At this point the party split up into two cliques, Amory turning

to Cosimo again, and Walter and the others continuing their

semi-symbolistic pastime.

Amory had not yet told Cosimo that she intended presently to make this

room her home. Cosimo was leaning against her knees now, and had tied

two strands of her hair together in a loose knot on his breast; and

when she spoke to him he turned up his fine face so that she saw it

upside down. When Cosimo had removed into his studio near the Vestry

Hall seven or eight months ago, Amory had spent whole days with him,

reading aloud passages from one or other of her Association volumes

while he had papered and distempered and hung his curtains, and nothing

had ever been so jolly; and so she told him now of her own approaching

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 windows?"

Amory had known that he would be enthusiastic. She began to say

something about muslin, but Cosimo shook his handsome tendrilled head

peremptorily. He loosed himself from the bond of hair and faced round,

cross-legged, before her.

"Oh no, you mustn't dream of having muslin! I know something _far_

better than that! There's a remnant-sale at Peter Hardy's, and they

have some shop-soiled casement-cloth at one-four-three double width,

all colours; _that'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....

Dorothy had been talking to Mr. Bielby, the young man who had been

"just brought along," and had discovered that he was still at the

McGrath. Suddenly she gave a laugh and a call to Laura Beamish.

"I say, Laura! Mr. Jowett's still just the same as ever, Mr. Bielby

says," she said.

Walter Wyron broke into a laugh. "Jowett? 'Pon my word, I'd almost

forgotten poor old Jowett! Immortelle'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?"

"I remember his looking at my life-drawing and asking me if I couldn't

sew," Dickie Lemesurier replied, bridling still at the recollection.

"And he told me my drawing was the best in the class, and that didn't

mean it was worth the time I'd spent on it," Walter chuckled. "The joke

is that poor old Jowett can say such funny things and never dream that

they're funny!"

"Why, he didn't think tremendously of Amory herself!" said Katie Deedes

indignantly.

"And still," Laura remarked with dreamy irony, "I suppose we _ought_

to hide our abashed heads really--but somehow or other we go on

painting----"

"--still survive----"

"--bear up----"

"--quite happy in our ignorance----"

"Curiously blind all the world must be except Jowett----"

"Rather dreadful to know you're the only wise man left----"

"Funny old stick!... But it's only a pose really----"

"That exactly describes it----"

"Certainly the immortelle for Jowett!"...

But the party proper had not begun yet: Walter had not recited, and

Laura Beamish's guitar still lay in its case in the window-seat. Katie

Deedes, who always kept a sort of tally of the good things said and

awarded marks (as it were) to the sayers, had not thought of striking

her balance yet.

"Give Dickie another cigarette, Cosimo, and then do let's have a song,

Laura!" Amory exclaimed; and Walter Wyron jumped up to get Laura's

instrument. It had long, many-coloured streamers of ribbon, which

Walter disposed 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

wriggling against my knees, Cosimo--and oh, how exquisite!--look, the

moon's just coming in at the window!"

And Laura's voice rose on the tender strumming as if a light and fluty

sound planed over the intervals between chord and chord.

"Lovely!" Amory murmured.... "Please, that verse again, about the

ribbon, Laura!"

"'And she tied a piece of ribbon round his bonnie, bonnie 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 whispered 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, 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 sketching, 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 said) she really

must go--her people would be wondering 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 together, and of course

Cosimo would take Amory herself. Laura tucked the guitar with the

coloured ribbons 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, putting 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 defend Dorothy.

"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 sorrows 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 thoughtfully.

"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.

V

POUNDS AND SHILLINGS

When 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 exhibited 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 undeniable;

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 appeared to be

to see everybody. He still occasionally called Amory "Mr. Towers" by

way of a joke.

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, 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. Hamilton 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.

"It's 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 disappointed 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 circumstances 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 valuable 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 resting of his eye.

"But you mustn't suppose that that is all I came to tell you," he said.

"My dear young lady, Mr. 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 authorized me to make you

a proposal."

"What?" said Amory. She did not like the remark about her pretty eyes.

Cosimo never spoke of her pretty eyes.

"It 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 entirely 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 continued.

"Well, what shall we say? If you were to ask my private opinion--but

there, I've no right to try to influence you. But a considerable sum

now--say a hundren pounds--eh----?"

He almost winked at Amory. It was as if he advised 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 pictures 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

_solatium_ 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 delight. 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 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----?"

"How Cosimo?" Amory asked, staring a little.

"I mean, I thought--I thought perhaps he'd proposed----"

Only for a moment or so was Amory a little stiff. "I 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 expected 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."

"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.

"It will be as soon as the market is favourable. They wait for a

favourable market and then----" 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 interesting."--"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----"

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

amusement, 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 telephone-summons. 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

sorts of new plans. They're going to launch out in all directions, he

says; in fact, they're going to waken London 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----"

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. "I

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 you'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 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 indelicacy,

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 _quite_ 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. Edmondson 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 Glenerne 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 reverentially whispered) hardly

needed to go before lunch 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 sometimes 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

circumstances.... 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----"

Mr. Massey's bed had not been made, but Mr. Massey 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 sufficient 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

engagement 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 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 ridiculously 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 "Fête

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 drawings for

him; they were really quite good--better, at any rate, than a good deal

of the stuff that was published. That was what the country had wanted

for a long time; not so much patrons who bought pictures, but patrons

who knew what they had got when they had bought them. And even if she

only painted a few pictures 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. Edmondson 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 building sternly on one

side, she riveted her attention to immediate things. She was going to

remove to Cheyne Walk immediately; she had announced the fact to Miss

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

Cosimo 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

There 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, I'll have the men give them a thorough sweeping in

the cart and Mrs. 'Ill 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. 'Ill----"

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 morning 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.

'Ill's and her oldest painting pinafore. Cosimo gave her loud warnings

to stand out of the way as each fall came down. Mrs. 'Ill and Jellies

grimaced and spat the dust out of their mouths as they swept the walls.

For a whole week Cosimo had been past telling helpful 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 glorious! 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 you a bed? And a bath? And what about

somewhere for your clothes? Tell me everything you've got, and then we

shall know where we are."

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 separately. 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 purchases on a slip of paper, as also she had those of turpentine

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 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-Victorian 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 consider 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 anything 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.

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 sandwiches 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 Cosimo 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

Lemesurier, 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 supposed 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 rubbish, Cosimo!"

Amory usually replied, "there are lots of girls; why, you couldn't find

a worse wife than me! What good should _I_ be about a house or nursing

a baby?"--"True," Cosimo would then reply,--thoughtfully 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 crux of the whole

matter. He would have wanted to hold her hand or to put his arm about

her, 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 Exhibition!" he chuckled

when Amory had told him.

"The dress?" Amory laughed. "The dress is nothing; 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 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 bookseller's, and Altruism and Camaraderie

taught at even ordinary schools, and everything thrown open to sensible

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 butterflies, 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 wearing 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 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 enlarge her ideas _too_ much. It was difficult, with a common

brush and an ordinary canvas and a paint-box like anybody else's, to

express the true philosophical meaning 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.

"I 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 traditions 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.' That's

what the Pre-Raphaelites did, and look at Ford Madox Brown! As I say,

it's the swing of the pendulum; action and re----(Hallo, here's Mrs.

'Ill--listen to her cough).... What a dreadful cold you have, Mrs.

'Ill!"

And they chuckled for a quarter of an hour over Mrs. 'Ill'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 something of Galton's meaning and spirit about it. "Express

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 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 criticism 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 certain 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 indeed; 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. Massey's, that young people

should be kept a little short in 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 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 another shrinking as

she remembered that, now that all her work had gone to Croziers',

she had hardly a canvas or stretcher in the place, and that half her

paint-tubes were 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 would hardly be too much; artists' colourmen

have their sundries too....

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

But the press-cuttings from the provincial papers were still coming in,

and her courage revived as she remembered Mr. Hamilton Dix's newest

article on her 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 unless 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 poor artist, provided he were really

deserving, should ask her help in vain.

Two days later she had cast her money cares almost entirely to the

winds. Naturally it was not to be supposed that she could come into

a hundred pounds and not buy herself at least one frock; as a matter

of fact she had bought two. She hoped she had not offended 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 Dorothy'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 exquisitely 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 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 morrow, 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, crossing this yielding

plank, was very funny indeed. The framing in _passe-partout_ of the

photographs of old masters 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, 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 hoping 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 exquisitely right in not

wanting to marry Amory herself--supposing, that was, that Amory had

not definitely decided 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 prohibited 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 creature

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 over the yard of casement-cloth

that united their hands, she smiled pensively and said:

"I 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 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 London was looking at them as those shopmen

looked at us when we bought the bed! But the moment _I_ ask a perfectly

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 driving 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 disability's going to be removed.

You're removing it in 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 intellectually 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----!"

"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

Environment, 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 practically 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 delightfully 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 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 the wineshop in the King's Road--Cosimo had

seen to all. Mrs. 'Ill 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. 'Ill said, leaving it delicately in doubt whether she meant the

pronoun to be taken as in the plural. "A prettier little 'ome, all

things considered, 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 married or not. Nor winkles, though I'm fond

of 'em myself, 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. 'Ill 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

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 intents and purposes forty-eight

was fifty. A party by all means; one might as well be hanged for a

sheep as for a lamb. 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 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-borders 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--practically 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

Herbertson'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 actually been on the point of setting out with her to

Shepherd'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

The invitations were out for Miss Geraldine Towers' wedding, and the

first acceptance Aunt Jerry received 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. 'Ill'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.

"I 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...."

"It _was_ one, Cosimo...."

"You are sure?..."

"If 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 invited to the wedding!"

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

"You _don't_ mean...."

Amory had clapped her hands.

"I 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. 'Ill

(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 I'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!"

"I 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."

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 Cosimo 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 musical 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? Cosimo agreed that it was a Law--the Law

of Compensation.

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 described 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 doing 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 fossilized. Strictly

speaking, it ought to be looked on paleontologically, as a curious and

interesting historic survival. For that matter, people seemed to have

their 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 regulations! 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 diffidently. Even he had

never seen Amory so astonishingly 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! _I_

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 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 themselves. 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 everything possible done to ensure the birth of

girls.... Science would soon be able to do that at the rate at which it

was advancing....

"I 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 whatnot 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 repast,

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.

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 yourself 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. Edmondson'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. Waddey, 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 calendar in his bedroom;

and Mr. Geake and Mr. Sandys had promised to run in, the one from the

Estate Office in Goldhawk Road, the other from the Branch 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

subject in which one of the monitors could be trusted to take them),

and Miss Tickell would close her milliner'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 Indians

should be invited; finally, they too had been included. Two of them

lunched daily at Glenerne. They could hardly be asked to move from

their accustomed 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 Wellcome

could hardly be called outsiders. Or if there was another outsider

at all it would be Mr. Cosimo Pratt, and he (Glenerne had been given

vaguely to understand) 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 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 contain Mr. Wellcome's contribution to the morrow's

breakfast, and it was a "wheeze" of the men to attitudinize 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 one...."

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. Massey's

brother's wife were helping Aunt Jerry to dress. Mrs. Deschamps had

lent her bedroom for the display 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

Glenerne 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. Wellcome, with Mrs. Wellcome bearing a

torrent of lace in which the youngest Master Wellcome slept, had

arrived. "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 behind his hand: "Lucky ... always want one like that

at a wedding!"... "_Not_ again!" Mrs. Deschamps 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 waiting for. They

set off, the line of cabs drawing up at the gate, stopping, starting,

stopping again, until the last had driven off with a couple of urchins

sitting on the back of it.

Amory and Cosimo heard every word of that preposterous 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 manifest 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 returned to Glenerne; and her

promise was richly fulfilled. 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

international matter of it, covertly elbowed and shouldered one another

and muttered words of contempt 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 neighbour tackle them

first and to see what implement he did so with. For, while fingers

might have been made before 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 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 attacked 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 Cosimo 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 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 achievement beyond the

power of most.

Not that Mr. Wellcome Himself showed himself immediately at the top of

his form; he husbanded his resources 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 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 continued). 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 confusion 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. Wellcome wasn't going to say they weren't, one

and all, very handsome wedding-presents, especially Miss Addams's

oak-and-silver biscuit-box and the embroidered quilt given by Mrs.

Deschamps herself (but Mr. Wellcome 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 instant recognition of their error on the part of

those who had thought that a humorist couldn't on occasion be serious

too.) Mr. Wellcome 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 remember: 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 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. "I don't know how ever Sammy did it!" he confided to them. "He

seemed to pick her together, then ... _hoooosh!_--Short head, and

a hundred-and-twenty o' the best for W.W.!... 'Who give _you_ the

office?' Dick Marks says to me when I goes to 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 proposed that of the youngest bachelor present--the infant

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. Wellcome himself.

And then Mr. Rainbow rounded on Cosimo likewise.... For nothing

succeeds like success, and Mr. Rainbow, having scored once, immediately

scored again. If little birds were to be believed, he said, giving

the discreetest of glances at Cosimo and Amory, they might be having

another jollification before long. He mentioned no names. He would

merely say that one of them was not unknown to 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 hollow!" 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 drawing-room, and there

the merriment became more furious still. For Mr. Wellcome's eyes fell

on the whatnot with the photographs of Miss Addams's "grandchildren,"

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.

"Be a man ... kiss her, damme!" he cried, a forcible hand on each; and

Amory dropped her lids....

But Cosimo, who was there to see others make exhibitions 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, deceived by

appearances. "_Hoooosh!_... Short head!--Hi, Bonzoline ... what's your

name ... Lorenzo! 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 utterances,

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!'"

"But he showed us the baby's legs."

"I admit he did that. That was rather beyond rubies."

"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, I'm not complaining! It was all you promised, and more!"

"I thought perhaps you were disappointed," Amory remarked.

"Good heavens, no! I 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.