that she intended
presently to make this room her home. Cosimo was
leaning against her knees now, and had tied two strands
of her hair together in a loose knot on his breast; and
when she spoke to him he turned up his fine face so
that she saw it upside down. When Cosimo had re-
moved into his studio near the Vestry Hall seven or
eight months ago, Amory had spent whole days with
him, reading aloud passages from one or other of her
Association volumes while he had papered and dis-
tempered and hung his curtains, and nothing had ever
been so jolly; and so she told him now of her own ap-
76 THE TWO KISSES

proaching change. He twisted half round within the
loop of hair.

“Give you a hand? Rather! By Jove, with your
view you ought to be able to make this place perfectly
ripping! How are you thinking of doing your win-
dows?”

Amory had known that he would be enthusiastic.
She began to say something about muslin, but Cosimo
shook his handsome tendrilled head peremptorily. He
loosed himself from the bond of hair and faced round,
cross-legged, before her.

“Oh no, you mustn’t dream of having muslin! I
know something far better than that! There’s a rem-
nant-sale at Peter Hardy’s, and they have some shop-
soiled casement-cloth at one-four-three double width, all
colours; that’s your stuff! Oh, decidedly! ... Then
stencil it—something like Dickie’s yoke there, only a
broader treatment, of course—and there you are!
They’ll take down and put up again in a couple of jiffs,
and you have to put muslin up wet, and it catches every
bit of dust, and only washes about twice—oh no: the
casement-cloth by all means! . . . Now, what furniture
have you got? ...

He entered wholeheartedly into her plans; he was so
handsome and intuitive, so big and tall, yet so almost
femininely sympathetic. Amory could have hugged
him, there was so little of the mere superior blatant male
about him... . They plunged into a ‘discussion—or
rather Cosimo plunged into a harangue—on the most
satisfactory way of staining floors... .
THE McGRATH ru

Dorothy had been talking to Mr. Bielby, the young
man who had been “ just brought along,” and had dis-
covered that he was still at the McGrath. Suddenly
she gave a laugh and a call to Laura Beamish.

“T say, Laura! Mr. Jowett’s still just the same as
ever, Mr. Bielby says,” she said.

Walter Wyron broke into a laugh. ‘“ Jowett?
’Pon my word, I’d almost forgotten poor old Jowett!
Immortelle’s his flower, I should say! What’s Jowett’s
latest, Bielby ?”’ ‘

Mr. Bielby related the “latest” of the Painting
Professor through whose hands so many students had
passed, all so different.and all so exactly alike, that he
had been driven to find what peace of mind he could
in a saturnine resignation. Walter Wyron laughed
again. :

“Dear old Jowett! But he seems to be getting a
bit below his game. He used to get off better ones than
that. Do you remember him on the womanly woman,
Dickie?”

“T remember his looking at my life-drawing and
asking me if I couldn’t sew,’ Dickie Lemesurier re-
plied, bridling still at the recollection.

“And he told me my drawing was the best in the
class, and that didn’t mean it was worth the time I’d
spent.on it,” Walter chuckled. ‘ The joke is that poor
old Jowett can say such funny things and never dream
that they’re funny! ”

“Why, he didn’t think tremendously of Amory her-
self!” said Katie Deedes indignantly.
78 THE TWO KISSES

“ And still,” Laura remarked with dreamy irony, “I
suppose we ought to hide our abashed heads really—
but somehow or other we go on painting i

“still survive——”

“bear up a

“quite happy in our ignorance

“Curiously blind all the world must be except
Jowett e

“ Rather dreadful to know you’re the only wise man
left =

“Funny old stick! ... But it’s only a pose
really: 7

“ That exactly describes it fe

“ Certainly the immortelle for Jowett!” ...

But the party proper had not begun yet: Walter
had not recited, and Laura Beamish’s guitar still lay
in its case in the window-seat. Katie Deedes, who al-
ways kept a sort of tally of the good things said and
awarded marks (as it were) to the sayers, had not
thought of striking her balance yet.

“Give Dickie another cigarette, Cosimo, and then
do let’s have a song, Laura!” Amory exclaimed; and
Walter Wyron jumped up to get Laura’s instrument.
It had long, many-coloured streamers of ribbon, which
Walter disposed like serpentins about Laura as she sat,
and Laura, turning pegs and tenderly strumming,
asked what she should sing.

“Oh, ‘ The Trees they do Grow High!’ ” said Amory
quickly; “and then ‘ The Sweet Primeroses’ and ‘ The
Clouded Yellow Butterfly,’ please!—Do stop wrig-
gling against my knees, Cosimo—and oh, how exquisite!

 

 

29

 

 

 

 

 
THE McGRATH 719

—look, the moon’s just coming in at the window!”

And Laura’s voice rose on the tender strumming
as if a light and fluty sound planed over the intervals
between chord and chord.

“Lovely!” Amory murmured. ... “ Please, that
verse again, about the ribbon, Laura!”

“¢ And she tied a piece of ribbon round his bonnie, bonn‘e waist,
To let the ladies know he was married,’ ”

Laura sang... .

“Oh, lovely!” Amory murmured, her golden eyes
closed.

Then Walter, whose father was Herman Wyron the
impresario, recited an unpublished poem of Wilde’s,
following it with one of Aristide Bruant’s in French;
and after that Laura sang again, ‘ The Morning Dew.’
Amory wished that she was coming into her new abode
on the morrow, and that these delightful companions
might come to visit her every night. She had whis-
pered to Cosimo to get up quietly and get her a crayon
and a piece of paper; putting her hair from her eyes
with the fingers of her left hand, she quietly made
notes on a piece of paper on the floor with her right;
and “ Amory’s going to do it!” the whisper went softly
round. . . . Amory felt that she really must “do” it.
It ought to “ come ” beautifully—Laura with the guitar
and the coloured streamers, so—Walter’s thin face at
its most pensive, so—Katie Deedes in that adorable
curled-up pose at Laura’s feet, with the jewel of fire-
light on her shoe-buckle and her face quite lost in the
shadow, so—and perhaps when she came to paint it,
80 THE TWO KISSES

she would get Cosimo to stand quite behind, where the
moonlight on the window-sill was almost of a sulphur-
flame blue. . . . And as she saw Amory busily sketch-
ing, Laura did not put down the guitar, but went on
softly singing song after song, from her Somersetshire
Songs and the Persian Garden, her fingers seeming to
cull the sparse and chosen chords from the strings as
if each one had been a picked flower. How different
.from Glenerne, with its brainless vamping and its
bawled choruses from The Scottish Students’ Song
Book! . . . Amory, as she worked, now revelled in the
thought that she would not be at Glenerne much
longer... .

The sulphur-blue moonlight crept farther along the
lattice, and shimmered on the river as if a piece of
silver foil had been crumpled and straightened out
again; and on the smoky, sagging ceiling the shadows
fluctuated, soft and enormous, whenever a head or a
hand was moved. Laura had laid aside her guitar
now, and they had drawn more closely together, and
were telling ghost-stories. Dickie Lemesurier told one
that had happened to somebody her mother knew as
well as they knew one another sitting there; and then,
as Amory put aside her hair again and began to speak,
she gave a little shriek: ‘ No—not that frrrightful
one out of Myers, Amory!” ... But Amory told it,
and Katie Deedes remembered the dark stairs, and said
that she would never dare to go down them. . . . So by
and by Cosimo got up and lighted the two candles, and
the terrors receded as the flames crept up, and Laura
was persuaded to sing just one more song and then (she
THE McGRATH 81

said) she really must go—her people would be wonder-
ing whatever had become of her. But Walter said that
that was all right: he’d see her home. And Mr. Bielby
would go along with Katie and Dorothy, who went to-
gether, and of course Cosimo would take Amory her-
self. Laura tucked the guitar with the coloured rib-
bons into its case, and reluctantly they sought their hats
and coats. Amory was putting her hair up again.
Cosimo took two blazing cobs of coal from the fire, put-
ting them out of harm’s way on an iron shovel; and as
Dorothy saw her friends out and locked the door, the
cheerful glow on the ceiling could still be seen where
the upper part of the door warped inwards. They
groped their way down the dark stairs, and passed in a
body up Oakley Street; and at the corner by the King’s
Road they said good-night.

“We walk, I suppose? ”’ Cosimo said to Amory.

“Rather!” said Amory.

They turned their faces towards Shepherd’s Bush.

It was as they walked up Redcliffe Gardens that
Amory suddenly said, with a little sigh of regret,
“Poor Dorothy!”

Cosimo nodded. He always understood so quickly;
that was the wonderful thing about Cosimo.— You
mean she was a bit out of it?”

“She only spoke about three times, and that was
to Mr. Bielby.”

Cosimo gave a shrug, and that was delicate of him
too. He knew that it would be a pleasure to Amory
to defend a lightly disparaged friend. Amory did de-
fend Dorothy.
82 THE TWO KISSES

“You really underrate her, Cosimo. Of course
there’s that dreadful job of hers, but she does know
better really. .I do hope she wasn’t bored.”

“Well, you can’t help Dorothy’s shortcomings,
Amory,” Cosimo remarked, as if true artists had sor-
rows enough of their own without taking those of
fashion-artists on their shoulders.

“But I’m worried about her, Cosimo——”

“Of course you are,” Cosimo replied promptly.
“ That’s what I always find so fine about you. The
stronger always worries about the weaker. It seems
to be a Law .

“Do you think it is a Law?” Amory asked thought-
fully. ;

“Well, isn’t it? Just look at it, now...”

Cosimo began to set it forth. Halfway up North
End Road Amory had reluctantly to confess that it
did seem to be a Law. She had suspected it before,
but never, never had it been made quite so clear to
her. She resolved that she must be very gentle with
Dorothy. At that moment she was very fond of her
indeed.

She continued her walk with Cosimo.

 
iV;

POUNDS AND SHILLINGS

HEN Mr. Hamilton Dix, the renowned critic,

had first mentioned Amory in print, he had

made a perhaps pardonable error about her sex. But

the error itself had been a compliment. In speaking

of “Mr. Amory Towers” he had been misled by the

rugged masculinity of ‘The Paviors,” her second ex-
hibited picture.

Amory was not sure that she liked Mr. Dix very
much. He seemed to her to have a rather remarkable
faculty for slightly impairing the value of everything
of which he wrote or spoke. His conclusions were un-
deniable; when Mr. Hamilton Dix had pronounced on
a thing Q.E.D. might be written after that thing;
there was no more to be said about it. But somehow
all the fun had gone out of it. You told yourself,
grossly unfairly, that if it interested Mr. Hamilton
Dix it had no further interest for you. That was your
loss, since Mr. Dix usually fastened on the best things.
In appearance he was a big man with an overpowering
presence, a promising eye, and brown curls that frothed
all over his head like the “ top ” of a mug of porter; and
you wondered whether a person could ever be so glad
to see anybody whomsoever as Mr. Hamilton Dix ‘ap-
peared to be to see everybody. He still occasionally

called Amory “ Mr. Towers” by way of a joke.
83
84 THE TWO KISSES

Mr. Dix had no official .connection with the Crozier
Gallery. He frequently wrote of “another admirable
Exhibition at the Crozier which no serious student of
art must miss,” or “the gift of discovering the best
among our younger artists which the proprietors of
the Crozier seem to possess,” but that was all. As a
professional critic he was not eligible for membership
of the artists’ clubs, but he blew like a March gale
through their studios, and the smaller and poorer the
studio the more he irradiated it with the light of his
optimistic eye.

During their earlier interviews he had carried Amory
entirely off her feet. Though his tongue had cautioned
and disclaimed, there had been no resisting the promise
of his eye. Croziers’ were going to take her up, and—
well, at the present stage “Mr. Towers” (ha, ha)
would quite understand that Mr. Dix did not want to
say too much about it—But his very reticence had
seemed a guarantee. It was not to be supposed that
Messrs. Crozier took people up without a certain amount
of belief in them. ... And that had kept Amory’s
head in the clouds for quite a long time. . . . But little
by little it had dawned on Amory that time seemed of
very little value to Messrs. Crozier. A thousand years
in their sight—or two years, to be precise—was but as
yesterday. Delay after delay had occurred; Messrs.
Crozier had not judged this time to be quite ripe, had
considered that market to be a little overstocked; it was
necessary, if the success was to be made for which they
hoped, that the time should be chosen to the hour; and
so on and so forth.—“ You’re far from being old yet.
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 85

if I may say so without offence, Miss Towers,” Mr. Dix
had remarked, rolling his eye over Amory’s small,
straight little figure, as if the organ had been mounted
on an universal joint. .

But lately it had looked as if things really were in
motion again. Amory had had several letters with the
Crozier embossing on the envelope flap, asking her to
state at once in what state of advancement her works
were, and once she had even had a prepaid telegram.
.. . Then things had slowed up once more, and Amory
had fumed.

Then, on a morning in May, a hansom cab drew up
at the greengrocer’s in Cheyne Walk, and Mr. Hamil-
ton Dix, seeing Amory look out of the window, had
waved his plump hand. He blundered up the stairs,
and told Amory that he wished to see the canvases
themselves, at once; at once, mind you. ... There
were between twenty-five and thirty of these canvases;
they were stacked round the walls like the slates in a
builder’s yard; and Mr. Dix rolled his eye over them
as Amory set them, one after another, on her easel.
Then he rolled the eye over Amory herself again.
Again Amory somehow had the impression of gluten.
It was as if the eye had left traces where it had rested.

“ Excellent. Admirable. Very choice. Very good
indeed,” said Mr. Dix. . ‘‘ And now, Miss Towers, I’m
afraid I’ve a disappointment for you.”

If Mr. Dix spoke of a disappointment it was sure
not to be so bad as it sounded. Amory watched him
a little anxiously, however. Another postponement
would be really too bad.
86 THE TWO KISSES

“Tis the old difficulty, the difficulty of fitting in
the dates,’ Mr. Dix said. “Mr. Hugh Crozier is
deeply apologetic about it; he’s quite as much disap-
pointed as you can possibly be; but—well, I see I shall
have to tell you a secret that must on no account pass
these four walls.”

Mr. Dix told his secret. It was that Herbertson,
the brilliant pastelist, was not expected to live through
the week.

“Not a word, mind,” Mr. Dix cautioned Amory.
“It’s only because the circurnstances in your case are
special that I have Mr. Hugh’s permission to tell you
this at all. But you see the difficulty it places him in.
Poor Herbertson’s exhibition will be ten times as valu-
able if it comes while the papers are still full of his
obituary—valuable to poor Mrs. Herbertson, I mean—
I’m sure you'll see that

Even the little thrill of being taken into Mr. Dix’s
confidence did not altogether compensate for Amory’s
disappointment. Another postponement now would
mean no exhibition until the autumn. Slowly she took
down from the easel the canvas she had. last placed
there.

“In that case I suppose there’s no hurry,” she said,
plunging into dejection once more.

But Mr. Dix’s plump white, hand went so far as to
pat her reassuringly on the shoulder. The touch of
his hand was only slightly more a contact than the rest-
ing of his eye.

“But you mustn’t suppose that that is all I came
to tell you,” he said. ‘My dear young lady, Mr.

 
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 87

Crozier isn’t that kind of man. He quite appreciates
the hardship this is on you, and—don’t look dismayed
—it doesn’t at all suit those pretty eyes—he has author-
ized me to make you a proposal.”

“What?” said Amory. She did not like the re
mark about her pretty eyes. Cosimo never spoke of her
pretty eyes. :

“Tt is this: that I am empowered to ask you if it
would be convenient to you that he should pay you a
sum of money now, in advance and on account of sales,
at our customary rate of interest in such cases, the
pictures themselves to be our security, at a valuation to
be arrived at in consultation between Mr. Crozier and
yourself? In fact, substantially the same terms that
were accepted by poor Herbertson.”

Amory’s heart had given a leap. She did not en-
tirely understand, but there was one thing that she did
understand, namely, that Mr. Dix was offering her
money at once. Money at once would enable her to
begin her tenancy at Cheyne Walk at once... . Mr.
Dix looked into the pretty eyes again, smiled, and con-
tinued. :

“Well, what shall we say? If you were to ask my
private opinion—but there, I’ve no right to try to in-
fluence you. But a considerable sum now—say a hun-
dren pounds—eh 7”

- He almost winked at Amory. It was as if he ad-
vised her to cry “Done” at once before Mr. Crozier
had time to change his mind.

A hundred pounds! Amory thought... .

“Mr. Crozier doesn’t mean that he buys the pie:

 
88 _ THE TWO KISSES

tures for a hundred pounds, does he?” she asked
presently.

Mr. Dix laughed heartily. “My dear Miss Towers!
. . - I can assure you that if Mr. Crozier had meant
that he’d have had to find another messenger. No, no.
You may regard this, if you like, as a mere solatim
for the postponement—to be a first charge, of course,
on whatever the pictures may ultimately fetch. That,
we trust, will be a far greater sum. We're watching
the market very keenly, and you may trust Mr. Crozier
to make the most of it when it comes. . . . Well, what
am I to tell him?”:

A hundred pounds, now!

Almost precipitately Amory accepted.

“ Bravo!” cried Mr. Dix, as if Amory had performed
a deed of bravery. And he bent gallantly over her
hand.

Amory was beside herself with importance and de-
light. She had not now a mere promise from Croziers’
—she was to have a proper contract, and a cheque for
a hundred pounds posted to her the very moment the
contract was signed. All that day she could not sit
still for a minute in one place, and in the afternoon
she suddenly started up, crammed her hat on her head,
and ran out to the confectioner’s in the King’s Road,
where the use of a telephone was to be had for twopence.
She must tell Dorothy that she particularly wanted to
see her at the studio that afternoon—why, she refused
to say. Then, treading on air, she returned to the
studio again, humming Laura’s song “ The Trees they
do Grow High” as she went. Still singing, she began

 
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 89

to potter about among the tins in the little cupboard, to
see in which one the tea was kept.

Dorothy came running in an hour later, just as
Amory sat down before the plate of bread-and-butter
and the saucerless cup she had placed on the little gate-
legged table. Her eyes were as big as the heads of
Amory’s hatpins.

“What is it?” she cried breathlessly. “Not
Cosimo 7”

“How Cosimo?” Amory asked, staring a little.

“T mean, I thought—I thought perhaps he’d pro-
posed: ”

Only for a moment or so was Amory a little stiff.
“T think Cosimo can be trusted not to do anything
quite so obvious,” she replied. ‘“ You don’t seem to
understand, Dorothy. . . . No, it’s far more exciting
than that——”

And she told her.

Somehow it struck Amory that Dorothy received the
news in an unexpectedly critical spirit. She had ex-
pected her to jump up with delight, or at least to say
that she was glad. But instead of that Dorothy stared
at Amory until Amory felt quite uncomfortable, and
had to say “ Well?” If this was the way Dorothy took
it, she was rather sorry she had rung her up.

“Tell me what Mr. Dix said again,” said Dorothy,
still almost glaring at Amory.

Amory did so.

“ And he’s sending for the pictures to-morrow?”

“Yes, but you don’t understand; this isn’t the price
of the pictures.”

 

 
90 THE TWO KISSES

“ And he doesn’t say when the Show will be?”

Amory spoke gently ; of course it must be difficult
for Dorothy to realize that Picture Exhibitions were
not Catalogues.

“Tt will be as soon as the market is favourable.
They wait for a favourable market and then. 2
She made an upward gesture with her hands. “ And
you see, Dorothy,” she explained kindly, “ pictures
aren’t much good to a dealer either just to shut up in a
cellar and keep. They buy them in order to sell them
again. That’s their business.”

But Dorothy hardly seemed to hear.

“And they’ve got thirty pictures?” she asked
presently.

“ Twenty-eight.”

“ And can you exhibit new ones anywhere else?”

“ They’ll take the new ones too, at the same rate.”

“ But can you exhibit them anywhere else if you
want?”

“Not for two years.” |

“Then,” said Dorothy slowly, “I don’t think I’d
sign the ‘contract, Amory.”

Amory took a drink of tea; then she leaned back
with the air of one who might say, “‘ This is interest-
ing.”—“ Oh? Why not?” she asked.

“Well, if it’s as you say, it seems to me that they
just muzzle you for two years.”

“Well, I can hardly expect to have dealings with two
sets of people at once, can I? I don’t want to exhibit
anywhere else. That would-be to nobody’s interest.
And my Show would have been next except for——”

 

 
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 91

She checked herself; she had almost forgotten that
Herbertson’s condition was a secret. ‘And anyway,
Mr. Dix is going to write a number of articles on me
at once, and Mr. Dix doesn’t write articles for amuse-
ment, I can assure you. There are wheels within
wheels, Dorothy. I call it a splendid bargain. I’m
perfectly satisfied ?

The last words seemed to say, “ So if I am, I don’t
see what anybody else has got to complain about.” She
was a little disappointed in Dorothy. She thought that
friends ought to rejoice at one another’s good fortune.
She hoped there was not just a trace of jealousy in
Dorothy’s demeanour.

When Dorothy next spoke Amory wondered, too,
whether she had come from Oxford Street entirely in
obedience to her telephonesummons. For Dorothy, it
appeared, also had something to say. ‘For the last ten
days Dorothy had been very little in the studio in
Cheyne Walk; the reason for this, Amory understood,
was that certain of her fellow-artists (she supposed they
called themselves that) had been given a holiday; and
now Dorothy was telling Amory that Cheyne Walk was
about to see even less of her.

“You see,” Dorothy explained, “I’ve known for
some time that Miss Porchester was after a job on the
Daily Speculum, and now she’s got it. That means
that Miss Benson takes her place. And as there are
all sorts of things going on, I shall simply have to be
there most of my time. There’s this re-building, you
see. Mr. Miller—he’s Hallowell’s manager, and we’re
doing one or two of their jobs now—he’s making all

 
92 THE TWO KISSES

sorts of new plans. They’re going to launch out in all
directions, he says; in fact, they’re going to waken Lon-
don up. So what I was going to say—I hope you won’t
find it inconvenient, and of course there are a few
weeks yet 2

There was no need for Dorothy to be more precise.
Amory nodded. Dorothy wanted to be released from
her share of the Cheyne Walk place. That simplified
things. With Amory living there the place certainly
would not have been big enough for the pair of them.

“ Well, if you hadn’t mentioned it I suppose I should
have had to do so,” she said. “I think I shall be able
to manage now.”

“You mean you’re accepting that offer?”

“ Accepting it? Of course I’m accepting it,” said
Amory with a laugh. “TI should be a perfect goose
not to accept it.’

“Oh, well,” said Dorothy with a shrug. “I only
meant that if any other dealer happened to want you
yow’re tied hand and foot ‘for two years.”

Amory laughed again. “Oh, I'll risk that,” she
assured Dorothy. “And now,” she said unselfishly,
“tell me more about the changes at your place.”

For of course she was glad that, in her own peculiar
line, Dorothy also stood in advancement’s way.

On the next day but one she signed her contract.

When, on the day following that, there was brought
to Glenerne, by an ordinary postman, along with other
ordinary letters, an ordinary envelope addressed to
Miss Amory Towers with a cheque for ninety-five
pounds inside it, Glenerne felt that it was indeed

 
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 93

privileged to participate in the making of history.
Amory was a little taken aback to find that interest at
the rate of five per cent. had already been deducted
from the sum; there seemed, not (of course) an indeli-
cacy, but a very great promptitude about this clipping
at the round figure. She would have liked the full
hundred, if only to call hers for a day; and she had
not quate realized that the euphemism “ five per cent.”
meant five real pounds.—But that was not Glenerne’s
way of looking at it. The breakfast-table gaped with
astonishment. Ninety-five pounds for Miss Amory’s
pictures! . . . Pictures, of course, were pictures; they
had never denied that; very pretty to look at, and hang
on walls and all that, especially water-colours: but—
_ ninety-five pounds! ... Had ninety-five tongues of
fire settled upon Amory’s bright head they could hardly
have held her in greater awe. They looked at her
anew. They had actually been living in the same house
with this prodigious young woman! And Mr. Ed-
mondgson had asked her whether she did not get “ fed
up” with painting towards the end of the day! “ Fed
up!” They should think so! It would take a lot
of feeding up of that sort before the boarders of Glen-
erne cried “ Enough!” . . . Mr. Edmondson was not
there when the cheque arrived; Mr. Edmondson rose at
five-thirty, cleaned his boots, made himself a cup of
tea over the little spirit-lamp in his bedroom, and was
out of the house before half-past six; but Mr. Rainbow
missed the nine-two that morning, and Uncle George,
who never went to business before ten and (it was rev-
erentially whispered) hardly needed to go before lunch
94 THE TWO KISSES

unless he chose, took the whole morning off. He had
something to say to Amory.—‘ He’s going to advise
her about investments,” Mr. Geake murmured to Miss
Addams as Mr. Massey and Amory left the. breakfast-
table together.

What Uncle George had really taken Amory apart
for was, in the new turn events had taken, a delight
crowning a delight. At any other time she would have
had quite a number of interior comments to make on
Mr. Massey’s bashful communication; her attitude
about such as have not the gift of continence was some-
times almost Pauline in its severity: but that morning
all was a golden hurly-burly. Mr. Massey, in a corner
of the double drawing-room that had been dusted, lisped,
blushing, that he and her aunt had been talking matters
over—that they had come to the conclusion that there
seemed no sufficient reason why their marriage should
not take place earlier than July—and so in the cir-
cumstances . . . Here Mr. Massey had hissed himself
to a complete standstill.

“There is really nothing to wait for,” he went on
presently, recovering a little. “I have taken the house
on the Mall from the June quarter, and—and—I am
sure you'll understand—at any rate I hope you will
some day ”

Amory, hardly hearing, said that she hoped so too.

“So,” Mr. Massey continued, “we had come to that
decision, and now this happy circumstance has befallen
—I think my bed will have been made; if you will
come into my bedroom there is a little business we might
discuss fe

 

 
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 95

Mr. Massey’s bed had not been made, but Mr. Mas-
sey modestly covered its disarray with the counterpane.
Then placing a chair for Amory, he plunged into the
little matter of business.

An hour later Amory’s pecuniary circumstances
stood as follows :—

From her godmother she had long had her thirteen
pounds a quarter, and now she had her ninety-five
pounds. This sum Mr. Massey had begged, with many
delicate preliminaries, to be allowed to bring up to
the round figure again out of his own pocket—“ simply
as a slight present, Amory—please don’t thank me—it
is such a pleasure to be of assistance to those who know
how to help themselves.” And in view of the hastened
marriage Mr. Massey had further to announce that of
her aunt’s tiny fortune a sum was to be earmarked suf-
ficient to allow Amory the continuance of the pound or
so a week that had been paid for her at Glenerne.
That, Mr. Massey said, made a steady two pounds a
week, plus the very nice little nest-egg of a hundred
pounds.

“And dear Geraldine and I fully expect to see you
a Kauffman or a Butler or a Rosa Bonheur yet,” he
beamed in conclusion.

Amory hoped that the event would prove them to be
mistaken, but for the first time she kissed Uncle George.
The educational bookseller wiped his glasses. Somehow
or other Amory had the impression that even his en-
gagement to Aunt Jerry had seemed to him to lack
something without this sanction of her own.

All that day Amory did nothing but build palaces of
96 THE TWO KISSES

fairy gold, laying them low again only to re-erect them
more shining than before. Say her pictures sold at
the very lowest figure, ten pounds apiece (but twenty or
thirty or more would be nearer the mark—Croziers’
didn’t dabble in mere ten-pound prices). Some of them
she had painted in a day, but call it two days, or even
two pictures a week. Why, there, at the most ridicu-
lously low estimate, was a thousand pounds a year!
Fifteen hundred would really be nearer the mark, and
that without counting the moral encouragement that
would come by mere force of success. Two thousand
would hardly be too much; but call it a thousand in
order to be perfectly safe. Her two pounds a week
would be mere glove-money. She could spend that on
handkerchiefs. Not real lace ones, of course; she would
have to do better even than a thousand before she could
afford real lace ones, with everything else to match;
but this, after all, was only a beginning. Ten pounds
a canvas? Why, Morton, who did not paint half as
well as she did, had got three hundred for that rubbishy
“ Féte Galante ” only the other day—a thing shockingly
out of drawing, and the colour—oh dear! “ Aha!”
‘(Amory smiled). Let them wait just a bit! She
would show them at the McGrath! She would make
the saturnine Mr. Jowett sit up presently! And she
would help the less fortunate, too, provided they were
deserving. She would publish a book of Walter’s draw-
ings for him; they were really quite good—better, at
any rate, than a good deal of the stuff that was pub-
lished. That was what the country had wanted for a
long time; not so much patrons who bought pictures,
POUNDS AND SHILLINGS 97

but patrons who knew what they had got when they had
bought them. And even if she only painted a few pic-
tures a year, that, when she had made her name...

Of course she laughed at herself from time to time;
she knew she was piling it on, but it was delicious for
all that. Like a queen she received their full chorus of
congratulations at Glenerne that night—a stately little
queen, crowned with the barbaric red gold of her hair.
She forbore to ask them whether they had thought that
artists painted pictures for the mere sake of killing
time; she did not want to rub in their booking-clerkships
and estate-agencies too much. It was enough that they
saw things now as they really were. Young Mr. Ed-
mondson would no more have dared to speak to her of
squeezing at the Crystal Palace now than he would have
dared to discuss with her the subjects that made her
friendship with Cosimo so wonderful; it was, rather,
a quite aged and very much subdued Mr. Edmondson
who for a full hour talked of Closing Prices to Mr.
Rainbow. . . . And even when, the felicitations over,
Mr. Sandys slapped his hands together in a business-like
way and said to Mrs. Deschamps, “ Well, what about a
tune, Mrs. D.?” that too in its way was a tribute. It
meant that even of exalted things poor weak human
nature can have more than its fill) Amory knew that
she had given Glenerne something to talk about for
many, many months to come. -

Then, on the morrow, setting her cloud-castle build-
ing sternly on one side, she riveted her attention to im-
mediate things. She was going to remove to Cheyne
Walk immediately ; she had announced the fact to Miss
98 THE TWO KISSES

Addams. Not only had no opposition been offered; it
had been tacitly accepted that Glenerne was no place
for one to whom these stupendous things could happen.
Amory would seek Cosimo that morning; without Cos-
imo nothing could be done. Dorothy, she was afraid,
would have to make other arrangements at once; she
must telephone to Dorothy that day.

Blithely she tripped down the Glenerne steps and
sought the Goldhawk Road tram. It was early; it was
not likely that Cosimo would have gone out. She might
even have time to call at Katie Deedes’s and get The
Golden Ass on the way.

When, two days later, there arrived at Glenerne a
blue press-cutting envelope containing an article nearly
a column long on “ The Art of Miss Amory Towers,” by
Hamilton Dix—and when, a day or two later still, there
followed half a dozen quotations from that same article
from the provincial papers—Glenerne was almost glad
of Amory’s translation. The honour was too heavy.
It was felt on all hands that the crags of Sinai, and not
the boarding-houses of Shepherd’s Bush, were the proper
habitation for Miss Towers and her renown.
VI
WOMAN'S WHOLE EXISTENCE

HERE was nobody like Cosimo for beginning at
the beginning. ‘‘ What,” he asked, extending a
magnificent arm, bare (and black) to the very shoulder,
“is the use of doing the floor when you’re going to fetch
all sorts of cobwebs down from the walls and ceiling,
and haven’t as much as got the chimney swept? It’s
simply doing work twice over. No; let that plumber
chap finish the sink-pipe first, then, when the things
we’ve bought come, Ill have the men give them a
thorough sweeping in the cart and Mrs. ’IIl or Jellies
can wash them with ammonia and water downstairs, so
that everything’ll come in perfectly clean. Jellies, did
you get lots of old newspapers? All right, I don’t want
’em yet, they’re to cover the floor when I distemper the
walls. Put ’em out on the landing there.—Now give.
me that brush, Mrs. IIL em

He took a long brush from Mrs. Ill and began at the
corner of the ceiling beyond the fireplace.

Dorothy had taken away her black-and-white desk
and her other belongings some days before; now the
table, the chairs, Amory’s easel and a whole clutter of
other things filled the landing and staircase outside.
The plumber worked crouched half under the sink; but

the chimney-sweep who had promised to come that morn-
99

 
100 THE TWO KISSES

ing at eight had not yet put in an appearance. The floor
was an inch deep in dust and cobwebs and débris, and
Cosimo’s broom fetched down fresh showers moment by
moment. He wore an old deer-stalker cap, to keep them
out of his tendrilled hair. Amory, too, wore an old
dust-bonnet of Mrs. ’IIl’s and her oldest painting pina-
fore. Cosimo gave her loud warnings to stand out of
the way as each fall came down. Mrs. ’IIl and Jellies
grimaced and spat the dust out of their mouths as they
swept the walls.

For a whole week Cosimo ed been past telling help-
ful and enthusiastic. He had not gone out when Amory
had called on him that morning; he had been still in
bed; but, hearing her knock and knowing her step, he
had called, “ That you, Amory? Oh, do come in!”
So Amory had sat on the edge of Cosimo’s bed, and
Cosimo had bounded upward into a sitting posture as
Amory had told him her great news. “No, by Jove,
really, though!” he had shouted joyously. “ You’ve
got the money? I say, Amory, that’s perfectly glo-
rious! Tell me quickly what you’re going to do!”

And they had taken a header into plans, both talking
at once.

Cosimo had done the whole of the shopping; Amory
had merely stood by and nodded and admired. “ Leave
it all to me,” he had said repeatedly; ‘ you have your
own special work that nobody but you can do: I can just
about manage this. . . . Now, have youabed? Anda
bath? And what about somewhere for your clothes?
Tell me everything you’ve got, and then we shall know -
where we are.”
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 101

So Cosimo had chosen Amory’s narrow bed for her,
going down into the basement for a slightly out-of-date
pattern, much cheaper and probably better made; and
since Amory must have a bath, Cosimo had advised her
to get one of those oval ones with a lid that served as a
travelling trunk as well; they were a little dearer, but
much cheaper than buying the bath and the trunk sepa-
rately. Then he had known where a second-hand chest
of drawers was going for next to nothing, also a bowl
and basin. And, cleverest of all, he had given orders
that these things were to be sent, not at once, but on
dates when, he calculated, the place would be just ready
for their reception. Amory had ticked off these pur-
chases on a slip of paper, as also she had those of tur-
pentine and paraffin, boiled oil and soap and firewood
and tins of distemper. She had read aloud from the
list: ‘Soap, scrubbing-brushes, blacklead, condensed
milk ”” and Cosimo, laying his hand on each article
as she named it, had replied with “‘ Right—right——”
It had been great fun.

It was lucky, too, that Jellies was out of work; that
gave them somebody to help when Mrs, ’Ill was at the
Creek (“or buying winkles for the hens,” Amory
laughed). And the pair of them were almost as funny
as a pantomime about Amory and Cosimo. They
waited quite half a minute between knocking at the door
and entering the room where the friends were, and if
one of them went out again both of them did. It caused
Amory the greatest amusement; they were as funny as
Dorothy, when she had run in that afternoon thinking
Amory wanted to tell her, not about Croziers’ and the

 
102 THE TWO KISSES

pictures, but about—Cosimo! Really, these one-ideaed
people were killing! It never occurred to them that it
was just possible that their narrow, illiberal views were
not shared by everybody! There was her aunt, for
example: Aunt Jerry was the most comical, mid-Vic-
torian survival imaginable. She had stated flatly, not
two nights ago, that if she wasn’t married in a church,
by two clergymen, with a bouquet and bells and “ The
“Voice that Breathed o’er Eden,” she should not con-
sider herself married at all! Bouquets and bells, at
this time of day! . . . Amory (she thanked goodness)
intended never to marry. Hers and Cosimo’s was a
much more rational relation. They had argued it out
anthropologically from Primitive Culture and The
Golden Bough.

The plumber under the sink had a gas-jet and a
soldering-iron, and he was raising a smell of warm lead
and flux. He, too, seemed to have jumped to the same
ludicrous conclusion as Mrs. "Ill and Jellies. There
was an intelligence about his back view, as if that aspect
of him said, “ I see—I’m minding my business—nearly
finished—three’s none—nuff said.” And when, as
Cosimo swept, Amory approached the plumber and
asked him whether the smell of cabbage-water would
now cease, he turned round almost with a start.

“Beg pardon, Miss?... Oh, that! Don’t you
worry your ’ead about that. A S-pipe’ll do it if any-
thing will, and I'll explain it to the master afore I go.”

The master! . . . Amory and Cosimo had to go out
on to the landing in order to laugh. Otherwise they.
would have stifled. .
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 103

Then, at nearly midday, the sweep arrived, and to the
smells of dust and hot lead was added that of the soot
that rustled down the chimney. Amory and Cosimo,
unable to eat in the room itself and too begrimed to
lunch at the little restaurant along the Embankment,
sat with their glasses of milk and paper bag of sand-
wiches on the dark stairs.

Amory always devoutly hoped that when Cosimo
married he would marry some nice girl whose friend
she could be. At present he was as poor as a church
mouse, but would not be so when his uncle died; and
Cosimo was not the kind of man money would spoil. If
he had not known the value of money he would not have
been able to do Amory’s shopping for her so admirably ;
and if anything at all could still further have uplifted
their beautiful friendship, it would have been that Cos-
imo should by and by be buying chests of drawers and
washbowls for some girl of whom Amory could really
approve. Girl after girl—Katie Deedes, Dickie Leme-
surier, and others—Amory had suggested them all at ©
one time and another as more or less eligible partners
for her “ pal’; but Cosimo had only laughed. He sup-
posed he would marry some time or other, he had said,
though why he must (now he came to think of it) he
didn’t quite know. Indeed, he thought he probably
wouldn’t, after all. ‘“‘ You see,” he explained frankly,
“it would have to be somebody so awfully like you, and
there isn’t anybody else so wonderful.”—‘ What rub-
bish, Cosimo!” Amory usually replied, “ there are lots
of girls; why, you couldn’t find a worse wife than me!
What good should J be about a house or nursing a
104 THE TWO KISSES

baby ?”—“ True,” Cosimo would then reply,—thought-
fully yet equably: “but you’re unique, you see. You
have your art.”’—And that, it always seemed to Amory,
was the whole point. An ordinary young man would
not have had the perception to recognize her art as the
erux of the whole matter. He would have wanted to
hold her hand or to put his arm about ber, and so would
have ruined all.

And Cosimo sometimes, but of course only as a joke,
spoke of her art with a sort of humorous resentment, as
a man who is allowed much but is still excluded from
one favour might speak of the rival in whose preference
he after all concurs. Amory thought that a perfecting
touch. Seriousness must be unassailable before such
gracious, humorous little liberties can be taken with it.

As they drank their milk and ate their sandwiches
that day they laughed together over Aunt Jerry’s old-
fashioned courtship. Cosimo asked to be told again
what Aunt Jerry proposed to wear at her wedding. He
had already been told several times, but he had the
power, so rare among men, of visualizing a dress from
a verbal description, and could carry the precise shade
of a ribbon “in his eye” for matching purposes better
than Amory herself. . . .

“ Doesn’t it sound like the year of the Great Ex-
hibition! ” he chuckled when Amory had told him.

“The dress?” Amory laughed. “ The dress is noth-
ing; it’s the whole thing that’s like the year of the Great
Exhibition! Why, when I asked auntie an ordinary,
‘simple question—whether she thought there would be
any babies—she blushed as if she really believed the

t
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 105

storks brought them, and implored me not to dream of
saying anything of the sort to George! Who to, I
should like to know, if not to George? Such absurd
false shame! ... And this to-day, my dear, if you
please, with Forel’s book to be had at any French book-
seller’s, and Altruism and Camaraderie taught at even
ordinary schools, and everything thrown open to sensi-
ble discussion just as you and I discuss these things!
It’s too funny!”

“There’s only one word for it really—‘ prurient,’ ”
Cosimo opined.

“Oh, but that’s taking it too seriously; I prefer the
funny side of it. Babies! Is she expecting butter-
flies, I wonder? . . . I did my best for her; I tried to
explain what a chromosome was; but it was no good.
You’ve never seen Aunt Jerry; I must have you meet
her; she’s so like the lady who went to see Anthony and
Cleopatra and said it was very unlike the homelife of
the dear late Queen! ”’

Cosimo was silent for a moment; then his voice came
authoritatively out of the darkness. Cosimo was not
much of a painter, but he really had views that were
often quite well worth hearing.

“You see, Amory, it’s the swing of the pendulum.
Action and re-action. Perfectly simple. Take wear-
ing stays, for example. What woman to-day would
think of wearing the stays they used to wear? Half the
women we know wear none at all, and the other half
only these ribbon corsets. And it’s just the same with
their views on marriage. They make such mysteries
about it, and what’s the result? Why, in trying to
106 THE TWO KISSES

make it impossibly beautiful they miss the real beauty
that’s there all the time, the beauty of the physical
process. We have to rediscover that to-day. And we’ve
got a whole lot of abolishing to do before we can begin.
Sorry to have to abolish your aunt, but really, as you
say, Amory, we haven’t time to-day to waste on people
who marry and expect to have butterflies.”

Sometimes Amory wondered whether these daring
and illuminating talks with Cosimo were altogether a
good thing for her art. They sometimes seemed to en-
large her ideas too much. It was difficult, with a com-
mon brush and an ordinary canvas and a paint-box like
anybody else’s, to express the true philosophical mean-
ing of the heart of things as Cosimo sometimes set that
meaning forth; or rather, she could explain what she
meant, but could not always make it explain itself.
She expressed this doubt to Cosimo now, and found him
quite extraordinarily full of help.

“T know,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s hard, but
it’s what you’ve got to do, Amory. It’s your job.
Fundamental brainwork, as Rossetti said. The old tra-
ditions are epuisées—worn out; in making the new one
you must say to yourself, ‘Is this that I am doing
merely a repetition, or does it belong to the age that has
—well, say, wireless telegraphy?’ I don’t mean that
you’ve got to muddle yourself, of course; that’s the other
danger: like Scylla and Charybdis; there are always two
dangers, underdoing and overdoing; it’s a Law. What
I mean is that your art must be the thing. See what I
mean? Break fresh ground. Do something new.
Say to yourself ‘I’m going to do something new.’
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 107

That’s what the Pre-Raphaelites did, and look at Ford
Madox Brown! As I say, it’s the swing of the pendu-
lum ; action and re——(Hallo, here’s Mrs. ’I1]—listen
to her cough). . . . What a dreadful cold you have,
Mrs. "Ill! ”

And they chuckled for a quarter of an hour over Mrs,
*TI’s comical confusion.

That afternoon they had one of their jolliest chats
about Heredity. Amory wished she had Galton by her
so that she could show Cosimo what she really meant,
but Galton, in that topsy-turvy, was not to be laid hands
on. Cosimo rested on his broom from time to time to
listen, fastened his coffee-brown eyes earnestly on her
face, and said that she ought to paint a picture, not
necessarily to be called “ Heredity,” but to have some-
thing of Galton’s meaning and spirit about it. ‘“ Ex-
press him in a different medium, if you understand me,”
he said. ... Then he finished his walls, and they
washed their begrimed hands and faces together over a
bucket and went out to tea. Mrs. "Ill and Jellies were
left to sweep up and to make all ready for Cosimo to
distemper the walls and stain the floor to-morrow.
They dined, talking ever the more rapidly and brightly
as the hours wore on; and Amory went as reluctantly
back to Glenerne that night as if she had been going
from a glorious liberty to a prison.

Here, however, a piece of bad news awaited her.
After dinner Uncle George drew her aside and handed
her a paragraph he had cut from a newspaper. Amory
read it, and then looked inquiringly up at Mr. Massey.
Except that it contained a name with which she was
108 THE TWO KISSES

somehow remotely familiar, it conveyed nothing to her.
Not many things in newspapers did convey much to
Amory. She thought them dull, and wished they had a
Cosimo at the head of them to fill them with the really
interesting things about the New Movement and criti-
cism and art.

Nor did the scholastic bookseller himself appear to
know the full purport of the paragraph. It announced
baldly and briefly that a trustee had absconded with cer-
tain funds, and Mr. Massey feared that those funds
might include the capital sum that hitherto had yielded
the thirteen pounds a quarter Amory had had from her
godmother. The man might, of course (Mr. Massey
said), be—something or other—“ extradited” she
thought the word was; but, on the other hand, he might
not: Even if he were to be extradited, Mr. Massey
feared that such delinquents commonly bolted, not with
the money, but after the money was spent. So he would
not advise Amory to build too much on the recovery of
the money. . . . And Amory discovered something new
and rather unexpected in her prospective uncle, namely,
that while it was “a pleasure to assist”? (as he had
softly hissed) a young woman who had shown herself
as capable as Amory had of assisting herself, he did not
think it necessary to keep hold of her hand once she was
set on her feet. She had a hundred pounds in actual
cash, on account of a sum that might be very large in-
deed ; and he himself would have thought himself lucky
had he been possessed of half that capital at her age.
. .. This mid-Victorian, heavy-father view of Mr. Mas-
sey’s, that young people should be kept a little short in
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 109

the very years of their capacity for enjoyment, could,
of course, have been demolished in a minute by any
modern and rational and hard-up young man: it was
manifestly absurd that people should have money only
when they were past their pleasures: but it would have
taken more than Cosimo to knock it out of Mr. Massey’s
head for all that.

Amory went to bed moodily that night, first trying to
tell herself, and then trying not to tell herself, that her
income was in all probability now reduced by a half.

. She had begun, too, to be a little alarmed at the
rate at which her hundred pounds of actual capital was
diminishing. Excellently and cheaply as Cosimo had
bought, she simply could not tell herself where nearly
thirty pounds had gone. There had been her bed, her
bath, her chest of drawers, her washstand, her this, that,
and the other; and there had been “ sundries.” She
had had the conception of sundries that they were quite
small things, in paper packets and tins, that cost a few
pence; it came rather as a shock to her that kettles and
frying-pans and cups and saucers and scrubbing-brushes
were sundries too. And tablecloths and blankets and
sheets and pillow-cases seemed to be very considerable
sundries indeed. Still—thirty pounds! She would
have thought that thirty pounds would have furnished
the Glenerne kitchens twice over. And at tea that
afternoon, Cosimo had spoken of a carved wood frame
he had seen in Marylebone High Street that it would be
positively criminal not to buy for another three! ...

Well, living would be cheaper at Cheyne Walk; that

would be one thing. Tea and bread-and-butter and a
110 THE TWO KISSES

chop or steak once a day would be quite enough for her
and when all these things were bought they were bought
and would not be to buy again. She had anothe
shrinking as she remembered that, now that all her worl
had gone to Croziers’, she had hardly a canvas o:
stretcher in the place, and that half her paint-tubes wer
mere flat metal ribbons with a screw-cap on the end
and that she badly wanted a complete set of new brushes
She tried to tell herself that five pounds would refit her
but she knew in her heart that ten or twelve woul
hardly be too much; artists’ colourmen have their sun
dries too... . ‘ ®

And now she must reckon a whole pound a week a:
good as gone... . '

But the press-cuttings from the provincial paper:
were still coming in, and her courage revived as she re
membered Mr. Hamilton Dix’s newest article on he:
and her work. . He was coming to interview her. The
market for her twenty-eight canvases was already being
prepared. Mr. Dix would hardly be doing all that un
less it was intended that her show should come on in the
autumn...

She went to sleep, once more resolved that when
presently, she should come into her kingdom, no pooi
artist, provided he were really deserving, should asl
her help in vain.

Two days later she had cast her money cares almos
entirely to the winds. Naturally it was not to be sup
posed that she could come into a hundred pounds anc
not buy herself at least one frock; as a matter of fac
she had bought two. She hoped she had not offendec
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 111

Dorothy about them. It was one of the advantages of
Dorothy’s occupation that she was frequently offered
clothes, not merely at cost price, but at truly absurd
reductions. But then (Amory had thought) they were
‘such clothes—inartistic and irrational in the extreme,
conventional Paris and Viennese models, some of them
actually resembling those excruciating drawings of Dor-
othy’s, and hats that (to put it bluntly) Amory would
not have been found dead in. Dorothy had offered to
get her a number of these, and had said that it was a
chance to be jumped at! ... Why, even Cosimo, a
man, had laughed and said, “ Dear old Dot—she means
awfully well, doesn’t she?” ... And Cosimo had
chosen the two.frocks Amory actually had bought. One
of them was terra-cotta, the other green; both were ex-
quisitely smocked at yoke and hips, and any of the Pre-
Raphaelites (Cosimo said) would have gone half wild
with delight over the drawing of the myriad intricate
folds. He had made a suggestion or two in the shop
itself, and when the things had been delivered at the
studio, Cosimo had not rested until he had seen Amory
put them on. Amory had looked round the room; the
curtain that was to enclose her new bed was not up yet,
but she thanked goodness she was not one of your
shrinking prudes. . . . “I don’t suppose a girl’s arms
will shock you, will they?” she had asked, smiling.
. .. So she had tried, first the terra-cotta, then the
green. “Oh, I say, you do look stunning!” Cosimo
had flattered her, lifting his fine dark eyes as she had
turned this way and that; “but you ought to have a
Portia cap, you know ” And that was only another

 
112 THE TWO KISSES

instance of the way their minds jumped together; for
Amory, without saying anything to Cosimo, had already
got two of the Portia caps, one for each frock... .
Then she had got back into the old frock again, and they
had discussed the preparation of the studio once more.

As Cosimo said, they had really got most of the work
done. The furniture would not arrive until the mor-
row, but the walls were already distempered a light
green colour, almost white, and the ceiling was done,
and the floor was a wide frame glassy with boiled oil
and paraffin and polish, only awaiting the square of
Japanese matting in the centre. The shining brown
border was not yet quite dry, and Cosimo had very
cleverly built up a sort of gang-plank across it to the
door. To see Jellies, herself of a yielding figure, cross-
ing this yielding plank, was very funny indeed. The
framing in passe-partout of the photographs of old mas-
ters went down as sundries; Amory, with Myers on
Human Personality tucked under her arm, had spent
half the day in setting the photographs each in the one
and only place for it; and now, until the bed and chest
of drawers and things should come, she and Cosimo were
sitting cross-legged in the middle of the unstained part
of the floor. A yard of casement-cloth was between
them, which Cosimo deftly ripped up with a pair of
scissors. He had brought his own little work-basket.
He was as handy with a needle as a sailor. And as he
measured the casement-cloth he talked.

“Steady a moment—you’ve got hold of the wrong
end; that’s the end, where I’ve basted it. If I were
you I should buttonhole the eyelets... . Look out,
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 118

you’re giving me a finished pair to cut . . . and I say,
Amory, you want a fresh binding on that skirt—you’ll
be catching your heel and coming down; I’ll put a stitch
in it for you as soon as I’ve finished this. . . . I say
you’re quiet; a penny for your thoughts! ”

Amory, as a matter of fact, had been once more hop-
ing that Cosimo would by and by find some really nice
girl to marry. In his case the wrong one would be
dreadfully wrong; he had the woman’s point of view so
perfectly. That, in a sense, was why he was so ex-
quisitely right in not wanting to marry Amory herself—
supposing, that was, that Amory had not definitely de-
cided never to marry at all. They knew one another
too well; were too much alike, too beautifully “ pals”;
somehow they seemed almost to come within the pro-
hibited degrees. . . . Still, if Amory couldn’t marry
Cosimo, she could keep, as it were, an eye on him. It
would be dreadful if he fell into the hands of some
jealous ereature or other, worthy neither of him nor of
Amory herself. Amory had long thought that it would
be rather nice to be “ Aunt Amory” to a number of
eugenically-selected and rationally-clothed boys and
girls, who were not told lies about where they came
from, and had moral courage enough, when they were
afraid, to say that they were afraid; but she wasn’t
going to be-“ come over” by their mother, and permitted |
as a favour to see Cosimo once in a while, and to be put
off with a “Not at Home” when she and Cosimo
wished to discuss her art. . . . So, when Cosimo said,
“ A penny for your thoughts,’ Amory was silent for a
moment, and then, lifting her pretty brook-brown eyes
114 THE TWO KISSES

over the yard of casement-cloth that united their hands,
she smiled pensively and said:

“JT was wondering, Cosimo, why—why you don’t
marry Dorothy.”

Cosimo dropped his end of the casement-cloth and
reached for a needle with black thread in it. He
leaned forward.

“ Here, let me stitch that binding while I think of
it. ... What’s that? Marry Dorothy? ... Why,
you don’t suppose Dorothy would have me, do you?
Because I don’t.”

Of course, Cosimo was far too well-bred to say that
he wouldn’t have Dorothy. Still, she guessed what he
meant. Dorothy (he seemed to say) was a perfect dear,
‘but not in that way. Nevertheless, Amory, who sat in
the light and could see herself ever so tiny in Cosimo’s
black-coffee-coloured eyes, looked a little doubtful, and
said, “ Are you quite sure of that?”

“Perfectly sure,” Cosimo repeated, with the same
beautiful tact. “ Don’t suppose she’d look at me if
there wasn’t another man in London. Besides, if I
wanted to be absurd, I might ask you why you don’t
marry Walter!”

Amory straightened her back and the pretty bluebell-
stalk of her neck. She gave a rich little laugh.

“Oh, just at present I’m having enough of marriage
to last me for some time to come. . . . Cosimo,” she
added, in impressive tones, “ Aunt Jerry’s—awful! ”

“ How, awful? (Just pull the edge round a bit, will
you?’’)

“Ugh! ... But you don’t know her: I'll take you
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 115

round and introduce you: then you'll see for yourself.
What about next Wednesday? or no, I'd better have
them here. . . . Really it seems to me to amount to a
public gloating? Their engagement was announced in
the ‘ Times,’ and ever since they’ve had nothing but
advertisements—advertisements for wedding-cakes,
dresses, veils, flowers, furniture, houses, and I don’t
know what not. The most private things—you
wouldn’t believe! It’s as if every tradesman in Lon-
don was looking at them as those shopmen looked at us
when we bought the bed! But the moment I ask a per-
fectly plain question, oh, the outraged modesty! .. .
And what do you think her latest is? She hopes that
if there are any children at all they’ll be boys! Boys!
Think of it!”

“Ah, the Feminist Movement was bound to tell,”
said Cosimo. “ If we’re doing nothing else, we’re driv-
ing the reactionaries into the opposite camp and making
them declare themselves.”

“You think it’s that?”

“Think, my dear! I’m quite sure. We're driving
them to their last defence. They know that woman’s
man’s equal really, and that’s why they’re afraid.
Why, look at your own case. You needn’t go further
than that. What’s the good of theorizing when one
knows? Take the chromosome. If woman’s got one
and man hasn’t, then she has something he hasn’t, and is
actually his superior. You’ve a chromosome and I
haven’t, and look at us. . . . Yes, that’s why the stick-
in-the-muds nowadays all want boys. The female dis-
ability’s going to be removed. You're removing it in
116 THE TWO KISSES

your work; the advance-guard are removing it by having
girls. It’s all right as long as we know who’s for us and
who’s against us. I don’t blame your aunt for a single
moment. I’m sorry for her, but that’s a different
thing.”

“Dorothy says she’d rather have boys, too,” Amory
mused.

“ Of course she would; so would Jellies; and making
allowances for accidentals, Dot and Jellies are intellec-
tually on a par, you know.”

(“ Here’s a piece that wants a stitch too.) But oh,
Cosimo, isn’t that going rather too far? Dorothy—and
Jellies 1?

“Not far enough,” Cosimo averred stoutly. “The
cases are exactly on all-fours. We know what Dorothy
is, but we don’t know what Jellies might not have been
if she’d had the chance. You aren’t allowing for En-
vironment, you see... .”

And only the arrival of the bed, the bath and the
chest of drawers cut short (three-quarters of an hour
later) the most illuminating talk about Environment
that Amory and Cosimo had ever had.

By seven o’clock that evening the studio was prac-
tically ready for Amory to come into it. It certainly
looked exceedingly comfortable. A fire had been
lighted, more for the sake of decorative effect than from
any need of one, and the smell of the excellent little
dinner Cosimo had cooked filled the room with a de-
lightfully homelike smell. Potatoes roasted in their
jackets in the ashes, liver-and-bacon keeping warm on
the two hot plates inside the fender, a pancake ready

 
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 117

for pouring into the pan, cheese, fruit, coffee in a little
‘lustre jug only needing the hot water to be poured upon
it, and half a bottle of “ Veuve Dodo” (an Australian
burgundy) from thé wineshop in the King’s Road—
Cosimo had seen to all. Mrs. "III herself, coming in to
give a last look round, had found nothing wanting.

“Well, nobody can say as ’ow you won't be snug—
can they, Florence?” Mrs. ’III said, leaving it delicately
in doubt whether she meant the pronoun to be taken as
in the plural. “A prettier little ’ome, all things con-
sidered, I never see. I always says as it isn’t riches
as makes contentment; and you ’aven’t far to go for
your potatoes anyway, which is just downstairs, also
apples and oranges. And eggs I can always supply,
though my experience is as artists puts too much trust
in eggs, which hasn’t the nourishment of meat when all’s
said, and not cheaper when you take your ’ealth into
consideration, as all of us must, young or old and mar-
ried or not. Nor winkles, though I’m fond of ’em my-
self, but not to rely on. Bring the bucket, Florence,
and I ’ope you’ve taken notice, so you can tell ’Orris
when ’e comes out next week. . . . Oh, thank you, sir;
I don’t deny it would be acceptable, the smell of turps
being that drying—and wishing you good night and
sweet dreams . . .”

And Mrs. ’IIl and Jellies curtsied elaborately and left
them.

“She almost said the Creek wasn’t five minutes
away!” Cosimo laughed when they had gone. “ And
that idea was a great success of yours, to put the slippers
I’d been whitewashing inside the fender. Jellies’s
118 THE TWO KISSES

eyes nearly fell into them when she saw them! Aren’t
people funny! . .. Well, let’s have the first meal in
the new place. . .”

He put a pinch of salt into the coffee-jug and reached
for the liver-and-bacon.

As they ate and toasted the new studio, in the Veuve
Dodo, they discussed the house-warming that, of course,
Amory must give. Including the carved wood frame,
the two frocks, and more sundries, Amory’s installation
had cost her in all forty-three pounds. A fresh supply
of materials for her work would bring the sum up to
forty-eight or more—call it forty-eight, and to all in-
tents and purposes forty-eight was fifty. A party by
all means; one might as well be hanged for a sheep as
foralamb. They talked of it. Laura would bring her
guitar again, and—who was that new friend of Walter’s,
the one with the glasses, who seemed to know Nietzsche
by heart? . . . They would get Walter to bring him.
And Katie and Dickie, of course, and Phyllis Hardy,
and Amory supposed they’d have to ask Dorothy. They
could pull the bed from behind its curtain to sit on; and
now, thank goodness, there were plates and glasses
enough to go round! Amory’s eyes rested on them
where they stood in overlapping rows on the rack that
Cosimo had put up where the little bookshelf had been.
They shone brightly, and the cups twinkled on the new
brass hooks below them; and there were tea and coffee
in the tins, and milk in a jug, and butter in a little dish,
and everything looked so spick-and-span that Amory
had half a mind to paint it all. The flat wide kettle
Cosimo had bought would boil on the oil-stove in twelve
WOMAN’S WHOLE EXISTENCE 119 ©

minutes. The bath was under the bed. Cosimo had
marked the spare bed and table linen that was neatly
folded in the chest of drawers. A curtain drew across
the row of pegs on which Amory’s clothes hung, and the
reflections of the candle-flames in the polished floor-bor-
ders made simply ripping shimmers of colour. Amory
was quite cross that she must return to Glenerne that
night; it was such a long way for poor Cosimo to see her
home. Well, she would be nearer to him soon—prac-
tically just round the corner. Then they would be able
to see quite a lot of each other.

After supper Cosimo washed up, and then they drew
up two chairs to the fire; and Amory turned back her
new terra-cotta skirt so as not to scorch it, and they
talked and ate apples. They talked of poor Herbert-
son’s show (he had died), and Mr. Dix’s articles, and
Amory’s own work; and it was long before Amory
yawned sleepily. Then she rose. Return to Glenerne
she must. She begged Cosimo, who had had a hard day,
to let her go alone; but Cosimo would not hear of it.
Then, as Cosimo was putting out the lamp, they both
laughed together. The absent-minded fellow had actu-
ally been on the point of setting out with her to Shep-
herd’s Bush in the slippers in which he had white-
washed, leaving his boots by the side of her bed.
VII

THE VOICE THAT BREATHED O'ER EDEN

HE invitations were out for Miss Geraldine Towers’

wedding, and the first acceptance Aunt Jerry re-

ceived was that of Cosimo Pratt. For Amory had kept
her promise and had brought them together. It had
been at the studio in Cheyne Walk, which Aunt Jerry
and Mr. Massey had come to see the very night before
Amory had left Glenerne; and really there had seemed
something to be said for Mrs. ’IIl’s cautious practice of
coughing as she ascended the stairs and tapping and
waiting before she entered the room. Amory had held.
a candle at the head of the stairs when they had left, but
had not descended with them, and she had re-entered
her room to find Cosimo at his funniest and most solemn.

“T trust, Amory,” he had said, looking gravely at her,
“that my ears deceived me? .. .”

“ Cosimo,” Amory had replied, looking as gravely at
him, “I greatly fear... .”

“ It sounded like one, Amory. . . .”

“Tt was one, Cosimo. . . .”

“You are sure? .. .”

“Tf an aquarium, why not a greengrocer’s entry?
... At their age!” Amory had burst out laughing.
“Well, one thing’s pretty certain now—you'll be in-

vited to the wedding! ”
120
V@QICE THAT BREATHED O'ER EDEN 121

At this Cosimo’s gravity had become profounder and
funnier still.

“You don’é mean... .

Amory had clapped her hands.

“TI do! Didn’t you see it in auntie’s eyes? ...
Cosimo, dear, you’re approved of—quite an eligible
young man!—So that makes Mrs. ’IIl (one), Jellies
(two), Dorothy (three), aunt and uncle (five), and the
plumber and the chimney-sweep (seven )—seven of these
dear, quaint, obsolete souls. . . .”

“ All trying to marry you and me, Amory?”

“Yes, Cosimo.”

“ And I shall be asked to the wedding as—er—one of
the family?”

“ Quite, if I know anything about auntie.”

“Then,” said Cosimo, in a deep voice, “I can only
say that I shall come.”

“ Oh, do!” Amory broke out. She clutched his arm.
“ And J’ll make a bet with you, Cosimo! Our great
pandjandrum will be there—‘ Mr. Wellcome Himself,’
they call him, with a capital ‘h,’ almost like God—and
I'll bet you anything ,you like he says, ‘ May all your
troubles be little ones!’ ”

“You promise me he shall say that?” said Cosimo
incredulously.

“ Oh, you don’t know the atmosphere I’ve had to keep
my art alive in!”

“T shall certainly come,” Cosimo had said. He
added that he would have gone there barefoot if
only Mr. Wellcome would say, “ May all your troubles
be little ones.”

PP
122 THE TWO KISSES

The wedding was to take place at St. Mark’s, not far
from Mr. Massey’s bookshop, and, the breakfast was to
be given at Glenerne itself. It was to be sent in from
Bunters’, all but what Mr. Sandys, the baritone, of the
Lillie Road branch of the East Midlands Bank, called
“the wet.” That was to be Mr. Wellcome’s wedding-
gift. He had vowed that unless he was allowed to
stand just one little bottle with a bit of gold foil on it to
two of the very best that ever stepped, he would never
set foot in Glenerne again; and everybody knew that by
“just one little bottle,” Mr. Wellcome meant a case, if
not two, not to speak of a liqueur for the sake of which
an invading general might have sacked a monastery.
Mr. Wellcome was also to give Miss Geraldine Towers
away.

The clear-eyed Weiniger, the ruthless Strindberg, the
hypochondriac Schopenhauer himself—not one of these
could have shed a more searching light of criticism on
the whole apparatus of Aunt Jerry’s wedding than did
the bride’s pretty and artistic niece. She reduced Cos-
imo to a state of mere respectful admiration. First
there was the age of the contracting parties. It was not
even (so to speak) a case of May and December; it was
November and December—or, at any rate, October and
November. If this was the outcome of young and musi-
cal society, what was to be expected of those who really
were in the April of their lives? It was a very good
thing indeed that Amory and Cosimo were able to set an
example of restraint. If age must go a-giddying, youth
must show itself sober and responsible. Amory put it
fairly and squarely to Cosimo: was that not a Law?
VOICE THAT BREATHED O'ER EDEN 128

Cosimo agreed that it was a Law—the Law of Compen-
sation.

Then there was the Service itself. Amory had just
read the Service again for the first time for a number of
years, and really the claims it made could only be de-
scribed as stupendous! . . . How could you possibly
know that you were going to honour somebody until
death did you depart? Suppose they turned out to be a
different kind of person altogether from what you had
supposed? Surely, then, it would be your clear duty,
as an open-minded person, not to honour them! And
how could you possibly know that you might not be do-
ing a quite criminally improvident thing in promising
to endow somebody, as to whose real character you were
totally in the dark, with all your worldly goods? Of
course, the sensible view was that that person should
be endowed with the worldly goods who was best capable
of looking after them. And how could you possibly
know that you would cleave to one only, and so on?
Not that anybody else was likely to take Aunt Jerry
away from Mr. Massey, but suppose they did want to?
Amory called that stultifying. It was not open-
minded: it was a wilful and deliberate shutting of your
mind, perhaps to some really wonderful revelation.
. . . And what had Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and
Rebecca, and all these dead-and-gone Jews got to do
with it all? Pretty records some of them had for that
matter! .. . Oh no, the whole thing was simply fossil-
ized. Strictly speaking, it ought to be looked on pale-
ontologically, as a curious and interesting historic sur-
vival. For that matter, people seemed to have their
124 THE TWO KISSES

doubts even in going into it, for they usually talked
about “ the silken cord of Love” in an apologetic sort of
way—silken cord, indeed, with all those cast-iron regu-
lations! Amory liked “silken cord!” ... Oh no;
the Service started out all right; it hit the nail on the
head with “ First it was ordained,” and so on, but the
rest, eugenically speaking, was mere—mere——

“ Obscurantism,”’ Cosimo suggested, but rather diffi-
dently. Even he had never seen Amory so astonish-
ingly into her stride before. He could have listened
to her all day; he did listen to her half the day.

“That’s the very word!” Amory praised him.
“Signifying darkness, where it’s pretending to shed
light all the time! If exploded ideas like those can be
put into the Prayer Book, it seems to me that a Divorce
Service ought to go into the Prayer Book too, instead of
having to go to a court of law.for it! And look, I ask
you, at the position of woman in divorce to-day!”
(Amory drove ahead as if it had been a question of
Aunt Jerry’s divorce already.) ‘‘ Suppose she gets her
decree: there’s an odium attaches. to her just the same
whether it’s her fault or not! J call it the fault of
Abraham and Sarah, and their stupid old Service!
Laws that are too harsh are bound to be broken! It’s a
duty to break them, so that we can get them altered.
What we want is a rational tie, voluntarily entered into,
and sweep all these archaic old penalties aside! Not
that it’s any business of mine; thank goodness I shan’t

marry...”
None the less, out of a noble love of abstract justice
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 125

and a hatred of wrong merely because it was wrong,
Amory found it intolerable.

Then there was the minor apparatus. From the
point of view of Eugenics, Amory would have thought
that the worst possible preparation for the perfect race
of the future was all this over-eating of indigestible
things, and over-drinking of things that were, medically
speaking, poisons. “ Healths” indeed! Pretty name
for them! . . . And all these buffooneries of throwing
rice and confetti, and flinging an old shoe after the
“happy” (ahem!) pair. For the wedding presents,
Amory conceded, there was something to be said. The
present economic conditions made it difficult for the
really splendid young people to get married at all, and
so it was right that they should be in a sense subsidized
by those who had wrested (principally by callousness)
more out of the competitive struggle than they (of a
more sensitive make) had managed to wrest for them-
selves. Indeed, Amory’s only complaint against the
custom of giving presents was that it did not go far
enough. What really ought to be done was that the
State should pick its best specimens, on the principles
laid down by Galton and others, and pension them off
for one understood purpose, putting them in the midst
of beautiful surroundings . . . a sort of Endowment of
Motherhood idea, but on a scale of the first magnitude,
and not by mere doles, . . . and, of course, with every-
thing possible done to ensure the birth of girls... .
Science would soon be able to do that at the rate at
which it was advancing... .
126 THE TWO KISSES

“T say, Amory, you are wonderful!” Cosimo
breathed, rapt... .

Amory said, “ Silly old Cosimo!” But she herself
could not help thinking that her lips had rather been
touched with the coal.

At Glenerne, nothing but the approaching wedding
was talked about. Unhappily, however, the talk was
all about those very accidentals that had the least to do
with the propagation of a healthy and rational race.
True, a knowing eye rested once in a while on the what-
not that contained the photographs of Miss Addams’s
“ grandchildren,” and a smile was hidden behind a hand
or turned hurriedly into a cough; but for the rest the
race was left to look after itself just as if Galton had
never been born, and a Eugenic Congress had never
been held. Very little whist or dancing went on in
the large double drawing-room upstairs. Everybody
flocked downstairs again into the dining-room, where the
tablecloth and cruets were not now left for the next re-
past, as usual, but removed to make room for Aunt
Jerry’s heaps and heaps of linen. Miss Crebbin and
Miss Swan marked; Miss Addams and Mrs. Deschamps
folded and set all into orderly heaps; and M. Criqui and
Mr. Edmondson wrapped the heaps in brown paper
and wrote on each package a description of its contents.
Mr. Massey was frequently taken by the shoulders by
Mrs. Deschamps and turned out of the room, as being
only in the way. He either retired to his bedroom and
wrote cheques, or else, in the company of other smokers,
sat on the garden roller in the little back greenhouse and *
lighted and threw away again Cubeb cigarettes.
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 127

Mr. Edmondson’s case was generally commiserated.
He had not been quite himself since Amory’s departure.
He had held rather moping discussions, on such subjects
as the progress of illustrated journalism and the decay
of respect in the attitude of the young towards the old,
with Mr. Rainbow and stout Mr. Waddey, the timber-
merchant; and he had more than once dropped a dark
hint that he might soon be leaving Glenerne—young
musical society becomes a little trying when you your-
self are the young and musical society. And he took it
rather hardly that he would not be able to be present at
the wedding-breakfast, but must rise at five-thirty, clean
his boots, make his cup of tea over his spirit-kettle, and
lunch in the ticket-office as usual. Mrs. Deschamps
told M. Criqui that she thought Mr. Edmondson had had
more than a penchant for Amory; M. Criqui, who was
in the Lyons silk trade, and had given Aunt Jerry a
beautiful dress-length, had raised his brows and said
“Si?” M. Criqui’s politeness never forsook him. It
was as if he asked Mrs. Deschamps where Mr. Edmond-
son’s eyes could have been to, have had a penchant for
anybody when Mrs. Deschamps herself was there, to be
admired almost whether her victim wished it or not.

But if Mr. Edmondson must be absent, a pretty full
gathering of the others was to be present. Mr. Wad-
dey, the timber-merchant, had put off the buying of a
Gloucestershire wood for the purpose; Mr. Rainbow
had put a red line round the date on the hanging calen-
dar in his bedroom; and Mr. Geake and Mr. Sandys
had promised to run in, the one from the Estate Of-
fice in Goldhawk Road, the other from the Branch
128 THE TWO KISSES

Bank. Miss Crebbin, away in the city, was in Mr.
Edmondson’s case, but Miss Swan was turning her
class over to the study of art.for the afternoon (a sub-
ject in which one of the monitors could be trusted to
take them), and Miss Tickell would close her milli-
ner’s shop from ten to four. As for five or six of the
other ladies, their time was their own. There had been
much discussion as to whether the olive-skinned In-
dians should be invited; finally, they too had been in-
cluded. Two of them lunched daily at Glenerne.
They could hardly be asked to move from their accus-
tomed chairs and wooden napkin-rings; and then there
was the solidarity of the Empire to consider. All
three had been asked, and were coming. Mr. Massey’s
brother and his wife were to be the only outsiders, for
Mr. and Mrs. Wellcome and the infant Master Well-
come could hardly be called outsiders, Or if there was
another outsider at all it would be Mr. Cosimo Prait,
and he (Glenerne had been given vaguely to under-
stand) might not be an outsider very long. Really the
most outside of all was Amory herself. It was true
she had lived in the house, but in the body only, not
in the spirit, if press-cuttings meant anything. She
had stooped on the wing from a brighter air. Her art
was not the same kind of art as that to which Miss
Swan had turned over her Board School class for the
afternoon. It brought in cheques for ninety-five
pounds.

The wedding was fixed for a Tuesday, and by the
Monday night the Glenerne hall was almost impassable
with trunks and bags and cases—the trunks and bags
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 129

for the going away (to the Lake District), the cases
containing nobody knew what until Mr. Massey and
Miss Geraldine, who had gone to the Vicarage, should
return. Two of them, however, were surmised to con-
tain Mr. Wellcome’s contribution to the morrow’s
breakfast, and it was a “wheeze” of the men to at-
titudinize in mock ecstasies before them and to make
luscious noises as of drinking. Another case, a yard
square but not very high, was so heavy that the porter
had hardly been able to carry it in; and if one might
judge from certain conspiratorial whispers, one or two
of the borders guessed what that case also contained.
Mrs. Deschamps had almost wept over Mr. Massey’s
special licence; Mr. Waddey, who was a widower, had
remarked that it was strange, when you came to think
of it, the meaning there might be in a bit of paper you
could easily crumple up and throw into the fire. Mr.
Edmondson, too, asked to be allowed to look at the
licence. Later he was heard going about saying that
it was strange, when you really considered it, how much
bits of paper, that you could easily tear up into little
pieces, stood for sometimes. “A railway ticket’s
nothing in itself,” he said, by way of illustration of
what he meant, “but just you try to travel without
ra

The wedding-day dawned. Mr. Massey and his
brother (a red-faced, silent man who wore policeman’s
boots and seemed uncomfortable in his collar) had gone
off arm in arm somewhere; and Amory and Mr. Mas-
sey’s brother’s wife were helping Aunt Jerry to dress.
Mrs. Deschamps had lent her bedroom for the display
130 THE TWO KISSES

of the wedding-presents. The heavy box in the hall
had been opened, and had been found to contain, by
stupid mistake, a second wedding-cake, all snow and
silver, which Mr. Geake and Mr. Sandys had carried
into the dining-room and set before the bride’s place.
You had to look twice at lavender bonnets and white
veils and black coats and light gloves before you were
quite sure who the wearers were; and the string of cabs
outside, with nosegays in the lamps, stretched away to
the end of the road and round the corner. And Glen-
erne that morning was a school for waiters indeed, for
six extra ones had come from Bunters’, and, with their
heads held high, looked as it were through their dropped
lids at Glenerne’s own Germans and Belgians and the
little red-fezzed Omar K.

Then a loud “ Hi, Squeegee—Lueegee—Guliulimo!
Them things come?” was heard in the hall. Mr. Well-
come, with Mrs. Wellcome bearing a torrent of lace
in which the youngest Master Wellcome slept, had ar-
rived. “ Brought her after all, you see, Nellie!” Mr.
Wellcome cried triumphantly to Mrs. Deschamps, whom
he met at the foot of the stairs; and then he spoke be-
hind his hand: “ Lucky ... always want one like
that at a wedding!” ... “ Not again!” Mrs. Des-
champs whispered back, half shocked, half as if such a
man was indeed a creature to be dreaded. “Eh?
Why not?” Mr. Wellcome blustered. “We don’t
adopt ’em at our house! Not while we have our health!
Now, time we were off; where’s this daughter o’ mine
pro tem?”

The arrival of the Wellcomes was all they had been
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 181

waiting for. They set off, the line of cabs drawing
up at the gate, stopping, starting, stopping again, un-
til the last had driven off with a couple of urchins sit-
ting on the back of it.

Amory and Cosimo heard every word of that pre-
posterous Service from the front pew. The quick
glances that passed between them from time to time
only emphasized their rock-like gravity between whiles.
And after all, there is such a thing as tolerance. If
this Sacrament was really the crumbling institution
the pure beam of reason showed it to be, so much the
less abolition there would be for Amory and Cosimo to
do. You teach a lesson to those who do not respect
your convictions when you deal gently with their mani-
fest prejudices, and the fewer who shared the joke the
more humour there would be for themselves. So
Amory merely noted that her aunt made no bones
about the word “ obey,” and wondered, as man and
wife knelt, where Uncle George’s brother, who was
best man, got those extraordinary boots.

But she had promised Cosimo that the real humour
should come afterwards, when the wedding-party re-
turned to Glenerne; and her promise was richly ful-
filled. There were heads at every window in the street,
and they could hardly get in at the gate for the press
of watchers about it. And when they had got in and
mounted the front steps and passed along the hall, they
could hardly get into the dining-room for the crowd of
waiters, Bunters’ and Glenerne’s, who, making an in-
ternational matter of it, covertly elbowed and shoul-
dered one another and muttered words of contempt
132 THE TWO KISSES

under their breath and exchanged malevolent glances.
But when they had got in, and had found each his or
her name written by Mrs. Deschamps on the half-sheets
of notepaper with the silver-lettered Glenerne heading,
it was worth coming miles to see and participate in.
Regular boarders eyed the table, with its dishes glazed
and its dishes garnished, its dishes frilled and crimped
and made strange with icing and aspic and cochineal,
very much as a man who knew a buttercup and a daisy
when he saw them might peep, intimidated, into a house
of rare and exotic orchids. These fantastic growths of
the same kingdom as the dandelion and the dog-rose ?
These gemmed and enamelled comestibles food also,
like Miss Addams’s thin soups and strips of watery
fish and semi-transparent slices of Argentine beef and
New Zealand lamb? . . . Each resolved to let his neigh-
bour tackle them first and to see what implement he did
so with. For, while fingers might have been made be-
fore forks, they were no fewer in number than the
bright plated objects of cutlery (including something
that seemed to start as a pair of sugar-tongs and to end
as a sort of cigar-cutter) that extended for quite six
inches on either side of each plate. It might be going
too far to say that one must necessarily be born to these
things; nevertheless a fellow did feel a bit taken aback
when he was confronted with them straight away.
(To anticipate a little: Nobody knew who it was
who first discovered that here they had a tower of
strength in Mr. Wellcome. But it was presently seen
that Mr. Wellcome knew all about fish-knives and finger-
bowls, and made nothing of them. Therefore all you
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 133

had to do was to watch Mr. Wellcome. Then, no idea
being so good but that it is capable of improvement,
it was discovered that you were quite safe if you
watched Mr. Sandys, who watched Mr. Rainbow, who
watched Mr. Wellcome. Soon each plat was being at-
tacked with grace and confidence at its proper remove
from the fountainhead of good form, the movement
“passing down the table very much as the cabs had drawn
up one by one at the door.)

To ask who occupied Mr. Wellcome’s Chair were to
ask who occupies the Throne at a Coronation. Mr.
Wellcome Himself occupied it. Mrs. George Massey
sat on his right hand, George Massey on his left.
This arrangement was duplicated at the other end of
the long table, where Miss Addams sat between Cos-
imo and Amory. These constellations of primary and
hardly secondary brilliance were united, along either
side of the table, by the lesser stars; and, just as a hole
appears in the Southern Heavens, so the three Indian
students made a sort of Coal Sack among the whiter
faces on Miss Addams’s right hand. Amory thought
it far better that she and Cosimo should not be sitting
actually together. Apart, they would have all the more
notes to compare afterwards.

Cosimo was gathering these already. As once he
had taken the broom from the crossing-sweeper, so now
he was talking across the corner of the table to Mrs.
Wellcome. He was talking about the only person who
breakfasted without taking his cue of deportment from
anybody—the child; he got, as he said afterwards,
“simply priceless things.” Amory, across the other
134 THE TWO KISSES

corner, was engaged in a series of lively rallies with
Mr. Rainbow. Mr. Rainbow always expanded when
Mr. Wellcome came to Glenerne. If he became a little
deflated again when Mr. Wellcome had turned his back,
nobody thought the less of him on that account. To be
able to play up to Mr. Wellcome at all was an achieve-
ment beyond the power of most.

Not that Mr. Wellcome Himself showed himself im-
mediately at the top of his form; he husbanded his re-
sources better than that. He had almost reunited the
two hostile camps of waiters and set them to make
common cause against himself when he had asked which
of them knew the top from the bottom of a bottle of
G. H. Mumm, and, taking a napkin and a cutter, had
shown them how to unwire one and to pour its contents
out; and when all the glasses had been filled, and Mr.
Wellcome had risen at the head of the table, dark
against the bow-window with its indiarubber-plants in
the mustard-yellow faience vases, those who rapped with
the ends of their knives on the table and called “ Order,
order!” felt that it would be some minutes yet before
he was thoroughly “ warm.”

And yet he started at a more humorous level than
anybody else could have attained. In the first place
(he said) he must apologize for speaking at all. It
was all Mrs. W.’s fault. As everybody knew, he was
not allowed to get a word in edgeways at home (smiles)
—led a dog’s life, in fact (more smiles)—indeed, as
he had said to his old friend Charlie Cutbush only the
other day, Charlie Cutbush, who used to travel for
Dwu Mawr Whisky and now kept “The Silent
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 135

Woman” in the Borough, “Charlie,” he had said,
“you ought to get that sign o’ yours altered—it ought
to be a man with his head cut off, not a woman!” (A
little more laughter, and a gallant remark from Cosimo
to the speaker’s wife that at any rate Mr. Wellcome
looked well on it). But to get on (Mr. Wellcome con-
tinued). As they all knew, there was a good deal of
giving in connexion with weddings. In his own time
at Glenerne it had always been a bit of a puzzle where
Miss Addams put ’em all to sleep; but they all knew
now where Mrs. Deschamps slept, and a pretty little
room it was, and its occupant lots of time before her
yet (quite a sudden outburst of mirth at this, and con-
fusion and a cry of “ Wretch! ” from Mrs. Deschamps).
Tut-tut!—What Mr. Wellcome meant to say, if they’d
be quiet a bit and not jump down his throat like that,
was that they’d all been into Mrs. Deschamps’ room to
see the wedding-presents. (Laughter.) Now Mr. Well-
come wasn’t going to say they weren’t, one and all,
very handsome wedding-presents, especially Miss Ad-
dams’s oak-and-silver biscuit-box and the embroidered
quilt given by Mrs. Deschamps herself (but Mr. Well-
come would have a word to say to his old friend George
Massey, about the comparative inefficacy of embroidered
quilts when your feet were really cold, by and by.
(More laughter.) But what Mr. Wellcome was going
to say, and he’d say it twice if anybody didn’t hear it
the first time, was that he’d been giving something
away that morning that he hoped and trusted his old
friend George would find worth more than all the rest
put together—a bonny bride. (Loud applause, and an
136 THE TWO KISSES

instant recognition of their error on the part of those
who had thought that a humorist couldn’t on occasion
be serious too.) Mr. Welleome repeated: a bonnie
bride. Mr. Wellcome didn’t mean that they didn’t all
joke about these things sometimes. He did himself,
and so would George Massey be doing by and'by. But
he did say this about marriage, and he spoke as a man
who had been married more years than he cared to re-
member: that there was nothing like it. (Cries of
“ Hear, hear!” from married and unmarried alike, and
a noisy drumming of knives and hands on the table.)
And while Mr. Wellcome was about it he was going to
say something else. There seemed to be people about
who thought themselves very wise nowadays. They
wanted this changed and that changed; Mr. Wellcome
didn’t know what they did want, and he didn’t think
they themselves did either; sometimes it seemed to him
that they just wanted something different—good or bad,
but different. In fact he, Mr. Wellcome, called ’em
grousers and grizzlers—a pack o’ frosty-faces. Now
nobody expected the world to stand still. No doubt
there was lots of things could be improved on. There
was off-licences, for instance. Likewise Clubs. But
(here Mr. Wellcome shook a fat forefinger warningly
and impressively) Marriage wasn’t one of ’em. If an
Englishman’s house was his castle, Marriage was what
Mr. Wellcome might call the front-door key of it!
(Applause far more loud and sustained than any mere
humorous sally could have called forth.) Now he kept
his front-door key on the bunch. (A “Go on with
you!” from Mrs. Wellcome.) If the law allowed him
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 187

two or three wives (and he had only to look round that
table to wish . . . but that was neither here nor there,
and no doubt if he could he’d soon be wishing he hadn’t
—much laughter)—what he was going to say was that
if he had twenty wives he’d keep ’em all on the bunch
too. . . . “ But instead o’ that one of ’em keeps me on
a bit of string,” said Mr. Wellcome, dropping his voice
so comically and despondingly that the whole table
roared with laughter. . . .

“ And now,” said Mr. Wellcome, beginning to pat
his pockets in search of something, “ let’s cut the cackle
and come to the horses. ... Where is the dashed
thing? Ah, here it is! .. .”

And, as if his gift of champagne had not been
enough, from the bottom of his breeches-pocket he drew
forth a gold wrist-watch, ordered Aunt Jerry to hold
out her hand, and snapped the chain about her wrist.

It was, too, a “ coming to the horses ” in a sense quite
other than the figurative one in which Mr. Wellcome
used the expression. They were real horses to which
he came. What else (Mr. Wellcome wanted to know)
could be expected of him when Toreador had come in
at twelve to one yesterday, and all the money on the
favourite, and the bookies’ pockets simply spilling gold
and notes? ... Nay, Mr. Wellcome described the
scene. He set himself in an attitude, and his voice
dropped to a hush. “TI don’t know how ever Sammy
did it!” he confided to them. ‘ He seemed to pick her
together, then . . . hoooosh!—Short head, and a hun-
dred-and-twenty 0’ the best for W.W.! . . . ‘Who give
you the office?’ Dick Marks says to me when I goes to
138 THE TWO KISSES

touch; ‘if it hadn’t been for you, Old Knowall, it’ld
ha’ been grand slam; you know a bit, you do’... So
now, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Wellcome concluded,
raising his glass, ‘in asking you all to drink the health
of Mr. and Mrs. George Massey, I’ll do so in the words
of the poet:

What is there in the vale of Life

Half so delightful as a wife,

When friendship, love and peace combine
To stamp the marriage-bond divine? .. .

I ask you to join me, ladies and gentlemen. . . .”
Then was begun the writing of a page unparalleled
for brightness in the annals of Glenerne. Health after
health was drunk, and it was Mr. Rainbow who pro-
posed that of the youngest bachelor present—the in-
fant Wellcome. Yesterday, he said, had been a fine
day for Toreador’s race, but no finer than to-day was
for another race—the Human Race! . . . Such a roar
as went up! Nobody had supposed Rainbow had it in
him. Aunt Jerry blushed; Mrs. Deschamps, who was
sipping champagne at the time, had to have her back
slapped by M. Criqui, and did not recover for several
minutes; Cosimo’s laugh rivalled that of Mr. Well-
come himself. And then Mr. Rainbow rounded on
Cosimo likewise . . . For nothing succeeds like suc-
cess, and Mr. Rainbow, having scored once, im-
mediately scored again. If little birds were to be be-
lieved, he said, giving the discreetest of glances at
Cosimo and Amory, they might be having another jolli-
fication before long. He mentioned no names. He
would merely say that one of them was not unknown to
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 139

fame, fame of what he might call an artistic sort; and
all he would say, in the words of a song that used to be
sung when he was a good many years younger, was,
“ That’s the time to do it—while you’re young!”

Then Mr. Rainbow made his best hit of all—he sat
down in the perfect moment of his triumph.

“The cake, the cake!” everybody shouted; and one
of Bunters’ waiters handed Aunt Jerry a knife.

Then there were fresh shrieks of merriment, for
when Aunt Jerry tried to cut that formidable cake it
was discovered to be of solid plaster-of-Paris—a white
grindstone tricked out with silver-paper cupids and
spurious sugar-work.

“ Beats Mrs. Deschamps and the Kissing Bee hol-
low!” roared the authors of the imposture.

And so the real cake had to be brought and cut.

They rose from the table and ascended to the draw-
ing-room, and there the merriment became more furi-
ous still, For Mr. Wellcome’s eyes fell on the whatnot
with the photographs of Miss Addams’s “ grandchil-
dren,” and the seed of an idea sprang into being in his
mind. It grew; it blossomed; it spread into the Rose
of Eugenics itself. Mr. Wellcome approached Amory
and Cosimo. He was perhaps just slightly drunk.
His fingers moved lovingly on Cosimo’s biceps, and
passed to his pectoral muscles: his other hand was out,
almost as if he would have done the same to Amory:
and then he gave them, so to speak, their certificate of
physical fitness. Noisily he bade Cosimo kiss Amory
there and then.

“Beaman... kiss her, damme!”’ he cried, a for-
140 THE TWO KISSES

cible hand on each; and Amory dropped her lids... .

But Cosimo, who was there to see others make ex-
hibitions of themselves but not to make one of himself,
hung reluctantly back. But the irresistible Wellcome
dragged them both forward again. There was no help
for it, and so, knocking his head against Amory’s, he
gave her a stage kiss only, which, of course, in this tale
of Two Kisses, does not count.

“ That’s the style!” cried Mr. Wellcome heartily, de-
ceived by appearances. “ Hoooosh! . .. Short head!
—Hi, Bonzoline ... what’s your name... Lor-
enzo! Hurry up with them liqueurs, and then go
downstairs, and feel in the right-hand pocket of my
overcoat, and you'll find a bundle of toothpicks—and hi!
—see whether my Missis has changed the boy yet... .
I want to show ’em his legs, tell her . . . Talk about
‘legs’?! ... But you'll see... .”

They had seemed to be merry up to then; but all
agreed afterwards that only with the bringing up of
the coffee and liqueurs and toothpicks did what might
be called the real merriment begin.

At six o’clock that evening Amory and Cosimo took
tea in the studio in Cheyne Walk and compared notes
of the events of the day. Cosimo was ecstatic. He
had not believed such things existed. Amory’s utter-
ances, too, were as breathless and explosive as his own,
but seemed somehow to lack ring. A close observer
might have supposed her to be acting a brightness.
Then for the twentieth time Cosimo guffawed.

“But you lost your bet, Amory—he didn’t say,
‘ May all your troubles be little ones!’ ”
VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN 141

“‘ But he showed us the baby’s legs.”

“T admit he did that. That was rather beyond ru-
bies.”

“* And he handed the toothpicks round.”

“So he did. I shall keep mine—die in defence of
it. And you'll find that horse’s name written on my
heart. A horse-race at a wedding!—Oh, oh, ’m not
complaining! It was all you promised, and more!”

“T thought perhaps you were disappointed,” Amory
remarked,

“Good heavens, no! J wouldn’t have missed it for
worlds! (But, of course, your aunt was charming.)
.. . Isn’t Mr. Massey fond of the police sergeant! ”

“ Sickly sentiment, I call it,” said Amory abruptly.

“Oh no, not if you take it as part of the general
show,” Cosimo explained. “Damon and Pythias, I
suppose; not having a brother, can’t say. But the
thing can’t be taken to bits. It was a perfect whole.
I wonder what there is about a perfect whole that
makes it far more than the sum of the parts?”

“Eh? ... Oh yes, it is more,” said Amory.

“More? ... Rather! Why, take it in art... .”

“Don’t talk about art to-night, Cosimo, please,” she
said. “You always give me so much to think of when
you talk about art.”

“ Tired?” said Cosimo solicitously, bending over the
back of her chair.

“A little.”

Amory could not have told why she was tired. She
only knew that, to-night somehow, Cosimo did not seem
as intuitive as he usually was.
PART II
I

PENCE

MORY was not the only one who was grumbling
at the weather. Even Mrs, ’I]l, who was usually
of an imperturbable temper, complained. The clothes
that she hadn’t had out, no, not half an hour, had been
drying that lovely it was a treat to see ’em; and of
course in running out quick to take ’em in she must go
and drop an armful—her most partickler gent’s shirts
too—and what with the babies and the hens carrying
the dirt in and out and one thing and another, it really
was enough to try anybody. Cheyne Walk! Rainy
Walk more like
Indeed, it must have rained an inch or more during
the morning. It overflowed so from the roof-gutter
overhead that as Amory stood by the casement window
she might as well have been looking through a Bridal
Veil Waterfall. Not that there was anything to look
at beyond it. The park had gone; the Jelly Factory
was blotted out; the Suspension Bridge was vignetted
into nothing half-way across the river. Gurglings came
from underneath the sink in the corner. Whether it
was the rain or not, the smell of cabbage-water had re-
turned.

 

142
PENCE 143

Amory was sure it was raining harder in Cheyne
Walk than it was anywhere else; harder than it could
possibly be in Oxford Street, for example. And she
had wanted, yet not wanted, to go to Oxford Street that
morning. She had wanted to go because she wanted
money; she had not wanted to go because the only
means she knew of getting it was to borrow from
Dorothy. Cosimo was away; his uncle had died a week
before; Cosimo could not possibly be disturbed. And
she had seen Mr. Hamilton Dix, and—thank you! It
would be some time before she troubled Mr. Hamilton
Dix again! ...

Overfed animal! ...

October, and still no Show. More, Mr. Hamilton
Dix hardly took the trouble now to promise one im-
mediately. But Mr. Dix need not think that Amory
didn’t now see perfectly clearly the trick that had been
practised upon her. She knew now why he had come
so hurriedly to her that morning and dazzled her with
his offer of a hundred pounds. Angiers’, a far better
firm than Croziers’, had wanted her; that was why.
Croziers’ had bought her merely in order that Angiers’
should not have her. “ Dishonest,” Amory called it,
and she had told Hamilton Dix so to his face. And
his reply had been to take her hand and try to pat it.

Wasn’t it dishonest? she had cried hotly to herself
any time this past month. If it wasn’t, she would be
glad if somebody would tell her what honesty was!
And Mr. Dix in his most odious and soothing voice,
had said that she really mustn’t talk like that. “ Dis-

honest?” he had repeated. Why, Miss Towers talked
144 THE TWO KISSES

as if Croziers’ had anything to gain by deliberately sup-
pressing her work! Nothing (he had assured her) was
further from the truth. Croziers’ were in the hands
of circumstances, too, the circumstances that made one
time ripe for a particular exhibition and another not.

. Messrs. Angier? Mr. Dix knew nothing about
feast: Angier and their arrangements. They might
be all right; Mr. Dix had heard it said that Messrs.
Angier were rather in the habit of promising more
than they performed, but that was only a rumour, and
Mr. Dix wouldn’t give it currency. But he could as-
sure Miss Towers that such “ options” as that which
Messrs, Crozier had obtained on her work were matters
of everyday business. . . . Come now: would she tell
him, as her friend, exactly what the trouble was? Was
it qoney? If so, there was perhaps a chance that
Messrs. Crozier might be willing to take over a certain
quantity of her more recent work on the same terms
as before... .

Another “ option,” in fact... .

Then, successively had come the stages when Mr.
Dix had told her that in his opinion she was inju-
dicious to change her style so frequently as she did
(“ Versatility’s all very well, but it puzzles your pub-
lic,” he had said, as if it had not been precisely the
ground of Amory’s complaint that Croziers’ were seeing
to it that she had no public at all)—when he had told
her, that, if she really thought Angiers’ could do bet-
ter for her, Croziers’ might be willing to release her
from her obligation on repayment of the sum advanced
plus a trifle for the accommodation—and when he had
PENCE 145

ceased to say anything at all. <A pretty “ option! ”’—
Amory supposed that other man had called it an “ op-
tion’ when he had run away with her godmother’s
fifty-two pounds a year.

And of course this was exactly why she didn’t want
to ask Dorothy for money. For Dorothy would be able
to say—perhaps to say it as if she was crowing over her
a little—that she had warned her about that contract.
Not that Dorothy had warned her one bit, really.
Dorothy had not known any more than herself that her
Show would be put off and put off and put off; and if
the Show had not been put off, all would have been well.
But Dorothy was so—peculiar. Her ways were pe-
culiar. She had ways, in fact, not principles. Amory
didn’t want to be severe on Dorothy, but some of the
things she did seemed positively unprincipled. Not'to
go any further, there was Dorothy’s undignified way
of regarding her own sex. She seemed to concur in
that view of it that made it merely the plaything of the
other sex. Of course (to be quite fair) it wasn’t to be
supposed for a moment that Dorothy would have let
Mr. Hamilton Dix kiss her, as he had wanted to kiss
Amory. Amory was sure she wouldn’t. But for all
that there would have been—something—not a kiss—
not even a “ leading on ” perhaps—Amory couldn’t have
said what it would have been—but there would have
been something. . . . Put coarsely, it was a sort of ex-
aggerated: sex-consciousness in Dorothy—that and lack
of principle. Amory ought to know that exaggerated
sex-consciousness by this time. Glenerne had been full
of it. The world seemed to be full of it. It seemed an
146 THE TWO KISSES

odious domination; Amory could not understand it at
all. Why, Cosimo did not want to kiss her... .

Because, of course, that sham gesture at her aunt’s
wedding had not been a kiss,

Cosimo quite understood that she was wedded to her
art.

Amory could not conceive where the money had gone.
Less than six months ago she had had nearly sixty
pounds, not counting her regular pound a week; now
she had a few shillings only,’and quite a number of
small debts. She supposed it was because she was not
really familiar with the prices of things. Yes, it must
be that, for she remembered how surprised she had been
at the cost of the little studio-warming she had given
when she had first come into this hateful little room.
She had not provided anything at all out of the way.
There had been a rather nice Greek wine Walter Wy-
ron had told her about, not to be bought in very small
quantities, but of course they had not drunk the whole
of it that night—indeed, it had lasted for weeks, And
there had been cold sausages and salads from a Ger-
man charcuterie, in glass, not in tins—it was not true
economy to run the risk of ptomaine poisoning. And
there had also been a few boxes of figs and candied
fruits—she admitted those had been rather dear. And
so on. Nor, if the party had been a great success,
would she have minded a little extra expenditure just
for once; but, somehow, it had not been a success.
Laura Beamish had had a cold and had not been able to
sing; Dickie Lemesurier had wired at the last minute
that she was not able to come; Cosimo had done his best,
PENCE 147

but Dorothy had turned up in an evening frock and had
said she could not possibly stay more than an hour; and
Walter’s friend, who could quote Nietzsche, had proved
to be domineering and had done nothing but wrangle
with Walter the whole of the evening. In fact, the
party had fallen miserably flat.

But that, after all, was only one evening, and if
Amory had been a little extravagant that time, she had
more than made up (or so she should have thought)
since. Eggs, sardines (in tins), cold boiled ham (at
half a crown a pound), bread, butter, and lots of nice
hot tea—it was not possible to live much more cheaply
than that. At first Mrs. Ill cooked her an occasional
joint in her own oven at the Creek, but joints are not
cheap when you throw a large portion of them away
from sheer weariness of the sight of them. She had
spent rather a lot on canvases, nothing on clothes. And
twice she had been away with Katie Deedes for week-
ends. Oh yes, and there had been one other party, a
river-party just before everybody went away for the
summer, which had been Amory’s, all but the railway-
fares and the claret and lemonade. That had been quite
a success.

Except for these things Amory had not the vaguest
idea where the money had gone.

She only wanted to borrow until the Christmas
quarter; indeed, it was not so much an advance on her
allowance as an anticipation of the Christmas present
she was sure to receive from her uncle and aunt.
Then she would be straight again, and would know how
to spend more wisely for the future. And Dorothy

é
148 THE TWO KISSES

could well afford it, if one might judge of her fortune
from her unhygienic but expensive dresses. If only the
rain would stop she would go to Dorothy at once. She
knew that Dorothy’s position had improved, and, if the
world chose to regard its art as a parasitic thing, the
artist could hardly be blamed if he spoiled the Philis-
tine whenever he had the opportunity. In one sense
she would actually be doing Dorothy a favour. <A loan
would put Dorothy into the honourable position of be-
ing a patron. Many a Philistine name lives on the
formal page of an immortal work that otherwise would
have been forgotten.

Amory continued to watch the flounces of water that
spilled from the eaves and to listen to the runnings and
gurglings of the West London drainage system.

But all at once a merry “ Cooee!”’ came from below;
a flapping as of shaken garments sounded in the entry;
and a step and a call of “ Amory!” were heard on the
stairs. It was the voice of Dorothy herself. The door
flew inwards, and Dorothy Lennard stood there, a pair

‘of blue eyes and the tip of a nose visible, the rest of
her a shimmer of some greenish-yellow material, thin
as goldbeaters’ skin and trickling rivulets of water.
She shook herself on the landing in a haze of water-
dust, like a dog that comes out of a pond, and then
eried—

“ Quick, Amory, and certify me—you shall take ’em
off yourself and feel—Mr. Miller said Sloane Street,
but it was so near I thought I’d come in—how are you!
—No, I'll unbutton them, then your hands will be quite
dry to feel——”

 
PENCE 149

She took from her head a sort of poke that fitted like
a bathing-cap, allowed the long garment to rustle in a
small close heap to the floor, and cried, “ There! Now
feel me!”

She seized Amory’s wrist and patted herself with
Amory’s palm.

“That damp isn’t the rain come through,” she went
on. “ Quite the other way; that’s my warmth that did
that, they’re as impervious as that! And of course
they’re rather dear. But it’s a perfect day for it!
There’ll be a column of floods and rainfall in all the
papers to-morrow, and we’re setting all the telephones
on the jump now getting the space next to it. You do

certify me? I said to Mr. Miller, ‘What is the good

of sticking a piece of the stuff under a tap in the win-
dow? What does it convey to anybody? They only
think there’s some fake somewhere (advertisers have
faked so much, you see), and besides, it’s been done.’
So I said, ‘ Why not let somebody go out in this rain in
’em? If they'll stand this they’ll stand anything.
Then get some known person to certify that at such-and-
such a time yesterday (the wettest day for eighteen
years) so-and-so arrived as dry as a bone at such-and-
such a place, having walked in Ararat Extra Light and
Japhet Boots ’—but you must feel my stockings too.”

She sat down in one of Amory’s basket-chairs, be-
gan to unlace her boots, and presently thrust out for
Amory’s examination, one after the other, her grey silk-
stockinged soles.

“So they’re mine,’ Dorothy cried jubilantly, “ and
if you'll give me your signature [’ll get you a set, not
~

150 THE TWO KISSES

to speak of the advertisement for you—can’t do without
that nowadays—‘ I, the undersigned, Amory Towers’
—if they’ve never heard of you they daren’t say so
when they see that. ... Those Cosimo’s slippers?
Tl put ’em on. . . . I say, you have let your fire down!
No, T’ll set it going—you fill the kettle—I have en-
joyed my walk!”

She began to potter about the black fire, gabbling
without stopping as she did so.

Amory was almost disinterestedly glad to see Dor-
othy; on such a day she would have been glad to
see anybody. For inside the studio was more desolate
than the streets without. No longer did that room over
the greengrocer’s shop shimmer and twinkle as on the
day when she and Cosimo had sat down to their first
little supper there. Half the plates that had overlapped
so prettily, half the cup that had dangled from the
bright hook, were broken; the sink was full of articles
awaiting that dreaded washing-up; and in the cupboard
forgotten condensed milk tins and brick-like half-loaves
turned yellow and green. Amory had cut off Mrs. ’III’s
daily visit; she now came on Saturdays only, and
Cosimo had not been there to give her a hand. By the
time Dorothy had drawn up the fire, and, going for the
tea-things, had found plates with sardine-tails on their
edges and cups with graduations of brown about their
rims, she might have been pardoned had she thought tea
hardly worth troubling about; but she merely bustled
cheerfully about, scraping things into a bucket, clearing
the table, sweeping the hearth. All the time she
PENCE 151

chatted about the Ararat Extra Light and the photo-
graph of her that would appear in the papers on the
morrow. Amory had been shocked to hear that Doro-
thy had actually consented to this. ;

“Why not?” Dorothy had demanded. “It won’t
have my name on, and by the time the machine men
_have finished with it, it won’t be either like me or any-
body else! My dear, you’re as bad as Aunt Emmie.
Hang my family! Would any of them buy me a pair
of Japhet Boots? My dear, I have to dress myself
well: I can’t afford to go about in rags! You don’t
suppose I buy my clothes, do you? Why, you couldn’t
get these stockings for thirty shillings! I don’t mean
that I get photographed for every stitch I have on, but
I have to get things one way or another! ”

Amory sighed to be the possessor of a relentless intel-
lect. It was a heavy burden. Far, far happier were
they, the simpler ones, whose nature it was to laugh
lazily and good-humouredly while others shouldered the
responsibility of the world. They did not even know
that in order that they might dance somebody else must
weep. Dorothy had condemned herself. All sorts of
people could put forward that plea of hers, “I have to
get things one way and another.” Amory wanted to
know what Dorothy gave the world in return. She,
Amory, gave her art; but Dorothy would surely hardly
claim that those fashion-drawings of hers could not quite
well be got along without. Therefore it was even a
little sorrowfully that Amory asked Dorothy how she
was getting along at the studio.
152 THE TWO KISSES

“ Please don’t tread on my new Ararat!” Dorothy
eried in fright. “ Sorry; my fault for leaving it there.
... The studio? Oh, I’m under Miss Benson, of
course; it would be a shame to turn her out of a job,
and Miss Umpleby would come next anyway; so I just
potter along. As a matter of fact, I’m only in the studio
about half my time; it’s much more fun downstairs,
talking over ideas with Mr. Miller. You wouldn’t sup-
pose, would you, Amory,” she said suddenly, both ear-
nestly and excitedly, “that as I stand here now, filling
this teapot, I’ve got an idea worth—I don’t know how
much, but certainly Doubledays’ would give me a thou-
sand for it, if Hallowells’ won’t take it, and I should
want a pretty stiff contract even then?”

With her hair all rumpled by the Ararat cap and her
feet in Cosimo’s old slippers she certainly did not look
worth a thousand. »

“Sorry I can’t tell you what it is,” she went on, set-
ting down the teapot, thumbing a hard half-loaf and
selecting a softer one. “I haven’t told Mr. Miller yet.
We have to choose our time for these things; wait for
the ripe moment. Wait till Hallowells’ get their last
storey up and the roof on, then we'll see. Mr. Miller
thinks I’m just a person who makes a useful suggestion
now and then, and I let him think so; but wait a bit.
Something better than Benny’s place for me!”

“* But—but—I don’t understand. Is this fashion-
drawing?” Amory asked.

“Oh, dear no!” Dorothy replied, drawing up a chair
to the table. “ Let it stand a minute first—stir it with
aspoon. ... I don’t mean fashion-drawing now. You

 
PENCE 153

see, Hallowells’ are going to wake London up. Mr.
Miller’s pretty good at his job—waking London up—in
other words, advertising, and I’m only a fashion-artist
a long as there’s nothing better going. It will probably
come off next Spring—depends how they get on with
the building; and I’ll buy a picture from you then,
Amory.”

Amory had smiled. Oh, advertisement! She had
thought that Dorothy could hardly mean that she was
going to make all this money out of fashion-drawing!
Advertisements—those funny things that Aunt Jerry
was getting! Amory smiled again.

For Aunt Jerry had lately been showing her more of
them—advertisements now, not of caterers and wedding-
cake makers, job-masters, and house-agents and furnish-
ers, such as she had had at the time of her wedding, but
of quite other things. Amory had thought she had
never seen anything so funny—and nauseating—funny
and nauseating both at once. Really, the things were
an outrage! She supposed that somebody—Mr. Miller
perhaps—read the top left-hand corner of the front page
of the Times and Morning Post day by day, carefully
counted the weeks, felt (as it were) Aunt Jerry’s pulse,
asked her how she was feeling each morning, pene-
trated into her hidden thoughts, anticipated her desires,
and then sent the things along—descriptions of layettes
and perambulators, of cribs and pens and patent bottles,
of foods and clothes and schemes for insurance. “ Baby
will Soon be Cutting his Teeth,’ Mr. Miller, or who-
ever it was, began, whispering (so to speak) confiden-
tially behind his hand; or “ Of course if you WANT
154 THE TWO KISSES

your Wee .One to have Wind!” ... That, Amory
thought, was the funny aspect; the nauseating one came
when you remembered that, properly diffused by this
same means, really valuable information about Eugenics
and.the Chromosome might have been given to the world.
That, if Aunt Jerry and Mr. Massey must have chil-
dren, would have been, not immediately perhaps, but
ultimately far more to the purpose. But Amory sup-
posed it would be a waste of time to look for ultimate
purposes to Dorothy. Possibly she not only devised
the advertisements, but drew the layette too.

But Amory had not forgotten that she wanted Doro-
thy to lend her ten pounds. The minutes were passing,
and no doubt Dorothy would soon be putting on the
. Ararat again, and going back to Oxford Street and Mr.
Miller. Amory turned over this and that “ opening”;
none of them seemed very promising. Dorothy was
already lacing up the Japhet Boots; she was going to
make her advertisement a “cinch” by walking back
also in the downpour. But suddenly Amory remem-
bered her pride. There was no need for abjectness.
Therefore it was with a certain offhandedness that, as
Dorothy rose and stamped one Japhet boot after the
other, she suddenly said, “ Oh, I say, Dorothy, will you
lend me ten pounds?”

It is astonishing how rich everybody. else appears
when we ourselves are poor. For a moment Dorothy’s
eyes opened widely, then she broke into a humorous
grimace.

“My dear! ... Where from, I wonder?” Then
she added, “ Really? I mean, you really want it?”
PENCE 155

“Yes,” said Amory shortly. She wondered whether
Dorothy thought she would ask for it if she didn’t want
it.

“T haven’t ten pounds in the world,” said Dorothy.
Then she considered for a moment. “If it’s really
urgent—I mean if you really must have it—I might—I
never have yet, but I might be able to get it ” She
paused.

There seemed to Amory a certain lack of delicacy in
the pause. It was as if she gave Amory an opportunity
of saying what she wanted the money for. Amory was
sure that some day, when those poor and deserving
artists should come to her, she would neither ask ques-
tions nor break off into pauses that came to the same
thing. She did not deny Dorothy’s right to refuse; she
did deny her any other right. If Dorothy’s fashion-
drawing or advertisements or whatever it was could not
provide ten pounds, then absolutely the only thing that
could be said for these absurdities disappeared.

“You see, I should have to borrow it myself. ;
Dorothy said hesitatingly, and Amory merely hoisted
her shapely shoulders.

Then, however, it seemed to strike even Dorothy that
she was not behaving very well. Suddenly she said,
“ All right, I will borrow it; will to-morrow do?”

“T should be awfully obliged,” said Aniory, helping
Dorothy on with the Ararat Coat.

But Dorothy relapsed from the right attitude again
immediately. Without stopping to think that the Ara-
rat sleeve was wet and Amory dry, she suddenly passed
her arm about her. She held her close, making her

 

?

 
156 THE TWO KISSES

horridly wet, and began to say a number of the so-called
sympathetic things that, when they are not imperti-
nences, are banalities.

“T am sorry, dear,” she said. “TI see how it is; of
course you aren’t cut out for this sort of life. I saw
that the moment I came in. Now, look here, what you
ought to: do would be to give Mrs. ’Ill a sum every week,
and to tell her that she’s got to do you, all in, for that.
Not too much, either; you can’t buy, but she can.
That’s the way I do. I saw how you'd been living
when I washed up; eggs and sardines and pressed beef;
and you're really run down. ‘You ought never to have
signed that contract, but I'll tell you what you perhaps
can do about that. Tell Croziers’ that you won’t go to
another dealer, but that you must have leave to sell
things privately, and that you'll pay them commission
just as if they'd sold them. If they won’t—well, just
you sell without their permission, and let ’em sue you if
they like. They won’t sue you. They can’t afford it.
I’m seeing business men every day, remember, and I’m
sure that’s what Mr. Miller would say. And if my
thing comes off I’ll buy a picture from you next Spring.
Will you promise to do that, Amory?”

Even Amory saw the sense of it, but that did not
alter the fact that to all intents and purposes Dorothy
was lending her money on the condition that she did as
she was told with it. Not exactly that, of course, but
rather indelicately like it. And she had all but told
Amory that her place was disgracefully dirty and her-
self underfed. Amory wasn’t sure that Dorothy wasn’t
simply one mass of pose. She could come here and
PENCE 157

speak her mind plainly enough, could talk in quite a
grasping spirit of the money she intended to get; but
Amory could imagine her with Mr. Miller—anything
but plain; sly, wheedling, not helping in the emancipa-
tion of her sex at all, but actually doing all she could
to rivet their chains the faster upon them; neither for-
getting, nor allowing Mr. Miller to forget, that she was
rather a personable young woman. Amory called it
the next thing to—well, she wouldn’t say what. She
would be kind,-merely say that they were in opposite
camps, and let it go at that.

Therefore she was not giving Dorothy one for her-
self, but was merely showing herself staunch to a high
ideal, when she said, effusively, but still with dignity,
“ Oh, thank you so very, very much .. . if you could
possibly get me the money. ... Perhaps I haven’t
managed very well, but as you say, I’ve other things to
think of; and about what you say about Croziers’, I
hardly thi ee

But Dorothy cut bluntly in. “Rubbish! They’ve
just taken advantage of your ignorance and inexperi-
ence. I should tell ’em they could make kite-tails of
their silly old contract! Look here, shall I see Mr. Dix
for you?”

Amory hesitated. She did not want to see Mr. Dix
again herself, firstly because she felt that an artist
ought to be spared these sordid matters, and secondly
because she always wanted to wash herself when Mr.
Dix had covered her with those galantined eyes. But
Dorothy was not an artist, and apparently didn’t mind
a glutinous look more or less. To the coarser nature

 
158 THE TWO KISSES

the coarser task. One didn’t chop firewood with a
razor... . ;

“What'd be the good?” she sighed. “TI signed the
thing.”

“Leave that to me,” said Dorothy briskly. “ T’ll
talk to Mr. Dix for you. At least I’ll get permission
for you to sell things privately, and then you can
reckon the ten pounds off the price of the picture Pll
buy—for my scheme’s bound to come off! So we'll call
that a bet. And now I must fly. Do try my plan
with Mrs. "Ill. When’s Cosimo coming back? Yes, I
saw about his uncle.’ Good-bye, dear. . . . And oh,
dear, now I’m forgetting the very thing I came for!
You will sign that advertisement, won’t you?”

“What advertisement?” Amory asked. She had
forgotten all about the Ararat Coat. But now she re-
membered. ... “Oh, that waterproof thing! Oh,
you don’t want me to sign that!”

Dorothy turned quickly. “Oh, Amory, don’t be so
silly!” she broke out. “ Of course it doesn’t matter a
button to us whether you sign it or not, but I thought
you might as well. Nobody need sign it for that mat-
ter, but we have our space, and it’s a pity to waste this
rain. And I really could get you the complete outfit,
boots and all. As well as getting your name before the
public. But don’t if you don’t want.”

Amory lifted her shallow (but penetrating) eyes.

“Well, dear—if it were really necessary—especially
after all your kindness—but as you say it isn’t—if you
wouldn’t very much mind—TI think my signature looks
better on my pictures ”

 
PENCE 159

“All right. It doesn’t matter,” said Dorothy.
“Tl let you know how I go on with Mr. Dix ”

And she was gone, once more to put the Ararat and
the Japhet Boots to the test of the heaviest rainfall for
eighteen years.

No sooner was her back turned than Amory, flinging
aside the curtain on its little rail, lay down on her
unmade bed. She had the promise of her ten pounds,
but it had cost its price. It had cost it in forbearance.
Still, that was no more than all the poets and seers and
souls dedicated to art had had to suffer before her, and
she, like them, had kept her ideal unsullied.

But she was disappointed in Dorothy.

 
II

A DAMSEL ERRANT

ORE and more as she thought it over, Amory was

glad that she was not going to see Mr. Hamilton

Dix again. Excepting always Cosimo, who was differ-

ent, she had begun to have a poor opinion of men.

And as this opinion was based, not on her reading of

Association books, nor on anything Laura Beamish or

Katie Deedes had told her, but on her own unshakable

and inalienable experience, it is perhaps worth a mo-
ment’s examination.

By no means, then, did she now think men the efli-
cient, capable creatures they appeared to consider them-
selves to be. Amory knew men; she knew two of them,
no fewer. Ome of these two men had inveigled her into
an all-but-fraudulent contract; the other, definitely
fraudulently, had absconded with the funds that had
provided Amory Towers with an income of a pound a
week, and was not very likely ever to be heard of again.
We all speak of the world as we find it. This was the
world as Amory had found it; and, since the total sum
of the world’s wrong and cruelty was admittedly enor-
mous, what more natural than to try to gauge its enor-
mousness by a process of multiplication ?

Amory, sternly and deliberately setting her painting
aside until she should have come to some really basic

conclusion on these points, began to multiply.
160
A DAMSEL ERRANT 161

And the day on which she did so was an evil day for
those impostors—men. How should it not be an evil
day for them? For men, who had had the world’s
affairs entirely in their hands in the past, still had them
almost entirely in their hands to-day; and what had they
made of things? Plainly, the best system they had been
able to devise was a system in which it was possible for
trustees to abscond with funds entrusted to them by
godmothers. And not only that. Forgetting that a
real man, Blake (unhappily now dead), had said that
the sight of a robin in a cage set all heaven in a rage—
totally ignoring that spiritual aspect of the matter—
men, when asked for redress, callously weighed the cost
of prosecution and the chances of securing a conviction,
_ shrugged their shoulders, and (in Amory’s case) appar-
ently proposed to do nothing at all. Men, in a word,
actually approved (though they pretended not to) of the
organized robbery of poor girls.

Next, whether they liked it or not, men must shoulder
the responsibility for a state of things that permitted
iniquitous contracts to be fluttered in the face of neces-
sitous people, and that (in effect) ground the face of the
poor because he (or in the present instance she) was
poor. Males, as males, could not escape the onus of
Mr. Hamilton Dix. Amory might have been more
merciful had they made any attempt to do so, but they
did not. They spoke of such things as everyday mat-
ters of business. They said that no humanly devisable
system could be perfect, and told her, with their hypo-
critical “‘ niceness,” that the whole fabric of society could
hardly be pulled down merely because a self-seeking in-
162 THE TWO KISSES

dividual here and there crept in and took advantage.
But Amory knew that it was not a question of
individuals, It was the underlying spiritual principle
that was the whole point. That was radically wrong.
Even men saw this, a few men, and called themselves
Radicals, which was really a Latin word, meaning that
they affected to go to the radix or root of the matter;
but Amory knew where the root of the matter really
lay. It lay in this artificial sex-distinction and in that
frightfully laughable masculine theory’ of the “ natural
dominance of the male.”

But this was only a part of it, and not the finer part.
It was in the finer part that the whole evil came to a
head. How (to put the thing in a nutshell) did men
(with the honourable exception of Cosimo and one or
two others) treat art (namely, Amory’s art)? There
you had it!

Here Amory was on her own ground, ‘and could speak
once more from that astonishingly useful thing, experi-
ence. How had the world, under male dominance,
treated her art? . ... Well, Amory would be fair, even
generous. There actually had been a period of a few
months, a sort of lucid interval, when Mr. Hamilton
Dix’s articles really had given the impression that Mr.
Dix knew what he was talking about. They had been
written about the time Amory had signed her contract,
and had been copied by provincial papers. But oh!
the downfall after that.. The adulation Dix had lately
been spilling over that Harris girl, who (as Amory could
demonstrate, absolutely and up to the hilt) had simply
stolen Amory’s own subjects and carried one or two of
A DAMSEL ERRANT 163

Amory’s own tricks of handling to simply screaming
absurdities! More than once Amory had wondered
whether Miss Harris let Mr. Dix kiss her... . And
when Amory had pointed out the theft to Mr. Dix, and
had said that in her poor opinion an action for infringe-
ment of copyright might lie (or if it mightn’t, then it
ought to), had Mr. Dix done anything but ogle her and
insult her with his sticky smile? Not he. He had
merely asked her whether she wished to make her
demonstration before a jury of matrons! . . . No doubt
he had thought that smart, but even a fool may some-
times tell the truth by accident and unawares. A jury
of matrons—that was to say an appeal to a court that
did not condone embezzlement and smile at thievish con-
tracts—was exactly what was needed. But had men,
during all the centuries in which they had ruled, ever
founded such a court? Were they ever likely to do so
until they were absolutely driven to it? Not they!
And it was probably too late now. The women had
seen through them, knew their real nature. At last
they had seen the thing to be the sex-war it really had
been all along. Amory could have named, offhand,
quite a dozen of her old companions of the McGrath
who had put the whole question far more clearly than
the so-called statesmen. And even among men them-
selves there was the clear-eyed Otto Weiniger—that
notable exception.

For what had Weiniger said, if the dull world would
but take the wool out of its ears and listen? Why, what
but that the classification by sexes was nothing but the
roughest of approximations after all? Because the
164 THE TWO KISSES

chromosome didn’t actually show, illogical folk had
" got into the habit of saying “ This is a man ” and “ That
is a woman,” largely by force of hearing it repeated time
after time. But what of the masculine qualities in
woman, the feminine qualities in man? What about
Cosimo’s exquisite perceptions, Amory’s own strong
art? Oh no; this rough guesswork really would not
do for a generation that at last, in spite of bandages and
blinkers, had begun to see the light! Amory knew—by
herself and Cosimo, to go no further—that the sexes
did intermerge and graduate. The best women to-day
had brains that pierced ruthlessly through shams (which
was what brains were primarily for); and the best men
were Feminist in their sympathies. No doubt it would
take a little time for this truth to force its way into the
Glenernes of the land. No doubt Mrs. Deschamps
would continue to flirt with M. Criqui, and the un-
speakable Mr. Wellcome to boast that he was wholly
(not partly) the father of his own offspring and his
placid wife entirely (and without qualification) their
mother. But nobody on the look-out for signs of the
true progress turned their eyes Glenernewards. Glen-
erne had never heard of the chromosome. Ten to one
it would have thought it was a mechanical piano-player.
That was why Amory had left Glenerne.

And how had the world treated its Weiniger—its
Nietzsche—its Strindberg? ‘‘ Mad as hatters,” it said,
merely because they had shot themselves, or died in the
madhouses to which it had driven them!

Yes (Amory thought), if that was the best the men
could do, it was time the women took hold!
A DAMSEL ERRANT 165

Hungrily, hungrily she wished Cosimo was back, so
that they might discuss these things together!

But Cosimo not only remained away; he did not
even write very frequently. He appeared to wait until
he had received three letters from Amory, and then to
“answer” them together, obviously with the letters
before him. Amory understood that business in con-
nection with his uncle’s estate detained him; he was in
Shropshire: and a phrase about “running up to town
presently ” had read as if, even when he should come,
he would go back to Shropshire again. But he had not
given up his studio near the Vestry Hall; Amory knew
that because he had sent her the key of it and had asked
her to forward his letters; and Amory went there daily.
Once she had even tried to work there, but without much
success. She had hardly expected it would answer.
She had only tried it because shé had come to hate her
own place so.

Indeed, there had been days when she had approached
her easel as reluctantly as if the instrument had been
a guillotine with a basket behind it to receive her severed
head; and there had been other days when to contem-
plate the daub on the canvas had almost made her wish
‘it had been one. For she now found her own work
execrable. And yet she could not summon the courage
to take a knife and scrape it out. Each afternoon she
hoped it would appear better in the morning, but it
never did. It seemed as if Oroziers’ carrier, in fetching
away those twenty-eight pictures, had taken away also
whatever talent had gone to their painting. On one
canvas only that she had produced since then could she
166 THE TWO KISSES

bear to look, and that was neither study, sketch, nor pic-
ture. It showed the group, all red with firelight, that
had sat about her hearth when Laura Beamish, with the
coloured ribbons of her guitar falling about her, had
sung “ The Trees they do Grow High.”

She knew that the reasons for this wretched falling
off lay close at hand. In the first place, she badly
needed a change. Next, she was making far, far
greater attempts than when she had been content to
state (as it were with a “ Something like this—you
know—and this—you’ve seen these things ”’), the results
of her Saturday night wanderings in the streets and of
her Sunday mornings in Petticoat Lane or where the
“ Salvation Army gathered to sing. She told herself that
she had acquired knowledge more quickly than she had
been able to assimilate it. Next, the lean years were
always followed by the fat, the fat by the lean: it was a
Law. . . . But she had gleams of hope too. Broadly
considered, discontent was no bad sign. Only fatuity
could regard its work with unvarying complacence.
Despondency might not be in itself a guarantee of
genius, but genius and despondency were no strangers.
‘Her work was in a stage of transition. She was in
mental and spiritual labour, and a new style would
emerge. To the old one she refused to return... .
And so on. The more she groped the more she read,
and the more she read the more she groped. They are
lucky who are merely required to love the highest when
they see it: let us sorrow for those who are condemned,
not only to love, but also to attempt to realize, the high-
est when they do not see it.
A DAMSEL ERRANT 167

And let us sorrow especially for the artist who has no
choice but to sacrifice, to the vast and thunderous things
he cannot do, the frail and small and comfortable things
that he can,

Amory’s refuge from herself at that time was to walk
the streets until she was ready to drop with fatigue.
North, south, east, and west she went, numbing herself
with mechanical movement, exhausting herself with
speculations that even for herself had no interest.
Faces passing, passing, for ever passing, seemed to lend
her a stupor; they seemed, not individuals, but aspects
of one general, horrible human phenomenon. Some-
times, in this multiple beast of a crowd, her heart palpi-
tated as the heart of a bird palpitates before a spinning,
fascinating snare. Sometimes for an hour at a time she
would see nothing but eyes—eyes various in shape and
colour as the pebbles on a beach, sometimes looking into
hers, sometimes looking past her, sometimes tipped with
arrowheads of white as they turned, sometimes only to
be seen under their lowered lids as a‘finger-nail is to be
seen under the finger of a glove.’ She wondered how
many of them, like her own, were seeing nothing but
eyes too. ‘She wondered on what pillows they closed,
within what walls, behind what doors and windows,
with what other eyes sealed by their sides. . . . And at
other times she saw nothing but doors and windows.
As if she had been paid to keep a catalogue of these
things, she counted and classified the fanlights of -Lin-
coln’s Inn and the Bloomsbury Squares, the high-rail-
inged balconies of the tenements behind Victoria Street
and Shaftesbury Avenue, the numbers on Soho doors,
168 THE TWO KISSES

the window-boxes of Mayfair. Then there would take
her the fancy that everybody she saw knew everybody
else, as the bees of a hive may be supposed to know one
another, and that she alone was an intruder and un-
known. And for a time she rather liked that. It gave
her a sense of specialness. But presently it began to
frighten her a little. The specialness turned to an in-
tolerable loneliness. Her elbows touched theirs, but
they were remoter from her than the stars. If she
could have stopped one of them and asked it what name
it bore it would have been rather a relief; to know even
a name would have been something; it would have
helped in that frightening blankness, and she would
have been quite willing to tell her own name in return.
But she knew nothing about them—nothing, nothing.
Even their sex (if Weiniger was to be believed) was a
matter of presumption. Of course some had beards
and some had not, but that was a shallow, superficial
view. No doubt with the advance of knowledge (she
fancied Galton had said something of the sort) beards
might be bred on every face, or bred out of existence
entirely. Amory hoped the latter. Mr. Jowett, at the
McGrath (she remembered), had once lifted his mous-
tache to show her the growth and construction of the
ornament, and it had not struck her as a pretty sight;
and she could not have endured Cosimo with a beard.
It would have been a contradiction of all she found most
sympathetic in Cosimo. That nice, friendly other girl
Amory was ready to choose for Cosimo should certainly

not be a girl who would allow Cosimo to grow a
beard. ...
A DAMSEL ERRANT 169

Amory went into Cosimo’s studio one night, after
a long walk through Wandsworth, past Clapham Com-
mon, and back through the Old Town to the bus at Vic-
toria, in order to see whether there were any letters for
him. There were none, and she sat down on the edge
of his bed, where she had sat that morning when she had
come to tell Cosimo that she was moving into Cheyne
Walk at once. Cosimo’s studio was on the ground floor,
at the back of a block. Amory had not lighted the gas.
Somewhere away across a yard somebody was going to
bed with a blind up, and the distant incandescent shed
a raw ugly light. It shone through a narrow side-
window of Cosimo’s studio, making quite a bright patch’
on the floor at the foot of his bed. Amory watched it
dully, trying to summon up force to get up and go home.

“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... .
170 THE TWO KISSES

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 an-
other’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. Cos-
imo, 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 a
real kiss, 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 Glen-
erne 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 that
A DAMSEL ERRANT 171

seemed 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. Per-
haps—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 re-
sentment. 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 any-
thing 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 her
172 THE TWO KISSES

instinctive shrinkings from the rough physique of men.
They were not Antinéuses 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 bearable-
ness 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 well-
nigh 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, and
A DAMSEL ERRANT 173

burglars 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 re-
membered 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
ihe milk-carts would be coming round, and the post-
man

But she would not wait to see whether any letters
came for him

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.

 

 
174 THE TWO KISSES

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. It could only 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? JI 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 the
A DAMSEL ERRANT 175

night 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’m
so tired!”

“ 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.
III

“ BUSINESS AS USUAL”

ALUABLE as were the qualities that had placed
Dorothy’s friend, Mr. Miller, high in the estima-
tion of Hallowells’, they entailed one defect that was
more valuable than all of them put together. Resolu-
tion, 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 compara-
tively 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 you
176
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 177

were 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 them-
selves 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 as follows:—

“Too smart. Smartness took the full count the fall
before last; we’re pushing these funny stunts under-
ground where they belong. And that other idee—
too noisy. Shouting don’t go any more to-day.
N. G. Now yow’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.

 
178 THE TWO KISSES

It’s a noo edifice, and it’s going to be run on noo meth-
ods. 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 un-
obtroosive. 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 diction-
ary 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, Gentle-
man—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 suf-
ficient if necessary to throw at the birds—from above.
One day Mr. Miller, passing a more than usually in-
genious 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 the
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 179

man 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 hun-
dred 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 prop-
erty, and so of no more value to one emporium than
to another) ; and though he had failed, it was still bet-
ter to have failed in such an attempt than to have suc-
ceeded in the funny stunts that had been pushed under-
ground 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. Mil-
ler had paid a good deal of court to Dorothy Lennard—
or perhaps less at first to Dorothy than to Lady Task-
er’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. Mil-
180 THE TWO KISSES

ler had 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 re-
turn 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 busi-
ness 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 pud-
dle in front of the Grand Entrance every day, and ev-
ery 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 de-
portment 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 inspect-
ors and engineers swarming all over the place, that
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 181

business should be “carried on as usual during re-
building ” 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 In-
auguration 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 Hallo-
well 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 Hallo-
wells’ must fast and keep his vigil before the picture of
Sir Walter and the Cloak. The funny stunt has taken
the full count. Mr. Miller has corrected the perspec-
tive of things. . . . Therefore pass we on to how Dor-
othy 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 Mc-
Grath Mr. Miller had presently come to think almost
as much as he did of Dorothy the niece of Lady Tasker;
182 THE TWO KISSES

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 dis-
daining as debarred by his official position from super-
intending Hallowells’ pictorial advertising; and she
had suggested Mr. Hamlton Dix instead. “Is he a
live wire?” Mr. Miller had demanded. “No push.
about him, I mean, no noise, not always forcing him-
self 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?”

6 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.”

“T 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 little
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 183

shaken. She smiled and blushed both at once. Mr.
Stanhope Tasker was her second cousin, and Mr. Mil-
ler’s next words explained how Lady Tasker’s nephew
had come to be at Hallowells’.

“TI 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 to look good; 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 with-
out familiarity. Now just you tell me, Miss Lennard,
what’s the bother?” é

Again Dorothy had bitten her lip, grown pink, and
laughed. “Leave him to me. I’ll keep him for you
if, 1 ean.”

“But great snakes (pardon me) what do these gen-
tlemen 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 ’—and the rank of marshal.”

“ But you just said that if they weren’t hard to get
they were no good to you.”
184 THE TWO KISSES

“‘ 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 sweet-
hearts on a field of battle. It 7s as noble. In a prop-
erly organized community there ought to be a Dis-
tinguished Salesmanship Order just as there’s a Dis-
tinguished Service Order for our military classes. And
Mr. Stan’s only asked to graduate for the Distin-
guished Smiling Order, if I may take the liberty of
saying so.”

“Well, perhaps he’ll do better after the Inaugura-
tion.”

“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 assist-
ance about Mr. Dix. It’s a fact that if these people
were easy to get everybody’d be getting em. Pardon
me, after you fe

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 Hal-
lowell 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.

 
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 185

Successively he had been ploughed for the army, had
tried six months in the city, had spent a year in Can-
ada, 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 bewil-
dered 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 or
186 THE TWO KISSES

somebody 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. Mil-
ler when he would be out, and borrowed his office—
his fourth office since the building had been in prog-
ress, 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 pre-
pared 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 orna-
mental without at four o’clock of a Friday afternoon
early in January, and Dorothy had all in readiness
for him. Before showirg 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 con-
veniently turned over), she gave him an outline of
the general scheme and the part it was hoped he would
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 187

consent 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 him-
self received meant anything, he would be a Berenson
or a Cavaleaselle 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-Lau-
trec.) 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 Tow-
ers 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 mag-
nanimous 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?
188 THE TWO KISSES

(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 they did believe this, that while
an inferior writer might seem to 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 Hallo-
wells’ 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 him-
self; with an hour or two in which to think the matter
over he might (he said) be able to come to a conelu-
sion. He understood that time pressed; it was half-
past five now. Could—could Miss 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 dig-
nity; 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.

 
“BUSINESS AS USUAL” 189

For the second time the scene was set in the Troca-
dero Grill. Mr. Dix pointed out that the decoration,
garish in detail, nevertheless took its place in the en-
semble; 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 genius was just 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 Doro-
thy 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 under-
stood. Was the Miss Towers of whom he had spoken
one of those unfortunate ones? She had heard (she
said) of a Mr. 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 these
190 THE TWO KISSES

hard-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 hor-
rible people myself! They couldn’t eat me, could
they ?”

Mr. Dix looked as if he could have eaten Miss Len-
nard, without sugar.

“Poor dear! But, I’m sure they couldn’t resist
you, Mr. Dix—not if you said the beautiful things to
them you’ve been saying to me——”

If they could, they could have done more than Mr.
Dix could Dorothy.

“Do help 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.
De a se

Again she lifted the large baby eyes. . . .

“T’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.
IV

“tr, FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—”

OW that 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, com-
ing 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 busi-
ness, and sometimes seemed more than ordinarily in-
terested in hers—almost as if he had her a little on
his mind and would have liked to be rid of some re-
sponsibility. 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 Jan-
uary 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 esthetic delight in the
way they “came.” He had reminded her a little of
‘the Antinéus. 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 and
191
199 THE TWO KISSES

to 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 or-
der 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, contin-
ued to screw.

“There!” he said at last. “I think that'll make
you safe, Amory.”

“Thanks most awfully, Cosimo,” Amory replied
quietly.

“T’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. “ Jel-
lies’ young man might burgle me, I suppose; but he’s
‘in’ again.”

“No! Really?” said Cosimo, so eagerly that Am-
ory wondered whether he was glad to change the sub-
ject. “I say! What is it this time?” ‘
“TL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 193

“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 concelu-
sions.””

“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.

“Tt 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 al-
most 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 ridiculous
194 THE TWO KISSES

you 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 an-
other reckless little laugh, she added, “Why, what
difference could a door make?”

“A good deal, or else why have ’em?” Cosimo re-
torted. He did not seem comfortable.

“Quite so: why?” Amory replied. “What a
strange idea! Really, I never knew you confuse Acci-
dentals 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 happen within ourselves.
Besides, I thought we’d arrived at our conclu-
sions.”

“ Of course, so we have,” said Cosimo apologetically.
“T know we’ve got quite down to fundamentals. Still,
there’s no actual harm in 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. “Some
thing’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.

“T haven’t changed, Amory, really—really I
haven’t,” he protested.

“You have, Cosimo,” Amory replied, her head crit-
“IL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 195,

ically a little on one side. “ You mayn’t know it, but
you’re becoming—ordinary.”

“Oh!” Cosimo broke out, revolted. ‘“ Ordinary—
Cosimo! zm :

“Tm not reproaching you,” Amory continued. “TI
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, Am-
ory? 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 mo-
ment.

“ 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 inter-
rupted.

“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 prop-
erty and so on on your mind, but I can’t believe that
accounts for all of it. I know you too well, you see!

 
196 THE TWO KISSES

Or is it”—she gave a little start, as at a quite new
surmise—“T don’t believe it can be, but is it—that
you find me changed?”

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 con-
tinued, 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, keep-
ing up a pretence of friendship that was simply an in-
tellectual 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, J’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 the
“IL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—”’ 197

eyes. They were full of sorrow and resolve. Cosimo
had changed... .

“ 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. Youre a bit run down, that’s all that’s the
matter with you.”

“T 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—T’m__ really worried about you,
dear——”

“You mustn’t worry, Cosimo. These things have
to be faced.”

“But, my dear girl! ... What things? 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 head-
ache, have you?”

“Only quite a slight one. No, please don’t brush
my hair; if you wouldn’t mind getting me a drink of
water instead, -

“ But,” said Cosimo presently, bending solicitously
over her with the water he had fetched, “I used to

 
198 THE TWO KISSES

be able to stroke your headaches away. Do let me
tr 2?

“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.”

“Ts it made?”

“T don’t know. Would you mind giving me a hand
up? I expect.I shall be all right again in the morn-
ing: 2)

He helped her weary but enduring form to the cur-
tained corner where the bed lay. Then he looked
anxiously at her. He stood irresolute.

“Tl put you a jug of water by your side, shall I?”

“Yes, please, and Tchekoff—the little book
there——”

“Oh, come, reading in bed’s the very worst thing
you can do!” :

“Perhaps Tchekoff’ll buck me up. He is stimu-
lating. 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 sup-
pose you'll be giving up the studio in March? I shall
go out for a long walk to-morrow by myself. Tl 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, Cosi-
mo-—?

She had crossed the floor again. They held the
tottering door up between them. “ Stupid not to have

 

 
“TIL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 199

waited 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.” /

“T was a fool not to wait till Monday. . . . You’re
all right ?”

“ Perfectly.”

“T 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 compari-
son 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 real-
ized 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-Jen-
kins 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 pretty
200 THE TWO KISSES

herself, and seemed to raise the question... . Still,
Cosimo had not changed. 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 Th. ss

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 the.
“TIL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 201

direction 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 peo-
ple: there was never any telling what they did not see.
As they passed through Hammersmith, Cosimo longed
to break out, “I haven’t changed, Amory——you’d know
I 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-respect-
ing 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 depend-
ent, 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 ac
cord with the finer things. Pattie in Shropshire, too,

 
202 THE TWO KISSES

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 wondering
again: 4

He waited for her to continue. As she delayed to
do so, he said, ‘“ What, Amory?”

“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. In-
stead, 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. An idée fixe isn’t
an idée at 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 preju-
dice,” she said. “ First, I know she’s mixed up with
perfectly impossible people, but you mustn’t forget

 

 
“TL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 203

that she was with us at the McGrath, Her work’s im-
possible too, poor dear Dot, but search where you will,
Cosimo, you won’t find a better appreciator than 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 little epuisées; 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 ear-
nestly, “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’t
want Dorothy, Amory!”

“T only ask you to ask yourself whether that isn’t
an idée fixe.”

“T really don’t think it’s an idée fixe,’ Cosimo re-
turned, after further examination of it. “ And be
sides, you've rather spoiled me for the companionship
of—of anybody who comes along: v

“Tt has been beautiful,” said Amory, with a de
tached air, “and it will be more beautiful still to look
back on. I don’t conceal from you, Cosimo, that quite

 
204 THE TWO KISSES

the 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 some
thing else to remember. Dorothy’s used to me. We
are friends. Another girl might not be. You see how
rouch 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 for-
ward again.

“ Ah, you’re at the very heart of the feminist Move-
ment there, if you only knew it, Cosimo,” she replied.
“ A man has only his intelligence; a woman has intelli-
gence and her intuitions as well.”

“You mean you’ve an intuition I want to get mar-
ried ?”’ Cosimo broke out. “ I swear——”

“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.
e

“IL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 205

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’sthrow 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. “T 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.

“T’m not so sure, after the disgraceful time you’ve
thought fit to stop away,” she replied. “I’m very
206 THE TWO KISSES

-eross 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—lI 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 pres-
ently. 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
J erry’s rounded bow-window, and a canary in a white
and gilt cage; and to Amory the house seemed fur-
nished 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.

“T’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 re
member Miss Crebbin?)—she’s bringing her young
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 and
“TL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 207

Cosimo 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 al-
together 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 pre-
cise 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 and her young man,
a Mr. Allport. And Mrs. Deschamps, too, greeted
Cosimo as quite an old friend.

“T shall never, never forget that wedding day, Mr.
Pratt!” she exclaimed vivaciously. “ That cake—the
wretches! But they’re always up to something, scar-
ing you out of your wits with a jam-splash on the table-
cloth 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 cannot call 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 come
208 THE TWO KISSES

on 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 and her young man on
the other. Cosimo presently became aware that this
was a quite amusing variation of the joke of Jellies,
Dorothy, the plumber, ete. It lacked the boisterous-
ness 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 Al
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 furni-
ture against the day when he and his young woman
should set up together for themselves. He seemed, too,
to be advising Cosimo also to be picking up wrinkles in
“TIL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE~—” 209

good time. Cosimo was secretly glad that Mr. Well-
come 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 there ought to 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 you
ever!”

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! If. only you 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 be-
gin! 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 an inkling of what it all really means?”

“You mean: ?” said Cosimo tentatively.

 
210 THE TWO KISSES

“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 noth-
ing 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.

“ Not the old. conceptions, of the father as the head
of the Family and soon?” Cosimo said incredulously.

“ Yes! a

“ No!—Parental Despotism ?”

“ Despotism ! ”

“ Not corporal 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?”

“ Cest cal” —

“ By—Jove!”

Cosimo whistled.

“Yes, I thought I should surprise you,” said Amory,
with quiet satisfaction.

“ Surprise !—Tm thunderstruck ! ”

“You didn’t know you’d been lunching in a regular
museum of it all, did you?”

“A museum? A catacomb!”
“TL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 211

“ You wouldn’t suppose that we lived in this Year of
Grace, would you?”

“ About 1100, Z should 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 should say: as

“ 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 longer can In-
dividualism last? We heard that American lady last
year; would you have thought it possible that the sys-
tem could have survived such a slashing attack? When
will people begin to have even a rudimentary concep-
tion of the function of the State in these matters?
When will they 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 re-
pression. Russianizing the Home, instead of abolish-
ing 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! The

 
212 THE TWO KISSES

Home! .., Oh, when will the dawn come?” She
turned up the pretty eyes to the sky; she spoke passion-
ately. “ 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 be-
ginning! 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 magnifi-
cent a lecturer was lost in her. Not that just at pres-
ent she was painting very much. She was doing better
than painting. With all the strength of which she was
capable she was resolutely not painting. She was lay-
ing 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 under-
take 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.
“TL FAUT QU’ UNE PORTE—” 213

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 at-
tracts 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 com-
mon 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 al-
tered!” .

“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 affec-
tionate 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 she
214 THE TWO KISSES

lifted the golden eyes almost bashfully, and then
dropped them again—“‘TI 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. J 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——”

She was even nobler in her confession of weakness:
than she had been in the strength and rush of her out-
burst. Again, for no reason that he could have ex-
plained, Cosimo felt a brute. . . . He paw this bright
little creature, as the odious Dix had done? He sully
a thing so radiant as their relation with—pawing ?

Suddenly Cosimo found himself disliking Mr.
Hamilton Dix more intensely than he had ever done
before.

Amory, for her part—though she did not know whose
—rather fancied that she had put a spoke into some
body’s wheel.
Vi

BOND AND FREE

\HE truth was, Amory presently began to tell her-
self, that Cosimo’s life was in danger of becoming
rather an aimless sort of thing. Few people knew the
perils of aimlessness so well as did Amory Towers.
She knew them because for a time she had suffered them
in her own thought and work. But that was all past
now. She had begun to work again. The foundations
of a real picture were being laid at last. This was the
famous canvas, “ Barrage,” that afterwards made her
name. None knew better than Amory herself its short-
comings as mere painting, but she had learned in bitter-
ness that issues greater than those of painting were at
stake to-day. To-day or never was the time to do all the
things that had never been done. Accordingly, her
picture was partly a painting and partly a sociological
symbol. It was, as far as it was at present designed,
a medley in which, before a series of guarded cave-
mouths and dropped portcullises and defended doors,
women of the various stages of civilization were grouped
with men. Now they were in the attitude of menials at
their feet, or hewing their wood, or drawing their water ;
anon, set on high pedestals, before which men made
mock reverences, they stood wreathed with roses from be-

neath which iron fetters peeped grimly forth; and later,
215
216 THE TWO KISSES

in apotheosis, Womanhood herself walked by man’s side,
equal, sworded, flashing and free. If something of a
likeness to Amory herself was to be traced in all these
figures, every artist who works in a single room knows
how frequently, for lack of pence, he must use him-
self as a model. It was this picture, of which more
later, that enabled Amory to see so clearly the peril
that beset Cosimo.

Of course Amory recognized that Cosimo was not
absolutely aimless as long as he had Amory’s own art
to admire; but that was a narrow and selfish way of
looking at it. Amory didn’t want Cosimo to admire
her art for any personal glory she might get of it. She
wanted him, not for herself, but for a Cause. In her
picture he posed as the champion who had stricken the
bonds from the belted and sworded and flashing and
free young woman (who was quite frankly Amory her-
self), because that was the réle she wished to see him
in; but she knew how easy it would be (Cosimo was
so good natured) for any designing and retrogressive
young woman to get hold of him and to enlist his sup-
port for the forces of conservatism and the night.
That (Amory’s pretty lips compressed and her eyes
shone with a cold and opal-like fire) must not be. In
order that it might not be, Amory had made use of
Dorothy’s name; not that she really wanted him to
marry Dorothy, but that even to marry Dorothy would
be better than to marry somebody more benighted still.
It was a mere ruse de guerre, justified by the larger
issue. These things have to be done when the fiends of
ignorance and the angels of knowledge contend.

a RG" ae
BOND AND FREE 217

Amory called these fiends and angels the Anabolic and’
the Katabolic forces in human progress. It didn’t
matter what you called them. Two principles always
had contended and always would contend. It was a
Law.

Therefore Amory wanted Cosimo, on the side of the
angels and victory. Ever so much more she wanted
him on that side now that he was a man of some sub-
stance. For money is the sinews of Anabolic and
Katabolic warfare also, Cosimo with his money and
Amory with her new art—what might they not accom-
plish, working together? A whole Promised Land of
endeavour lay shining before them. For Amory herself
(for example) there were all the possibilities of sym-
bolic painting—a style of painting which (actual
draughtsmanship being admittedly her weak point)
would suit her genius the more exactly for that very
reason. Nobody can dismiss a symbol because it is
badly drawn; any old drawing will do for a symbol.
For the holy purposes of social regeneration the novel-
ists thought any old writing good enough; and so it
was. So it should be for Amory too. She had half
a mind to let drawing go altogether. Then, with draw-
ing out of the way, she saw her task. “ Barrage”
would be followed by a picture (perhaps a newer word
than “ picture” would be necessary to describe it) that
would symbolize Labour Unrest; she was thinking it out
in her spare moments already. Then there should be
another, a slap in the face for Militarism. After that
should come canvases dealing with Education, and
Disestablishment, and the Triumph of Sentimental
218 THE TWO KISSES

Government and the establishment of the New
Matriarchy. Oh yes, Amory saw her task though
twenty lifetimes lay before her... .

And Cosimo? She could guide Cosimo too. No
doubt at his own doors in Shropshire there lay wrongs
to be righted—sites for village halls waiting to be
built upon, libraries and communal kitchens and wash-
houses to be founded, greens for morrice-games (Amory
vetoed archery, as coming dangerously near to Milita-
rism and the miniature rifle-range), societies for the
study of folk-song, ethical societies, lectures on econom-
ics, bands for the exchange of foreign picture post-
cards (that the spirit of brotherhood among the en-
lightened of all nations might be fostered), and so
on. . . . Oh, with Amory to direct him, there would
be plenty for Cosimo, too, to do. And he had the
money with which to do it.

And if Amory shrank from the cost to herself—
the cost, namely, of conforming to the outworn institu-
tion of marriage—it was but for a moment. What
was she, to attempt to stem the River of the Race?
She must bear the burden cheerfully. And after all,
with a little thought she ought to be able to ensure it
that Cosimo as her husband should not be very different
from Cosimo as he was now. By keeping his eyes con-
stantly uplifted to the shining peaks of their joint duty,
mere personal thoughts of self could be kept in their
place. He would hardly want a wife when he possessed
the heroine of a Feminist Crusade, she hardly a hus-
band when she had an ally placed by his sex in the
BOND AND FREE 219

fortress that, whether by beleaguering or by assault,
must be won. Yes, she would strive to bear even this.
The glory of a campaign would supplant the private
self-seeking of a courtship. They would mingle, not
love-sick sighs, but the aspirations of their souls. No
doubt when they were both old, and looked back, it
would seem well worth the cost... .

Amory herself would have been the first to confess the
weakness that set her wondering how many bedrooms
the Shropshire house had, and whether there were rose
gardens and fruit trees on the southern walls. Even
from thoughts of duty weak mortals must sometimes
stoop. Besides, if there was not a village green with
a maypole on it, some arrangement would probably have
to be made. Amory didn’t think she would want
morrice-dancing on the lawn in front of the drawing-
room windows, except, of course, on birthdays and fes-
tival days and the days when the tenants paid their rent.
The people themselves would probably prefer to have
their merrymaking to themselves. Very likely they
would only be shy before their betters. She would
show the tenantry (she did not insist on the name)
every consideration, as she should expect them to con-
sider her. . . . And if there was a lily garden as well
as a rose garden, she would send lilies as well as roses
to the cottages quite frequently.

But Cosimo must be saved for the Cause quickly,
for he was giving up his studio in March, and once he
got away again. he might fall into the hands of the de-
signing woman whose existence Amory had suspected.
220 THE TWO KISSES

She knew those designing women. She knew them by
the simple process of inversion of everything that was
noble within herself.

Amory had only seen Dorothy Lennard: once since
the afternoon when Dorothy had promised to see what
she could do about Croziers’ contract. That had been
when Dorothy had come to tell her of the mitigation
of its rigour she had secured from Hamilton Dix. But,
finding herself in Oxford Street one afternoon, she
sought Hallowells’, and tried to find her way upstairs
to the fashion-studio. “Tried,” one says, for nearly
twenty minutes Amory was hopelessly lost in the wilder-
ness that seemed to grow ever more and more compli-
cated as the time fixed for the opening drew nearer. It
was during her wandering through this labyrinth that
Amory received a shock. Passing along a corridor of
such vast length that she seemed to be looking at it
throtigh the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses, she
entered a large apartment where three women on their
knees polished the floor. There she saw a large his-
torical painting. It was the picture of Queen Bess, Sir
Walter, and the Cloak.

Her first impulse was to fall back; her second one,
which she obeyed, was to stand her ground, to put her
head back and a little on one side, and to smile defi-
antly, indulgently, truculently, all three. It was as if
she said to the picture, “We meet unexpectedly, but
since we are here we may as well have a few words to-
gether, you and [!”

A certain amount of skill, manual and ocular, had
gone to the making of the picture—enough, as we have
BOND AND FREE 221

seen, to “hit” Mr. Miller “right there.’ Perhaps
that was the reason why it hit Amory right there too,
though in the contrary sense. She stepped forward
and examined it near; then she stepped back and ex-
amined it at a distance. As she did so, a man in an
astrachan-collared overcoat and an indented grey hat
hurried past, dropping his cigar and uncovering his
head as he found himself in the presence of a lady,
even one he did not know; and then Amory continued
her gazing.

The picture struck her as incredibly funny. First,
there was the subject—“ Our old friend Chivalry,”
Amory mused. Oh yes, Chivalry in other words, those
garlands of roses in her own picture beneath which
the iron chains peeped forth. Chivalry! Oh yes, Am-
ory knew—any feminist knows—the toils men impose
on women when they talk about Chivalry! Amory
became cynical. ... Let them amend the Divorce
Laws, and then Amory would listen to what they had
to say about Chivalry! Let them give women equal
opportunities with men, and she would excuse the lift-
ing of a hat or the offering of a seat ina train! Chiv-
alry might have had its place in the social organization
of the Year Dot (see “ Barrage”), but things had
moved a bit since then, and woman to-day would walk
through puddles if she wished, though twenty cloaks
were outspread for her to step on! Thank you very
much for your Chivalry ... and now will you give
us a little Justice for a change? ... And then the
complacent handling of the thing! There was really
nothing to be said! Nobody could say it wasn’t
222 THE TWO KISSES

“ finished ”; that was just it; it was fatally “ finished ”;
the man had done exactly what he had set out to do, and
—there it was. No unseizable desire, no unattainable
dream, no Promethean attempt, no suspicion that here
was not the last possible word on the subject; and this
in a new and straining and eager age, when men were
just beginning to know that they knew nothing, and to
put off their past boastings, and to take the cave-
dweller into their counsels as their equal, perhaps their
superior, in knowledge! Here, actually to-day, was a
man who truly thought that he knew a thing or two
more than the cave-dweller! Oh, the smugness, the
self-satisfaction! Really, Amory would not dare to
show such a man her “ Barrage”; its pure heart of fire,
shining even through all its shortcomings, would have
shrivelled him and his conceit up! For surely there, in
“ Barrage,” was the true impulse of the arts to-day.
Some called it “propagandist,” but what, Amory
wanted to know, had all these Virgins and Children,
all these Crucifixions, all these Holy Families of the
past been but propaganda? The arts had been shackled
to the propagation of superstition and dogma, and of
the tenets of a religion that had found its expression
one day in seven; but in the Newer Day all days were
going to be equally holy, with the abolition of the Sab-
, bath as a first step to the consecration of the other six.
To the Virgins and Children of the future a proper
comprehension of the Rights of Woman and the Re-
sponsibilities of Parentage would be brought. Eugen-
ics would have a word to say about the Holy Families.
The Crucifixions would probably be cut out alto-
BOND AND FREE 223

gether. ... To bring that day nearer was Amory’s
mission. If she could only sell “ Barrage ”—and she
thought she could now, for the Women’s Manumission
Guild had approached her about it, and an Executive
was further considering it... .

And she would ask a good price for it, for the labourer
is worthy of her hire, and she really must study her
dress a little more... .

Amory turned away from the picture and resumed
her search for Dorothy.

But she had hardly left the room where the women
polished the floors (showing how, even in physical
strength, women were not the inferiors of men), when
she received a second shock. She was backing out again
from a room where a telescopic ladder rose to a sagging
sheet under a skylight when she saw, beyond an oval
section of redwood counter, the fair head of Dorothy
herself. It was now luncheon time, the workmen had
left, and Dorothy appeared to be eating her lunch amid
the smell of shavings and varnish and plaster. Amory
advanced.

But once more, she started back. She saw that
Dorothy was not alone. And not only was Dorothy not
alone, but she was sitting with a good-looking but ridieu-
lously smart young man on a box so narrow that from
mere necessity the young man had passed his arm about
Dorothy’s waist. They were eating sandwiches from
a paper bag, and if they were not sharing the same .
glass of lemonade, the second glass was certainly not
visible.

Then, with his mouth full of sandwich, the young
224 THE TWO KISSES

man kissed Dorothy, who performed the same idiotic
gesture on him in return.

Now no really sensitive person likes to see other
persons in the act of an embrace, and Amory was ex-
quisitely sensitive. And in this hard world it is the
sensitive person who suffers for the dull. Further, even
suffering takes a keener edge when you are seen to
suffer. Therefore the least that Dorothy and her smart
young man could have done, when, turning, they became
aware of Amory’s presence, would have been to spare
her the gratuitous pain of looking at her. But they did
not. Having outraged her, they stared at her. They
stared at her almost as if they asked her what she meant
by stealing upon them like that. It struck Amory as
it had never struck her before that Glenerne would have
been Dorothy’s proper place. If this was the way she
carried on during lunch time at Hallowells’, nothing
at the boarding-house would have shocked her.

“Hallo!” said Dorothy, not (Amory thought)
exactly welcomingly.

Still, if Dorothy had no tact, that was no reason why
Amory should not act up to her own finest instincts.
The truest delicacy would be to let it be supposed that
she had noticed nothing. Therefore she too said
“ Hallo!” very brightly. They must not guess that
they had caused her pain.

At first Amory thought that Dorothy was not going to
_ Introduce her friend, but when Dorothy did so, in three
words—“ My cousin Stan ”—she was able to guess that,
even Dorothy was not quite without some sense of shame
and confusion. Her cousin! Such unfertility of in-
BOND AND FREE 225

vention would have done discredit even to Jellies! But
of course Dorothy was embarrassed, and had said the
first thing that had come into her head. Amory bowed
with reserve to “ the cousin,” who, for his part, seemed
inclined to laugh. Very rudely, he pulled out his
watch.

“By Jove, a quarter to two! I must cut, Dot.
Dusty’ll be looking for me. See you at tea-time?
Right, Pll ring you up. So long.”

And with scarce a look at Amory he was off.

No sooner had he gone than Amory broke into vol-
uble speech.

“My dear, what a place! I’ve been looking every-
where for you this last half-hour—upstairs, downstairs,
everywhere! I was almost sure I remembered the way
to the studio—wasn’t it past a square room that has a
painting in it now?”

“Tt was, but they moved us two months ago,” Doro-
thy replied. ‘“ Did you ask for me?”

“Do you mean how did I get in? I just walked up.
Nobody stopped me. Is it against the rules?”

“Tt doesn’t matter, as it happens. But I’m afraid
Tve had lunch.”

“Oh, thanks awfully, but I always go to one of those
Food Reform places now; I feel ever so much better for
it. I was only passing, and thought I’d look in.”

“Good of you,” said Dorothy, and there was a long-
ish pause.

Amory thought it was not very clever of Dorothy not
to be able to conceal her chagrin. Amory herself al-
ways tried to behave better than that to people who
226 THE TWO KISSES

went out of their way to call on her. Probably what
was really the matter was Dorothy’s conscience; one
cannot hold aloof from the noble movements of the day
without at times feeling a little uneasy about it. But -
Causes can afford to be magnanimous. If Dorothy
wanted to out-pause Amory, Amory would let her; and,
that absurd picture being uppermost in her mind, she
gave a little laugh and spoke of that.

“It’s easy to see you’re not the art-adviser to Hallo-
wells’, Dorothy,” she said. “Must they buy such
things? And what are they going to do with it? Get
it lithographed, I suppose, for a supplement or some-
thing?”

When the subject of painting was raised Dorothy
was still a little afraid of Amory and her superior
knowledge—but less so than she had been. Twice in
the course of its production she had seen “ Barrage,”
and had stood apologetically silent before Amory’s pic-
ture. At another time she would not have excited her-
self one way or the other about Sir Walter, but new
forces thrust some of us into conservatism whether we
will or not, and “ Barrage” had made Dorothy almost
‘ ready to swallow Sir Walter holus-bolus. Therefore
she said a little defensively, ‘“‘What’s the matter with
it?”

“The matter!”? Amory exclaimed. She was smil-
ing. If Dorothy meant this for a joke she was quite
willing to enter into it.

“Well,” said Dorothy, more defensively still,
“ everybody isn’t trying to do nothing but the greatest
things all the time, after all.”
BOND AND FREE 227

“Oh, ca se voit!” Amory returned, rippling out-
right into a laugh.

“ And,” Dorothy continued, hating herself because
Amory seemed to be driving her into a defence even of
the absurd and solemn Miller, “ we’re only a business
concern, not an Exhibition, you know.”

“Oh? The wonderful thing isn’t for sale, then?”

“No; and anyway, Mr. Dix didn’t laugh at it.”
(This was true. Mr. Dix did not laugh at his bread
when Hallowells’ spread it with an extra thick helping
of butter.)

Amory kept a straight face— Dorothy,” she said,
“what’s happened to you?”

“ How, happened to me?” Dorothy returned, a little
tartly. That confounded “ Barrage” had put her into
an altogether false position. ‘“ Nothing’s happened to
me. Never mind me; tell me what’s fresh with you.
Has anything happened about your own picture yet?”

The fact that Dorothy was evidently rather cross was
enough to make Amory aware of the superiority of
cheerfulness. Besides, it might not be amiss to show
Dorothy that, high and ideal as the Cause was, it was
not quite without its mundane and practical side. That
at any rate would not be beyond Dorothy’s comprehen-
‘sion. Therefore Amory told Dorothy how the negotia-
tions stood between herself and the Manumission League
for the purchase of “ Barrage.”

Dorothy listened attentively. When Amory had
finished she paused. . . .

“Two hundred pounds, you say? Would that be
for a sale outright?”
228 THE TWO KISSES

ce Yes.”’

“ And they’d be able to do whatever they liked with
it—reproduce it or anything ?”

“T suppose so. Do you mean it isn’t enough ?”

“T wasn’t thinking of that so much. I was think-
ing—but of course I don’t know all the circumstances.”

“Ym not keeping anything back from you, Doro-
thy,” said Amory. Indeed she wasn’t. She knew
that Dorothy’s advice on such a point would be well
worth having.

“Oh, I don’t mean that at all,” Dorothy hastened
to say. “TI only mean that it’s hard to form a judg-
ment without having seen for yourself. I don’t like
the idea of selling anything outright. If it was only
a nominal royalty, in case they wanted to reproduce or
anything of that sor a

“Oh, that! As for that, I should be only too glad
to let them reproduce if they wanted.”

“Of course you would get the advertisement, but
I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a small royalty
too.”

Amory smiled. The advertisement! Wasn’t that
just like dear old Dorothy! As if all the costly things
that had gone to the making of “ Barrage” could be
valued and bartered like that! Amory explained
gently.

“T don’t think you quite understand, Dorothy. You
see, it isn’t like those other things Croziers’ got. Those
were just knocked off. I don’t want to be conceited
about ‘ Barrage,’ but it has rather taken it out of me,
in thought and emotion and those things. I’ve been

 
BOND AND FREE 229

feeling a perfect rag after a day at it. Of course, there
were heaps of things I should like to do to it, but ‘ No,’
I said that morning, ‘ you’ve expressed yourself, and
if you began tickling it up here and there you'd only
take away from the fierce meaning of it.’ So I threw
my brushes down, and then collapsed—perfectly limp.”

“Oh!” said Dorothy deferentially. She herself had
once collapsed during a spring rush, but that had been
a quite inferior collapsing, from too long hours simply,
not from any emotional strain. But Amory misinter-
preted her mild and respectful “Oh!” She spoke
rather sweetly.

“Of course I must live, and nobody can say I don’t
live frugally. But that apart, I don’t do this for money
at all. I do it because of my beliefs.”

“Oh!” said Dorothy again, this time very much as
some gallant monarch might have protested that he
never,meddled with the beliefs of ladies.

“T know,” Amory continued firmly, “ that there are
some things we don’t agree on, and of course I think
I’m right and you’re wrong, or I shouldn’t believe what
Ido. But I do think that that picture in there,” she
made a little vague pointing movement, “ preaches——
well, a perfectly damnable lesson—from the feminist
point of view perfectly damnable.”

“T—J don’t think it’s meant to,” Dorothy ventured
to say. “TI don’t so much mind it really—not that it
pretends to be very much—but parts of it are quite like
something, and I think painting has to be like things
when all’s said and done—I mean—certain sorts of
painting: ?

 
230 THE TWO KISSES

It was rather a tickling experience for Amory to be
schooled by a fashion-artist on “ sorts of painting,” and
she wished Cosimo had been there to hear. And on
these lines she knew that she could play with Dorothy
as a cat plays with a mouse. So she was beginning,
“Oh, why must painting necessarily be ‘like’ things,
as you say? Is it a Law? Do tell me!” when sud-
denly Dorothy took her back altogether. For all the
world as if both of them had been talking about one
thing and thinking of another all the time, Dorothy
boiled up.

“Oh, Amory, you do make me so cross!” she cried.
“Really, to hear you sometimes, nobody would think
an awfully pretty girl was talking! Who cares a button
about your opinions, with looks like yours? I could
understand it if you were plain! JI do wish you could
manage to be a bit more like a human being; why don’t
you put on some clothes like other people’s, instead of
always dressing as if you were going to have a baby?
‘Can’t you take an interest in things, instead of always’
moping the way you do? Why, you might be a super-
fluous woman yourself!”

For one moment Amory fairly lost her composure,
but only for one moment. The next moment she had
seen what was the matter. By “taking an interest in
things” Dorothy meant forsaking her principles; by
“putting on clothes like other people’s,” she meant
abandoning her velvets and corduroys that took the light
in such lovely broken bits of accidental colour, and
dressing like one of her own impossible fashion-plates ;
and by being “a bit more like a human being,” she
BOND AND FREE 231

meant sitting with a young man on a box and kissing
him with a mouth full of sandwich. It was almost too
funny to laugh at. If Dorothy would only ask her out-
right what she evidently had in her mind to ask her—
why she didn’t marry Cosimo—it would be perfect.
Poor old Dot! She had been fairly caught only a few
minutes before, and naturally would still feel rather
sore. Amory waited for her to go on.

She did go on. “I’ve wanted to say this for a long
time,” she-said. ‘Look here, Amory, why don’t you
marry Cosimo and have done with it? You’re lovely—
he’s quite good-looking—you seem to understand one
another all right—I’m sure you ought to by this time—
and it would be ever so much more sensible! It seems
to me you could drag on like this for ever!”

Amory’s golden eyes seemed to dance with mirth. Of
course that accidental discovery had forced Dorothy’s
hand beautifully. Dorothy was pleading with her as
earnestly as if she had just been seen, not “ canoodling ”
under a counter (that Amory believed was the word
used in such cases), but lifted up on a plinth, in a
heroic pose, with an archangel by her side, grouped
with their faces towards the east or in whatever quarter
the sun of Feminism might be expected to rise... .
Amory had not even to say anything. All she needed
to do was to stand smiling at dear old Dot and to watch
her grow redder and redder. Obviously there was no
need to accuse Dorothy when Dorothy was accusing
herself.

In another moment, too, Dorothy was defending her-
self. Her eyes, in the surrounding flush of colour,
232 THE TWO KISSES

seemed bluer than ever. And in jumping straight at
Amory’s thought she skipped a stage.

“T don’t care anyway,” she blurted out. ‘Some
things are understandable, but you and Cosimo—well,
who’s to make head or tail of you? You’re always
together, early and late, sometimes in your place and
sometimes in his—of course Z understand, dear, but
really I don’t see how you could blame people who
didn’t if—i ”

Already Amory had drawn herself up to her full five
foot against the redwood counter and had tossed back
the bright nasturtium of her head.

“Tf what?” she asked, the brook-brown eyes look-
ing full into Dorothy’s blue ones.

“Well, if they draw their own conclusions, if you
must know,” Dorothy blurted out.

As a wet cloth wipes chalk from a blackboard, so the
smile had gone from Amory’s face. Most decidedly
she wasn’t going to stand this—at any rate not from
Dorothy.

“Oh!” she said. “What people? And what con-
clusions 2”

“Well, people do. You can’t expect. to have no
conclusions drawn but your own.”

“You mean conclusions about me and Cos-
imo?” .

“T’m not saying J draw any, Amory. I understand
perfectly, of course. I mean I know there’s nothing
wrong. But you can’t stop people talking.”

Amory became still taller.

“May I ask who’s been talking?” she added. “I

 
BOND AND FREE 233

won’t say besides yourself, but this is the first I’ve heard
of it.”

“ Amory!” said Dorothy, deeply wounded. She
lifted her eyes almost humbly. “ Do you really think
that of me?”

“What am I to think?” Amory replied loftily. Yet
she was glad that Dorothy had the grace to be ashamed.
By twisting and turning and a shameless use of her
charms Dorothy might contrive to get her own way with
men, but she must not think she could come it over
one of her own sex in the same way.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry I said anything at all!” Dor-
othy wailed.

“Oh, I’m glad, I assure you!” Amory replied
quickly. ‘TI don’t believe in driving these things un-
derground and then pretending they don’t exist! If
a thing is, I want to see it as it is!”

“T know you’re ever so much braver than I am,
dear—I know I’m a dreadful coward at a push—yow’re
worth twenty of me—but still, Amory, people do say
things, and not very nice ones, and it could so easily
be avoided. ?

“ Avoided!”

“T know there isn’t anything—I only mean the ap-
pearance to people who don’t know. 1

“ And what,” said Amory slowly, “do you suppose I
care for people of that kind, and what they think?”

“Yes, you always were splendid and brave—
still 2

“Have you heard anybody talking like this?”
Amory demanded.

 

 

 
234 THE TWO KISSES

“T gaid it was a wicked lie——”

“ Ah, you have heard somebody ! ”

“Not really saying anything—only wondering—you
know how people wonder "

“Then please tell me at once who it was,” said
Amory with dignity.

But Dorothy only grew more confused than ever.

“Oh, Amory, I can’t do that—it was nothing that
wasn’t fair in a way—you oughtn’t to ask me to do
that. ”

“Be so good as to tell me at once.”

Dorothy was silent.

As a matter of fact the people who had been speak-
ing of Amory and Cosimo were Walter Wyron and
Laura Beamish, but Dorothy did weakly hope that if
things were driven underground they might at least be
forgotten.

“ Aren’t you going to tell me?” Amory demanded.:

“No,” Dorothy mumbled.

“You refuse?”

“Yes,” Dorothy mumbled. And then suddenly
she broke out almost passionately—

“T don’t blame you in the very least, Amory, but I
do blame Cosimo! I do, and it’s no good saying I
don’t. A man’s no right to be always about with a
woman, getting her talked about, and doing things
for her, and always in and out of her place! I do
think he might know better! ”

Amory was smiling again now, but not very pleas-
antly—“ Oh!” she said. “So when you said you

 

 

 
BOND AND FREE 235

thought I ought to marry Cosimo, you meant that
things had gone so far that I might as well?”

“T didn’t, Amory. I didn’t, I didn’t!” Dorothy
cried appealingly. “‘T really think you do seem to hit
it off together somehow. And as for what people say,
you say what you think about people, and they’ve a
right to do the same, and anyway you can’t stop them,
and you can’t expect to have the world to yourself.
Why, I thought you were always talking about ‘ equal
rights.’ ”

“T don’t know whether you know that just at pres-
sent you’re talking about a very precious and beauti-
ful friendship!” said Amory proudly.

“Yes, I do know—I mean I suppose so—you really
are such chums, I know: a

“ And I hope and trust the day’s coming when such
a thing can be without nasty prurient minds ‘ drawing
their own conclusions,’ as you call it, Dorothy! ...
Perhaps,” the golden eyes were sidelong now on Dor-
othy’s, “perhaps there was some particular—compro-
mising situation—your friend objected to? Or was it
merely the whole scandalous relation?”

Suddenly Dorothy, for her “part also, did not much
like the tone of this. She felt as if that sandwich
might still have left crumbs upon her mouth. There
might be a good many things to be said about her cousin
Stanhope, but at any rate he did not compromise her
on principle, nor did he discuss with her some of the
rather astonishing subjects that seemed to come into this
precious and beautiful friendship of Amory Towers and

 
236 THE TWO KISSES

Cosimo Pratt. She would bow to Amory’s superior
knowledge when it came to matters of art, but she wasn’t
going to have even Amory’s foot on her neck if Stan
was to be dragged into the dispute. And if Dorothy
again skipped a step in the chain of processes, she
thought she had reason.

“T suppose that’s because you caught me out a few
minutes ago?” she said, rather challengingly.

“Tm not sure that I quite follow you. I’m sorry
if I’m dull.”

“Very well, if you want it more plainly, you said
‘compromising situation’ because you caught us just
now. I’ve always stood up for you, Amory, but ’m
not going to let you talk like that.”

“ Sorry,” said Amory offhandedly.

“Well, you needn’t say so in that tone either; we
don’t expect everybody to go about whistling, or knock-
ing at doors and then waiting, like that charwoman and
her daughter. I’m sorry if we shocked you.”

“T don’t think I mentioned—what you seem to be
talking about, Dorothy. If I did I don’t remember.”

“ You were thinking about it, though.”

Ot a «at

As if people might say what they liked about Amory
and Cosimo, but Amory might not even think what she
liked about Dorothy and Stan!

There was a rather hostile pause. Probably either
felt that the particular male of her preference was be-
ing subjected to criticism.

“Well, we needn’t quarrel about it,” Dorothy re-
sumed,
BOND AND FREE 237

Amory brightened remarkably.

“Quarrel? Of course not, dear Dorothy—what an
absurd idea! And of course, as you say, I was think-
ing... . Are you—you know—may I congratulate
you?” she asked softly.

Again Dorothy reddened. She would dearly have
liked to fling a triumphant “ Yes, we are engaged!”
into Amory’s pretty face, but she and Stanhope had
their pact about that. They were not officially engaged.
Once more Amory had her at a disadvantage.

“No,” she said shortly. It cost her a struggle not
to add the mitigating words “‘ Not yet.”

“Oh... I beg your pardon,” said Amory, in-
stantly apologetic. “‘ You see——” she hesitated.

“Well, what do I see?”? Dorothy Lennard demanded.
Against her wishes she felt herself getting angry again.

“Well, dear, you did ask me about Cosimo 2

“You're not engaged to him, are you?”

“ No—but then——”

“You mean you don’t let him kiss you?” sprang
from Dorothy’s lips.

Amory thought it crude—revolting ...

Then for the second time Dorothy boiled up and
over.

“Well, it seems to me you might just as well!” she
eried. “ Better, I should say—it seems to me you do
everything else! I think I’ve given up trying to under-
stand you clever people; you’re beyond me entirely. I
like being a man’s plaything—there! I don’t mind one
little bit being a chattel—there! And I think it would
be perfectly ripping being property, as long as you

 
238 THE TWO KISSES

belonged to the right person! And I do believe in one
law for the man and another for the woman. They are
different—they are, Amory! They’re—they’re—ever
so different! And I’m glad! .. . And it seems to me
that if you and Cosimo lived in the same house you
needn’t kiss one another if you didn’t want to, and
anyway it would save a good deal of walking about!
That alone might be worth getting married for—you
could talk about the State quite undisturbed then! I
know it’s no business of mine, but you shouldn’t look
at me as you have been doing for the last ten minutes all
on account of nothing! I’m sorry if I seem angry,
because I’m not bad-tempered really, but dash it all, I do
think it’s the one thing a woman can’t afford to be im-
practicable about, and sometimes you really do seem
hopeless, Amory! . . . Unless ’? she checked her-
self instantly.

But it was too late. She had said the word. Amory
knew what it was that she had cut off so short—“ Unless
you do know your business after all, and think that
always sitting in his pocket, and letting him play with
your hair, and talking about Heredity all the time, is
the way to get him!” That was the peck that Doro-
thy measured her out of her own bushel! Those were
the very.methods by which Dorothy herself got round
her Mr. Miller, and her Mr. Hamilton Dix, and this
smart young man, whoever he was... .

She meant that between herself and Amory there
was not at bottom a pin to choose... .

And since the Cause of Progress did demand that
Amory should marry Cosimo, even had it all been true

 
BOND AND FREE 239

the end would still have justified those or almost any
other means. There precisely lay the rub. What are
you to say to a person so blind to true meanings as to
accuse you of doing what, quite inessentially, you do
merely happen to be doing? You cannot admit that
they are right—they are so hideously wrong: you cannot
tell them they are wrong—they cling so stupidly to a
certain appearance of being right. What are you to do?

One thing at least Amory did: she hated Dorothy
in that moment. And because she herself wished to be
merciful to Dorothy she did not take up that fatal “ Un-
less ” nstead she said, very gently indeed:

“ Aren’t you rather taking the lowest view of things ?.
Must this physical side always be dragged in?”

Nor was Dorothy very much disposed now to mince
matters. The word had popped out, and she was not
going to run away from it. If Amory wanted to talk
about physical sides, she might; Dorothy’s own physique
overshadowed Amory’s as a ruffled swan overshadows a
duckling. She turned, her bosom high, her hands strok-
ing down her waist.

“ But it’s you who drag it in!” she cried. “ If only
you weren’t always talking about it! But you only
pretend you’re only talking about something else; it
seems to me you never let it alone! What's your
Eugenics, if it isn’t that, and your Balarice of the Sexes,
and your State Nurseries? You aren’t a snuffy old
man writing learned treatises about it all; you’re a
pretty girl, and I dare say you’re quite right, but I don’t
see the use of pretending ”

“Do you mean that I’m pretending to be something

 

 
240 THE TWO KISSES

I’m not?” Amory asked sharply. “Say what you
mean. Perhaps you mean virtuous?”

Dorothy stamped. “Oh... need we?”

“ Because if you really care to know ” said Am-
ory proudly.

“Oh... Vm going. Good-bye.”

“You can’t go now,” said Amory significantly.
“Think for a moment and youw’ll see that you can’t go
now. People can’t make charges and then run away.
It isn’t done, Dorothy.”

“ How absurd! Who’s-made charges ?”

“T understood you to say that I was a pretender?”

“ Don’t be so ridiculous! You know very well what
! ”

 

I mean

“Then you should be more careful about your ex-
pressions, Dorothy. Expression is all people have to
go by, you know; expression’s precisely art, in fact.
But I should like you to tell whoever it is who’s been
talking about me and Cosimo something.”

“What's that?” Dorothy grunted over her shoulder.

“You can tell them that they could be present at
every one of those dreadful meetings and hear every
word we say, if that’s the idea. They wouldn’t take
any harm; in fact, it might take them out of them-
selves for a bit. And even if it was as they supposed,
I don’t admit that that would be as important as they
seem to think. An altogether false importance is given
to these things, Dorothy. My friendship with Cosimo
wouldn’t be one bit less beautiful whatever the ‘ con-
clusions’ were people drew. Nor one bit more. I’m
not a pretender, Dorothy. I don’t pretend to be any
BOND AND FREE — 241

wiser than. I am. But I do think I’m rational. I—
object—most—strongly ” (she gave each word its spe-
cial emphasis) “to this really secondary matter of sex
being made a thing of the first importance. I hope
that’s all going to be changed before very long, and that
more enlightened views will take its place. And, really,
the brave women of the Movement are the very last peo-
ple who ought to be talked about in that way. They
haven’t time for such things. They’ve far, far too much
to do. I know some are married, but they have the
true conception of marriage; it’s the rational concep-
tion, not mere legalized tyranny on the one hand and
submission on the other. So though we don’t admit
that what’s commonly called virtue has anything to do
with it one way or the other, we give you the virtue
in as a sort of present. I think I shall have to lend
you John Stuart Mill, Dorothy; he’d clear your ideas
on the subject. I'll lend you Subjection, It’s all in
there, art and everything. If you read only a quarter
of an hour every night you’ll soon feel the benefit. Do
read him. .. . And now I must go. I’m sorry if our
talk has seemed a bit of a wrangle, but I have to state
these things fearlessly, you see. At whatever cost we
have to avoid false positions. The world really doesn’t
matter that so long as we have the Right on our side.
Do try to see it, Dorothy.—Good-bye.”

She touched Dorothy’s hand and turned away to the
door; but, for all her serenity, one thought and one
thought only occupied her as she plunged into Hallo-
wells’ labyrinth again and wandered through rooms
and corridors in search of the way out. The more she
242° THE TWO KISSES

thought of it the less it bore thinking of. It was the
thought that Dorothy had to all intents and purposes
told her that she allowed Cosimo to admire her and to
help her to take down her glorious hair for the same
reason that Dorothy sat on a box eating sandwiches with
her own unenlightened young man, and that when young
men came into the question there was not a pin to choose
between them after all.

“Poor, dear, dull old thing!” she muttered as she
left Hallowells’. ‘And it’s she who pretends, for she’d
have given anything to have heard me coming. All the
same, if it had been me and Cosimo. . . .”

It would have been irrational, but she supposed she
would have resented an intrusion too. Inherited prej-
udice is very strong... .
PART IIT
I

THE LEAGUE

THER grounds of complaint against the
Manumission League you might have, but you
could never, never say that they minced matters. As
they themselves declared, they could not afford to.
Woman had been told for so long that she was a crea-
ture of impulse and caprice, not to be depended on for
a judgment uninfluenced by personal considerations,
that the eagle itself was not clearer-eyed than it now
behoved her to show herself to be. Therefore the
League’s members were rigorously rational. They saw
opposing principles in stark and irreconcilable conflict.
You agreed with the League and all its ways, or you did
not; you subscribed to its funds, which were consider-
able, or you identified yourself with the White Slave
Traffic. You were for Manumission or Immorality.
It was because woman had not seen so piercingly and
ruthlessly in the past that she had got the name of
an illogical and non-political animal; the League had
changed all that. True, a weaker member did now and
then hint in private that the League demanded more
than it expected to get, so that the basis of a bargain
might be established, but these admissions were looked

upon with disfavour as a drag of darkness and the past.
243
244 THE TWO KISSES.

All or nothing: and he or she who was not for the
League was against it.

It was for this reason that the barb that Dorothy had
planted in Amory’s breast so galled her that there would
have been no getting rid of it without cutting out
a portion of her heart also. She, on a point of sex,
no different from anybody else! It was monstrous.
Why, who in such matters was spotless if Amory was
not? Who, unstayed by an exalted and pure ideal,
could have behaved as Amory had behaved? Oh, these
worser méanings, and the glee with which a world, base
itself, seized upon them! Amory would have given
anything to know the name of the person who had been
talking about her; not that she hated any person, but
oh, she hated, with a hatred that set a red spot glowing
in either cheek, a slanderous tongue! She and Cosimo,
her dear, brave old pal! ‘Forked tongues had been at
work on a relation so heavenly-pure as theirs! ...
Well, at any rate Cosimo must know. She would have
felt a traitor to her chum had she kept this from him.
“The world draws its own conclusions!” Cosimo
must be told that without loss of time. It would be
in the highest degree unjust to Cosimo to allow him to
remain for another hour in a position so damnably
false!

And Amory had been told this by a blue-eyed fashion-
artist, whose wiles had no doubt corrupted a young man
who, for all. Amory knew, might have been one of Hallo-
wells’ shop-walkers! ;

With the red spots still burning in her cheeks, she
sought Cosimo that very afternoon.
THE LEAGUE 245

Until March Cosimo still had his studio, but he no
longer lived there. He had taken a bedroom and sit-
ting-room in Margaretta Terrace, the short right-angled
street off Oakley Street that runs into Oakley Crescent.
Amory gave her soft treble knock at his door at a little
before five o’clock. The knock had been arranged be-
tween them. The landlady in the basement was deaf,
and if, after waiting for a minute, Cosimo did not de-
scend, Amory always went away again.

Cosimo was at home, and even as he opened the door
he was aware of Amory’s perturbation. He followed
her upstairs to his sitting-room on the first floor, and
the moment he had closed the door asked her what was
the matter. She pulled out her enamel-headed hatpins
and threw the hat into an arm-chair; but when she
turned she was a little calmer.

“The matter? How the matter?” she said. “I’m
dying for some tea. Have you got some? I’ve been
to see Dorothy, but I suppose it was a bit early for tea
when I left.”

Cosimo had tea; he made it for himself in his room.
As ‘he lighted his spirit-lamp and filled the little kettle
from the jug in the next room Amory listlessly tossed
over the magazines on his little round table; but there
was nothing new in them. She had grown suddenly
dejected. There seemed to be nothing new in the
world. She was as tired of Cosimo’s little furnished
sitting-room as she was of his studio in the King’s Road
or of her own studio in Cheyne Walk. She was tired
of her work; she was tired of her friends—especially
when they spread gross reports about her; for the mo-
246 THE TWO KISSES

ment she was even tired of “ Barrage” and the League.
And she was not sure that she was not tired of herself.
Although Cosimo was back in town, she was plunged
again into the mood in which she had wandered the
streets during his absence, looking into eyes strange and
various as the pebbles on a shore and thinking that the
solitude would have been less frightening had she known
as much as the names of their enigmatical possessors.
She wanted a change; “ Barrage” had taken more out
of her even than she had supposed; she was petulant
with herself. She was also exceedingly sorry for any-
body of brilliant gifts on whom the world presses so
harshly as to make that person petulant with herself.
Self-contempt is ever the artist’s blackest despair.

“Well,” said Cosimo cheerfully, taking cakes from a
square biscuit-tin which he had produced from a cup-
board, ‘‘ and what had Dorothy to say for herself?”

Amory did not hesitate. Though Dorothy could not
keep her tongue from repeating a slander and then run-
ning away from it by refusing the slanderer’s name,
Amory respected herself a little too much to give Doro-
thy or anybody whomsoever away. So she lay back on
one of Cosimo’s sofa-cushions and put her cheek on
the sofa-end.

“Oh, quite a lot,” she answered dully. “She seemed
to be enjoying herself. She asked after you.”

“Really, awfully kind of her. She’s still at the
Juperies, of course?”

“Oh yes, still there.”

“T say, you look fagged out. ‘But tea won’t be a
minute. No, don’t get up to help; all’s ready when
THE LEAGUE 247

the water boils. . .. Nothing wrong, is there?” he
asked, as Amory sank wearily back on the cushion again.

“Oh, give me some tea first.”

“Then there is?” said Cosimo quickly, catching at
the last word. ‘ Not about ‘ Barrage, I hope? They
haven’t cried off, have they?”

“No, it’s nothing about ‘ Barrage.’ ”

“Then what . . . but I’m worrying you, poor dear.
Tl give you some tea and you can tell me then.”

And, the water boiling, he made the tea and carried
Amory a cup where she lay. He packed a cushion in
the small of her back and made her put her feet up;
then, sitting down on a little square hassock by her side,
he patted her hand.

“No, don’t talk just yet,” he murmured. “ Will
you have a phenacetin? Well, perhaps the tea will set
you right. Close your eyes and I'll try to take it away.”

And, rising from the hassock, he drew a chair to the
sofa-end, sat behind Amory, and began gently to draw
his fingers over her closed lids and back towards the
roots of her hair,—‘ Don’t talk—give yourself quite up
to it,” he murmured... .

Amory, relaxing totally, did: so.

Sympathetic in all things as Cosimo was, in nothing
was he so sympathetic as in his touch of an aching head.
Softly as a woman, he changed from stroking Amory’s
lids, and began lightly to draw his sensitive tips along
the angle of her jaw and up the sides of her bluebell-
stalk of a neck. And he knew when she felt better,
for he whispered “‘ Sssh—TI can feel it passing into my
fingers and wrists—keep your eyes closed. ” and

 
248 THE TWO KISSES

continued to stroke. Amory could not have borne to let
anybody else touch her so; it was only because of their
intellectual affinity that she could bear Cosimo’s long
fingers upon her lids and cheek and neck. “Mr. Hamil-
ton Dix she must certainly have struck; and as she lay
back, with Cosimo’s silky tips passing over her face,
she remembered, apropos of nothing, the only other
male contact she had ever experienced—a brutal kiss,
snatched years ago under the dark portico of the Mc-
Grath, with a knocking together of crania, and a smell
of tobacco, and a horrible stiff little moustache...
She could not have endured even Cosimo with a mous-
tache. ...

And Dorothy talked about the world and its “ con-
clusions! ”

By and by her fingers softly touched Cosimo’s, in
token that she felt better. Slowly she opened her eyes
again.

“ Ah!” she said. . . . “ Thanks, dear. I don’t know
why I should come all over like that.”

“By Jove, you had got it,” said Cosimo, stroking
his hands and wringing, as it were, the numbness from
them. “I feel it all up my forearms.”

“So now you’ve got it.”

“Oh, it’s rather pleasant; only like your foot going
to sleep. It’s going already. Now have some more
tea and you'll be quite all right. I expect you’ve had
too much on your mind, that’s what’s been the matter
with you.”

“T have, rather. And I’ve been upset to-day, too.”

““T knew you had. What was it?”
THE LEAGUE 249

“Tt was something Dorothy told me. Perhaps I’ll
tell you in a few minutes, but I don’t in the least want
to. Yes, I will have some more tea, please.
Cosimo——” .

She spoke so shortly that Cosimo started and al-
most dropped the teacup. There was that in her tone
which suggested that, though she had only that moment
resolved that what she had to tell him might be told
by and by, it was torn from her now by something
stronger than herself. Cosimo had turned.

“What? Good gracious, how you startled me.”

“T want you to tell me something, Cosimo.”

“What?” said Cosimo. The golden eyes were
glittering on his. Evidently Amory was fighting hard
to Keep in check some powerful emotion.

“T want you to tell me this, and truthfully, please,
and without any false modesty: Do I strike you as
the kind of girl decent people might wish not to
know?”

Cosimo was thunderstruck. He could only look at
her incredulously. Was something worse than a head-
ache the matter with her ?

“ Do you strike me ”? he repeated.

“Yes,” she interrupted. “Am I a—peculiar—sort
of person?”

“ Peculiar

“Yes. J’ll tell you why I ask ina minute. I want
to know how I strike you first. You wouldn’t call me
an immodest girl, would you?”

Still Cosimo was all at sea.

“Do you mean—I mean, has somebody been shocked

 

9 4

 
250 THE TWO KISSES

because—well, because you have brave and enlightened
views?”

'“T don’t mean anything about my views. I mean
about myself. To put it brutally, would you think
that anybody had the right to say I led—a horrid life?”

Cosimo had been standing gaping, with the cup in
his hand. This time he did drop the cup. He gasped.

“Do I understand ?

** Answer my question,” Amory commanded. “Do
I give people that impression ?”

“You: !”? was all that Cosimo could say.

“Do I give you that impression ?”

ce Amory: ! oP

But she put up her hand peremptorily and continued.

“So that if anybody does think that, you’d say it-was
just the vileness of their own minds?” (Amory her-
self could not help noticing that somehow it sounded
worse when put in this way than it had when Dorothy
had talked about “ conclusions.”’) ;

“ My dear girl [y

“Mere unconventionality apart, you wouldn’t say
that?”

“Wouldn’t . . . why, anybody who’d say that must
be mad!”

Amory straightened her back and nodded. “ Thank
you. That’s all I wanted to know,” she said. “I was
a little afraid to trust my own judgment, that’s all.
Thank you.”

But apparently it was not all that Cosimo wanted
to know. Of course such a subject was always inter-
esting quite apart from its personal application; many

 

 

 

 
THE LEAGUE 251

times he and Amory had discussed that kind of thing
in the abstract by the half-day together; but now that
was not all. His face was quite grimly set. Slowly
he drew up a chair to where Amory sat, bolt upright
and robed in her consciousness of rectitude, on the
sofa.

“ This,” he said slowly, “is interesting. May I hear
a little more about it, please?”

Amory had more than half expected him to take that
attitude. Since Cosimo had had his hair cut he was
still to be counted as “ one of them,” one of the enlight-
ened ones; but, like Samson, he had lost perhaps a little
of his strength in the process of shearing. THe still saw
the light, but sometimes it dazzled him a little—that
was another reason why he needed an unflinching pair
of eyes always by his side. Now his grimness was al-
most the ordinary conventional thing. The male be-
haved like that in most novels and in all theatres.
Taken properly in hand, Cosimo would not be very
difficult to manage.

“Need we go into it?” said Amory quietly. There
was withering disdain of her traducers in the single
glance she shot at him.

“ T think we've got to,” Cosimo replied, with the same
slightly histrionic quietness. “I really think we'd
better, don’t you know.”

“As regards myself, I don’t consider it worth it,”
Amory replied proudly.

“T know you don’t,” the still strong man pursued
doggedly. ‘‘ That’s because you’re so high-minded and
scornful and wonderful, You’re so high above it all
252 THE TWO KISSES

that really it’s difficult for you to understand. But I
think [’ll make this my business, if you don’t mind.
Please tell me.”

“Don’t you think that by touching pitch you’d only
be defiling yourself ?”

“Tt isn’t a question of me. It’s you. I really think
you'd better tell me.”

“ But what could you do?”

“Leave that to me. If it’s a man who’s been talk-
ing ”” Cosimo left the sentence significantly un-
finished. “Is it a man?”

“T don’t know. Dorothy wouldn’t tell me.”

Cosimo half rose. ‘‘ Oh, she wouldn’t, wouldn’t she?
Perhaps she’ll tell me, though! Will she have left that
place of hers if I take a cab?”

Amory put up her hand rather quickly.

“Oh, Cosimo, do treat it with the contempt it de-
serves! You’d get nothing out of Dorothy. You
know how obstinate she can be.”

“Well, tell me what she said; then I’ll consider
whether I’ll go or not.”

“No, Cosimo, I’d rather not.”

“ But you must!”

At that Amory once more broke passionately out.
She hit at the sofa cushion with her tiny white fist.

“Oh, it’s—I know I’ve not deserved it! That ought
to be enough for me, and I do try to look at it in that
light, but I’m not always so high-minded as you think,
Cosimo, and it does hurt when they spring a thing like
than on you without warning! And the way she did
it! . .. Listen. I didn’t mean to tell you, but she

 
THE LEAGUE 253

seems to have been talking me over, and there does come
a point when the truth has to be told! I went up when
she was having her lunch; she was having it with some-
body or other, I forget his name; and—Cosimo—but
I’m sure I needn’t tell you ”

“ Not ?” The golden eyes and the black-coffee
brown ones were crossed as it were like swords for a
moment, as if either had started into an attitude of
defence against some monstrous meaning—the mean-
ing that, Dorothy had said, was always between them.

“Yes,” Amory sighed as if in disgust. —

Cosimo stared, frowning.

“You do mean kissing, don’t you?”

“Tf you must have the horrid word.”

“ And it was after that that she said a?

“Yes. Rather unbelievable, isn’t it? ... And
that,”” Amory broke out anew, “is what made me so
angry. In a room where the workmen might come at
any moment, too! And then to talk about me! ...
Listen, Cosimo, I’m going to make a confession. I know
it isn’t necessary with you, but I want to make it. I
want you to know exactly how much and how little I
have to reproach myself with; then you'll see. An
awful man did once kiss me, at a dance at the McGrath
—and once I did give a kiss—I’1l tell you ee

Cosimo made a little protesting movement.

“Oh, Amory, do you think you need defend yourself
to me——?”

“But I want to tell you. It wasn’t to a man—it
was to a beautiful object—the Antinédus in the Louvre.
I dare say it was foolish, but I thought it so beautiful,

 

 

 

 
254 THE TWO KISSES

and anybody with any understanding at all would have
regarded it as—don’t think me silly—as a sort of dedi-
cation—to my art—and I have been faithful to my
ideal ever since——”

Cosimo’s eyes were moist with emotion. The beau-
tiful. gesture! What a ripping touch that would be
if anybody ever wrote the life of the painter of “ Bar-
rage!” ... “Oh!” he breathed reverentially. “You
are superb, Amory.”

“And of course I’m not counting that stupid thing
at my aunt’s wedding se

“ That ,” said Cosimo, straightway dismissing it.

“ And that’s all—absolutely all,” said Amory, softly
and bitterly. ‘To all intents and purposes I’ve never
been kissed... . So don’t you think, Cosimo, that
from her at any rate I might have been spared this?”

She lifted the shallow opals of her eyes.

Suddenly Cosimo ceased to be the still strong man.
He became the hero, dreadful in his anger.

“It’s unbelievable—cruel!” he cried. “ And I’m
going to see about it! You wait here—I’m going now
—I’m going to get to the bottom of this—you stay here
till I come back.”

He was half-way across the room, reaching for his
hat.

But Amory called him. “ Cosimo——!”

“We'll talk about it when I get back!” Cosimo
muttered, grim once more. Talking would do any
time. This was the hour for action.

“ But—Cosimo—wait! You can’t go to her! She’d
think I’d been telling you things—she doesn’t under-

 

 
\

THE LEAGUE 255

stand these moments when the truth simply must be
told! Come here and be reasonable. She'd only round
on you; I know her! If I can take it calmly I think
you might. I’m not angry now. I’m going to take
simply no notice. ‘Let Gryll be Gryll and have his
hoggish mind ’—you know—it’s in the Faerie Queene.
That’s what I think about it. . . . So you don’t mind,
do you, Cosimo?”

Something in this, he did not know what, arrested
Cosimo, but Amory gave him no time to think. She
continued—

“We should show ourselves quite unworthy of the
faith we profess to take the least bit of notice, either of
us. It’s merely the old prejudice about the Subjec-
tion persisting. Why should the woman be compro-
mised, as they call it, and not the man? They’re equally
guilty or equally innocent, one would have thought ?
But that’s not our business really; our business is to
strike and suffer, and strike and suffer, and to go on
striking and suffering until not a tongue in the whole
wide world dare say those hateful words again, ‘ One
Law for the Man and Another for the Woman!’ ”

“ But: ”? Cosimo gasped.

“Tsn’t it?” Amory bore him down, flinging out
an adorable arm. “Isn’t it? What is the battle, then,
if that isn’t it? What is every woman worth her salt,
and a few devoted men, working and suffering and
fighting for if it isn’t for that? They’re fighting
against Wrong, Cosimo, and Vivisection, and Tuber-
culosis, and Man-made Laws, and the White Slave
Traffic ”

 

 
256 THE TWO KISSES

But Cosimo was white. He had heard all this be-
fore, but something he had not heard before had evi-
dently seized on him now. Again he tried to speak, but
again Amory went triumphantly on.

“And with that noble task before us, what does it
matter what scurrilous tongues say? Let them say!
We defy the world! The world!” (She gave a con-
temptuous laugh). “Why, the world will be drawing
its ‘conclusions’ (I believe that’s the expression) at
this very moment. A young man and a young woman,
discussing ideals together: ,’ she became brightly
mocking, “—dreadful! Two beings of the opposite
sex merely discussing great Social Problems—ha ha!
Heavens, if they only knew! I really believe, Cosimo,
that of all the times we’ve been together, if once—just
once—the roof could have been lifted off and we could
have been seen, perfectly innocently occupied, the world
would have had such a shock to its conceit and ignorance
that the Dawn would begin to-morrow! I really think
that——”

But here Cosimo found his tongue. “ Amory,” he
gasped, “do you mean that they’ve been talking about
—you and me?”

Amory laughed. “ Why, you stupid old Cosimo,
who else?”

“Do you mean—you and me?” .

At that Amory’s laugh ceased. She stared. “ You?
. « » Cosimo, did you—tell me—did you think I had
a scandalous relation with anybody else?”

“ No—no, no—but a

 

 

 
THE LEAGUE O57

“Then who did you suppose they'd been talking
about?” she asked, staring.

“ J—I—I didn’t know. xz

“Do you mind?” This was said slowly, as if
Amory struggled with a new idea.

“'No—of course not—I mean, I think you’re mag-
nificent—but it—it didn’t occur to me—just at
‘first-——’

Amory smiled cynically. ‘Oh, I’ve not had any
scandalous relation with anybody except you! ”

“Er—er—ha—have some more tea,’ said Cosimo
quaveringly, putting out his hand to the cold teapot.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Perhaps you don’t believe me either?” said Amory
presently, her head suddenly thrown back. ‘Perhaps
you thought I’d found another friend while you were
away?”

“Oh, Amory!’ Cosimo reproached her; but he
fidgeted uneasily. Perhaps he had suddenly remem-
bered Pattie Wynn-Jenkins.

“ Because—because——” Amory’s voice quavered
now, “because if you did, Cosimo, it wasn’t true—it
wasn’t—I trusted you as I thought you trusted me——”

She showed signs of breaking down. That was in-
finitely pathetic. Is it not pathetic, when one who is
prepared to defy the whole world provided she is al-
lowed her single beautiful friendship, finds that friend-
ship too yielding under the strain? Cosimo thought
so, and put out his hand rather aimlessly.

But Amory drew her own hand back. The pa-

 
258 THE TWO KISSES

thetic weakness passed. Wearily she laughed now.

“Oh no, better not, Cosimo. There are perfectly
innocent things that we can’t allow ourselves. It’s
hard, isn’t it? but you see what the world is. It’s
probably damned us already; we’re probably damned at
this moment for being together here; but as long as we
give it no reason it only recoils on its own head. T’m
perfectly willing to accept the situation. I accepted
it in a sense when I did that’ foolish thing with the
Antindus. I thought then that I was just vowing my-
self to my art, but I see now that it was a far greater
thing. It really meant that I chose all the large and
beautiful and abstract things—a sort of life of toil—
and put off these other things once for all. I didn’t
know; I might not have had the courage if I’d known;
but there’s no going back. Once I said our friendship
must end, Cosimo, but that’s over too. They’d talk
just the same if we ended it now. So let them talk.
It’s bitter, but if I can bear it you ought to be able to.
After all, there is that petty sense in which I lose more
than you do.”

Cosimo had been staring hard at her. Again he had
‘a merely conventional look. This time it was that of
a man who, occupied with important and practical
things, indulgently allows a woman to talk while he
arrives at his conclusion. Presently he seemed to have
come to the conclusion. His face was set.

“Well,” he said, rousing himself, “‘ that leaves only
one thing to be done.”

“ Precisely,” said Amory, with a little shrug.

“You must marry me,” said Cosimo.
THE LEAGUE 259

Amory fell back into the sofa-corner and for a mo-
ment looked at him as if she did not believe she
could have heard aright. Then she smiled. She shook
her head slowly.

' Poor, foolish Cosimo! Was that all he saw? Well
she must teach him. ...

“Don’t you see, Cosimo,” she said, as patiently as
if she had been instructing a child, “ that that’s the
one thing that can’t be done?”

“ Can’t!—It must!”

“ Really, Cosimo——”

“ But it’s as plain as it can be —”

“ But you don’t, you don’t see, dear,” Amory replied,
still smiling. ‘“ That would be to be false to everything.
It would be an admission. Think how all those people
who have been so hideously wrong would instantly
be sure they’d been perfectly right all the time! Why,
it might just as well have been so! ... No, Cosimo,
that would be mere weakness—yielding to pressure,
and an acknowledgment of that very opinion we hate
so. We can’t be on both sides at once, Cosimo. Either
we've been right or we’ve been wrong, and I know
which I think we’ve been. Don’t you see yet, dear,
what it meant when I kissed the Antinéus? It meant
that I removed myself away from all that! . . . Really,
Cosimo, I think you are almost dull enough sometimes
to marry!”

“ But—but—lots of the League people are mar-
ried: ”? said Cosimo, bewildered.

“ Ah, but they aren’t you and me, Cosimo! They
haven’t our perfect friendship. Besides, I’m rather

 
260 THE TWO KISSES

t

proud, you know. I don’t think I could ever accept
a man who merely thought he was under an obligation
to marry me. You never asked me before, and you
were quite right, just as you're quite wrong in this.
If you really want an answer, it’s—No. And if you
want to know whether you’ve got to behave one bit
differently because of this—well, that’s No too. I ad-
mit I was angry, but now that I’ve talked it over I find
it really rather amusing. It’s quite funny, in fact,
coming from Dorothy, after you know what. There
are Dorothy’s ideas, and there are mine, and I do some-
times think that if Dorothy thinks a thing right that’s
almost enough in itself to make it wrong for me. I
hope you see now, Cosimo?”

Cosimo may not have seen, but he was at any rate
silenced. A new fear had seized on him now. Hith-
erto he had taken this question of ‘“ compromising”
very much at Amory’s valuation, without overmuch
thought about it on his own account; but now—now
that he had had his hair cut—that irrational conventional
point of view refused to be altogether banished.
Though it came late and should have come earlier, per-
haps he ought to consider her a little more; indeed,
things being so hatefully as they seemed to be, it might
be better if, for some time to come at any rate, they were
less together than they had been in the past. The
thought afflicted him with a melancholy sense of loneli-
ness and hopelessness; he felt a little as a man feels
after a weakening attack of influenza. Something he
had grown to need he must. now be more or less de-
prived of. . . . But again, as he mumbled something
THE LEAGUE 261

of this kind, Amory came out shining and magnificent.
Not go on precisely as before? Why (she exclaimed)
that would be the next worst thing to marrying! If
any difference was to be made at all, they must be seen
even more constantly together than before! Just as
the League sometimes overstated things in order that
those things should “ carry,” so even by a slight parade
of intimacy they must enter their protest. To weaken
now would never, never do! Surely Cosimo saw that?

So they dined that night at the Lettuce Grill, in
St. Martins Lane, and Amory had never been more
trenchant and brilliant, more bright and tender and
free and brave. And after dinner they joined a larger
party at one of the long tables, and Walter Wyron and
Laura Beamish dropped in, and everybody was ab-
solutely at his and her best, and it was almost like a
larger and more responsible McGrath over again, and
the Dawn, if emotion and enthusiasm and resolve
counted for anything at all, was hastened that night
by several years. And before the party broke up
Amory definitely clinched the sale of “ Barrage” .. .
And Cosimo was pensive and abstracted now. He saw,
not only how right Amory was in everything she said
and did, but how temerarious he himself had been when,
that afternoon, he had said, almost as if he had been
making a sacrifice, that a being so daring and dashing
and gloriously winged must of course marry him.
There was no of course about it. It would be she, not
he, who would be making the sacrifice. He would be
lucky to get her. Laura Beamish, whispering to him
that Amory, drinking to the Dawn in the Lettuce Grill’s
262 THE TWO KISSES

Unfermented Grape-fruit Moselle, was stunningly
pretty, told Cosimo nothing that he could not now see
for himself.

Yes, Cosimo Pratt saw at last that he had come near
making a precious ass of himself when he had taken
her acceptance of him so entirely for granted. He did
not suppose for a moment that a girl so frank and free
and brave could (to put it grossly) be holding out for
her price; nevertheless her price could be no light one.
And because it was not a light one, Cosimo was now
full of eagerness to pay it.
II
“ BARRAGE”

HE sale of “Barrage” to the Manumission

League was definitely concluded within the week.
Amory thought it a distinct smack in the eye for Mr.
Hamilton Dix. ~Mr. Dix, in hoodwinking her, and
all but fraudulently getting her to accept Croziers’
miserable hundred pounds, had no doubt thought
he was doing a smart stroke of business; but he
was likely to squirm now, and to wish he had not
given her permission to sell privately what work she
could. True, Amory admitted that in a sense she had
been indebted to Dorothy Lennard for this release—
but only in a sense. It was a thing anybody would
have thought of, and things anybody might think of
were very lightly and happily hit off in that perfect
phrase of Nietzsche’s, “the vulgarity of the lucky
find.” In any case, Amory and nobody else had ac-
tually painted “ Barrage.” So if Dorothy liked to go
about boasting that she herself had procured the sale
to the League—not that Amory knew for a fact that she
had done or was doing this—well, it would be a little
beneath Amory’s dignity to contradict her. Some peo-
ple cannot bear to hear of the success of others. Amory
‘habe goodness that she was not like that.

The transaction put her into possession of no less a
263
264 THE TWO KISSES

sum than two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds,
and for a single picture—at last that was something
like! She had always known it would come, and come
it had. Again, as she had done after the Crozier agree-
ment, she counted the time “ Barrage” had taken to
paint; again she saw those other pictures she intended
to paint—the Education picture, the State Motherhood
picture, the terrible indictment of all non-members of
the Manumission League that the White Slave canvas
was to set forth; and again she saw herself rich. “ Bar-
rage” had left her limp and a rag, but that was past.
It paid in cash to soar. Throes meant thousands. She
laughed at her immediate two hundred, and straight-
way set about the spending of it.

And first of all she ‘discovered that no system of
physical exercises yet invented can compare for one
moment with silk stockings for giving an erect carriage
to the female head. She bought a couple of dozen
pairs, taking Cosimo with her to choose the colours.
She bought scarves, too, Indian and Japanese, and the
most exquisitely embroidered peasant smocks, and a
kind of goose-girl costume for the evenings, to go with
which Cosimo, as a joke, made her buy a pair of sabots
also. She put on the costume in the studio in Cheyne
Walk, and her tiny feet were bare inside the sabots,
and her hair was done in two glorious plaits, and she
had a Breton cap on the top of it. For the studio itself
she bought nothing new; that, she said, was to be kept
severely for work—she had already begun a cartoon for
the White Slave picture, and Cosimo had posed for the
angelic and accusing figure that symbolized Manu-
“ BARRAGE ” 265

mission and the League. The only new piece of furni-
ture that she did buy was a hanging cupboard so tall
that it would hardly go under the blackened and sagging
ceiling. She filled it with the new velvets and silks
and put the stockings and shawls and the dyed leather
belts with the enamelled clasps in the drawers beneath;
and then one Sunday she bore off Cosimo to Oasthouse
View again, on the Mall, Chiswick. He was to see
Aunt Jerry’s baby.

This time they did not go to lunch; they arrived at
about tea-time instead. But if by going later Amory
had expected to avoid Mrs. Deschamps and Miss Creb-
bin and her young man, she was disappointed. And
not only that; as it happened, she and Cosimo walked
straight into a party so large that its talk and laughter
could be heard twenty yards before they reached the
wrought-iron gate. Indeed, at the gate Amory hesitated
for a moment and exchanged a quick glance with
Cosimo; one voice had risen above all the rest; it was
the voice of Mr. Wellcome. “ Shall we hurry past?”
Amory’s glance seemed to say; but Cosimo hoisted him-
self out of a rather quiet mood and replied, “ Oh, we’ll
go in—rather!” Perhaps he still lived in hopes of
hearing Mr. Wellcome say “ May all your troubles be
little ones.”

It would have been laughable, if at the same time it
had not been so terribly socially deplorable, to see the
ridiculous fuss they made of that baby of Aunt Jerry’s.
These people did not seem to have as much as a glimmer
of the true significance of childhood—not to speak of
its rights. They did not seem to realize that every
266 ' THE TWO KISSES

false impression it acquired now would have to be cor-
rected, painfully and with labour and tears, in the long
years to come. It did not seem to occur to them, for ex-
ample, that it was in the last degree important that, from
the very beginning, its eyes should rest on none but beau-
tiful and sage-green objects; instead they let it see Mr.
Wellcome. They seemed to be totally ignorant of the
fact that, already, beauty born of murmuring sound
should be passing into its mite of a face; they prodded
it, and guffawed in its tender ears, and said ‘“‘ Boh!”
and “ Diddums!” And was it conducive to a proper
modesty and earnestness of purpose in later years that:
the child should be told already that it was precious
and a gem, and that its mother could eat it, and (when
it expressed its just resentment by a cry, so that its
father had to take it into his arms and to sing to it),
that the hills and the towers (the oasthouses presum-
ably) that it could see from the window all belonged
toit? That wasalie. They did not, and never would.
Amory hoped that by the time it grew up there would
be no such thing as private ownership of hills and
oasthouses. But there they were, all of them, poison-
ing its vague young mind, and really not thinking of it
at all, but of their own stupid cachinnations and witti-
cisms. No wonder it cried.

And Mr. Wellcome was positively devastating in his
humour. Mrs. Deschamps had her small fingers on
his mouth even as Amory and Cosimo entered, trying
to prevent the utterance of some dreadful facetiousness
or other; pretty Miss Crebbin was blushing at it yet;
but Mr. Wellcome tore Mrs. Deschamps’ hand away as
“ BARRAGE” 267

he saw the newcomers, and cried, ‘ Well, all I can say is
hooray for the little difference—here’s Cos and Am
—is all right behind, George ?’—Here, Cos, come and
be getting your hand in. m

And he snatched the baby and forced it into Cosi-
mo’s arms.

Truth to tell, Cosimo held the infant quite as well
as Amory did. When, in the course of the shocking
display of promiscuity, it arrived at Amory, she stood
with it much as a hatstand stands with the hat that is
hung upon it. But she thanked goodness that she knew
a little more than to say “ Diddums” to it. It was a
little boy; Amory was rather sorry for that; neverthe-
less she bent an earnest gaze upon it, as if, male as
it was, she still sealed it as more or less vowed to
the Cause. Mr. Wellcome was entirely wrong when he
cried that he’d take short odds he could guess what she
was thinking of. Mr. Wellcome could never have
guessed. Mr. Wellcome was for the propagation of
Tuberculosis and the direct encouragement of the Social
Evil. In fact, Amory was not at all sure that men
like Mr. Wellcome were not the real Antichrist.

Then the babe was borne away by a nurse, and, while
George Massey, mingling his hissings with those of the
silver kettle over Aunt Jerry’s spirit-lamp, passed round
cups of tea, the conversation came round to Amory her-
self and “ Barrage.’ Mr. Wellcome had failed to catch
the figure for which the picture had been sold.

“How much did you say?” he demanded again
over his cup. :

Amory glanced at Cosimo.

 
268 THE TWO KISSES

“Two hundred pounds,” said Cosimo with a negli-
gent air.

Mr. Wellcome’s respect for the Cause evidently went
up. “Come, that’s not so dusty,” he approved.
“Have you been raking it in at this rate ever since
you left Glenerne, Miss Am?” he asked, fixing her
with his eye and tapping her on the knee. He was a
friendly man.

Amory replied graciously that she had, more or less;
it was not easy to fix a rate; sometimes she would be
quite a long time without making very much, and
then

“T see; like winnings,” said Mr. Wellcome. “ Well,
and Cos here’s been touching too from all I hear.”
He winked slowly.

“ Mis-ter Wellcome!” Mrs. Deschamps interposed,
shocked.

But Mr. Wellcome only guffawed.

“Well, it makes the mare to go—eh, George? No
doin’ your duty as a citizen without it, George, what?
I always say, every time I have a good win, ‘ Now for
the duty as a citizen!’ Not that horses ain’t preca-
rious, like art; but getting married’s like learning to
swim—when you’re neck and crop in for it you find a
way out all right. Well, I don’t care, among friends,
where it is, Glenerne or where you like—I know where
there’s a bottle or two of G. H. Mumm left, and the
Spanish brandy’s got no force, I give you my word!
It’s betwixt Miss Crebbin and somebody—Miss Creb-
bin’s favourite for the moment, but betting alters”

 
“ BARRAGE ” 269

And the opening of an oyster is not larger nor more
watery than the next wink Mr. Wellcome gave.

“ Aren’t you going to stay and see him in his bath,
Amory?” Aunt Jerry asked wistfully when, at a little
after five, Amory and Cosimo rose to go.

“Tm afraid not,” Amory replied, drawing on her
new gloves. ‘‘ Cosimo and I have to go and see Huropa
at the New Greek Society; it’s the first performance in
England.”

“The theatre—on Sunday!” Aunt Jerry exclaimed’
softly.

And Amory and Cosimo left. If they had stayed
there would have been nothing to beat Aunt Jerry’s
consternation at the idea of going to a theatre on Sun-
day.

Hitherto it had not struck Amory that the Manu-
mission League, in paying her two hundred pounds for
“Barrage,” had paid a very good price indeed for a
canvas by an artist who, save for a. few columns about
her by Mr. Hamilton Dix (who was not to a column or
so about anybody on whom Croziers’ wandering eyes
might rest), was unknown. Nor had it occurred to her
that the League might want to see its money back again.
Dorothy Lennard might entertain such suspicions, but
then Dorothy was of a suspicious nature, always think-
ing somebody might be getting the better of her, and
naturally crediting other people with intentions no
better than her own. “I don’t like sales outright,”
Dorothy had said. . . . And Amory, too, began to won-
der whether righteousness also may not have its mam-
270 THE TWO KISSES

mon when she first heard, at the Lettuce Grill, of the
purpose to which it was intended to put her picture.
It was only a rumour; indeed, Amory had it from a
source no more official than Walter Wyron and Laura
Beamish; but Walter’s father was the mainstay of the
New Greek Society, and things that he said had a way
of being authentic, and Amory began to wonder whether
she ought not to have had a royalty, or a percentage,
or whatever Dorothy had called it after all. The
rumour was to the effect that, merely as a means of
sowing the good seed, “‘ Barrage”? was to be exhibited,
not in an ordinary gallery with a hundred other pic-
tures, but by itself, with drapery round it, set back in
a sort of proscenium, with lights at the top and bottom,
and a muffled harmonium playing sacred music in the
next room, and a faint odour of Ruban de Bruges
burning, and other appurtenances of reverence and
solemnity. That converts might be made, the whole
of the League’s resources were to be concentrated on
the enterprise, and the admission was to be a shilling.
If the picture drew neophytes and shillings enough in
London it was to be taken to the Provinces.

' There are twenty shillings in a pound, and in two
hundred pounds four thousand shillings. When four
thousand shillings had been taken, “ Barrage,” omit-
ting other expenses, would have paid for itself.

Now the League had many times four thousand mem-
bers in London alone. . . .

A royalty of, say, a penny in the shilling would have
worked out at more than four pounds per thousand. . . .

The League was going to do the thing very thor-
“ BARRAGE ” 271

oughly, and a special “ Barrage” Committee was to be
formed. ...

Two hundred pounds was well enough as far as
it went, but there was going to be increment beyond
that, earned really by Amory... .

She felt a sharp stab of regret that she had let “ Bar-
rage” go for so little.

But the regret did not last long. She remembered
in time that she was bringing herself down to Doro-
thy’s level. The full reward she might not get, but all
the renown would be hers, and, though she was no
Dorothy, she was yet not so ignorant of business but that
she knew that in other ways her market was now as
good as made. And compared with the kudos that
would be hers, even the foregone royalty fell away into
the background. “ Foregone,” she told herself, was
the world; for the effect was the same as if she had had
the royalty and had magnanimously handed it back again
to the Cause. To all intents and purposes, she was sub-
scribing to the Cause’s funds (say) a thousand guineas.
Her name would not appear with that figure after it in
any list, but it is well to do good by stealth, and the
name would ring resoundingly enough in other ways.
“ Amory Towers, you know, the painter of ‘ Barrage’ ”
—‘ Barrage,’ Miss Towers’ great work ”—“ That
‘feminist picture that everybody’s going to see, ‘ Bar-
rage,’ by Amory Towers”... yes, there would be
lots of that. And in the Movement itself she would
_ be a person of consideration and authority. She would
have a voice in its councils. “ Has Miss Towers given
her opinion yet?” the leaders would ask one another
272 THE TWO KISSES

on this point or that; and there were the other propa-
gandist pictures yet to come. In the meantime it was
a little odd that Amory was not asked to join the “ Bar-
rage” Committee. But perhaps that was as well too.
Anybody can serve on a Committee, but it takes a
somebody to paint a “Barrage.” To inferior minds
inferior work. It was better after all that there should
be a little mystery about Amory and that she should
be shut off from the common gaze as it were by a veil.
More than her own exclusion she resented the inclusion
of the name of Mr. Hamilton Dix. For Mr. Dix had
been called in. Mr. Dix, whose articles on Hallowells’
advertisements had brought him very much to the fore,
had evidently been deemed by the Committee to be the
very man to act as Art Director for “ Barrage” also.
And as that man of parts, who had no interest in
Croziers’, still never abandoned an attitude of benevo-
lence towards Croziers’ and such artists as they elected
to “take up,” Amory’s twenty-odd older pictures also
seemed in a fair way for being fetched up out of Cro-
ziers’ cellars, One thing brings another. Amory had
known it would come, and it had come, or was coming.
And it was coming without her having receded from
the highest that was in her by as much as a single inch.
That (as Cosimo said) was what was so wonderful.
In an age of polluted altars she had kept her single
taper burning pure and bright.

To anticipate a little: those contingent results of the
enormous publicity that was presently given to “ Bar-
rage’ came duly to pass. Croziers’ sold all but two
of those old Saturday-night street-markets of hers at
“ BARRAGE ” 273

prices that varied from ten to thirty pounds apiece.
Their numerous charges and commissions struck Amory
as merely capacious; for all that, she received a series
of cheques that totted up in all to more than four hun-
dred pounds; and in several articles he wrote on the
astonishing combination of human sympathy and pure
idealism that distinguished the work of Miss Towers
from the work of all other living artists, Mr. Hamil-
ton Dix fairly let himself go. This was when “ Bar-
rage” left London for Manchester, Liverpool, and the
North, to draw its thousands of visitors per week and
to be chosen as a popular and attractive text, though
with various applications, by half the Nonconformist
ministers in.the land; and one of the curious little after-
effects of the enterprise was to show how entirely right
Mr. Miller was when he said that the mere advertising
“ stunt ” was over, and that advertising, to be effective
to-day, must attach itself to something higher than it-
self. He would have attached a drapery business to the
Royal Standard; but the feminist picture did even
better. The “ Barrage” turnstiles took their toll of
shillings that were really the sinews of a Holy War.
Nothing, in Cosimo’s opinion, could have been more
simple and unaffected and fine than the way in which
Amory still stuck to the shabby little studio in Cheyne
Walk. ‘More than once he protested, but she lifted her
eyes to him and asked him, Was it not enough? The
roof kept out the rain; the door kept out intruders; and
she could open the diamond-latticed window and look
at the stars whenever she liked. She liked the solitude,
she said; out of just such a solitude the strength must
274 THE TWO KISSES

be gathered that is to be put to the service of the mul-
titude. She did sometimes sigh for the country; she
was not sure that soon she might not take a trip away
somewhere, a longish one, quite alone; she had always
promised herself such a trip, to Italy, but the loved
servitude of her career had never permitted her to get
farther than Paris; but now there was nothing to keep
her in England. She might even go and live perma-
nently abroad, working for the Cause from wherever
it might be. But wherever she went, Cosimo must
not suppose she would ever forget him. She would
write to him quite frequently. And he must write to
her.

The first time Amory allowed Cosimo this peep at
her plans his face became blank with dismay. They
were sitting together on a bench in the little Embank-
ment garden where the Carlyle statue is. It was an
evening early in April, approaching dusk, and on an-
other bench, twenty yards away, a dim huddle under the
trees had caused Amory’s lips to curl into a smile; it
had reminded her of that horrible hypnotizing even-
ing when she had walked on Clapham Common and had
returned to pass a night of starts and tremors, lying -
dressed on Cosimo’s bed. She could afford to smile
now, though she did so a little disdainfully. Things
had improved since then—rather! Cosimo, though he
had always been splendid, had been somehow a little
off-handed at odd times; not exactly casual, but as if,
while ésteeming her very highly indeed, his esteem had
none the less fallen just a little short of her true deserts;
but that, too, was being quickly altered now. And she
“ BARRAGE” 275

would like to see Rome too. Quite inferior people had
seen Rome, and Amory owed it to herself and to her art
not to be crowed over by anybody. She told Cosimo
80.

“Yes,” he said dejectedly; “I thought that would
be the next. You’re rising, Amory. You'll remem-
ber us poor grovellers sometimes, though, won’t you?”
Amory’s tone of reproach almost passed reproach; it
was as if she had received a twinge of pain.

“T don’t think I’ve deserved that of you, Cosimo,”
she could not forbear saying.

But Cosimo persisted sadly.

“T beg your pardon, dear, but it is so. You might
remember a little longer than most others, because
you're finer and truer than they are, but time and dis-
tance do make a difference, and it’s no good saying they
don’t. I know.”

Amory wondered whether Cosimo knew the differ-
ence time and distance made because of Pattie Wynn-
Jenkins, but she only shook her head on its white
hyacinth-stalk of a neck.

“TI don’t forget my friends, Cosimo,” she said
quietly.

“Ym not accusing you, Amory. But,” he continued
mournfully, “there are brilliant circles in Rome, and
I know exactly how you’d take your place there, and
it would be quite right and proper in one sense, and
nobody would be gladder than I. But I should be
buried in that beastly hole Shropshire all the time, bor-
ing myself to tears with cows and grass and pheasants
and a lot of stupid yokels id

 
276 THE TWO KISSES

Gently Amory tried to show him how ungrateful
he was.

“Oh, Cosimo, how can you speak so of the country
that gave the world ‘ The Shropshire Lad’! I should
always have beautiful thoughts of you—as my Shrop-
shire Lad—and it isn’t as if there wasn’t a noble work
to do in the country too. There’s the Housing Prob-
lem, and an iniquitous Land System, and sanitary
dwellings for the agricultural labourer a

She went on, but Cosimo refused to see it. It was
as if her “Barrage” would be carried in triumph
through the streets of Rome as Cimabue’s “‘ Madonna ”
was carried through those of Florence, while he would
be tapping the barometer each morning, and then taking
a walk with no other company than that of his dog,
and returning to his solitary lunch, and going to sleep
in the afternoon, and wishing to goodness he’d never
seen his beastly estate. And so strongly did he now
feel how little he had to offer Amory that he did not
offer it, but sighed instead, and said that he supposed
he’d be driven to marry some wench from the nearest
dairy in order not to die of sheer weariness within six
months. Amory mused.

“ About that, Cosimo,” she said slowly at last.
“You know what I’ve always wanted for you. I’ve
always wanted you to marry some nice girl I could
make a friend of. At one time I thought Dorothy
might have done, but I see now that I was wrong. But
you'd be better not marrying at all than marrying some
body who wouldn’t enter into your ideas. Can’t you
live for duty alone, Cosimo, as I can?”

 
“ BARRAGE ” 277

“ You’ve more to sustain you,” he replied dully.

“ All duties are alike precious,” said Amory firmly.
“Yours is a more even temperament. I grant I rise
a little sometimes, but for every rise there’s a despair,
Cosimo, and I often think almost anybody is happier
than I. Besides, you’d have the richest of my thought in
my letters. You remember that fine passage in Ruskin—
I think it’s in the Crown of Wild Olive—about the
spoken word often being hasty and inaccurate, but the
written one being choice and considered; I forget ex-
actly how it goes. But you’d have that, Cosimo.”

“Oh, that ”? Cosimo sighed.

His eyes had rested on the grey huddle on the bench
twenty yards away. The huddle had moved, and a
dim face had appeared. It was the face of Mrs. ’IIl’s
daughter, Jellies, and Amory had seen it too. It seemed
to brighten her. She gave a gay little laugh.

“There you are,” she said; “when you say you’d
marry a dairymaid, do you mean—that?” She made
a little movement of her head. “If you do, Cosimo,
by all means marry one. When things come to that
pitch I don’t see that anything matters very much.
Marry a dairymaid, by all means, if that’s what you
mean by marriage. But’—her laughter suddenly
ceased—“ don’t forget, Cosimo, that there is another
side to it. You’d perhaps get all that some men seem
to require, and perhaps you are that kind of man, but
I shouldn’t have thought it. I should have planned
something very different for you. . . . And think what
you'd forego. No Societies for the study of those lovely
Folk-Songs. No revival of Morrice Dancing. No

 
278 THE TWO KISSES

bringing back the peasantry to those beautiful and ra-
tional old smock costumes. No bringing up of the
standard of rustic morals to the level of that of the
chaste animals. No education of the people up to an
enlightened system of Land Tenure. No jolly Socialist
Vans, no Pamphlets, nothing fine. Only the extortions
of Landlordism and the old hateful Three—Rent, In-
terest, and Profits. ... I’m not saying that to do all
this 7s your work, Cosimo. I’m only pointing out that
it’s somebody's work. I don’t know Shropshire; per-
haps Shropshire isn’t ripe for it; but it’s being done
elsewhere. It attracts me. But of course that is no
reason why it should attract you. I only mean that
I should have said it was worth examining.”

Cosimo sat in the falling dusk, thrilled. What a
daring and constructive brain! ... And still some
fools said women had no capacity for affairs! What
(he wondered) would they have said could they have
heard Amory as she was now—not argumentative, urging
nothing, pleading nothing, with nothing to gain, quite
detached and disinterested, merely anxious that, as she
saw her own work before her, so others should see theirs ?
He rather thought they would have been silenced! . . .

And now there was no expressing how much Cosimo
wanted her. Alone and of himself he could never have
thought of these things, but with Amory by his side!
. . » He seemed to see that Shropshire estate as it might
be made. The bright parts of his vision seemed to
gather as it were about a Maypole; the Maypole was in
the middle; Cosimo knew the very spot for it. And
“ BARRAGE ” 279

the place really needed a Village Hall, on a contribu-
tory basis. In wet weather they could have the Folk-
Songs and the Morrice Dancing there, and in fin
weather on the green. There might be Vans and Pam-
phlets too; they might even set up a Villars “Press.
And with these as a beginning the rest wouid come in
time; but he could do nothing without Amory. He
must have her. He knew it would not be easy, but he
fancied—he was not sure, but he fancied—that there
had been suppressed emotion in the tone in which she
had called him her Shropshire Lad. Again he glanced
at Jellies, whose face had disappeared again. The
huddle, as far as he could see in the gloom, was quite
motionless. Often and often with Amory he had
laughed at this slow and elementary and adhesive love-
making of the lower orders; it had always seemed so
funny; and of course it was funny still with people of
that class; Cosimo was not running away from that.
Still, Cosimo had once taken a crossing-sweeper’s broom
and had swept for half an hour for him, and Amory
was temptingly pretty as she sat by his side in the
dusk... .

Between his dream of a Model Village, of which he
was proud, and something else for which he felt a little
apologetic, Cosimo did not quite know where he was;
but he knew that he wanted Amory. A soft “Ow!”
came from the huddle on the other bench; it rather put
Cosimo off for a moment or two; but all was silent
again, and he took heart. He altered his position, and
ran his arm along the back of the bench.
280 THE TWO KISSES

 

“ Do you really think, Amory: ” he began huskily.

“Eh?” said Amory. Apparently he had startled
‘her. She had been quite lost in abstraction.

“Do you think that’s the choice—for me?”

“The,choice?... Ob, I see! You mean what I
was saying” Well, Cosimo, what do you think your-
self ?”

Cosimo spoke spiritlessly.

“T don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth
while my thinking when you're here. I want you to
tell me.”

“T don’t think,” Amory answered slowly, “that in
cases like this one person has really the right to settle
things for another. As you know, I hate the word
Conscience; I prefer the expression Personal Will; but
that’s what it seems to me to be.”

“ But in so many things my will’s yours, Amory.
You see deeper than I. Yow’re constructive. You're
one of the world’s Makers of Things. I should be a
very good lieutenant or something, but I’m quite with-
out the creative gift. Won’t you help me to do all those
beautiful things, Amory?”

But evidently Amory didn’t understand him. She
replied, with quick eagerness—

“ Gladly—oh, so gladly! You know you have only
to ask, Cosimo, now or at any time.”

Cosimo tried again.

““I—I don’t mean that exactly,” he stammered.
‘“‘ That’s splendid, that part in the Crown of Wild Olive,
I know, but—but—I mean something else, Amory—
dear——”
“ BARRAGE ” 281

His hand had slipped from the back of the bench;
softly it lay on Amory’s shoulder. He could hardly
believe that it had lain there many times before, it lay
so differently softly now. And yet Amory did not seem
to recognize the difference in the softness, nor did she
appear conscious that he had called her “dear” in a
tone he had never used before. She put her finger-
tips lightly on his knee. “ Wait a bit,” she said. “TI
have it on the tip of my tongue—it’s not the Crown of
Wild Olive; it’s Sesame and Lnlies—you know—that
passage about gossiping with housemaids and stable-
boys when you might be conversing with kings and
queens—I shall remember it in a moment ”

For one fleeting instant it did strike Cosimo that if
he had not taken down Amory’s hair for her and called
her “dear” in the past he might have had more re
sources at his disposal now—at any rate in the sense
that Amory would have apprehended him more quickly ;
and yet that, too, had its little furtive compensation.
His hand could remain where it was... .

Amory continued to try to recollect the passage from
Sesame and Lalies.

But suddenly she too gave, not a common “ Ow!”
but a quite sudden start into perception. She moved a
little, but the hand on her shoulder did not. With
quiet firmness she put her own hand upon it, but her
slight effort to draw it away met with resistance. She
had seen. She made as if to rise.

“Isn’t it getting late?” she said, looking away over
the river.

“ Amory—don’t go—you know what I mean

 

 
282 THE TWO KISSES

Cosimo pleaded throatily. “ It’s—it’s what I said the
other day—you know: ”

“ Let’s be going, Cosimo,” said Amory. “I really
don’t know what you mean by the other day.”

“ After you’d seen Dorothy—and I wanted at to
marry me—do marry me, dear me

Somehow his hold of her suddenly loosened, aia
Amory was on her feet. From the bench twenty yards
away two faces watched them through the gloom.
Amory looked sorrowfully at Cosimo. She was not
angry. She did not pretend that she did not under-
stand.

“ Cosimo,” she said, and her voice was low, “I don’t
see how you can expect things to be the same after
this.”

Cosimo sat helplessly, as if still to sit might be con-
strued as an invitation for her also to resume her place.

“*J—I don’t want them to be the same, dear——”
he begged almost abjectly.

“And you mustn’t call me dear—not in this new

” Amory commanded, softly, but with decision.
“T do see what you mean—now., And I admit it
makes matters clearer—too clear, perhaps. In that way
our friendship may have been a disadvantage. It’s
committed us to a certain course, and we must either
keep to that course or else undo things. I think you'll
admit that’s a Law. I

“Oh, undo them!” Cosimo cried ardently, catching,
as he sat, at her hands.

But Amory drew the hands away and glanced towards

 

 

 
“ BARRAGE ” 283

Alf and Jellies. Her low voice thrilled, as it were,
with the first tones of a tragic scene.

“ Cosimo—no, I say. Not now. Not here. Per-
haps never, and not anywhere. I’m almost sure it
would be better not. I’m quite sure. It’s not like
that time the other day. J’d seen Dorothy then, you
see, and she’d said that horrid thing. Mere pride made
us go on as we had been doing in the face of the whole
world. It was noble of you to offer it then—noble in
a way, but quite impossible; and that’s all past. Now
our paths seem to lie in different directions, and we
must follow them; it’s a L—it’s our duty. In the
sense you mean, the sense of doing a sacred work, I was
actually more your wife during that long and beautiful
friendship than I can be now that you say you love
me——”’

“Oh, I do love you! ” Cosimo groaned, hearing these
words of doom. “I do love you, Amory!”

“Then I bid you love your duty more,” Amory re-
plied, with sweet mournfulness, placing her finger-tips
ever so lightly for one moment on his shoulder, as it
were an accolade. “Go, my Shropshire Lad, and do
it. And I will try to do mine. Let that unite us,
and let nothing gross and of the earth ”—from the next
bench came a resounding smack of two mouths placed
together—“ let nothing of the earth come near. So
you will be my Cosimo, and I your Amory. Isn’t that
the higher and the better way ?”

“Oh, but, Amory, it’s so hard! You know you’ve
often said yourself that the physical relation has its
284 THE TWO KISSES

proper place! How—how would the world go on with-
out it?”

“The world, Cosimo, goes on by the progress of
ideas. Ideas can be in a sense our children, yours and
mine. And these are born of no contact but the con-
tact of the mingling spirits. I will write to you quite
frequently—after a time, when I have forgotten a
little; I will write such letters as you’d never, never
receive from anybody else! And perhaps, after a
number of years, we could meet again. When it was
safer. I couldn’t meet you until it was safe, and I
must leave you now. Don’t come with me, dear friend.
I am not really going away; only the mortal part of
me; everything else is yours, Cosimo. Good night, a

“ Amory! Amory!”

“Don’t make it harder, dearest thought—you are
thought of my thought a

Cosimo sat still.

“Must that be all, Amory?”

“Ts it so little? Oh, you don’t know! Have you
forgotten what I told you about the Antinéus? You
are all that to me!”

“ Then——~” Cosimo supplicated, his arms out-
stretched; but Amory turned away her head.

“Ah no! You mean I kissed the Antinéus. But
I daren’t kiss you, my Shropshire Lad; I might fail
utterly. And it would be no good your trying to kiss
me; you'd hold my corporeal part for a moment, but
think of all you’d lose! Would it be worth while,
Cosimo?” She smiled, benign as a star, down on him.
“Would it?”

 

 

 
“ BARRAGE ” 285

How could he say Yes? How, on the other hand,
could he say No? He was between the highest she
had ever taught him, and that common, blissful lethargy
of the huddle on the neighbouring seat. Thus two
Principles run through that multicoloured pattern of
the world’s web. Itisa Law. Cosimo saw that it was
a Law. He also saw that it was a hard one.

Suddenly he did the most sensible thing he could
have done. He rose.

“Well, Pll walk along with you as far as your place,”
he said wearily. “I suppose I may do that?”

“Yes,” said Amory. She would not have had the
heart to refuse him so little. They walked in silence,
and stopped before the greengrocer’s entry.

“Mayn’t I come up?” Cosimo asked.

“ No.”

“Oh, Amory! You can’t mean never again?”

“Never again, I think, Cosimo. I’m going up to
think, and to gather my things together. I shall leave
to-morrow or the day after.”

An “Oh!” broke from Cosimo’s lips. So might
a prisoner failingly exclaim who, having known that
he must-die at sunrise, should be ordered forth from
his cell before the stars had begun to pale.

“Good night—and good-bye,” said Amory, smiling
bravely as she held out her little hand.

“Oh! ... Not like this! Amory, I can’t bear
alee

“Tt must be borne. I see now that this had to

come. I don’t say you may not see me just once
more,”
286 THE TWO KISSES

Even at that Cosimo caught eagerly. “When? To-
morrow ?”

“No, not to-morrow; I shall be packing. Nor the
day after; I shall be busy with the ‘ Barrage’ Com-
mittee. I’ll write to you, Cosimo.”

“ Write!”

“Do you get many letters such as I should write to
you?” she asked gently. “ I’ll write, Cosimo; perhaps
you may see me once or twice more.”

“ Oh,” Cosimo groaned, “ however shall I get through
the time! ”

The years they had spent together now seemed as
nothing compared with these last eternal days before
the new order, whatever it was to be, should begin.
III

EPITHALAMIUM

T is not impossible, though it is in the last degree
unlikely, that you may have lived in England in
those days of Amory Towers’ rise to fame without hay-
ing heard of the furore created by “ Barrage,” and of
its triumphant tour through the country, drawing shill-
ings wherever it went; but you certainly did not live in
London that spring without having another and not dis-,
similar event hammered home on you morning, noon,
and night—the astounding series of social functions
with which Hallowells’ immortalized its Inauguration.
“Not dissimilar,’ one says, and that is the truth, if
not the very obvious truth. For both successes were
due to the same cause—high, victorious advertisement.
It made no difference that the two glories were differ-
ent glories—that Mr. Miller knew the dignity due to
millinery, and the “ Barrage” Committee, ably assisted
by Mr. Hamilton Dix, had the secret of making art
boom. And perhaps the hidden causes that slowly make
history decreed that both successes should come to pass
at pretty much the same time. You put pressure upon
an object, but that object also puts pressure upon you.
Mr. Miller recognized the need of commerce for ideals,
and the leaders of the Manumission League recognized

the need ideals had of business organization. The one
287
288 THE TWO KISSES

would elevate business into a Faith, the others make
their Faith into an effective and shilling-producing
business. It is a Law. It was also one of the Laws
that Amory did not see.

For Amory forgot the slight and constant bitterness
of having sold “ Barrage” outright in the renown that
was now hers. Virtually, by an omission so ludicrously
accidental that even Dorothy Lennard had noticed it
(so, in these miserable mercenary matters, has the small
mind the advantage over the great one), she was-pour-
ing streams of gold into the League’s war-chest. She
solaced herself with that thought—but she intended to
see that matters were placed on a very different footing
next time. She did not know that there could be no
next time. She did not know that though her signature
might now be clamoured for by the advertisers of Brain
Foods and Hair Washes, Dentifrices and the makers of
Portia Caps, the public does not rise to the same fly
twice. There was to be no successor to “ Barrage.”
She might paint—she did paint—all those other fiery-
cross canvases, the White Slave canvas, the Tubercu-
losis canvas, the State Motherhood canvas, and the rest,
but she remained Miss Amory Towers, the painter of
the famous feminist picture, “Barrage.” And pres-
ently there grew up a cult of her finer but unrecognized
masterpieces. Cosimo began it later, when he set about
the writing of the Life and Work of Amory Towers.
It became a test of your knowledge and discrimina-
tion. Your lip, if you were really one of the elect,
curled a little at the mention of “ Barrage”; not (you
were expected, if you were a superior person, to say)
EPITHALAMIUM 289

that “ Barrage ” was not all very well in its way ; popu-
lar and so forth; but—did your hearer know the “ Tu-
berculosis”’ canvas? That was the true Towers. So
it was in this pluperfect esteem that Amory by and by
came to bask, with Cosimo as her showman.

Benighted Dorothy Lennard, on the other hand,
fluked into her wretched success by sheer luck. She
had never an ideal to her name, never realized that the
best possession to which she could lay claim was a cer-
tain knack, a certain low business cunning. And it was
only to be expected that this should pay her, in mere
despicable cash, twenty times as well as Amory’s purer
awen had paid.; Amory was not in the least envious.
Poor Dorothy would need it all, and more. However
rich she became, she could never become a prophet; she
might become a millionaire, but she could never qualify’
for the martyr’s crown. Amory hoped her money
might make her happy. But she did not see how it
could,

But to this fluke of Dorothy’s :—

When, long, long. before, Dorothy Lennard had told
Amory Towers that she had an idea that alone had
made her wealthy as she stood, she had ‘spoken with a
superb confidence. Amory had looked for something of
national, nay, more, of feminist value; but later she had
begun to think that Dorothy had been merely giving ut-
terance to an idle boast; some people, seeing others
achieving something, must needs boast, merely to keep
up appearances. Since that day Dorothy had kept her
own counsel. She had kept her project even from Mr.
Miller, without whom she had known she could do
290 THE TWO KISSES

nothing; she had kept it from Miss Benson, and Miss
Umpleby, and for long enough from her cousin Stan-
hope. But presently she had had to tell Stan. He
shared her sandwiches, and must share her ignoble
scheming also.

It appeared that Mr. Miller and Hallowells’ were
to provide the money for them to marry on. They must
marry, they told one another twenty times a week—:
simply must. It was stupid, Stan said, not marrying;
what on earth was there not to get married about? He
didn’t believe in that off-and-on sort of business, as if
they didn’t know their own minds... . But ought
second cousins to marry? Dorothy had urged (scuffling
disgustingly for the biggest bite of the sandwich) ;
wasn’t it said to be a bad thing? Weren’t all these
Eugenist people always saying what a bad thing it was?
Miss Towers said so—

“Was that Miss Towers, that red-haired little thing
you were in such a paddy with that day?”

“What day?” ,

“The day she caught us—doing this.”

“ (There, I’m glad you pricked yourself!) . . . Yes,
that was Miss Towers.”

““ Seemed to creep up rather quietly, didn’t she?”

“Stan! Of course she didn’t!”

“Oh, all right. I wondered where you picked her up,
that’s all.... And does she say second cousins
oughtn’t to marry ?”

“ Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps she doesn’t. She says
so many things.”

“Well, you can tell her from me that I don’t know
EPITHALAMIUM 291

anything about ‘ ought,’ but I want to, and I’m jolly well
going to. And look here, Dot, I won’t have you wear-
ing pins—just look what you’ve done to my hand.”

“ Did it tratch its hand!” ...

Then, of course, the question of prospects had arisen,
and Dorothy had had to tell Stanhope Tasker what was
in her mind.

“ All right, if you think there’s anything in it,” Stan
had agreed when Dorothy had unfolded her plan. “TI
don’t quite see it, though.”

“Tdiot!” Dorothy had chuckled, taking a butt at
him with her face as if they had been two of the chaste
animals at play. “ You just wait and see if Mr. Miller
doesn’t see it, though!”

“Hope he does, that’s all,” Stan had grunted over
the glass of ginger-beer. ‘ Then we'll clear out of this.
T’ve got my eye on a job as secretary to a polo club.
Just suit me. And I might get a game sometimes.”

Before Dorothy had allowed Mr. Miller either to “ see
it” or to know anything whatever about it, however,
she had first taken good care of the receptivity of Mr.
Miller’s mind. At that time the Inauguration had
occupied him day and night; ideas for cheap stunts
had come to him plenty as blackberries; but no idea
had occurred to him that combined the flashy and
ephemeral attractions of these with that real dignity
of which the Throne, the Royal Standard, and the Es-
tablished Church stood as the outward and visible sym-
bols. And Dorothy had let him fume and fret. The
longer he fumed and fretted the higher her price was
likely to rise. And presently, by the time Mr. Miller
292 THE TWO KISSES

had fumed and fretted himself into a state of nerves
lest, after all his vaunting Hallowell & Smith’s Inaug-
uration might turn out to be just like any other Inaug-
uration, the price was likely to be very high indeed.

Moreover, Dorothy had seen Mr. Miller’s somewhat.
unscrupulous ways with the originators of other ideas,
Mr. Miller was painfully subject to a weakness which
might have been constitutional to himself or merely part
of the general keenness of his job. This weakness was
that he had sometimes been known to help himself to an
idea, and to deny its real author as much as an acknowl-
edgment. It was in vain that those authors screened
themselves with elaborate and formal contracts drawn
up in black and white. The law, by the one master-
phrase that there is no copyright in idea, indemnified
Mr. Miller. Dorothy knew that if she also did not
want to be robbed, she must make herself more secure
than any black and white could make her. Now there
is only one way of doing this. It is by means of the
free and flexible understanding of which agreements
and contracts are but the rather clumsy letter. She had
seen that, touch by touch, she must so prepare Mr.
Miller’s attitude that any suggestion of hers would be
more likely to appear valuable than not. That had
meant such present sacrifices as the leaving of really
quite passable “stunts” to others. Dorothy could not
afford to suggest ordinary things. An imaginary red
carpet, so to speak, was to be laid down before she ap-
proached Mr. Miller with a suggestion. And Mr.
Miller would think the more highly of it in propor-
tion as he paid highly for it.
EPITHALAMIUM 2938

So she had carefully “ nursed”? Mr. Miller, had used
her charms when the use of charms would serve a turn
and had been businesslike and off when the charm of her
sex would have been out of place, had dined and supped
with Mr. Miller, had left Mr. Miller alone for a week,
had one day dropped a hint that Doubledays’ manager
was a friend of her people (expressing quite a liking
for Doubledays’ manager personally), and so on and
so forth, until Mr. Miller thought her not only one of
the brightest young women that had ever happened,
but one with whom it was a pleasure to be seen in the
well-dressed assemblies his British heart loved. And,
of course, here Dorothy’s connexions helped too. Lady
Tasker crossed over at the Ritz one evening and sat
talking with Dorothy for a full ten minutes, with Mr.
Miller standing all the time and bowing whenever he
got a chance; and his bow when Lady Tasker left was
the bow of Sir Walter with the cloak. Thereafter he
kept glancing across in the direction of Lady Tasker’s
party as if he wondered whether it would be permissible
to take wine with Lady Tasker across the width of the
room; and he spoke to Dorothy as follows :—

“ Now that’s the reel thing; I say this is an Expe
rience, Miss Lennard. The way you introdooced me:
“Mr. Miller—,’ no more than thaaat, but with a man--
ner, so to say: ‘Mr. Miller—,’ and then went on con-
versing about intimate things just as if you’d been at
home or in her ladyship’s private suite of rooms at this
ho-tel . . . that’s the Note! Now if we could secure
Lady Tasker for our Inauguration—not to be on voo,
but just to be there—that would be worth dallars,
294 THE TWO KISSES

guineas, I mean, both to us and to her ladyship... .
And is she Mr. Stan’s aunt, if I may use the word,
too? Well, now! I have to thank you for a real ex-
perience, Miss Lennard. ‘Mr. Miller ’—just like that
—I might have been anybody way up! Some of our
Misters make some of our Sirs look poor, if I may use
the expression—cheap skates—‘ bum’s’ the word they
use in America—nooveau. I’m vurry glad to have had
the pleasure of Lady Tasker’s acquaintance. Now in-
dicate to me who the rest of the party are——”

And when, a week later, Mr. Miller, bowing to Lady
Tasker at the theatre, received a bow in return, he cer-
tainly felt, if he was not actually, many “ dallars”
better off. Perhaps actually he was, too. Perhaps his
Idea had received confirmation and support, so that he
was enabled to go forward with fresh energy and en-
thusiasm. We must get our inspiration from some
where, and these things are very difficult to explain.

It may be supposed that this and a few similar
things did Dorothy no harm at all; and of course
she lied grossly, at any rate by implication, when
she introduced the name of Doubledays’. Not that
Doubledays’, too, were not straining every nerve.
They and everybody else knew of the coming Inaugura-
‘tion that was already as completely planned as—
say, “ Hamlet ” without the Prince. Perhaps Dorothy
did actually say something to them; perhaps she gave
Mr. Miller an aceount that she thought quite good
enough for Mr. Miller; not all of us can take our
truth nascent and unsullied from the Fountainhead
of all Truth. Mr. Miller at any rate thought she
EPITHALAMIUM 295

might possibly be dickering with Doubledays’, and
that was the practical matter. An introduction to
Lady Tasker at the Ritz was no good to him if Double-
days’ also was going to be introduced to Lady Tasker
at the Ritz, and these and other things were Dorothy’s
to give or to withhold. . . . You see how it was. You
see how time-serving and unprincipled and altogether
immoral it was. Amory would not have touched it
with the end of a long pole. Had Stan written the
“Life and Work of Miss Dorothy Lennard” he would
probably have written the most deplorable record of
our whole deplorable age.

Apart from these things, however, there was the
intrinsic beauty of the idea itself. That went straight
’ to the heart of every woman, and of nearly every man
‘also. And it touched every single being of the future,
too. To Mr. Wellcome it peculiarly belonged, and
Jellies and the Eugenist might have shaken hands
upon it, Actuarially its basis was as sound as it could
be. Dorothy went carefully into this. The cost for
the whole week would be nothing to Hallowells’, and
its return would be incalculable. Without it, those
shining palatial premises would be as a setting that
begged, prayed, implored for its jewel. If Mr. Miller
didn’t take it, Doubledays’—might. You don’t bar-
gain for these things; you show them, and name your
price. If you are robbed, it is your own fault before
the fact; only the people are robbed who deserve to
be robbed. Dorothy didn’t guarantee a gem of such
water every spring; nevertheless she intended to ask
for fifteen hundred pounds a year for a number. of
296 THE TWO KISSES

years on the strength of it—this time (for contracts
have their dull uses) to be clinched by a formal con-
tract. She was not a fashion artist now; she had
barely passed her Sealskin; she was a Publicity Ad-
viser, and what she did not know about wheedling and
scheming and other gross misuses of her sex was not
worth knowing. And she did not care one rap for
Emancipation and the Cause. She thought the Cause
a very useful thing, merely because it collected all
the cranks together, so that you might know where to
find them if you happened to want them and how to
avoid them when you did not; and, applying her
publicity training to the extraordinary success “ Bar-
rage” was by this time having, she had no difficulty
whatever in seeing to what that success was really due.
Given the occasion and the organization, anybody else’s
picture would have done quite as well as Amory’s.
Amory was merely lucky to have hit on the idea at
the right moment, and foolish if she thought the idea
and the moment were likely ever to jump so happily
together again. And if Amory didn’t know this, the
odds were that Mr. Dix did.

This idea of Dorothy’s, then (not to beat any longer
about the bush), was that of the famous Wedding
Week that has now passed into history. “ Shopping
Weeks” had been tried before, but they had struck
Dorothy as “some of our Sirs” had struck Mr. Miller
by comparison with the unadorned simplicity of some
Misters—as ‘ poor,” “nooveau,” and (to use the
American expression) “bum.” And yet they had
paid. If those, then, had paid, such an. idea ag
EPITHALAMIUM 297

Dorothy’s was likely to pay at least as well. It
seemed to her that all that these highly-paid Captains
of Commerce lacked was inventiveness. They could
be trusted with the details, but they had no largeness
of conception. They niggled where they should have
drawn with a free hand. Dorothy knew that she had
ideas enough to keep a dozen of them going.
Hallowell & Smith’s, then, were going to provide,
for a week, and up to the capacity of their largest
hall, free weddings. Subject to certain conditions,
that varied from the purchase of a veil to the opening
of a monthly aceount—and even these were imposed
only to stem the rush that was confidently anticipated
—Hallowells’ would supply carriages, the breakfast,
flowers, cake, music, wine, silver-paper boxes, awnings,
liveries, crimson carpets, souvenirs and what not, en-
tirely without charge, deduction, obligation, or any
catch about it whatever. Between the pronouncing
of the Benediction at the Church and your stepping
on to the footboard of the train that was to take
you away, you simply put yourself into Hallowells’
hands. Indeed, it was not Hallowells’ fault that they
were not able to do even more for you. Certainly it
was not Mr. Miller’s fault. For Mr. Miller simply
could not see why, if in Scotland a wedding might be
celebrated in an ordinary drawing-room, in England it
might not take place in an up-to-date Store. He took
advice, both legal and ecclesiastical; he approached
both the Church and the Registry Office; and the only
result was that he found something more inaccessible
even than he had found the Royal Standard to be.
298 THE TWO KISSES

Hallowells’, dedicated though it was (subject to the
Shops’ Hours Acts) to that practical form of Faith
which the Apostle James offered to show by his works,
still remained, in the hidebound sense that is the only
one accepted of dogma, an unconsecrated building.
Mr. Miller felt this as an injustice. It seemed to him
that the Church could not after all be very sure of its
own position. If, as it preached, it was the duty of the
strong to help the weak, surely it was equally the duty
of an Establishment that had dignity enough and to
spare to bestow a little of that dignity where there was
need of it. Not to do so was a stultification of reel
enterprise, and a refusal to give live and go-ahead
brains (his brains and Dorothy’s) their proper reward.
He would have met the Church more than. half-way;
would have dressed his marshal-celebrant in any way
they had wished; cloth-of-gold if they liked; no ex-
pense should have been spared: but the authorities of
the Chapel Royal and St. George’s, Hanover Square,
stuck to their cobwebby old monopoly, and in a busi-
ness sense Mr. Miller was forced to the conclusion that
the Church was “bum.”

But while the Sacrament itself lay beyond his
power, its appurtenances provided an opportunity
more glorious than Publicity had dreamed of yet.
Never was a Publicity-secret more jealously guarded.
Day and night a picket kept the door of the room in
the Clerkenwell factory where the gigantic papier-
maché Old Shve was being made; and the white-and-
silver hymeneal torches, both the large ones for the
trophies and the small ones for table-decoration and
EPITHALAMIUM 299

the holding of flowers, were allotted to separate firms.
All “roughs” given out to printers were red-labelled,
like poison-bottles, ‘ Destroy at Once”; and the de-
liveries of Menus, Souvenirs, Wedding-cake Boxes and
so on were sealed with private seals. The theatrical
costumiers who supplied the wings and wreaths for
the Cupids were given for secrecy’s sake, an address in
Scotland from which the consignments were brought
back by private van by road; and for long enough the
Executive of the Wedding Week was divided about the
building of an organ in the place. Mr. Miller rather
wanted an organ: it would be, he thought, rather a
scorching come-back on the Church; but his stunt-ad-
visers persuaded him otherwise, and a string-band car-
ried the day. And before it was absolutely too late
for Doubledays’ or any other firm to have queered the
whole thing and to have got ahead of Hallowell’s,
Dorothy got her contract. The office of Consultant to
Hallowell’s for five years was signed, sealed and de-
livered unto her. Thereafter she might stick to the
job or allow it to lapse, as she pleased ; in the meantime,
not counting contingent benefits that were sure to
come, it would start her and Stan very comfortably to-
gether. ,

And so, with London at its fairest and fullest, and
the flower-barrows in the Circuses ablaze with tulips
and narcissi and gladioli and escholtzsias, and Bond
Street blocked with cars and taxis, and the Park on
Sunday mornings for all the world as if rivers of con-
fetti and black patches flowed slowly back and forth,
all was made in readiness at Hallowell’s. And so well
300 THE TWO KISSES

had the secret been kept that it was only when Miss
Umpleby happened one day to.go into the room where
the Bell was being unpacked that anybody in the place
(outside the Executive) had the faintest notion of
what was going on. But the Bell gave it away to Miss
Umpleby. Mr. Miller had got the idea of the Bell
from that foreign land, America. It was twelve feet
high and composed entirely of artificial flowers; and
while it had originally been intended that each bridal
pair should hew its way out of it with a silver axe,
bringing the souvenirs for its particular party out with
it, that idea had been abandoned as impracticable, and
the Bell opened with two flaps like a roc’s egg at a
pantomime instead. Miss Umpleby was an intelligent
young woman; she had read of the device before in
the newspapers; and she flew to Dorothy.

“What are they up to in there, Lennie?” she de-
manded. “Mr. Miller isn’t going to be married, is
he?”

Nobody would have known from Dorothy’s face that
she guessed that the secret had leaked out.

“Mr. Miller get married? Mr. Miller is married.
What are you talking about?” she asked.

“That thing in the room at the end of the corridor
there. I peeped in.”

“Then you'd no business to peep,” Dorothy re-
plied; and she denied all knowledge of what was to-
ward.

But presently she was sorry she had done so. Miss
Umpleby, being under no obligation of secrecy, told
the girls of the fashion studio what she had seen.
EPITHALAMIUM 301

Dorothy entered the studio as they were discussing it
that same afternoon, and the hail of questions that
greeted her almost blew her out of the room again.

“ Here’s Lennie—she knows!”

“Ts it going to be like that New York one that was
in the papers, Lennie?”

“ And who is it?”

“Tt isn’t you, Lennie, is it?”

They paused for breath, and then went on.

“ And there’s stacks and stacks of mock-orange in
boxes -

“ And lots of lace-paper 7

“ And they’re doing the Central Hall downstairs all
in white and silver.”

“ Do tell us!” they implored.

But it was only some days later, when there was no
longer any danger of betrayal, that Dorothy told Miss
. Umpleby, as a great secret. Miss Umpleby clutched
at Dorothy’s arm.

“Really?” she cried excitedly. “Do you mean
there’ll be champagne, and flowers, and a cake, all for
nothing?”

“Well, you give Hallowells’ an order, and they’ll
do as many as there’s room for.”

“Oh! ... How much is the order?”

“What, do you mean that you'd ¢”

“Me and Arthur? Rather! I don’t suppose we
shall be married this side of the next eclipse if we don’t
do something of the sort! I’m not proud, as long as
they don’t mix the husbands up; I’ve had to watch
Arthur, I can tell you, ever since he got his new Sans

 

 

 
302 THE TWO KISSES

Souci hat! . . . But really, Lennie, do you think you
could get us a ticket or whatever it is?”

“Tf you really mean i ?

“Of course I mean it. Oh, I say, you are a brick!
What a lark!”

And so Miss Umpleby, who otherwise would have
had to wait for another year, put her name down for
that public wedding-breakfast.

And su a word was dropped here and a word was
dropped there, and the business spies stole back and
forth piecing gathered rumours together, and, some
days before the announcements appeared in the papers,
Doubledays’ and the rest of them knew that they were
done. No counter-device they could have prepared in
the time would have compared for one single instant
with that clean-cut and beauty-bright idea of Dorothy’s.
So some of them touched hidden springs that caused
‘letters on over-advertised business to appear in the
papers, but most of them took their defeat magnani-
mously, merely sending out fresh spies to try to dis-
cover “whose notion Miller had stolen that time” and
to try to secure the services of that ingenious brain for
themselves. Oh, Dorothy would have had no difficulty
whatever in selling herself two or three times over!
Tn fact she.did so, at varying figures, though of course
not to Hallowell’s trade competitors. It is quite
simple. When you are more anxious to sell your brains
than somebody else is to buy them, then your price is
a low one; but when people come running to you with
their money in their hands, that is the time to stick it
Ol. 2 es

 
EPITHALAMIUM ~ 303

‘Dorothy stuék it on. If Stan got his game of polo
once in a while he must have just as good ponies as
anybody else’s. ...

And so, you know, in the beginning of the June of
that year the famous Wedding Week opened. You do
not need to dig deep into your newspaper files in
order to read all about it and to remember how, for
brilliance and festivity and renown, for crowds and
mirth and family gatherings and thundering good busi-
ness, it by far outdistanced any mere Shopping
Week that had ever been held in this island realm. It
caught on instantaneously. London talked of nothing
else. From eleven o’clock to four daily, Oxford Street
was blocked. Folk stood up to watch from the stand-
‘ing buses; streams of traffic were diverted into the side
streets; it took you half an hour to walk on foot from
Oxford Circus to Tottenham Court Road, and high
across the street, all pale blue and silver and white, Hal-
lowell’s swinging banner, “oUR WEDDING WEEK,”
flapped and fluttered in the spring wind. And the even-
ing papers reserved special columns for the daily do-
ings. Press-photographers snapped; descriptive re-
porting soared; ponderously playful editorials gave
the Wedding Week their imprimatur; comedians made
it the theme of their choicest “gags.” The Daily
Speculum rose to a million a day on the strength of
its photographs of bridal-parties alone. There were
rumours of a Manchester Wedding Week. One
couple journeyed all the way from Stornoway to be
married by Special Licence and to breakfast at Hallo-
wells’; another couple came from the Potteries. In
304 THE TWO KISSES

both these cases Hallowells’ handsomely paid for the
railway-tickets also. Newly-made husbands and wives
were interviewed as they signed the large Bridal
Book; they bore testimony that the champagne was
excellent, the wedding-cakes not made of plaster of
Paris, and that there were absolutely no gratuities
_ whatever. Hallowells’ defiantly invited investigation
on these points. They issued a public challenge to any-
body who could prove that they were not doing all they
had undertaken to do. Especially they drove it home
that any genuine bride or bridegroom or member of
their party might drink just as much champagne as
ever he or she wished. Doubts, they said, had been
cast upon their bona fides, and they considered that
they owed it to themselves to set themselves right with
the public. And surely you could not blame them.
And inside the great domed Central Hall was the
sight of a lifetime. The large twenty-four-hours’ clock
was embowered with cherubs’ heads so that it almost
resembled the picture by Reynolds, and quivers and
darts and nuptial torches, big and little, were arranged
in trophies everywhere. A real sculptor had been com-
missioned to model the figure of Hymen that stood in
the middle of the hall, and at or in among the fifty
tables the wedding-parties sat or moved. Ordinarily
the parties were limited to a dozen; special notice had
to be given of larger parties; but the mirth those dozens
made! ... Party succeeded party while the chairs
were yet warm; as one party ate its fruit those who
waited for the vacated chairs stood so close behind
them that they also might almost have bitten of the
EPITHALAMIUM 305

same banana or apple or pear. The room that is now
the world-famed Juperies was the reception-room;
there those who did not breakfast joined their friends
who did; and the Umbrella Department was turned
into a smoking-room for the men. And in they came,
party after party, to Hallowells’ to breakfast. Cheers
went up from those whom Hallowells’ carriages passed
in the streets. An amber-yellow, the same yellow in
which their parcels are now done up, was Hallowells’
chosen colour; flowers of that colour filled the carriage
lamps, rosettes of that colour were tied to the drivers’
whips. The souvenirs and favours were tied with rib-
bons of that colour, and confetti of that colour (unless
not desired) was thrown at the parties that descended
from Hallowells’ vestibule to Oxford Street; this con-
fetti thinned gradually out on the pavements for a
quarter of a mile either way, east and west. And
every bride and: bridegroom who breakfasted was made
to enter the great Floral Bell, and to take, from the
shelves that lined the structure, the parcel of souvenirs
for the party. Two Cupids kept the flap-doors of the
Bell. They shot harmless darts at Hallowells’ guests.
Sometimes these darts had serpentins of coloured paper
(amber yellow) attached to them; sometimes they had
whistles. These last, as they flew through the air,
made a noise like swallows.

And the parties themselves! . . . Arthur and Miss
Umpleby were among the first to breakfast and then,
to the strains of the Wedding March from the string
band, to take their souvenirs from the Bell; but on the
following day Mr. Nolan, of the Satteens, took Miss
306 THE TWO KISSES

Feather, of the Fancies Counters, to have and to hold,
and the whole of those two Departments took tea in re-
lays in the room where Sir Walter spread the Cloak,
and Mr. Miller himself presided at the tea, and gave
Mr. Nolan an advance of salary, and the reporters, too,
joined in the applause that greeted the announcement.
Mr. Miller would have given his ears to have dared to
suggest to Dorothy that she and Mr. Stanhope, Lady
Tasker’s nephew and niece, should eat their cake and
enter the Bell along with the others; but though he
guessed an understanding to exist, he knew no more
than that, and in the end funked it. Moreover, to his
chagrin, he was losing Mr. Stanhope. His swellest
Marshal of all had handed in his paper. In vain had
Mr. Miller offered to confer on him the title of.
Field-Marshal; Stan had told him that he really didn’t
feel up to the job, and had refused to reconsider his
decision. But that drop of mortification was as noth-
ing in the buckets and buckets of good business the
Wedding Week was doing. If Stan was leaving, there
was still Sir Walter, and a daily drilling of Marshals
for an hour before that inspiring picture might be ex-
pected to-work wonders. They had really performed
very creditably at the Nolan-Feather wedding-tea, and
‘ a touch here and there of the easy negligence Dorothy
had used when she had introduced him to Lady Tasker
in the simple words, “ Mr. Miller,” should presently
give their deportment its consummation and crown.
Thus, from a hundred churches, east and west and
south and north, the newly joined couples came to
Hallowells’ to make merry with their friends. They
EPITHALAMIUM 307

eame from Fulham and Wimbledon, from Kilburn
and Epping, from Finchley and Streatham and Wool-
wich and Denmark Hill; and the hinges of the Bell
wore loose with much work, and parcels’ delivery vans
took the cakes away in great loads each evening, and
the strains of the Wedding Marches never ceased, and
enough champagne was opened to have converted the
great silver-and-white Central Hall into a swimming-
bath. And besides the wedding parties, sightseers
came also. One of these came daily, occupying a chair
under the garlanded and cherubimed twenty-four-hours’
clock. His eyes were agog; sometimes, as one in a
dream, he half rose from his chair, grasped the hand
of some passing bride or bridegroom, murmured some-
thing unintelligible, and sat down again, once more
watching in a sort of stupid ecstasy. He was Mr.
Wellcome. . . . And Walter Wyron came with Laura
Beamish, and they clutched one another, and, both
speaking at once, said that Amory and Cosimo must on
no account miss this, and Walter sent Cosimo a post-
card that very night. Amory and Cosimo came on the
morrow, but missed Walter and Laura in the crush,
and retired to a sort of recess on the second floor, past
which the lift-well ascended. There, sitting down on
a narrow padded bench without a back, they talked.
Cosimo had all but won Amory. Only a few -points
remained on which it was necessary that their under-
standing should be quite clear.

“You see, Cosimo,” Amory explained earnestly,
while the noisy parties went up and down in the lift,
“in one sense two rational beings have hardly the
308 THE TWO KISSES

right to marry at all as long as the Divorce Laws are
in their present chaotic condition. Even a Judicial
Separation places a quite unjust stigma on the woman,
and the Restitution Decree has become a mere formal
step to Divorce itself. There’s absolutely no Equality
in the contract. As Equity it’s a farce from beginning
to end. I’m not sure that the wisest thing to do
wouldn’t be to wait until the Law is altered. 1 want
that one-sided plea of cruelty done away with, or else
made the same for both. It’s anomalous—it belongs
to the Stone Age.”

“T quite agree,” said Cosimo slowly. ‘“ But we have
our private arrangement about that. It’s quite un-
derstood that if it isn’t a success we each go our own
way. You’re to be as free as I am, Amory. I’ve no
right to choose your friends for you, male or female.
If things come to the worst, I fancy I’m not altogether
without a sense of fairness and rationalness and phi-
losophy. So our eyes are quite open.”

Amory mused. “It’s a risk for all that,” she mur-
mured. ‘ There may be all sorts of things about both
of us that neither of us knows. In a sense, we’re com-
plete strangers.”

“ Then,” Cosimo urged, “let us be brave anit take
it. There’s very little doubt that they’ll reform those
ridiculous laws before long. They’re bound to. With
the spread of Democracy cheaper Divorce is inevitable;
and when it becomes quite common much of the stigma
you speak of will disappear. Look here: [ve an
idea! . . . Why shouldn’t we start a sort of private In-
surance against not getting on together—put away a
'

EPITHALAMIUM 309

sum each year for the contingency, so that the ex-
penses of Divorce would be met out of a fund? We
could arrange some means of drawing on it, too, in
case we decided to live apart. Don’t you think that’s
a good idea?”

“Ye-es,” said Amory slowly. “Ye-es. It’s cer-
tainly a Law, I should say, that the only real way
of keeping people together is to leave them perfectly
free to separate whenever they like. The day of force,
whether physical or legal, is over. That’s what makes
all that downstairs so exquisitely funny. They think
that the way to bind yourself is to tie yourself fast!
So of course it’s our duty to dissociate ourselves as
far as ever we can from all that. . . . Isn’t it nearly
time ’Orris and Jellies were here?” ...

“Oh, they aren’t due for half an hour yet. Now
about Incompatibility, Amory. ”

And their love-making went on.

The remark about ’Orris and Jellies had to do with
their dissociation from the semi-communal feasting that
was going on in the Central Hall. It had been Amory’s
idea that this dissociation would be more complete if
Orris and Jellies also feasted with the rest of the world,
and the joke had been cheap at the cost of the qualifying
purchase at Hallowells’ of Jellies’ wedding-veil. So
’Orris, Jellies, Mrs. ’IJ], a woman who lent a hand at
the Creek sometimes, together with one or two friends,
had been told off to a table midway between Hymen
and the Bell. Amory and Cosimo intended to watch
from the gallery. They still regarded the world and
its happenings much as they might have regarded a

 
310 THE TWO KISSES

stereoscope, to be taken up for a few minutes when they
found themselves in the humour for it, and put down
again when it no longer amused them; and if Dorothy
did not like the presence of this particular party at
Hallowells’, that could only be because Dorothy was a
snob.

So Amory and Cosimo, presently descending by the
lift again, watched Jellies’ nuptial party from the bal-
cony, and went on to discuss their own affairs again.
They would be married—unless even yet they amicably
agreed that it would be best that they should not marry
—at a Registry Office; and if they did happen to feel
hungry afterwards (certainly not unless) they would
go to the Lettuce Grill. The noise that came up from
the vast oval below was no doubt a mere reaction from
the false religiosity in the church an hour or so before,
and champagne certainly heated the blood. Amory
drank nothing at meals, Cosimo only barley-water.
Jellies’ husband, as they could see from where they
leaned over the rail, was already a little drunk on
champagne; there was no doubt whatever that he would
presently be quite drunk on beer. And these were the
people to whom England looked for a eugenically begot-
ten race! Black eyes were in front of Jellies, and in-
tervals of returning to her mother when ’Orris hap-
pened to be “in,” and a shamefully large family, and
work at the Jelly Factory as before, and very little
prospect indeed of ever having either the money or the
initiative to obtain a Divorce. It made Amory
aad. . 4 «

And as she stood, with Cosimo by her side, looking
EPITHALAMIUM ’ 311

down on the laughing, moving crowd below, she thought
of a picture that should move the best women and men
of her land as even “ Barrage” had not moved them.
It was this :—

She would take a large canvas, and would rough
out upon it that very oval down on which she now
looked. And she would fill it with figures, even as it
was filled with figures now. But they should not be
giggling, guffawing, gesticulating figures such as these,
uttering the inanities about lifelong happiness that they
themselves knew to be untrue, and filling and refilling
their glasses with the blood-heating champagne. No.
They should be the enlightened men and women of
To-morrow; rational, responsible, of a nobler-moulded
flesh and a more ardent spirit; they should average
about nine heads high. And their eyes should be
centred, not on their own selfish and private parties,
but on the figure in the centre of the room that she
would put where that absurd Hymen now stood. This
figure should be symbolic, colossal, twenty-five heads
high. It should represnt the Earthly Authority of the
marriage-contract. Its feet should be set upon broken
figures, each one of which should typify some marriage-
form of the past—hedge-priests, broomstick-weddings,
handfastings, morganatic unions, savage rites (from
Primitive Culture), ecclesiastical rites, even the Regis-
try Office; and the fragments of stich pagan emblems
as hearts and torches and Cupids and bells should ap-
pear all about it. And in her right hand the figure
should bear, as it were, a crystal with a flame in it,
which should be Marriage, and in her left another crys-
312 THE TWO KISSES

tal with a flame in it, no less perfect, no less honour-
able, which should be Divorce. And these she should
offer to the Children of the Morrow together, both at
the same time. Either should be the warranty of the
other, as the olive-branch justifies the sword, the sword
maintains the olive-branch. ‘So should that figure be
set up. And benignly brooding over all, exactly where
she and Cosimo now stood, should be two larger and
vaguer shapes, rather difficult to do, but probably to
be achieved by scraping and scumbling and pumice.
These should symbolize the Divine Sanction. Soft and
reassuring rays should shoot from their angelic eyes
and rest upon the Earthly figure below; this should
turn up its glad gaze to receive the rays. In one sense,
it was true, Amory did not approve of this parapher-
nalia of angel-shapes, but merely as emblems they
might prove serviceable. They were prejudices that
must be accepted pro tem. Though she dreamed of
To-morrow, she must paint her picture in: terms of
To-day.

Rapidly and earnestly she began to describe the pic-
ture to Cosimo... .

“Oh! By Jove, Amory: ”? he breathed, well-
nigh breathless before the daring of her genius.

“And those two wonderful shapes, just here, ex-
actly where we are.” ...

“Looking down and comprehending  every-
thing: ”

“ Oh—like you, Amory!”

“ Like you, too, Cosimo—for, if you don’t actually
paint the picture, you help in other ways m

 

 

 
EPITHALAMIUM 313

“ Shall I, Amory,” he breathed—“ shall I always
be there to help in those other ways?”

Her eyelids fluttered and dropped.

“You, do understand me as nobody else does.” . . .

“JT do—I do—I’m sure I do——”

“ And you understand, too, that there’s always that
other kiss-—the kiss of the Antinéus is

“Tt shall be our picture, Amory—all three of us,”
he said, with ardour.

“T hope we’re not acting in haste, Cosimo.”

“T’m quite sure we’re not. Oh, let it be soon,
Amory!” .

He had put his hand on her arm, but she drew a
little away.

“Don’t touch me just yet, Cosimo, please,” she
asked him.

“No—I beg your pardon,” he said humbly. “T
know that in a sense you aren’t here—you’re creating.
By Jove, it 7s wonderful! ”

He would have felt. unworthy of her had he wanted
to kiss her just then.

And, down below them, Jellies and her party rose,
and a Marshal made a signal, and the conductor gave
a couple of taps with his baton, and the bored musicians
reached for their instruments, and their eyes rested
sullenly on the tip of the poised stick. . . .

“ Hooray—let ’er go!” ’Orris roared huskily. .. .

And once more the Wedding March broke forth.

 

END OF BOOK ONE
ENTR’ ACTE

lige men turned out of the gateway of the McGrath

and walked up the street that led to the Euston
Road. Just before they reached the corner one of
them stopped and gave a lingering, but sardonic, look
behind him. He was Jowett, the Professor of Paint-
ing, and his companion was the friend who had once
talked with him at a students’ dance, while the Dis-
cobolus and the Gladiator had held the shawls and fans
of the dancers. Then they went forward together
again.

“So youre shaking the dust off your feet?”
Jowett’s friend said. ‘How many years has it been?”

“Twenty-odd. Twenty-two or three. Twenty-three
years next March, to be precise. Nice way for a man
to spend twenty-three years of his life, isn’t it?”

“A very nice way, I should say. Beautiful things
about you all the time—lots of pleasant young people
and so on. One gets older, of course, but you have the
fun of starting ’em in the world and seeing how far they
go.”

With an “Eh?” Jowett looked sideways at his com-
panion ; then he looked before him again.

“The world? That place hasn’t got anything to do
with the world,” he said.

“No? Well, one of your old students seemed to be

making quite a stir in it not so long ago—that girl who
314
ENTR ACTE 315

painted ‘ Barrage’—what’s her name—Miss Towers,
. wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Amory Towers. <A small red-haired girl. I
fancy I pointed her out to you once. She was married
a year or so ago; married another of our students.
Pratt, his name was.”

“Then she’s in the world now, at any rate.”

“Think so? I very much doubt it. Of course she
is, in one sense; I can’t deny that; but this is what I
mean: There’s too much paper in their lives. They
read too much. Draw too much. Especially reading.
Lord, the books they get hold of! Weeks and months
together I’ve heard ’em: Myers says this, and Galton
says that, and Tolstoi says the other; and they make
up a sort of world out of all that, and think it’s the real
one, or is soon going to be, and they live in it, and go
on living in it, and never get out of it. I hope I’ve
heard the last of Myers and Galton and Tolstoi.”

“ But—my good chap!”

Jowett glared. ‘‘ Well?”

“Well!”

“You mean these are the great men? Well, I’m
not a great man myself, so what does it matter to me?
And what does it matter to those infants? Oh, it’s all
in the old Greek tag: ‘A great book is a great evil.’
... Yowre laughing; look here: T’Il tell you the
kind of thing that used to happen half a dozen times a
day. I used to set these boys and girls to draw a
simple object—simple, but more than they could do,
for all that, or ever would be able to do; it all depends
on how much you see in a simple object. And I’d even
316 THE TWO KISSES

show ’em how to do it—for there are one or two simple
things I really know and can do myself. Well, pres-
ently I’d look up, and there would be sweet seventeen,
giving me a pitying sort of smile. I’d ask her what
she was smiling at, and then she’d coo, ‘ Oh, but Degas
didn’t draw like that!’—or Beardsley, or the newest
man from Montmartre (but the chances were it was
somebody rather corrupt). ‘But you don’t happen
to be his pupil just at this moment,’ I'd say....
Anyhow, the point is, that an adorable young female
person, or a decent young fellow for that matter, with
no more use for an idea than I have for Moses’ Rod,
would throw one of these names at my head as soon as
look at me. And the bigger the duffer the bigger the
name: get that well into your head: that was unvarying.
They used to think it was a joke when I asked them
whether they could make an omelette—of course, I
really meant make a baby’s shirt and contrive to get a
baby inside it, but I couldn’t exactly say that, so I
used to say ‘omelette’ very slowly and distinctly, and
look hard at ’em. ... A baby? If I had said it, an-
other piece of paper would have come in. They
wouldn’t have been able to get a baby until they’d
seen what Strindberg or Nietzsche or somebody had to
say about it first! And even if they did manage it, then
there’d be more paper—systematics—newest methods
of this and that and the other—lectures on proteids
before they dared to feed it—paper, paper, yeper—t
know—I’ve had twenty-three years of it

His friend twinkled. “Has the little red-haired,
girl any family yet?” he asked.

 
ENTR’ ACTE 317

“JT don’t know; but”—something like a twinkle
flickered for a moment under Jowett’s shaggy brows
also—“ perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps Pratt knows at
least one little bit about Life by this time. One of the.
girls there used to sing some song or other, I remem-
ber—something about—

“Tying a piece of ribbon round his bonnie, bonnie waist,
To let the ladies know he was married.’
and I shouldn’t be surprised—I don’t know, of course,
but at a guess ”

“Oh? ... You mean she’ll be likely to be jeal-
ous?”

“Well, I fancy she’ll have him safe under her pretty
little thumb. I suppose there’s nothing new about the
whole thing really—same old twig, same old lime, same
old bird. ‘But a vast deal more paper—I still stick to
that.”

Jowett’s friend twinkled again. “I know what’s
the matter with you and me,” he chuckled. “ We’re
both on the wrong side of five-and-forty. That’s all
that’s the matter with us.”

Jowett had been muttering within his shaggy mous-
tache some extempore Litany or other; his friend
caught the words, “ From all young women who talk
paper with their hair down—From all young men who
think the New Woman isn’t just the same as the Old
one—And from all day-nurseries for the children
of the well-to-do middle classes-——’ He stopped
short.

“Think so?” he said. “ You think that’s it? Per-
haps you’re right... . Well, it’s not my habit, but

 
318 THE TWO KISSES

 

suppose—if it was only for the sake of the name ee
He indicated an establishment with large hanging
lamps
And they entered the Adam and Eve,

 
BOOK TWO.
A VERY MODERN MARRIAGE

819
BOOK TWO
A VERY MODERN MARRIAGE

PART I
I

THE WITAN

dee TASKER had missed her way in the Tube.
She had been on, or rather under known ground
on the Piccadilly Railway as far as Leicester Square,
but after that she had not heard, or else had forgotten,
that in order to get to Hampstead by the train into
which she had stepped she must change at Camden
Town. Or perhaps she had merely wondered what
Camden Town supposed itself to be that she should put
herself to the trouble of changing there. With the
newspaper held at arm’s length, and a little figure-8-
shaped gold glass moving slightly between her puckered
old eyes and the page, she was reading the “ By the
Way” column of the “ Globe.”—‘“ All change,” called
the man at Highgate; and, still unconscious of her mis-
take, Lady Tasker left the train. She was the last to
enter the lift. But for an unhurried raising of the
little locket-shaped glass as the attendant fidgeted at the
half-closed gate she might have been the first to enter

the next lift.
321
322 A CROOKED MILE

Only from the policeman outside Highgate Station
did she learn that she must either take the Tube back
again to Camden Town or else walk across the Heath.

Now Lady Tasker was seventy, and, with the excep-
tion of the Zoo, a place she visited from time to time
with troops of turbulent great-nephews, the whole of
North London was a sort of Camden Town to her, that
is to say, she had no objection to its existence so long
as it wasn’t troublesome. It was half-past three when
she said as much to the Highgate policeman, who up to
that time had been an ordinary easy-going Conserva-
tive; by five-and-twenty minutes to four she had made
of him a fuming Radical. He was saying something
about South Square and Merton Lane. Lady Tasker
addressed the bracing Highgate air in one of those ex-
pressionless and semi-ventriloquial asides that, espe-
cially in a mixed company, always made her ladyship
very well worth sitting next to.

“ Merton Lane! Does the man suppose that conveys
anything to me?... I want to know how to get
to Hampstead, not the names of the objects of interest
on the way!”

The newly-made Radical told her that there might
be a taxi on the rank, and turned away to cuff the
ears of an urchin who was tampering with an auto
matic machine. It was a wonder that Lady Tasker’s
glare, focussed through the gold-rimmed glass on a point
between his shoulder-blades, did not burn a hole in his
tunic.

_ Taxis at eightpence a mile, indeed, with the house
at Ludlow already full of those children of Churchill’s,
THE WITAN | 323

and three of Tony’s little girls eating their way through
the larder in Cromwell Gardens, and young Tommy,
Emily’s boy, who had just “ pulled” his captaincy, ar-
riving at Southampton in the “Seringapatam” on
Saturday with another batch for her to take under her
wing! Did people suppose she was made of
money?...

The policeman’s tunic was just beginning to scorch
when Lady Tasker, dropping the glass, turned away and
set out for Hampstead on foot.

She might very well have been excused had she
omitted to return Mrs. Cosimo Pratt’s call. Indeed
she had vowed that very morning that nothing should
drag her up to Hampstead that day. But for twenty
times that Lady Tasker said “TI will not,” nineteen she
repented and went, taking out the small change of her
magnanimity when she got there. And after all, she
would be killing two birds with one stone, for her niece
Dorothy also lived somewhere in this northern Great
Bae; and unless she got these things over before the

“ Seringapatam” dropped anchor on Saturday there
was no knowing when next she would have an hour to
call her own. As she turned (after a brush with a
second policeman, who summed her up quite wrongly
on the strength of her antiquated pelisse and trailing
old Victorian hat) down Merton Lane to the ponds,
she told herself again that she was a foolish old woman
to have come at all.

For the Cosimo Pratts were not bosom friends of hers.
True, they had been, until six months ago, her neigh-
bours at Ludlow, and for that matter she had known
324 A CROOKED MILE

young Cosimo’s people for the greater part of her life:
but she had not forgotten the hearty blackguarding the
young couple had got, any time this last two years, from
the rest of the country-side. Small wonder. What
else did they expect, after the way in which they had
made farm-labour too big for its jacket and beaters
hardly to be had for love or money? Not that Lady
Tasker herself had seen very much of their antics.
Great-nieces and nephews had kept her too busy for
that, and she was moreover wise enough not to believe
all she heard. And even were it true, that, she now
told herself, had been in the country. They would have
to behave differently now that they had let the Shrop-
shire house and had come to live in town. They could
hardly dance barefoot round a maypole in Hampstead,
or stage-manage the yearly Hiring-Fair for the sake of
the “ Daily Speculum” photographer (as they had done
in Ludlow), or group themselves picturesquely about
the feet of the oldest inhabitant while that shocking old
reprobate with the splendid head recited (at five shil-
lings an hour) the stories of old, unhappy, far-off things
he had learned by heart from the booklets they had
printed at the Village Press. No: in London they
would almost certainly have to do as other people did,
and Shropshire, after its three years of social and ar-
tistic awakening, would no doubt forget all about the
esthetic revival and would sink back into a well-earned
rest.

It was a Thursday afternoon in September, warm for
the time of the year, and a half-day closing for the
THE WITAN 325

shops. Had Lady Tasker remembered the half-holiday
she certainly would not have come. She hated crowds,
and, if you would believe her, had no illusions whatever
about the sanctity of our common nature and the
brotherhood of man. She would tell you roundly that
there was far too much aimless good-nature in the world,
and that every sob wasted over a sinner was something
taken away from the man who, if he was a sinner too,
had at least the decency to keep up appearances. And
so much for brotherhood. Great-nephewship, of course,
was another matter. Somebody had to look after all
those youngsters, and if her sister Eliza, the one at
Spurrs, went into a tantrum about every bud that was
picked in the gardens and every chair-leg that was an
inch out of its place in the house, so much the worse
for Lady Tasker, who must walk because she had some-
thing else to do with her money than to waste it on
taxis.

She had been told by her niece Dorothy to look out
for a clump of tall willows and an ivied chimney; that
was where the Pratts lived; but Dorothy had spoken of
the approach from the Hampstead side, not from High-
gate way. Lady Tasker got lost. She was almost
dropping for want of a cup of tea, and the Heath seemed
all willows, and all the wrong ones. No policeman,
Radical or Conservative, was to be seen. Walking
across an apparently empty space, well away (as she
thought) from a horde of shouting boys, the old lady
suddenly found herself enveloped in a game of football.
This completed her exhaustion. Near by, one of
326 A CROOKED MILE

Messrs. Libertys’ carts was ascending a steep road at a
slow walk; somehow or other Lady Tasker managed to
get her hand on the tail of it; and the car gave her a
tow. She was seventy after all.

As it happened, that was her first piece of luck in a
luckless afternoon. The cart drew off to the left; Lady
Tasker trailed after it; and suddenly it stopped before
a high privet hedge with a closed green door in the
middle of it. Lady Tasker did not look for the ivied
chimney. On the door was painted in white letters
“The Witan.” She was where she wanted to be.

Ordinarily Lady Tasker would have approved of
the height of the privet hedge, which was seven or
eight feet; that was a nice, reassuring, anti-social height
for a hedge; but as it was she could not even put up her
hand to the bell. The carter .rang it for the pair of
them. Over the hedge came the low murmur of voices
and the clink of cups and saucers, and then the door was
opened. It was opened by the mistress of the house.
No doubt Mrs. Pratt had expected the cart, had heard
its drawing up, and had not waited for a maid to come.
Her eyes sought the carman, who had stepped aside.
She spoke with some asperity.

“Tt’s Libertys’, isn’t it?” she said. “Well, I’ve a
very good mind to make you take it back. It was
promised for yesterday.”

“ Can’t say, I’m sure, m’m.”

“Tt’s always the same. Every time I-

Then she saw her visitor, and gave a little start.

“Why, it’s Lady Tasker! How delightful! Do

”

 
THE WITAN 327

come in! And do just excuse me—I shan’t be a min-
ute. ... Why didn’t this come yesterday? It was
promised faithfully ”

She stepped outside to scold the carman, leaving
Lady Tasker standing just within the green door.

The altercation was plainly audible:

“Very sorry, m’m. You see——”

“J will see, if it occurs again ”

“ The orders is taken as they come, m’m

“ They said the first deliver 2 :

“We wasn’t loaded till one o’clock——”

“ That’s none of my business e

“Very sorry, m’m ie

“ Well, the next time it occurs

And so forth.

Now in reading what happened the next moment you
must remember that Lady Tasker was very, very tired.
Had she been less tired she might have wondered why
one of the two maids she saw crossing to the tea-table
under the copper beech had not been allowed to take in
Mrs. Cosimo Pratt’s parcel. And she would certainly
have thought it extraordinary that she should be left
standing alone while Mrs. Cosimo Pratt scolded the
carrier, and wanted to know why the parcel had not
been brought yesterday. But, tired as she was, her eyes
had already rested on something that had momentarily
galvanized even the weariness out of her. It was
this :—

Seven or eight people sat in basket-chairs or stood:
talking; and, under the copper beech, as if Mrs. Pratt

 

 

3?

 

 

 

 

29

 
328 A CROOKED MILE

had just slid out of it, a hammock of coloured string
still moved, slung from the beech to a sycamore beyond.
Lady Tasker saw these things at once; she did not at
once see what it was that stood just beyond the ham-
mock. .

Then it moved, and Lady Tasker raised her glass.

No doubt you have seen the cover of Mr. Wells’s
“Invisible Man.” It will be remembered that all that
can be seen of that afflicted person is his clothes; and
all that Lady Tasker at first saw of the Invisible Man
by the copper beech was his ‘clothes. These were of
light yellow tussore, with a white double collar and a
small red tie, sharp-edged white cuffs and highly pol-
ished brown boots. At collar and cuffs the man ended..

And yet he did not end, for the lenses of a pair of
spectacles made lurking lights in the shadow of the
beech, a few inches above the white collar.

The phantom wore no hat.

Then Lady Tasker, suddenly pale, dropped her glass.
Between the collar and the spectacles a white gash of
teeth had appeared. The Invisible Man had smiled,
and at the same moment there had shown round the
bole of the beech a second smoky shape, this one with-
out teeth, but with white and mobile eyes instead.

Lady Tasker was in the presence of two Hindoos.

Now all her life, and long before her life for that
matter, Lady Tasker had been accustomed .. . but
no: that is not the way to put it, The following
table will save many words :—
829

THE WITAN

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330 A CROOKED MILE

You see how it was, and had to be. Not only was
Lady Tasker insular, arrogant, and of opinion that
Saint Paul made the mistake of his life when he set out
to preach the Gospel to all nations, but she made a
virtue of her narrowness and defect. Show her a finger-
nail with a purple half-moon, and you no longer saw a
charming if acid-tongued old English lady, who cut
timber in order to pay for governesses for those grand-
children of Emily’s and sent, under guise of birthday
gifts, useful little cheques to the descendants of her
brother-in-law the groom. Babu or Brahmin, all were
the same to her. No defence is offered of an attitude so
indefensible. Such people do still exist. Let us sigh
for their narrowness of mind, and pass on.

The smile of the first Hindoo was for Mrs. Pratt, who
had got her row with the carman over and had reap-
peared behind Lady Tasker and closed the door of The
Witan again. Her face, pretty and finished as a minia-
ture, and the great chestnut-red helm of her hair, showed
over the slant of the box in her arms. “ Do excuse me,
just one moment!” she said, smiling at Lady Tasker as
she passed; and she ran off into the house, her mistle-
toe-berry white robe with its stencilling of grey-green
whipping about her heels as she did so. And fortu-
nately, as she ran in at the door, Cosimo Pratt came out
of the French window, saw Lady Tasker, and strode
to her. He broke into rapid and hearty speech.

“You here! How delightful!—Amory!—I didn’t
hear you come! So kind of you!—Amory, where are
you ?—How are you? Do let me get you some tea !—
Amory! us

 
THE WITAN 331

Lady Tasker spoke faintly.—‘I should like,” she
said, ‘to go into the house.”

“ Rather! Hang on to my arm.—Amory! Where
is that girl ?@—Sure you won’t have tea outside? I can
find you a nice shady place under the beech 3

Lady Tasker closed her eyes.—“‘ Please take me in.”

“Tube headache? I hate the beastly thing. I
thought you were in Ludlow. Charming of you e

And he led Lady Tasker into the house.

This was a low building of stucco, with slatted win-
dow-shuts which, like the sashes of the slightly bowed
French window and of the two windows beyond, were
newly painted green. This painting seemed rather to
emphasize than to mitigate a certain dogseared look the
place had, not amounting to dilapidation, but enough to
make it probable that Cosimo Pratt had taken it on a re-
pairing lease. The copper beech, the high privet hedge
and the willows beyond it, shut out both light and air.
The fan-lighted door had two electric bell buttons, with
little brass plates. The upper plate read, “ Mr. Cosimo
Pratt ” ; the lower one “ Miss Amory Towers (Studio).”

But Lady Tasker noticed none of these things. In
the hall she sank into the first chair she came to. ‘ Tea,
please,” she said faintly; and Cosimo dashed out to get
it. He returned, and began to murmur something sym-
pathetic, but Lady Tasker made a little movement with
her hand. She didn’t want him to “send Amory.”
She only wanted to rest her tired legs and to collect her
dispersed thoughts.

An eight-foot hedge, not to shut the populace out,
but to shut Indians in! And she, Lady Tasker, had

 

 
332 A CROOKED MILE

been kept standing while some parcel or other had been
taken into the house—standing, and watching a still-
moving hammock with a smiling Invisible Man bending
over it! Was this England, or a Durbar? ... And
even yet her hostess didn’t come to ask her if she felt
better! . . . Not that Lady Tasker was greatly sur-
prised at that. She knew that Mrs. Pratt was quite ca-
pable of reasoning that the greatest respect is shown to a
tired old lady when no fuss is made about her tiredness.
The Pratts were like that—full of delicacies so subtle
that plain folk never noticed them, but jumped instead
to the conclusion that they were bad-mannered. And it
would not in the least surprise Lady Tasker if, pres-
ently, Mrs. Pratt allowed her to leave without a word
about her indisposition. Of course: Lady Tasker had
a little forgotten the Pratts at Ludlow. That would be
it: “ Good-bye—and do come again!” She could see
Mrs. Pratt’s pretty brook-brown eyes did anybody (say
a Japanese or an Ethiopian) point out this so-called
omission to her. She could see the surprise in them.
She could hear her earnest voice: ‘‘ Say: these
things! ... Why, does she suppose I was glad
then?” ...

Yes, Lady Tasker had a little forgotten her Pratts.

It was an odd little hall in which she sat. It ap-
peared to be an approach to the studio of which the elec-
tric bell gave notice, for it was continued by a narrower
passage that led to a garden at the back; and either the
studio “ properties” were gradually thrusting the hat-
stand and hall table out of the fan-lighted front door, or
else these latter ordinary and necessary objects were
THE WITAN 333

fighting as it were for admission. Thus, the chair on
which Lady Tasker sat was of oak, but it had a Faust-
like look; beyond it stood a glass-fronted cupboard of
bric-4-brac, with a trophy of Abyssinian armour hang-
ing over it; and the whole of the wall facing Lady
Tasker was hung with a tapestry which, if it had been
the only one of its kind in existence, would no doubt have
been very valuable. And two other objects not com-
monly to be seen in ordinary halls were there. One of
these stood on the narrow gilt console table next to Lady
Tasker’s cup of tea. It was a plaster cast, taken from
the life, of a female foot. The other hung on the wall
above it. This also was a plaster cast, of the whole of
a female arm and shoulder, ending with a portion of the
side of the neck and the entire breast—of its kind an
exquisite specimen. Many artists make or buy such
things, but Brucciani has nothing half so beautiful.

It was as Lady Tasker finished her tea that her gaze
fell on the two casts. Half negligently she raised her
glass and inspected, first the foot, and then the other
piece. It is probable that her first remark, uttered in
a casual undertone to the air about her, was prompted by
mere association of ideas; it was “Hm! I wonder if
Mrs. Pratt nursed those twins herself!” Any other
reflection that might have followed it was cut short by a
sudden darkening of the doorway by which she had en-
tered. Mrs. Pratt stood there. Lady Tasker had been
wrong. She had come to ask if she felt better. She
did ask her, gathering up long swathes of some newly
unpacked white material she carried over her arm as
she did so.
334 A CROOKED MILE

“ Sorry you were done up,” she remarked. “ Won’t
you have some more tea?”

Already Lady Tasker was rising.—‘‘ No more, thank
you.—I was just looking at these. What are they?”
She indicated the casts.

The gesture that Mrs. Pratt gave she could probably
no more have helped giving than an eye can help wink-
ing when it is threatened with a blow. Within one
mistletoe-white sleeve an arm moved ever so slightly;
very likely a foot also moved within a curiously-toed
Saxon-looking white slipper; and she gave a confused
and conscious and apologetic little laugh.

“Oh, those silly things!” she said deprecatingly.
“T really must move them. But the studio is so
full. . . . Do you know, it’s a most horrid feeling hav-
ing them done—first the cold plaster poured on, and
then, when they take it off again—the mould—you
know ”

Lady Tasker plainly did not understand. Perhaps
she did not yet even apprehend.—* But—but—,” she
said, ‘‘ they’re from a statue, aren’t they?”

Again Mrs. Pratt gave the pleased bashful little
laugh. It was almost as if she said it was very good
of Lady Tasker to say so.

“No, they’re from life,” she said. “As a matter
of fact they’re me, but I really must move them; they
aren’t so remarkable as all that. . . . Oh, you’re not
going, are you? is

For Lady Tasker had given a jump, and a move
ment as sudden and sprightly as if she had only that
moment got freshly out of her bed. Nervously she put

 

 
THE WITAN 335

out her hand, while her hostess looked politely disap-
pointed.

“Oh, and I was hoping you’d come and join us in
the garden! We've Brimby there, the novelist, you
know—and Wilkinson, the young Member—and Mr.
Strong, of the ‘ Novum ’—and I should so much like
to introduce Mr. Suwarree Prang to you ie
“Oh, thank you so much—,” sprang as effusively
from Lady Tasker’s lips as if she had been a school-
girl allowed for the first time to come down to dinner,
“it?s so good of you, but really I half hoped you’d
be out when I called—I only meant to leave cards—
I’m going on to see my niece, and really haven’t a mo-
ment au

“Oh, I’m sure Dorothy’d excuse you for once! c
Mrs. Pratt pressed her.

“Oh, she wouldn’t—I’m quite sure she wouldn’t—
she’d never forgive me if she knew I’d been so near
and hadn’t called,” said Lady Tasker feverishly... .
“ How do I get to Dorothy’s from here?”

“Oh, Mr. Wilkinson will take you, or Mr. Prang;
but are you sure you won’t stay ?”

Lady Tasker was so far from staying that she was
already out of the hall and walking quickly towards the
green door in the eight-foot hedge. “ Thank you, thank
you so much,” she was murmuring hurriedly. “TI don’t
see your husband anywhere about—never mind—so
good of you—good-bye——”

“ Come again soon, won’t you?”

“Yes, yes—oh, yes! ... No, no, please don’t!”
(Mrs. Pratt had made a half-turn towards the hammock

 

 

 
336 A CROOKED MILE

and the copper beech). “Straight across the Heath
you said, didn’t you? I shall find it quite easily!
Don’t come any further—good-bye——”

And, touching Mrs. Cosimo Pratt’s extended fingers
as timorously as she might have touched those of the
cast itself, she fairly broke into a run, The door of
The Witan closed behind her.
II

THE POND-ROOM

ee truth was not very far to seek: Lady Tasker
was too old for these things. Nobody could have
expressed this more effectively than Mrs. Cosimo Pratt
herself, had it entered the mind of Mrs. Pratt to con-
ceive that any human soul could be so benighted as the
soul of Lady Tasker was. “ Those casts!” Mrs.
Pratt might have cried in amazement—or rather Miss
Amory Towers might have cried, for there is nothing
in the Wedding Service about making over to your hus-
band, along with your love and obedience, the valuable
goodwill of a professional name. “ Those poor casts!
... Of course they may not be very beautiful—,”
here the original of the casts might have modestly
dropped her eyes, ““—but such as they are—goodness
me! How can people be so prurient, Cosimo? Don’t
they see that what they really prove has nothing at all
to do with the casts, but—ahem!—a good deal to do
with their own imaginations? I don’t. want to use the
word ‘morbid,’ but really! . . . Well, thank goodness
Corin and Bonniebell won’t grow up like that! Afraid
of the beautiful, innocent human form! ... Now
that’s what I’ve always claimed, Cosimo—that that’s the
type of mind that’s made all the mischief we’ve got to set
right to-day.”
337
338 A CROOKED MILE

But for all that Lady Tasker was too old. Invisible
Men in the garden (or, if not actually invisible, at any
rate as hard to be seen against the leaves of the copper
beech as a new penny would have been)—and in the
hall those extraordinary replicas! In the hall—the
very forefront of the house! It was to be presumed
that Mrs. Pratt’s foreign friends, who were permitted
to lean over her hammock, would not be denied The
Witan itself, and, for all Lady Tasker knew, the rest
of Mrs. Pratt might be reduplicated in plaster in the
dining-room, the drawing-room, and elsewhere. . . .

‘Had she not said it herself, Lady Tasker would never
have believed it... .

What a—what a—what an extraordinary thing!

Lady Tasker had fled from The Witan still under
the influence of that access of effusive schoolgirlishness
in which she had told Mrs. Pratt that she really must
go; nor did she grow up again all at once. But little
by little, as she walked, she began to resume the burden
of her years. She became eighteen, twenty-five, thirty
again. By the time she reached the lower pond Arthur
had just got that billet in the India Office, and her
brother Dick, of the Department of Woods and Forests,
had married Ada Polperro, daughter of old Polperro of
Delhi fame, and her sister Emily had got engaged to
Tony Woodgate, of the Piffers. (But those casts!)
. . . Then as she took the path between the ponds she
remembered the children at Ludlow, the three little girls
at Cromwell Gardens, and the arrival on Saturday of
the “Seringapatam.” (But those natives!) ... The
thought of the children settled it. Her curious lapse

 
THE POND-ROOM 339

into juvenescence was over. By the time she rang
Dorothy’s: bell she was the same Lady Tasker who
changed the political opinions of policemen and dep-
recated the wanderings of Saint Paul.

Dorothy’s flat was as different as it could well be
from that other house which (Lady Tasker had already
decided) had something odd and furtive about it—stag-
nant yet busy, segregated yet too wide open. The flat
had one really brilliant room. This room did not merely
overlook the pond in front of it; it seemed actually to
have asked the pond to come inside. A large triple
window occupied the whole of one end of it; this win-
dow faced west; and not only did the September sun
shine brightly in, but the inverted sun in the water shone
in also, doubling (yet also halving) all shadows, illwmin-
ing the ceiling, and setting the cream walls a-ripple with
the dancing of the wavelets outside. Sprightly chintzes
looked as if they also might begin to dance at any mo-
ment; the china in Dorothy’s cupboards surprised the
eye that had not expected this altered light; and pres-
ently, to complete the complexity, the shadow of the
sycamore in the little garden below would move round,
so that you would hardly be able to tell whether the
ceaseless creeping on the cream walls was glitter of
ripples, pattern of leaves, or both. —

Dorothy sat in her accordion-pleats by the window,
surrounded by letters. And pray do not think it mere
coincidence in this story that her letters were Indian
letters. Some interests that the home-amateur takes up
as he might take up poker-work or the diversion of jig-
saw hold a large part of the hearts and lives of others,
340 A CROOKED MILE

and so Dorothy, as she did more or less every week, had
been reading her cousin Churchill’s letter, and that of
her little niece and namesake Dot, up in Murree, and
Eva Woodgate’s, who had sent her a parcel from Kohat,
and others. She rose slowly as her aunt was announced,
and put her finger on the bell as she passed.

“How are you, auntie?” she said, kissing Lady
Tasker on both cheeks. “ Give me your things. Some-
how I thought you might come to-day, but I’d almost
given you up. Do look what Eva’s sent me! Really,
with her own to look after, I don’t know how she finds
the time! Aren’t they sweet! ”

And she held them up.

Now Lady Tasker knew perfectly well the mean-
ing of her niece’s accordion-pleating; but she was
seventy and worldly-wise again now. Therefore as she
looked at the things she remarked off-handedly, “But
they’re far too small.”

“Too small!” Dorothy exclaimed. “ Of course they
aren’t. Why, Noel was only nine, and that’s pretty
big, and Jackie only just over eight-and-a-half, though
he put on weight while you watched him. They’re just
right.” .

Lady Tasker reached for a chair. ‘“ But they are
for Jackie, aren’t they ?”

Dorothy’s blue eyes were as big as the plates in her
cupboards.—“ Jackie! Good gracious, auntie! -

“Eh?” said Lady Tasker, sitting down. “ Not
Jackie? Dear me. How stupid of me. Of course, I
did hear, but I’ve so many other things to think of, and
nobody’d suppose, to look at you ‘a

 

 

 
THE POND-ROOM 341

Dorothy ran to her aunt and gave her a kiss and a
hug, a loud kiss and a hug like two.

“You dear old thing!—Really, I’d begun to hate
all the horrid kind people who asked me how I felt
to-day and whether I shouldn’t be glad when it was
over! What business is it of theirs? I nearly made
Stan sack Ruth last week, she looked so, and I positively
refuse to have a young girl anywhere near me!...
But wasn’t it sweet of Eva? Ill give you some tea and
then read you her letter. Indian or China?”

“China,” Lady Tasker remarked.

“ China, Ruth, and I’ll have some more too. I don’t
know whether His Impudence is coming in or not; he’s
gadding off somewhere, I expect. . . . But you weren’t
only pretending just now, were you, auntie ? n?

She put the plug of the spirit-kettle into the wall.

“Well, how are the Bits?” Lady Tasker asked. .. .

(Perhaps “ His Impudence” and “ The Bits” re-
quire explanation. Both expressions Dorothy had from
her “ maid,’ Ruth Mossop. ‘“ Maid” is thus written be-
cause Ruth was a young widow, who, after a series of
disciplinary knockings-about by the late Mr. Mossop,
was not over-troubled with maternal anxiety for the four
children he had left her with. When asked by Dorothy
whether she would prefer to be called Mrs. Mossop or
Ruth, Mrs. Mossop had chosen the latter name, giving
as her reason that it had been like Mr. Mossop’s impu-
dence to ask her to accept the other name at all; and
very many other memories also, brooded on and gloom-
ily loved, including the four children, had been bits of
Mr. Mossop’s impudence. Stan had adopted the phrase,

 
842 | A CROOKED MILE

finding in it chuckles of his own; and so His Impudence
he had become, and Noel and Jackie the fruits thereof.)

Dorothy put her fair head on one side, as if she con-
sidered the absent Bits critically and dispassionately,
and really thought that on the whole she might venture
to approve of them.

“‘ Ra-ther little dears; but oh, Heaven, how are we
going to manage with a third!”

Her aunt dissociated herself from the problem with
a shrug. Well—if Stan will persist in thinking that
his dressing-room is merely a room for him to dress
in: 29

 

“So I tell him,” Dorothy murmured, with great
meekness. “ But—but flats aren’t made for children.
We did manage to seize the estate agent’s little office for
a nursery when all the flats were let, but when Stan
brings a man home we have to sleep him in the dress-
ing-room as it is—,” (Lady Tasker shook her head, but
the words “ Wrong man” were hardly audible), “—and
a house will mean stair-carpets, and hall furniture, and
I don’t know what else. Besides, Stan hasn’t time to
look for one——”

“No?” said Lady Tasker drily.

“ He really hasn’t, poor boy,” Dorothy protested.
“ And he’s after something really good this time—For-
tune and Brooks, the what-d’-you-call’ems, in Pall
Mall a

“What about them?”

“Well, Stan’s been told that they pay awfully good
commissions, for introductions, new accounts, you know;
Stan dines out, say, and makes himself nice to some

 
THE POND-ROOM 343

body with whole stacks of money, and mentions Fortune
& Brooks’s chutney and pickled peaches and things, and
—and ”

“T know,” remarked Lady Tasker, with not much
more expression than if she had been a talking-doll and
somebody had pulled the string that worked the speak-
ing apparatus. She did know these dazzling schemes
of her smart and helpless nephew’s—his club secretary-
ships, his projects for journals that should combine the
various desirable features of the “ Field” and “ Country
Life” and the “Sporting Times” and “ Punch,” his
pony deals, and his other innumerable attempts to make
of his saunters down Bond Street to St. James’s and
back vid the Junior Carlton and Regent Street a source
of income. Perhaps she knew, too, that Dorothy knew
of her knowledge, for she went on, “ Well, well—let’s
hope there’s more in it than there was in the fishing-
flies—now tell me what Eva’s got fresh.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Dorothy, plunging her hand into
her letters. ‘Eva sent the things, but here’s Dot’s
first—look at the darling’s writing! 2

And from a sheet of paper with a regimental heading
Dorothy began to read:

 

 

“ Dearest Aunt Dorotny,—

, “were in murree and we got a servant that
wigles his toes when we speak to him and he loves
baba and makes noises like him and there are squiboos
in the tres—”

—(she means squirrels)—
344 A CROOKED MILE

“_and ive got a parrot uncle tony bought me and
uncle tony says the monsoon will praps fale and the
peple wont have anything to eat but weve lots and i like
this better than kohat the shops are lovely but there are
lots of flees and they bite baba and he cries this is a
long letter how are jackie and noel i got the photo-
graf—”

—(that’s the new one on the mantelpiece)—

“__were going to tifin at major hirsts little girls one is
called marjorie and were great friends "

 

“ Where’s the other page got to? It was here——”

She found the other page, and continued the reading
of the child’s letter.

Suddenly Lady Tasker interrupted her.

“ Had Jack to borrow money to send them up there?”

“To Murree? I really don’t know. Perhaps he
had. But as adjutant of the Railway Volunteers he’d
have his saloon.”

“Hm! ... Anyway, the child oughtn’t to be there
at all. India’s no place for children.”

“T know, auntie; but what can one do? They do
come.”

“Hm! ... They didn’t to me. Thank goodness
T’ve done with love and babies.” (Dorothy laughed,
perhaps at a mental vision of the houses in Ludlow and
Cromwell Gardens.) ‘“ Anyway, now they are here
somebody’s got to look after them. They may as well
be healthy. . . .”
THE POND-ROOM 345

She mused, and Dorothy reached for other letters.

Lady Tasker’s additions to her responsibilities
usually began in this way. Dorothy had very little
doubt that presently little Dot also would be handed
like a parcel to some man or other coming home on
leave, and Lady Tasker would send to the makers for
yet another cot. . . . Therefore, pushing aside her last
letter, she exclaimed almost crossly, “I do think it’s
selfish of Aunt Eliza! There she is, with Spurrs all to
herself, and she never once thinks that Jack might like
to send Dot to England!”

“Neither would I if I had my time over again,”
said Lady Tasker resolutely. “‘ You needn’t look like
that—I wouldn’t. Cromwell Gardens is past praying
for, and in another year there won’t be a stick at the
Brear that’s fit to be seen. The next batch I certainly
intend to charge for. J’m on the brink of the poor-
house as it is.”

This time it was Dorothy who mused. She was a
calculating young woman; the wife of His Impudence
had to be; and she was far too shrewd to suppose for a
moment that her aunt could ever escape her destiny,
which was to be imposed upon by her own flesh and
blood while hardening her heart against the rest of the
world. Dorothy, and not Stan, had had to keep that
flat going, and the flat before it; unless Fortune &
Brooks turned up trumps—a rather remote contingency
—she would have to continue to do so; and she was quite
casuistical enough to argue that, while Aunt Eliza might
keep her old Spurrs, Aunt Grace might properly be
victimized because Dorothy loved Aunt Grace. There-
346 A CROOKED MILE

fore there were musings in Dorothy’s wide-angle blue
eyes . . . musings that only the sound of a key in the
outer lock interrupted.

“ Hallo, that’s His Impudence,” Dorothy exclaimed.
“T do hope he hasn’t brought anybody. I shall simply
rush out if he has.”

Stan hadn’t. He came in at the door drawing off a
pair of lemon-yellow gloves, said “ Hallo, Aunt Grace,”
and rang the bell. He next said, “ Hallo, Dot! Been
out? Beastly smelly in town. No, I’ve not had tea.
Look here, you’ve eaten all the hot cakes; never mind;
bread and butter’ll do, if you’ve got some jam—no,
honey. Got an invitation for you, Dot, to lunch, with
Ferrers on Monday; can’t you buck up and manage
it? ... Well, Aunt Grace, what brings you up here?
Bit off your beat, isn’t it? Awfully rude of me, I
know, but it isa long way. Glad I came in.”

“T’ve been to see the Cosimo Pratts,” said Lady
Tasker.

Dorothy looked suddenly up.

“ Oh, auntie, you didn’t tell me that! ” she exclaimed.

A grin lighted up Stan’s good-looking face.

“Oh? How many annas to the rupee are they to-
day? By Jove, they arearum lot up there! Any new
prime cuts?”

“Stan, you mustn’t!” said Dorothy, pareaxptorily:
“Please don’t! Don’t listen to him, auntie; he’s out-
rageous.”

But His Impudence went on, with his mouth full of
bread and butter.

“ T’ve only seen the fore-quarter and the trotter, but
THE POND-ROOM ‘B47

you see I haven’t been over the house. Did they show
-you the Bluebeard’s Chamber? What is there there?
By Jove, it’s like Jezebel and the dogs. . . . But I don’t
suppose they’ll have me up again. There was some
chap there, and I got him by himself and told him he
didn’t know what he was talking about; rotten of me,
I know, but you should have heard him! Anarchist—
Votes for Women—all the lot; whew! . . . More tea,
Ruth, please e

Lady Tasker felt the years beginning to ebb away
-from her again. She had remembered the hammock
and the Invisible Men.

“T hope he was—English ?” she murmured.

ce Who 2? oP

“The man you say you were rude to.”

“English? Yes. Why? English? Rather! No
end of gas about the Empire. Said it was on a wrong
basis or something. Why do you ask?”

“T only wondered.”

But Stan was perspicacious; he could see anything
that was as closely thrust under his nose as is the com-
parative rarity of the Englishman in Hampstead. He
laughed.

“Oh, that! We’re used to that. We've all sorts
up here. . . . By Jove, I believe Aunt Grace has been
thrown into the arms of a Jap or a nigger or something!
Well, if that doesn’t put the lid on! . . . So of course
you wondered what I meant by the fore-quarter and
Jezebel and the dogs. Those are just some things they
used to have. . . . Well, T’ll tell you what you can do
about it next time, auntie. You talk to ’em about Lud-

 
348 A CROOKED MILE

low. That shuts ’em up. Sore spot, Ludlow; they’re
trying to forget about Ye Olde Englysshe Maypole, and
that row with old Wynn-Jenkins, and old Griffin letting
his hair grow and reciting those poems. They look at
you as if it never happened. But they didn’t shut me
up.”

“You seem to have been thoroughly rude,” Lady
Tasker remarked.

“Well, dash it all, they ask for it. She used to
be some sort of a pal of Dorothy’s ”

“She’s very clever, and she was always very kind
to me,” Dorothy interpolated over her sewing.

“When, I should like to know? But never mind.
I was going to say, Aunt Grace, that I’ve had to put
my foot down. I won’t have the Bits meeting those
kids of Pratt’s. It’s perfectly awful; why, those chil-
dren know as much as I do—and I know a bit!
They’ll be wanting latchkeys presently. That day I was
up there I heard one of ’em say that little boys weren’t
the same as little girls. I forget how she put it, but she
knew all right; think of that, at about four! I wish I
could remember the words, but it was a bit thick for
four |——” ‘

A restrained smile, perhaps at the thought of Stan
putting his foot down, had crossed Lady Tasker’s face;
no doubt it was part of the smile that she presently said,
toying with the little gold-rimmed glass, “ Quite right,
Stan. ... Anything fresh about Fortune & Brooks ?
Dorothy told me.”

Stan’s feelings on any subject were never so strong
but that at a word he was quite ready to talk about

 
THE POND-ROOM 349

something else. “Eh? Rather!” he said heartily, and
went straightway off at score—New? Yes. He'd seen
old Brooks the day before; not a bad chap at all really ;
and they quite understood one another, he and old
Brooks. He’d told Stan things, old Brooks had, (which
Stan wasn’t at liberty to disclose) about the commissions
they paid for really first-class introductions, things that
would astonish Lady Tasker!

“You see,” he explained, “as Brooks himself said,
they can’t afford to advertise in the ordinary way; infra
dig. They’d actually lose custom if they put an ad.
in the ‘ Daily Spec.’ I don’t mean that they don’t put
a thing now and then into the right kind of paper, but
just being mentioned in general conversation, at din-
ners and tamashas and so on, that’s their kind of ad-
vertisement! For instance—but just a minute, and
Pll show you——”

He jumped up and dashed out of the room. Lady
Tasker took advantage of his absence to give a discreet
glance at Dorothy, but Dorothy’s head remained bent
demurely over her work. Stan returned, carrying a
small parcel.

“Here we are,” he said, unfastening the package:
and then suddenly his voice and manner changed re-
markably. He took a small pot from the parcel and
set it on the palm of his left hand; he pointed at it
with the index-finger of his right hand; and a bright
and poster-like smile overspread his face. He spoke
slightly loudly, and very, very persuasively.

“Now I have here, Aunt Grace, one of our newest
lines—Pickled Banyan. Now I’m not going to ask you

 
350 A CROOKED MILE

to take my word for it; I want you to try it for yourself.
It isn’t what this man says or what that man says; tast-
ing’s believing. Give me your teaspoon.”

“My dear Stan!” the astonished Lady Tasker
gasped.

“ We're selling a great many of this particular article,
and are prepared to stake our reputation on it,” Stan
went on. “ Established 1780; more than One Hundred
Gold Medals. Those are our credentials. Those are
what we lose.—Pass your spoon.”

Lady Tasker was rigid. Perhaps Stan would have
been better advised to cast his spell over those who were
going up in the world, and not on those who,
like themselves, were coming down or barely holding
their own. Again he went on, pointing engagingly at
the small pot.

“But just try it,” he urged, pushing the pot under
his aunt’s nose. “It isn’t what this man says or—I
mean, it doesn’t cost you anything to try it. A free
trial invited. THere’s the recipe, look, on the bottle—
carefully selected Banyans, best cane sugar, lemon-juice
refined by a patent process, and a touch of tabasco. The
makers’ guarantee on every label—none genuine with-
out it—have a go!”

With a “Really, Stan!’ Lady Tasker had turned
away in her chair, revolted. ‘“ And do you expect to
go to a house again after an exhibition like that?” she
asked over her shoulder.

“Kh?” said Stan, a little discomfited. “Too much
salesman about it, d’you think? Brooks warned me
about that. Fact is, he had a chap in as a sort of ob
THE POND-ROOM 351

ject-lesson. This chap came in—I didn’t know they
had schools and classes for this kind of thing, did you?
—this chap came in, and I was supposed to be some-
body who didn’t want the stuff at any price, and he’d got
to sell it to me whether I wanted it or not, and old
Brooks said to me, ‘ Now ask him how much the beastly
muck is,’ and a lot of facers like that, and so we'd a
set-to. . . . Then, when the fellow had gone, he said
he’d had him in just to show me how not to do it... .
But he was an ingenious sort of beast, and I can’t get
his talk out of my head. I’d thought of having a shot
at it to-night, but perhaps I'd better practise a bit more
first. Thanks awfully for the criticism, Aunt Grace.
If you don’t mind I'l] practise on you as we go along.
I’m dining with a man to-night, but I’d better be sure
of my ground.—Now what about having the Bits in,
Dot?”

“T think I hear them coming,” said Dorothy, whose
demureness had not given as much as a flicker. Per-
haps she was wondering whether she could spare the
sovereign His Impudence would presently ask her for.

The door opened, and Noel and Jackie stood there
with a nurse behind them. Noel walked stoutly in.
Jackie, not yet very firm on his pins, bumbled after
him like an overladen bee.
III

THE “NOVUM”

TAN was quite right in supposing that the Cosimo

Pratts wished to forget all about the Ludlow ex-
periment that had disturbed the Shropshire country-
side a year or more before, but he was wrong in the
reason he assigned them. They were not in the least
ashamed of it. As a stage in their intellectual develop-
ment, the experiment had been entirely in its place.
Especially in Mrs, Pratt’s career—as an old student
of the McGrath School of Art, a familiar (for a time)
with Poverty in cheap studios, the painter of the fa-
mous Feminist picture “ Barrage,” and so forward—
had this been true. Cosimo, in “ The Life and Work of
Miss Amory Towers,” a labour to which he devoted
himself intermittently, pointed out the naturalness and
inevitability of the sequence with real eloquence. Step
had led to step, and the omission of any one step would
have ruined the whole.

But nobody with work still in them lingers long over
the past. They had dropped the task of regenerating
rural England, or rather had handed it over to others,
only when it had been pointed out to them that capacity
so rare as theirs ought to be directed to larger ends.
One evening there had put in an appearance at one of

the Ludlow meetings—a meeting of the Hurdy-gurdy
352
THE “NOVUM” 3538

Octette, which afterwards gave instrumental perform-
ances with such success at Letchworth, Bushey and
Golder’s Green—Mr. Strong, the original founder and
present editor of the “ Novum Organum,” or, as it was
usually called, the “Novum.” Mr. Strong, as it hap-
pened, was the man whom the scatter-brained Stan had
met at The Witan, and of whom he had expected that
impossibility of any man whomsoever—an admission
that he did not know what he was talking about. At
that time Mr. Strong had been perambulating the coun-
try with a Van, holding meetings and distributing litera-
ture; and whatever Mr. Strong’s other failings might
have been, nobody had ever said of him that he did not
recognize a good thing when he saw it. The Cause it-
self had served as an introduction between him and
Cosimo; it had also been a sufficient reason for his in-
viting himself to Cosimo’s house for a couple of days
and remaining there for three weeks; and then he had
got rid of the Van and had come again. He was a
rapturous talker, when there was an end to be gained,
and he had expressed himself as strongly of the opinion
that, magnificent a field for the sowing of the good seed
as the country-side was, there was simply stupendous
propaganda to be done in London. He knew (he had
gone on) that Mrs. Pratt would forgive him (he had a
searching blue eye and an actor’s smile) if he appeared
for a moment to speak disparagingly of what he might
call the mere graces of the Movement, (alluring as these
were in Mrs. Pratt’s capable and very pretty hands) ;
it was not disparagement really; he only meant that
these garlands would burgeon a hundred-fold if the stern
354 A CROOKED MILE

and thankless work was got out of the way first. Mr.
Strong had a valuable trick of suddenly making those
searching blue eyes of his more searching, and of switch-
ing off the actor’s smile altogether; both of these things
had happened as-he had gone on to point out that what
the Cause was really languishing for was a serious and
responsible organ; and then, and only then, when they
had got (so to speak) the diapason, there would be time
enough for the trills and appoggiaturas of the Hurdy-
gurdy Band. .

Before the end of Mr. Strong’s second visit Cosimo
had. put up the greater part of the money for the
“ Novum.”

So you see just where the feather-pated Stan was
wrong. The Cosimo Pratts were not outfaced from
anything; they had merely seen a new and heralding
light. They did not so much recede from the Rural
Experiment, and discussions of the Suffrage, and eat-
ing buns on the floor at assemblies of the Poets’ Club,
and a hundred and twenty other such things, as become
as it were translated. They still shed over these ac-
tivities the benignity of their approval, but from on
high now. Amory could no longer be expected actually
to “run” the Suffrage Shop herself—Dickie Leme-
surier did that; nor the “ Eden” (the new offshoot off
the Lettuce Grill)—that she left to Katie Deedes; nor
the “ Lectures on Love” Agency—that was quite safe
in the hands of her friends, Walter Wyron and Laura
Beamish. Amory merely shed approval down. She
was hors concours. She .. . but you really must read
THE “NOVUM” 355

Cosimo’s book. You will find it all there (or at any
tate a good deal of it).

For Amory Pratt, in so far as Cosimo was the pro-
prietor of the “ Novum,” was the proprietor of the pro-
prietor of a high-class weekly review that was presently
going to put the two older parties out of business en-
tirely. She had more than a Programme now; she had
_ a Policy. She had crossed the line into the haute poli-
tique.. Her At Homes were already taking on the char-
acter of the political salon, and between herself and the
wives of ministers and ambassadors were differences, in
' degree perhaps, but not in kind. And that even these
differences should become diminished she had taken on,
ever since her settling-down at The Witan, slight, but
significant, new attitudes and condescensions. She was
kinder and more gracious to her sometime equals than be-
fore. She gave them encouraging looks, as much as to
say that they need not be afraid of her. But it was quite
definitely understood that when she took Mr. Strong
apart under the copper beech or retired with him into
the studio at the back of the house, she must on no ac-
count be disturbed.—Mr. Strong, by the way, always
dressed in the same Norfolk jacket, red tie and soft felt
hat, and his first caution to Cosimo and Amory had been
that Brimby, the novelist, was an excellent chap, but.
not always to be taken very seriously.

Amory did not often put in an appearance at the
“ Novum’s ” offices. This was not that she thought it
more befitting that Mr. Strong should wait on her, for
she went about a good deal with Mr. Strong, and did
356 A CROOKED MILE

not always trouble him to come up to The Witan to fetch
her. It was, rather, if the truth must be told, that she
found the offices rather dingy. Her senses loved the
newly-machined smell of each new issue of the paper,
but not the mingled odour of dust and stale gum and
Virginia cigarettes of the place whence it came. More-
over, the premises were rather difficult to find. They
lay at the back of Charing Cross Road. You dodged
into an alley between a second-hand bookseller’s and a
shop where electric-light fittings were sold, entered a
narrow yard, and, turning to the right into a gas-
lighted cavern where were stacked hundreds and hun- °
dreds of sandwich-boards, some back-and-fronts, some
with the iron forks for the bearer’s shoulders, you as-
cended by means of a dark staircase to the second floor.
There, at the end of a passage which some poster-artist
had half papered with the specimens of his art, you
came upon the three rooms. The first of these was the
general office; the second was Mr. Strong’s private office ;
and the third was a room which, the “ Novum ” having
no need of it, Mr. Strong had thought he might as well
use as a rent-free bedroom as not. The door of this
room Mr. Strong always kept locked. It was more
prudent. He was supposed to live somewhere in South
Kentish Town, and gave this address to certain of his
correspondents. The letters of these reached him sooner
or later, through the agency of a barber, in whose win-
dow was a placard, “ Letters may be addressed here.”

Perhaps, too, the extraordinary people who visited
Mr. Strong in the way of business helped to keep
Amory away. For an endless succession of the queerest
THE “NOVUM” 357

people came—contributors, and would-be contributors,
and friends of the Cause who “ were just passing and
thought they’d look in,’ and artists seeking a paper
with the courage to print really stinging caricatures,
and article-writers who were out of a job only because
they dared to tell the truth about things, and Russian
political exiles, and Armenians who wanted passages to
America, and Eurasians who wanted rifles, and tramps,
and poets, and the boy from the milkshop who brought
in the bread and butter and eggs for Mr. Strong’s break-
fast. And out of these strange elements had grown
up the paper’s literary style. This was unique in Lon-
don journalism: philosophical, yet homely; horizon-
wide of outlook, yet never without hope that the shining
thing in the gutter might prove to be a jewel; and, de
spite its habitual omissions of the prefix “ Mr.” from
the names of statesmen, and its playful allusions to this
personage’s nose or the waist-measurement of the other,
with more than a little of the Revelation of Saint John
the Divine about it. “ Damn” and “Hell” were
words the “ Novum” commonly used. Once Amory
had demurred at the use of a word stronger still. But
Mr. Strong had merely replied, “ If I can say it to you
I think I can say it to them.” He was no truckler to
his proprietors, and anyhow, the man whom the word
had encarnadined was only a colliery-owner.

The “ Novum” had hardly been six weeks old when
a certain desire on Amory’s part to make experiment of
her power had, putatively at any rate, lost it money.
The little collision of wills had come about over the
question of whether the “ Novum” should admit ad-
358 A CROOKED MILE

vertisements to its columns or not. Now as most peo-
ple know, that is a question that seldom arises in
journalism. A question far more likely to arise is
whether the advertisements can be got. But when a
journal sets out to do something that hitherto has not
only not been done, but has not even been attempted,
you will admit that the case is special. The experience
of other papers is useless; their economics do not apply.
What did apply was the fact that Mrs. Pratt had been
. an artist, looked on sheets of paper from another angle
than that of the mere journalist and literary man, and
loved symmetry and could not endure unsightliness.
Besides, ‘‘ No Compromise ” was the “ Novum’s ” motto,
and what was the good of having a motto like that if
you compromised in the very form of your expression !
... A “shoulder-piece,” “The Lnttle Mary Emolli-
ent,” had brought out all Mrs. Pratt’s finer artistic in-
stincts. Here was a journal consecrated to a great and
revolutionary cause, and the very first thing to catch
a reader’s eye was, not only an advertisement, but a
facetious advertisement at that—a Pill, without a Pill’s
robust familiarity—a commercial cackle issuing from
the “‘ Novum’s” august and oracular mouth . . . For
the first time in her life Mrs. Pratt had wielded the
blue pencil, tearing the rubbishy proof-paper in the en-
ergy with which she did so. Mr. Strong’s blue eyes,
bluer for the contrast with his red knot of a tie, had
watched her face, but he had said nothing. He was
willing to humour her. . .

But when all was said and done he was an editor, and
no sooner was Amory’s back turned than he had restored
THE “NOVUM” 359

the announcement. The paper had appeared, and there
had been a row... .

“ Then I appeal to Pratt,” Mr. Strong had said, with
all the good-nature in the world. “I take it the
“ Novum’s’ a serious enterprise, and not just a hobby?”

Cosimo had glanced a little timidly at his wife.
Then he had replied thoughtfully.

“T don’t know. I’m not so sure. That is, I’m not
so sure it oughtn’t to be a serious enterprise and a hobby.
The world’s best work is always done for love—that’s
another way of calling it a hobby—you see what I
mean—Nietzsche has something about it somewhere or
other—or if he hasn’t Ruskin has——”

Any number of effective replies had been open to
Mr. Strong, but he had used none of them. Instead his
eyes had given as it were a flick to Amory’s face. The
proprietor’s proprietor had continued indignantly.

“ Tt ruins the whole effect! It’s unspeakably vulgar !
After that glowing, that impassioned Foreword—this!
Hardly a month ago that lovely apostrophe to Truth
Naked—that beautiful image of her stark and innocent
on our banners but with a forest of bright bayonets
bristling about her—and now this! It’s revolting!”

But Mr. Strong had himself written that impassioned
Foreword, and knew all about it. Again he had given
his proprietor’s wife that quietly humouring look.

“Do you mean that the ‘ Novum’s’ going to refuse
advertisements ?”

“T mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself.”

“And what about the others—the ‘Eden’ and the
Suffrage Shop and Wyron’s Lectures ?”’

 
360 A CROOKED MILE

“ They’re different. They are the Cause. You said
yourself that the ‘Novum’ was going to be a sort of
generalissimo, and these the brigades of whatever they’re
called. They are, at any rate, doing the Work. Is that
doing any Work, I should like to know?”

Mr. Strong had refrained from flippancy.—“ I see
what you mean,” he had replied equably. “ At the
same time, if you’re going to refuse advertisements the
thing’s going to cost a good deal more money.”

“Well?” Amory had replied, as who might say,
“Has money been refused you yet?”

Strong had given a compliant shrug—‘ All right.
That means I censor the advertisements, I suppose.
New industry. Very well. The ‘Eden’ and Wyron’s
Lectures and Week-end Cottages and the Plato Press
only, then. I'll strike out that “Platinum: False
Teeth Bought. But I warn you it will cost more.”

“ Never mind that.”

And so the incident had ended.

But perhaps Mrs. Pratt’s sensitiveness of eye was not
the only cause of the rejection of that offending adver-
tisement. Another reason might have lain in her pres-
ent relation with her sometime fellow-student of the
McGrath School of Art, Dorothy Tasker. For that re-
lation had suffered a change since the days when the two
girls had shared a shabby day-studio in Cheyne Walk,
Chelsea. At that time, now five years ago, Amory
Towers had been thrust by circumstances into a posi-
tion of ignoble envy of her friend. She had been poor,
and Dorothy’s people (or so she had supposed) very,
very wealthy. True, poor Dorothy, without as much as
THE “NOVUM” 361

a single spark of talent, had nevertheless buckled to,
and, in various devious ways, had contrived to suck a
parasitic living out of the wholesome body of real art;
none the less, Amory had conceived her friend to be of
the number of those who play at hardship and inde-
pendence with a fully spread table at home for them to
return to when they are tired of the game. But the case
was entirely changed now. Amory frankly admitted
that she had been mistaken in one thing, namely, that if
those people of Dorothy’s had more money, they had
also more claims upon it, and so were relatively poor.
Amory herself was now very comfortably off indeed.
By that virtue and good management which the envious
call luck, she had now money, Cosimo’s money, to de-
vote to the regeneration of the world. Dorothy, mar-
ried to the good-tempered and shiftless Stan, sometimes
did not know which way to turn for the overdue quar-
ter’s rent. :

Now among her other ways of making ends meet Doro-
thy had for some years done rather well out of precisely
that kind of work which Amory refused to allow the
“ Novum ” to touch—advertisements. She had wormed
herself into the services of this firm and that as an ad-
vertisement-adviser. But her contracts had begun in
course of time to lapse, one or two fluky successes had
not been followed up, and two children had further
tiglitened things. Nor had Stan been of very much
help. Amory despised Stan. She thought him, not a
man, but a mere mouth to be fed. Real men, like
Cosimo, always had money, and Amory was quite sure
that, even if Cosimo had not inherited a fortune from
362 A CROOKED MILE

his uncle, he would still have contrived to make himself
the possessor of money in some other way.

Therefore Amory was even kinder to Dorothy than
she was to Dickie Lemesurier of the Suffrage Shop, to
Katie Deedes of the “ Eden,” and to Laura Beamish and
Walter Wyron, who ran the “ Lectures on Love.” But
somehow—it was a little difficult to say exactly how,
but there it undoubtedly was—Dorothy did not accept
her kindnesses in quite the proper spirit. One or two
she had even rejected—gently, Amory was bound to
admit, but still a rejection. For example, there had
been that little rebuff (to call it by its worst name for
a moment) about the governess. Amory had, in Miss
Britomart Belchamber, the most highly-qualified gover-
ness for Corin and Bonniebell that money and eareful
search had been able to obtain; Dorothy lived less than
a quarter of an hour’s walk away; it would have been
just as easy for Britomart to teach four children as to
teach two; but Dorothy had twisted and turned and had
finally said that she had decided that she couldn’t put
Amory to the trouble. And again, when the twins had
had their party, Amory would positively have liked
Noel and Jackie to come and dance “ Twickenham
Ferry ” in those spare costumes and to join in those
songs from the Book of Caroline Ditties; but again an
excuse had been made. And half a dozen similar
things had driven Amory to the conclusion, sadly against
her will, that the Taskers were taking up that ridiculous,
if not actually hostile attitude, of the poor who hug
their pride. It was not nice between old friends.
Amory could say with a clear conscience that she had
THE “NOVUM” 363

not refused Dorothy’s help in the days when the boot
had been on the other leg. She was not resentful, but
really it did look very much like putting on airs. |
But of course that stupid Stanhope Tasker was at
the bottom of it all. Amory did not so much mind his
not having liked her from the first; she would have
been sorry to let a trifle like that ruffle her equanimity ;
but it was evident that he did not in the least realize
his position, She was quite sure, in the first place,
that he couldn’t afford (or rather Dorothy couldn’t
afford) to pay eighty pounds for that flat, plus another
twenty for the little office they had annexed and used
asanursery. And in the next place he dressed absurdly
above his position. Cosimo dressed for hygiene and
comfort, in cellular things and things made of nonirri-
tant vegetable fibre; but those absurdly modish jackets
and morning-coats of Stan’s had, unless Amory was very
much mistaken, to be bought at the expense of real
necessaries. And so with their hospitality. In that
too, they tried to cut a dash and came very near to mak-
ing themselves ridiculous. Amory didn’t want to in-
terfere; she couldn’t plan and be wise for everybody ;
she had her own affairs to attend to; but she was quite
sure that the Taskers would have done better to regulate
their hospitality as hospitality was regulated at The
Witan—that was, to make no special preparation, but
to have the door always open to their friends. But no;
the Taskers must make a splash. They must needs
“invite” people and be a little stand-offish about people
coming uninvited. They were “ At home” and “ Not
at home” for all the world as if they had been impor-
364 A CROOKED MILE

tant people. But Amory would have thought herself
very stupid to be taken in by all this ceremony. For
example, the last time she and Cosimo had been asked to
the flat to dinner she knew that they had been “ worked
off” only because the Taskers had had the pheasants
given by somebody, and very likely the fish too. And it
would have been just like Stan Tasker’s insolence had
he asked them because he knew that the Pratts did not
eat poor beasties that should have been allowed to live
because of their lovely plumes, nor the pretty speckled
creatures that had done no harm to the destroyer who
had taken them with a hook out of their pretty stream.

But, kind to her old friend as Amory was always
ready to be, she did not feel herself called upon to go
out of her way to be very nice to her friend’s husband.
He had no right to expect it after his rudeness to Edgar
Strong about the “ Novum.” For it had been about the
“ Novum” that Stan had given Strong that talking-to.
Much right (Amory thought hotly) he had to talk!
Just because he consorted with men who counted their
money in rupees and thought nothing of shouldering
their darker-skinned brothers off the pavement, he
thought he was entitled to put an editor into his place!
But the truth, of course, was, that that very familiarity
prevented him from really knowing anything about these
questions at all. Because an order was established, he
had not imagination enough to see how it could have
been anything different. His mind (to give it that
name) was of the hidebound, official type, and too many
limited intelligences of that kind stopped the cause of
Imperial progress to-day. Or rather, they tried to stop
THE “NOVUM” 365

it, and perhaps thought they were stopping it; but really,
little as they suspected it, they were helping more than
they knew. A pig-headed administration does uncon-
sciously help when, out of its own excesses, a divine dis-
content is bred. Mr. Suwarree Prang had been eloquent
on that very subject one afternoon not very long ago.
A charming man! Amory had listened from her ham-
mock, rapt. Mr. Prang did the “ Indian Review ” for
the “ Novum,” in flowery but earnest prose; and as he
actually was Indian, and did not merely hobnob with a
few captains and subalterns home on leave, it was to be
supposed that he would know rather more of the subject
than Mr. Stanhope Tasker!

And Mr. Stanhope Tasker had had the cheek to tell
Mr. Strong that he didn’t know what he was talking
about !

Amory felt that she could never be sufficiently thank-
ful for the chance that had thrown Mr. Strong in her
way. She had always secretly felt that her gifts were
being wasted on such minor (but still useful) tasks as
the “Eden” Restaurant and the “Love Lectures”
Agency. But her personal exaltation over Katie Deedes
and the others had caused her no joy. What had given
her joy had been the immensely enlarged sphere of her
usefulness; that was it, not the odious vanity of leader-
ship, but the calm and responsible envisaging of a task
for which not one in ten thousand had the vision and
courage and strength. And Edgar Strong had shown
her these things. Of course, if he had put them in
these words she might have suspected him of trying to
flatter her; but as a matter of fact he had not said a

 
366 A CROOKED MILE

single word about it. He had merely allowed her to see
for herself. That was his way: to all-but-prove a thing
—to take it up to the very threshold of demonstration—
and then apparently suddenly to lose interest in it.
And that in a way was his weakness as an editor..
Amory, whom three or four wieldings of the blue pencil
had sufficed to convince that there was nothing in jour-
nalism that an ordinary intelligence could not master in
a month, realized this. She herself, it went without
saying, always saw at once exactly what Mr. Strong
meant; she personally liked those abrupt and smiling
stops that left Mr. Strong’s meaning as it were hung up
in the air; but it was a mistake to suppose that every-
body was as clever as she and Mr. Strong. “I’s” had
to be dotted and “ t’s ” crossed for the multitude. But
it was at that point that Mr. Strong always became al-
most languid.

It was inevitable that the man who had thus revealed
to her, after a single glance at her, such splendid and
unsuspected capacities within herself, should exercise
a powerful fascination over Amory. If he had seen
all this in her straight away (as he assured her he had),
then he was a man not lightly to be let go. He might be
the man to show her even greater things yet. He
puzzled her; but he appeared to understand her; and
as both of them understood everybody else, she was
aware of a challenge in his society that none other of
her set afforded her. He could even contradict her and
go unsacked. Prudent people, when they sack, want to
know what they are sacking, and Amory did not know.
THE “NOVUM” 367

Therefore Mr. Strong was quite sure of his job until she
should find out.

Another thing that gave Mr. Strong this apparently off-
hand hold over her was the confidential manner in which
he had warned her not to take Mr. Brimby, the novelist,
too seriously. For without the warning Amory, like a
good many other people, might have committed pre-
cisely that error. . . . But when Mr. Brimby, taking
Amory apart one day, had expressed in her ear a gentle
doubt whether Mr. Strong was quite “ sound ” on cer-
tain important questions, Amory had suddenly seen.
Mr. Strong had “ cut” one of Mr. Brimby’s poignantly
sorrowful sketches of the East End—seen through
Balliol eyes—and Mr. Brimby was resentful. She did
not conceal from herself that he might even be a little
envious of Mr. Strong’s position. He might have been
wiser to keep his envy to himself, for, while mere de-
tails of routine could hardly expect to get Amory’s
personal attention, there was one point on which Mr.
Strong was quite “sound” enough for Amory—his
sense of her own worth and of how that worth had
hitherto been wasted. And Mr. Strong had not been
illnatured about Mr. Brimby either. He had merely
twinkled and put Amory on her guard. And because
he appeared to. have been right in this instance, Amory
was all the more disposed to believe in his rightness
when he gave her a second warning. This was about
Wilkinson, the Labour Member. He was awfully fond
of dear old Wilkie, he said; he didn’t know a man more
capable in some things than Wilkie was; but it would
368 A CROOKED MILE

be foolish to deny that he had his limitations. He
wasn’t fluid enough; wanted things too much cut-and-
dried; was a little inclined to mistake violence for
strength; and of course the whole point about the
“ Novum ” was that it was fluid... .

“In fact,” Mr. Strong concluded, his wary blue eyes
ceasing suddenly to hold Amory’s brook-brown ones
and taking a reflective flight past her head instead, “ for
a paper like ours—I’m hazarding this, you understand, .
and keep my right to reconsider it—I’m not sure that
a certain amount of fluidity isn’t a Law. . . .”

Amory nodded. She thought it excellently put.
IV

THE STONE WALL

MORY sometimes thought, when she took her
bird’s-eye-view of the numerous activities that
found each its voice in its proper place in the columns
of the “ Novum,” that she would have allowed almost
any of them to perish for lack of support rather than
' the Wyron’s “ Lectures on Love.” She admitted this
to be a weakness in herself, a sneaking fondness, no
more; but there it was—just that one blind spot that
mars even the clearest and most piercing vision. And
she always smiled when Mr. Strong tried to show this
weakness of hers in the light of a merit.

“No, no,” she always said, “I don’t defend it.
Twenty things are more important really, but I can’t
help it. I suppose it’s because we know all about Laura
and Walter themselves.”

“Perhaps so,” Mr. Strong would musingly concede.

Anybody who was anybody knew all about Laura
Beamish and Walter Wyron and a certain noble defeat
in their lives that was to be accounted as more than a
hundred ordinary victories. That almost historic epi-
sode had just shown everybody who was anybody what
the world’s standards were really worth. Hitherto the

Wyrons have been spoken of both as a married couple
369
370 A CROOKED MILE

and as “ Walter Wyron” and “ Laura Beamish” sep-
arately; let the slight ambiguity now be cleared up.

Mrs. Cosimo Pratt became on occasion Miss Amory
Towers for reasons that began and ended in her pro-
fession as a painter; and everybody who was anybody
was as well aware that Miss Amory Towers, the painter
of the famous feminist picture “ Barrage,” was in real-
ity Mrs. Cosimo Pratt, as the great mass of people who
were nobody knew that Miss Elizabeth Thompson, the
painter of “ The Roll Call,” was actually Lady Butler.
But not so with the Wyrons. Reasons, not of business,
nor yet of fame, but of a burning and inextinguishable
faith, had led to their noble equivocation. Deeply
seated in the hearts both of Walter and of Laura had
lain a passionate non-acceptance of the merely parroted
formula of the Wedding Service. So searching and
fundamental had this been that by the time their vari-
ous objections had been disposed of little had remained
that had seemed worth bothering about; and in one
sense they had not bothered about it. True, in another
sense they had bothered, and that was precisely where
the defeat came in; but that did not dim the splendour
of the attempt. To come without further delay
to the point, the Wyrons had married, under strong
protest, in the ordinary everyday way, Laura
submitting to the momentary indignity of a ring; but
thereafter they had magnificently vindicated the New
Movement (in that one aspect of it) by not saying a
word about the ceremony of their marriage to anybody
—no, not even to the people who were somebody. Then
they had flown off to the Latin Quarter.
THE STONE WALL 371

It had not been in the Latin Quarter, however, that
the true character of their revolt had first shown. Per-
haps—nobody knows—their relation had not been singu-
lar enough there. Perhaps—there were people base
enough to whisper this—they had. feared the singularity
of “ letting on.” It is easy to do in the Boul’ Mich’
as the Boul’ Mich’ does. The real difficulties begin
when you try to do in London what London permits
only as long as you do it covertly.

And if there had been a certain covertness about their
behaviour when, after a month, they had returned, what
a venial and pardonable subterfuge, to what a tre-
mendous end! Amory herself, up to then, had not had
a larger conception. For while the Wyrons had secretly
married simply and solely in order that their offspring
should not lie under a stigma, their overt lives had been
one impassioned and beautiful protest against any as-
sumption whatever on the part of the world of a right
to make rules for the generation that was to follow.
No less a gospel than this formed the substance of those
Lectures of Walter’s; great as the number of the born
was, his mission was the protection of a greater number
still. The best aspects both of legitimacy and of ille-
gitimacy were to be stereoscoped in the perfect birth.
And he now had, in quite the strict sense of the word,
a following. The same devoted faces followed him
from the Lecture at the Putney Baths on the Monday
to that at the Caxton Hall on the Thursday, from his
ascending the platform at the Hampstead Town Hall
on the Tuesday to his addressing of a garden-party from
under the copper-beech at The Witan on the Sunday
372 A CROOKED MILE

afternoon. And in course of time the faithfulness of
the followers was rewarded. They graduated, so to
speak, from the seats in the body of the building to the
platform itself. There they supported Laura, and gave
her a countenance that she no longer needed (for she
had earned her right to wear her wedding-ring openly
now), and flocked about the lecturer afterwards, not as
about a mere man, but rather as seeing in him the phys-
ician, the psychologist, the expert, the helper, and the-
setter of crooked things straight that he was.

As a lecturer—may we say as a prophet ?—Walter
had a manner original and taking in the extreme.
Anybody less sustained by his vision and less upheld
by his faith might have been a little tempted to put on
“side,” but not so Walter. Perhaps his familiarity
with the stage—everybody knew his father, Herman
Wyron, of the New Greek Theatre—had taught him the
value of the large and simple statement of large and
simple things; anyhow, he did not so much lecture to
his audiences as accompany them, chattily and compan-
ionably, through the various windings of his subject.
With his hands thrust unaffectedly into the pockets of
his knickers, and a sort of sublimated “ Well, here we
are again” expression on his face, he allayed his hear-
ers’ natural timidity before the magnitude of his mis-
sion, and gave them a direct and human confab. on a
subject that returned as it were from its cycle of vast-
ness to simple personal experience again. His every
sentence seemed to say, “ Don’t be afraid; it’s nothing
really; soon you’ll be as much at your ease in dealing
with these things as I am; just let me tell you an anec-
THE STONE WALL 373

dote.” No wonder Laura held her long and muscular
neck very straight above her hand-embroidered yoke.
Everybody understood that unless she adopted some sort
of an attitude her proper pride in such a married lover
must show, which would have been rather rubbing it
in to the rest of her sex. So she booked dates for new
lectures almost nonchalantly, and, when the platform
was invaded at the end of the Lecture, or Walter
stepped down to the level of those below, she was there
in person as the final demonstration of how well these
things actually would work as soon as Society had de
cided upon some concerted action.

Corin and Bonniebell, Amory’s twins, did not attend
Walter’s Lectures. It was not deemed advisable to
keep them out of bed so late at night. But Miss Brito-
mart Belchamber, the governess, could have passed—
had in fact passed—an examination in them. It had
been Amory who, so to speak, had set the paper. For
it had been at one of the Lectures—the one on “ The
Future Race: Are We Making Manacles? ”—that
Miss Belchamber had first impressed Amory favour-
ably. Amory had singled her out, first because she
wore the guarantee of Prince Eadmond’s Collegiate In-
stitution—the leather-belted brown sleeveless djibbah
with the garment of fine buff fabric showing beneath it
as the fruit of a roasted chestnut shows when the rind
splits—and secondly because of her admirable physique.
She was splendidly fair, straight as an athlete, and
could shut up her long and massive limbs in a wicker
chair like a clasp-knife; and for her movements alone
it was almost a sin that Walter’s father could not secure
374 A CROOKED MILE

her for the New Greek Society’s revival of “ Europa”
at the Choragus Theatre. And she was not too quick
mentally. That is not to say that she was a fool.
What made Amory sure that she was not a fool was
that she herself was not instinctively attracted by fools,
and it was better that Miss Belchamber should be duc-
tile under the influence of Walter’s ideas than that she
should have just wit enough to ask those stupid and
conventional and so-called “ practical” questions that
Walter always answered at the close of the evening as
patiently as if he had never heard them before. And
Miss Belchamber told the twins stories, and danced
“Rufty Tufty,” with them, and “ Catching of Quails,”
and was really cheap at her rather stiff salary. Cosimo
loved to watch her at “ Catching of Quails.” If the
children did not grow up with a love of beauty after
that, he said, he gave it up. (The twins, by the way,
unconsciously served Amory as another example of
Dorothy Tasker’s unreasonableness. As the mother of
Noel and Jackie, Dorothy seemed rather to fancy her-
self as an experienced woman. But Amory could af-
ford to smile at this pretension. There was a difference
in age of a year and more between Noel and Jackie.
No doubt. Dorothy knew a little, but she, Amory, could
have told her a thing or two).

On a Wednesday afternoon about a fortnight after
Lady Tasker’s visit to The Witan, Amory walked the
garden thoughtfully. The weather was growing chilly,
the hammock had been. taken in, and her feet in the
fallen leaves made a melancholy sound. Cosimo had
left her half an hour before; certain points had struck
THE STONE WALL 375

him in the course of conversation which he thought
ought to be incorporated in the “ Life and Work” ;
and it was a rule at The Witan that nothing must ever
be allowed to interfere with the impulse of artistic
creation. For the matter of that, Amory herself was
creating now, or at any rate was at the last preparatory
stage that immediately precedes creation. Presently
she would have taken the plunge and would be deep in
the new number of the “ Novum.” For the moment
she was thinking of Mr. Strong.

As she tried to clear up exactly what place Mr.
Strong had in her thoughts she was struck by the dread-
ful tendency words and names and definitions have to
attach themselves to vulgar and ready-made meanings—
a tendency so strong that she had even caught herself
more than once jumping to a common conclusion. To
take an example, though a rather preposterous one.
Had Dorothy, with one of her ridiculous advertisements
waiting to be done, confessed to her that instead of set-
ting about it she was thinking of a male person with
a pair of alert blue eyes and a curiously mobile and
clean-cut mouth (not that it was likely that Dorothy
would have had the candour to make such a confession)
—well, Amory might have smiled just like. anybody
else. She was not trying to make herself out any bet-
ter than others. She was candid about it, however,
which they were often not.

Still, the trouble about her feeling for Mr. Strong
was to find a word for it that had not been vulgarized.
She was, of course, exceedingly interested in him, but
that was not saying very much. She “ liked” him, too,
376 A CROOKED MILE

but that again might mean anything. Her difficulty
was that she herself was so special; and so on secopd
thoughts she might have been right in giving an inter-
pretation to Dorothy’s actions, and Dorothy quite
wrong in giving the same interpretation to hers merely
because the data were the same.

Nor had Mr. Strong himself been able to help her
very much when, a couple of days before, she had put
the question to him, earnestly and without hateful false
shame.

“What is this relation of ours?” she had asked him,
point-blank and fearlessly.

“Eh?” Mr. Strong had replied, a little startled.

“ There must be a relation of some sort between every
two people who come into contact. I’m just wondering
exactly what ours is.”

Then Mr. Strong had knitted his brows and had said,
presently, “I see... . Have you read ‘The Tragic
Comedians?’ ’’—Amory had not, and the copy of the
book which she had immediately ordered had not come
yet. And then she too had knitted her brows. She
had caught the trick from him.

“T suppose that what it really comes to is knowing
yourself,”. she had mused; and at that Mr. Strong had
given her a quick approving look, almost as if he said
that if she put in her thumb in the same place again
she might pull out a plum very well worth having.

“ And not,” Amory had continued, curiously heart-
ened, “anything about the other person at all.”

“Good, good,” Mr. Strong had applauded under his
breath; “have you Edward Carpenter’s book in the
THE STONE WALL 377

house, by the way? ... Never mind: I'll send you
my copy.”

He had sent it. It was in Amory’s hand now. She
had discovered that it had a catching and not easily
identifiable smell of its own, of Virginia cigarettes and
damp and she knew not what else, all mingled; and
somehow the smell seemed quite as much an answer to
the question she had asked as anything in the book
itself.

Nor, despite Walter’s special knowledge of these indi-
cations, could she go to the Wyrons for diagnosis and
advice. For one thing, there was her own position of
high patronage to be considered; for another, splen-
didly daring as the Wyrons’ original protest had been,
the Lectures had lately begun to have a little the air of
a shop, over the counter of which admittedly valuable
specifies were handed, but with a kind of “ And the
next article, please?”’ suspicion about it. Besides, the
Wyrons, having no children, had of necessity to “ chic”
a little in cases where children formed a complicating
element. . Besides . . . but anyway, Amory wasn’t go-
ing either to Laura Beamish or to Walter Wyron.

She made a charming picture as she walked slowly
the length of the privet hedge and then turned towards
the copper beech again. Mr. Strong had said that he
liked her in that dress—an aluminium-grey one, very
simple and very expensive, worn with a handsome In-
dian shawl, a gift of Mr. Prang’s, the mellow colour of
which “led up” to the glowing casque of her hair;
and she had smiled when Mr. Strong had added that
Britomart Belchamber’s rough tabards and the half-
378 A CROOKED MILE

gym costume in which she danced “Rufty Tufty”
would not have suited her, Amory, at all. Probably
they wouldn’t—not as a regular thing. Cosimo liked
those, especially when the wearer was largish; indeed,
it was one of Cosimo’s humours to pose as Britomart’s
admirer. But Amory was small, and never shut her
limbs up like a multiple-lever in a basket chair, but.
drew her skirt down a foot or so below her toes instead
whenever she sat down. She fancied, though Mr.
Strong had never used the word, that the “ Novum’s ”
editor found Miss Belchamber just a little hoydenish.

Amory wished that something would bring Mr.
Strong up that afternoon. It was one of the days on
which the editing of the “‘ Novum” could take care of
itself, and besides, they would actually be editing it
together. For the next number but one—the forth-
coming one was already passed—was to be their most
important utterance yet. It was to indicate clearly,
firmly and once for all, their Indian policy. The
threatened failure of the monsoon made the occasion
urgent, and Mr. Suwarree Prang himself had explained
to Amory only the night before precisely what the mon-
soon was, and how its failure would provide, from the
point of view of those who held that the present wicked
regime of administration by the strong hand was at last
tottering to its fall, a providential opportunity. It had
struck Amory as wondrously romantic and strange that
a meteorological condition halfway round the world, in
a place she had never seen, should thus change the
course of her quiet life in Hampstead; but, properly
considered, no one thing in this wonderful world was
THE STONE WALL | 379

more wonderful than another. It was Life, and Life,
as she remembered to have read somewhere or other, is
for the Masters of it. And she was beginning to find
that after all these things only required a little confi-
dence. It was as easy to swim in six miles deep of
water, like that place in Cosimo’s atlas of which the
name escaped her for the moment, as it was in six
feet. And Mr. Prang had talked to her so long and so
vividly about India that she sometimes found it quite
difficult to realize that she had never been there.

Still wishing that Mr. Strong would come, she slowly
left the garden and entered the house. In the hall she
paused for a moment, and a tender little smile softened
her face. She had stopped before the exquisite casts
of the foot and the arm. Pensively she took the foot
up from the console table, and then, coming to a resolu-
tion, she took the arm down from its hook on the wall.
After all, beautiful as she had to admit them to be, the
studio, and not the hall, was the proper place for them.

With the foot and Edward Carpenter in her left
hand, and the plaster arm hugged to her right breast,
she walked along the passage and sought the studio.

It was called the studio, and there certainly were
canvases and easels and other artists’ paraphernalia
there, but it was less used for painting than as a room
for sitting and smoking and tea and discussion. It
was a comfortable apartment. Rugs made islands on
the thick cork floor-covering, and among the rugs were
saddlebag chairs, a long adjustable chair, and a wide
couch covered with faded tapestry. The room was an
annex of corrugated iron lined with matchboarding,
380 A CROOKED MILE

but electric-light fittings depended from the iron ties
overhead, and in place of an ordinary hearth was a sort
of stage one, with an imitation log of asbestos, which,
when you put a match to it, broke into a licking of blue
and yellow gas-jets. The north window occupied the
whole of the garden end, and, facing it, was the large
cartoon for Amory’s unfinished allegorical picture,
“The Triumph of Humane Government.” High up
and just within the door was the bell that answered to
the button outside.

Amory was putting down the casts on a Benares tray
when the ringing of this bell startled her. But as it
rang in the kitchen also, she did not move to answer
it. She stood listening, the fingers of one hand to her
lips, those of the other still resting on the plaster shoul-
der. Then she heard a voice, and a moment later-there
came a tap at the door.

It was Mr. Strong.

He advanced, and did a thing he had not done before
—lifted the hand she extended to his lips and then let
it drop again. But Amory was not surprised. It was
merely a new and natural expression of the homage he
had never concealed, and even had Amory been vain
enough to suppose that it meant anything more, the
briskness of the “Good afternoon” that followed it
would have disabused her. “Glad I found you,”
Mr. Strong said. “I wanted to see you. Cosimo
in?”

Her husband was always Cosimo to him, but in speak-
ing to herself he used no name at all. It was as if
he hesitated to call her Amory, and refused to call her
THE STONE WALL 381]

Mrs. Pratt. Even ‘“ Miss Towers” he had only used
once, and that was some time ago.

Amory’s fingers left the cast, and Mr. Strong walked
towards the asbestos log.—‘ May I?” he said, draw-
ing forth a packet of Virginia cigarettes; and after-
wards he put the match with which he lighted one of the
cigarettes to the log. Amory drew up a small square
footstool, and put her elbows on her knees and her in-
terwoven, fingers beneath her chin. Mr. Strong ex-
amined the end of his cigarette, and thrust his chin
down into his red tie and his hands deep into his
trousers pockets. Then he seemed to plunge into
thought.

Suddenly he shot a glance at Amory, and said ab-
tuptly, “ I suppose you’ve talked over the Indian policy
with Cosimo?”

It was nice and punctilious of him, the way he al-
ways dragged Cosimo in, and Amory liked it. She felt
sure that the editor of the “ Times,” calling on the
Prime Minister’s wife, would not ignore the Prime
Minister. But to-day she was a little abstracted—dull
—she didn’t know exactly what; and so she replied,
without moving, ‘Would you like him here? He’s
busy with the ‘ Life.’ ”

“Oh no, don’t trouble him then.”

There was a pause. Then, “TI did talk to him about
it. And to Mr. Prang,” Amory said.

“Oh. Hm. Quite so,” said Mr. Strong, looking
at the toes of his brogues. .

“Yes. Mr. Prang was here last night,” Amory con-
tinued, looking at the points of her own slippers.

i
382 A CROOKED MILE

ce Yes.”

Again My. Strong’s chin was sunk into his red tie.
He was rising and falling slowly on his toes. His
eyes moved ruminatively sideways to the rug at
Amory’s feet.

“Yes, Yes. I’ve been wondering ” he said
thoughtfully.

“Well?”

“Oh, nothing really. I dare say I’m quite wrong.
You see, Prang: ”

“What?” Amory asked as he paused again.

There was a twinkle in the eyes that rose to Amory’s.
Mr. Strong gave a slight shrug.—‘ Well—Prang! a
he said with humorous deprecation.

Amory was quick.— Oh!—You don’t mean that
Mr. Prang isn’t sound?”

“Sound? Perfectly, perfectly, And a most ca-
pable fellow. Only I’ve wondered once or twice whether
he isn’t—you know—just a little too capable... .
You see, we want to use Prang—not to have Prang
using us.”

Amory could not forbear to smile. If that was all
that was troubling Mr. Strong she thought she could
reassure him.

“JT don’t think you’d have been afraid of that if
you'd been here last night,”’ she replied quietly. ‘“ We
were talking over England’s diabolical misrule, and I
never knew Mr. Prang so luminous. It was pathetic—
really. Cosimo was talking about that Rawal Pindi
case—you know, of that ruffianly young subaltern
drawing down the blinds and then beating the native.—

 

 

 
THE STONE WALL 383

‘But how do they take it?’ I asked Mr. Prang, rather
scornfully, you know; and really I was sorry for the
poor fellow, having to apologize for his country.—
‘That’s it,’ he said sadly—it was really sad.—And he
told me, frankly, that sometimes the poor natives pre-
tended they were killed, and sometimes they announce
that they’re going to die on a certain day, and they
really do die—they’re so mystic and sensitive—it was
most interesting . . . But what I mean is, that a gentle
and submissive people like that—Mr. Prang admits
that’s their weakness—I mean they couldn’t use us!
It’s our degradation that we aren’t gentle and sensitive
too. You see what I mean?”

“Oh, quite,” Mr. Strong jerked out. “ Quite.”

“And that’s why I call Mr. Prang an idealist.
There must be something in the East. At any rate it
was splendid moral courage on Prang’s part to say,
quite openly, that they couldn’t do anything without
the little handful of us here, but must simply go on
suffering and dying.”

There fell one of the silences that usually came when
Mr. Strong lost interest in a subject. Merely adding,
“Oh, I’ve not a word to say against Prang, but “

 

?
he began to rise and fall on his toes again. Then he

stepped to the Benares table where the casts were. But
he made no criticism of them. He picked the foot up,
and put it down again. “T like it,” he said, and re-
turned once more to the asbestos hearth. The silence
fell again.

Amory, sitting on the footstool with her knees sup-
porting her elbows and her wrists supporting her chin,
384 A CROOKED MILE

would have liked to offer Mr. Strong a penny for his
thoughts. She had had an odd, warm little sensation
when he had. picked up that cast of the perfect. foot.
She supposed he must know that it was her foot, but
so widely had his thoughts been ranging that he had
merely put it down again with an abstracted “ I like it.”
Amory was not sure that any other woman than herself
would not have been piqued. Any other woman would
have expected him either not to look at the thing, or
else to say that it was small, or to ask whether the real
one was as white, or something foolish like that. But
Amory was superior to such things. She lived on
higher levels. On these levels such an affront to the
pure intellect as a flirtation could not exist. Free Love
as a logical and defensible system—yes, perhaps; or a
combination so happy of marriage and cohabitation as
that of the Wyrons’—yes again ; but anything lower she
left to the stupid people who swallowed the conventions
whole, including the convention of not being found out.
—So she merely wondered about their relation again.
Obviously, there must be a relation. And yet his own
explanation had been quite insufficient; it had been no
explanation at all to ask her whether she had read
“The Tragic Comedians” or whether she had Edward
Carpenter in the house. No doubt it was flattering to
her intelligence to suppose that she could “ flash” at
his meaning without further words on his part, but it
was also a little irritating when the flash didn’t come.
And, now that she came to think of it, except that he
allowed it to be inferred that he found Britomart Bel-
THE STONE WALL 385

chamber a bit lumpish, she didn’t know what he thought,
not merely of herself, but of women at all.

And yet there was a passed-through-the-furnace look
about him that might have piqued any woman. It was
not conceivable that his eyes had softened only over
inspired passages in proof, or that the tenderest speeches
his lips had shaped had been the “‘ Novum’s”’ rallying-
cries to the devoted band of the New Imperialists.
Amory was sure that his memory must be a maze of
things, less spacious perhaps, but far more interesting
than these. He looked widely now, but must have
looked close and intense too. He pronounced upon the
Empire, but, for all he was not married, must have
probed deep into the palpitating human heart as
well.

Amory was just thinking what a gage of intimacy an
unembarrassed silence can be when Mr. Strong broke
it. He lighted another cigarette at the end of the
last, turned, threw the end on the asbestos log, and
stood looking at the purring blue and yellow jets. No
doubt he was full of the Indian policy again.

But as it happened it was not the Indian policy—
“Oh,” Mr. Strong said, “I meant to ask you—Who
was that fellow who came up here one day?”

This was so vague that when Amory said “ What
fellow?” Mr. Strong himself saw the vagueness, and
laughed.

“Of course: ‘How. big is a piece of wood?’—I
mean the fellow who came to the Witan in a morning-
coat ?”?
386 A CROOKED MILE

This was description enough. Amory’s back
straightened a little.

“Oh, Stanhope Tasker! Oh, just the husband of a
friend of mine. I don’t think you’ve met her. Why?”

Surely, she thought, Mr. Strong was not going to tell
her that “Stanhope Tasker was an excellent fellow in
his way, but ,” as he had said of Mr. Brimby, Mr.
Wilkinson and Mr. Prang!

“Oh, nothing much. Only that I saw him to-day,”
Strong replied offhandedly.

“He’s often about. He isn’t a very busy man, I
should say,” Amory remarked.

“ Saw him in Charing Cross Road as I was coming
out of the office,’ Mr. Strong continued. “I don’t
think he saw me though.”

“ After his abominable manners to you that day I
should think he’d be ashamed to look you in the face.”

For a moment Mr. Strong looked puzzled; then he
remembered, and laughed again.

“ Oh, I didn’t mind that in the least! Rather re-
freshing in fact. Far more iikely he didn’t notice me
because he had his wife with him. I think you said he
was married ?”

Amory was just about to say that Mr. Strong gave
Stan far more magnanimity than he deserved when a
thought arrested her. Dorothy in Charing Cross Road!
As far as she was aware Dorothy had not been out of
Hampstead for weeks, and even then kept to the less
frequented parts of the Heath. It wasn’t likely... .

Her eyes became thoughtful.

“Oh? That’s funny,” she said.

 

 
THE STONE WALL 387

“What, that he shouldn’t see me? Oh no. They
seemed far more interested in electric-light fittings.”

Amory’s eyes grew more thoughtful still—“ Oh!”
she said; and added, “ Did you think her pretty?”

“Hm—in a way. Very well dressed certainly;
they both were. But I don’t think these black Spanish
types amuse we much,” Mr. Strong replied.

Dorothy a black Spanish type!

“Oh, do tell me what she had on!” said Amory
brightly.

She rather thought she knew most of Dorothy’s
dresses by this time.

A black Spanish type!

The task of description was too much for Mr. Strong,
but he did his best with it. Amory was keenly inter-
ested. But she pocketed her interest for the present,
and said quite banteringly and with an almost arch look,
“Oh, I should have thought Mrs. Tasker exactly your
type!”

Again the quick motion of Mr. Strong’s blue eyes
suggested an audible click—“ Oh? Why?” he asked.

“Oh, there’s no ‘ why’ about it, of course. It’s the
impression of you I had, that’s all. You see, you don’t
particularly admire Miss Belchamber a

“Oh, come! I think Miss Belchamber’s an exceed-
ingly nice girl, only———”

“Well, Laura Beamish, then. But I forgot; you
don’t go to Walter’s Lectures. But I wonder whether
you'd admire Laura?”

“Tf she’s black and Spanish you think I should?”
He paused. “Is she?”

 

 
388 A CROOKED MILE

“No. Brown and stringy rather, and with eyes that’
open and shut very quickly. . . . But I’m very absurd.
There’s no Law about these things really. Only, you
see, I’ve no idea of the kind of woman you do admire?”

She said it smilingly, but that did not mean that she
was not perfectly candid and natural about it too. Why
not be natural about these things? Amory knew
people who were natural enough about their preferred
foods and clothing and houses; was a woman less than
an entrée, or a bungalow, or a summer overcoat? Be
sides, it was so very much more intrinsically interest-
ing. Walter Wyron had made a whole Lecture on it—
Lecture No. II, “ Types and Tact,” and Walter had
barely touched the fringe of the subject. Amory
wanted to go a little deeper than that. But she also
wanted to get away from those vulgarized words and
ready-made conclusions, and to have each case con-
sidered on its merits. Surely it ought to be possible
to say that the presence of a person affected you pleas-
antly, or unpleasantly, without sniggering inferences
of a liaison in the one case or of a rupture in the other!

Therefore it was once more just a little irritating
that Mr. Strong, instead of telling her what type he
did admire, should merely laugh and say, “ Well—
not Mrs. Tasker.” If Amory had a criticism at. all
to make of Mr. Strong it was this habit of his of
negatives, that sometimes almost justified the nickname
Mr. Brimby had given him, of “ Stone Wall Strong.”
So she dropped one hand from her chin, allowing it
to hang loose over her knee while the other forearm
still kept its swan’s-neck curve, and said abruptly,
THE STONE WALL 389

“ Well—about the Indian Number. Let’s get on.”
“ Ah, yes,” said Mr. Strong. “ Let’s get on.”
“‘What had we decided?”

“ Only Prang’s article so far.”

“But you say you have your doubts about it?”

Mr. Strong hesitated. “Only about its selling-
power,” he said with a little shrug. “We must sell
the paper, you see. It’s not paying its way yet.”

“Well, I’m sure that’s not Mr. Prang’s fault,”
Amory retorted. “ He’s practically made the export
circulation.”

“You mean the Bombay circulation? Yes, I sup-
pose he has. I don’t deny it.”

“You can’t deny it. Since Prang began to write
for us we’ve done awfully well in Bombay.”

To that too, Mr. Strong assented. Then Amory,
after a moment’s pause, spoke quietly. She did not
‘like to think of her editor as jealous of his own con-
tributors.

““T know you don’t like Mr. Prang,” she said, look--
ing fixedly at the asbestos log.

“TIT!” began Stone Wall Strong. “Why, you
know I think he’s a first rate fellow, if onl: iu

This time, however, Amory really did intend to get
it out of him. For once she would have one of those
hung-up sentences completed.

“ Tf only what?” she said, looking up at him.

“Oh, I don’t know—as you said a moment ago,
there’s no ‘ why’ about these things——”

“But I did give you my impression. You don’t
give me yours.” .

 
390 A CROOKED MILE

“You did, I admit. Yes, I admit you did....
What is it you want to know, then?”

“ Only why you seem so doubtful about Mr. Prang.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Strong... .

Those who knew Edgar Strong the best said that he
was a man who, other things being equal, would rather
go straight than not. Even when the other things were
not quite equal, he still had a mild preference for
straightness. But if other people positively insisted that
he should deviate from straightness, very well; that was
their lookout. He had been a good many things in his
time—-solicitor’s clerk, free-lance journalist, book-
pedlar, election-agent’s minion, Vanner, poetic vaga-
bond, and always an unerring “ spotter” of the liter-
ary son of the farming squire the moment he appeared
in sight; and the “ Novum” was the softest job he
had found yet. If the price of his keeping it was that
he should look its owner’s wife long and earnestly in
the eyes, as if in his own there lay immeasurable things,
not for him to give but for her to take if she list, so
be it; he would sleep none the less well in his rent-free
bedroom behind the “ Novum’s” offices afterwards.
His experience of far less comfortable sleeping-quarters
had persuaded him that in this imperfect world a man
is entitled to exactly what he can get.

His eyes, nevertheless, did not seek Amory’s, In-
stead, roving round the room to see if nothing less
would serve (leaving him still with the fathomless look
in reserve for emergencies), they fell on the Benares
tray and the casts. And as they remained there he
suddenly frowned. Amory’s own eyes followed his;
THE STONE WALL 391

and suddenly she felt again that little creeping thrill.
A faint colour and warmth, new and pleasurable, came
into her cheeks.

Then with a little rush, her discovery came upon
her...

She had got something from Mr. Strong at last!

Her head drooped a little away from him, and the
hand that had hung laxly over her knee dropped gently
to the rug. It was a delicious moment. So all these
weeks and weeks Mr. Strong had cared that that foot,
that arm, had been exposed to the gaze of anybody
who might have entered the house! He had’ not said
so; he did not say so now; but that was it! ‘More, he
had cared so much that it had quite distorted his judg-
ment of Mr. Prang. And all at once Amory remem-
bered something else—a glance Edgar Strong had given
her, neither more nor less eloquent. than the look he was
bending on the casts now, one afternoon when she
had lain in the hammock in the garden and Mr. Prang,
bending over her, had ventured to examine a locket
about her throat. ...

So that was at the bottom of his reserve! That was
the meaning of his “buts”! ...

Amory did not move. She wished it might last for
hours. Mr. Strong had taken a step towards the casts,
but, changing his mind, had turned away again; and
she was astonished to find how full of meaning dozens
of his past gestures became now that she had the key to
them. And she knew that the casts were beautiful.
Brucciani would have bought them like a shot. And
she seemed to see Mr. Strong’s look, piteous and frown-
392 A CROOKED MILE

ing both at once, if she should sell them to Brucciani,
and Brucciani should publish them to hang in a hun-
dred studios. .

The silence between them continued.

But speak she must, and it would be better to do
so before he did; and by and bye she lifted her head
again. But she did not look directly at him.

“Tt was very foolish,” she murmured with beauti-
ful directness and simplicity.

Mr. Strong said nothing.

“ But for weeks I’ve been intending to move them.”

Mr. Strong shrugged his shoulders. It was as if
he said, “Well better late than never... but you
see, now.”

“Yes,” breathed Amory, softly, but aloud.

The next moment Mr. Strong was himself again. He
returned to his station by the asbestos log.

“ Well, there’s Prang’s article,” he said in his busi-
ness voice. ‘‘ Am I to have it set up?”

“Perhaps we’d better see what Cosimo says first,”
Amory replied.

She did not know which was the greater delicacy
in Mr. Strong—the exquisite tact of the glance he had
given at the casts, or the quiet strength with which he
took up the burden of editing the “ Novum” again.
V

THREE SHIPS

WHITE October mist lay over the Heath, and

the smell of burning leaves came in at the pond-

room window of Dorothy Tasker’s flat. But the smell

was lost on Dorothy. All her intelligence was for the

moment concentrated in one faculty, the faculty of

hearing. She was sure Jackie had swallowed a safety-

pin, and she was anxiously listening for the click with
which it might come unstuck.

“ Shall I send for the doctor, m’m?” said Ruth, who
stood holding the doorknob in her aproned hand. She
had been called away from her “ brights,” and there
was a mournful relish of Jackie’s plight on her face.

“No,” said Dorothy. . .. “Oh, I know there were
twelve of them, and now there are only eleven! ...
Have you put one of these things into your mouth,
Jackie?”

“He put it up his nose, mumsie, like he did some
boot-buttons once,” said Noel cheerfully.

“ But he couldn’t do that. . . . Have you swallowed
it, Jackie?”

“Mmm,” said Jackie resolutely, as who should say
that that which his hand (or in this case his mouth)

found to do he did with all his might.
393
394 A CROOKED MILE

“Oh dear!” sighed Dorothy, leaning back in her
chair...

She supposed it was the still white weather that
weighed on her spirits; she hoped so, for if it was not
that it was something worse. Even dreary weather was
better than bankruptcy. She had sent her pass-book to
the bank to be balanced; until it should come back she
refused to look at the pile of tradesmen’s books that
stood on her writing-desk ;‘and borrowing from her aunt
was not borrowing at all, but simply begging, since
Aunt Grace regarded the return of such loans as the
last of affronts.

And (she sighed again) she had been so well-off at
the time of her marriage! Why, she had had well over
a thousand a year from Hallowell and Smith’s alone!
. . . But Stan had had a few debts which had had to
be settled, and Stan’s knowledge of the style in which
things ought to be done had been rather a drawback
on that trip they had taken to the Riviera, for his
ideas of hotels had been a little splendacious, and of
dinners to “a few friends” rather daring; and, with
one thing and another, the problem of how to satisfy
champagne tastes on a beer income had never been really
satisfactorily solved by Stan, poor old boy. And he
never, never grumbled at home, not even when the cold
beef came on three evenings together, which was harder
on’ him than it was on most people. He did what he
could to earn, too. It wasn’t his fault that the standard
of efficiency in the Army was so impracticably high, nor
that he had been packed off to try his luck in Canada
with the disadvantage of being a remittance-man, nor
THREE SHIPS 395

that, at the age of twenty-seven, when his father had
died, he had had to turn to and compete for this job
or that with a horde of capable youngsters years his
juniors and with fewer hampering decencies. It was
his father’s fault and Aunt Susan’s really, for having
sent him to Marlborough and Sandhurst without being
able to set him properly on his feet afterwards. Such
victims of circumstances, on a rather different level,
made husbands who stopped at home and cleaned the
knives and took the babies out in the perambulator.
In Stan’s case the natural result had been to make a
young man fit only to join as a ranker or to stand with
his back to a mirror in a suspect card-room.

“ Shall I take him away, m’m?” Mrs. Mossop asked
—(“ And prepare his winding-sheet,” her tone seemed
to add).

“Yes, do,” Dorothy replied, with a glance at Ruth’s
blackened hands. ‘ And please make yourself fit to be
seen, Ruth. You know you oughtn’t to be doing all
that on the very day I let Norah out.”

She knew that her rebuke had set Ruth up in the
melancholy enjoyment of resentment for half a week,
but she was past caring. Ruth rose an inch in height
at being chidden for the faithful performance of her
most disagreeable duties; she turned; and as she bore
the Bits away the mighty roar into which Jackie broke
diminished in volume down the passage.

Dorothy sighed, that all her troubles should thus
crowd on her at once. Her eyes fell again on the
tradesmen’s books. It hardly seemed worth while to
pay them, since they would only come in again next
396 a CROOKED MILE

week, as clamorous and urgent as ever. They were
thrust through the letterbox like letters; Dorothy knew
very well the thud with which they fell on the floor;
but she could never help running out into the hall when
they came. She had tried the plan of dispensing with
books altogether and paying for everything in cash as
she got it, but that had merely meant, not one large
worry a week, but harassing little ones all the week
through.

Oh, why had she squandered, or allowed Stan to
squander, those good round sovereigns of Hallowell
and Smith’s!

Still—there is measure in everything—she had not
sent her pass-book to the bank in order to learn whether
she had a balance. That would have been too awful.
It was the amount of her margin that she wanted, and
feared, to know. For presently there would be the
doctor to pay, and so many guineas a week at the Nurs-
ing Home, and the flat going on just the same, and
poor old Stan pathetically hoping that a casual dinner-
table puff in a Marlborough voice would result in fat
new ledger-accounts for Fortune and Brooks’ and mag-
nificent commissions for himself. If only she could
get just a little ahead of her points! But the money
went out just slightly quicker than it came in. Stan
carved it as it were in twopences off the cold beef, the
Bits swallowed it in. pennorths with their breadcrumbs
and gravy, and directly the strain eased for a little,
down swooped the rent and set everything back again
exactly where it had been three months before.

And the Income Tax people had actually sent Stan

 
THREE SHIPS 397

a paper, wanting to know all about his income from
lands, hereditaments, etc., and warning him that his
wife’s income must be accounted as part of his
own!

But it must not be supposed that Dorothy had al-
lowed things to come to this pass without having had
an idea. She had an idea, and one that she thought a
very good one. Nevertheless, an idea is one thing, and
the execution thereof at the proper time quite another.
For example, the proper moment for the execution of this
idea of Dorothy’s was certainly now, or at any rate at
the Christmas Quarter (supposing she herself was up
and about again by that time and had found a satis-
factory subtenant for the flat). But the person against
whom her idea was designed—who, by the way, hap-
pened to be her unsuspecting and much-loved aunt,
Lady Tasker—was a very present difficulty. Dorothy
knew for a fact that what would be admirably conven-
ient for herself at Christmas could not possibly be con-
venient to her aunt until, at the very earliest, next sum-
mer. That was the crab—the intervening period of
nine months. She knew of no mandragora that would
put herself, Stan and her Bits of Impudence gently to
sleep, to wake up again to easier times.

Oh, why had she spent those beautiful thick sover-
eigns of Hallowell and Smith’s so recklessly !—

The mist lay flat over the pond outside, making in
one corner of it a horrible scum, from which the swans,
seeking their food, lifted blackened necks. There was
never a ripple on the pond-room walls to-day. Slowly
Dorothy rose. Moping was useless; she must do some-
398 A CROOKED MILE

thing. She crossed to her writing-desk and took from
one of its drawers a fat file, concertina-ed like her own
accordion-pleated skirts; and she sat down and opened
it fan-wise on her knee. It was full of newspaper-cut-
tings, draft “ideas” for advertisements, and similar
dreary things. She sighed again as her listless fingers
began to draw them out. She had not thought at one
time that she would ever come to this. By a remark-
able piece of luck and light-heartedness and ingenuity
she had started at Hallowell and Smith’s at the top of
the tree; the brains of underlings had been good enough
to cudgel for such scrap-stuff as filled her concertina-
file; but that was all changed now. Light come, light
go; and since the lapse of her contracts she had been
glad not only to devise these ignoble lures for the public,
but to draw them also. They formed the pennies-three-
farthings that came in while Stan carved the twopences
from the joint. She had thought the good times were
going to last for ever. They hadn’t. She now looked
enviously up to those who had been her own subordi-
nates.

With no heart in her task at all, Dorothy set about
the drafting of an advertisement.

She was just beginning to forget about swallowed
safety-pins, and poor luckless Stan, and guineas for her
Nursing Home, and the prospect of presently having
seven mouths, big and little, to feed—she was even be-
ginning to cease to hear the clamour of the Bits in the
room along the passage—when there came a ring at
the bell. Her fair head did not move, but her blue eyes
stole abstractedly sideways as Ruth passed the pond-
THREE SHIPS , 399

room door. Then a man’s voice sounded, and Dorothy
dropped her pen... .

“Mrs. Tasker,” she had heard, with the “a” cut
very short and two “s’s” in her name... . .

The next moment Ruth had opened the pond-room
door, and, in tones that plainly said “ You needn’t think
that I’ve forgotten about just now, because I haven’t,”
announced: “ Mr. Miller.”

Now it was curious that Dorothy had just been think-
ing about Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller was Hallowells’
Publicity Manager, and the time had been when Doro-
thy had had Mr. Miller completely in her pocket. She
had obtained that comfortable contract of hers from Mr.
Miller, and if during the latter part of its continuance
she had taken her duties somewhat lightly and her
pleasures with enormous gusto, she was not sure that
Mr. Miller had not done something of the same kind.
But the firm, which could excuse itself from a renewal
of her own contract, for some reason or other could not
get rid of Mr. Miller; and now here was Mr. Miller
unexpectedly in Dorothy’s flat—seeking her, which is
far better for you than when you have to do the seek-
ing. He stood there with his grey Trilby in his hand
and his tailor-made deltoids almost filling the aperture
of the doorway.

“ There, now, if I wasn’t right!” said Mr. Miller
with great satisfaction, advancing with one hand out-
stretched. “I fixed it all up with myself coming along
that you’d be around the house. I’ve had no luck all
the week, and I said to myself as I got out of the
el’vator at Belsize Park, ‘It’s doo to change.’ And
400 A CROOKED MILE

here I find you, right on the spot. I hope this is not an
introosion. How are you? And how’s Mr. Stan?”

He shook hands heartily with Dorothy, and looked
round for a place in which to put his hat and stick.

“Why, now, this is comfortable,” he went on, draw-
ing up the chair to which Dorothy pointed. “TI like
your English fires. They may not have all the advan-
tages of steam-heat, but they got a look about ’em—the
Home-Idee. And you’re looking just about right in
health, Mrs. Tasker, if I may say so. You English
women have our N’York ladies whipped when it comes
to complexion, you have for sure. And how’s the fam-
ily: ae

But here Mr. Miller suddenly stopped and looked at
Dorothy again. If the look that came into his eyes
had come into those of a young unmarried woman,
Dorothy would have fled there and then. He dropped
his head for a moment as people do who enter a church ;
then he raised it again.

“ Tf you’ll pardon an old married man and the father
of three little goils,” Mr. Miller said, his eyes rever-
ently lifted and his voice suddenly altered, “—but am
I right in supposing that . . . another little gift from
the storks, as my dear old Mamie—that was my dear
old negro nurse—used to say?” Then, without waiting
for the unrequired answer, he straightened his back and
squared his deltoids in a way that would have made
any of Holbein’s portraits of Henry the Eighth look
like that of a slender young man. His voice dropped
three whole tones, and again he showed Dorothy the
little bald spot on the crown of his head.

 
THREE SHIPS 401

“Tm glad. I say I’m glad. I’m vurry glad. I
rejoice. And I should like to shake Mr. Stan by the
hand. I should like to shake you by the hand too, Mrs.
Tasker.” Then, when he had done so: “It’s the
Mother-Idee. The same, old-fashioned Idee, like our
own mothers. It makes one feel good. KReverent. I
got no use for a young man but what he shows lats of
reverence for his mother. The old Anglo-Saxon-Idee
—reverence for motherhood. . . . And when, if an old
married man may ask the question. ?

Dorothy laughed and blushed and told him. Mr.
Miller, dropping his voice yet another tone, told her in
return that he knew of no holier place on oith than the
chamber in which the Anglo-Saxon-Idee of veneration
for motherhood was renewed and sustained. And then,
after he had said once more that he rejoiced, there fell
a silence.

Dorothy liked Mr. Miller. Once you got over his re-
markable aptitude for sincerities he had an excellent
heart. Nevertheless she could not imagine why he
had come. She shuddered as he seemed for a moment
to be once more on the point of removing his shoes at
the door of the Mosque of Motherhood, but apparently
he thought better of it. Squaring his shoulders again,
and no doubt greatly fortified by his late exercise, he
said, “ Well, I always feel more of a man after I felt
the throb of a fellow-creature’s heart. That’sso. And
now you'll be wondering what’s brought me up here?
Well, the fact is, Mrs. Tasker, I’m wurried. I got
wurries. You can see the wurry-map on my face.
Hallowells’ is wurrying me. I ain’t going to tell you

 
402 A CROOKED MILE

Hallowells’ ain’t what it was in its pammy days; it
may be, or it may not; mebbe you’ve heard the talk
that’s going around?”

“No,” said Dorothy.

“Ts that so? Well, there is talk going around.
There’s a whole push of people, knocking us all the
time. They ain’t of much account themselves, but they
knock us. It’s a power the inferior mind has. And
I say I’m wurried about it.”

Dorothy, in spite of her “No,” had heard of the
“knocking ” of Hallowell and Smiths’, and her heart
gave an excited little jump at the thought that flashed
across her mind. Did Hallowells’ want her back?
The firm had been launched upon London with every
resource of publicity; Dorothy herself had been the
author of its crowning device; and whereas the motto
of older firms had been Courtesy Costs Nothing,”
Hallowells’ had vastly improved upon this. Courtesy
had, as a matter of fact, cost them a good deal; but the
rewards of the investment had been magnificent. Mr.
Miller had known that if you say to people often enough
“See how courteous I am,” you are to all intents and
purposes courteous. But what Mr. Miller had not
known had been the precise point at which it is neces-
sary to begin to build up a strained reputation again.
Commercial credit too, like those joints Stan carved,
comes in in twopence-halfpennies but goes out in three-
pences.... And so the “knocking” had begun.
Rumours had got about that Hallowells’ was a shop
where you were asked, after a few unsuitable articles
had been shown to you, whether you didn’t intend to
THREE SHIPS: 403

buy anything, and where you might wait for ten min-
utes at a counter while two assistants settled a private
difference behind it. Did Mr. Miller want her help in
restoring the firm’s fair name? Did he intend to offer
her another contract? Were there to be more of Hallo-
wells’ plump, ringing sovereigns—that she would know
better how to take care of this time? It was with diffi-
culty that she kept her composure as Mr. Miller con-
tinued :

“There’s no denying but what inferior minds have
that power,” he went sorrowfully on. “ They can’t build
up an enterprise, but they can knock, and they been
good and busy. You haven’t heard of it? Well, that’s
good as far as it goes, but they been at it for all that.
Now I don’t want to knock back at your country, Mrs.
Tasker, but it seems to me that’s the English character.
Yow’re hostile to the noo. The noo gives you cold feet.
You got a terrific capacity for stopping put. Your
King Richard Core de Lion did things in a certain
way, and it ain’t struck you yet that he’s been stiff and
straight quite a while. And so when you see some-
thing with snap and life to it you start knocking.” Mr.
Miller spoke almost bitterly. ‘‘ But I ain’t holding you
personally responsible, Mrs. Tasker. I reckon you’re
a wonderful woman. Yours is a reel old family, and if
anybody’s the right to knock it’s you; but yow appreciate
the noo. You look at it in the light of history. You
got the sense of world-progress. You're a sort of Lady
Core de Lion to-day. I haven’t forgotten the Big Idee
you started us off with. And so I come to you, and tell
you, straight and fair, we want you.”
404 A CROOKED MILE

Dorothy was tingling with excitement; but she took
up a piece of sewing—the same piece on which she had
bent her modest gaze when she had machinated against
her aunt on the afternoon on which Lady Tasker had
come on, weary and thirsty, from the Witan. It was
a piece she kept for such occasions as these. She
stitched demurely, and Mr. Miller went on again :—

“We want you. We want those bright feminine
brains of yours, Mrs. Tasker. And your ladies’ in-
tooition. We're stuck. We want another Idee like the
last. And so we come to the department where we got
satisfaction before.” _

Dorothy spoke slowly. She was glad the pond-room
was beautifully furnished—glad, too, that the hours
Ruth spent over her “ brights ”’ were not spent in vain.
The porcelain gleamed in her cabinets and the silver
twinkled on her tables. At any rate she did not look
poor.

“ This is rather a surprise,’ she said. “I hardly
know what to say. J hadn’t thought of taking on an-
other contract.”

But here Mr. Miller was prompt enough.

“ Well, I don’t know that we were thinking of a noo
contract exactly. You're a lady with a good many
responsibilities now, and ain’t got too much time for
contracts, I guess. No, it ain’t a contract. It’s an
Idee we want.”

Far more quickly than Dorothy’s hopes had risen they
dropped again at this. “An Idee:” naturally! ...
Everybody wanted that. She had not had to hawk an
idea like the last—so simple, so shapely, so beauty-
THREE SHIPS 405

bright. And she had learned that it is not the ideas,
but what follows them, that pays—the flat and unin-
spired routine that forms the everyday work of a lucra-
tive contract. It is the irony of this gipsy life of liv-
ing by your wits. You do a stately thing and starve;
you follow it up—or somebody else does—with faint
and empty echoes of that thing, and you are overfed.
An Idea—but not a contract; a picking of her brains,
but no permanent help against that tide of tradesmen’s
books that flowed in at the front door. . . . And Doro-
thy knew already that for another reason Mr. Miller
had sought her out in vain. Ideas are not repeated.
They visit us, but we cannot fetch them. And as for
echoes of that former inspiration of hers, no doubt Mr.
Miller had thought of all those for himself and had
rejected them.

“T see,” she said slowly... .

“ Well,” said Mr. Miller, his worry-map really pite-
ous, “ I wish you could tell me where we’ve gone wrong.
It must be something in the British character we ain’t
appreciated, but what, well, that gets me. We been
Imperialistic. There ain’t been one of our Monthly
House Dinners but what we’ve had all the Loyal Toasts,
one after the other. There ain’t been a Royal Wedding
but what we’ve had a special window-display, and
christenings the same, and what else you like. We
-ain’t got gay with the Union Jack nor Rotten Row nor
the House of Lords. We’ve reminded folk it was your
own King George who said ‘Wake up, Eng-
land——_!’ ”

But at this point Mr. Miller’s doleful recital was
406 A CROOKED MILE

cut short by a second ring at the bell. Again Ruth’s
step was heard in the passage outside, and again Ruth,
loftily sulky but omitting no point of her duty, stood
with the door-knob in her hand.

“ Mrs. Pratt,” she announced ; and Amory entered.

Seeing Mr. Miller, however, she backed again. Mr.
Miller had risen and bowed as if he was giving some
invisible person a “back” for leapfrog.

“Oh, I do so beg your pardon!” said Amory hur-
riedly. “TI didn’t know you’d anybody here. But—
if I could speak to you for just a moment, Dorothy—
it won’t take a minute——”

“‘ Please excuse me,” said Dorothy to Mr. Miller;
and she went out.

She was back again in less than three minutes. Her
face had an unusual pinkness, but her voice was calm.
She did not sit down again. Neither did she extend
her hand to Mr. Miller in a too abrupt good-bye.
Nevertheless, that worried man bowed again, and looked
round for his hat and stick.

“T shall have to think over what you’ve been saying,”
Dorothy said. “ I’ve no proposal to make off-hand, you
see—and I’m rather afraid that just at present I shan’t
be able to come and see you iy

There were signs in Mr. Miller’s bearing of another
access of reverence.

“So I'll write. Or better still, if it’s not too much’
trouble for you to come and see me again ? Per-
haps I’d better write first—But you'll have tea, won’t
you?”

 

 
THREE SHIPS 407

Mr. Miller put up a refusing hand.—“ No, I thank
you.—So you'll do your possible, Mrs. Tasker? That’s
vurry good of you. I’m wurried, and I rely on your
sharp feminine brains. As for the honorarium, we
shan’t quarrel about that. I wish I could have shaken
hands with Mr. Stan. There ain’t a happier and
prouder moment in a man’s life than .

“ Good-bye.”

And the father of the three little goils of his own
took his leave.

No sooner had he gone than Dorothy’s brows con-
tracted. She took three strides across the room and
rang for Ruth. Never before had she realized the in-
feriority, as a means of expressing temper, of an elec-
tric bell to a hand-rung one or to one of which a yard or
two of wire can be ripped from the wall. Only by
mere continuance of pressure till Ruth came did she
obtain even a little relief. To the high resolve on
Ruth’s face she paid no attention whatever.

“A parcel will be coming from Mrs. Pratt,” she
said. ‘ Please see that it goes back at once.”

Ruth’s head was heroically high. The late Mr.
Mossop had had his faults, but he had not kept his
finger on electric-bell buttons till she came. .

“No doubt there’s them as would give better satis-
faction, m’m,” she said: warningly.

But Dorothy rushed on her fate-— There seems
very little satisfaction anywhere to-day,” she answered.

“Then I should wish to give the usual notice,” said
Ruth.

 
408 A CROOKED MILE

“Very well,” said the reckless mistress... .
“Ruth!” (Ruth returned). ‘ You forgot what I said
about always shutting the door quietly.”

This time the door closed so quietly behind Ruth
that Dorothy heard her outburst into tears on the other
side of it.

Second-hand woollies for her Bits! .. . Of course
Amory Pratt had made the proposal with almost effu-
sive considerateness. No doubt the twins, Corin and
Bonniebell, had outgrown them. Dorothy did not sup-
pose for a moment that they were not the best of their
kind that money could buy; the Pratts seemed to roll
in money. And beyond all dispute the winter might
come any morning now, and the garments would just
fit Jackie. But—her own Bits! . . . she had had her
back to the bedroom window when the offer had been
made; she knew that her sudden flush had not showed ;
and her voice had not changed as she had deliberately
told her lie—that she had bought the children’s winter
outfits only the day before... .

“T’m sure you won’t have any difficulty in giving
them away,” she had concluded as she had passed to
the bedroom door.

“Far less difficulty than you’ll find here,” she might
have added, but had forborne. .. .

Other children’s woollies for her little Jackie!

What gave sting to the cut was that Jackie sorely
needed them; but then it was not like Amory Pratt,
Dorothy thought bitterly, to make a graceful gift of
an unrequired thing. She must blunder into people’s
necessities. A gift of a useless Teddy Bear or of a

 
THREE SHIPS 409

toy that would be broken in a week Dorothy might not
have refused; but mere need!—“‘ Oh!” Dorothy ex-
claimed, twisting in her chair with anger... .

What a day! Whata life! And what a little thing
thus to epitomize the whole hopeless standstill of their
circumstances !

And because it was a little thing, it had a power
over Dorothy that twenty greater things would not
have had. She was about to call the precious and dis-
paraged Jackie when she thought better of it. In-
stead, she dropped her face into her hands and melted
utterly. What Ruth did in the kitchen she did in the
pond-room; and Jackie, who caught the contagion,
filled the passage between with an inconsolable howling.

It was into this house of lamentation that Stan
entered at half-past four.

“ Steady, there!” he called to his younger son; and
Jackie’s bellow ceased instantaneously.

“ Ruth’s eying, so I ¢ied too,” he confided solemnly
to his father; and the two entered the pond-room to-
gether, there to find Dorothy also in tears.

“Hallo, what’s this?” said Stan. “ Jackie, run
and tell Ruth to hurry up with tea.... Head up,
Dot—let’s have a look at you i

Perhaps he meant that Dot should have a look at
him, for his face shone with an—alas!—not unwonted
excitement. Dorothy had seen that shining before.
It usually meant that he had been let in on the ground
floor of the International Syndicate for the manufac-
ture of pig-spears, or had secured an option on the
world’s supply of wooden pips for blackberry jam, or

 
410 A CROOKED MILE

an agency for a synthesized champagne. And she
never dashed the perennial hopefulness of it. ‘The
poor old boy would have been heartbroken had he been
allowed to suppose that he was not, in intent at any
rate, supporting his. wife and children.

“What is it, old girl?” he said. “Just feeling
low, eh? Never mind. I’ve some news for you.”

Dorothy summoned what interest she could.— Not
an agency or anything?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

“ Petter than that.” og

“Well, some agencies are very good.”

“ Not as good as this!”

“Put your arm round me. I’ve been feeling so
wretched ! ”

“Come and sit here. There. Wretched, eh?
Well, would three hundred a year cheer you up any?”

Tt would have, very considerably ; but Stan’s schemes
were seldom estimated to produce a sum less than that.

“Eh?” Stan continued. “ Paid weekly or monthly,
whichever I like, and a month’s screw to be going on
with?”

Suddenly Dorothy straightened herself in his arms.
She knew that Stan was trying to rouse her, but he
needn’t use a joke with quite so sharp a barb. She
sank back again.

“Don’t, dear,” she begged. “I know it’s stupid of
me, but I’m so dull today. You go out somewhere
this evening, and I'll go to bed early and sleep it off.
I shall be all right again in the morning.”

But from the pocket into which she herself had put
four half-crowns that very morning—all she could
THREE SHIPS 411

spare—Stan drew out a large handful of silver, with
numerous pieces of gold sticking up among it. A
glance told her that Stan was not likely to have backed
a winner at any such price as that. Other people did,
but not Stan. She had turned a little pale.

“Tell me, quick, Stan!” she gasped.

“You laughed rather at the Fortune & Brooks idea,
didn’t you?”

“Oh, don’t joke, darling !——”

“Eh?...I say, you’re upset. Anything been
happening to-day? Look here, let me get you a drink
or something! ”

“Do you mean—you’ve got a job, Stan?”

“ Rather!—I say, do let me get you a dri

“T shall faint if you don’t tell me——”

She probably would... .

Stan had got a job. What was it, this job that had
enabled Stan to come home, before he had lifted a
finger to earn it, with masses of silver in his pocket,
and the clean quids sticking up out of the lump like
almonds out of a trifle?

—He would have to lift more than a finger before
that money was earned. He would have to hang on
wires by his toes, and to swim streams, and to be
knocked down by runaway horses, and to dash into
burning houses, and to fling himself on desperate men,
and to ascend into the air in water-planes and to de-
scend in submarines into the deep. Hydrants would
be turned on him, and sacks of flour poured
on him, and hogsheads of whitewash and bags of
soot. Not for his brains, but for his good looks

2)

 
412 A CROOKED MILE

and steady nerves and his hard physical condition had
he been the chosen one among many. For Stan had
joined a Film Producing Company, less as an actor
than as an acrobat. Go and see him this evening. He
is as well worth your hour as many a knighted actor.
And the scene from “ Quentin Durward,” in which
Bonthron is strung up with the rope round his neck,
is not fake. They actually did string Stan up, in the
studio near Barnet that had been a Drill Hall, and
came precious near to hanging him into the bargain.

But he passed lightly over these and other perils as
he poured it all out to Dorothy at tea. Pounds, not
perils, were the theme of his song.

“J didn’t say anything about it for fear it didn’t
come off,” he said, “but I’ve been expecting it for
weeks.” He swallowed tea and cake at a rate that must
have put his internal economy to as severe a strain as
“ Mazeppa” (Historical Film Series, No. XII) after-
wards did his bones and muscles. “I start on Mon-
day, so breakfast at eight, sharp, Dot. ‘ Lola Montez.’
They’ve got a ripping little girl as Lola; took her out
to tea and shopping the other day; I’ll bring her
round.” (‘No you don’t—not with me sitting here
like a Jumping Bean,” quoth Dorothy). “Oh, that’s
all right—she’s getting married herself next month—
furnishing her flat now—I helped her to choose her
electric-light fittings—you’d like her.... Ain't it
stunning, Dot! si

It was stunning. Part of the stunningness of it was
that Dorothy, with an abrupt “ Excuse me a moment,”
was enabled to cross to her desk and to dash off a note

 
THREE SHIPS 413

to Harrods. Second-hand woollies for her Bits! Oh
no, not if she knew it! ... ‘“ Yes, go on, dear,” she
resumed, returning to the tea-table again. “No, I
don’t wish it was something else. If we’re poor we’re
poor, and the Services are out of the question, and it’s
just as good as lots of other jobs—And oh, that re-
minds me: I had Mr. Miller in this afternoon!” ...
“ And oh!” said Stan ten minutes later; “I forgot,
too! I met’a chap, too—forgotten all about it. That
. fellow I gave a dressing-down about India to up at the
Pratts’ there. He stopped me in the street, and what
do you think? It was all I could do not to laugh.
He asked me whether I could put him on to a job!
Me, who haven’t started myself yet! ... I said I
could put him on to a drink if that would do—I had
to stand somebody a drink, just to wet my luck, and I
didn’t see another soul—and I fetched it all out of
my pocket in a pub in St. Martin’s Lane—,” he fetched
it all out of his pocket again now, “—fetched it out
as if it was nothing—you should have seen him look
at it!—Strong his name is—didn’t catch it that day
he was burbling such stu 7
Dorothy’s eyes shone. Dear old Stan! That too
pleased her. No doubt the Pratts would be told that
Stan was going about so heavily laden with money that
he had to divide the weight in order not to walk lop-
sided.
Worn woollies for His Impudence’s Bits!
Rather not! There would be a parcel round from
Harrods’ to-morrow!

 

 

 
VI

POLICY

MORY would have been far less observant than
she was had it not occurred to her, as she left
Dorothy’s flat that day, that she had been hustled out
almost unceremoniously. She hoped—she sincerely
hoped—that she did not see the reason. To herself,
as to any other person not absolutely case-hardened by
prejudice, the thing that presented itself to her mind
would not have been a reason at all; but these conven-
tional people were so extraordinary, and in nothing
more extraordinary than in their regulations for re-
ceiving callers of the opposite sex. That was what she
meant by the vulgarizing of words and the leaping to
ready-made conclusions. A conventional person com-
ing upon herself and Mr. Strong ‘closeted together
would have his stereotyped explanation; but that was
no reason why anybody clearer-eyed and more open-
minded and generous-hearted should fall into the same
degrading supposition. It would be ridiculous to sup-
pose that there was “ anything” between Dorothy and
Mr. Miller. Amory knew that in the past Dorothy had
had genuine business with Mr. Miller. And so now
had she herself with Mr. Strong. And as for Stan’s
going about in open daylight with a “dark Spanish

type ”’—a type traditionally wickeder than any other
414
POLICY 415

—Amory thought nothing of that either. Stan had as
much right to go about with his Spanish female as
Cosimo had to take Britomart Belechamber to a New
Greek Society matinée or to one of Walter’s Lectures.
Amory would never have dreamed of putting a false
interpretation on these things.

Nevertheless, her visit had been cut singularly short,
and Dorothy plainly had wanted to be rid of her. Be-
cause hearts are kind eyes need not necessarily be
blind. Amory could not conceal from herself that in
magnanimously passing these things over as nothing,
she was, after all, making Dorothy a present of a
higher standard than she had any right to. Judged
by her own standards (which was all the judgment she
could strictly have claimed), there was—Amory would
not say a fishiness about the thing—in fact she would
not say anything about it at all. The less said the
better. Pushed to its logically absurd conclusion,
Dorothy’s standard meant that whenever people of both
sexes met they should not be fewer than three in num-
ber. In Amory’s saner view, on the other hand, two,
or else a crowd, was far more interesting. Nobody
except misanthropists talked about the repulsion of sex.
Very well: if it was an attraction, it was an attraction.
And if it was an attraction to Amory, it was an attrac-
tion to Dorothy also; if to Cosimo, then to Stan as
well. The only difference was that she and Cosimo
openly admitted it and acted upon it, while Stan and
Dorothy did not admit it, but probably acted furtively
on it just the same.

It was very well worth the trouble of the call to have
416 A CROOKED MILE

her ideas on the subject so satisfactorily cleared
up.

At the end of the path between the ponds she hesi-
tated for a moment, uncertain whether to keep to the
road or to strike across the sodden Heath. She decided
for the Heath. Mr. Strong had said that he might
possibly come in that afternoon to discuss the Indian
policy, and she did not want to keep him waiting.

Then once more she remembered her unceremonious
dismissal, and reflected that after all that had left her
with time on her hands. She would take a turn. It
would only bore her to wait in The Witan alone, or,
which was almost the same thing, with Cosimo. The
Witan was rather jolly when there were crowds and
crowds of people there; otherwise it was dull.

She turned away to the right, passed the cricket-
pitch, found the cycle track, and wandered down to-
wards the Highgate ponds.

She had reached the model-yacht pond, and was won-
dering whether she should extend her walk still further,
when she saw ahead of her, sitting on a bench beneath
an ivied stump, two figures deep in conversation. She
recognized them at a glance. They were the figures of
Cosimo and Britomart Belchamber. Britomart was
looking absently away over the pond; Cosimo was
whispering in her ear. Another second or two and
Amory would have walked past them within a yard.

Now Amory and Cosimo had married on certain ex-
press understandings, of which a wise and far-sighted
anticipation of the various courses that might be taken
in the event of their not getting on very well together
POLICY 417

had formed the base. Therefore the little warm flurry
she felt suddenly at her heart could not possibly have
been a feeling of liberation. How could it, when there
was nothing to be liberated from? Just as much lib-
erty as either might wish had been involved in the
contract itself, and a formal announcement of inten-
tion on either part was to be considered a valid release.

And so, in spite of that curious warm tingle, Amory
was not one atom more free, nor one atom less free,
to develop (did she wish it) a relationship with any-
body else—Edgar Strong or anybody—than she had
been before. She saw this perfectly clearly. She had
talked it all over with Cosimo scores of times. Why,
then, did she tingle? Was it that they had not talked
it over enough ?

No. It was because of a certain furtiveness on
Cosimo’s part. Evidently he wished to. “take action ”
(if she might use the expression without being guilty
of a vulgarized meaning) without having made his
formal announcement. That she had come upon them
so far from The Witan was evidence of this. They
had deliberately chosen a part of the Heath they
had thought it unlikely Amory would visit. They
could have done—whatever they were doing—under
her eyes had they wished, but they had stolen off to-
gether instead. It was a breach of the understanding.

Before they had seen her, she left the path, struck
across the grass behind them, and turned her face home-
wards. She was far, far too proud to look back. Cer-
tainly it was his duty to have let her know. Never
mind. Since he hadn’t... .
418 A CROOKED MILE

Yet the tingling persisted, coming and going in quite
pleasurable little shocks. Then all at once she found
herself wondering how far Cosimo and Britomart had
gone, or would go. Not that it was any business of
hers. She was not her husband’s keeper. It would be
futile to try to keep somebody who evidently didn’t
want to be kept. It would also take away the curious
subtle pleasure of that thrill.

She was not conscious that she quickened the steps
that. took her to the studio, where by this time Edgar
Strong probably awaited her.

Most decidedly Cosimo ought to have given her
warning:

As for Britomart Belchamber—sly creature—no
doubt she had aia him to slink away like
that, ’

Well, there would be time enough to deal with her
by and bye——_..

‘Amory reached The Witan again.

As she entered the hall a maid was coming out of
the dining-room. Amory called her.

“Has Mr. Strong been in?”

“ He’s in the studio, m’m,” the maid replied.

“Are the children with Miss Belchamber ?”

“No, m’m. They’re with nurse, m’m.”

“Ts Miss Belchamber in her room?”

“No, m’m. She’s gone out.”

“ How long ago?”

“ About an hour, m’m,

“Ts Mr. Pratt in?”

 

 
POLICY 419

“T think so, m’m. I’ll go and inquire.”

“Never mind. I’m going upstairs.”

Ah! Then they had gone out separately, by pre-
arrangement! More slyness! And this was Cosimo’s
“pretence” at being Miss Belchamber’s devoted ad-
mirer! Of course, if there had been any pretence at
all about it, it would have had to be that he was not
her admirer. Very well; they would see about that,
too, later !

She went quickly to her own room, changed her
blouse for a tea-gown, and then, with that tingling at
her heart suddenly warm and crisp again, descended
to the studio.

It was high time (she told herself) that the “ Nov-
um’s” Indian policy was definitely settled. Mr.
Strong also said so, the moment he had shaken hands
with her and said “ Good afternoon.” But Mr. Strong
spoke bustlingly, as if the more haste he made the more
quickly the job would be over.

“ Now these are the lines we have to choose from,”
he said... .

And he enumerated a variety of articles they had in
hand, including Mr. Prang’s.

“Then there’s this,” he said... . ;

He told Amory about a crisis in the Bombay cotton
trade, and of a scare in the papers that very morning
about heavy withdrawals of native capital from the
North Western Banks. .. .

“But I think the best thing of all would be for me
to write an article myself,” he said, “and to back it

 
420 A CROOKED MILE

up with a number of Notes. What I really want
cleared up is our precise objective. I want to know
what that’s to be.”

“We'll have tea in first, and then we shall be un-
disturbed,” said Amory.

“ Better wait for Cosimo, hadn’t we?”

“ He’s out,” said Amory, passing to the bell.

She sat down on the corner of the sofa, and watched
the maid bring in tea. Mr. Strong, who had placed
himself on the footstool and was making soughing
noises by expelling the air from his locked hands, ap-
peared to be brooding over his forthcoming number.
But that quick little tingle of half an hour before had
had a curious after-effect on Amory. How it had come
about she did not know, but the fact remained that she
was not, now, so very sure that even the “ Novum”
was quite as great a thing as she had supposed it to be.
Or rather, if the “ Novum” itself was no less great,
she had, quite newly, if dimly, foreseen herself in a
more majestic role than that of a mere technical
directrice.

Politics? Yes, it undoubtedly was the Great Game.
Strong men fancied themselves somewhat at it, and
conceited themselves, after the fashion of men, that it
was they who wrought this marvel or that. But was
it? Had there not been women so much stronger than
they that, doing apparently nothing, their nothings
had been more potent than all the rest? She began to
give her fancy play. For example, there was that
about a face launching a thousand ships. That was an
old story, of course; if a face could launch a thousand
POLICY 421

ships so many centuries ago, there was practically no
limit to its powers with the British Navy at its present
magnificent pitch of numerical efficiency. But that by
the way. It was the idea that had seized Amory.
Say a face—Helen’s, she thought it was—had launched
a thousand, or even five hundred ships; where was the
point? Why, surely that that old Greek Lord High
Admiral, whoever he was—(Amory must look him up;
chapter and verse would be so very silencing if she
ever had occasion to put all this into words)—surely
he had thought, as all men thought, that he was obey-
ing no behest but his own. The chances were that he
had hardly wasted a thought on Helen’s face as a factor
in the launching. .. .

Yet Helen’s face had been the real launching force,
or rather the brain behind Helen’s face... but
Amory admitted that she was not quite sure of her
ground there. Perhaps she was mixing Helen up with
somebody else. At any rate, if she was wrong about
Helen she was not wrong about Catherine of Russia.
Nor about Cleopatra. Nor about the Pompadour.
These had all had brains, far superior to the brains of
their men, which they had used through the medium
of their beauty. She knew this because she had been
reading about them quite recently, and could put her
finger on the very page; she had a wonderful memory
for the places in books in which passages occurred. . . .
So there were Catherine the Second, and Cleopatra,
and the Pompadour, even if she had been wrong about
Helen. That was a curious omission of Homer’s, by
the way—or was it Virgil?—the omission of all ref-
422 A CROOKED MILE

erence to the brain behind. Perhaps it had seemed so
obvious that he took it for granted. But barring that,
the notion of a face launching the ships was very fine.
It was the Romantic Point of View. Hitherto Amory
had passed over the Romantic Point of View rather
lightly, but now she rather thought there was a good
deal in it. At any rate that about the face of a woman
being the real launching-force of a whole lot of ships
—well, it was an exaggeration, of course, and in a sense
only a poetic way of putting it—but it was quite a
ripping idea.

So if a ship could be launched, apparently, not by
a mere material knocking away of the thingummy, but
by the timeless beauty of a face, an Indian policy ought
not to present more difficulties. At all events it was
worth trying. Perhaps “trying” was not exactly the
word. These things happened or they didn’t happen.
But anybody not entirely stupid would know what
Amory meant.

The maid lighted the little lamp under the water-
vessel that kept the muffins hot and then withdrew.
Amory turned languidly to Mr. Strong.

“Would you mind pouring out the tea? I’m so
lazy,” she said.

She had put her feet up on the sofa, and her hands
were clasped behind her head. The attitude allowed
the wide-sleeved tea-gown into which she had changed
to fall away from her upper arm, showing her satiny
triceps. The studio was warm; it might be well to
open the window a little; and Amory, from her sofa,
gave the order. It seemed to her that she had not
POLICY 423

given orders enough from sofas. She had been doing
too much of the work herself instead of lying at her
ease and stilly willing it to be done. She knew better
now. It was much better to take a leaf out of the
book of les grandes maitresses. She recognized that
she ought to have done that long ago.

So Mr. Strong brought her tea, and ther returned
to his footstool again, where he ate enormous mouth-
fuls of muffin, spreading anchovy-paste over them, and
drank great gulps of tea. He fairly made a meal of
it. But Amory ate little, and allowed her tea to get
cold. The cast which Stan had coarsely called “the
fore-quarter ” had been hung up on the wall at the
sofa’s end, and her eyes were musingly upon it. The
trotter lay out of sight behind her.

“Well, about that thing of Prang’s,” said Mr.
Strong when he could eat no more. “ Hadn’t we better
be settling about it?”

“Don’t shout across the room,” said Amory lan-
guidly, and perhaps a little pettishly. She was won-
dering what was the matter with her hand that Mr.
Strong had not kissed it when he had said good after-
noon. He had kissed it on a former occasion.

“ Head bad?” said Mr. Strong.

“No, my head’s all right, but there’s no reason we
should edit the ‘ Novum’ from the house-tops.”

“Was I raising my voice? Sorry.”

’ Mr. Strong rose from his footstool and took up a
station between the tea-table and the asbestos log.

Amory was getting rather tired of hearing about that
thing of Prang’s. She did not see why Mr. Strong
424 A CROOKED MILE

should shuffle about it in the way he did. The article
had been twice “ modified,” that was to say more or
less altered, and Amory could hardly be expected to
go on reading it in its various forms for ever. What
did Mr. Strong want? If he whittled much more at
Mr. Prang’s clear statement of a point of view of
which the single virtue was its admitted extremeness,
he would be reducing the “ Novum” to the level of
mere Liberalism, and they had long ago decided that,
of the Conservative who opposed and the Liberal who
killed by insidious kindnesses, the former was to be
preferred as a foe. Besides, there was an alluring
glow about Mr. Prang’s way of writing. No doubt
that was part and parcel of the glamour of the East.
The Eastern style, like the Eastern blood, had more
sun in it. Keats had put that awfully well, in the
passage about “ parched Abyssinia” and “ old Tartary
the Fierce,” and so had that modern man, who had
spoken of Asia as lying stretched out “in indolent
magnificence of bloom.” Yes, there was a funny
witchery about Asia. In all sorts of ways they “ went
it” in Asia. Bacchus had had a spree there, and it
was there—or was that Egypt ?—that Cleopatra or the
Queen of Sheba or somebody had smuggled her satiny
self into a roll of carpets and had had herself carried
as a present to King Solomon or Mark Antony or who-
ever it was. It seemed to be in the Asian atmosphere,
and Mr. Prang’s prose style had a ‘smack of it too,
Mr. Strong—his literary style, of course, she meant—
might have been all the better for a teuch of that blood-
warmth and thrill... .
POLICY 425

And there were ripping bits of reckless passion in
Herodotus too.

But Mr. Strong continued to stand between the tea-
table and the asbestos log, and to let fall irresolute
sentences from time to time. Prang, he said, really
was a bit stiff, and he, Mr. Strong, wasn’t sure that he
altogether liked certain responsibilities. Not that he
had changed his mind in the least degree. He only
doubted whether in the long run it would pay the
“ Novum” itself to acquire a reputation for exploiting
what everybody else knew as well as they did, but left
severely alone. In fact, he had assumed, when he had
taken the job on, that the work for which he received
only an ordinary working-salary would be conditioned
by what other editors did and received for doing it.

At that Amory looked up.

“Oh? But I thought that the truth, regardless of
consequences, was our motto?”

“Of course—without fear or favour in a sense—
but where there are extra risks e

What did this slow-coach of a man mean?
“What risks?” Amory asked abruptly.

“Well, say risks to Cosimo as proprietor.”

“You mean he might lose his money?” she said,
with a glance round the satiny triceps and the apple-
bud of an elbow.

“ Well—does he want to lose his money ?—What I
mean is, that we aren’t paying ou way—we’ve scarcely
any advertisements, you see——”

“T think that what you mean is that we ought to

 

 
426) A CROOKED MILE

become Liberals?” There was a little ring in Amory’s
voice.

Mr. Strong made no reply.

“Or Fabians, perhaps?”

Still Mr. Strong did not answer.

“‘ Because if you do mean that, I can only say I’m
—disappointed in you!”

Now those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew
how exceedingly sensitive he was to those very words
—“T’m disappointed in you.” In his large and
varied experience they were invariably the prelude to
the sack. And he very distinctly did not want the
sack—not, at any rate, until he had got something bet-
ter. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that, of him-
self and Prang, he would be the more discreet, editor,
and so lifted the question a whole plane morally higher.
Perhaps, if it came to the next worst, he was prepared
to accept the foisting of Prang upon him and to take
his chance. Anyway, his face grew very serious, and
he reached for the footstool, drew it close up to
Amory’s couch, and sat down on it. .

“T wonder,” he said slowly, looking earnestly at his
folded hands, “ whether you’ll put the worst interpre
tation on what I’m going to say.”

Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper
arm. Mr. Strong resumed, more slowly still—

“Tt’s this. We're risking things. Cosimo’s risking
his money, but he may be risking more than that. And
if he risks it, so do I.”

Into Amory’s pretty face had come the look of the
woman who prefers men to take risks rather than to
POLICY 427

talk about them.—“‘ What do you risk?” she asked in
tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong.

“Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang’s rather
a whole-hogger. It’s what I said before—we want to
use him, not have him use us.”

“Oh?” said Amory with a faint smile. “ And
can’t you manage Mr. Prang?”

There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong’s mind what
that meant. “Because if you can’t,” it plainly meant,
““T dare say we can find somebody who can.” With-
out any qualification whatever, she really was be
ginning to be a little disappointed in him. She
wondered how Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba would
have felt (had such a thing been conceivable) if, when
that carpet had been carried by the Nubians into her
lover’s presence and unrolled, Antony or whatever his
name was had blushed and turned away, too faint-
hearted to take the gift the gods offered him? Risks!
Weren’t—Indian policies—worth a little risk? .. .

Besides, no doubt Cosimo was still with Britomart
Belchamber. .. .

She put her hands behind her head again and gave
a little laugh.

Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it
in the days when his conversation had been slangier
than it was now), it was up to him to make good pretty
quickly or else to say good-bye to the editorship of a
rag that at least did one bit of good in the world—
paid Edgar Strong six pounds a week. And if it must
be done it must, that was all. Damn it!...

Perhaps the satiny upper arm decided his next
428 A CROOKED MILE

action. Once before he had made its plaster facsimile
serve his turn, and on the whole he would have pre-
ferred to be able to do so again; but even had that
object not been out of reach on the wall and its original
not eighteen inches away at the sofa’s end, three hun-
dred pounds a year in jeopardy must be made surer
than that. He would have given a month’s screw
could Cosimo have come in at that moment. He actu-
ally did give a quick glance in the direction of the
door... .

But no help came.

Damn it: !

The next moment he had kissed that satiny surface,
and then, gloomily, and as one who shoulders the con-
sequences of an inevitable act, stalked away and stood
in the favourite attitude of Mr. Brimby’s heroes under
great stress of emotion—with his head deeply bowed
and his back to Amory. There fell between them a
silence so profound that either became conscious at the
same moment of the soft falling of rain on the studio
roof.

Then, after a full minute and a half, Mr. Strong,
still without turning, walked to the table on which his
hat lay. Always without looking at Amory, he moved
towards the door.

“ Good-bye,” he said over his shoulder.

There was the note of a knell in his tone. He
meant good-bye for ever. All in a moment Amory
knew that on the morrow Cosimo would receive Edgar
Strong’s formal resignation from the “ Novum’s” edi-
torial chair, and that, though Edgar might retain his

 
POLICY 429

hold on the paper until his successor had been found,
he would never come to The Witan any more. He had
called Mr. Prang a whole-hogger, but in Love he him-
self appeared to be rather a whole-hogger. He had all
but told her that to see her again would mean . . . she
trembled. The alternative was not to see her again.
His whole action had said, more plainly than any words
could say, “ After that—all or nothing.”

She had not moved. She hardly knew the voice for
her own in which she said, still without turning her
head, “ Wait—a minute——”

Mr. Strong waited. The minute for which she
asked passed.

“ One moment »’ murmured Amory again.

At last Mr. Strong lifted his head.—“ There’s noth-
ing to say,” he said.

“Tm thinking,” Amory replied in a low voice.

“ Really nothing.”

“Give me just a minute——”

For she was thinking that it was her face, nothing
else, that had launched him thus to the door. For a
moment she felt compunction for its tyranny. Poor
fellow, what else had he been able to do?... Yet
what, between letting him go and bidding him stay,
was she herself to do? At his touch her heart had
swelled—been constricted—either—both; even had she
not known that she was a pretty woman, now at any
rate she had put it to the proof; and the chances seemed
real enough that if he turned and looked at her now,
he must give a cry, stride across the studio floor, and
take her in his arms. Dared she provoke him? . .

 
430 A CROOKED MILE

The moment she asked herself whether she dared
she did dare. Not to have dared would to have been
to be inferior to those great and splendid and reckless
ones who had turned their eyes on their lovers and had
whispered, ‘“ Antony—Louis—I am here!” If she
courted less danger than she knew, her daring remained
the same. And the room itself backed her up. So
‘many doctrines were enunciated in that studio, the
burden of one and all of which was “ Why not?” The
atmosphere was charged with permissions .. . per-
haps for him too. He was at the door now. It was
only the turning of a key... .

Amory’s low-thrilled voice called his name across the
studio.

ce Edgar 99

But he had thought no less quickly than she. He
had turned. Shrewdly he guessed that she meant
nothing; so much the better—damn it! There was
something female about Edgar Strong; he knew more
about some things than a young man ought to know;
and in an instant he had found the “line” he meant
to take. It was the “line” of honour rooted in dis-
honour—the “line” of Cosimo his friend—the “ line”
of black treachery to the hand that fed him with muf-
fins and anchovy paste—or, failing these, the all-or-
nothing “line.” ... But on the whole he would a
little rather go straight than not... .

Nor did he hesitate. Amory had turned on the sofa.
“Edgar!” she had called softly again. He swung
round, The savagery of his reply—there seemed to

 
POLICY 431

Amory to be no other word to describe it—almost
frightened her.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he broke out.
“ Haven’t you done enough already? What do you
suppose I’m made of?”

The moment he had said it he saw that he had made
no mistake. It would not be necessary to go the length
of turning the key. He glared at her for a moment;
then he spoke again, less. savagely, but no less curtly.

“You called me back to say something,” he said.
“What is it?”

Instinctively Amory had covered her face with her
hands. It was fearfully sweet and dangerous. Flat-
tery could hardly have gone further than that tortured
ery, “ What do you think ’'m made of?” Her heart
was thumping—thump, thump, thump, thump. A les-
ser woman would have taken refuge in evasions, but
not she—not she, with Cosimo carrying.on with Brito-
mart, and Dorothy Tasker no doubt whispering to her
Otis or Wilbur or whatever her American’s name might
be, and Stan perhaps deep in an intrigue with his
Spanish female at that very moment. No, she had
provoked him, and he had now every right to cry, not
“Have you read ‘ The Tragic Comedians’? ” but “ Do
you know what you’re doing?” ... And he was
speaking again now.

“ Because,” he was saying quietly, “if that’s it...
I must know. I must have a little time. There will
be things to settle. I don’t quite know how it hap-
pened; I suddenly saw you—and did it. Anyway, it’s
432 A CROOKED MILE

done—or begun... . But I won’t stab Cosimo in the
back. ... It will have to be the Continent, I sup-
pose. Paris. There’s a little hotel I know in the
Boulevard Montparnasse. It’s not very luxurious, but
it’s cheap and fairly clean. Seven francs a day, but it
would come rather less for the two of us. And you
wouldn’t have to spend much on dress in the Quartier.
Or there’s Montmartre. Or some of those out-of-the-
way seaside places. I should like to take you to the sea
first, and then to a town a

He stopped, and began to walk up and down the
studio.

Amory was suddenly pale. She had not thought of
this. She had thought that perhaps Mr. Strong might
give a cry, rush across the studio, and take her in his
arms; but of this cold and almost passionless prevision
of details she had not dreamed. And yet that was
magnificent too. Edgar wasted no time in dalliance
when there was planning to be done. There would be
time enough for softer delights when the whole of the
Latin Quarter lay spread out before them in indolent
magnificence of bloom. He was terrifying and superb.
Such a man not manage Mr. Prang! Why, here he
was, ready to bear her off that very night at a word!

Paris—Montmartre—the Quartier!

It was Romance with a vengeance!

Then at a thought she grew paler still. The chil-
dren! What about Corin and Bonniebell? It didn’t
matter so much about Cosimo; it would serve him
right; but what about the twins? Were they also to
be included in the seven francs a day? And wouldn’t

 
POLICY 433

it matter how they dressed either in the Quarter?
Or, did Edgar propose that they should be left behind
in Cosimo’s keeping, with Britomart Belchamber for a
stepmother ?

Edgar had reached the door again now. He was not
hurrying her, but there was a look on his face that
seemed to say that all she needed was a hat and a rug
for the steamer.

Such a very different thing from a carpet to roll
round her——

She had risen unsteadily from the sofa. She crossed
the floor and stood before Edgar, looking earnestly up
into his blue eyes. She moistened her lips.

“What’s happened ” she began in a _ whis-
Poa
He interrupted her only to make the slightest of for-
bidding gestures with his hand; her own hands had
moved, as if she would have put them on his shoulders.
And she saw that he was quite right. At the touch
of her his control would certainly have broken down.
She went on, appealingly and almost voicelessly.

“ What’s happened—had to happen, hadn’t it?” she
whispered. “You felt it sweeping us away too—
didn’t you? . . . But need we say any more about it
tonight? ... I want to think, Edgar. We must
both think. There’s—there’s a lot to think about—
and talk over. We mustn’t be too rash. It would be
rash, wouldn’t it? Look at me, Edgar ie

“Oh—I must go——,” he said with an impatience
that he had not to assume.

“But look at me,” she begged. “TI shan’t sleep a

 

 
434 A CROOKED MILE

wink to-night. I shall think. about it all night. It_
will be lovely—but torturing—dear !—But you'll sleep,”
I expect... .” She pouted this last.

“Tm going away,” he announced abruptly.

“Oh!” she cried, startled. . . . “ But you'll come
in to-morrow ?”

“T shall go away for a few days. Perhaps longer.”

“ But—but—we haven’t settled about the pa-
per! si

He was grim.—‘ You don’t suppose I can think
about the paper now, do you?”

“No, no—of course not—but it must be done to-day,
Edgar! Or to-morrow at the very latest! . . . Can’t
we try to put this on one side, just for an hour?”

He shook his head before the impossibility. . . .

And that was how it came about that the Indian
policy of the “ Novum ” was left in the hands of Mr.
Suwarree Prang.

 
PART II
I

THE PIGEON PAIR

MORY had been at a great deal of trouble to
.gather all the opinions she could get about the
education of her twins, Corin and Bonniebell; but it
was not true, as an unkind visitor who had been once
only to The Witan had said, that they were everybody’s
children. Just because Amory had taken Katie
Deedes’ advice and had had their hair chopped off short
at the nape like a Boutet de Monvel drawing—and had
not disdained to accept the spelling-books which Dickie
Lemesurier had given them (books in which the diff-
cult abstraction of the letter “A” was visualized for
their young eyes as “ Little Brown Brother,’ “B” as
“Tabby Cat,” and so on)—and had listened to Mr.
Brimby when he had said what a good thing it would
be to devote an hour on Friday afternoons to the study
of Altruism and Camaraderie—and, in a word, had
-not been too proud and egotistical to make use of a
good suggestion wherever she found it—because she
kad done these things, it did not at all follow that she
had shirked her duties. If she did not influence them

directly, having other things to do, she influenced those
435
436 A CROOKED MILE

who did influence them, which came to the same thing.
She influenced the Wyrons, for example, and nobody
could say that the Wyrons had not made a particularly
careful study of children. They had, and Walter had
founded at least two Lectures directly on the twins and
their education.

But the Wyrons, who had submitted to the indignity
of marriage for the sake of the race, laboured and lec-
tured under an obvious disadvantage; they had no chil-
dren of their own. And so Amory had to fill up the
gaps in their experience for herself. Still, it was won-
derful how frequently the Wyrons’ excogitations and
the things Amory had found out for herself coincided.
They were in absolute accord, for example, about the
promise of the immediate future and the hope that lay
in the generation to come. The Past was dead and
damned; the Present at best was an ignoble compro-
mise; but the Morrow was to be bright and shining.

“Walter and I,” Laura sometimes said sadly,
“aren’t anything to brag about. There is much of the
base in us. Our lives aren’t what they should be.
We're in the grip of inherited instincts too. We strive
for the best, but the worst’s sometimes too much for
us. It’s like Moses seeing the Promised Land from
afar. We’re just in the position of Moses. But these
young Aarons——” .

Amory thought that very modest and dignified of
poor old Laura. She frequently thought of her as
“poor old Laura,’ but of course she didn’t mean her
actual age, which was only two years more than
Amory’s own. And that was very good, if a little sad,
THE PIGEON PAIR 437

about Moses. The Wyrons did look forth over a
Canaan they weren’t very likely ever to tread.

Lately—that is to say since that secret and tre-
mendous moment between herself and Edgar Strong in
the studio—Amory had fallen into the habit of musing
long over the sight of the twins at lessons, at play, or
at that more enlightened combination that makes les-
sons play and play lessons. Sometimes Mr. Brimby,
the novelist, had come up to her as she had mused and
bad asked her what she was thinking about.

“ Your little Pigeon Pair, eh?” he had said. “ Ah,
the sweetness; ah, lucky mother! Grey books have to
be the children of some of us; ah, me; yours is a pleas-
anter path!”

Then he would fondle the little round topiary trees
of’ their heads. Amory was almost as sorry for Mr.
Brimby as she was for Laura. His books sold only
moderately well, and she had more than once thought
she would like the ‘‘ Novum” to serialize one of them
—the one with the little boy rather like Corin and the
little girl rather like Bonniebell in it—if Mr. Brimby
didn’t want too much money for it.

Edgar Strong, on the other hand, never fondled the
children, and Amory’s heart told her why. How could
he be expected to do anything but hate those poor in-
nocents who had come between him and his desire?
He must have realized that only the twins had frus-
trated that flight to Paris. Of course he was polite
about it; he said that he was not very fond of children
at all; but Amory was not deceived. She was, in a
way, flattered that he did not fondle them. It was
438 A CROOKED MILE

such an eloquent abstention. But it would have been
more eloquent still had he come to the Witan and not-
fondled them oftener.

Therefore it was that Amory looked on Corin and
Bonniebell as the precious repositories of her own re-
linquished joys, and heirs to a happier life than she
herself had known. She dreamed over them and their
future. Laura Wyron was quite right: by the time
they had grown up the fogs of cowardice and prejudice
and self-seeking would have disappeared for ever.
Perhaps even by that time, as in Heaven, there would
be no more marrying nor giving in marriage. Things
would have adjusted themselves out of the rarer and
sweeter and more liberal atmosphere. Corin, grown
to be twenty, would one day meet with some mite who
was still in her cradle or not yet born, and the two
would look at one another with amazement and delight,
and the Ideal Love would be born in their eyes, and
Corin would recite a few of those brave and pure and
unashamed things out of ‘“ Leaves of Grass” to her,
and—well, and there they would be.... And Bon-
niebell, too, would do the same, on a Spring morning
very likely, simply clad, cool and without immodest
blushes—yes, she too would see somebody, and she
would say, gladly and simply, “I am here” (for there
would be no reason, then, why she should wait for the
youth to speak first), and—well, and there they would
be too. And it would be Exogamy, or whatever the
word was that Walter used. Either would go forth
from the family on the appointed day—or perhaps only
Corin would go, and Bonniebell remain behind—but
THE PIGEON PAIR 439

anyway, one, if not both of them would go forth, and
rove the morning-flushed hills, alone and free and sing-
ing and on the look-out for somebody, and they would
look just like pictures of .young Greeks, and nobody
would laugh, as they did at the poor lady who walked
in Greek robes down the Strand... .

And Amory herself? Alas! She would be leit
with the tribe. She would be old then—say fifty-
something on the eleventh of October. And Edgar
would be old too. They would have to recognize that
their youth had been spent in the night-time of igno-
rance and suspicion. They would only be able to think .
of those spirited young things quoting “ Leaves of
Grass” to one another and wondering what had hap-
pened to them... .

No wonder Amory was sometimes pensive. .

Mr. Wilkinson, the Labour Member, had been to all
intents and purposes asked not to fondle the twins.
He was a tall spare man with a great bush of pepper-
and-salt hair, a Yorkshire accent, and an eye that
hardly rested on any single object long enough to get
more than a fleeting visual impression of it. He wrote
on the first and third weeks of the month the “ Nov-
um’s” column of “ Military Notes,” and on the
alternate weeks filled the same column with officially
inspired “ Trade Union Echoes.” Between these two
activities of Mr. Wilkinson’s there was a connexion.
He, in common with everybody else at the Witan, was
loud in decrying the jobberies and vested interests of
Departments, with the War Office placed foremost in
the shock of his wrath. But the Trade Unions were
440 A CROOKED MILE

another matter, and never a billet-creating measure
came before Parliament but he strove vehemently to
have its wheels cogged in with those of the existing
Trade Union machine. That is to say, that while in
theory he was for democratic competitive examination,
in practice he found something to be said for jobbery,
could the fitting Trade Unionist but be found. He
was, moreover, a firebrand by temperament, and this
is where the connexion between the “ Military Mat-
ters” and the “Echoes” appears. Trade Unionists
he declared, ought to learn to shoot. The other side,
with their cant about “Law and Order,” never hesi-
tated to call out the regular troops; therefore, until the
Army itself should have been won over by means of
the leaflets that were disseminated for the purpose, they
ought in the event of a strike to be prepared to throw
up barricades, to shoot from cellar-windows, and to
throw down chimney-stacks from the house-tops.
Capitalist-employed troops would not destroy more
property than they need; in a crooked-streeted town
the advantage of long-range fire would be gone; and
Mr. Wilkinson was prepared to demonstrate that a
town defended on his lines could hold out, in the event
of Industrial War pushed to an extreme, until it was
starved into surrender.—These arguments, by the way,
had impressed Mr. Prang profoundly.

Now (to come back to the twins) on Corin’s fourth
birthday Mr. Wilkinson, moved by these considerations,
had given him a wooden gun, and in doing so had com-
mitted a double error in Amory’s eyes. His first mis-
THE PIGEON PAIR 441

take had been to suppose that even if, under the
present lamentable (but nevertheless existing) condi-
tions of militarism, Corin should ever become a soldier
at all, he would be the uncommissioned bearer of a
gun and not the commissioned bearer of a sword. And
his second mistake had been like unto it, namely, to
think that, in the case of a proletariat uprising say in
Cardiff or York, Corin would not similarly have held
some post of weight and responsibility on the other
side. Corin shoot up through the street-trap of a
coal-hole or pot somebody from behind a chimney-
stack! ... But Amory admitted that it must be
difficult for Mr. Wilkinson to shake off the effects of
his upbringing. That upbringing had been very dif-
ferent from, say, Mr. Brimby’s. Mr. Brimby had
been at Oxford, and in nobly stooping to help the op-
pressed brought as it were a fragrant whiff of gracious-
ness and culture with him. Mr. Wilkinson was a
nobody. He came from the stratum of need, and,
when it came to fondling the twins, must not think
himself a Brimby. . . . Therefore, Amory had had
to ask him to take the gun back (a deprivation which
had provoked a mighty outery from Corin), and to
give him, if he must give him something, a Nature
book instead.

Katie Deedes and Dickie Lemesurier were both per-
mitted to fondle the twins, though in somewhat differ-
ent measure. This difference of measure did not mean
that either Katie or Dickie suffered from a chronic
cold that the twins might have contracted. Here again
449 A CROOKED MILE

the case was almost as complicated as the case of Mr.
Wilkinson. Cases had a way of being complicated at
The Witan. It was this:—

Both of these ladies, as Amory had assured Mr.
Brimby, were “quite all right.” She meant socially.
No such difference was to be found between them in
this respect as that which yawned between Mr. Brimby
and Mr. Wilkinson. ‘Indeed as far as Dickie was con-
cerned, Amory had given a little apologetic laugh at
the idea. of her having to place and appraise a Lem-
esurier of Bath at all. The two girls had equally to
work for their living, and—but perhaps it was here
that the difference came in. There are jobs and jobs.
It was a question of tone. Dickie, running the Suffrage
Book Shop, enjoyed something of the glamour of
Letters; but Katie, as manageress of the Eden Restau-
rant, was, after all, only a caterer. It was not Amory’s
fault that Romance had pronounced arbitrarily and
a little harshly on the relative dignity of these oc-
cupations. She could not help it that books are books
and superior, while baked beans are only baked beans,
necessary, but not to be talked about. If Dickie had,
by her calling, a shade more consideration than was
strictly her due, while Katie, by hers, was slightly
shorn of something to which she would otherwise have
been entitled, well, it was not Amory who had ar-
ranged it so.

But between books and baked beans the twins did
not hesitate for an instant. They saw from no point
of view but their unromantic own.

Dickie, overhauling the remainder stock at the Suf-
THE PIGEON PAIR 443

frage Shop, was able to bring them a book from time
to time; but Katie, whose days were spent in a really
interesting place full of things to eat, brought them
sweetened Proteids, and cold roasted chestnuts, and
sugared Filbertine, and sometimes a pot of the Eden
Non-Neurotic Honey for tea. And because the flesh
was stronger in them than Amory thought it ought to
be (at. any rate until the day should come when they
must leave the tribe with a copy of “ Leaves of Grass”
in their hands), they adored Katie and thought very
much less of Dickie.

Now this belly-guided preference was a thing to be
checked in them; and one day Amory had asked Katie
(quite nicely and gently) whether she would mind not
bringing the children things that spoiled their ap-
petites, not to speak of their tempers when they
clamoured for these comestibles at times when they
were not to be had. Then, one afternoon in the nurs-
ery, Amory actually had to:repeat her request. Half
an hour later, when the children had been brought
down into the studio for their after-tea hour, she
learned that Katie had left the house. It was Corin
himself who informed her of this.

“ Auntie Katie was crying,” he said. “ About the
vertisements,”’ he added.

“ Ad-vertisements, dear,’ Amory corrected him.
“Say ad-vertisements, not vertisements.”

“ Ad-vertisements,” said Corin sulkily. “ But—”
and he cheered up again, “—she was, mother.”

““ Nonsense,” said Amory. “ And you’re not to say
‘Auntie’ to Katie. It isn’t true. Your Auntie is
444 A CROOKED MILE

your father’s or your mother’s sister, and we haven’t
any ... And now you've played enough. Say good-
night, both of you, and take Auntie Dickie’s book,
and ask Miss Belechamber to read yow the story of the
Robin and her Darling Eggs, and then you must have
your baths and go to bed.”

“T want the tale about Robin Hood, that Mr. Strong
once told me,” Corin demurred.

“No, you must have the one about the dear Dickie
Bird, who had a wing shot off by a cruel man one day,
and had to hide her head under the other one, so that
when her Darling Eggs were hatched out the poor
little birds were all born with crooked necks—you
remember what I told you about the fortress in a hor-
rible War, when the poor mothers were all so fright-
ened that all the little boys and girls were born lame
—it’s the same thing—”

“Were there guns, that went bang?” Corin de
manded. He had forgotten that the story contained
this really interesting detail.

cc Yes.”

“ Great big ones?” Corin’s eyes were wide open.

“Very big. It was very cruel and anti-social.”

But Corin’s momentary interest waned again.
—“T want Robin Hood,” he said sullenly.

“ Now you're being naughty, and I shall have to
send you to bed without any nice reading at all.”

“JT want Robin Hood.” The tone was omi-
nous. .

“ And I want some chestnuts,” Bonniebell chimed
in, her face also puckering. . . .

|
THE PIGEON PAIR 445

And so Amory, who had threatened to send them
bookless to bed, must keep her word. It is very wrong
to tell falsehoods to children. She dismissed them,
and they went draggingly out, their Boutet de Monvel
hair and fringed éponge costumes giving them the ap-
pearance of two luckless pawns that had been pushed
off the board in some game of chess they did not un-
derstand. ;

Amory thought it very foolish of Katie to take on
in this way. She might have known that her advertise-
ments had not been refused without good ° reason.
Amory had fully intended to explain all about it to
Katie, but she really had had so many things to do.
Nor ought it to have needed explaining. Surely Katie
could have seen for herself that Dickie’s Bookshop
List, with its names of Finot and Forel and Mill and
the rest, was a distinction and an embellishment to the
paper, while her own Filbertines and Protolaxatives
were a positive disfigurement. The proper place for
these was, not in the columns of the “ Novum,” but
in the “ Please take One” box at the Eden’s door. . .
But if Katie intended to sulk and ery about it, well,
so much the worse. ... (To jump forward a little:
Katie did elect to sulk. Or rather, she did worse.
She was so ill-advised as to go behind Amory’s back
and to speak to Cosimo himself about the advertise
ments. With that Katie’s goose—or perhaps one
should say her Anserine—was cooked. Amory did not
allow that kind of thing. She certainly did not in-
tend to explain anything after that. It was plain as a
pikestaff that Katie was jealous of Dickie. Amory
446 A CROOKED MILE

was bitterly disappointed in Katie. Of course she
would not forbid her the house; she was still free to
come to The Witan whenever she liked; but—some-
how Katie only came ‘once more. She found herself
treated so very, very kindly. . . . So she gulped down
a sob, fondled the twins once more, and left.)

Miss Britomart Belchamber saw enough of the twins
not to wish to fondle them very much. Amory was not
yet absolutely sure that she fondled Cosimo instead,
but she was welcome to do so if she could find any satis-
faction in it. Cosimo fondled the twins to a foolish ex-
treme. Mr. Prang could never get near enough to
them to fondle them. Both Corin and Bonniebell dis-
played a most powerful interest in Mr. Prang, and
would have stood stock-still gazing at him for an hour
had they been permitted ; but the moment he approached
them they fled bellowing.

And in addition to these various fondlings there
were casual fondlings from time to time whenever the
more favoured of the “ Novum’s” contributors were
asked to tea. ‘

But the Wyrons remained, so to speak, the ex-officio
fondlers, and perhaps childless Laura felt a real need
to fondle at her heart. It was she who first asked
Amory whether she hadn’t noticed that, while Mr.
Brimby and-Dickie frequently fondled the twins sepa-
rately, more frequently still they did so together.

“No!” Amory exclaimed. “I hadn’t noticed!”

“ Walter thinks they would be a perfect pair,” Laura
mused... .
II

THE ’VERT

TAN saw very little in the scheme that Dorothy
darkly meditated against her aunt. He seldom
saw much in Dorothy’s schemes. Perhaps she did not
make quite enough fuss about them, but went on so
quietly maturing them that her income seemed to be
merely something that happened in some not fully ex-
plained but quite natural order of events. Stan
thought it rather a lucky chance that the money usually
had come in when it was wanted, that was all.

But of his own job he had quite a different con-
ception. That took thought. This appeared plainly
now that he was able to dismiss his own past failures
with a light and almost derisive laugh.

“T don’t know whatever made me: think there was
anything in them,” he said complacently one night
within about ten days of Christmas. He had put on
his slippers and his pipe, and was drowsily stretching
himself after a particularly hard “ comic film” day, in
the course of which he had been required to fall through
a number of ceilings, bringing the furniture with him
in his, downward flight. He had come home, had had
a shampoo and a hot bath, and the last traces of the

bags of flour and the sacks of soot had disappeared.
447
448 A CROOKED MILE

“YT don’t think now they’d ever have come to very
much.”

“ Hush a moment,” said Dorothy, listening, her
‘needle arrested half-way through the heel of one of his
socks. ... “All right. I thought I heard him—
Yes?”

She could face young girls now. The third Bit
had turned out to be yet another boy.

“JT mean,” Stan burbled comfortably, “there
wouldn’t have been the money in them I thought there
would. Now take those salmon-flies, Dot. Of course
I can tie ’em in a way. But what I mean is, it’s a
limited market. Not like the boot-trade, I mean, or
soap, or films. Everybody wears boots and sees films.
There’s more scope, more demand. But everybody
doesn’t carry a salmon-rod. Comparatively few peo-
ple do. And the same with big-game shooting. Or
deer-stalking. Everybody can’t afford ’em.”

“No, dear,” said Dorothy, her eyes downcast.

“Then there was Fortune and Brooks,” Stan con-
tinued with a great air of discovery. “TZ see their
game now. You see it, too, don’t you?—They just
wanted orders. New accounts. That's what they
wanted. If I could have put ’em on to a chap who'd
have spent say five hundred a year on Chutney and
things—well, what I mean is, where would they be
without customers like that?”

““ Nowhere, dear,” said the dutiful Dorothy.

“Exactly. Nowhere. That's what I was leading
up to. They wouldn’t be anywhere. They just
THE ’VERT 449

wanted to be put on to these things. And it’s just
struck me how J should have looked going out to din-
ner somewhere, strange house very likely, and I’d said
to somebody I’d perhaps met for the first time, ‘ Don’t
think much of these salted almonds; our hostess ought
to try the F. and B, Brand, a Hundred Gold Medals,
and see that the blessed coupon isn’t broken.’—Eh?
See what I mean?”

“T was never very keen on the idea,” Dorothy ad-
mitted gravely.

“No, and I’m blessed if I see why I was, now,”
Stan conceded cheerfully... .

She loved this change in him which a real job with
real money had brought about. Poor old darling, she
thought, it must have been pretty rotten for him before,
borrowing half-crowns from her in the morning, which
he would spend with an affected indifference on drinks
and cab fares in the evening. And he should speak
with a new authority if he wished. Not for worlds
would she have smiled at His Impudence’s new air of
being master in his own house. He should be a Sultan
if he liked—provided he didn’t want more than one
wife.

Moreover, his bringing in of money had been a relief
so great that even yet she had hardly got out of the
habit of reckoning on her own earnings only. It had
taken her weeks to realize that now the twopences came
in just a little more quickly than they went out, and
that she could actually afford herself the luxury of
keeping Mr. Miller waiting for his Idea, or even of
450 A CROOKED MILE

not giving it to him at all. She really had no Idea
to give him. She was entirely wrapped up now in
her plot against Lady Tasker.

That plot, summarized from several conversations
with Stan, was as follows:—

“You see, there’s the Brear, with all that land, Aunt
Grace’s very own. The Cromwell Gardens lease is up
in June, and it’s all very well for auntie to say she
doesn’t hate London, but she does. She spends half a
rent, with one and another of them, in travelling back-
wards and forwards, and she’s getting old, too.—Then
there’s us. We can’t go on living here, and the Tonys
will be home just as Tim’s leave’s up, and they’re sure
to leave their Bits behind. Very well. Now the
Tims and the Tonys can’t afford to pay much, but they
can afford something, and I think they ought to pay.
They’re sure to want those boys to go into the Army,
and they’d have to pay for that anyway.—So there
ought to be a properly-managed Hostel sort of place,
paying its way, and a fund accumulating, and Aunt
Gracie at the head of it, poor old dear, but somebody
to do the work for her.—I don’t see why we shouldn’t
clear out that old billiard-table that nobody ever uses,
and throw that and the gun-room into one, and make
that the schoolroom, and have a proper person down—
a sort of private preparatory school for Sandhurst and
Woolwich, and the money put by to help with the fees
afterwards. It would be much easier if we all clubbed
together. And I should jolly well make Aunt Eliza
give us at least a thousand pounds—selfish old thing.”

“ Frightful rows there’d be,” Stan usually com-
THE ’VERT 451

mented, thinking less of Dorothy’s plan than of his
own last trick-tumble. “ Like putting brothers into
the same regiment; always a mistake. And we're all
rather good at rows you know.”

“Well, they’re our own rows anyway. We keep
’em to ourselves. And we do all mean pretty much the
same thing when all’s said. I’m going to work it all
out anyway, and then tackle Aunt Grace. ... I shall
manage it, of course.”

She did not add that her Lennards and Taskers and
Woodgates would sink their private squabbles precisely
in proportion as the outside attacks on their common
belief rendered a closing-up of the ranks necessary.
But she had been to The Witan and had kept her eyes
open there, and knew that there were plenty of other
Witans about. If stupid Parliament, with its votes and
what not, couldn’t think of anything to do about it, that
was no reason why she should not do something, and
make stingy old Aunt Eliza pay for the training of her
Bits into the bargain.

She had not seen Amory since that day when the
episode of the winter woollies had made her angry, for,
though Amory had called once at the Nursing Home
soon after the birth of the third Bit, Dorothy had really
not felt equal to the hair-raising tale of the twins all
over again, and had sent a message down to her by
the nurse. There was this difference between this
tragic recital of Amory’s and the fervour with which
Ruth Mossop always hugged to her breast the thought
of the worst that could happen—that Ruth had known
brutality, and so might be forgiven for getting “a little
452 A CROOKED MILE

of her own back”; but Amory had known one hardish
twelvemonths perhaps, a good many years ago and
when she had been quite able to bear it, and had since
magnified that period of discomfort by a good many
diameters. Amory, Dorothy considered, didn’t really
know she was born. She was unfeignedly sorry for
that. Whatever measure of contempt was in her she
kept for Cosimo.

For she considered that Cosimo was at the bottom
of all the trouble. If Stan, at his most impecunious
and happy-go-lucky, could still stalk about the house
saying “ Dot, I won’t have this,” or ‘ Look here, Doro-
thy, that has got to stop,” it seemed to her that Cosimo,
with never a care on his mind that was not his own
manufacture, might several times have prevented
Amory from making rather a fool of herself. But it
seemed to Dorothy that kind of man was springing up
all over the place nowadays. Mr. Brimby was another
of them. Dorothy had read one of Mr. Brimby’s
books—*“ The Source,’ and hadn’t liked it. She had
thought it terribly dismal. In it a pretty and rich
young widow, who might almost have been Amory her-
self, went slumming, and spent a lot of money in start-
ing a sort of Model Pawn Shop, and by and by there
came a mysterious falling-off in her income, and she
went to see her lawyer about it, and learned, of course,
that her source of income was that very slum in which
she had stooped to labour so angelically. . . . Dorothy
didn’t know very much about pawnshops, but then she
didn’t believe that Mr. Brimby did either; and if her
interest in them ever should become really keen, she
THE ’VERT 453

didn’t think she should go to Oxford for information
. about them. And Mr. Brimby himself seemed to feel
this “crab,” as Stan would have called it, for after
“The Source’’ he had written a Preface for a book
by a real and genuine tramp. ... And it had been
Amory who had recommended “ The Source” to Doro-
thy. She had said that it just showed, that with vision
and thought and heart and no previous experience
(“no prejudice ” had been her exact words), there need
be none of these dreadful grimy establishments, with
their horrible underbred assistants who refused a poor
woman half a crown on her mattress and made a joke
about it, but airy and hygienic rooms instead, with
rounded corners so that the dust could be swept away
in two minutes (leaving a balance of at least twenty-
eight minutes in which the sweeper might improve
himself), and really courtly-mannered attendants, full
of half crowns and pity and Oxford voice, who would
give everybody twice as much as they asked for and a
tear into the bargain.

And Amory knew just as much about real pawn-
shops as did Dorothy and Mr. Brimby.

For the life of her Dorothy could not make out what
all these people were up to.

And—though this was better now that Stan was
earning—the thought of the money that was being
squandered at The Witan had sometimes made her
ready to ery. For at the Nursing Home she had had
one other visitor, and this visitor had opened her eyes
to the appalling rate at which Cosimo’s inheritance
must be going. This visitor had been Katie Deedes.
454 A CROOKED MILE

Katie too, was an old fellow-student of Dorothy’s; it
had not taken Dorothy long to see that Katie was full
of a grievance; and then it had all come out. There
had been some sort of a row. It had been simply and
solely because Katie ran a Food Shop. Amory thought
that infra dig. And just because Katie had given the
children a few chestnuts Amory had practically said so.

“T shan’t go there again,” Katie had said, trying on
Dorothy’s account to keep down her tears. “J didn’t
marry a man with lots of money, and turn him round
my finger, and make him write my Life and Works,
and then snub my old friends! And none of the peo-
ple who go there are really what she thinks they are.
She thinks they go to see her, but Mr. Brimby only
goes because Dickie does, and because he wants to sell
the “ Novum ” something or otber, and Mr. Strong of
course has to go, and Mr. Wilkinson goes because he
wants Cosimo to stop the “ Novum” and start some-
thing else with him as editor, and Laura goes because
they get things printed about Walter’s Lectures, and
I don’t know what those Indians are doing there at all,
and anyway I’ve been for the last time! I’m just as
guod as she is, and I should like to come and see you
instead, Dorothy, and of course I won’t bring your
babies chestnuts if you don’t want.... But I’m
frightfully selfish; I’m tiring you out.... May an
A BC girl come to see you?”

And Katie had since been. There is no social reason
why the manager of a Vegetarian Restaurant may not
visit the house of a film acrobat.

As it happened, Katie came in that very night when
THE ’VERT 455

the weary breadwinner was painstakingly explaining
to his thoughtful spouse his reasons for doubting
whether he would ever have got very rich had he re-
mained one of Fortune and Brooks’ well-dressed
drummers. Katie had a round face and puzzled but
affectionate eyes, and Stan was just beginning to school
his own eyes not to rest with too open an interest on
her Greenaway frocks and pancake hats. Katie for
her part was intensely self-conscious in Stan’s presence.
She felt that when he wasn’t looking at her clothes he
was, expressly, not-looking at them, and that was worse.
. . . But she couldn’t have worn a hobble skirt and
an aigrette at the “ Eden.” . ... Stan had told Doro-
thy that when he knew Katie better he intended to get
out of her the remaining gruesome and Blue-Beard’s-
Chamber details which the hoof and the forequarter
seemed to him to promise.

“ Poor little darlings!” Dorothy exclaimed compas-
sionately by and by—Katie had been relating some
anecdote in which Corin and Bonniebell had played a
part. “TI do think it’s wrong to dress children ridicu-
lously! The other day I saw a little girl—she must
have been quite six or seven—and she’d knickers like
a little boy, and long golden hair all down her back!
What is the good of pretending that girls are boys?”

“ Awful rot,” Stan remarked with a mighty stretch.
“T say, I’m off to bed; I shall be yawning in Miss
Deedes’ face if I don’t. Is there any arnica in the
house, Dot? . . . Good night q?

“Good night,” said Katie; and as the door closed
behind the master of the house she settled more com-

 
456 A CROOKED MILE

fortably in her chair. ‘“ Now that he’s stopped not-
looking at me we can have a good talk,” her gesture
seemed to say; “how does he expect I can get any
other clothes till I’ve saved the money?” ...

They did talk. They talked of the old days at the
McGrath, and who’d married who, and who hadn’t
married who after all, and, in this connection, of Laura
Beamish and Walter Wyron, whom they had both
known. .. . And it just showed how little glory and
fame were really worth in the world. For Dorothy,
who had been living in London all this time, had not
heard as much as a whisper of that memorable revolt
of the Wyrons against the Marriage Service, and,
though she did know vaguely that Walter lectured, had
not the ghost of an idea of what his lectures were about.
She had been too busy minding her own petty and
private and selfish affairs. Katie couldn’t believe it.
She thought Dorothy was joking.

“You’ve never heard of Walter’s Lecture on ‘ Heads
or Tails in the Trying Time,’ nor his ‘ Address on the
Chromosome ’?” she gasped... .

“No; do tell me. What is a Chromosome?”

“A Chromosome? Why, it’s a—it’s a—well, you
know when you’ve a cell—or a nucleus—or a gland or
something—but it isn’t a gland—it’s the—but you do
astonish me, Dorothy!”

“But surely you’re joking about Walter and
Laura?” Dorothy exclaimed in her turn.

“Indeed I’m not! Why, I thought everybody
knew! .. .”

“(Its all right—he won’t come in again). But
THE ’VERT 457

why did they pretend not to be married?” Dorothy
asked in amazement.

“JT don’t know—-I mean I forget for the moment—
it seemed perfectly clear the way Walter explained it
—you ought to go and hear him

“ But what difference could being married—I mean
not being married—make ?”

“Ah!” said Katie, with satisfaction at having
found her bearings again. ‘“‘ Walter’s got a whole
Lecture on that. It always thrills everybody. Amory
thinks it’s almost his best—after the ‘ Synthetic Proto-
plasm’ one, of course—that’s admitted by everybody
to be quite the best!” ?

“Proto... but I thought those were a kind of
oats!” said poor Dorothy, utterly bewildered.

 

1I have been charged with the invention of these facetia. Here
is the Synthetic Protoplasm idea: —

“The dream of creating offspring without the concurrence of
woman has always haunted the imagination of the human race.
The miraculous advances which thé chemical synthesis has ac-
complished in these latter days seem to justify the boldest hopes,
but we are still far from the creation of living protoplasm. The
experiences of Loeb or of Delage are undoubtedly very confound-
ing. But in order to produce life these scientists were obliged,
nevertheless, to have recourse to beings already organized. Thou-
sands of centuries undoubtedly separate us from any possibility of
realizing the most magnificent and most disconcerting dream ever
engendered in the human brain. In the meantime, as the Torch
of Life must be transmitted to the succeeding generations, woman
will continue gloriously to fulfil her character of mother.”—
“ Problems of the Sexes,” Jean Finot; 12s. 6d. net; p. 352.

‘Lightly worked up and chattily treated, this theme, as Katie
said, drew quiet smiles of appreciation from every cultured audi-
ence which Walter addressed.

0. O.
458 A CROOKED MILE

“Oats!” cried Katie in a sort of whispered shriek.
“Why, it’s—it’s—but I don’t know even how to begin
to explain it! Do you mean to say you haven’t read
about these things?”

“No,” murmured Dorothy, abashed.

“Not Monod, nor Ellen Key, nor Sebastian Faure,
nor Malom! ”

“N-o.” Dorothy felt horribly ashamed of herself.

“ But—but—those lovely little boys of yours! -

She gazed wide-eyed at the disconcerted Doro-
thy. ...

 

 

It was the humiliating truth: Dorothy had never
heard of the existence of a single one of these writers
and leaders of thought. She had borne Noel in black
ignorance of what they had had to say about the Torch
of the Race, and Jackie and the third Bit for all the
world as if they had never set pen to paper. Monod
had not held her hand, nor Faure been asked for his
imprimatur; Key had hymned Love superfluously, and
the Synthesists, equally superfluously, its supersession.
For a moment she anxiously hoped that it was all right,
and then, as Katie went on, the marvel of it all over-
whelmed her again.

The dictum that desirable children could be born only
out of wedlock! That stupendous suggestion of
Walter’s to millionaires who did not know what to do
with their money, that, for the improvement of the
Race, they should endow with a thousand pounds
every poor little come-by-chance that weighed eleven,
pounds at birth! That other proposal, that twenty
THE ’VERT 459

years could straightway be added to woman’s life and
beauty by a mere influencing of her thoughts about the
Chromosome—whatever it was! . .. Poor uncultured
Dorothy did not know whether she was on her head
or her heels. She had never dreamed, until Katie told
her, that before marrying Stan she ought to have gone
to the insect-world, or to the world of molluses and
crustacee, to learn how they maintained the integrity of
their own highest type—whether by pulling their wings
off after the flight, or devouring their husbands, or—
or—or what! She had heard of the moral lessons that
can be learned of the ant, but it had not struck her that
she and Stan might, by means of a little more study
and care, have lifted up the economy of their little flat
to the level of the marvellously-organized domesticity
you see when you kick over a stone.

But Katie’s hesitations and great gaps of confessed
ignorance gave her a little more courage. Katie was
at pains to explain that all that she herself knew about
it all was that these things were what they said, and
Dorothy must go to Walter and the books for the
rest.

“ They’re all very expensive books, and I may not
really have understood them,” she said wistfully.
“They must be awfully deep ard so on if they’re so
dear—twelve and fifteen and twenty shillings! But I
did try so hard, and sometimes it seemed quite reasona-
ble and plain, especially when the print was nice and
big. ... Close print always seems so frightfully
learned. . . . And I know I’ve explained it badly; I
haven’t Walter’s gift of putting things. Amory has,
460 A CROOKED MILE

of course. When she and Walter have a really good
set-to it makes one feel positively abject about one’s
ignorance. I doubt if Cosimo can always quite follow
them, and I’m quite sure Mr. Strong can’t—I know
he’s only hedging when he says, ‘Ah, yes, have you
read Fabre on the Ant or Maeterlinck on the Bee? ’—
and I believe he just glances at the review books that
come to the “ Novum ” instead of really studying them,
as Walter and Amory do. And it’s very funny about
Mr. Strong,” she rattled artlessly on. “ Sometimes I’ve
thought that it isn’t just that Amory doesn’t know what
they all go to The Witan for, but that everybody else
does know. They all seem to want it to themselves.
Of course if Mr. Wilkinson wants Cosimo to stop the
“Novum,” and to start something else for him, it’s
only natural that he and Mr. Strong should be a little
jealous of one another; but Dickie and Mr. Brimby are
jealous of the Wyrons, and I suppose I was jealous
of Dickie too—and everybody seems jealous of every-
body, and Amory of Cosimo, and Amory’s always in-
terfering between Britomart Belchamber and the twins’
lessons, and that can’t be a very good thing for dis-
cipline, but Britomart’s like me in being rather stupid,
and I wish I’d her screw—she gets nearly twice as
much asI do. The only people who don’t seem jealous
of anybody are those Indians. They’re always affable.
I suppose it’s rather nice for them, so far from their
dwn country, having a house to go to. . . .”

But here Dorothy’s humility and self-distrust ended.
The moment it came to India, she shared her aunt’s de-
THE ’VERT 461

plorable narrow-mindedness and propensity to make
a virtue of her intolerance. It seemed to her that it
was one thing for the Tims and Tonys, in India, to have
to employ a native interpreter (and to be pretty severely
rooked by him) when they had their Urdu Higher Pro-
ficiency to pass, but quite another for these same na-
tives to come over here, and to learn our law and
language, and our excellent national professions, and
our somewhat mitigated ways of living up to them.
No, she was not one whit better than her hide-bound
old aunt, and she did not intend to have too practical
a brotherly love taught at that meditated foundation
at the Brear....

She became silent as she thought of that foundation
again, and presently Katie rose.

“T suppose I couldn’t see him in his cot?” she said
wistfully.

Dorothy smiled. Katie meant the youngest Bit.

“Well... I’m afraid he’s in our room, you
see... .,” she said.

Katie had been thinking of The Witan. She col-
oured a little.

“Sorry,” she murmured; and then she broke out

emphatically.
“T like coming to see you, Dorothy. I don’t feel
so—such a fool when I’m with you. . . . And do tell

me where you got that frock, and how much it was; I
must have another one as soon as I can raise the money!
I do wish I could make what Britomart Belchamber
makes! Two-twenty a year! Think of that!...
462 A CROOKED MILE

But of course Prince Eadmond teachers do come ex-
pensive-——”

More and more it was coming to seem to Dorothy
that the whole thing was terrifically expensive.
ITI

THE IMPERIALISTS

HEY were great believers in the Empire, they on
the “ Novum.” Indeed, they were the only true
Imperialists, since they recognized that ideas, and not
actions, were by far and away the most potent instru-
ments in the betterment of mankind. Everybody who
was anybody knew that, a mere sporadic outbreak here
and there (such as the one in Manchuria) notwithstand-
ing, war had been virtually impossible ever since the
publication of M. Bloch’s book declaring it to be so.
What, they asked, was war, more than an unfortunate
miscalculation on the part of the lamb that happened
to lie down with the lion? And what made the mis-
calculation so unfortunate? Why, surely the posses-
sion by the lion of teeth and claws. Draw his teeth
and cut his claws, and the two would slumber peace-
fully together. So with the British lion. He only
fought because he had things ready to fight with. Phil-
osophically, his aggressions were not much more than
a kind of sportive manifestation of the joy of life, that
happened, rather inconsequentially, to take the form of
the joy of death. Take away the ships and guns, then,
and everything would be all right.
These views on the Real Empire were in no way in-

compatible with Mr. Wilkinson’s desire to see all Trade
463
464 A CROOKED MILE

Unionists armed. For a war at home, about shorter
hours and higher wages, would at any rate be a war be-
tween equals in race. It was wars between unequals
that had made of the Old Empire so hideous a thing.
Amory herself had more than once stated this rather
well.

“T call it cowardice,” she had said. “ Every fine
instinct in us tells us to stick up for the weaker side.
It makes my blood boil! Think of those gentle and
dusky millions, all being, to put it in a word, bullied—
just bullied! We all know the kind of man who goes
abroad—the conventional ‘adventurer.’ (I like ‘ad-
venturer!’) He’s just a common bully. He drinks
disgustingly, and swears, and kicks people who don’t
get out of his way—but he’s always careful to have a
revolver in his pocket for fear they should hit him back!
. . . And he makes a tremendous fuss about his white
women, but when it comes to their black or brown ones

. well, anyway, Z think he’s a brute, and we want a
better class of man than that for our readers!”

And that was briefly why, at the “ Novum,” they
tried to reduce armaments at home, and gave at least
moral encouragement to the other side whenever there
was a dust-up abroad.

But it had been some time ago that Amory had said
all this, and her attitude since then had undergone cer-
tain changes. One of these changes had been her ac-
quisition of the Romantic Point of View; another had
been that suspended state of affairs between herself
and Mr. Strong. The first of these curtailed a good
deal of the philosophy in which Mr. Strong always
THE IMPERIALISTS 465

seemed anxious to enwrap the subject (in order, as
far as Amory could see, to avoid action). It also made
a little more of the position of women, white, black or
brown, and especially when rolled up in carpets, in
Imperial affairs. And the second, that hung-up rela-
tion between Edgar Strong and herself, had left her
constantly wondering what would have happened had
she taken Mr. Strong at his word and fled to Paris
with him, and exactly where they stood since she had
not done so.

For naturally, things could hardly have been ex-
pected to be the same after that. Since Edgar had
ceased to come quite so frequently to The Witan, Amory
had thought the whole situation carefully over and had
come to her conclusion. Perhaps the histories of les
grandes maitresses and the writings of Key had helped
her; or, more likely, Key in Sweden (or wherever it
was) and herself in England had arrived at the same
conclusion by independent paths. That conclusion,
stated in three words, was the Genius of Love.

It was perfectly simple. Why had Amory Towers,
the painter of that picture (“Barrage”) so en-
thusiastically acclaimed by the whole of Feminist Eng-
land, now for so long ceased to paint? What had be-
come of the Genius that had brought that picture into
being? It is certain that Genius cannot be stifled.
Deny it one opportunity and it will break out some-
where else—in another art, in politics, in leadership in
one form or another, or it may be even in crime.

Even so, Amory was conscious, her own Genius had
refused to be suppressed. It had found another out-
466 A CROOKED MILE

let in politics, directed in a recumbent attitude from a
sofa.

Yet that had landed her straightway in a dilemma
—the dilemma of Edgar and the twins, of Paris on seven
francs a day and the comforts Cosimo allowed her, of
a deed that was to have put even that of the Wyrons
into the shade and a mere settling down to the pros-
pect of seeing Edgar when it pleased him to put in an
appearance. :

She had not seen this protean property of Genius
just at first. That could only have been because she
had not examined herself sufficiently. She had been
introspective, but not introspective enough.

And lest she should be mistaken in the mighty changes
that were going on within herself, at first she had tried
the painting again. Her tubes were dry and her
brushes hard, but she had got new ones, and one after
another she had taken up her old half-finished can-
vases again. A single glance at them had filled her
with astonishment at the leagues of progress, mental
and emotional, that she had made since then. She had
laughed almost insultingly at those former attempts.
That large canvas on the “ Triwmph of Humane Govern-
ment ”’ was positively frigid! And Edgar had liked it!
... Well, that only showed what a power she now
had over Edgar if she only cared to use it. If he had
liked that chilly piece of classicism, he would stand
dumb before the canvas that every faculty in her was
now straining to paint. She began to think that can-
vas out... .

It must be Eastern, of course; nay, it must be The
THE IMPERIALISTS 467

East—tremendously voluptuous and so on. She would
paint it over the “Triumph.” It should be bathed in
a sunrise, rabidly yellow (they had no time for decay-
ing mellowness in those vast and kindling lands to
which Amory’s inner eye was turned)—and of course
there ought to be a many-breasted what-was-her-name in
it, the goddess (rather rank, perhaps, but that was the
idea, a smack at effete occidental politeness). And
there ought to be a two-breasted figure as well, perhaps
with a cord or something in her hand, hauling up the
curtain of night, or at any rate showing in some way or
other that her superb beauty was actually responsible
for the yellow sunrise... .

And above all, she must get herself into it—the whole
of herself—all that tremendous continent that Cosimo
had not had, that her children had not had, that her
former painting had left unexpressed, that politics had
not brought out of her. .

The result of that experiment was remarkable. Two
days later she had thrown the painting aside again. It
was a ghastly failure. But only for a moment did that
depress her; the next moment she had seen further.
She was a Genius; she knew it—felt it; she was so
sure about it that she would never have dreamed of
arguing about it; she had such thoughts sometimes.
. .. And Genius could never be suppressed. Very
well; the Eastern canvas was a total failure; she ad-
mitted it. Ergo, her Genius was for something else
than painting.

That was all she had wanted to know.

For what, then? No doubt Edgar Strong, who had
468 A CROOKED MILE

enlightened her about herself before, would be able to
enlighten her again now. And if he would not come to
see her, she must go and see him. But already she saw
the answer shining brightly ahead. She must pant,
not paint; live, not limn. Her Genius was, after all,
for Love.

True, at the thought of those offices in Charing Cross
Road she had an instinctive shrinking. Their shab-
biness rather took the shine out of the voluptuousnesses
she had tried, and failed, to get upon her canvas. But
perhaps there was a fitness in that too. Genius, whether
in. Art or in Love, is usually poor. If she could be
splendid there she could be so anywhere. No doubt
heaps and heaps of grand passions had transfigured
grimy garrets, and had made of them perfectly ripping
backgrounds. .. .

So on an afternoon in mid-January Amory put on
her new velvet costume of glaucous sea-holly blue and
her new mushroom-white hat, and went down to the
“ Novum’s”’ offices in a taxi. It seemed to her that
she got there horribly quickly. Her heart was beating
rapidly, and already she had partly persuaded herself
that if Edgar wasn’t in it might perhaps be just as well,
as she had half-promised the twins to have tea with
them in the nursery soon, and anyway she could come
again next week. Or she might leave Edgar a note to
come up to The Witan. There were familiar and sup-
porting influences at The Witan. But here she felt
dreadfully defenceless. . . . She reached her destina-
tion. Slowly she passed through the basement-room
with the sandwich-boards, ascended the dark stairs, and
THE IMPERIALISTS 469

walked along the upper corridor that was hung with the
specimens of poster-art.

Edgar was in. He was sitting at his roll-top desk,
with his feet thrust into the unimaginable litter of
papers that covered it. He appeared to be dozing over
the “ Times,” and had not drunk the cup of tea that
stood at his elbow with a sodden biscuit and a couple of
lumps of sugar awash in the saucer.—Without turning
his head he said ‘“ Hallo,” almost as if he expected
somebody else. ‘‘ Did you bring me some cigarettes
in?” he added, still not turning. And this was a re-
lief to Amory’s thumping heart. She could begin with
a little joke.

“No,” she said. ‘I didn’t know you wanted any.”

There was no counterfeit about the start Mr. Strong
gave. So swiftly did he pluck his feet away from the
desk that twenty sheets of paper planed down to the
floor, bringing the cup of tea with them in their fall.

But Mr. Strong paid no attention to the breakage
and mess. He was on his feet, looking at Amory. He
looked, but he had never a word to say. And she stood
looking at him—charming in her glaucous blue, the
glint of rich red that peeped from under the new white
hat, and her slightly frightened smile.

“ Haven’t you any?” she said archly.

At that Mr. Strong found his tongue.

“Excuse me just a moment,” he muttered, striding
past her and picking up something from his desk as
he went. “Sit down, won’t you?” Then he opened
the door by which Amory had entered, did something
behind it, and returned, closing the door again. “Only
470 A CROOKED MILE

so that we shan’t be disturbed,” he said. “They go
into the other office when they see the notice.—I wasn’t
expecting you.”

Nor did he, Amory thought, show any great joy at
her appearance. On the contrary, he had fixed a look
very like a glare on her. Then he walked to the hearth.
A big fire burned there behind a wire guard, and within
the iron kerb stood the kettle he had boiled to make tea.
He put his elbows on the mantelpiece and turned his
back to her. Again it was Mr. Brimby’s sorrowing Ox-
ford attitude. Amory had moved towards his swivel
chair and had sat down. Her heart beat a little agi-
tatedly. He remembered! . .

He spoke without any beating about the bush,—
“ Ought you to have done this?” he said over his shoul-
der.

She fiddled with her gloves.—“ To have done what?”
she asked nervously.

“To have come here,” came in muffled tones back.
It was evident that he was having to hold himself in.

Then suddenly he wheeled round. This time there
was no doubt about it—it was a glare, and a resolute
one.

But he had not been able to think of any new line.
It was the one he had used before. He made it a little
more menacing, that was all.

“I’m only flesh and blood—,” he said quickly, his
hands ever so slightly clenching and unclenching and
his throat apparently swallowing something.

Her heart was beating quickly enough now.—“ But
THE IMPERIALISTS 471

—but—,” she stammered,—“ if you only mean my com-
ing here—I’ve been here lots of times before——”

He wasted few words on that.

“Not since——” he rapped out. He was survey-
ing her sternly now.

“ But—but—,” she faltered again, “—it’s only me,
Edgar—I am connected with the paper, you know—that
is to say my husband is ”

“ That’s true,” he groaned.

. “ And—and—TI should have come before—I’ve been
intending to come—but I’ve been so busy: ef

But that also he, brushed aside for the little it was
worth. “ Must you compromise yourself like this?”
the demanded. “Don’t you see? I’m not made of
wood, and I suppose your eyes are open too. Prang
may be here at any moment. He’ll see that notice on
the door and wait . . . and then he’ll see you go out.
You oughtn’t to have come,” he continued gloomily.
“Why did you, Amory?”

Once more she quailed before the blue mica of his
eye. Her words came now a bit at a time. The vic
tory was his. ;

“ Only to—to see—how the paper was going on—and
to—to talk things over—,” she said.

“Oh!” He nodded. “ Very well.”

He strode forward from the mantelpiece and ap-
proached the desk at which she sat.

“T suppose Cosimo wants to know; very well. As
a matter of fact I’m rather glad you’ve come. Look
here——”

 

 
472 A CROOKED MILE

He grabbed a newspaper from the desk and thrust
it almost roughly into her hands.

“Read that,” he said, stabbing the paper with his
finger.

The part in which he stabbed it was so unbrokenly
set that it must have struck Katie Deedes as over-
whelmingly learned—‘“ There you are—read that!”
he ordered her.

Then, striding back to the mantelpiece, he stood
watching her as if he had paid for a seat in a playhouse
and had found standing-room only.

Amory supposed that it must be something in that
close and grey-looking oblong that was at the bottom
of his imperious curtness. She was sure of this when,’
before she had read half a dozen lines, he cut it with
a sharp “ Well? I suppose you see what it means to
us?”

“ Just a moment,” she said bewilderedly; “you al-
ways did read quicker than I can——”

“ Quicker !—” he said. “Just run your eye down
it. That ought to tell you.”

She did so, and a few capitals caught her eye.

“Do you mean this about the North-West Banks?”
she asked diffidently.

“Do I mean ! Well, yes. Rather.”

“T do wish you'd explain it to me. It seems rather
hard.”

But he did not approach and point out particular
passages. Instead he seemed to know that leaden ob-
long by heart. He gave a short laugh. .

“Hard? It’s hard enough on the depositors out

 
THE IMPERIALISTS 473

there! . . . They’ve been withdrawing again, and of
course the Banks have had to realize.”

“Yes, I saw that bit,” said Amory.

“A forced realization,’ Mr. Strong continued.
“ Depreciation in values, of course. And it’s spread-
ing.”

It sounded to Amory rather like smallpox, but, “I
suppose that’s the Monsoon?” she hazarded.

“Partly, of course. Not altogether. There’s the
rupee too, of course. At present that’s at about one
and twopence, but then there are these bi-metallists.
. . . So until we know what’s going to happen, it seems
to me we’re bound hand and foot.”

Amory was awed.—‘‘ What—what do you think will
happen?” she asked.

Edgar gave a shrug.— Well—when a Bank begins
paying out in pennies it’s as well to prepare for the
worst, you know.”

“ Are—are they doing that?” Amory asked in a
whisper. “Really? And is that the bi-metallists’ do-
ing—or is it the Home Government? Do explain it
to me so that I can visualize it. You know I always
understand things better when I can visualize them.
That’s because I’m an artist.—Does it mean that
there are long strings of natives, with baskets and
things on their heads to put the pennies in, all
waiting at the Banks, like people in the theatre
queues ¢ ”

“T dare say. ‘I suppose they have to carry the
pennies somehow. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you more
than’s in the papers.”
474 A CROOKED MILE

Amory’s face assumed an expression of contempt.
On the papers she was quite pat.

“The papers! And how much of the truth can we
get from the capitalist press, I should like to know!
Why, it’s a commonplace among us—one is almost
ashamed to say it again—that the ‘ Times’ is always
wrong! We have no Imperialist papers really; only
Jingo ones. Is there no way of finding out what this
—crisis—is really about?”

This was quite an easy one for Mr. Strong. Many
times in the past, when pressed thus by his proprietor’s
wife for small, but exact, details, he had wished that
he had known even as much about them as seemed to
be known by that smart young man who had once come
to The Witan in: a morning coat and had told Edgar
Strong that he didn’t know what he was talking about.
But he had long since found a way out of these trifling
difficulties. Lift the issue high enough, and it is true
of most things that one man’s opinion is as good as an-
other’s; and they lifted issues quite toweringly high
on the “Novum.” Therefore in self-defence Mr.
Strong flapped (so to speak) his wings, gave a struggle,
cleared the earth, and was away in the empyrean of
the New Imperialism.

“The ‘ Times’ always wrong. Yes. We've got to
stick firmly to that,” he said. ‘“ But don’t you see, that
very fact makes it in its way quite a useful guide. It’s
the next best thing to being always right, like us; we
can depend on its being wrong. We've only got to
contradict it, and then ask ourselves why we do so.
There’s usually a reason. . . . So there is in this—er
THE IMPERIALISTS 475

—crisis. Of course you know their argument—that a
lot of these young native doctors and lawyers come over
here, and stop long enough to pick up the latest wrinkles
in swindling—the civilized improvements so to speak—
and then go back and start these wildcat schemes, Banks
and so on, and there’s a smash. I think that’s a fair
statement of their case.—But what’s ours? Why, sim-
ply that what they’re really doing is to give the Home
Government a perfectly beautiful opportunity of living
up to its own humane professions. . . . But we know
what that means,” he added sadly.

“You mean that it just shows,” said Amory eagerly,
“that we aren’t humane at all really? In fact, that
England’s a humbug?”

Mr. Strong smiled. He too, in a sense, was paying
out in pennies, and so far quite satisfactorily.

“Well... take this very crisis,” he returned.
“ Oughtn’t there to be a grant, without a moment’s loss
of time, from the Imperial Exchequer? I’m speaking
from quite the lowest point of view—the mere point of
view of expediency if you like. Very well. Suppose
one or two natives are scoundrels: what about it?
Are matters any better because we know that?
Don’t the poverty and distress exist just the same?
And isn’t that precisely our opportunity, if only we had
a statesman capable of seeing it? ... Look here:
We've only got to go to them and say, ‘ We are full of
pity and help; here are a lot of—er—lakhs; lakhs of
rupees; rupee one and twopence: you may have been
foolish, but it isn’t for us to cast the first stone; it’s the
conditions that are wrong; go and get something to eat,
476 A CROOKED MILE

and don’t forget your real friends by and by.’—Isn’t
that just the way to bind them to us? By their grati-
tude, eh? Isn’t getting their gratitude better than
blowing them from the muzzles of guns, eh? And
isn’t that the real Empire, of which we all dream ?
OY ey a”

He warmed up to it, while keeping one ear open for
anybody who might come along the passage; and when
he found himself running down he grabbed the news-
paper again. He doubled it back, refolded it, and
again thrust it under Amory’s nose... . There! That
put it all in a nutshell, he said! The figures spoke for
themselves. The Home Government, he said, knew all
about it all the time, but of course they came from that
hopeless slough of ineptitude that humorists were pleased
to call the “ governing classes,” and that was why they
dragged such red herrings across the path of true prog-
ress as—well, as the Suffrage, say... . What!
Hadn’t Amory heard that all this agitation for the Suf-
frage was secretly fomented by the Government itself ?
Oh, come, she must know that! Why, of course it was!
The Government knew dashed well what they were do-
ing, too! It was a moral certainty that there was some-
body behind the scenes actually planning half these out-
rages! Why? Why, simply because it got ’em popu-
lar sympathy when a Minister had his windows smashed
or a paper of pepper thrown in his face. They were
only too glad to have pepper thrown in their faces, be-
cause everybody said what a shame it was, and forgot
all about what fools they’d been making of themselves,
and when a real—er—crisis came, like this one, people
THE IMPERIALISTS 477

scarcely noticed it. . . . But potty little intellects like
Brimby’s and Wilkinson’s didn’t see as deep as that.
It was only Edgar Strong and Amory who saw as deep
as that. That was why they, Edgar and Amory, were
where they were—leaders of thought, not subordinates.

“ Just look rather carefully at those figures,” he con-
cluded. ...

Nevertheless, lofty as these flights were, they had a
little lost their thrill for Amory. She had heard them
so very, very often. She had trembled in the taxi in
vain if this was all that her stealthy coming to the
“ Novum’s” offices meant. Nor had she put on her
new sea-holly velvet to be told, however eloquently, that
Wilkinson and Brimby were minor lights when com-
pared with Edgar and herself, and that the “ Times”
was always wrong. Perhaps the figures that Edgar
had thrust under her nose as if he had been clapping a
muzzle on her meant something to the right person, but
they meant nothing to Amory, and she didn’t pretend
they did. They were man’s business; woman’s was
“visualizing.” The two businesses, when you came to
think of it, were separate and distinct. Whoever heard
of a man wrapping himself up in a carpet and being
carried by Nubians into his mistress’s presence? Who-
, ever heard of a man’s face launching as much as an up-
river punt, let alone fleets and fleets of full-sized ships?
And whoever heard of the compelling beauty of a man’s
eyes, as he lay on a sofa with one satiny upper-arm up-
raised, simply making—making—a woman come and
kiss him? ... It was ridiculous. Amory saw now.
478 A CROOKED MILE

Even Joan of Arc must have put on her armour, not so
much because of all the chopping and banging of maces
and things (which must have been very noisy), but
more with the idea of inspiring. . . . Yes, inspiring:
that was it. There was a difference. Why, even phys-
ically women and men were not the same, and mentally
they were just as different. For example, Amory her-
self wouldn’t have liked to blow anybody from the
mouth of a gun, but she wasn’t sure sometimes that
Edgar wouldn’t positively enjoy it. He had that hard
eye, and square head, and capacity for figures. .. .

She wasn’t sure that her heart didn’t go out to him
all the more because of that puzzle of noughts and dots
and rupees he had thrust into her hands... .

And so, as he continued (so to speak) to gain time
by paying in pennies, and to keep an ear disengaged for
the passage, it came about that Edgar Strong actually
overshot himself. The more technical and masculine
he became, the more Amory felt that it was fitting and
feminine in her not to bother with these things at all,
but just to go on inspiring. She still kept her eyes bent
over the column of figures, but she was visualizing
again. She was visualizing the Channel steamer, and
the Latin Quarter, and satiny upper-arms. And the
taxitremor had returned. .. .

Suddenly she looked softly yet daringly up. She
felt that she must be Indian—yet not too Indian. .
“ And then there’s suttee,” she said in a low voice.

“Eh?” said Strong. He seemed to scent danger.
“ Abolished,” he said shortly.

But here Amory was actually able to tell Edgar
THE IMPERIALISTS 479

Strong something. She happened to have been read-
ing about suttee in a feminist paper only a day or two
before. No doubt Edgar read nothing but figures and
grey oblongs.

“ Oh, no,”’ she said softly but with a knowledge of her
ground. “ That is, I know it’s prohibited, but there
was a case only a little while ago. I read it in the
‘Vaward.’ And it was awful, but splendid, too. She
was a young widow, and I’m sure she had a lovely face,
because she’d such a noble soul.—Don’t you think they
often go together?”

But Edgar did not reply. He had walked to a little
shelf full of reference books and books for review, and
was turning over pages.

“And the whole village was there,’ Amory con-
tinued, “ and she walked to the pyre herself, and said
good-bye to all her relatives, and then——”

Edgar shut his book with a slap.— Abolished in
1829,” he said. “It’s a criminal offence under the
Code.”

Amory smiled tenderly. Abolished! . .. Dear, fel-
low, to think that in such matters he should imagine
that his offences and Codes could make any difference!
Of course the ‘‘ Vaward” had made a mere Suffrage
argument out of the thing, but to Amory it had just
showed how cruel and magnificent and voluptuous and
grim the East could be when it really tried. . . . And
then all at once Amory thought, not of any particular
poem she had ever read, but what a ripping thing it
would be to be able to write poetry, and to say all those
things that would have been rather silly in prose, and
480 A CROOKED MILE

to put heaps of gorgeous images in, like the many-
breasted what-was-hername, and Thingummy—what-
did-they-call-him—the god with all those arms. And
there would be carpets and things too, and limbs, not
plaster ones, but flesh and blood ones, as Edgar said
his own were, and—and—and oh, stacks of material!
The rhymes might be a bit hard, of course, and perhaps
after all it might be better to leave poetry to somebody
else, and to concentrate all her energies on inspiring, as
Beatrice inspired Dante, and Laura Petrarch, and that
other woman Camoens, and Jenny Rossetti, and
Vittoria Colonna Michael Angelo. She might even
inspire Edgar to write poetry. And she would be care-
ful to keep the verses out of Cosimo’s way... .

“ Abolished! ” she smiled in gay yet mournful mock-

ery, and also with a touch both of reproach and of dis-
dain in her look. . . . “Oh well, I suppose men think
80.6 a0”
But at this he rounded just as suddenly on her as
he had done when he had told her that she ought not to
have come to the office. Perhaps he felt that he was
losing ground again. You may be sure that Edgar
Strong, actor, had never had to work as hard for his
money as he had to work that afternoon.

“ Amory!” he called imperiously. “TI tell you it
won't do—not at this juncture! J’d just begun to find
a kind of drug in my work; I’ve locked myself up here;
and now you come and undo it all again with a look!
I see we must have this out. Let me think.”

He began to pace the floor.

When he did speak again, his phrases came in de-
THE IMPERIALISTS . 481

tached jerks. He kept looking sharply up and then dig:
ging his chin into his red tie again.

“Tt was different before,” he said. ‘ It might have
been all right before. We were free then—in a way.
It was different in every way. . . . (Mind your dress
in that tea). . . . But we can’t do anything now. Not
at present. There’s this crisis. That’s suddenly
sprung upon us. There’s got to be somebody at the
wheel—the ‘ Novum’s’ wheel, I mean. I hate talking
about my duty, but you’ve read the ‘Times’ there.
The ‘Times’ is always wrong, and if we desert our
posts the whole game’s up—U. P. Prang’s no good
here. Prang can’t be trusted at a pinch. And Wilkin-
son’s no better. Neither of ’em any good in an emer-
gency. Weak man at bottom, Wilkinson—the weakness
of violence—effeminate, like these strongword poets.
We can’t rely on Wilkinson and Prang. And who is
there left? Eh?”

But he did not wait for an answer.

“ Starving thousands, and no Imperial Grant.” His
voice grew passionate. “Imperial Grant must be
pressed for without delay. What's to happen to the
Real Empire if you and I put our private joys first?
Eh? Answer me. . .. There they are, paying in pen-
nies—and us dallying here. ... No. Dash it all, no.
May be good enough for some of these tame males,
but it’s a bit below aman. I won’t—not now. Not at
present. It would be selfish. They’ve trusted me,
and. »? a shrug. “No. That’s flat. I see my
nights being spent over figures and telegrams and all that
sort of thing for some time to come. . . . Don’t think

 
482) A CROOKED MILE

I’ve forgotten. I understand perfectly. I suppose
that sooner or later it will have to be the Continent and
so on—but not until this job’s settled. Not till then.
Everything else—everything—has got to stand down.
You do see, don’t you, Amory? I hope you do.”

As he had talked there had come over Amory a sense
of what his love must be if nothing but his relentless
sense of duty could frustrate it even for a day. And
that was more thrilling than all the rest put together.
It lifted their whole relation exactly where she had tried
to put it without knowing how to put it there—into the
regions of the heroic. Not that Edgar put on any frills
about it. On the contrary. He was simple and plain
and straight. And how perfectly right he was! Nat-
urally, since the “Times” and its servile following of
the capitalist Press would not help, Edgar had to all
intents and purposes the whole of India to carry on his
shoulders. It was exactly like that jolly thing of Love-
lace’s, about somebody not loving somebody so much if
he didn’t love Honour more. He did love her so much,
and he had as much as said that there would be plenty
of time to talk about the Continent later. Besides, his
dear, rough, unaffected way of calling this heroic work
his “job!” It was just as if one of those knights of
old: had called slaying dragons and delivering the op-
pressed his “ job!”

Amory was exalted as she had never been exalted.
She turned to him where he stood on the hearth, and
laved:him with a fond and exultant look.

“T see,” she said bravely. “I was wretchedly self-
ish. But remember, won’t you, when you’re fighting
THE IMPERIALISTS 483

this great battle against all those odds, and saying all
those lovely things to the Indians, and getting their
confidence, and just showing all those other people how
stupid they are, that J didn’t stop you, dear! J know it
would be beastly of me to stop you! I shouldn’t be
worthy of you... . But I think you ought to appoint
a Committee or something, and have the meetings re-
ported in the ‘ Novum,’ and I’m sure Cosimo wouldn’t
grudge the money. Oh, how I wish I could help !|——”

But he did not say, as she had half hoped he would
say, that she did help, by inspiring. Instead, he held
out his hand. As she took it in both of hers she won-
dered what she ought to do with it. If it had been his
foot, and he had been the old-fashioned sort of knight,
she could have fastened a spur on it. Or she might
have belted a sword about her waist. But to have filled
his fountain-pen, which was his real weapon, would have
been rather stupid. . . . He was leading her, ever so
sympathetically, to the door. He opened it, took from
it the notice that had kept Mr. Prang away, and stood
with her on the landing.

“ Good-bye,” she said.

He glanced over his shoulder, and then almost hurt
her hands, he gripped them so hard.

“ Good-bye,” he said, his eyes looking into hers,
“You do understand, don’t you, Amory?”

“Yes, Edgar.”

Even then he seemed loth to part from her. He ae-
companied her to the top of the stairs.—‘ You'll let
me know when yow’re coming again, won’t you?” he

asked.
484 A CROOKED MILE

“Yes. Good-bye.”

And she tore herself away.

At the first turning of the stairs Amory stood aside
to allow a rather untidy young woman to pass. This
young woman had a long bare neck that reminded Amory
of an artist’s model, and her hands were thrust into the
fore-pockets of a brown knitted coat. She was whistling,
but she stopped when she saw Amory.

“Do you know whether Mr. Dickinson, the poster
artist, is up here?” she asked.

“ The next floor, I think,” Amory replied.

“ Thanks,” said the girl, and passed up.
IV

THE OUTSIDERS

“©ATO, not this week,” Dorothy said. “Dot wrote
a fortnight ago. This one’s from Mollie.

(You remember Mollie, Katie? She came to that

funny little place we had on Cheyne Walk once, but

of course she was only about twelve then. She’s nearly

nineteen now, and so tall! They’ve just gone to Ko-

hat).—Shall I read it, auntie?”

And she read :—

“<Ym afraid I wrote you a hatefully skimpy letter
last time—,’ ” h’m, we can skip that; here’s where they
started: ‘‘‘It was the beastliest journey that I ever
made. To begin with, we were the eighteenth tonga that
day, so we got tired and wretched ponies; we had one
pair for fifteen miles and couldn’t get another pair for
love or money. We left Murree at two o’clock and got
to Pindi at nine. The dust was ghastly. Mercifully
Baba slept like a lump in our arms from five till nine,
so he was all right. We had from nine till one to wait
in Pindi Station, and had dinner, and Baba had a wash
and clean-up and a bottle, and we got on board the
train and off. Baba’s cot, ete.; and we settled down
for the night. Nurse and Baba and Mary and I were

in one carriage and Jim next door. I slept beautifully
485

S
486 A CROOKED MILE

till one o’elock, and then I woke and stayed awake.
The bumping was terrific, and it made me so angry to
look down on the others and see them fast asleep! I
had an upper berth. Baba slept from eleven-thirty till
six-thirty! So we had no trouble at all with him

 

“ Well, and so they got to Kohat. (I hope this isn’t
boring you, Katie.)”

““Tt was most beautifully cool and fresh, and we
had the mess tonga and drove to the bungalow. The
flowering shrubs here would delight Auntie Grace. I’ve
fallen in love with a bush of hibiscus in the compound,
but find it won’t live in water, but droops directly one
picks it. The trees are mostly the palmy kind, and so
green, and the ranges of hills behind are exactly like
the Red Sea ranges. The outside of our bungalow is
covered with purple convolvulus, and the verandah goes
practically all round it. Jim’s room is just like him—
heads he’s shot, study, dressing-room, and workshop, all
in one, and it’s quite the fullest room in the house. Be-
yond that there’s my room, looking out over the Sinai
Range——’

}
‘“‘ Then there are the drawing and dining-rooms——”

“The curtains are a pale terra-cotta pink over the
door and dark green in the bay-windows, with white
net in front. The drawing-room is all green. The
durrie (that’s the carpet) is green, with a darker bor-
der, and the sofa and chairs and mantelpiece-cover and
THE OUTSIDERS 487

the sereen behind the sofa all green. There’s another
bay-window, with far curtains of green and the near
ones chintz, an awfully pretty cream spotted net with a
green hem let in. That makes three lots, two in the
window itself and a third on a pole where the arch comes
into the room. Then over the three doors there are
chintz curtains, cream, with a big pattern of pink and
green and blue, just like Harrods’ catalogue——’

“ Can’t you see it all!—H’m, h’m! . . . Then on the
Sunday morning they got the mess tonga and went out
to Dhoda, with butterfly-nets, and Jim went fish-
ing—h’m, h’m—and she says—

“¢ Té’s just like the Old Testament; I shouldn’t have
been in the least surprised to meet Abraham and Jacob.
It’s the flatness of it, and the flocks and herds. There
are women with pitchers on their heads, and a man was
making scores of bricks with mud and straw—exactly
like the pictures of the Children of Israel in “ Line upon
Inne.” And about a hundred horses and mules and
donkeys and carts all stopped at midday, because it was
so hot, and it was just what I’d always imagined Jacob
doing. But inside cantonments it isn’t a bit Biblical,
but rather too civilized, ete.’

(“ Isn’t Katie patient, listening to all this, auntie! ”’)
“¢ But you can’t go far afield at Kohat. At Murree
you could always get a three or four mile walk round
Pindi Point, but here it’s just to the Club and back.
We go to the Central Godown and the Fancy Godown
to shop. The Central is groceries, and the Fancy tooth-
488 A CROOKED MILE

powder, Serubb’s Ammonia, ete. On Saturday they
were afraid Captain Horrocks had smallpox, and so we
all got vaccinated, but now that we’ve all taken beauti-
fully it seems it isn’t smallpox after all, and we’ve all
got swelled arms, but Captain Horrocks is off the sick-
list to-morrow. Colonel Wade is smaller than ever.
Mrs. Wade is coming out by the “ Rewa.” Mrs.
Beecher came to tea on Sunday 4

(“Is that our Mrs. Beecher, when Uncle Dick was
at Chatham, auntie?” )—

“¢_and I forgot to say that Dot’s parrots stood the
journey awfully well, but they’ve got at the loquat trees
and destroyed all the young shoots. Jim saw us safely
in and is now off on his Indus trip. The 56th are going
in March, and the 58rd come instead. I’m sure the
new baby’s a little darling; what are you going to call
him ? y

“And so on. I do think she writes such good let-
ters. Now let’s have yours, Aunt Grace (and that really
will be the end, Katie).”

And Lady Tasker’s letters also were “ put in.”

 

 

It was a Sunday afternoon, at Cromwell Gardens.
Stan was away with his film company for the week-
end, and Dorothy had got Katie to stay with her during
his absence and had proposed a call on Lady Tasker.
They had brought the third Bit with them, and he now
slept in one of the cots upstairs. Lady Tasker sat
with her crochet at the great first-floor window that
looked over its balcony out along the Brompton Road.
On the left stretched the long and grey and red and
THE OUTSIDERS 489

niched and statued facade of the Victoria and Albert
Museum, and the failing of the western flush was leav-
ing the sky chill and sharp as steel and the wide traffic-
polished road almost of the same colour. Inside the
lofty room was the still glow of a perfect “ toasting-fire,”
and Lady Tasker had just asked Katie to be so good as
to put more coal on before it sank too low.

Katie Deedes had made no scruple whatever about
changing her coat in more senses of the words than one.
She had bought a navy-blue costume and a new toque
(with a wing in it), and since then had got into the
way of expressing her doubts whether Britomart Bel-
chamber’s hockey legs and Dawn of Freedom eye were
in the truest sense feminine, Nay, that is altogether
to understate the change in Katie. She had now no
doubt about these things whatever. As Saul became
Paul, so Katie now not only reviled that which she had
cast off, but was even prepared, like the Apostle at
Antioch, to withstand the older Peters of Imperialism
to their faces, did she detect the least sign of temporiz-
ing in them. And this treason had involved the final
giving-way of every one of her old associates. She was
all for guns and grim measures; and while she looked
fondly on Boy Scouts in the streets and talked about
“the thin end of the wedge of Conscription,” she scowled
on the dusky-skinned sojourners within London’s gates,
and advocated wholesale deportations.

And in all this Katie Deedes was only returning to
her own fold, though her people were not soldiers, but
lawyers. For the matter of that, her father’s cousin
was a very august personage indeed, for whose com-
490 A CROOKED MILE

fort, when he travelled, highly-placed railway officials
made themselves personally responsible, and whose
solemn progress to Assize was snapshotted for the il-
lustrated papers and thrown on five hundred cinema
screens. In the past Katie had been privileged to call
this kingpost of the Law “ Uncle Joe.” .. .

And then Mr. Strong had got hold of her... .

And after Mr. Strong, Mr. Wilkinson... .

And according to Mr. Wilkinson, the most ferocious
of the hanging-judges had been a beaming humani-
tarian by comparison with Sir Joseph. Mr. Wilkin-
son had the whole of Sir Joseph’s career at his fingers’
ends: the So-and-So judgment—this or that flagrant
summing up—the other deliberate and wicked misdirec-
tion to the jury. Sir Joseph’s heart was black, his law
bunkum, and he had only got where he was by self-ad-
vertisement and picking the brains of men a hundred
times fitter for heaven than himself. . . .

Therefore Katie, hearing this horrible tale, had
quailed, and had straightway given away this devil who
was the sinister glory of her house. She had agreed
that he was a man whom anybody might righteously
have shot on sight, and had gathered her Greenaway
garments about her whenever she had passed within a
mile of Sir Joseph’s door... .

But now he was “ Uncle Joe” again, and—well, it -
must have been rather funny. For Katie’s impres-
sionable conscience had given her no rest day or night
until she had sought Uncle Joe out and had made a
clean breast of it all before him. Katie had fancied
THE OUTSIDERS 491

she had seen something like a twinkle in those sinful
old eyes, but (this was when she mentioned the name of
the ‘“ Novum”) the twinkle had vanished again. Oh,
yes, Sir Joseph had heard of the “ Novum.” Didn’t a
Mr. Prang write for it?...

And thereupon Katie had given Mr. Prang away
too. ...
But in the end Sir Joseph had forgiven her, and had
told her that she had better not be either a revolutionary,
nor yet the kind of Conservative that is only a revolu-
tionary turned inside-out, but just a good little girl, and
had asked her how she was getting on, and why she
hadn’t been to see her Aunt Anne, and whether she
would like some tickets for a Needlework Exhibition ;
and now she was just beginning to forget that he had
ever been anything but “ Uncle Joe,” who had given her
toys at Christmas, and Sunday tickets for the Zoo when-
ever she had wanted to go there on that particularly
crowded day.

Dorothy had had something of this in her mind when
she had brought Katie to Cromwell Gardens that Sun-
day afternoon. From Katie’s new attitude to her own
Ludlow project was not so far as it seemed. If she
could lead the zealous ’vert to such promising general
topics as Boy Scouts, Compulsory Service, and the
preparation of boys for the Army (topics that Katie con-
stantly brought forward by denunciation of their op-
posites), her scheme would certainly not suffer, and
might even be advanced.

And, as it happened, no sooner had Dorothy tucked
492 A CROOKED MILE

her last letter back into its envelope than Katie broke
out—earnestly, proselytizingly, and very prettily on the
stump.

“There you are!” she exclaimed. “ That’s all ex-
actly what I mean! Why, any one of those letters
ought to be enough to convince anybody! Here are all
these stupid people at home, ready to believe everything
a native tells them, going on as they do, and hardly one
of them’s ever set foot out of England in his life! Of
course the Indians know exactly what they want, but
don’t you see, Dorothy—,” very patiently she explained
it for fear Dorothy should not see, “—don’t you see that
it’s all so much a matter of course to Mollie and those
that they can actually write whole letters about window-
curtains! I love that about the window-curtains! It’s
all such an old story to them! They know, you see,
and haven’t got to be talking about it all the time in
order to persuade themselves! There it is/—But these
other people don’t know anything at all. They don’t
even see what a perfect answer window-curtains are to
them! They go on and on and on—you do see what I
mean, Dorothy ? Re

“Yes, dear,” said Dorothy, mildly thinking of the
great number of people there were in the world who
would take no end of trouble to explain things to her.
oe Go on.”

And Katie continued to urge upon her friend the argu-
ment that those know most about a country who know
most about it.

Katie had got to the stage of being almost sure that
she remembered Mollie’s coming into the studio in

 
THE OUTSIDERS 493

Cheyne Walk one day, when Lady Tasker, who had not
spoken, suddenly looked up from her crochet and said,
“Took, Dorothy—that’s the girl I was speaking about—
coming along past the Museum there.”

Dorothy rose and walked to the window.—“ Where ?”
she said.

“ Passing the policeman now.”

Dorothy gave a sudden exclamation. Why,” she
exclaimed, ‘“—come here, Katie, quick—it’s Amory
Towers !—It is Amory, isn’t it?”

Katie had run to the window, too. The two women
stood watching the figure in the mushroom-white hat
and the glaucous blue velvet that idled forlornly along
the pavement.

“Do you mean Mrs. Pratt?” said Lady Tasker, put-
ting up her glass again. “ Are you quite sure?”

Once before in her life, in the days before her mar-
riage, Amory Towers had done the same thing that she
was doing now. Then, seeking something, perhaps a
refuge from herself, she had walked the streets until
she was ready to drop with fatigue, watching faces pass-
ing, passing, for ever passing, and slowly gathering from
them a hypnotic stupor. Sometimes, for hour after
hour, she had seen nothing but eyes—eyes various in
shape and colour as the pebbles on a beach, sometimes
looking into hers, sometimes looking past her, some-
times tipped with arrow-heads of white as they turned,
sometimes only to be seen under their lids as a finger-
nail is seen within the finger of a glove. And at other
times, weary of her fellow-beings and ceasing to look

é
494 A CROOKED MILE

any more at them, she had seen nothing but doors and
windows, or fan-lights, or the numbers of houses, or
window-boxes, or the patterns of railings, or the serried
shapes of chimneys against the sky. She had been look-
ing, and yet not looking, for Cosimo Pratt then; she was
looking, and yet not looking, for Edgar Strong now.
Had she met him she had nothing new to say to him;
she only knew that he had taken weak possession of
her mind. She was looking for him in South Kensing-
ton because he had once told her, when asked suddenly,
that he lived in Sydney Street, S. W., and frequently
walked to the Indian section of the Imperial Institute
in order to penetrate into the real soul of a people
through its art; and she was not looking for him, be-
cause one day she had remembered that he had said
before that he lived in South Kentish Town—which
was rather like South Kensington, but not the same—
and something deep down within her told her that the
other was a lie.

But yet her feet dragged her to the quarter, as to
other quarters, and she talked to herself as she walked.
She told herself that her husband did not understand
her, and that it would be romantic and silencing did
she take a lover to her arms; and she could have wepi
that, of all the flagrant splendours of which she dreamed,
London’s grey should remain her only share. And she
knew that the attendants of the Imperial Institute had
begun to look at her. Once she had spoken to one of
them, but when she had thought of asking him whether
he knew a Mr. Strong who came there to study Indian
Art, her heart had suddenly failed her, and the ques-
THE OUTSIDERS 495

tion had stayed unspoken. Nevertheless she had feared
that the man had guessed her thought, and must be
‘taking stock of her face against some contingency (to
visualize which passed the heavy time on) that had a
Divorce Court in it, and hotel porters and chamber-
maids who gave evidence, and the Channel boat, and
two forsaken children, and grimy raptures in the Latin
Quarter, and its hectic cafés at night... .

And so she walked, feeling herself special and strange
and frightened and_ half-resolved; and thrice in as
many weeks Lady Tasker, sitting with her crochet at
her window, had seen her pass, but had not been able
to believe that this was the woman, with a husband and
children, on whom she had once ealled at that house
with the secretive privet hedge away in Hampstead.

“Tt is Amory!” Dorothy exclaimed. “Is she com-
ing here?”

Lady Tasker spoke reflectively—‘ I don’t know. I
don’t think so. But—will you fetch her in? I should
like to see her.”

“Tf you like, auntie,” said Dorothy, though a little
reluctantly.

But Lady Tasker seemed to change her mind. She
laid down her crochet and rose.

“No, never mind,” she said. “ll fetch her my-
self.”

And the old lady of seventy passed slowly out af the
room, and Katie and Dorothy moved away from the
window.

Lady Tasker was back again in five minutes, but no
496 A CROOKED MILE

Amory came with her. She walked back to her chair,
moved it, and took up her work again.— Switch the
table light on,” she said.

“Was it Amory?” Dorothy ventured to ask after a
silence.

“Yes,” Lady Tasker replied.

“‘ And wouldn’t she come in?”

“She said she was hurrying back home.”

That raised a question so plain that Dorothy thought
it tactful to make rather a fuss about finding some al-
bum or other that should convince Katie that she really
had met the Mollie who had written the letter about
the window-curtains. Lady Tasker’s needle was danc-
ing rather more quickly than usual. Dorothy found her
album, switched on another light, and told Katie to
make room for her on her chair.

Amory, dawdling like that, and then, when spoken
to, to have the face to say that she was hurrying back
home!

It was some minutes later that Lady Tasker said off-
handedly, ‘‘ Has she any children besides those twins?”

“ Amory?” Dorothy replied, looking up from the al-
bum. “ No.”

“ How old is she?” Lady Tasker asked.

“ Thirty-two, isn’t she, Katie?”

“ About that.”

“Ts she very—athletic?’’ Lady Tasker next wanted
to know.

“Not at all, I should say.”

““T mean she doesn’t go in for marathon races or
Channel swimming or anything of that kind?”

 
THE OUTSIDERS 497

“Amory? No,” said Dorothy, puzzled.

“And you’re sure of her age?” the old lady per-
sisted.

“Well—she may only be thirty-one.”

“T don’t mean is she younger. Is she older than
that ?”’

‘““No—I know by my own age.”

“Wm!” said Lady Tasker; and again her needle
danced... .

Dorothy was explaining to Katie that Mollie was
fair, about her own colour, but of course the hair never
came out right in a photograph, when Lady Tasker sud-
denly began a further series of questions.

“ Dorothy: a

& Yes 2 )

“ Did she—develop—early ?”

“ Who—Amory? I don’t know. Did she, Katie?
Of course she was quite the cleverest girl at the Mc-
Grath.”

“Ah! ... What did she do at the McGrath?”

“Why, painted. You’re awfully mysterious, auntie!
It was soon after she left the McGrath that she painted
‘ Barrage ’—you’ve heard of her feminist picture that
made such a stir! ”

“ Ah, yes. Yes, I didn’t see it, but I did hear about
it. I don’t know anything about art.—Had she any
affair before she married young Pratt?”

“No. Dmsure of that. I knew her so well.” Dor-
othy was quite confident on that point, and Katie agreed.
J.ady Tasker’s questions continued.

And then, suddenly, into this apparently aimless cate-

 
498 A CROOKED MILE

chism the word “ doctor” came. Dorothy gave a start.

“ Aunt Grace! . . . Do you mean Amory’s ill?” she
cried.

Lady Tasker did not look up from her crochet.—
“Tll?” she said. “I’ve no reason to suppose so. I
didn’t say she was ill. There’s no illness about it. . .
By the way, I don’t think I’ve asked how Stan is.”

But for the curiously persistent questions, Dorothy
might have seized the opportunity to hint that Stan
was made for something more nationally useful than
getting himself black and blue by stopping runaway
horses for the film or running the risk of double pneu-
monia by being fished out of the sea on a January day
—which was the form his bread-winning was taking on
that particular week-end. But the Ludlow design was
for the moment forgotten. She would have liked to
ask her aunt straight out what she really meant, but
feared to be rude. So she turned to the album again,
and again Katie, turning from turban to staff-cap and
from staff-cap to pith helmet, urged that those were the
people who really knew what they were talking about—
surely Dorothy saw that!

Then, in the middle of Dorothy’s bewilderment, once
more the questions. . . . About that painting of her
friend’s, Lady Tasker wanted to know: did Mrs. Pratt
get any real satisfaction out of it?—Any emotional sat-
isfaction ?—Was she entirely wrapped up in it?—Or
was it just a sort of hitting at the air ?—Did it exhaust
her to no purpose, or was it really worth something when
it was done?

 

 
THE OUTSIDERS 499

“Tf Dorothy doesn’t know, surely you do, Katie.”

Katie coloured a little —“ I liked ‘ Barrage’ awfully
at the time,” she pontessed, “but—,” and she cheered
up again, “—TI hate it now.’

“But did her work—what’s the expression fll
her life ?”

Here Dorothy answered for Katie—‘I think she
rather liked the fame part of it,” she said slowly.

“ Does she paint now?”

“ Very little, I think, Lady Tasker.”

“‘ Has her children to look after, I suppose?”

“ Well—she has both a nurse and a governess”

“ They’re quite well off, aren’t they? I seem to re-
member that Pratt came into quite a lot.”

“ They seem to spend a great deal.”

“ But that’s only a small house of theirs?”

“Oh, yes, they’re rather proud of that. They don’t
spend their money selfishly. It goes to the Cause, you
see.”

“What Cause?” Lady Tasker asked abruptly.

This was Katie’s cue... .

She ceased, and Lady Tasker muttered something. It
sounded rather like “H’m! Too much money and
not enough to do!” but neither of her companions was
near enough to be quite sure.

And thereupon the questions stopped.

But a surmise of their drift had begun to dawn glim-
meringly upon Dorothy. She ceased to hear the ex-
position of Imperialism’s real needs into which Katie
presently launched, and fell into a meditation. And

 
500 A CROOKED MILE

of that meditation this was about the length and
breadth :—

Until the law should allow a man to have more
wives than one (if then), of course only one woman
in the world could be perfectly happy—the woman
who had Stan. That conviction came first, and last,
and ran throughout her meditation. And of what Dor-
othy might compassionately have called secondary hap-
pinesses she had hitherto not thought very much. She
had merely thanked her stars that she had not married
a man like Cosimo, had once or twice rather resented
Amory’s well-meant but left-handed kindnesses, and
that had been the extent of her concern about the Pratt
household. But first Katie, and now her aunt, had
set her wondering hard enough about that household
now.

What, she-asked herself, had the Pratts married on ?
What discoveries had they made in one another, what
resources found within themselves? Apart from their
talks and books and meetings and “ interests” and
that full pack of their theories, what was their mar-
riage? ‘Thrown alone together for an hour, did they
fret? Did their yawning cease when the bell rang and
a caller was admitted? Did even the same succession
of callers become stale and a bore, so that strangers had
to be sought to provide a stimulus? And did they call
these and half a hundred other forms of mutual bore-
dom by the rather resounding names that blabbing
Katie had repéated to her— wider interests,” “the
broad outlook,” “the breaking down of personal in-
sularity,” and the rest ?
THE OUTSIDERS ° 501

And for once Dorothy dropped her excusatory at-
titude towards her friend. She dropped it so com-
pletely that by and by she found herself wondering
whether Amory would have married Cosimo had he
been a poor man. She was aware that, stated in that
way, it sounded hideous; nor did she quite mean that
perhaps Amory had married Cosimo simply and solely
because he had not been poor; no doubt Amory had
assumed other things to be equal that as a matter of
fact had unfortunately proved to be not equal at all;
but she did doubt now whether Amory had not missed
that something, that something made of so many things,
that caused her own heart suddenly to gush out to the
absent Stan. The thought frightened her a little.
Had Amory married and had babies—all, as it were,
beside the mark? ...

Dorothy did not know.

But an obscurer hint still had seemed to lie behind
her aunt’s persistent questions. “Was Amory ill?”
she herself had asked in alarm when that unexpected
word “ doctor” had been quietly dropped; and “ Tl]?
I didn’t say she was ill; there’s no illness about it,”
Lady Tasker had replied. No illness about what?
Apparently about something Lady Tasker saw, or
thought she saw, in Amory. ... An old lady whose
years had earned her the right to sit comfortably in
her chair had gone so far as to descend the stairs and
go out into the street to have a closer look at a young
one: why? Why ask “Is she a Channel swimmer?”
and. “ Is her painting a mere hitting of the air?” Why
this insistence on some satisfaction for labour, as if
502 A CROOKED MILE

without that satisfaction the labour wreaked on the
labourer some sort of revenge? What sort of a re-
venge? And why on Amory?

Yes, Dorothy would have liked to ask her aunt a
good many questions... .

She did not know that Lady Tasker could not have
answered them. She did not know that the whole
world is waiting for precisely those replies. She did
not know that the data of a great experiment have not
yet begun to be gathered together. She did not know
that, while she and Stan would never see the results
of that experiment, little Noel and the other Bits, and
Corin and Bonniebell might. She only knew that her
aunt was a wise and experienced woman, with an ap-
‘petite for life and all belonging to it that only grew
the stronger as her remaining years drew in, and that
apparently Lady Tasker found something to question,
if not to fear.

“Ts she a Channel swimmer? Does she get any
emotional satisfaction out of what she does?”

They were oddly precise questions... .

Much less odd was that homely summing-up of
Lady Tasker’s: ‘Too much money, and not enough
to dow» »

Dorothy had often thought that herself.
Vv.

“ HOUSE FULL”

eo gate in the privet hedge of The Witan had
had little rest all the afternoon. It was a Sun-
day, the one following that on which Lady Tasker
had issued bareheaded from her door, had crossed the
road, and had caused Amory to start half out of her
skin by suddenly speaking to her. The Wyrons had
come in the morning; they had been expressly asked
to lunch; but it was known that Dickie Lemesurier
was coming in afterwards to discuss an advertisement,
and if Dickie came the chances were that Mr. Brimby
would not be very long after her. As a matter of fact
Dickie and Mr. Brimby had encountered one another
outside and had arrived together at a little after three,
bringing three young men, friends of Mr. Brimby’s still
at Oxford, with them. These young men wore Nor-
folk jackets, gold-pinned polo-collars, black brogues
and turned-up trousers; and apparently they had hesi-
tated to take Cosimo at his word about “ spreading
themselves about anywhere,” for they stood shoulder
to shoulder in the studio, and when one turned to look
at a picture or other object on the wall, all did so.
Then, not many minutes later, Mr. Wilkinson had en-
tered, in his double-breasted blue reefer, bringing with

him a stunted, bow-legged man who did not carry, but
503
504 A CROOKED MILE

looked as if he ought to have carried, a miner’s lamp;
and by half-past four, of The Witan’s habitués, only
Mr. Prang and Edgar Strong were lacking. But Ed-
gar was coming. It had been found impossible, or at
any rate Amory had decided that it was impossible, to
discuss the question of Dickie’s advertisement without
him. But he was very late.

When Britomart Belchamber came in simultane-
ously with the tea and the twins at a little before five,
the studio was full. The asbestos log purred softly,
and Mr. Brimby’s three Oxford friends, glad perhaps
of something to do,-walked here and there, each of them
with a plate of bread and butter in either hand, not
realizing that at The Witan the beautiful Chinese rule
of politeness was always observed— When the stranger
is in your melon-patch, be a little inattentive.” Had
Dickie Lemesurier and Laura Wyron eaten half the
white and brown that was presented to them, they must
have been seriously unwell. It was Cosimo, grey-col-
lared and with a claret-coloured velvet waistcoat show-
ing under his slackly-buttoned tweed jacket, who gave
the young men the friendly hint, “Everybody helps
themselves here, my dear fellows.” Then the Nor-
folk jackets came together again, and presently their
owners turned with one accord to examine the hock
and the top-side that hung on the wall over the sofa.

Not so much a blending of voices as an incessant
racket of emphatic and independent pronouncements
filled the studio. Walter Wyron had fastened upon
the man who looked as if he ought to have carried a
miner’s lamp, and his forefinger was wagging like a
“HOUSE FULL” 505

gauge-needle as he explained that one of his Lectures
had been misrepresented, and that he had never taken.
up the position that a kind of Saturnalia should be
definitely state-established. He admitted, neverthe-
less, that the question of such an establishment ought
to be considered, like any other question, on its merits,
and that after that the argument should be followed
whithersoever it led.—Dickie Lemesurier, excessively
animated, and with the whites showing dancingly all
round her pupils, was talking Césanne and Van Gogh
to Laura, and declaring that something was “ quite
the” something or other—Mr. Brimby’s hand was
fondling Bonniebell’s head while he deprecated the
high degree of precision of the modern rifle to Mr.
Wilkinson. “If only it wasn’t so ruthlessly logical! ”
he was sighing. “If only it was subject to the slight
organic accident, to those beautiful adaptations of give-
and-take that make judgment harsh, and teach us that
we ought never to condemn! ”—Corin, drawn by the
word “gun,” was demanding to be told whether that
was the gun that had been taken away from him.—And
Britomart Belchamber, indifferent alike to the glances
of the Oxford men and their trepidation in her pres-
ence, stood like a caryatid under a wall-bracket with an
ivy-green replica of Bastianini’s Dante upon it.

“No, no, not for a moment, my dear sir!” Walter
shouted to the man who looked like (and was) a miner.
“That is to ignore the context. I admit I used the
less-known Pompeian friezes as a rough illustration of
what I meant—but I did not suggest that Waring &
Gillow’s should put them on the market! What I did
506 A CROOKED MILE

say was that we moderns must work out our damnation
on the same lines that the ancients did. Read your
Nietzsche, my good fellow, and see what he says about
the practical serviceability of Excess! I contend that
a kind of general oubliance, say for three weeks in the
year, to which everybody without exception would have
to conform (so that we shouldn’t have the superior per-
son bringing things up against us afterwards) .

“Ah doan’t see how ye could mak’ fowk ,” the
miner began, in an accent that for a moment seemed
to blast a hole clean through the racket. But the hole
closed up again.

“Ah, at present you don’t,” Walter cried. “ The
spade-work isn’t done yet. We need more education.
But every new and great idea——”

But here an outburst from Mr. Wilkinson to Mr.
Brimby drowned Walter’s voice. Mr. Wilkinson raised
his clenched fist, but only for emphasis, and not in
order to strike Mr. Brimby.

“Stuff and nonsense! There you go, Brimby, trim-
ming again. We’ve heard all that: ‘A great deal to
be said on both sides,’ ”—(Mr. Wilkinson all but mim-
icked Mr Brimby). ‘ There isn’t—not if you’re going
to do anything! There’s only one side. You’ve got to
shoot or be shot. I’m a shooter. Give me five hundred
real men and plenty of barricade stuff——”

“Oh, oh, oh, my dear friend!” Mr. Brimby pro-
tested. “Why, if your principles were universally
applied. We

“Who said anything about applying ’em univer-
sally? Hang your universal applications! I’m talk-

 

 

 
“HOUSE FULL” 507

ing about the Industrial Revolution. J’ll tell you
what’s the matter with you, Brimby: you don’t like
the sight of blood. I’m not blaming you. Some men
are like that. But it’s in every page of your writing.
You’ve got a bloodless style. I don’t mind admitting
that I liked some of your earlier work, while there still
seemed a chance of your making up your mind some
day: ”?

But here Mr. Wilkinson in his turn was drowned,
this time by an incredulous laugh from Cosimo, who
had joined Dickie and Laura.

“Van Gogh says that?’ his voice mounted high.
“Really? You’re sure he wasn’t joking? Ha ha, ha
ha! ... But it’s rather pathetic really. One would
think Amory’d never painted ‘Barrage,’ nor the
‘White Slave,’ nor that—,” he pointed to the unfinished
canvas of “ The Triumph of Humane Government ” on
the wall. “By Jove, I must make an Appendix of
that! . . . Here—Walter!—Have you told him,
Dickie ?—Walter ! ”

But Walter was now at deadly grips with the man
who had forgotten his miner’s lamp.

“T tell you I never used Saturnalia in that sense at
all! a

But the miner stood his ground.

“Happen ye didn’t, but Ill ask ye one question:
Have ye ever been to Blackpool of a August Bank
Holiday ? ”

“ My good man, you talk as if I proposed to do some-
thing with the stroke of a pen, to-morrow, before the
world’s ready for it a

 

 

 

 

 
508 A CROOKED MILE

“Have ye ever been to Blackpool of a Bank Holli-
day?”

“What on earth has Blackpool to do with it? of

“Well, we'll say Owdham Wakes week at t’ Isle 0’
Man—Douglas ”

“Pooh! You’ve got hold of the wrong idea alto-
gether! Do you know what Saturnalia means?

“T know there’s a man on Douglas Head, at twelve
o’clock i’ ¢? day, wi’ t? sun shining, going round wi’ a
stick an’ prodding ’em up an’ telling ’em to break
away: Rs

“T shouldn’t have thought anybody could have been
so incredibly slow to grasp an idea—!” cried Walter,
his hands aloft. .

“ Have—you-——ever—been—to—Blackpool—when—
t? Wakes—is on?”

Then Cosimo called again—

“Walter! I say! Come here! . . . Dickie’s just told
me something that makes the ‘ Life and Work’ rather
necessary, I think! m

And Walter turned his back on the miner and joined
his wife and Dickie and Cosimo.

Anybody who wasn’t anybody might have supposed
the noise to be a series of wrangles, but of course it
wasn’t so at all really. Issues far too weighty hung
in the balance. It is all very well for people whose -
mental range is limited by matinées and Brooklands
and the newest car to talk in pleasant and unimpas-
sioned voices, but what was going to happen to Art un-
less Cosimo hurled himself and the ‘ Life and Work’
against this heretic Van Gogh, and what was to become

 

 

 

 

 
“HOUSE FULL” 509

of England if Walter allowed a pig-headed man who
could say nothing but “Blackpool Pier, Blackpool
Pier,” to shout him down, and what would happen to
Civilization if Mr. Wilkinson did not, figuratively
speaking, take hold of the dilettante Brimby and shake
him as a terrier shakes a rat? No: there would be time
enough for empty politenesses when the battle was
won.

In the meantime, a mere nobody might have thought
they were merely excessively rude to one another.

Then began fresh combinations and permutations of
the talk. Mr. Wilkinson, whose square-cut pilot jacket
‘somehow added to the truculence of his appearance,
planted himself firmly for conversation before Dickie
Lemesurier; the miner, whose head at a little distance
appeared bald, but on a closer view was seen to be cov-
ered with football-cropped and plush-like bristles,
nudged Cosimo’s hip, to attract his attention: and Wal-
ter Wyron sprang forward with a welcoming “ Hallo,
Raffinger!” as the door opened and two young Mc-
Grath students were added to the crowd, For a min-
ute no one voice preponderated in the racket; it was—

“Hallo, Raff! Thought you weren’t coming!”

“T want a gun!” (This from Corin.)

“My dear Corin” (this from Bonniebell), “ Miss
Belchamber’s told you over and over again guns are
anti-social a

“ Anybody smoking? Well, I know they don’t
mind -

“But, Miss Lemesurier, where a speaker reaches
only a hundred or two, the written word

 

 

 

!
510 A CROOKED MILE

“ Ah, but the personal, magnetic thrill ” (This
was in Dickie’s rather deep voice. )

Then Walter, to somebody else, not the miner—

“T should have thought anybody would have known
that when I said Saturnalia I meant——”

“‘Where’s Amory?”

“ Sweet, in those little tunics!

“ A subsidy from the State, of course——”

Then the miner, but not to Walter—

“T t? daylight, proddin’ ’em up wi’ a stick—to say
nowt o’ Port Skillian bathin’-place of a fine Sunda’—”’

“That hoary old lie, that Socialism means shar-
ing: 29 *

“Oh, at any artists’ colourman’s

“No; it will probably be published privately 2

“Van Gog’ in

“ Oh, you’re entirely wrong!

And then, in the middle of a sudden and mysterious
lull, the man who had come without his safety-lamp was
heard addressing Cosimo again :—

“Well, what about t? new paaper? Owt settled
yet? ... Nay, ye needn’t look; Wilkinson telled me;
it’s all right; nowt ’at’s said ’ll go beyond these fower
walls. Wilkinson’s gotten a rare list together, names
an’ right, I can tell ye! But t? way I look at it is
this a

Cosimo looked blank.

“But, my dear—I’m afraid I didn’t catch your
name——,” he said.

“ Crabtree—Eli Crabtree. This is t? point I want
to mak’, mister. Ye see, I can’t put things grammar;

 

o

 

 

7)

 

 

 

99

 

 
“HOUSE FULL” 511

but there’s lots about ’at can; so I thowt we’d get a sec’e-
tary, an’ I’d sit an’ smoke whol’ my thowts come, and
then I’d tell him t’ tale. Ye see, ye want to go slap into
t? middle o’ t’ lives 0’ t? people. Now comin’ up o’ t’
tram-top I bethowt me of a champion series: ‘ Back to
Back Houses P’'ve Known.’ Tl bet a crahn that wi’
somb’dy to put it grammar for me——”

“ My dear Crabtree, I’m afraid, don’t you know, that
there’s been some mistake——”

And at this point, everybody becoming conscious at
the same moment that they were listening, a fresh wave
of sound flowed over the assembly; and presently Mr.
Wilkinson was seen to take Cosimo aside and to be
making the gestures of a man who is explaining some
ridiculous mistake.

Then once more :—

“T beg your pardon—I thought you were Mrs.
Pratt———”

“Put grammar—straight to fowk’s hearts—sinks and
slopstones an’ all t’ lot ee

“No, Balliok—”

“ But listen, Pratt, the way the mistake arose——”

“ Ellen Key, of course——”

“The ‘ Times! ’—As if the ‘ Times’ wasn’t always
wrong! ”

 

 

 

 

 

“ There’s a raucousness about her paint: ”

“The Caxton Hall, at eight—do come! as

“But we authors are so afraid of sentiment nowa-
days! 4

“ Bombay, I think—or else Hyderabad a
“ Oh, he talks like a fool! 22

 

 
512 A CROOKED MILE

“Raff! Come here and recite ‘The King is
Duller -———”’

“ But Love is Law! ”

“Suspend our judgments until we’ve heard the other
side——”

“ Only water—but they couldn’t break her spirit—she
was out again in three days——”

And again there came an unexpected lull.

This time it was broken by, perhaps not the loudest,
but certainly the most travelling voice yet—the voice of
the caryatid beneath the bracket with the bust upon it.
Miss Belchamber was dressed in a sleeveless surcoat
chess-boarded with large black and white squares; the
skirt beneath it was of dark blue linen; and there were
beards of leather on her large brown brogues. One of
the young Oxford men, greatly daring, had approached
her and asked her a question. She turned slowly; she
gave the young man the equal-soul-to-equal-soul look ; and
then the apparatus of perfect voice-production was set in
motion. Easily and powerfully the air came from her
magnificent chest, up the splendid six-inch main of her
throat, rang upon the hard anterior portion of her palate,
and was cut, as it were, to its proper length and shaped
into perfect enunciation by her red tongue and beauti-
ful white teeth.

“ What?” she said.

The undergraduate fell a little back.

“‘ Only—I only asked if you’d been to many theatres
lately.”

“ Not any.”

 
“HOUSE FULL” 513

“Oh! ...I-I suppose you know everybody
here?”

“ Yes.”’

“ Do point them out to me!”

“ That’s Walter Wyron. That’s Mrs. Wyron. That’s
Miss Lemesurier. I don’t know who the little man is.
That’s Mr. Wilkinson. My name’s Belchamber.”

“ Oh—TI say—I mean, thanks awfully. We've heard
of them all, of course,” the unhappy young man faltered.

“What?”

“ All distinguished names, I mean.”

“ Of course.”

“ Rather ! i

And again everybody listened, became conscious of ©
the fact, and broke out anew.

But where all this time was Amory ?

Demonstrably, exactly where she ought to have been—
in her bedroom. She was too dispirited to be accessible
to the rational talk of others; she did not feel that she
had energy enough to be a source of illumination herself ;
surely, then, merely because a lot of people, invited and
uninvited, chose to come to The Witan, she need not put
herself out to go and look after them. They might call
themselves her “guests” if they liked; Amory didn’t
care what form of words they employed; the underlying
reality remained—that she was intensely bored, and too
fundamentally polite to bore others by going down. Per-
haps she would go down when Edgar came. She had
left word that she was to be informed of his arrival.
But he was very late.

 
514 A CROOKED MILE

Nevertheless, she knew that he would come. Lately
she had grown a little more perspicacious about that.
It had dawned on her that, everything else apart, she had
some sort of hold on him through the “ Novum,” and
there had been a trace of command in her summons that
he was pretty sure not to disregard. No doubt he would
try to get away again almost directly, but she had ar-
ranged about that. She intended to keep him to suppef.
Also the Wyrons. And Britomart Belchamber too
would be there. And of course Cosimo.

She moved restlessly between her narrow bed and the
window, now polishing her nails, now glancing at her
hair in the glass. From the window she could see over
the privet hedge and down the road, but there was no
sign of Edgar yet. She looked at herself again in the
glass, without favour, and then sat down on the edge of
her bed again.

Her meeting with Lady Tasker the week before had
greatly unsettled her. Very stupidly, she had quite for-
gotten that Lady Tasker lived in Cromwell Gardens.
She would have thought nothing at all of the meeting
had Lady Tasker had a hat on her head and gloves on
her hands; she would have set that down as an ordinary
street-encounter; but Dorothy’s aunt had evidently seen
her from some window, perhaps not for the first time,
and, if not for the first, very likely for the third or
fourth or fifth. Ina word, Amory felt that she had been
caught.

And, as she had been thinking of Edgar Strong at
the moment when the old lady’s voice had startled her
so, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that her
“HOUSE FULL” 515

start had seemed remarkable. Lady Tasker was so very
sharp.

At all events, even Edgar was not going to have every-
thing all his own way.

For she was sure now that she had the hold of the
“ Novum ” on him, and that that hold was not altogether
the single-minded devotion to his duty he had made it
out to be on that day when she had last gone to the office.
Not that she thought too unkindly of him on that ac-
count. The labourer, even in the field of Imperial Poli-
tics, is still worthy of his hire, and poor Edgar, like the
rest of the world, had to make the best compromise he
could between what he would have liked to do and what
circumstances actually permitted him to do. Of course
he would be anxious to keep his job. If he didn’t keep
it a worse man would get it, and India would be no bet-
ter off, but probably worse. She sighed that all work
should be subject to compromises of this kind. Edgar,
in a word, was no longer a hero to her, but, by his very
weakness, something a little nearer and dearer still.

But for all that she had not hesitated to use her
“ pull ” in order to get him to The Witan that day.

She saw him as she advanced to the glass again. He
was nearly a quarter of a mile down the road. She
found a little secret delight in watching his approach
when he was unconscious of her watching. His figure
was still very small, and she indulged herself with a
fancy, closing her eyes for a moment in order to do so.
Suppose he had been, not approaching, but going away—
then when she opened her eyes again he would look
smaller still, . . . She opened them, and experienced a
516 A CROOKED MILE

little thrill at seeing him nearer and plainer. She could
distinguish the red spot of his tie. Now he turned his
head to look at some people who passed. Now he
stepped off the pavement to make room for somebody.
Now he was on the pavement again—now hidden by a
tree—now once more disclosed, and quite near——

She straightened herself, gave a last look into the
glass, and descended. ,

She met him in the hall. They shook hands, but
did not speak. There was no need for him to ask
whether anybody had come; the babble of noise could be
plainly heard through the closed studio door. They
walked along the passage, descended the two steps into
the garden, and reached the studio.

Strong opened the door, and—

“ Ha, ha, ha! I shall tell them that at the Nurs-
ery ! m9

“ No—just living together: ”

“ Corin !—Corin ! 2

“ The eighteenth, at the Little Theatre——”

Then the voice of Mr. Crabtree vociferating to his
friend Mr. Wilkinson.

“T thowt ye telled me ’at Pratt knew all about
it a9

“‘One day in the High, just opposite Queens a

“Not know the ‘ Internationale’!—Debout, les
damnés de la terre——!”

Next, sonorously, Miss Belechamber.

“Yes, I dance ‘Rufty Tufty’ and ‘Catching of
Quails ’"——”

 

 

 

 

 
“HOUSE FULL” 517

“But my good chap, don’t you see that the Referen-
dum——”
“Oh, throw it down anywhere—on the hearth e
“ Really, the bosh he talks 2

“The Minority Report——”

 

 

 

“ Corin ! ”
“ Plato——”
“ Pr 29

 

Then, before anybody had had time to notice the en-
try of Amory and Edgar Strong, an extraordinary, not
to say a regrettable thing occurred.

Mr. Eli Crabtree had spent the last twenty minutes
in going deliberately from one person to another, often
thrusting himself unceremoniously between two people
already engaged in conversation, and in subjecting them
to questionings that had become less and less reticent the
further he had passed round the room. And it appeared
that this collier who had forgotten his Davy had yet an-
other lamp. with him—the lamp of his own narrow intel-
ligence and inalienable, if worthless, experience. By
the help of that darkness within him that he mistook for
light, he had added inference to inference and conclusion
to conclusion. Cosimo—Wilkinson—Walter Wyron—
Brimby—the Balliol men—the young students of the
McGrath—he had missed not one of them; but none
knew the portent of his tour of the studio until he had —
reached the hearth again. Then he was seen to be stand-
ing with his hands behind him, as if calmly summing
them up.

“ By—Gow!” he said half to himself, his football-
518 A CROOKED MILE

cropped head moving this way and that and his eyes
blinking rapidly as he sought somebody to address.

Then, all in a moment, he ceased his attempt to single
out one more than another, and was addressing them in
the lump, for all the world as if he had been allowed the
entrée of the house, not as a high and memorable priv-
ilege and in order that he might learn something he had
never suspected before, but as if, finding himself there,
he might as well tell them a thing or two while he was
about it. And though his astonishment at what he had
seen might well have rendered him dumb, his good tem-
per did not for an instant forsake him.

“ By—Gow!” he said again. “But this is a me
nagerie, an’ reight!”

The instantaneous dead silence and turn of every
head might have disconcerted a prophet, but they made
not the slightest impression on Mr. Crabtree.

“Tt is a menagerie!” he continued superbly.
“Ding, if onnybody’d told me I wadn’t ha’ believed
em !—Let’s see how monny of ye there is -

And calmly he began to count them.

“ Fowerteen—fifteen—sixteen countin’ them two
’at’s just come in an’ leavin’ out t’ barns. Sixteen of
ye, grown men an’ women, an’ not a single one of ye
knows ye’re born! Nay, it’s cappin’!—Him wi’ his
Salmagundys or whativver he calls ’em, an’ niver been
on Douglas Head!—T’ maister here, ’at doesn’t know
what a back-to-back is, I’se warrant!—An’ yon
chap—,” Mr. Crabtree’s forefinger was straight as a
pistol between Mr. Brimby’s eyes, “at says there’s a
deeal to be said o’ both sides an’ll be having his pocket’-

 
“HOUSE FULL” 519

ankercher out in a minute!—An’ these young men
thro’ t? Collidge!—Nay, if it doesn’t beat all! I ne’er
thowt to live to see t? day!

And he made a T-t-t-ing with his tongue on his
palate, while his sharp little eyes looked on them all
with amusement and pity.

Out of the silence of consternation that had fallen
on the studio Walter Wyron was the first to come. He
nudged Cosimo, as if to warn him not to spoil every-
thing, and then, with his hands deep in the pockets of
his knickers and an anticipatory relish on his face, said
“T say, old chap—make us a speech, won’t you?”

But if Walter thought to take a rise out of Mr. Crab-
tree he was quite, quite mistaken. With good-natured
truculence the collier turned on him also.

“A speech?” he said. “ Well, I wasn’t at t? back
o’ t’ door when t’ speechifyin’-powers was given out; it
wadn’t be t’ first time I’d made a speech, nut by a mug-
full. Mony’s t? time they’ve put Eali Crabtree o’ 1’
table i? t? ‘Arabian Horse’ at Aberford an’ called on
him for a speech. I’d sooner mak’ a speech nor have a
quart o’ ale teamed down my collar, an’ that’s all t
choice there is when t’ lads begins to get lively! . . . I
don’t suppose onny o’ ye’s ever been i’ +’ ‘ Arabian
Horse’? We owt to come, of a oppenin’-time of a
Sunda’ morning. Ye’d see a bit o’ life. Happen ye
might ha’ to get at t? back o’ t? door—if they started
slinging pints about, that is—but it’s all love, and ye’ve
got to do summat wi’ it when ye can’t sup onny more.
I should like to have him ’at talks about t? Paraphernalia
there; it "Id oppen his eyes a bit! An’ him ’at wor re-

 
520 A CROOKED MILE

citing about t? King an’ all—t’ little bastard i’ t? corner
there——”

At this word, used in so familiar and cheerful a
sense, Laura Wyron stiffened and turned her back; but
Walter still hoped for his “ rise.”

“Go on,” he said;. “ give us some more, old chap.”

The child of nature needed no urging.

“ Ay, as much as ivver ye like,” he said accommoda-
tingly. “But I wish I’d browt my voice jewjewbes.
Ay, I willn’t be t’ only one ’at isn’t talking! T” rest
on ye talks—ding, it’s like a lamb’s tail, waggin’ all day
and nowt done at neet—so we mud as weel all be
friendly-like! Talk! Avy, let’s have a talk! Here ye
all are, all wi’ your fine voices an’ fine clothes, an’ iv-
very one 0’ ye wi’ t’ conveeanience i’ t? house, I don’t
doubt, an’ I’ll bet a gallon there isn’t one o’ ye’s ivver
done a hands-turn i’ your lives! Nay, ye’re waur nor
my Aunt Kate! Come down to Aberford an’ Ill show
ye summat! Come—it’s a invitaation—lI’ll see it
doesn’t cost ye nowt! TT” lads is all working, all but t’
youngest, an’ we’re nooan wi’ out! No, we’re nooan
wi’out at our house! T’ll interdewce ye to t’ missis,
an’ ye can help her to peel t’ potates, an’ ye can go down
i t’ cage if ye like! Come, an’ I'll kill a pig, just for
love. Come of a Sunda’ dinnertime, when t’ beef’s hot.
Wilkinson knows what I mean; he knows t’ life; he
reckons not to when he’s wi’ his fine friends, but Wil-
kie’s had to lie i’ bed while his shirt was being mended
afore to-day! ... Nay, the hengments!” He broke
into a jovial laugh. “ Ye know nowt about it, an’ ye
nivver will! These ’ere young pistills fro’ t’ Collidge
“HOUSE FULL” 521

—what are they maalakin’ at? It doesn’t tak’ five thou-
sand pound a year to learn a lad not to write a mucky
word on a wall!” (Here Dickie Lemesurier turned
ner back on the speaker). . . . “ They want to get back
to their Collidges. T’ gap’s ower wide. They’ll get
lost o’ t? road. Same as him ’at wrote t’ book about t’
pop-shop ,’ again Mr. Crabtree’s forefinger was
levelled between Mr. .Brimby’s eyes. “ Brimbyin’
about, an’ they don’t know a black puddin’ from a
Penny Duck! Has he ivver had to creep up again t’
chimley-wall to keep himself warm i’ bed, or to pull t’
kitchen blinds down while he washed himself of a Sat-
urda’ afternooin? But ye can all come an’ see if ye
like. We've had to tew for it, but we’re nooan wi’out
now. An’ I'll show ye a bit o’ sport too. We all have
wer whippets, an’ we can clock t’ pigeons in, an’ see
what sort of a bat these young maisters can mak’ at
knurr-an’-spell—eighteen-and-a-half score my youngest
lad does! Ay, we enjoy we’rsens! An’ there’s quoits
an’ all. Eighteen yards is my distance if onnybody
wants to laake for a beast’s-heart supper! Come—ding
it, ? lot & ye come! We can sleep fower o’ ye, wed
’uns, heads to tails, if ye don’t mind all being 7’ t’ little
cham’er. ”

By this time Mr. Crabtree was having to struggle
to keep his audience. Mr. Brimby too had turned
away, and Mr. Wilkinson, and even Miss Belchamber
had spoken several words of her own accord to the
young Balliol boy. The tide of sound began to rise
again, so that once more Mr. Crabtree’s voice was only
one among many. Then Walter started forward with

 

 
522 A CROOKED MILE

an “ Ah, Amory!” and “Hallo, Strong!” Mr. Raf-
finger of the McGrath exclaimed... .

“ Perseverance Row, fower doors from t’ ‘ Arabian
Horse’ ” Mr. Crabtree bawled hospitably through
the hubbub.,..

“Oh, you must see it—the New Greek Society, on
the seventeenth ey

“ But I say—what is ‘ Catching of Quails,’ Miss Bel-
chamber a”

“Mr. Wilkinson brought him, I think

“ Fellow of All Souls, wasn’t he ? MY

Then that genial’ Aberford man again:

“T tell ye  gap’s ower wide, young man—ye’ll get
lost 0’ t? roa

“No, the children take her name——”

“Got a match, old fellow ? ?

“Rot, my dear chap! hg

“ But what 1s condonation if that isn’t ?

“ Oh, the ordinary brainless Army type——”

“T read it in the German 2

“They gained time by paying in pennies

“Tn Pére Lachaise——”

“Well, we can talk about it at suppertime——”

“ But with cheaper Divoree——”

“One an’ all—whenivver ye like—EKali Crabtree,
Perseverance Row, Aberford, fower doors from +t’
‘Arabian Horse’ ye

“ Nietzsche ——”

“ Finot——”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ord

 

 

 

 
“HOUSE FULL” 5238

 

 

“ Weininger 2
“ Wadham: 22
“ Aberfor 2

 

“ Rufty Tufty——’
VI

THE SOUL STORM

 

2)

¢ lire f ?
“ Wasn't he priceless!

“You got his address, Cosimo? I. must cultivate
him! i

“Pure delight! Hs

“You had come in, hadn’t you, Amory }——’

“ He shot Brimby! bd

“To all intents and purposes—with his finger- —

“ Can you do his accent, Walter ? 4

“T will in a week, or perish

“ His bath in the kitchen! ps

“'T’ wed ’uns can sleep i’ t’ little chamber w

“ No—he didn’t sound the ‘b’ in ‘chamber,’ and
there were at least three ‘a’s’ in it y

“<'T” little chaaam’er ’ ” :

“No, you haven’t quite got it a

“ Give me a little time a

The party had dwindled to six—Cosimo and Amory,
‘ the Wyrons, and Britomart Belchamber and Mr. Strong.
They were still in the studio, but they were only wait-
ing for the supper-gong to ring. Cigarette ends were
thickly strewn about the asbestos log. The bandying
of short ecstatic phrases had been between Walter and

his wife, with Cosimo a little less rapturously interven-
524

 

 

 

2

 

.

 

29

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
THE SOUL STORM 525

ing; the subject of them was, of course, Mr. Crabtree.
To his general harangue Mr. Crabtree had added, be-
fore leaving, more particular words of advice, making
a second tour of the studio for the purpose; and he had
distinguished Walter above all the rest by inviting him,
not merely to the house four doors from the “ Arabian
Horse,” but to spend a warm afternoon with him on
Douglas Head also.

But the Wyrons had these raptures pretty much to
themselves. Perhaps Cosimo was thinking of Mr. Wil-
kinson, of some new paper of which he had never heard,
and of the assumption that he, apparently, was to find
the money for it. Miss Belechamber was rarely rap-
turous, so that her silence was nothing out of the way.
Edgar Strong could be rapturous when he chose, but he
evidently didn’t choose now. And Amory had far too
much on her mind.

Her original idea in asking the Wyrons to stay to
supper had been that they, as acknowledged experts in
the subject that perplexed her, would be the proper
people to keep the ring while the four persons imme-
diately concerned talked the whole situation quietly and
reasonably and thoroughly out. But she was rather in-
clined now to think again before submitting her case to
them. It would be so much better, if the case must be
submitted to anybody, that Cosimo should do it. Then
she herself would be able to shape her course in the light
of anything that might turn up. Nothing, she had to
admit, had turned up yet, and Amory was not sure that
in that very fact there did not lie a sufficient cause for
resentment. Had Cosimo pleaded a passion for Brito-
526 A CROOKED MILE

mart Belchamber he would have had Passion’s excuse.
Lacking Passion, it could only be concluded that he
was bored with Amory herself.

And that amounted to an insult... .

The booming of the gong, however, cut short her
brooding. They passed to the dining-room. LBritomart
and Walter sat with their backs to the tall black dresser
with the willow pattern stretching up almost to the
ceiling; Laura and Edgar took the German chairs that
had their backs to the copper-hooded fireplace; and Cos-
imo and Amory occupied either end of the highly pol-
ished clothless table. This absence of cloth, by the
way, gave a church-like appearance to the flames of
the candles in the spidery brass sticks that had each of
them a ring at the top to lift it up by; the preponderance
of black oak and dull black frames on the walls further
added to the effect of gloom; and the putting down of
the little green pipkins of soup and the moving of the
green-handled knives and round-bowled spoons made lit-
tle knockings from time to time.

Again Walter and Laura, with not too much help
from Cosimo, sustained the weight of the conversation ;
and it was not until Amory asked a question in a tone
from which rapture was markedly absent that they
sponged, as it were, the priceless memory of Mr. Crab-
tree from their minds. Amory’s question had been
about Walter’s new Lecture, still in course of prepara-
tion, on “ Post-Dated Passion”; and Walter cursorily
ran over its heads for the general benefit.

“T admit I got the idea from Balzac,” he said be-
tween mouthfuls (whenever they came to The Witan
THE SOUL STORM 527

the Wyrons supped almost as heartily as did Edgar
Strong himself). “‘ Comment I’amour revient aux
vieillards,’ you know. But. of course that hasn’t any
earthy interest for anybody. ‘ Aux vieilles’ it ought
to be. Then—well, then you’ve simply got ’em.”

“Why not ‘vieillards?’” Amory asked, not very
genially.

““T say, Cosimo, Dll have another cutlet if I may.—
Why not ‘vieillards?’ Quite obvious. Men aren’t
the interest. . I’ve tried men, and you can ask Laura
how the bookings went.—But ‘vieilles’ and I’ve got,
7em. Really, Amory, you’re getting quite dull if you

‘don’t see that! Ill explain. You see, I’ve already
got the younger ones, like Brit here—shove the claret
along, Brit—but the others, of forty or fifty say, well,
they’ve all had their affairs—or if they haven’t better
still—and it’s. merely a question of touching the right
chord. Regrets, time they’ve lost, fatal words ‘ Too
late’ and so on—it’s simply made for me! Touch the
chord and they do the rest for themselves. They prob-
ably won’t hear half of it for sobbing—Of course I
shall probably have to modify my style a bit—not quite
so—what shall I say a

“ Jaunty,” his wife suggested,
I mean a

“ Hm—that’s not quite the word—but never mind.
It’s a great field. Certainly women, not men,.are the
draw.”

Amory made a rather petulant objection, and the
argument lasted some minutes. In the end Walter tri-
umphantly gained his first point, that women and not

 

“__in the best sense,

 
528 A CROOKED MILE

men were the “ draw” in the box-office sense; and also

his second one, namely, that not the Britomarts, but
the older women, who would put their hearts into his
hands and pay him for exploiting their helplessness
and ache and tenderness and regret, and never sus-
pect that they were being practised upon, were “ simply
made for him... .” “What do you think of my
title?” he asked.

And the title was discussed.

Amory was beginning. to find Walter just a little
grasping. She wished that after all she had not asked
the Wyrons to stay to supper. Formerly she had
thought that marriage-escapade of theirs big and heroic
(that too, by the way, had been in the Latin Quarter,
and probably on seven francs a day); but now she was
less sure about that. Quite apart from the inapplica-
bility of the Wyrons’ experience to her own case, she
now wondered whether theirs had in fact been expe-
rience at all. Now that she came io think of it, they
had taken no risks. They had been married, and in
the last event could always turn round on their critics
and silence them with that fact... .

Nor was she quite so ready now to lay even the souls
of Britomart and Cosimo on the dissecting-table for the
sake of seeing Walter exercise his professional skill
upon them. This was not so much that she wanted to
spare Cosimo and Britomart as that she did not want
to give Walter a gratification. She was inclined to
think that if Walter couldn’t be a little more careful
about contradicting her he might find his advertisement
omitted from the “‘ Novum ” one week, as Katie Deedes’
THE SOUL STORM 529

had been omitted, and where would he be then? The
way in which he had just said that she was “ getting
quite dull” had been next door to a rudeness. .

But she had to admit that she felt dull. Edgar, who
sat next to her, did not speak, and Cosimo, who faced
her, was apparently still brooding on people who planned
the spending of his money without thinking it neces-
sary to consult him first. She was tired of the whole
of the circumstances of her life. Paris on seven francs
a day could hardly be much worse. Nor, if she could
but shake off her lethargy, need that sum be fixed as
low as seven francs. For she had lately remembered
an arrangement made between herself and Cosimo be-
fore she had ever consented to become engaged to him.
It was a long time since either of them had spoken of
this arrangement—so long that Cosimo would have been
almost within his rights had he maintained that the
circumstances had so altered as to make it no longer
binding; but there it was, or had been, and it had never
been expressly revoked. It was the arrangement by
which they had set apart a fund to insure themselves,
either or both of them, against any evils that might
arise from incompatibility. Amory had no idea how
the matter now stood. She didn’t suppose for a mo-
ment that Cosimo had actually set a sum by each week
or month; but, hard and fast or loose and fluid, he must
have made, or be still ready to make, some provision.
It was an inherent part of the contract that a solemn
affirmation, with reason shown (spiritual, not mere legal
reason) by either one or the other, should constitute a
sufficient claim on this fund.
530 A CROOKED MILE

Therefore Paris need not necessarily be the worst
penury.

But, for all her new inclination to leave the Wyrons
out of it, she still thought it a prudent idea to carry
the fight: (not that there would be any fight—that was
only a low way of expressing the high reasonableness
that always prevailed at The Witan) to Cosimo and
Britomart, rather than to have it centre about Edgar
and herself. Walter’s eyes were mainly on the box-
office nowadays. The original virtue of that fine pro-
test of theirs was—there was no use in denying it—gone.
He spread his Lectures frankly now as a net. Well,
that was only one net more among the many nets of
which she was becoming conscious. Edgar too, poor
boy, was compelled to regard even the “ Novum” as
in some manner a net. Mr. Brimby, Amory more than
guessed, had nets to spread. Mr. Wilkinson, in his
own way, was out for a catch; and Dickie fished at the
Suffrage Shop; and Katie had fished at the Eden; and
the only one who didn’t fish was Mr. Prang, who wrote
his articles about India for nothing, just to be prac-
tising his English. :

All these nets were spread for somebody’s money—
a good deal of it Cosimo’s. It had been the same,
though perhaps not quite so bad, at Ludlow. That ex-
periment on the country-side had been alarmingly
costly. And all this did not include the dozens and
dozens of nets of narrower mesh. The “ Novum”
might gulp down money by the hundred, but the lesser
things were hardly less formidable in the sum of them
—subscriptions, contributions, gifts, loans, investments,
THE SOUL STORM 531

shares in the Eden and the Book Shop, mortgages, sec-
ond mortgages, subsidies, sums to “tide over,” back-
ings, guarantees, losses cut, more good money sent to
bring back the bad, fresh means of spending devised by
somebody or other almost every day. It had begun to
weary even Amory. The people who came to The
Witan became rather curiously better-dressed the longer
their visiting continued; but the things they professed
to hold dear appeared very little further advanced. All
that first brightness and promise had gone. Amory’s
interest had gone. She wanted to escape from it all,
and to go away with Edgar appeared once more to be
the readiest way out.

But, though she might now wish to keep Walter
Wyron out of it all, that did not necessarily mean that
Walter would be kept out. This ex-officio specialist on
the (preferably female) heart, this professional recti-
fier of unfortunate marriages, had not done a number
of years’ platform-work without having discovered the
peculiar beauties of the argumentum ad hominem, and
it was one of his practices to enforce his arguments
with “Take the case of Brit here”—or “Let’s get
down to the concrete: suppose Amory—”’ And these
descents to the particular had always a curiously ac-
cusatory effect. Walter, interrupting Amory’s medi-
tation, broke into one of them now.

“ But my dear chap,”—this was to Cosimo, “—I can’t
imagine what’s come over all of you to-night! First
Amory, now you! Yovw’re usually quicker than this!
Let’s take a case.—Brit here——”

One sterno-mastoid majestically turned the caryatid’s
532 A CROOKED MILE

head. Again Miss Belchamber’s grand thorax worked
as if somebody had put a penny into the slot.

“What?” she said.

“ Quiet, Brit; ’m only using you as an illustration.
—Suppose Brit here was to develop a passion for
somebody—Oosimo, say; yes, Cosimo’ll do capitally;
awfully good instance of the cant that’s commonly talked
about ‘treachery’ and ‘under his own roof’ and all
the rest of it—as if a roof wasn’t a roof and it hadn’t
got to be under somebody’s—unless they went out on
the Heath !—Well, suppose it was to happen to Cosimo
and Brit; what then? We're civilized, I hope. We’re
a little above the animals, I venture to think. Amory
wouldn’t fly at Brit’s eyes, and Brit’s father wouldn’t
come round with a razor to cut Cosimo’s throat. In
fact i

“My fa-ther al-ways uses a safety-razor,” said Miss
Belchamber with a reminiscent air.

“ Don’t interrupt, Brit.—I was going to say that the
world’s got past all.that. Nor Brit wouldn’t fly at
Amory, nor Cosimo kick the old josser out of the house
—though we should be much more ready to condone
that part of it if they did—if it was only to get quits
with the past a bit ia

“My fa-ther’s forty-five,’ Miss Belchamber an-
nounced, as the interesting result of an interesting men-
tal process of computation. “‘ Next June,” she added.

“More interruptions from the back of the hall—
In fact, I’m not sure that wouldn't be entirely defens-
ible—Brit going for Amory and Cosimo kicking the
old dodderer out, I mean. That’s the justification of the

 

 
THE SOUL STORM 533

crime passionel. It’s the Will to Live. And by Live
I mean Love. It’s the old saying, that kissing lips have
no conscience. Or Jove laughs at lovers’ oaths. Quite
right. It’s the New Greek Spirit. But for all that
we're modern and rational about these things. If
Strong here wanted to take Laura from me I should
simply say, ‘ All you’ve got to do, my dear chap, is to
table your reasons, and if they’re stronger than mine
you take her.’ See?”

At that Edgar Strong, like Britomart, looked up. He
spoke for the first time.—‘‘ What’s that you’re saying ? ”
he asked.

“T don’t suppose you’d want her, but suppose you
did... « 3”

Mr. Strong dropped his eyes to his plate again.—
“ Ah, yes,” he said. “ Ellen Key’s got something about
that.” And he relapsed into silence again.

It sounded to Amory idiotic. Walter was so evi-
dently “trying” it on them in order to see how it
would go down with an audience afterwards. She
wouldn’t have scratched Britomart’s eyes out for Cos-
imo,—but she coloured a little, and bit her lip, at the
thought that somebody might want to come between her-
self and Edgar. . . . But perhaps that was what Walter
meant—real affinities, as distinct from the ordinary
vapid assumptions about marriages being made in
Heaven. If so, she agreed with him—not that she
was much fonder of him on that account. She wished
he would keep his personalities for Cosimo and Brito-
mart, and leave herself and Edgar alone.—Walter went
on.
534 A CROOKED MILE

“ And then, when you’ve got your New Greek Cer-
tificate, so to speak, it’s plainly the duty of everybody
else, not to put obstacles in your way and to threaten
you with razors and cutting off supplies, but to sink
their personal feelings and to do everything they can
to help you. And without snivelling either. I
shouldn’t snivel, I hope, if anybody took Laura, and
she wouldn’t if anybody took me——”

Here Laura interposed softly—‘ I don’t want any
one to take you, dear,” she said.

Walter turned sharply.

“Eh? ... Now you’ve put me off my argument.
. . . What was I saying? . . . Haven’t I told you you
must never do that, Laura? ... No, it’s quite gone.
se -« COW SEOs % 5.”

Laura murmured that she was very sorry... .

“No, it’s gone,” said Walter, almost cheerfully, as
if not sorry that for once the worth of what he had been
about to say should be measured by the sense of loss.
“So since Laura wishes it I'll shut up.”

He passed up his plate for a second helping of trifle.

By this time Amory was perhaps rather glad that she
had had the Wyrons after all. That about people not
putting obstacles in the way was quite neat. “A plain
duty,” he had said. She hoped Cosimo’d heard that,
and would remember it when she raised the subject of
the fund. And so far was she herself from putting ob-
stacles in his way that, although she could have sent
Britomart Belchamber packing with her wages at any
moment, she had not done so. That, as Walter had
THE SOUL STORM 535

said, would only have been another way of flying at
her eyes. . . . Besides, Amory had been far too deeply
occupied to formulate definitely her charges against Cos-
imo and Britomart. For all she knew it might have
gone much, much further than she had thought. Some-
times, when Amory took breakfast in her own room,
she did not see Cosimo until the evening, and Brito-
mart too had heaps of time on her hands when she had
finished with Corin and Bonniebell. Cosimo must not
tell her that the “ Life and Work” occupied him dur-
ing every minute of his time... .

Then, presently, she was sorry again that the Wyrons
had been asked, for Walter had suddenly remembered
the thread of his discourse, and, in continuing it, had
been almost rude to Laura. She wondered whether he
would have turned with a half angry ‘“ Why, what’s
the matter?” had Laura cried. Perhaps it was. really
a good thing the Wyrons hadn’t any children, for this
kind of thing would certainly have been a bad example
for them. She herself was never rude to Cosimo be-
fore Corin and Bonniebell. She was always markedly
polite. There were excuses to be made for Passion,
but none for rudeness.

By this time Edgar Strong had finished his last piece
of cheese and was wiping his lips with his napkin.
Then he looked at his watch, and for the second time
during the course of the meal spoke.

“Look here, Cosimo, I’ve got to .be off presently,
and we haven’t settled about those advertisements yet.
And there’s something else I want to say to you too.
536 A CROOKED MILE

Could we hurry coffee up? Where do we have it? In
the studio, I suppose? Or do the others go into the
studio and you and Walter and I have ours here?”

“We might as well all go into the studio,” said Cos-
imo, rising; and they left the sombre room and sought
the studio, all except Miss Belchamber, who went up-
stairs.

The sight of the innumerable cigarette-ends about the
asbestos log reminded Walter of Mr. Crabtree again;
and for a minute or two—that is to say during the time
that Walter, taking her aside, told her of the quiet but
penetrating side-light Mr. Crabtree had innocently shed
on Mr. Wilkinson’s scheme for some new paper or other
that Cosimo was to finance—Amory was once more glad
that the Wyrons had come. But the next moment, as
Walter loitered away and Laura came and sat softly
down beside her, she was sorry again. Laura was
gently crying. That struck Amory as stupid. As if
she hadn’t enough great troubles of her own, without
burdening herself with the Wyrons’ trivial ones!

So, as she had nothing really helpful to say to Laura,
she left her, and sat down on the footstool she had oc-
cupied on the day when Edgar Strong had said that he
liked the casts and had asked her whether she had read
something or other—she forgot what.

Edgar was talking in low tones to Cosimo, and Amory
thought she heard the name of Mr. Prang. Then Cos-
imo, who always thought more Imperially with a map
before him, got out the large atlas, and the two of them
bent over it together. Walter joined them, and, after
an interlude that appeared to be about the Lectures’
THE SOUL STORM 537

advertisement, Walter strolled away again and joined
Laura. Amory heard an “ Eh?” and a moment later
the word “ touchy,” and Walter went off to the window
with his hands in the pockets of his knickers, whistling.
Edgar took not the least notice of Amory’s eyes intently
fixed upon him. He continued to talk to Cosimo. Wal-
ter, who was examining a Japanese print, called over
his shoulder, “ This a new one, Amory? What is it—
Utamaro?” Then he walked up to where Laura sat
again. He was speaking in an undertone to her:
“Rubbish . . . take on like that . . . better clear off
then”; and a moment later, seeing Edgar Strong but-
toning up his coat, he called out, “ Wait a minute,
Strong—we’re going down too—get your hat, Laura
”?

Five minutes later Cosimo Pratt and his wife were
alone.

It was the first time they had been so for nearly a
fortnight. Indeed, for weeks the departure of the last
visitor had been the signal for their own good-night,
Cosimo going his way, she hers. There had never been
anything even remotely approaching a “scene” to ac-
count for this. It had merely happened so.

Therefore, finding himself alone with his wife in

the studio again, Cosimo yawned and stretched his arms
above his head.

“ Ah-h-h! .. . You going to bed?” _

As he would hardly be likely to take himself off be-
fore she had answered his question, Amory did not re-
ply at once. She sat down on the footstool and stretched
her hands out to the asbestos log. Then, after a min-
538 A CROOKED MILE

ute, and without looking up, she broke one of their
tacitly excepted rules by asking a direct question.

“‘ What were you and Edgar Strong discussing?” she
asked.

He yawned again.— Oh, the Bookshop advertise-
ment—and advertisements generally. It begins to look
as if we should have to be less exclusive about these
things. Strong tells me that it’s unheard-of for a paper
to refuse any advertisement it can get.”

“T mean when you got out the atlas.”

“ Oh—India, of course. ‘The Indian policy. Strong
isn’t altogether satisfied about Prang. He seems to
think he might get us into trouble.”

“How? Why?” Amory said, her eyes reflectively
on. the purring gas-jets. ;

“Can’t make out. Some fancy of his. The policy
hasn’t changed, and Prang hasn’t changed. I wonder
whether Wilkinson’s right when he says Strong’s put
his hand to the plough but is now... ah! That re-
minds me!—Were you here when that preposterous fel-
low—what’s his name—Crabtree—rather let the cat out
of the bag about Wilkinson ?”

“You mean about another paper? No. But Wal-
ter said something about it.”

“Yes, by Jove! He seems to have it all cut-and-
dried! Crabtree seems to think I knew all about it.
Of course I did know that Wilkinson had a scheme,
but I’d no idea he was jumping ahead at that rate. I
don’t want two papers. One’s getting rather serious.”

Still without looking at her husband, Amory said,
“‘ How, serious?”
THE SOUL STORM 539

“Why, the expense. I’m not sure that we didn’t take
the wrong line about the advertisements. Anyway,
something will have to be done. Thirty pounds a week
is getting too stiff. I’m seriously thinking of selling
out from the Eden and the Bookshop. Do you know
that with one thing and another we’re down more than
three thousand pounds this year?”

Amory was surprised; but she realized instinctively
that that was not the moment to show her surprise.
Were she to show it, the moment would not be op-
portune for the raising of the subject of the fund, and
she wanted to raise that subject. And she wanted to
raise it in connexion with Cosimo and Britomart Bel-
chamber. She continued to gaze at the log. The serv-
ants, she thought, might have taken the opportunity
of dinner to sweep up the litter of cigaretteends that
surrounded it; and then she had a momentary fancy.
It was, that the domestic relations that existed between
herself and Cosimo were a thing that, like that me
chanical substitute for a more generous fire, could be
turned off and on as it were by the mere touching
of a tap. She wondered what made her think of
TRGte « %

Cosimo had taken out his penknife and was scrap-
ing his nails, moodily running over items of disburse
ment as he scraped; and then the silence fell between
them again.

It was Amory who broke it, and in doing so she turned
her head for the first time. She gave her husband a
look that meant that, though he might talk about ex-
penses, she also had a subject.
540 A CROOKED MILE

“Walter was excessively stupid to-night,” she said
abruptly.

He said “ Oh?” and went on scraping.

“¢ At the best he’s never a model of tact, but I thought
he rather overstepped the mark at dinner.”

Again he said “Oh?” and added, “ What about?”

“His manners. His ideas are all right, I sup-
pose, but I’m getting rather tired of his platform-
tricks.”

“ His habit of illustration and so on?”

“ And his want of tact generally. In fact I’m not
sure it isn’t more than that. In a strange house it
would have been simply a faux pas, but he knows us
well enough, and the arrangement between us. He
might at any rate wait till he’s called in.”

Cosimo started on another nail‘ What arrange
ment?” he said.

Again Amory gave him that look that might have
told him that, though he might think that only a lot of
money had gone, she knew that something far more
vital had gone with it.

“Do you mean that you didn’t hear what he was
saying about you and Britomart Belchamber ?”

“Yes, I heard that, of course. Of course I heard
te

“Well?”

“Well!”

And this time their eyes met in a long look...

Cosimo had only himself to thank for what hap-
pened to him then. After all, you cannot watch a
superb piece of female mechanism playing “ Catch-
THE SOUL STORM 541

ing of Quails,” and openly admire the way in which it
can shut up like a clasp-knife and fold itself upon it-
self like a multiple lever, and pretend to be half in
love with it lest sharp eyes should see that you are
actually half in love with it, and take it for walks, and
discuss Walter’s Lectures with it, and tell it frequently
how different things might have been had you been ten
years younger, and warn it to be a good girl because
of dangerous ‘young men, and stroke its hair, and tell
it what beautiful eyes it has, and kiss its hand from
time to time, and walk with your arm protectingly about
its waist, and so on and so forth, day after day—you
cannot, after all, do these things and be entirely un-,
flurried when your ever-so-slightly tiresome wife re-
minds you that, be it only by way of illustration, a
young expert in such matters has coupled your name
with that of the passive object of your philanderings.
Nor can you reasonably be surprised when that wife
gives you a long look, that doesn’t reproach you for
anything except for your stupidity or hypocrisy if you
pretend not to understand, and then resumes her medi-
tative gazing into a patent asbestos fire. Appearances
are for the moment against you. You cannot help for
one moment seeing it as it must have appeared all the
time to somebody else. Of course you know that you
are in the right really, and the other person entirely
wrong, and that with a little reasonableness on that
other person’s part you could make this perfectly clear ;
but you are rather trapped, you know it, and the state
of mind in which you find yourself is called by people
who aren’t anybody in particular “ flurry.”
542 A CROOKED MILE

Which is perhaps rather a long way of saying that
Cosimo was suddenly and entirely disconcerted.

And his flurry included a certain crossness and im-
patience with Amory. She was—could be—only pre-
tending. She knew perfectly well that there was noth-
ing really. The least exercise of her imagination must
have told her that to press Britomart Belchamber’s hand,
for example, was the most innocent of creature-com-
forts. Why, he had pressed it with Amory herself
there; he had said, jokingly, and Amory had heard him,
that it was a desirable hand to press, and he had pressed
it. And so with Britomart’s dancing of “ Rufty Tufty.”
Amory, who, like Cosimo, had had an artist’s training,
ought to be the last person to deny that any eye so
trained, did not see a hundred beauties where eyes un-
educated saw one only. And that of course meant
chaste beauties. Such admiration was an exercise in
analysis, not in amorousness. . . . No, it was far more
likely that Amory was getting at him. She was smil-
ing, a melancholy and indifferent little smile, at the as-
bestos log. She had no right to smile like that. It
made him feel beastly. It made him so that he didn’t
know what to say... .

But she continued to smile, and when Cosimo did at
last speak he hated himself for stammering.

“ But—but—but—oh, come, Amory, this is absurd!
Yowre—youw’re tired! Me and _ Britomart! Oh,
c-c-come !——””

And then it occurred to him that this was a ridiculous
answer, and that the proper answer to have made would
have been simply to laugh. He did laugh.
THE SOUL STORM "543

“Ha, ha, ha! By Jove, for the moment you almost
took me in! You really did get a rise out of me that
time! Congratulations.—And I admit it is rather cool
of Walter to pounce on the first name that occurs to
him and make use of it in that way. Deuced cool when
you come to think of it. It seems to me——”

But again that quite calm and unreproaching look
silenced him. ‘There was a loftiness and serenity about
it that reminded him of the Amory of four or five years
before. And she spoke almost with a note of wonder
at him in her tone.

“My déar Cosimo,” she said very patiently, “ what
is the matter? You look at me as if I had accused you
of something. Nothing was further from my thoughts.
I suppose, when you examine it, it’s a matter for con-
gratulation, not accusation at all. As Walter said, I
don’t want to fly at anybody’s eyes. We foresaw this,
and provided for it, you know.”

At this cool taking for granted of a preposterous
thing Cosimo’s stammer became a splutter.— But—
but—but—,” he broke out: but Amory held up her
hand.

“TJ raise no objection. T’ve no right to. What
earthly right have I, when I concurred before ever we
were married ?”

“ Coneurred! . . . My dear girl, concurred in what?
Really this is the most ridiculous situation I was ever
in!”

Amory raised her brows.—“ Oh? ... I don’t see
anything ridiculous about it. It received my sanction
when Britomart stopped in the house, and I haven’t
544 A CROOKED MILE

changed my mind. As I say, we foresaw it, and pro-
vided for it.”

“<Tt!?” Cosimo could only pipe—one little note,
high and thin as that of a piccolo. Amory continued.

“Tm not asking a single question about it. I’m not
even curious. I didn’t become your property when we
married, and you’re not mine. Our souls are our own,
both of us. I think we were very wise to foresee it
quite at the beginning—And don’t think I’m jealous.
Perfectly truly, I wish you every happiness. Brito-
mart’s a very pretty girl, and nobody can say she’s al-
ways making a display of her cleverness, like some of
them. I respect your privacy, and want you to do the
best. you can with your life.”

‘The piccolo note changed to that of a bassoon.—
“ Amory—listen to me.”

“No. Id very much rather not hear anything about
it. As Walter said, Life is Love, and I only mentioned
this at all to-night because there is one quite small prac-
tical detail that doesn’t seem to me entirely satisfac-
tory.”

She understood Cosimo to ask what that was.

“This: You ought to be fair to her. I know you'll
forgive my mentioning anything so vulgar, but it is—
about money. She can’t be expected to think of such
things herself just now,”’—there were whole honey-
moons in the reasonable little nod Amory gave, “—and
so I mention it. It’s my place to do so. For us all
just to dip our hands into a common purse doesn’t seem
to me very satisfactory. She’s rights too that I shouldn’t
dream of disputing. And don’t think I’m assuming
THE SOUL STORM 545

more than there actually is. I only mean that I don’t
see why, in certain events, you shouldn’t, et cetera;
that’s all I mean. You see?... But I admit that
for everybody’s sake I should like things put on a proper
footing without loss of time.”

Cosimo had begun to wander up and down among
the saddlebag chairs. His slender fingers rested aim-
lessly on the backs of them from time to time. Amory
thought that he was about to try the remaining notes
within the compass of his voice, but instead he sud-
denly straightened himself. He appeared to have come
to a resolution. He strode towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Amory asked.

“Tm going to fetch Britomart,” he replied shortly.
“This is preposterous.”

But again he hesitated, as perhaps Amory surmised
he might. His offer, if it meant anything, ought to
have meant that his conscience was so clear that Amory
might catechize Britomart to her heart’s content; but
there had been those hair-strokings and hand-pat-
tings, and—and—and Britomart, as Amory had said,
was “not always making a display of her cleverness.”
She might, indeed, let fall something even more discon-
certing than the rest—

Cosimo was trying a bluff.

In a word, between fetching Britomart and not
fetching her, Amory had her husband by the short
hairs.

She mused.—‘ Just a moment,” she said.

And then she rose from the footstool, put one hand
on the edge of the mantelpiece, and with the other drew
546 A CROOKED MILE

up her skirt an inch or two and stretched out her slip-
per to the log.

“Tt really isn’t necessary to fetch Britomart,” she
said after a moment, looking up. “ Fetch her if you
prefer it, of course, but first I want to say something
else—something quite different.”

That it was something quite different seemed to be
a deep relief to Cosimo. He returned from the door
again.

“ What's that?” he said.

“Tt’s different,” Amory said slowly, “but related.
Let me think a moment how to put it... . You were
speaking a few minutes ago of selling out from the Eden
and the Suffrage Shop. If I understand you, things
aren’t going altogether well.”

“They aren’t,” said Cosimo, almost grimly.

“ And then,” Amory continued, “ there’s Mr. Prang.
Neither you nor Strong seem very satisfied about him.”

“ T¢’s Strong who isn’t satisfied. I’ve no complaints
to make about Prang.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that too, and I’ve
had an idea. ‘I’m not sure that after all Strong mayn’t
be right. I admit Prang states a case as well as it
could be stated; the question is whether it’s quite the
case we want stated. His case is ours to a large ex-
tent, but perhaps not altogether. And as matters stand
we're in his hands about India, simply because he knows
more about it than we do. You see what I mean?”

““ Not quite,” said Cosimo.

“No? Well, let me tell you what I’ve been think-
Me awe” :
THE SOUL STORM 547

Those people who are nobodys, and have not had the
enormous advantage of being taken by the hand by the
somebodys, are under a misconception about daring and
original ideas. The ideals seem original and daring to
them because the processes behind them are hidden.
The inferior mind does not realize of itself that every
sudden and miraculous blooming is already an old
story to somebody.

But Cosimo occupied a sort of intermediary position
between the sources of inspiration and the flat levels of
popular understanding. Remember, he was in certain
ways one of the public; but at the same time he was the
author of the “ Life and Work.” He took his Amory,
so to speak, nascent. Therefore, when she gave utter-
ance to a splendour, he credited himself with just that
measure of participation in it that causes us humbler
ones, when we see the airman’s spiral, to fancy our own
hands upon the controls, or, when we read a great book,
to sun ourselves in the flattering delusion that we do:
not merely read, but, in some mysterious, sense, partici-
pate in the writing of it also.

And so the words which Amory spoke now—words
which would have caused you or me to give a gasp of
admiration—affected him less extraordinarily.

“Why don’t you go to India and see for yourself?”
she said.

Nevertheless, Cosimo was not altogether unaffected.
Even to his accustomed ear it was rather stupendous,
and, if he hadn’t been again uneasily wondering whether
he dared risk having Britomart down when Amory
should return to the former subject again, might have
548 A CROOKED MILE

been more stupendous still. He resumed his walk along
the saddlebag chairs, and, when at last he did speak, did
not mar a high occasion with too much vulgar demon-
strativeness.

‘‘ That’s an idea,” he said simply.

“You see, Mr. Chamberlain went to South Africa,”
Amory replied, as simply.

“Yes,” said Cosimo thoughtfully. . . “It’s cer-
tainly an idea.”

“ And you know how people have been getting at the
‘Novum’ lately, and even suggesting that Prang was
merely a pen-name for Wilkinson himself.”

“Yes, yes.”

“ Well, if you went, for six months, say, or even three,
nobody’d be able to say after that that you didn’t know
all about it.”

“No,” Cosimo replied.

“The stupid people go. Why not the people with
eyes and minds?”

“ Exactly,” said Cosimo, resuming his walk.

Then, as if he had been a mere you or a simple me,
the beauty of the idea did begin to work a little in him.
He walked for a space longer, and then, turning, said
almost with joy, “I say, Amory—would you lke to
go 2 ”

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.
THE SOUL STORM 549

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 inter-
posed eagerly, anxiously.

“You do jump to conclusions! ”’—he began.

“My dear Cosimo,” she put up her hand, “ I’m do-
ing nothing of the kind. As I said, the other isn’t my
affair. Oh, I do wish you'd believe that I was per-
fectly calm about it! As Emerson said, soul ought to
speak from the top of Olympus or something, and, ex-
cept that I want you to be happy, it’s a matter of in-
difference 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 un-
reasonable 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.
550 A CROOKED MILE

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.

“T’ve left the hot water tap running,” she announced.
“T 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 of pétrissage
upon herself in the region of the erectors spinae. As
she did so she again spoke, placidly and syllabically.

“T 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. ;

“T 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 ’'m
THE SOUL STORM 551

having a hot bath. Hot baths open the pores, or sweat-
ducts. Then you close them again with a cold sponge.
I always close them again with a cold sponge.”

Cosimo cleared his throat again and had another try.
—‘“ Listen, Britomart—we were talking about you x

Miss Belchamber looked complacently at her crossed
Parian-marble ankles. Then she raised one of them,
and her fingers explored the common tendon of the soleus
and gastrocnemius.

“The soleus,” she said, “ acts when the knee-joint is
flexed. In ‘Rufty Tufty’ it acts. Both of them, of
course. And the manage-ment of the breath is very im-
portant. It would be a very good thing if every-body
opened their windows and took a hun-dred deep breaths
before the Saturn-alia begins. I shall, and I shall make
Corin and Bonniebell. Or won’t they be able to go if
it’s very late? If it’s after their bedtime I could bring
them away early and then go back. I am so looking for-
ward to it.”

Cosimo made a third attempt.—‘ Britomart—”, he
said gravely.

“ What?” said Miss Belchamber.

“T want to tell you about a rather important discus-
sion we’ve been having——”’

“Then shall I go and turn the tap off? The water
will run cold. Then the sweat-ducts would have to be
closed before they are opened, and that’s wrong.”

But this time Amory had moved towards the door.
Cosimo, and not she, had wanted Miss Belchamber down,
and now that he had got her he might amuse her. She
theught he looked extremely foolish, but that was his

 
5BQ A CROOKED MILE

lookout; she was going to bed. It seemed an entirely
satisfactory moment in which to do so. She had man-
aged 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. Espe-
cially 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 in-
terested in the common tendon of the other soleus and
gastrocnemius,
PART III
I

LITMUS

ie was on an afternoon in May, and the window of
Dorothy’s flat overlooking the pond was wide open.
Ruffles of wind chased one another from moment to mo-
ment across the water, and the swans, guarding their
cygnets, policed the farther bank, where dogs ran bark-
ing. 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, “‘ sweep-
ing in,” and preparing tea, she sang cheerfully to her-
self “A few more years shall roll, a few more sorrows

.come.” Ruth considered that the sorrows would prob-
ably 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 comforteto 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..

553
554 A CROOKED MILE

“ 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 think-
ing 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. Was it’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 ciga-
rette cards and taking girls to the pictures.”

“Tt 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.”

“ But was that ’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 eoon. Already the subletting 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.

2
LITMUS 555

“It’s as good as Maypoles and Village Players any-
way,” 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 May-
pole?”

“ T don’t know, auntie. I’ve seen very little of them.”

“ Has she gone?”

6 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, Tll see they don’t impose on me as they’ve
been imposing on you! ... So I may move that bil-
liard-table, and alter the gun-room ?”’

“Yes, if you pay for it.”

“ Thanks—you area 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 thé
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 ap-
peared in certain newspapers, announcing that an experi-
ment 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,”
556 A CROOKED MILE

the residence of the late Sir Noel Tasker, was already
in course of alteration. And so on, in Dorothy’s opin-
ion, neither too much nor too little for her design. . . .
It had been a public committance of the family, and it
had worked the oracle with Aunt Eliza. Rather than
have a public squabble about it, she had come in with
her thousand, the work was now well advanced, and the
venerable sinner who had recited the poems printed by
Cosimo Pratt’s Village Press was in charge of the job.
Dorothy, hurriedly weaning the youngest Bit, had run
down to Ludlow for the express purpose of announcing
to him that it was a job, and not an aesthetic jollifica-
tion.

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 fer-
vently 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 approaching déménagement, she had
much of the care of that of her aunt. As Stan’s earn-
ings 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 Dor-
othy’s case to a nicety.

Therefore, as another burden more or less would
make little difference to one already so burdened, Dor-
LITMUS 557

othy had 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,

“T 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 she want any
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 Dor-
558 A CROOKED MILE

othy and Katie took a turn round the Heath before re-
turning 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, nod-
ding towards the backs of the houses that make the loop
of South Hill Park.

Katie only said “Oh?” She too had caught the un-
easiness 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 you half!
It’s everything they do. Why, the nurse practised for
months and months at a school where they washed a cel-
luloid 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 if that would 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 a big crowd there, of course, but just a few of them
—wWalter, and Mr. Brimby, and Edgar Strong—and
all of them going quite red in the face with pureminded-
ness! At any rate, I never did think that was quite the
thing!”

She spoke with great satisfaction of the point of the
LITMUS 559

New Law she had not broken. It seemed to make up
for those she had.

“And those casts and paintings and things about
—it’s all right being an artist, of course, but if I ever
got married, I shouldn’t like casts and paintings of
me about for everybody to see like that!

“Oh, just look at that hawthorn!” Dorothy inter-
rupted.

“Yes, lovely—And Walter talking about Diony-
sus, 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—not really know, 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 it all! At any rate nobody can
contradict him. But what does it matter to us to-day,
Dorothy? What does it matter? ... Of course I
don’t mean they’re wicked. But—but—in some ways
I can’t help thinking it would be better to be wicked as
long as you didn’t say anything about it 1”

“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 de-
voted to Laura—in his way—though he does talk about
these things with Britomart Belchamber sitting there in

 

 
560 A CROOKED MILE

her nightgown. But it’s always the same bit of truth
they face boldly. They never think of going in for
asttonomy—or crystal-what-is-it—crystallography—or
something chilly—and face that bold] e

Dorothy laughed.—“ You absurd girl!”

“but no. It’s always whether people wear clothes
because they’re modest or whether they’re modest be
cause 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 Tues-
day, and Wednesday, and every day—and I don’t know
what they’ve decided even yet -

“Well, here we are,” Dorothy said as she reached
her own door. “ Let’s have some tea... . Mr. Miller
hasn’t been in yet, has he, Ruth?”

“No, m’m.”

“Well, we’ll have tea now, and you can make some
fresh when he comes. And keep some cakes hot.”

Mr. Miller’s visit that afternoon had to do with a
eare 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 circum-
stance enough, and set people talking enough about it,
it will prove just as serviceable as the genuine article;
and she was equally familiar, as we have seen, with that
beautiful and compensating Law by which quick and

 

 
LITMUS 561

original minds are refused money when they are produc-
ing of their best but overwhelmed with it when their
brains have become as dry as baked sponges. She had
given My. 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 flimsi-
ness of the one poor Idee she had, she had resolved that
Mr. Miller’s eyes should be diverted as much as pos-
sible from the central lack, and kept to the bright ir-
relevancies 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. Mil-
ler, 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 re-
lationship to the great Sir Joseph Deedes, and Katie
had told of a stand-up fight she had had with her uncle’s
Marshal about admittance to his lordship’s private room.

“Well, now, that’s something I’ve learned to-day,”
Mr. Miller magnanimously admitted, sitting down
again. “So your English Judges have Marshals! I
was under the impression that that was a military title,
like Marshal Macmann and Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn
562 A CROOKED MILE

Wood. Well now.... And how might Judge
Deedes’ Marshal be dressed, Miss Deedes?”

“Not ‘Judge’ Deedes,” said Katie smiling.
“ That’s a County Court Judge.” And she explained.
‘Mr, Miller opened his eyes wide.

“Ts that so-o-o? Well now, if that isn’t interesst-
ing! 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 Wor-
ship ’—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 ? ee

Building (as it now appeared) even better than he
knew, Mr. Miller had, in the past, granted the rank of
Marshal to Messrs. Hallowell and Smiths’ shopwalkers.

Dorothy’s reason for thus flagrantly introducing Sir
Joseph’s name was this :—

Katie had left the Eden, and she herself was pres-
ently off to Ludlow. Thus there was the possible re-
version 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 Hal-

 
LITMUS 563

lowell and Smiths’ Marshals to that of his long-hoped-
for Idee, Dorothy was ready for him. Avoiding the
weak spot, she enlarged on the tradition—very different
from a mere superstition—that, in Layettes, blue stood
always for a boy and pink for a girl.

“You see,” she said, “this is England when all’s
said, and we're frightfully conservative. Don’t con-
demn it just because it wouldn’t go in New York... .
You’ve heard of the Willyhams, of course?” she broke
off suddenly to ask.

“T cann’t say I have, Mrs. Stan. But I’m sitting
here. Tellme. They’re a Fam’ly, I presoom ?”

“Yes. Upshire’s their title. Now that title’s de-
scended 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 know yet which 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 dy-
nasties and things—but to every woman! You see the
564 A CROOKED MILE

tremendous interest they. take in it at once!—But 1
don’t know whether a man can ever understand
that v4

She ‘paused.

“Go on, Mrs. Stan—I want the feminine point of
voo,” said Mr, Miller.—‘ The man ain’t broken Post
Toasties yet that has more reverence for motherhood
than what I have——”

“T 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 whether any man knows what it
means to us as we wait and wonder—and wait and won-
der—day after day—day after day. ye

Here’ she dropped her eyes. Here also Mr. Miller
dropped his head.

“Tt 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 alltous. 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. JI ain’t a knocker; I don’t want to
get knocking our men of science; but it’s a fact they
cann’t tell. I recollect Mrs. Miller saying to me——”

 

 
LITMUS 565

“Yes—look at it from Mrs. Miller’s point of
view ee

“T 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. Brad-
ley Martin any more than what it is for any poor lady
stenographer at so miany dallars per. But—if you'll
pardon me putting the question in that form—where’s
the point, Mrs. Stan? What’s the reel prapasition?”

This being precisely what Dorothy was rather care-
fully avoiding, again she smiled bashfully and dropped
her head, as if once more calling on those profound re-
serves of Mr. Miller’s veneration for motherhood.
These even profounder reserves, of Mr. Miller’s venera-
tion for dallars, were too much to the point altogether.

“T was afraid you wouldn’t understand,” she sighed.

“ But,” said Mr. Miller earnestly, ‘ give me some-
thing 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 mo-

 
566 A CROOKED MILE

ment—the pink ribbons—dip them in the preparation—
and there they’d have been, ready for immediate use.
And blue ones would be dipped in the other solution and
of course they’d have turned pink. . . . You see, you
can’t alter the baby, but you can alter the ribbons. And
it isn’t only ribbons. A woolly jacket—or a pram-rug
—or socks—or anything—I think it’s an exceedingly
clever Idea of Miss Deedes! a

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 peo-
ple’s very eyes!—Just think how—I mean, it interests
every woman! They’d stand in front of the window,
and think—but you’re a man. Mrs. Miller would un-
derstand. . . . Anyhow, you would get crowds of peo-
ple, 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 with-
out an eye, so they have to walk past half a mile of
counters, and you sell them all sort of things on the way.
I think there’s a great deal in it!”

“Tt’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 de
pend entirely in your own belief in it. If you did it
as thoroughly as you’ve done lots of other things——”

 

 
LITMUS 567

“Tt’s soitainly a Stunt, Miss Deedes,” -Mr. Miller
mused... .

He was frowningly meditating on the mystic differ-
ences 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.
II

BY THE WAY

ADY TASKER never missed the “ Globe’s” By
the Way column, and there was a curious, mock-
ing, unpleasant By-the-Way-ishness about the an-
nouncement she made as she entered. There isa spe-
cial psychological effect, in the Harvard and not in the
Hallowell and Smith’s sense, when you come unexpect-
edly in print upon news that affects yourself. The
multiplicity of newspapers notwithstanding, revelation
still hits the ear less harshly than it does the eye; tell-
ing 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.
“Not Sir 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—it can’t be! r?
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. Three
568

 
BY THE WAY 569

bullet-wounds are three undeniable reasons. It was:the
third, the brief account said, that had proved fatal.

“They say the finest view in Asia’s Bombay from
the stern of a steamer,” said Lady Tasker, with no ex-
pression whatever. “J think your friend Mr. Cosimo
Pratt will be seeing it before very long.”

But Dorothy was white. Their Sir 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 In-
visible Man had shot at him three times, and at ne
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. Mil-
ler had gone, and Dorothy had stood looking stupidly at
her aunt.

“What did you say?” she said. “You said some
thing about Cosimo Pratt.”
570 A CROOKED MILE

“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 hap-
BY THE WAY 571

pened to be fond of somebody (who probably hadn’t
been one bit better than he ought to have been).
These pompous people of the official classes were always
bragging about their readiness to lay down their lives
for their country; very well; they had no right to
grumble when they were taken at their word. Ruskin
had expressed much the same thought rather finely when
he had said that a soldier wasn’t paid for killing, but
for being killed. Some people seemed to want it both
ways—to. go on drawing their money while they were
alive, and then to have an outcry raised when they got
shot. In strict justice they ought to have -been, not
merely shot, but blown from the mouths of guns; but
of course neither Amory nor anybody else wanted to
go quite so far as that. . . . Nevertheless, perspective
was needed—perspective, and vision of such scope that
you had a clear mental picture, not of misguided in-
dividuals, 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 any-
body how hopelessly behind the noble movements of her
572 A CROOKED MILE

time Dorothy was. The sense of proportion never en-
tered 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 senti-
mentalists, and the others of the New Imperialism, with
their real grasp of the true and humane principles of
government, who were the downright practical folk. . . .

All this fuss about a single Governor, of whom Mr.
Prang himself had said (and there was no gentler soul
living than Mr. Prang) that his extortions had been a
byword and his obstinacy proof positive of his innate
weakness !

But Amory was not in the pond-room that day, and
so Dorothy’s sickly display of emotion went unchecked.
The nurse herded the Bits together, but they were not
admitted for their usual tea-time romp. Indeed, Doro-
thy 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.

 
BY THE WAY 573

He came in before Lady Tasker had finished her pro-.
longed questioning of Katie. Aunt Grace told him
where Dorothy was. Then she and Katie left together.

The newspapers showed an excellent sense of propor-
tion 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 re-
plies in the witness-box naturally overshadowed every-
thing else. And, to anticipate a little, on the following
day the “ Times” showed itself to be, as usual, hope-
lessly in the wrong. Indeed there were those who. con-
sidered that this journal made a deplorable exhibition of
itself. For it had no more modesty nor restraint than
to use the harsh word “ murder,’ without any
“alleged” about it, which was, of course, a flagrant pre-
judging of the case. Nobody denied that at a first
glance appearances were a 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 Govern-
ment. The staff was no doubt secretly glad that it had
happened, and was gloating, and already calculating its
effect on an impending by-election. . . . Besides, there
was the whole ethical question of capital punishment.
It would not bring Sir Benjamin back to life to try this
man, find him guilty, and do him barbarously to death
in the name of the Law. That would only be two dead
574 A CROOKED MILE

instead of one. The proper way would be to hold an
inquiry, with the dusky instrument of justice (whose
faith in his mission must have been very great since he
had taken such risks for it) not presiding, perhaps, but
certainly called as an important witness to testify to the
Wrongness of the Conditions. . . . Besides, an assas-
sination 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 prin-
ciples 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. Every-
body 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 found
BY THE WAY 575

Cosimo’s cigarettes, and Dickie said she was sure
Amory wouldn’t mind if she rang for tea. When they
had made themselves quite comfortable, they began to
chat about a number of things, not the murder.

“Seen Strong?” Mr. Brimby asked Mr. Wilkinson.

Mr. Wilkinson was at his most morose and truculent.

“No,” he said. “TI called at the office, but he was
out. Doesn’t put in very much time there, it seems
tome. 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
T’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 an-
other; 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 sup-
pose 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.
576 A CROOKED MILE

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, who
is this 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 com-
plete without Edgar Strong. ‘“T’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 re-
plied, 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.

“Tt doesn’t,” Mr. Wilkinson grunted.

“ Girl’s voice, anyway. . . . I say, I wonder how old
Prang’s getting on!”

“TJ 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 vigor-
BY THE WAY jit

ous,” Mr. Wilkinson growled. ‘“ The only strong thing
about Strong’s his name. He’s simply ruined that
paper.”

“T agree that it was at its best when Prang was do-
ing the Indian notes.”

“Oh, Prang knew what he wanted. Prang’s all right
in his way. But I tell you India’s too far away. We
want something at our own doors, and somebody made
an example of that somebody knows. Now if Pratt had
only been guided by me——”

“ Hallo, here’s Britomart Belchamber.—Why doesn’t
Amory come down, Brit? She’s in, isn’t she?”

“What?” said Miss Belchamber.

“Tsn’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. “TI 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.”
578 A CROOKED MILE

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. Al-
most for the first time in her life she wanted to be
alone—quite alone, with her eyes on nobody and no-
body’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 she
BY THE WAY 579

made for the loneliest part of the Heath she wished that
night would fall.

She had to all intents and purposes packed Cosimo off
to India in order to have him out of the way. His
presence had become as wearisome as that of the
Wyrons and the rest of them. And that was as much as
she had hitherto told herself. She had taken no resolu-
tion about Edgar Strong. But drifting is accelerated
when an obstacle is removed, and her heart had fre-
quently 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 not-
withstanding, she was still Cosimo’s wife. She might
pathetically urge on him that, now more than ever, she
needed a friend and not a lover—or else that, now more
than ever, she needed a lover and not a friend. She
might say that nothing could be done until Cosimo came
back—or that when Cosimo came back would be too
late to do anything. Or she might... .

Or she might... .

Or she might... .

Yet when all was said, Edgar and the “ Novum’s ”
offices were perilously near. . .

For it was not what she might do, but what he might
do, that set her heart beating most rapidly of all. Her
580 A CROOKED MILE

dangerous dreaming always ended in that. Here was
no question of that trumpery subterfuge of the Wyrons.
It struck her with extraordinary force and newness that
she was what was called “a married woman.” It was
a familiar phrase; it was as familiar as those other
phrases, “No, just living together,” ‘“ Well, as long as
there are no children,” ‘“ Love 7s Law ”—familiar as
the air. Left to herself, the phrases might have re
mained 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 should
not stretch out his hand—well, in that case there would
be no more to be said. Butif 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. Cour-
age! . . . Images of Cleopatra and the carpet rose in
BY THE WAY 581

her mind again. .. . But the images were faint now.
She had evoked them too often. Her available mental
material had become stale. She needed a fresh impulse
—a new experience——

But—she always got back to the same point—suppose
Edgar should take her, not at her word, nor against her
word, but with words, for once, left suddenly and en-
tirely 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 re-
minded 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 pro-
portion 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 im-
portant than it had done. Perhaps the newsboy’s voice
had made it sound more important: things did seem to
come more personally home when they were spoken than
when they were merely read. She hoped it was not very
important; it might be well to make sure. She was not

 
582 A CROOKED MILE

very far from home; her Timon-guests would still be
there; somebody would be able to tell her all about
it, ss

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.

‘Qh, 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 unaffect-
edly, they stood round in a ring while Amory opened
it, with all their eyes on her. They most frightfully
wanted to know what was in it, but of course it would
BY THE WAY 583

have been rude to ask outright. So they merely
watched, expectantly.

Then, as Amory stood looking at the piece of paper,
Walter was almost rude. But in the circumstances
everybody forgave him.

“Well?” he said; and then with ready tact he re-
trieved the solecism. ‘ Hope it’s good news, Amory?”

For all that there was just that touch of schadenfreude
in 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 be-
cause she had not had any tea.

“Cosimo’s coming home,” she said.

There was a moment’s silence, and then the congratu-
lations 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. A little more
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.”
584 A CROOKED MILE

“ Cowardly,” said Mr. Wilkinson grimly. “ Rub-
bing 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 hap-
pened.—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, if I’d
had that paper of yours! . . . I told you at the begin-
ning what Strong was—neither wanted to do things nor
let ’em alone; but J’d have 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 it is War, isn’t it? Or only Brimby’s sort of War
—like everything else about Brimby ? py

 
BY THE WAY 585

Here somebody tried to interpose, but Mr. Wilkin-
son raised his voice almost to a shout.

“Tsn’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 kill-
ing somebody, can you? JI 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 that
does know what we want! And Prang’s got his all
right—my turn next—and I shan’t ask Brimby to help
me——”’

Through a sort of singing in her ears Amory heard
the rising cries of dissent that interrupted Mr. Wilkin-
son—‘‘ Oh no—hang it—Wilkinson’s going too far!”
But the noise conveyed little to her. Stupidly she was
staring at the blue and yellow jets of the asbestos log,
and weakly thinking what a silly imitation the thing
586 A CROOKED MILE

was. She couldn’t imagine however Cosimo had come
to buy it. And then she heard Mr. Wilkinson repeat-
ing 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.—“ An-
other Mutiny? Well, what about it? It 2s War, isn’t
it? Or is it only Brimby’s sort of War ? os

Then Amory felt herself grow suddenly cold and re-
solved. 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 sur-
round 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,

 
BY THE WAY 587

“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 de-
scended 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.
III

DE TROP

T HOSE who knew Edgar Strong the best knew that

the problem of how to make the best of both worlds
pressed with a peculiar hardship on him. The smaller
rebel must have the whole of infinity for his soul to
range in—and, for all the practical concern that man
has with it, infinity may be defined as the condition in
which the word of the weakest is as good as that of the
wisest. Give him scope enough and Mr. Brimby can-
not 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 re-
sponsibility 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.
588
DE TROP 589

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 finporta-
tions (Sir Joseph Deedes, Katie’s uncle, knew all about
these things). And this and that and the other were
going on behind the scenes; and these deep mutterings
meant, if they meant anything at all, that it was time
Edgar Strong was packing up.

Fruit-farming was the line he fancied; oranges in
Florida; and it would not take long to book passages—
passages for two

He had heard the news in the early afternoon, and
had straightway sent off an express messenger to the
person for whom the second passage was destined.
Within an hour this person had run up the stairs, with-
out 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 super-
fluous. He had been carrying armfuls of papers into
the little room behind the office and thrusting them with:
out 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 ship-
ping offiee. Edgar Strong, in Charing Cross Road, had
continued to feed his fire. The whole place smelt of
burning paper. A mountain of ashes choked the grate

 
590 A CROOKED MILE

and spread out as far as the bed and the iron washstand
in the corner.

The girl returned. From under the bed she pulled
out a couple of bags. Into these she began to thrust her
companion’s clothes. Into a third and smaller bag she
crammed her own dressing-gown and slippers, a comb
and a couple of whalebone brushes, and other things.
She had brought word that the boat sailed the day after
to-morrow. . .

“ There’s the telephone—just answer it, will you?”
Strong said, casting another bundle on the fire... .

“Wyron,” said the girl, returning.

“Never mind those boots; they’re done; and you
might get me a safety-razor; shall want it on the ship.
. . . By the way—I think we’d better get married.”

The girl laughed.—‘ All right,” she said as she
crammed a nightdress-case into the little bag... .

Amory walked quickly down the East Heath. As she
walked she could not help wondering what there had’
been to make such a fuss about. Indeed she had been
making quite a bugbear of the thing she was now doing
quite easily. What, after all, would it matter? Would
a single one of the people she passed so hurriedly think
her case in the least degree special? Had they not, each
one of them, their own private and probably very similar
affairs? Was there one of them of whom it could be
said with certainty that he or she was not, at that very
moment, bound on the same errand? She looked at
the womgn. There was nothing to betray them, but it
was quite as likely as not. Nor could they tell by look-
DE TROP 591

ing at her. For that matter, the most resolute would
hide it the most. Anda person’s life was hisown. No-
body would give him another one when he had starved
and denied the one he had. There might not be an-
other 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 think-
ing 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 preponder-
ance, which would, no doubt, settle down in time. Vir-
tually 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 inside
592 A CROOKED MILE

it, between a man in a white muffler and opera-hat
and a flower-woman returning home with her empty
baskets.

Many, many times Amory Pratt, abusing her fancy,
had rehearsed the scene to which she was now so
smoothly and rapidly approaching; but she rehearsed
nothing now. It would suffice for her just to appear
before Edgar; no words would be necessary; he would
instantly understand. Of course (she reflected) he
might have left the office when she got there; it was even
reasonably probable that he would have left; it was not
a press-night; twenty to one he would have left. But
her thoughts went forward again exactly as if she had
not just told herself this. . . . He would be there. She
would go up to him and stand before him. As likely
as not not a word would pass between them. She felt
that she had used too many words in her life. She and
her set had discussed subjects simply out of existence.
Often, by the time they had finished talking, not one of
them had known what they had been talking about. It
had been sheer dissipation. Men, she had heard, took
drinks like that, and by and by were unable to stand, and
then made hideous exhibitions of themselves. Nobody
could say exactly at what point they, the men, 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 she
DE TROP 593

from wishing that the tram would go more slowly, that
she would have hastened it had she been able.

The “Mother Shipton”—the Cobden Statue—
Hampstead Road—the “ Adam and Eve.” At this last
stopping-place she descended, crossed the road, and
boarded a bus. She remembered that once before, when
she had visited the office in a taxi, the cab had seemed
to go at a terrifying speed ; now the bus seemed to crawl.
A fear took her that every stop might cause her to miss
him by just a minute. She tapped with her foot. She
looked almost angrily at those who got in or out. That
flower-woman: why couldn’t she have got out at the
proper stopping-place, instead of. upsetting everything
with her baskets hardly a hundred yards further on?
.. . Off again; she hoped to goodness that was the last
delay. She had been stupid not to take a taxi after all.

‘She descended opposite the “‘ Horse Shoe,” not three
minutes’ walk from the “Novum’s” offices. Then
again she called herself stupid for not having sat where
she was, since the bus would go straight past the door.
But she could be there as soon as the bus if she walked
quickly.

The bus overtook her and beat her by twenty yards. —

The bookseller’s shutters were down, and in the win-
dow of the electric-fittings shop could be dimly seen a
ventilating fan, a desk-lamp, and’a switch-board or two.
Amory turned in under the arch that led to the yard be-
hind. Her eyes had gone up to the third floor almost
before she had issued from the narrow alley

Ah! ... So she was not too late. There was a
light.

 

 
594 A CROOKED MILE

Through the ground-floor cavern in which the sand-
wich-boards were stacked she had for the first time to
slacken her pace; the floor was uneven, and the place
was crowded with dim shadows. A man smoking a
pipe over an evening paper turned as she entered, but,
seeing her make straight for the stairs, he did not ask
her her business. The winding wooden staircase was
black as a flue. On the first landing she paused for a
moment; the man with the pipe had, after all, challenged
her, “ Who is it you want, Miss?” he called from be-
low. . . . But he did not follow her. A vague light
from the landing window showed her the second flight
of wedge-shaped wooden steps. She mounted them, and
gained the corridor hung with the specimens of the
poster-artist’s work. Ahead along the passage a narrow
shaft of light crossed the floor. She gave one more look
behind, for fear the man below had, after all, followed
her; she was determined, but that did not mean that
she necessarily wished to be seen... .

Her life was her own, to do what she liked with.
Nobody would give her another one... .

And Edgar might be cruel if he wished. .. .

For one instant longer she hesitated. Then she
pushed softly at the door from which the beam of light
came,

The quietness of her approach was wasted after all.
There was nobody in the office. The floor was untidy
with scattered leaves of paper, and Edgar had care
lessly left every drawer of his desk open; but that only
meant that he could not be very far away. Probably he
was in the waiting-room. She approached the door of it.
DE TROP 595

But, as she did so, some slight unfamiliarity about the
place struck her. The first room of the three, or wait-
ing-room, she knew, from having once or twice pushed
at the first door of the passage and having had to pass
through that ante-room. Of the third room she knew
nothing save that it was used as a sort of general lumber-
room. But the rooms seemed somehow to have got
changed about. It was from this third room, and not
from the waiting-room, that a bright light came, and
the smell of charred paper. The door was partly open.
Amory advanced to it.

As she did so somebody spoke.

For so slight a cause, the start that Amory gave was
rather heartrending. She stopped dead. Her face had
turned so chalky a white that the freckles upon it, which
ordinarily scarcely showed, looked almost unwhole-
some.

In her mind she had given Edgar Strong leave to
be cruel to her, but not with this cruelty. The cruelty
we choose is always another cruelty. Once a man, who
miraculously survived a flogging, said that by compari-
son with the anguish of the second stroke that of the
first was almost a sweetness; and after the third, and
fourth, men, they say, have laughed. It happened so
to Amory. The voices she heard were not loud; so
much the worse, when a few ordinary, grunted, half ex-
pressions could so pierce her.

" months ago, but I wasn’t ready. I stayed on
here for nobody’s convenience but my own, I can tell
you.” It was Edgar who said this. Then a woman’s
voige—

 
596 A CROOKED MILE

“JT don’t think this waistcoat’s worth taking; I’ve

patched and patched it n2
“Oh, chuck it under the bed. And I say—we’ve
had nothing to eat. Make. the cocoa, will you?”

“ Just a minute till I finish this bag—What’ll Pratt
say when he comes back?”

“ Ag I shan’t be here to hear him, it’s hardly worth
while guessing.”

“Will Wilkinson take it over?”

“The ‘Novum’?... I don’t think there’ll be any
more ‘Novum.’ I suppose these London Indians will
be holding a meeting. I don’t like ’em, but let’s be fair
to them: most of ’em are all right. They’ve got to dis-
sociate themselves from this Collins business somehow.
But I expect some lunatic will go and move an amend-
ment. ... Well, it won’t matter to us. We shall be
well down the Channel by that time.”

Then the girl gave a low laugh—I do think you
might buy me a trousseau, Ned—the way it’s turned
out: ”

The man’s voice grunted.

“T thought that would be the next. Give you some-
thing and you all want something else immediately. . . .
Can’t afford it, my dear. I’ve only pulled between three
and four hundred out of this show, living here, paying
myself space-rates and all the lot; and we shall want all
that.”

Again the low voice—very soft and low.

“ But you'll be a little sorry to leave here, won’t you
—m’mmm?——”’ (This was the second stroke, by
comparison with which the first had been sweet).

 

 
DE TROP 597

Strong spoke brusquely.—‘‘ Look here, old girl—
we've heaps of things to do to-night—lots of time before
us—don’t let’s have any nonsense——”

.T7 No-o-o ? 9?

Amory, besides hearing, might have seen; but she did
not. Something had brought into her head her own
words to Walter Wyron of an hour or two before, when
Walter had picked up the cable announcing Cosimo’s
return: “ Put that down, Walter; it’s mine.” This
other, that was taking place in that inner room, was
theirs. It would have been perfectly easy to strike them
.dumb by appearing, just for one moment, in the door-
way of this—lumber-room; but she preferred not to do
it. If she had, she felt that it would have been the re-
mains of a woman they would have seen. There is not
much catch in striking anybody dumb when the process
involves their seeing—that. Much better to steal out
quietly. ...

Noiselessly she turned her back to the half-open door.
She tiptoed out into the corridor again. For a dozen
yards she continued to tiptoe—in order to spare them;
and then she found herself at the head of the steep stairs.
She descended. She had not made a single sound.
Down below the man was still reading the paper, and
again he looked round. At another time Amory might
have questioned him; but again she did not. There
was nothing to learn. She knew.

It was the first thing she had ever really known.

Bowed with the strangeness of knowledge, she walked
slowly out into Charing Cross Road.

 
IV

GRAY YOUTH

HE continued to walk slowly; the slowness was as

remarkable as her haste had been. She had in-
tended, had she missed Edgar, to go to an hotel; but
home was hotel enough, hotel home. Home—home to
a house without privacy—home to children of whom she
was not much more than technically the mother—home
to an asbestos log and to the absence of a husband that
was at least as desirable as his presence: nothing else re-
mained.

For her lack seemed total—so total as hardly to be
a lack. She desired no one thing, and a desire for
everything is an abuse of the term “ desire.” So she
walked slowly, stopping now and then to look at a flag-
stone as if it had been a remarkable object. And as
she walked she wondered how she had come to be as
she was.

She could not see where her life had gone wrong.
She did not remember any one point at which she had
taken a false and crucial step. For example, she did
not think this gray and harmonious totality of despond-
ency: had come of her marrying Cosimo. They were
neither outstandingly suited nor unsuited to one another,
and a thousand marriages precisely similar were made

every day and turned out well enough. No; it could
598
GRAY YOUTH 599

not be that she had expected too much of marriage. She
had not courted disappointment that way. ... (But
stay: had the trouble come of her not expecting largely
enough? Of her not having assumed enough? Of her
not having said to Life, “ Such and such I intend to
have, and you shall provide it?” Would she have fared
better then?). . . . And if Cosimo had brought her no
wonder, neither had her babes. People were in the habit
of saying astonishing things about the miracle of the
babe at the breast, but Amory could only say that she had
never experienced these things. She had wondered that
she should not, when so many others apparently did, but
the fact remained, that bearing had been an anguish and
nursing an inconvenience. And so at the twins she had
stopped.

Would it have been better had she not stopped?
Would she have been happier with many children?
Without children at all? Or unmarried? Or ought
her painting to have been husband, home and children
to her? . .

It was a little late in the day to ask these questions
now

And yet there had been no reason for asking them
earlier

It had needed that, her first point of knowledge, to
bring it home into her heart... .

But do not suppose that she was in any pain. As
a spinally-anaesthetized subject may have a quite poig-
nant interest in the lopping off of one of his own limbs,
and may even wonder that he feels no local pain, so she
assisted at her own dismemberment. Home, husband,

 

 
600 A CROOKED MILE

babes, her art—one after another she now seemed to see
them go—or rather, seemed to see that they had long
since gone. She saw this going, in retrospect. It was
as if, though only degree by degree had the pleasant
things of life ticked away from her, the escapement was
now removed from her memory, allowing all with a
buzz to run down to a dead stop. She could almost
hear that buzz, almost see that soft rim of whizzing
teeth. ...

Now all was stillness—stillness without pain. She
knew now what Edgar Strong had been doing. She
knew that he had been making use of her, pocketing
Cosimo’s money, using the “ Novum’s” office as his
lodging, had had his bed there, his slippers in the fender,
his kettle, his cocoa, his plates, his cups, his. . . . And
she knew now that Edgar Strong was only one of those
who had clustered like leeches about Cosimo. . . . She
forgot how much Cosimo had said that from first to last
it had all cost. She thought twenty thousand pounds.
‘Twenty thousand pounds, all vanished between that first
Ludlow experiment and that last piece of amateur sociol-
ogy, three revolver shots in a man’s back! As a price
it was stiffish. She did not quite know what the pro-
vider of the money had had out of it all. At any rate
she herself had this curious stilly state of painless but
rather sickening knowledge. And knowledge, they say,
is above rubies. So perhaps it was cheap after all... .

But where had she gone wrong? Had she simply
been born wrong? Would it have made any difference
whatever she had done? Or had all this been appointed
for her or ever her mother had conceived her ?
GRAY YOUTH 601

She asked herself this as she passed Whitefield’s
Tabernacle; still walking slowly, she was well up Hamp-
stead Road and still no answer had occurred to her. But
somewhere near the gold-beater’s arm on the right-hand
side of the road a thought did strike her. She thought
that she would not go home after all. This was not be-
cause to go home now would be inglorious; it was no at-
tempt to keep up appearances; it was merely that she
would have preferred anything to this horrible numb-
ness. Pain would be better. It is at any rate a condi-
tion of pain that you must be alive to feel it, and she did
not feel quite alive. This might be a dream from which
she would presently awake, or a waking from which she
would by and by drop off to sleep again. In either case
it was more than she could bear for much longer, and,
did she go home, she would have to bear it throughout
the night—for days—until Cosimo came back—after
that

But where else to go, if not to The Witan? To
Laura’s? To Dickie’s? That would be the same thing
as going home: little enough change from spinal
anaesthesia in that! They could not help. Of all her
old associates, there was hardly one but might—that
was to say if anything extraordinary ever happened to
them, like suddenly getting to know something—there
was hardly one of them but might experience precisely
this same hopeless perfection of wrongness, and fail to
discover any one point at which it had all begun. It
was rather to be hoped (Amory thought) that they never
would get to know anything. They were happier as they
were, in a self-contained and harmonious ignorance.

 
602 A CROOKED MILE

Knowledge attained too late was rather dreadful; peo-
ple ought to begin to get it fairly early or not at all.
They ought to begin at about the age of Corin and
Bonniebell. . . .

A month ago the last person she would have gone to
with a trouble would have been Dorothy Tasker. They
had not a single view in common. Moreover, it would
have been humiliating. But now that actually became,
in a curious, reflex sort of way, a reason for going. She
did not know that she actually wished to be humiliated ;
she did not think about it; but she had been looking at
herself, and at people exactly like herself, for a long,
long, long time, and, when you have looked at yourseli
too much you can sometimes actually find out something
new about yourself by looking for a change at somebody
else as little like you as can possibly be found. Amory
had tried a good many things, but she had never tried
this. It might be worth trying. She hesitated for one
moment longer. This was when she feared that Doro-
thy might offer her, not the change from numbness to
pain, but a sympathy and consolation that, something
deep down within her told her, would not help her. . . .
A little more quickly, but not much, she walked up
Malden Road. She turned into Fleet Road, and reached
the tram-terminus below Hampstead Heath Station.
Thence to Dorothy’s was a bare five minutes. What
she should say when she got to Dorothy’s she did not
trouble to think.

And at first it looked as if she would not be allowed
to say anything at all to her, for when she rang the bell
of the hall-floor flat Stan himself opened the door, looked
GRAY YOUTH 603

at her with no great favour, and told her that Dorothy
was not to be seen. From that Amory gathered that
Dorothy was at least within.

Now when your need of a thing is very great, you
are not to be put off by a young man who admits that
his wife is at home, but tells you that she has some
trifling affair—is in her dressing-gown perhaps, or has
not made her hair tidy—that makes your call slightly in-
convenient. Therefore Amory, in her need, did what
the young man would no doubt have called “an infer-
nally cheeky thing.” She repeated her request once
more, and then, seeing another refusal coming, waited
for no further reply, but pushed past Stan and made di-
rect for Dorothy’s bedroom. Why she should have sup-
posed that Dorothy would be in her bedroom she could
not have told. She might equally well have been in the
dining-room, or in the pond-room. But along the pas-
sage to the bedroom Amory walked, while Stan stared
in stupefaction after her.

Dorothy was there. She had not gone to bed, but,
early as it was, appeared to have been preparing to do
so. Amory knew that because, though in Britomart
Belchamber’s case a dressing-gown and plaited hair
might merely have meant that she wanted to listen to
Walter Wyron’s talk in looseness and comfort, or else
that a plaster cast was to be taken, they certainly did
not mean that in Dorothy’s. And she supposed that
differences of that kind were more or less what she had
come to see.

Dorothy was gazing into the fire before which the
youngest Bit had had his bath. Close to her own chair
604 A CROOKED MILE

was drawn the chair that had evidently been lately oc-
cupied by Stan. The infant Bit’s cot was in a corner of
the room. At first Dorothy did not look up from the
fire. Probably she supposed the person who was look-
ing at her from the doorway to be Stan.

But as that person neither spoke nor advanced, she
turned her head. The next moment a curious little
sound had come from her lips. You see, in the first
place, she had expected nobody less, and in the second
place, she wholeheartedly shared many of her worldly
old aunt’s prejudices, among which was the monstrous
one that established a connexion between recently-bibbed
politicians in this country and revolver shots in another.
And there was no doubt whatever that her presentable
but brainless young husband had fostered this fallacious
conviction. He might even have gone so far as to say
that Amory herself was not altogether unresponsi-
ble...

And that, too, in a sense, was what Amory had come
for.

The eyes of the two women met, Amory’s at the
door, Dorothy’s startled ones looking over her shoulder ;
blue ones and shallow brook-brown ones; and then Doro-
thy half rose.

But whatever the first expression of her face had been,
it hardly lasted for a quarter of an instant. Alarm in-
stantly took its place. She had begun to get up as a
person gets up who would ask another person what he
is doing there. Now it was as if, though she did not yet
know what it was, there was something to be done, some-
GRAY YOUTH 605

thing practical and with the hands, without a moment’s
delay.

“What's the matter?” she cried. “Cried” is
written, but her exclamation actually gained in emphasis
frora the fact that, not to wake the Bit, she voiced it in
a whisper.

For a moment Amory wondered why she should speak
like that. Then it occurred to her that the face of a
person under spinal anaesthesia might in itself be a rea-
son. She had forgotten her face.

“ May I come in?” she asked.

She took Dorothy’s “ Shut the door—and speak low,
please—what do you want?” as an intimation that she
might. Amory entered. But she was not asked to sit
down. The man who runs with a fire-call, or fetches
a doctor in the night, is not asked to sit down, and some
urgency of that kind appeared to be Dorothy’s con-
ception of Amory’s visit.

“What do you want?” she demanded again.

Amory herself felt foolish at her own reply. It was
so futile, so piteous, so true. She stood as helpless as
a Bit before Dorothy.

“JT—J don’t know,” she said.

“What’s the matter? What are you looking like
that for? Has anything happened to Cosimo?”

“No. No. No. He’s coming home. No. Noth-
ing’s happened.”

“Can I be of use to you?” She was prepared to be
that.

“‘ No—yes—I don’t know ie

 
606 A CROOKED MILE.

Dorothy’s eyes had hardened a little-—‘‘ Do you want
something—and if you don’t—had you to come—to-
night ?”

Amory spoke quite quickly and eagerly.

“Oh yes—to-night—it had to be to-night—I had to
come to-night ie

Dorothy’s eyes grew harder still.

“ Then I think I know what you mean. . . . I don’t
think we’ll talk about it. There’s really nothing to be
said.—So a /

Amory was vaguely puzzled. Of Dorothy’s relation
to Sir Benjamin she knew nothing. Dorothy appeared
to be waiting for her to go. That would mean back
to The Witan. But she had come here expressly to
avoid going back to The Witan. Again she spoke fool-
ishly.

“ Cosimo’s coming back,” she said.

“ My aunt thought he might be,” said Dorothy in an
even voice.

“ And I was going away—but I’m not now

“Oh?” ‘

“May I sit down?”

She did so, with her doubled fists thrust between her
knees and her head a little bowed. Then her eyes wan-
dered sideways slowly round the room. Dorothy’s
blouse was thrown on the wide bed; from under the bed
the baby Bit’s bath peeped; and on the blouse lay Doro-
thy’s hairbrushes.

Amory was thinking of another bed, a bed she had
never seen, with portmanteaus on it, and a patched old
waistcoat cast underneath it, and a girl busily packing

 

 

2)

 
GRAY YOUTH 607

at it, a girl whose voice she had heard pouting “ You
might buy me a trousseau—”

Dorothy also had sat down, but only on the edge of
her chair. And she thought it would be best to speak
a little more plainly.

“Tf you'll come to-morrow I shall know better what
to say to you,” she said. ‘You see, you’ve taken me
by surprise. I didn’t think you’d come, and I don’t
know now what you’ve come for. It isn’t a thing to talk
about, certainly not to-day. I should have liked to-day
to myself. But if you feel that you must—will you
come in again to-morrow?” —

But Amory hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes were
noting the appointments of the bedroom again. The
time had been when she would at once have denounced
the room as overcrowded and unhygienic. A cot, and a
bed with two pillows . . . in some respects her own plan
was to be preferred. But this again was the kind of
thing she had come to see, and she admitted that these
things were more or less governed by what people could
afford. From the kicked and scratched condition of
the front of the chest of drawers she imagined that Dor-
othy’s children must romp all over the flat. A parti-
coloured ball lay under the cot where the baby slept.
There was a rubber bath-doll near it. The two older
boys would be sleeping in the next room.

She spoke again.—‘“I was going away,” she said,
dully, ‘ with somebody.”

Once more Dorothy merely said “ Oh?”

Then it occurred to Amory that perhaps Dorothy did
not quite understand.
608 » A CROOKED MILE

“T mean with—with somebody not my husband.”

She had half expected that Dorothy would be shocked,
or at least surprised; but she seemed to take it quite
coolly. Dorothy, as a matter of fact, was not surprised
in the very least. She too guessed at the futility of
looking for a starting-point of things that grow by in-
evitable and infinitesimal degrees. It was rather sad,
but not at all astonishing. On Amory’s own premises,
there was simply no reason why she shouldn’t. So again
she merely said “Oh?” and added after a moment,
“But you're not?”

“ No.”’

“ How’s that? Has what we’ve heard ey made
you change your mind?”

Again Amory was slightly puzzled; and at Dorothy’s
questions she had, moreover, a sudden little hesitation.
Was it after all necessary that Dorothy should know
everything? Would it not be sufficient, without going
into details, to let Dorothy suppose she had changed her
mind? It came to the same thing in the end... .
Besides, Edgar Strong had not refused her that night.
He had not even known of her presence in the office. Of
the rest she would make a clean breast, but it was no
good bothering Dorothy with that other. . . . She was
still plunged into a sort of stupor, but these reflections
stirred ever so slightly under the surface of it. .

Then what “what we’ve heard to-day” struck her.
She repeated the words.

“ What we've heard to-day?”

“Oh, if you haven’t heard. . . . I only mean about
the murder of my uncle,” said Dorothy coldly.
GRAY YOUTH 609

This was far more than Amory could take in. She
reflected for a moment. Then, “ What do you say,
Dorothy ?”’ she asked slowly.

“ At least he wasn’t my uncle really. I liked him
better than any of my uncles.”

“Do you mean Sir Benjamin Collins?”

It was as if Amory had not imagined that Sir Benja-
min could by any possibility have been anybody’s
uncle.

“T called him uncle,” said Dorothy, in a voice that
she tried to keep steady. ‘“‘ Before I could say the word
—I called him .” But she decided not to risk the
baby-word she had used— Unnoo ”’

It seemed to Amory a remarkable little coincidence.

“‘ I—I didn’t know,” she said stupidly.

ce No.”

“ You—you mean you—knew him ?——”

“Oh... oh yes.”

Amory said again that she hadn’t known... .

“Then why,” Dorothy would have liked to ery aloud,
“have you come, if it isn’t to make matters worse by
talking about it? That wouldn’t have surprised me
very much! I should have been quite prepared for you
to apologize! It’s the kind of thing you would do. I
don’t think very much of you, you see”... But
again that worse than frightened look on her visitor’s
face struck her sharply, and again a remark of her
aunt’s returned to her: “ They puzzle their brains till
their bodies suffer, and overwork their bodies till they’re
little better than fools.” Suddenly she gave her some-
time friend more careful attention.

 

 
610 A CROOKED MILE

‘“‘ Amory—,” she said all at once.

Amory had her fists between her knees again.—
“ What ?” she said without looking up.

“You just said something about—going away. I
want to ask you something. You haven’t.. .?”

The meaning was quite plain.

As if she had been galvanized, Amory looked sharply
up.—‘‘ How dare——’,, she began.

But it was only a flash in the pan. Dorothy was look-
ing into her eyes.

“You're telling me the truth?” She hated to ask
the question.

“Yes,” Amory mumbled, dropping her head again.

** Has Cosimo been unkind to you?”

iT No.”

“ Nor neglected you?”

“ No.”

“Has—has anybody been unkind to you?” She
could not speak of “somebody” by name.

Here Amory hesitated, and finally lied. It was
rather a good sign that she did so. It meant returning
animation. ...

“No,” she said.

“Then what has happened ?”

“Nothing. That’s what I asked myself. That’s just
it. Nothing. Nothing at all’s happened.”

Dorothy spoke in a low voice, as if to herself—“ I
know,” she murmured... .

And, on the chance that she really did know, Amory
clutched at the sleeve of Dorothy’s dressing-gown al-
most excitedly.
GRAY YOUTH 611

“Yes, that’s what I mean . . . you do know?” she
asked in a quick whisper.

“ Yes—no—I’m not sure——”

“ But you do know that—nothing happening, nothing
at all, and everything happening—everything? That’s
what I mean—that’s what I want to know—that’s why
I came——”

“Ton’t speak so loudly. Put your hands to the fire ;
they’re like ice. Wait; I’ll get you a shawl; you’re
shivering. ... Now I want you to tell me some
things. . . .”

And, first wrapping her up and putting Stan’s pillow
behind her back, she began to question her. _

What, again, was the purport of her questions?
What of those of her aunt? What of those of a good
many others in an age that is producing, and for some
mysterious reason or other counts it a sign of progress to
produce, innumerable Amorys—so many that, stretch
out vour hand where you will, and you will touch one?

All is guessing: but it will pass on the time if we
hold a Meeting about it now. Everybody is agreed that
the wa: to arrive at the best conclusions is to hold a
Meeting, and this will be only one more Meeting added
to the cloud of Meetings in which the “ Novum” went
up and out—the Meeting which, as Edgar Strong had
prophesied, the loyal London Indians: held (in the Im-
perial Institute) in order to dissociate themselves from
the Collins affair (as Edgar Strong had also prophesied,
Mr. Wilkinson moved an amendment, “ That this Meet-
ing declines to dissociate itself, etc. etce.””)—the numer-
612 A CROOKED MILE

ous secondary Meetings that arose out of that Meeting—
the Meetings of the “ Novum’s” creditors (for Edgar
Strong in his haste to be off had omitted to pay all the
bills)—-the Meetings at which (Cosimo Pratt having
withdrawn his support) the Eden and the Suffrage Shop
had to be reconstructed—the Meetings convened to talk
about this, that and the other—as many of them as you
like.

‘Let us too, then, hold a nice, jolly Meeting, in order
to find out what was the matter with Amory—a Meet-
ing with Mr. Brimby in the Chair, to tell us that. there
is a great deal to be said on both sides, and that no party
has a monopoly of Truth, and that the words that ought
always to be on our lips as we hurl ourselves into the
thickest and hottest of the fray, whatever it may be, are
“To know all is to forgive all.”

But let us keep our Meeting as quiet as we can, for
we shall have no end of a crowd of Meeting-lovers there
if we don’t. The Wyrons will of course have to be ad-
mitted, and Mr. Wilkinson, and Dickie Lemesurier, and
a few of the oldest students of the McGrath; but we do
not particularly want the others—those who feel that
in a better and brighter world they would have’been stu-
dents of the McGrath, but, as matters stand, are merely
young clerks who can draw a little, young salesmen who
can write a little, young auctioneers with an instinct for
the best in sculpture, young foremen who yearn to ex-
press themselves in music, young governesses (or a few
of them) who have heard of the enormous sums of money
to be made by playwriting, New Imperialists, amateur
regenerators, social prophets after working-hours, and,
GRAY YOUTH 613

in a word, all the people who have just heard that it is
not true that Satan is yet bound up for his promised
stretch of a thousand years. A terrible number of them
will get in whether we wish it or not; but let the rest
be our own little party; and you shall sit next to Brito-
mart. Belchamber, and I will stand by to open the win-
dows in case we feel the need of a little fresh air.

So Mr. Brimby will open the proceedings. He will
say the things above-mentioned, and presently, with emo-
tion and his sense of the world’s sorrow gaining on him,
will come to the case of their dear friend Amory Pratt.
Here, he will say, is a young woman, one of themselves,
who does not know what is the matter with her—who
does not know what has become of her joy—who cannot
understand (if Mr. Brimby may be allowed to express
himself a little poetically) why the bloom of her life
has turned to an early rime. And so (Mr. Brimby will
continue), knowing that if two heads are better than one,
two hundred heads must be just one hundred times
better still, their friend has submitted her case to the
Meeting. He will beg them to approach that case sym-
pathetically. Let the extremists of the one part (if
there be any) balance the extremists of the other, leav-
ing as an ideal and beautiful middle nullity those
words he had used before, but did not apologize for
using again—to know all is to forgive all. And with
these few remarks (if we are lucky), Mr. Brimby will
say no more, but. will call upon their friend Mr. Walter
Wyron to state his view of their friend’s case.

Then Walter will get up, with his hands in the pockets
of his knickers, and it will not be his fault if he does
614 A CROOKED MILE

not get off an epigram or two of the “Love is Law”
kind. But you will not fail to notice that Walter is not
his ordinary jaunty self. The withdrawal of Cosimo’s
support is going to hit him rather hard, and glances will
be exchanged, and one or two will whisper behind their
hands, “ Isn’t Walter beginning to live a little on his
reputation? ”’ Still, Walter will contribute his quotum.
We shall hear that, in his opinion, the Cause of Synthetic
Protoplasm is making such vast strides to-day that we
must revise every one of our estimates in the light of
the most recent knowledge, having done which we shall
probably find that what is really the matter with Amory
is that, by comparison with the mechanical appliances of
Loeb and Delage—appliances which he will take leave
to call the Womb of the Workshop—their friend Amory
is over-vitalized.

Then Mr. Wilkinson will spring to his feet. And
Mr. Wilkinson also will be more than a little sore about
Cosimo’s cowardly backsliding. He will say first of all
that their Chairman, as usual, is talking out of his hat,
and that anybody with a grain of sense knew that to know
all was to have a contempt for all; and then he will point
out that all the trouble had come of shillyshallying with
the wrong policy. ‘Under Strong’s direction of the
“ Novum,” he will say, Amory had been hitting the air
to no purpose; whereas had he, Mr. Wilkinson, been al-
lowed a chance, they would have had the proletariat
armed with rifles by this, and Pratt’s wife would have
been a tricoteuse, doing a bit of knitting conspiratoriably
and domestically useful at one and the same time—would
have worn a Phrygian cap, and carried a pike, and sung
GRAY YOUTH 615

“ A la Lanterne,” and put a bit of fire into the men!
That’s what she ought to have done, and have had a bit
of a run for her money, instead of shillyshallying about
with that idiot Strong

And then a maiden speech will be given us. Mr.
Raffinger, of the McGrath, will get timidly but resolutely
up, and we shall all applaud him when he says that the
bad old régime at the McGrath was at the bottom of all
the mischief. The stupid old Professors of the past
had tried to drill instruction into the students instead
of allowing each one to do exactly as he pleased and so
to find his own soul. Amory had been crushed under
the cruel old Juggernaut of discipline. But that,
happily, was a thing of the past at the McGrath. Now
they went on the more enlightened principles laid down
by Séguin, who cured a child of destructiveness by giv-
ing it a piece of priceless Venetian glass to play with,
and when he broke it gave it another unique piece, and
then another, and another after that, and another, until
by degrees the child learned, and would never have to
unlearn (that was the important thing!) that it was very
naughty to break valuable Venetian glass. (A “ hear
hear” from Mr. Brimby, which will probably prove so
disconcerting to young Mr. Raffinger that he will sit
down as suddenly as if Mr. Wilkinson had discharged
two bullets at him).

And then Laura Wyron will speak, saying tremu-
lously that she can’t understand why Amory isn’t happy
when she has those two lovely babies; but she is not
happy, and never will be again, because she has turned
her back on her art; and Britomart Belchamber (who

 
616 A CROOKED MILE

will be hoisted to her feet because she has lived in the
same house with Amory, and may have something inter-
esting and intimate to say) will doubt whether Amory
has always quite closed the sweat-ducts with a cold
sponge; and then the crowd will rush in—the governess
playwrights will say what they think, the clerk sculptors
what they think, and everybody else what he or she
thinks—and presently they will have strayed a little
from the business in hand, and will be discussing Cub-
ism, or Matriarchy, or Toe-posts, or the Revival of the
Ballad, or Rufty Tufty, quite beyond Mr. Brimby’s
power to hale them back to the proper subject. And so
the Meeting will have to be adjourned, and we shall all
go again to-morrow night, when Mr. Wilkinson will be
in the Chair, and there ought to be some fun

But Edgar Strong will not be there, because he will
be on the water, and Cosimo will not be there, because he
will be anxiously counting what money remains to him,
and Mr. Prang will not be there, because he will be un-
der arrest in Bombay. But, except for these absences,
it will be a perfectly ripping Meeting——

 

But none of these things were Dorothy’s business.
Instead, by the time she had finished her questioning
of Amory, there was no thought at all in her breast,
save only the pitiful desire to help. She saw before
her an old young woman, more drained and disillusioned
and with less to look forward to at thirty-odd than her
aunt had at seventy. Her very presence in Dorothy’s
house that night was a confession of it. It was the last
house she would willingly have gone to, and yet there
GRAY YOUTH 617

she was, begging Dorothy to tell her what had happened
to her. .And there was nothing for Dorothy to say in
reply. ...

She knew that Stan, in the dining-room, was waiting
to come to bed, but he must wait; Dorothy had the fire
to mend, and Amory’s cold hands to chafe, and to get
her something hot to drink, and a dozen other things to
do that had never had a beginning either, yet there they
were, mere helpful habit and nothing more. Presently
she set a cup of hot soup to Amory’s lips.

“ Drink this,” she said, ‘and when youre rested my
husband will take you home.”

But that did not happen either. Amory spoke very
tiredly.

“T should like—I don’t want to trouble you—any-
where would do—but I don’t want to go home to-
night 2

Dorothy made a swift and doubting mental calcula-
tion. Where could she put her ?

“T’m simply done up,” muttered Amory closing her
eyes.

“Tm afraid we could only give you a shakedown in
the dining-room =

“ Yes—that would do——”

Dorothy went out to give Stan his orders. Stan
swore. ‘Rather cool, one of that crew coming here,
to-night of all nights!” But Dorothy was peremptory.

“Tt isn’t cool atall. You don’t know anything about
it. You'll find blankets in the chest in your dressing-
room, and mind you don’t wake Noel. Then get some
cushions—I’ll air a pillow case—and then you must

 

 

 
618 A CROOKED MILE

go up there and tell them where she is—they’ll be anx-
ious

“ Shall I bring those twins of hers back with me while
I’m about it?” Stan asked satirically. ‘“ May as well
put the lot up.”

When he heard Dorothy’s reply he thought that his
wife really had gone mad.

“T’ve arranged that,” she said. “We shall be
putting the twins up for a time at Ludlow by and by
while she and her husband go away somewhere for a
change. It’s the least we can do. Don’t stand gaping
there, Stan ”

“Hm! May I ask what’s up?”

“You may if you like, but I shan’t tell you.”

“Hm! ... Well—it’s a dog’s life—but I suppose
it’s no good my saying anything y .

“ Not a bit.”

So Amory was put to bed, most unhygienically, in
Dorothy’s dining-room; but in the middle of the night
she woke, quite unable to remember where she was.
There was a narrow opening between the drawn cur-
tains; through it a glimmer of light shone on the Vene-
tian blinds from the street-lamp outside; and without
any other light Amory got out of her improvised couch.
She felt her-way along the wall to a switch, and then
suddenly flooded the room with light.

Blinking, she looked around. She herself wore one
of Dorothy’s nightgowns. On Stan’s armchair, near
his pipe-rack, was her hat, and her clothing lay in a
heap where she had stepped out of it. Dorothy’s slip-
pers lay by the fender, and Dorothy had been too occu-

 

 

 
GRAY YOUTH 619

pied to remember to remove the photograph of Uncle
Ben from the mantelpiece. It seemed to be watching
Amory as she stood, only half awake, in her borrowed
nightgown.

It was odd, the way things came about

If you had asked Amory at six o’clock the evening
before where she intended to spend the night, she would
not have replied “In Dorothy Tasker’s flat a

But she felt frightfully listless, and the improvised
bed was very warm

She switched off the light and crept back.

 

 

 
TAILPIECE

LONG the terrace of the late Sir Noel Tasker’s

house—‘ The Brear,” Ludlow—there rushed a
troop of ten or twelve urchins. They were dressed
anyhow, in variously-coloured jerseys, shirts, jackets
and blazers, and the legs of half of them were bare, and
brown as sand. Their ages varied from five to fifteen,
and it is hardly necessary to say that as they ran they
shouted. A retriever, two Irish terriers, an Airedale
and a Sealyham tore barking after them. It was a
July evening, amber and windless, and the shouting
and barking diminished as the horde turned the corner
of the long low white house and disappeared into the
beech plantation. Their tutor was enjoying a well-
earned pipe in the coach-house.

From the tall drawing-room window there stepped
on to the terrace a group of older people. The sound
of wheels slowly ascending the drive could be heard.
Lady Tasker came out first; she was followed by
Cosimo and Amory and Dorothy and Stan. A little .
pile of labelled bags stood under the rose-grown veran-
dah; the larger boxes had already gone on to the sta-
tion by cart.

Stan took a whistle from his pocket and blew two
shrill blasts; then he drew out his watch. The sounds

of shouting drew near again.
620
TAILPIECE 621

“T give ’em thirty seconds,” Stan remarked... .
“ Twenty-five, twenty-six—leg it, Corin!—ah; twenty-
eight! . . . Company—fall in!”

The young Tims and the young Tonys, Corin and
Bonniebell and the terriers, stood (dogs and all, save
for their talls) stiff as ramrods. Stan replaced his
watch. He had been fishing, and still wore his tweed
peaked cap, with a spare cast or two wound round it.

‘““Company—’Shun! Stand a-a-at—ease! ’S you
were! Stand a-a-at—ease! Stand easy ... Tony,
fall out and see to the bags. Tim, hold the horse.
Corin—Corin !—What do you keep in the trenches?”

“ Silence,” piped up Corin. He.had a rag round one
brown knee, his head was half buried in an old field-
service cap, and he refused to be parted, day nor night,
from the wooden gun he carried.

“ Not so much noise then.—Who hauls down the flag
to-night ?”

“ Billie.”

“Billie stand by. The rest of you dismiss, but
don’t go far—’Evening, Richards ut

The trap drew up in front of the house. Tim held
the horse’s head, Tony stood among the bags. The
leavetaking began.

Amory and Cosimo were going to Cumberland for
the rest of the summer. They would have liked to go
to Norway, but the money would no longer run to it.
They seemed a little shy of one another. They had
been at the Brear a fortnight, and had had the little
room over the porch. The twins were remaining be-
hind for the present. Dorothy had said they would be

 
622 A CROOKED MILE

no trouble. This was entirely untrue. They were
more trouble than all the rest put together. Corin,
near the schoolroom window, was wrangling with an
eight years old Woodgate now.

“They do, there! On Hampstead Heath! I’ve
seen them, an’ they’ve hats, an’ waterbottles, an’ broom-
sticks! ”

‘Pooh, broomsticks! My father has a big elephant-

“Well... mine goes to great big Meetings, an’
says ‘ Hear hear!’ ”

“My father’s in India!”

“Well, so was mine! ”

“T’ve seen them troop the Colour at the Horse
Guards’ Parade!”

“So’ve I!” Corin mendaciously averred.

The other boy opened his eyes wide and protruded
his mouth. It is rarely that one boy does not know
when another boy is lying.

“Oh, what a big one! You'd catch it if Uncle Stan
heard you!”

“ Well,”’ Corin pouted, “—I will—or else ll ery all
night—hard—and I’ll make Bonnie cry too!—”

“Well, an’ so shall I, again, an’ then I’ll have seen
it twice, an’ you'll only have seen it once, an’ if I see
it every time you do you'll never have seen it as often
as me!”

Then Stan’s voice was heard.

“ Corin, come here.”

It was an atmosphere of insensate militarism, but
the Pratts were content to leave their offspring to
TAILPIECE 623

breathe it for the present. They had another matter
to attend to—their own marital relations. It had at
last occurred to them that you cannot rule others until
you can govern yourself, and they were going to see
what could be done about it. They had secured a cot-
tage miles away from anywhere, at the head of a nar-
row-gauge railway, and it remained to be seen whether
quiet and privacy and the resources they might find
within themselves would avail them better than the op-
posites of these things had done. There was just the
chance that they might—their only chance. The twins,
if all went well, would join them by and by. In the
meantime they must see red, and learn to do things with
once telling.

So Amory took the struggling Corin into her arms—
he wanted to go to the armoury of wooden guns—and
kissed him. Then he ran unconcernedly off. Dorothy
saw the sad little lift of Amory’s bosom, guessed the
cause, and laughed.

“Shocking little ingrates!” she said. ‘“ Noel’s joy
when I go away is sometimes indecent.—But don’t
be afraid they’ll be any trouble to us here. You see
the rabble we have in any case.”

“Tt’s very good of you,” Amory murmured awk-
wardly.

“ Nothing of the sort. Stan loves to manage them—

it keeps his hand in for managing me, he says.
Now, I don’t want to hurry you, but you’d better be off
if you’re going to get as far as Liverpool to-night.
Good-bye, dear

“ Good-bye, Dorothy———”

 
624 A CROOKED MILE

 

“So long, Pratt—up with those bags, Tim.

““ Good-bye, Bonnie——”

“Corin! Corin!—(Hm! See if I don’t have you
in hand in another week or two, my bay Gome
and say good-bye to your ralhen”

“Good-bye, Lady Tasker

“ All right?”

The wheels crunched; hands were waved; the rabble
gave a shockingly undisciplined cheer; and young Ar-
thur Woodgate, who had run along the terrace and stood
holding the gate at the end open, saluted. Stan took
out his watch again.

“Four minutes to sunset,” he announced.

But there was no need to tell Billie to stand by to
strike the flag that hung motionless above the gable
where the old billiard-room and gun-room had been
thrown together to make the schoolroom. The hal-
yards were already in his hands.

““ Here, Corin,” Stan called, “ you shall fire the gun
to-night.”

Corin gave a wild yell of joy. Well out of reach,
there was an electric button on one of the rose-grown
verandah posts. Stan lifted his newest recruit to it,
who put a finger-tip on it and shut his eyes

“ Bane!” went the little brass carronade in the
locked enclosure behind the woodshed

And hand over hand Billie hauled the flag down. :.

But it would be run up again in the morning.

 

 

 

THE END
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