she suddenly made a soft little appeal and held out both hands--"why
don't you tell me what it is?"
Cosimo appeared not to notice her hands. His own fumbled with a screw.
"I haven't changed, Amory, really--really I haven't," he protested.
"You have, Cosimo," Amory replied, her head critically a little on one
side. "You mayn't know it, but you're becoming--ordinary."
"Oh!" Cosimo broke out, revolted. "Ordinary--Cosimo!----"
"I'm not reproaching you," Amory continued. "I suppose that if you
examine it, it's nothing to be ashamed of--I mean that 'ashamed' isn't
quite the word. But words are only symbols after all; it's the thing
that matters."
"Of course," Cosimo agreed quickly. "You don't think I've changed my
mind about that, I hope, Amory? We came to the conclusion that words
were only symbols years ago."
But again Amory made her tender little appeal. Her fingers touched
Cosimo's hand lightly for a moment.
"Won't you tell me, Cosimo? You see, it's purely a matter of our
intellectual identity. That's been such a beautiful thing. Hasn't it
been a beautiful thing?" The fingers rested on his hand.
"Don't say 'been,' Amory--it is," Cosimo interrupted.
"Such a precious thing. Isn't it Emerson who says that at bottom all
friendship is based on equality of intellectual understanding? It's
a mingling of minds, Cosimo. When we use the same words we mean the
same things by them, and--oh, how rare that is! Of course, I know your
uncle's dead, and that may have upset you, and you've all sorts of
business about property and so on on your mind, but I can't believe
that accounts for all of it. I know you too well, you see! Or is
it"--she gave a little start, as at a quite new surmise--"I don't
believe it can be, but is it--that you find _me_ changed?"
Cosimo protested that Amory had not changed in the least. Neither of
them had changed. A person might change from prejudice and intolerance
to the larger view, but nobody in their senses thought of changing back
again.
"Because if we have, either of us," Amory continued, looking fearlessly
before her, "I think we ought to face the fact. There can't be two
opinions about that. Whatever else we do, Cosimo, don't let's muddle.
I simply couldn't bear to sloven along, keeping up a pretence of
friendship that was simply an intellectual hypocrisy. Either we still
think the same about the great basic facts of Life, or we don't; but
don't in either case let's be cowards about it. If I'm to go forward
alone, I'd much, much rather know it. No doubt it'll be strange at
first, but I shall get used to it, I suppose."
She might have found it a little difficult to tell Cosimo exactly
what it was she was so brave about, but unflinchingly brave about
something she certainly seemed to be. With both hands she cast back
her hair, showing her dauntless brow; her chin was held high above the
bluebell-stalk of a throat, the lids were dropped over the shallow,
gold-flecked eyes. As if she saw before her the bleak prospect of years
to come without the intellectual companionship of Cosimo, the corners
of her mouth gave a momentary twitch, but were instantly courageous
again; and she reopened the eyes. They were full of sorrow and
resolve. Cosimo _had_ changed....
"Amory," he pleaded, "don't look like that." This time he touched her
hand.
"Like what?" she asked, without emotion.
"As if--it's so ridiculous--as if it wasn't all your fancy. You're a
bit run down, that's all that's the matter with you."
"I have felt better," she admitted, closing the eyes again and passing
her finger-tips over the lids.
"Look here--can I get you something--knock a chemist up or anything?"
"No, thank you, Cosimo."
"But--but--I'm really worried about you, dear----"
"You mustn't worry, Cosimo. These things have to be faced."
"But, my dear girl!... _What_ things? I assure you it's pure fancy!
Look here," he said resolutely, "tell me what you've been doing with
yourself this past week, and I'll bet I can tell you what's the matter
with you! In the first place, have you had proper meals?"
"All I wanted, thank you."
"That means eggs, I expect. You haven't a headache, have you?"
"Only quite a slight one. No, please don't brush my hair; if you
wouldn't mind getting me a drink of water instead----"
"But," said Cosimo presently, bending solicitously over her with the
water he had fetched, "I used to be able to stroke your headaches
away. Do let me try----"
"No, thank you so awfully much, Cosimo--I don't think it would do this
one any good--and I really think you ought to be going now. I shall go
to bed."
"Is it made?"
"I don't know. Would you mind giving me a hand up? I expect I shall be
all right again in the morning----"
He helped her weary but enduring form to the curtained corner where the
bed lay. Then he looked anxiously at her. He stood irresolute.
"I'll put you a jug of water by your side, shall I?"
"Yes, please, and Tchekoff--the little book there----"
"Oh, come, reading in bed's the very worst thing you can do!"
"Perhaps Tchekoff'll buck me up. He _is_ stimulating. You haven't read
him? You should. I feel I need him to-night. Thank Heaven, one can
always have the companionship of these men through their works.... When
are you going away again? I suppose you'll be giving up the studio in
March? I shall go out for a long walk to-morrow by myself. I'll prop
the door up after you, but it really didn't matter; there's nothing
anybody would come for. Thank you so much for mending it, though, and
for the glass of water. I'm quite all right now. Good night, Cosimo----"
She had crossed the floor again. They held the tottering door up
between them. "Stupid not to have waited till Monday," Cosimo was
muttering; "look here, shall I try to fix it up again as it was? Afraid
the screwholes wouldn't hold, though; they'll have to be plugged....
Then put something heavy against it inside--your chest of drawers or
something--won't you?"
"Oh, very well, if you wish."
"I was a fool not to wait till Monday.... You're all right?"
"Perfectly."
"I shall come round in the morning to see how you are.... Good night."
He was peering round the edge of the door.
"Good night."
Cosimo left slowly. He felt a brute. He couldn't have told why, but it
seemed to him that, by comparison with this brave girl, who preferred
the sharpest pains of knowledge to the lethargy of ignorance, and would
have the truth though it were a blade in her lonely breast, he was
inferior and a coward. But for all that, Amory had been quite wrong in
thinking he had changed. He had not. He still thought Amory splendid.
And not only that: he hadn't quite realized before how very pretty
she was. He had known she was pretty, but not how pretty; perhaps she
hadn't been quite so pretty before?... And now Cosimo came to think
of it, he had been noticing lately whether girls were pretty or not.
Somehow Pattie Wynn-Jenkins had got him into the way of it. Pattie,
whose father's plantation adjoined the western boundary of the grazing
that was now Cosimo's own, was pretty herself, and seemed to raise the
question.... Still, Cosimo had _not_ changed. He could admire Pattie
without in the least taking away from the devotion he owed to Amory.
And as for anything else than mere prettiness, Pattie wasn't in it.
Pattie would never have dreamed of reading Weiniger and Tchekoff. Just
at present she cared for nothing in the world so much as how she should
reduce her golf handicap. It was hard to call a girl so pretty as
Pattie a fool, but, not to mince matters, that was about the long and
the short of it....
And, on the whole, Cosimo was rather glad that Amory didn't suspect
there was such a girl as Pattie in existence.
Cosimo half expected to find Amory still in bed when he went round
to Cheyne Walk at ten o'clock on the following morning; but she was
dressed and ready for going out. He was lucky, she said, to have caught
her; she would have been off in another five minutes.--"Off where?"
Cosimo asked. Oh, Amory didn't know.--"All right, come along," he said.
But when she turned her eyes slowly round to his he saw that the night
had only set higher their clear courage. Again he could not have told
why he felt guilty.
"Do you think it would be wise?" she asked gravely.
"Why not?" he asked, taken aback anew.
"Oh, very well," she answered indifferently. "I'm ready."
Many times they had walked together in the direction of Earl's Court
and Brook Green, but never in such a silence as this. Yet on Amory's
part it was a calm and cheery silence. It was so calm and cheery that
uneasily Cosimo fell to wondering whether Amory had not been right
and he had not, after all, changed without knowing it. These geniuses
were terrible people: there was never any telling what they did not
see. As they passed through Hammersmith, Cosimo longed to break out,
"I _haven't_ changed, Amory--you'd _know_ I thought more of you than
ever if you'd seen the pretty but awfully stupid sort of girl I've been
seeing while I've been away--everything we've agreed a self-respecting
woman can't be any longer: a mere man's toy, a chattel, property,
on sale just as much as if she was in an Oriental slave-market,
economically dependent, hopelessly apathetic to everything that's
fine and feminist and new----" He knew that Amory would have called
that "facing the facts." But something, he knew not what, held him
back. Oh, it was none of the things you might have thought--that
Amory might make more of it than there had been (indeed, there had
been nothing), nor that he realized that the whole truth can never be
told, and that the more you explain the more there remains still to be
explained, nor that hypocrisy and lack of candour are not without their
poor uses when all is said and done. Cosimo would have denied these
obsolescent propositions one by one.... So he concluded that he could
not be very well either. That must be the reason for his reticence.
Pattie's company must have put him a little out of accord with the
finer things. Pattie in Shropshire, too, seemed a thought less pretty
than did Amory by his side that Sunday morning. If Amory were only a
little differently dressed she might be incomparably pretty, as she was
already incomparably clever....
But suddenly Amory broke the silence. It was as they approached
Ravenscourt Park.
"Cosimo," she said slowly--"I've been wondering again----"
He waited for her to continue. As she delayed to do so, he said, "What,
Amory?"
"I've been wondering again--why you don't marry Dorothy."
When Amory had said this same thing before, Cosimo had laughed, and
with beautiful tact had replied that Dorothy would never have married
him: but there was something of the still, of the rapt, about Amory
that morning that would have made a laugh an offence. Instead, he said,
almost reproachfully, "Oh,--Amory!"
"Why don't you?" she continued dreamily. "I hope it's not that mere
settling down of opinion that is fatal to real vitality of thought. An
_idée fixe_ isn't an _idée_ at all; it's a Law that in course of time
thoughts become petrified. Then they've got to be got fluid again. Are
you sure that you haven't got Dorothy wrongly classified?"
She looked earnestly at him.
"But----" he began, but Amory interrupted him gently.
"Let's face the facts about Dorothy without prejudice," she said.
"First, I know she's mixed up with perfectly impossible people, but
you mustn't forget that she was with us at the McGrath. Her work's
impossible too, poor dear Dot, but search where you will, Cosimo,
you won't find a better _appreciator_ than she is. It would only
need a little encouragement of that side of her nature and a little
suppression of the other and Dorothy would be an almost ideal wife
for an advanced and fine-thinking man. It's merely her Environment
that doesn't give her a chance. Of course, from the point of view of
Eugenics, those people of hers may be a little _epuisées_; intermarried
too much: but she doesn't show it--she may be a throw-back. And it
isn't a drawback any longer that Dorothy's rather fond of her own way.
Equality of Opportunity is admitted nowadays, and in another ten years
the conception of woman as property will be quite dead. And think
how much worse you might do, Cosimo! Suppose you got hold of a mere
doll!... Cosimo," she added earnestly, "it would be--hell!"
Cosimo quailed inwardly, nor could he, in the face of Amory's
earnestness, dissemble his quailing with a laugh. "But," he protested
by and by, "I--I don't _want_ Dorothy, Amory!"
"I only ask you to ask yourself whether that isn't an _idée fixe_."
"I really don't think it's an _idée fixe_," Cosimo returned, after
further examination of it. "And besides, _you've_ rather spoiled me for
the companionship of--of anybody who comes along----"
"It has been beautiful," said Amory, with a detached air, "and it will
be more beautiful still to look back on. I don't conceal from you,
Cosimo, that quite the most precious and significant part of my life
has been shared with you."
He broke out almost angrily--"The past tense again, Amory! Really, I--I
don't know what's come over you!"
"You mean that you'd miss me a little too?"
"Miss you!----" This time he did give a little mirthless laugh.
"Then," Amory went on presently, "there's something else to remember.
Dorothy's used to me. We are friends. Another girl might not be. You
see how much I care who you marry, Cosimo, and why."
"But--but--whatever's put it into your head that I want to marry at
all?" Cosimo cried, stopping and looking blankly at her.
She, too, looked at him; then she moved slowly forward again.
"Ah, you're at the very heart of the feminist Movement there, if you
only knew it, Cosimo," she replied. "A man has only his intelligence; a
woman has intelligence _and_ her intuitions as well."
"You mean you've an intuition I want to get married?" Cosimo broke out.
"I swear----"
"Oh, Cosimo, what's the good of swearing? That's merely like that
antiquated old Service again, when you promise to love and honour and
all the time you're absolutely in the dark. You may not want to at this
moment. But you don't know that to-morrow somebody may not want to
marry you. I only want it to be the right person--chum of mine," she
added softly.
As she put her hand on his arm Cosimo had a little brotherly warming.
He was not aware--or if he had been aware, he had forgotten--that
Amory's Aunt Jerry and Mr. Massey lived on Chiswick Mall, hardly a
stone's-throw from where they were. They were passing the "Doves" when
suddenly Amory exclaimed, "Why, we're quite near to Aunt Jerry's. Shall
we go in to lunch?"
Her quick tone seemed a change from the past tense and broodings about
his marriage, and he welcomed it eagerly. Moreover, to call on the
Masseys would recall enlivening thoughts of that merry wedding day
when Mr. Wellcome had got slightly drunk and had passed round the
toothpicks. It would be the very thing to take Amory out of herself.
"Ripping idea!" said Cosimo enthusiastically. "Which is the house?"
"The one you're walking past now," said Amory, putting her hand on the
knob of a tall wrought-iron gate. "I don't suppose Aunt Jerry's been to
church."
They walked up a narrow flagged path and Amory rang an old bell by the
side of a torch-extinguisher. Already Aunt Jerry had waved her hand
from the drawing-room window of the first floor. The door was opened,
and they were admitted.
"We've asked ourselves to lunch, Cosimo and I," said Amory, kissing her
aunt where she sat by the window. "May we stay?"
Aunt Jerry affected a severity.
"I'm not so sure, after the disgraceful time you've thought fit to stop
away," she replied. "I'm very cross with both of you. If you'd left it
one week longer, Cosimo--you see I haven't forgotten I was to call you
Cosimo--I really don't think George would have had you in the house.
But I forgive you now you are here. George will be back from church
presently. Go and take your things off, child, and Cosimo will talk to
me. You know the little room--or is it so long since you were here that
you've forgotten?"
There were hyacinth bulbs in the glasses of Aunt Jerry's rounded
bow-window, and a canary in a white and gilt cage; and to Amory the
house seemed furnished consonantly with the age of its owners, that
is to say, its chairs and tables were not old enough in style to be
antique and not new enough to be anything but what doubtless some of
them were--second-hand. But the panelling was pleasant, and the airy
view up the river delightful. Aunt Jerry pointed out the view to Cosimo
at once; she sat there all day, she said, but it was almost as good
as being out of doors. There was no need to ask why she sat there,
watching her swelling hyacinths and listening to the trilling of her
bird. Amory expected to be made a cousin early in April.
"I'm so glad you've come," said Aunt Jerry to Cosimo. "Mrs. Deschamps
is coming; George will meet her after church; and Miss Crebbin (do you
remember Miss Crebbin?)--she's bringing _her_ young man. But I ought
to say that our lunch is really our dinner on Sundays because of the
girls' afternoon off. Well, and now tell me how you are."
She was fresh as a rose, and talked as if she and Cosimo had been
old friends. Cosimo remembered the joke of Mrs. 'Ill, the plumber,
Mr. Wellcome, and the chimney-sweep. Only for a moment had Aunt
Jerry glanced at Cosimo's suit of tweeds. She had heard of Cosimo's
bereavement, but, after all, a loss can be felt as deeply in tweeds
as in anything else, and the glance had seemed to admit that perhaps
it wasn't altogether a bad thing that the old custom of extravagant
funerals, often at the expense of the needs of the living, was dying
out. "We must all go sometime," her short silence seemed to say, "and
those who follow us must take up the burdens we leave." Perhaps it was
not all burden either. Aunt Jerry had forgotten the precise number of
acres, but she remembered that Cosimo was now "eligible."
Aunt Jerry was telling Cosimo how all at sea Amory had seemed during
the past weeks, when Mr. Massey arrived with Mrs. Deschamps. They were
followed a few minutes later by Miss Crebbin and _her_ young man, a Mr.
Allport. And Mrs. Deschamps, too, greeted Cosimo as quite an old friend.
"I shall never, never forget that wedding day, Mr. Pratt!" she
exclaimed vivaciously. "That cake--the wretches! But they're always
up to something, scaring you out of your wits with a jam-splash on
the tablecloth or a spill of ink on your book--you've seen them, Mr.
Pratt; they're a penny, and I've had dreadful turns with them! But I
simply can_not_ call you 'Mr. Pratt.' It isn't like Glenerne here. I
admit it's best to be on the safe side there, but at Oasthouse View
we're a family party--aren't we, George? And don't I come on Sundays
till you're sick of the sight of me and say, 'Here's that nuisance of
a Nellie again?' He needn't shake his head," the bright little widow
continued to Cosimo; "Geraldine thinks we go to church together, but
really I'm making love to him--aren't I, George?"
"Yes--yes, yes, yes," Mr. Massey hissed softly over his teeth, entering
into the joke and smiling amiably about him.
And Mrs. Deschamps confided to Cosimo in a stage whisper that it was
already arranged that she was to be "Number Two."
They lunched in the panelled room beneath Aunt Jerry's drawing-room,
Amory and Cosimo on one side of the table facing Miss Crebbin and _her_
young man on the other. Cosimo presently became aware that this was a
quite amusing variation of the joke of Jellies, Dorothy, the plumber,
etc. It lacked the boisterousness of that day when Mr. Wellcome had
thrust him into Amory's arms, but it had a subtle flavour of its own.
Cosimo had only one uneasiness, which was that Amory was perhaps not
well enough in health to extract the last particle of savour from all
this taking-for-granted. She sat next to Mr. Allport, but said little.
She ate hungrily of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and quite agreed
when Mr. Allport said what "an A1 little pitch Oasthouse View was."
Then Mr. Allport talked water-rates and gas-fittings to Mr. Massey. He
could be seen making mental notes of fixtures and furniture against
the day when he and _his_ young woman should set up together for
themselves. He seemed, too, to be advising Cosimo also to be picking up
wrinkles in good time. Cosimo was secretly glad that Mr. Wellcome was
not there. His robustiousness would have spoiled the quiet and artistic
character of the comedy.
And again he hoped that Amory was not missing anything.
Then the ladies ascended to the drawing-room again, and Mr. Massey,
who knew perfectly well everything that the sideboard did and did not
contain, pretended to be in doubt, and "thought there _ought_ to be a
little port somewhere." He found it, and the three men sat, Mr. Allport
again talking of cupboards and drains, but obviously thinking that ...
but let Cosimo and Amory tell the rest.
"My--dear!" Amory broke out when, at half-past three, they passed the
"Doves" again. "Did you _ever_!"
Cosimo's light fears that Amory might have missed the delicate comedy
had been wasted; Amory was quite her old self again. That, Cosimo
thought, was the good meal of roast beef. She bubbled freely, and
caught at Cosimo's arm.
"My--dear! If _only_ you could have heard the priceless things that
were said upstairs!"
Cosimo was wondrously bucked by the change in her.
"Oh, this is torture--do tell me!" he implored.
"Oh, it's beyond words--I don't know where to begin! Aunt Jerry--and
that incredible Deschamps woman--and that doll of a girl who's going to
love, honour, obey, and all the rest of it!... Have the poor dears an
_inkling_ of what it all really means?"
"You mean----?" said Cosimo tentatively.
"Of course I do--the stupid institution of the Family again! Did George
say anything to you? No, I suppose he wouldn't; high-and-mighty man
again; quite too superior; hopes that as long as he says nothing he'll
be taken for wise, as somebody says. But Aunt Jerry's got it all--oh,
perfection hardly describes it!" Lightly she threw up her hands and
allowed them to drop again.
"_Not_ the old conceptions, of the father as the head of the Family and
so on?" Cosimo said incredulously.
"_Yes!_"
"_No!_--Parental Despotism?"
"Despotism!"
"_Not_ corporal punishment!"
"Cor-por-al punishment!"
"No Justice for children?"
"Love and Authority instead!"
"And woman as the mere plaything of man?"
"The mere plaything of man!"
"Property?"
"A chattel!"
"Woman's place at home with her children?"
"_C'est ça!_"
"By--Jove!"
Cosimo whistled.
"Yes, I thought I should surprise you," said Amory, with quiet
satisfaction.
"Surprise!--I'm thunderstruck!"
"You didn't know you'd been lunching in a regular museum of it all, did
you?"
"A museum? A catacomb!"
"You wouldn't suppose that we lived in this Year of Grace, would you?"
"About 1100, _I_ should have said."
"Oh no," Amory interrupted, "under Feudalism it would have been all
right. It would have been proper to their stage of development.
But--to-day! Or rather next April, I should say----!"
"The hands of the clock are to be set back in April?"
"So the doctor says. I dare say his rule-of-thumb carries him as far as
that."
"Awful impostors, doctors."
Then Amory spoke slowly and impressively.--"What I want to know is,
how much longer _can_ Individualism last? We heard that American
lady last year; would you have thought it _possible_ that the system
could have survived such a slashing attack? When _will_ people begin
to have even a rudimentary conception of the function of the State
in these matters? When _will_ they see, for instance, that when a
dispute arises between a parent and a child the case is exactly like
any other dispute, with the plaintiff on one side and the defendant
on the other? If the parent's the plaintiff, how can he speak for the
defendant as well? Why, it's making him judge and executioner and all
the lot!... And those, Cosimo," she went on, with still deeper gravity,
into which contempt crept, "are my aunt's and uncle's ideas! Violence,
harshness, and repression. Russianizing the Home, instead of abolishing
it altogether, or only allowing it under the very strictest inspection,
in such cases as when a parent has really proved his fitness for
Child-culture! The Home!... Oh, when _will_ the dawn come?" She turned
up the pretty eyes to the sky; she spoke passionately. "Aunt Jerry fit
to be a Mother of the Race! Why," she broke out witheringly--"has she
(to begin with the very elements) a notion of what to feed a child on?
Does she know what a proteid is? Does she know what albumen is? Has
she as much as seen a bit of yeast under the microscope? (I have; a
girl once showed me.) Doesn't she choose her very feeding-bottles out
of these awful circulars of Dorothy's or whose ever they are? And the
clothes she showed us!... Ribbons, pink if it's a girl and blue if
it's a boy! This hateful insistence on sex from the very beginning!
From before the beginning!... And the pride of these people in their
ignorance and conceit! Bursting with it!"...
Cosimo was awed. But he was glad, too, that there was no more talk
about the end of their friendship. Amory was incomparable. Never had
he honoured her so. It was almost a pity she painted, so magnificent
a lecturer was lost in her. Not that just at present she was painting
very much. She was doing better than painting. With all the strength
of which she was capable she was resolutely _not_ painting. She was
laying strong and enduring foundations. There would be time enough for
pinnacles by and by.
"And then," Amory continued, more quietly, but even more stingingly,
"in what spirit do they undertake this enormous responsibility? From
the highest motive known to Ethics you'd think, wouldn't you--the sense
of Duty to Mankind? Yes, you'd think so. You wouldn't think they'd
regard it as a mere personal gratification, would you? You wouldn't
think they thought they'd accounted for it all when they said they were
'in love,' would you? But it is so, Cosimo. That's exactly their mental
development. They are exactly as advanced as the animals. Neither more
nor less.... Mind you, I don't deny what's called 'love' altogether.
I suppose it does serve some such purpose as the perfume does to the
flower. The perfume attracts insects, and insects do fertilize some
flowers. So love has its place. But what I want to know is, is it going
to be allowed to supplant plain reason and common sense? I say no.
There ought to be a State Mating-season. They can do it about fishing
and game; why not about love? Because everything's in the hands of men,
and men think more about fishing and game than they do about these
things. Oh, if only a Woman would arise! We should soon see all this
altered!"...
"Well, you know I'm heart and soul with you about that, Amory," Cosimo
said, a little uneasily, as if he personally might be included in her
arraignment of his sex.
"You!" said Amory, with an intellectually affectionate look of her
golden eyes.... "If it weren't for you, Cosimo, I should despair
altogether. Nobody else understands me--nobody. The others--well,
take a man like Hamilton Dix, who might be supposed to have higher
interests: really, it's as much as I've been able to do sometimes to
keep him from pawing me! And once he did kiss my hand.... Cosimo"--she
lifted the golden eyes almost bashfully, and then dropped them
again--"I said last night that there ought perhaps to be an end of
our friendship. Not an end, I mean, because I should always respect
you and honour your views. And I still think it might be best. But--I
don't know whether I should have the strength to do it, Cosimo. I ought
to, but--I'm only a woman in some things. I know they aren't the real
things, and it's only because my sex has been downtrodden and we've
been denied our opportunities; but we do have transmitted fears from
those barbarous times when you used to drag us about by the hair. So I
don't know whether I should really have the strength, Cosimo----"
She was even nobler in her confession of weakness than she had been in
the strength and rush of her outburst. Again, for no reason that he
could have explained, Cosimo felt a brute.... He paw this bright little
creature, as the odious Dix had done? He sully a thing so radiant as
their relation with--pawing?
Suddenly Cosimo found himself disliking Mr. Hamilton Dix more intensely
than he had ever done before.
Amory, for her part--though she did not know whose--rather fancied that
she had put a spoke into somebody's wheel.
V
BOND AND FREE
The truth was, Amory presently began to tell herself, that Cosimo's
life was in danger of becoming rather an aimless sort of thing. Few
people knew the perils of aimlessness so well as did Amory Towers. She
knew them because for a time she had suffered them in her own thought
and work. But that was all past now. She had begun to work again. The
foundations of a real picture were being laid at last. This was the
famous canvas, "Barrage," that afterwards made her name. None knew
better than Amory herself its shortcomings as mere painting, but she
had learned in bitterness that issues greater than those of painting
were at stake to-day. To-day or never was the time to do all the
things that had never been done. Accordingly, her picture was partly
a painting and partly a sociological symbol. It was, as far as it was
at present designed, a medley in which, before a series of guarded
cave-mouths and dropped portcullises and defended doors, women of the
various stages of civilization were grouped with men. Now they were
in the attitude of menials at their feet, or hewing their wood, or
drawing their water; anon, set on high pedestals, before which men made
mock reverences, they stood wreathed with roses from beneath which
iron fetters peeped grimly forth; and later, in apotheosis, Womanhood
herself walked by man's side, equal, sworded, flashing and free. If
something of a likeness to Amory herself was to be traced in all these
figures, every artist who works in a single room knows how frequently,
for lack of pence, he must use himself as a model. It was this picture,
of which more later, that enabled Amory to see so clearly the peril
that beset Cosimo.
Of course Amory recognized that Cosimo was not absolutely aimless as
long as he had Amory's own art to admire; but that was a narrow and
selfish way of looking at it. Amory didn't want Cosimo to admire her
art for any personal glory she might get of it. She wanted him, not for
herself, but for a Cause. In her picture he posed as the champion who
had stricken the bonds from the belted and sworded and flashing and
free young woman (who was quite frankly Amory herself), because that
was the _rôle_ she wished to see him in; but she knew how easy it would
be (Cosimo was so good natured) for any designing and retrogressive
young woman to get hold of him and to enlist his support for the forces
of conservatism and the night. That (Amory's pretty lips compressed and
her eyes shone with a cold and opal-like fire) _must_ not be. In order
that it might not be, Amory had made use of Dorothy's name; not that
she really wanted him to marry Dorothy, but that even to marry Dorothy
would be better than to marry somebody more benighted still. It was a
mere _ruse de guerre_, justified by the larger issue. These things have
to be done when the fiends of ignorance and the angels of knowledge
contend. Amory called these fiends and angels the Anabolic and the
Katabolic forces in human progress. It didn't matter what you called
them. Two principles always had contended and always would contend. It
was a Law.
Therefore Amory wanted Cosimo on the side of the angels and victory.
Ever so much more she wanted him on that side now that he was a man
of some substance. For money is the sinews of Anabolic and Katabolic
warfare also. Cosimo with his money and Amory with her new art--what
might they not accomplish, working together? A whole Promised Land of
endeavour lay shining before them. For Amory herself (for example)
there were all the possibilities of symbolic painting--a style of
painting which (actual draughtsmanship being admittedly her weak point)
would suit her genius the more exactly for that very reason. Nobody can
dismiss a symbol because it is badly drawn; any old drawing will do for
a symbol. For the holy purposes of social regeneration the novelists
thought any old writing good enough; and so it was. So it should be for
Amory too. She had half a mind to let drawing go altogether. Then, with
drawing out of the way, she saw her task. "Barrage" would be followed
by a picture (perhaps a newer word than "picture" would be necessary to
describe it) that would symbolize Labour Unrest; she was thinking it
out in her spare moments already. Then there should be another, a slap
in the face for Militarism. After that should come canvases dealing
with Education, and Disestablishment, and the Triumph of Sentimental
Government and the establishment of the New Matriarchy. Oh yes, Amory
saw her task though twenty lifetimes lay before her....
And Cosimo? She could guide Cosimo too. No doubt at his own doors
in Shropshire there lay wrongs to be righted--sites for village
halls waiting to be built upon, libraries and communal kitchens and
wash-houses to be founded, greens for morrice-games (Amory vetoed
archery, as coming dangerously near to Militarism and the miniature
rifle-range), societies for the study of folk-song, ethical societies,
lectures on economics, bands for the exchange of foreign picture
postcards (that the spirit of brotherhood among the enlightened of all
nations might be fostered), and so on.... Oh, with Amory to direct him,
there would be plenty for Cosimo, too, to do. And he had the money with
which to do it.
And if Amory shrank from the cost to herself--the cost, namely, of
conforming to the outworn institution of marriage--it was but for a
moment. What was she, to attempt to stem the River of the Race? She
must bear the burden cheerfully. And after all, with a little thought
she ought to be able to ensure it that Cosimo as her husband should
not be very different from Cosimo as he was now. By keeping his eyes
constantly uplifted to the shining peaks of their joint duty, mere
personal thoughts of self could be kept in their place. He would hardly
want a wife when he possessed the heroine of a Feminist Crusade,
she hardly a husband when she had an ally placed by his sex in the
fortress that, whether by beleaguering or by assault, must be won.
Yes, she would strive to bear even this. The glory of a campaign would
supplant the private self-seeking of a courtship. They would mingle,
not love-sick sighs, but the aspirations of their souls. No doubt when
they were both old, and looked back, it would seem well worth the
cost....
Amory herself would have been the first to confess the weakness that
set her wondering how many bedrooms the Shropshire house had, and
whether there were rose gardens and fruit trees on the southern walls.
Even from thoughts of duty weak mortals must sometimes stoop. Besides,
if there was not a village green with a maypole on it, some arrangement
would probably have to be made. Amory didn't think she would want
morrice-dancing on the lawn in front of the drawing-room windows,
except, of course, on birthdays and festival days and the days when the
tenants paid their rent. The people themselves would probably prefer
to have their merrymaking to themselves. Very likely they would only
be shy before their betters. She would show the tenantry (she did not
insist on the name) every consideration, as she should expect them
to consider her.... And if there was a lily garden as well as a rose
garden, she would send lilies as well as roses to the cottages quite
frequently.
But Cosimo must be saved for the Cause quickly, for he was giving up
his studio in March, and once he got away again he might fall into the
hands of the designing woman whose existence Amory had suspected. She
knew those designing women. She knew them by the simple process of
inversion of everything that was noble within herself.
Amory had only seen Dorothy Lennard once since the afternoon when
Dorothy had promised to see what she could do about Croziers' contract.
That had been when Dorothy had come to tell her of the mitigation of
its rigour she had secured from Hamilton Dix. But, finding herself
in Oxford Street one afternoon, she sought Hallowells', and tried to
find her way upstairs to the fashion-studio. "Tried," one says, for
nearly twenty minutes Amory was hopelessly lost in the wilderness that
seemed to grow ever more and more complicated as the time fixed for the
opening drew nearer. It was during her wandering through this labyrinth
that Amory received a shock. Passing along a corridor of such vast
length that she seemed to be looking at it through the wrong end of a
pair of opera-glasses, she entered a large apartment where three women
on their knees polished the floor. There she saw a large historical
painting. It was the picture of Queen Bess, Sir Walter, and the Cloak.
Her first impulse was to fall back; her second one, which she obeyed,
was to stand her ground, to put her head back and a little on one side,
and to smile defiantly, indulgently, truculently, all three. It was as
if she said to the picture, "We meet unexpectedly, but since we are
here we may as well have a few words together, you and I!"
A certain amount of skill, manual and ocular, had gone to the making
of the picture--enough, as we have seen, to "hit" Mr. Miller "right
there." Perhaps that was the reason why it hit Amory right there too,
though in the contrary sense. She stepped forward and examined it near;
then she stepped back and examined it at a distance. As she did so, a
man in an astrachan-collared overcoat and an indented grey hat hurried
past, dropping his cigar and uncovering his head as he found himself
in the presence of a lady, even one he did not know; and then Amory
continued her gazing.
The picture struck her as incredibly funny. First, there was the
subject--"Our old friend Chivalry," Amory mused. Oh yes, Chivalry
in other words, those garlands of roses in her own picture beneath
which the iron chains peeped forth. Chivalry! Oh yes, Amory knew--any
feminist knows--the toils men impose on women when they talk about
Chivalry! Amory became cynical.... Let them amend the Divorce Laws,
and _then_ Amory would listen to what they had to say about Chivalry!
Let them give women equal opportunities with men, and she would excuse
the lifting of a hat or the offering of a seat in a train! Chivalry
might have had its place in the social organization of the Year Dot
(see "Barrage"), but things had moved a bit since then, and woman
to-day _would_ walk through puddles if she wished, though twenty
cloaks were outspread for her to step on! Thank you very much for
your Chivalry ... and _now_ will you give us a little Justice for a
change?... And then the complacent handling of the thing! There was
really nothing to be said! Nobody could say it wasn't "finished";
that was just it; it was fatally "finished"; the man had done exactly
what he had set out to do, and--there it was. No unseizable desire,
no unattainable dream, no Promethean attempt, no suspicion that here
was not the last possible word on the subject; and _this_ in a new and
straining and eager age, when men were just beginning to know that
they knew nothing, and to put off their past boastings, and to take
the cave-dweller into their counsels as their equal, perhaps their
superior, in knowledge! Here, actually to-day, was a man who truly
thought that he knew a thing or two more than the cave-dweller! Oh, the
smugness, the self-satisfaction! Really, Amory would not dare to show
such a man her "Barrage"; its pure heart of fire, shining even through
all its shortcomings, would have shrivelled him and his conceit up! For
surely there, in "Barrage," was the true impulse of the arts to-day.
Some called it "propagandist," but what, Amory wanted to know, had all
these Virgins and Children, all these Crucifixions, all these Holy
Families of the past been but propaganda? The arts had been shackled
to the propagation of superstition and dogma, and of the tenets of a
religion that had found its expression one day in seven; but in the
Newer Day all days were going to be equally holy, with the abolition
of the Sabbath as a first step to the consecration of the other six.
To the Virgins and Children of the future a proper comprehension of
the Rights of Woman and the Responsibilities of Parentage would be
brought. Eugenics would have a word to say about the Holy Families. The
Crucifixions would probably be cut out altogether.... To bring that
day nearer was Amory's mission. If she could only sell "Barrage"--and
she thought she could now, for the Women's Manumission Guild had
approached her about it, and an Executive was further considering it....
And she would ask a good price for it, for the labourer is worthy of
her hire, and she really must study her dress a little more....
Amory turned away from the picture and resumed her search for Dorothy.
But she had hardly left the room where the women polished the floors
(showing how, even in physical strength, women were not the inferiors
of men), when she received a second shock. She was backing out again
from a room where a telescopic ladder rose to a sagging sheet under a
skylight when she saw, beyond an oval section of redwood counter, the
fair head of Dorothy herself. It was now luncheon time, the workmen had
left, and Dorothy appeared to be eating her lunch amid the smell of
shavings and varnish and plaster. Amory advanced.
But once more, she started back. She saw that Dorothy was not alone.
And not only was Dorothy not alone, but she was sitting with a
good-looking but ridiculously smart young man on a box so narrow that
from mere necessity the young man had passed his arm about Dorothy's
waist. They were eating sandwiches from a paper bag, and if they were
not sharing the same glass of lemonade, the second glass was certainly
not visible.
Then, with his mouth full of sandwich, the young man kissed Dorothy,
who performed the same idiotic gesture on him in return.
Now no really sensitive person likes to see other persons in the act of
an embrace, and Amory was exquisitely sensitive. And in this hard world
it is the sensitive person who suffers for the dull. Further, even
suffering takes a keener edge when you are seen to suffer. Therefore
the least that Dorothy and her smart young man could have done, when,
turning, they became aware of Amory's presence, would have been to
spare her the gratuitous pain of looking at her. But they did not.
Having outraged her, they stared at her. They stared at her almost as
if they asked her what she meant by stealing upon them like that. It
struck Amory as it had never struck her before that Glenerne would have
been Dorothy's proper place. If this was the way she carried on during
lunch time at Hallowells', nothing at the boarding-house would have
shocked her.
"Hallo!" said Dorothy, not (Amory thought) exactly welcomingly.
Still, if Dorothy had no tact, that was no reason why Amory should not
act up to her own finest instincts. The truest delicacy would be to let
it be supposed that she had noticed nothing. Therefore she too said
"Hallo!" very brightly. They must not guess that they had caused her
pain.
At first Amory thought that Dorothy was not going to introduce her
friend, but when Dorothy did so, in three words--"My cousin Stan"--she
was able to guess that even Dorothy was not quite without some sense
of shame and confusion. Her cousin! Such unfertility of invention
would have done discredit even to Jellies! But of course Dorothy was
embarrassed, and had said the first thing that had come into her head.
Amory bowed with reserve to "the cousin," who, for his part, seemed
inclined to laugh. Very rudely, he pulled out his watch.
"By Jove, a quarter to two! I must cut, Dot. Dusty'll be looking for
me. See you at tea-time? Right, I'll ring you up. So long."
And with scarce a look at Amory he was off.
No sooner had he gone than Amory broke into voluble speech.
"My dear, _what_ a place! I've been looking everywhere for you this
last half-hour--upstairs, downstairs, everywhere! I was almost sure I
remembered the way to the studio--wasn't it past a square room that has
a painting in it now?"
"It was, but they moved us two months ago," Dorothy replied. "Did you
ask for me?"
"Do you mean how did I get in? I just walked up. Nobody stopped me. Is
it against the rules?"
"It doesn't matter, as it happens. But I'm afraid I've had lunch."
"Oh, thanks awfully, but I always go to one of those Food Reform places
now; I feel ever so much better for it. I was only passing, and thought
I'd look in."
"Good of you," said Dorothy, and there was a longish pause.
Amory thought it was not very clever of Dorothy not to be able to
conceal her chagrin. Amory herself always tried to behave better than
that to people who went out of their way to call on her. Probably what
was really the matter was Dorothy's conscience; one cannot hold aloof
from the noble movements of the day without at times feeling a little
uneasy about it. But Causes can afford to be magnanimous. If Dorothy
wanted to out-pause Amory, Amory would let her; and, that absurd
picture being uppermost in her mind, she gave a little laugh and spoke
of that.
"It's easy to see _you're_ not the art-adviser to Hallowells',
Dorothy," she said. "_Must_ they buy such things? And what are they
going to do with it? Get it lithographed, I suppose, for a supplement
or something?"
When the subject of painting was raised Dorothy was still a little
afraid of Amory and her superior knowledge--but less so than she had
been. Twice in the course of its production she had seen "Barrage,"
and had stood apologetically silent before Amory's picture. At another
time she would not have excited herself one way or the other about Sir
Walter, but new forces thrust some of us into conservatism whether we
will or not, and "Barrage" had made Dorothy almost ready to swallow Sir
Walter holus-bolus. Therefore she said a little defensively, "What's
the matter with it?"
"The matter!" Amory exclaimed. She was smiling. If Dorothy meant this
for a joke she was quite willing to enter into it.
"Well," said Dorothy, more defensively still, "everybody isn't trying
to do nothing but the greatest things all the time, after all."
"Oh, ça se voit!" Amory returned, rippling outright into a laugh.
"And," Dorothy continued, hating herself because Amory seemed to be
driving her into a defence even of the absurd and solemn Miller, "we're
only a business concern, not an Exhibition, you know."
"Oh? The wonderful thing isn't for sale, then?"
"No; and anyway, Mr. Dix didn't laugh at it." (This was true. Mr. Dix
did not laugh at his bread when Hallowells' spread it with an extra
thick helping of butter.)
Amory kept a straight face.--"Dorothy," she said, "what's happened to
you?"
"How, happened to me?" Dorothy returned, a little tartly. That
confounded "Barrage" had put her into an altogether false position.
"Nothing's happened to me. Never mind me; tell me what's fresh with
you. Has anything happened about your own picture yet?"
The fact that Dorothy was evidently rather cross was enough to make
Amory aware of the superiority of cheerfulness. Besides, it might
not be amiss to show Dorothy that, high and ideal as the Cause was,
it was not quite without its mundane and practical side. That at any
rate would not be beyond Dorothy's comprehension. Therefore Amory told
Dorothy how the negotiations stood between herself and the Manumission
League for the purchase of "Barrage."
Dorothy listened attentively. When Amory had finished she paused....
"Two hundred pounds, you say? Would that be for a sale outright?"
"Yes."
"And they'd be able to do whatever they liked with it--reproduce it or
anything?"
"I suppose so. Do you mean it isn't enough?"
"I wasn't thinking of that so much. I was thinking--but of course I
don't know all the circumstances."
"I'm not keeping anything back from you, Dorothy," said Amory. Indeed
she wasn't. She knew that Dorothy's advice on such a point would be
well worth having.
"Oh, I don't mean that at all," Dorothy hastened to say. "I only mean
that it's hard to form a judgment without having seen for yourself.
I don't like the idea of selling anything outright. If it was only a
nominal royalty, in case they wanted to reproduce or anything of that
sort----"
"Oh, that! As for that, I should be only too glad to let them reproduce
if they wanted."
"Of course you would get the advertisement, but I don't see why you
shouldn't have a small royalty too."
Amory smiled. The advertisement! Wasn't that just like dear old
Dorothy! As if all the costly things that had gone to the making of
"Barrage" could be valued and bartered like that! Amory explained
gently.
"I don't think you quite understand, Dorothy. You see, it isn't like
those other things Croziers' got. Those were just knocked off. I don't
want to be conceited about 'Barrage,' but it has rather taken it out
of me, in thought and emotion and those things. I've been feeling a
perfect rag after a day at it. Of course, there were heaps of things
I should like to do to it, but 'No,' I said that morning, 'you've
expressed yourself, and if you began tickling it up here and there
you'd only take away from the fierce meaning of it.' So I threw my
brushes down, and then collapsed--perfectly limp."
"Oh!" said Dorothy deferentially. She herself had once collapsed
during a spring rush, but that had been a quite inferior collapsing,
from too long hours simply, not from any emotional strain. But Amory
misinterpreted her mild and respectful "Oh!" She spoke rather sweetly.
"Of course I must live, and nobody can say I don't live frugally. But
that apart, I don't do this for money at all. I do it because of my
beliefs."
"Oh!" said Dorothy again, this time very much as some gallant monarch
might have protested that he never meddled with the beliefs of ladies.
"I know," Amory continued firmly, "that there are some things we
don't agree on, and of course I think I'm right and you're wrong, or
I shouldn't believe what I do. But I do think that that picture in
there," she made a little vague pointing movement, "preaches--well, a
perfectly damnable lesson--from the feminist point of view perfectly
damnable."
"I--I don't think it's meant to," Dorothy ventured to say. "I don't so
much mind it really--not that it pretends to be very much--but parts of
it are quite like something, and I think painting has to be like things
when all's said and done--I mean--certain sorts of painting----"
It was rather a tickling experience for Amory to be schooled by a
fashion-artist on "sorts of painting," and she wished Cosimo had been
there to hear. And on these lines she knew that she could play with
Dorothy as a cat plays with a mouse. So she was beginning, "Oh, why
must painting necessarily be 'like' things, as you say? Is it a Law? Do
tell me!" when suddenly Dorothy took her back altogether. For all the
world as if both of them had been talking about one thing and thinking
of another all the time, Dorothy boiled up.
"Oh, Amory, you do make me so cross!" she cried. "Really, to hear you
sometimes, nobody would think an awfully pretty girl was talking! Who
cares a button about your opinions, with looks like yours? I could
understand it if you were plain! I do wish you could manage to be a bit
more like a human being; why don't you put on some clothes like other
people's, instead of always dressing as if you were going to have a
baby? Can't you take an interest in things, instead of always moping
the way you do? Why, you might be a superfluous woman yourself!"
For one moment Amory fairly lost her composure, but only for one
moment. The next moment she had seen what was the matter. By "taking an
interest in things" Dorothy meant forsaking her principles; by "putting
on clothes like other people's," she meant abandoning her velvets and
corduroys that took the light in such lovely broken bits of accidental
colour, and dressing like one of her own impossible fashion-plates;
and by being "a bit more like a human being," she meant sitting with
a young man on a box and kissing him with a mouth full of sandwich.
It was almost too funny to laugh at. If Dorothy would only ask her
outright what she evidently had in her mind to ask her--why she didn't
marry Cosimo--it would be perfect. Poor old Dot! She had been fairly
caught only a few minutes before, and naturally would still feel rather
sore. Amory waited for her to go on.
She did go on. "I've wanted to say this for a long time," she said.
"Look here, Amory, why don't you marry Cosimo and have done with it?
You're lovely--he's quite good-looking--you seem to understand one
another all right--I'm sure you ought to by this time--and it would be
ever so much more sensible! It seems to me you could drag on like this
for ever!"
Amory's golden eyes seemed to dance with mirth. Of course that
accidental discovery had forced Dorothy's hand beautifully. Dorothy
was pleading with her as earnestly as if she had just been seen, not
"canoodling" under a counter (that Amory believed was the word used
in such cases), but lifted up on a plinth, in a heroic pose, with an
archangel by her side, grouped with their faces towards the east or
in whatever quarter the sun of Feminism might be expected to rise....
Amory had not even to say anything. All she needed to do was to stand
smiling at dear old Dot and to watch her grow redder and redder.
Obviously there was no need to accuse Dorothy when Dorothy was accusing
herself.
In another moment, too, Dorothy was defending herself. Her eyes, in the
surrounding flush of colour, seemed bluer than ever. And in jumping
straight at Amory's thought she skipped a stage.
"I don't care anyway," she blurted out. "Some things _are_
understandable, but you and Cosimo--well, who's to make head or tail of
_you_? You're always together, early and late, sometimes in your place
and sometimes in his--of course _I_ understand, dear, but really I
don't see how you could blame people who didn't if--if----"
Already Amory had drawn herself up to her full five foot against the
redwood counter and had tossed back the bright nasturtium of her head.
"If what?" she asked, the brook-brown eyes looking full into Dorothy's
blue ones.
"Well, if they draw their own conclusions, if you must know," Dorothy
blurted out.
As a wet cloth wipes chalk from a blackboard, so the smile had gone
from Amory's face. Most decidedly she wasn't going to stand this--at
any rate not from Dorothy.
"Oh!" she said. "What people? And what conclusions?"
"Well, people do. You can't expect to have no conclusions drawn but
your own."
"You mean conclusions about me and Cosimo?"
"I'm not saying _I_ draw any, Amory. I understand perfectly, of course.
I mean I know there's nothing wrong. But you can't stop people talking."
Amory became still taller.
"May I ask who's been talking?" she added. "I won't say besides
yourself, but this is the first I've heard of it."
"Amory!" said Dorothy, deeply wounded. She lifted her eyes almost
humbly. "Do you really think that of me?"
"What am I to think?" Amory replied loftily. Yet she was glad that
Dorothy had the grace to be ashamed. By twisting and turning and a
shameless use of her charms Dorothy might contrive to get her own way
with men, but she must not think she could come it over one of her own
sex in the same way.
"Oh dear, I'm sorry I said anything at all!" Dorothy wailed.
"Oh, I'm glad, I assure you!" Amory replied quickly. "I don't believe
in driving these things underground and then pretending they don't
exist! If a thing is, I want to see it _as_ it is!"
"I know you're ever so much braver than I am, dear--I know I'm a
dreadful coward at a push--you're worth twenty of me--but still, Amory,
people _do_ say things, and not very nice ones, and it could so easily
be avoided----"
"Avoided!"
"I know there isn't anything--I only mean the appearance to people who
don't know----"
"And what," said Amory slowly, "do you suppose _I_ care for people of
that kind, and what they think?"
"Yes, you always were splendid and brave--still----"
"Have you heard anybody talking like this?" Amory demanded.
"I said it was a wicked lie----"
"Ah, you _have_ heard somebody!"
"Not really saying anything--only wondering--you know how people
wonder----"
"Then please tell me at once who it was," said Amory with dignity.
But Dorothy only grew more confused than ever.
"Oh, Amory, I can't do that--it was nothing that wasn't fair in a
way--you oughtn't to ask me to do that----"
"Be so good as to tell me at once."
Dorothy was silent.
As a matter of fact the people who had been speaking of Amory and
Cosimo were Walter Wyron and Laura Beamish, but Dorothy did weakly hope
that if things were driven underground they might at least be forgotten.
"Aren't you going to tell me?" Amory demanded.
"No," Dorothy mumbled.
"You refuse?"
"Yes," Dorothy mumbled. And then suddenly she broke out almost
passionately--
"I don't blame you in the very least, Amory, but I do blame Cosimo!
I do, and it's no good saying I don't. A man's no right to be always
about with a woman, getting her talked about, and doing things for her,
and always in and out of her place! I do think he might know better!"
Amory was smiling again now, but not very pleasantly--"Oh!" she said.
"So when you said you thought I ought to marry Cosimo, you meant that
things had gone so far that I might as well?"
"I didn't, Amory. I didn't, I didn't!" Dorothy cried appealingly. "I
really think you do seem to hit it off together somehow. And as for
what people say, _you_ say what _you_ think about people, and they've
a right to do the same, and anyway you can't stop them, and you can't
expect to have the world to yourself. Why, I thought you were always
talking about 'equal rights.'"
"I don't know whether you know that just at present you're talking
about a very precious and beautiful friendship!" said Amory proudly.
"Yes, I do know--I mean I suppose so--you really are such chums, I
know----"
"And I hope and trust the day's coming when such a thing can be without
nasty prurient minds 'drawing their own conclusions,' as you call it,
Dorothy!... Perhaps," the golden eyes were sidelong now on Dorothy's,
"perhaps there was some particular--compromising situation--your friend
objected to? Or was it merely the whole scandalous relation?"
Suddenly Dorothy, for her part also, did not much like the tone of
this. She felt as if that sandwich might still have left crumbs
upon her mouth. There might be a good many things to be said about
her cousin Stanhope, but at any rate he did not compromise her on
principle, nor did he discuss with her some of the rather astonishing
subjects that seemed to come into this precious and beautiful
friendship of Amory Towers and Cosimo Pratt. She would bow to Amory's
superior knowledge when it came to matters of art, but she wasn't
going to have even Amory's foot on her neck if Stan was to be dragged
into the dispute. And if Dorothy again skipped a step in the chain of
processes, she thought she had reason.
"I suppose that's because you caught me out a few minutes ago?" she
said, rather challengingly.
"I'm not sure that I quite follow you. I'm sorry if I'm dull."
"Very well, if you want it more plainly, you said 'compromising
situation' because you caught us just now. I've always stood up for
you, Amory, but I'm not going to let you talk like that."
"Sorry," said Amory offhandedly.
"Well, you needn't say so in that tone either; we don't expect
everybody to go about whistling, or knocking at doors and then waiting,
like that charwoman and her daughter. I'm sorry if we shocked you."
"I don't think I mentioned--what you seem to be talking about, Dorothy.
If I did I don't remember."
"You were thinking about it, though."
"Oh!..."
As if people might say what they liked about Amory and Cosimo, but
Amory might not even think what she liked about Dorothy and Stan!
There was a rather hostile pause. Probably either felt that the
particular male of her preference was being subjected to criticism.
"Well, we needn't quarrel about it," Dorothy resumed.
Amory brightened remarkably.
"Quarrel? Of course not, dear Dorothy--what an absurd idea! And of
course, as you say, I _was_ thinking.... Are you--you know--may I
congratulate you?" she asked softly.
Again Dorothy reddened. She would dearly have liked to fling a
triumphant "Yes, we _are_ engaged!" into Amory's pretty face, but
she and Stanhope had their pact about that. They were not officially
engaged. Once more Amory had her at a disadvantage.
"No," she said shortly. It cost her a struggle not to add the
mitigating words "Not yet."
"Oh ... I beg your pardon," said Amory, instantly apologetic. "You
see----" she hesitated.
"Well, what do I see?" Dorothy Lennard demanded. Against her wishes she
felt herself getting angry again.
"Well, dear, you _did_ ask me about Cosimo----"
"You're not engaged to him, are you?"
"No--but then----"
"You mean you don't let him kiss you?" sprang from Dorothy's lips.
Amory thought it crude--revolting....
Then for the second time Dorothy boiled up and over.
"Well, it seems to me you might just as well!" she cried. "Better,
I should say--it seems to me you do everything else! I think I've
given up trying to understand you clever people; you're beyond me
entirely. I _like_ being a man's plaything--_there!_ I don't mind one
little bit being a chattel--_there!_ And I think it would be perfectly
ripping being property, as long as you belonged to the right person!
And I _do_ believe in one law for the man and another for the woman.
They _are_ different--they _are_, Amory! They're--they're--_ever_ so
different! And I'm glad!... And it seems to me that if you and Cosimo
lived in the same house you needn't kiss one another if you didn't
want to, and anyway it would save a good deal of walking about! That
alone might be worth getting married for--you could talk about the
State quite undisturbed then! I know it's no business of mine, but you
shouldn't look at me as you have been doing for the last ten minutes
all on account of nothing! I'm sorry if I seem angry, because I'm not
bad-tempered really, but dash it all, I do think it's the one thing a
woman can't afford to be impracticable about, and sometimes you really
do seem hopeless, Amory!... Unless----" she checked herself instantly.
But it was too late. She had said the word. Amory knew what it was that
she had cut off so short--"Unless you _do_ know your business after
all, and think that always sitting in his pocket, and letting him play
with your hair, and talking about Heredity all the time, is the way to
get him!" That was the peck that Dorothy measured her out of her own
bushel! Those were the very methods by which Dorothy herself got round
her Mr. Miller, and her Mr. Hamilton Dix, and this smart young man,
whoever he was....
She meant that between herself and Amory there was not at bottom a pin
to choose....
And since the Cause of Progress did demand that Amory should marry
Cosimo, even had it all been true the end would still have justified
those or almost any other means. There precisely lay the rub. What
are you to say to a person so blind to true meanings as to accuse you
of doing what, quite inessentially, you do merely happen to be doing?
You cannot admit that they are right--they are so hideously wrong: you
cannot tell them they are wrong--they cling so stupidly to a certain
appearance of being right. What _are_ you to do?
One thing at least Amory did: she hated Dorothy in that moment. And
because she herself wished to be merciful to Dorothy she did not take
up that fatal "Unless----" Instead she said, very gently indeed:
"Aren't you rather taking the lowest view of things? _Must_ this
physical side always be dragged in?"
Nor was Dorothy very much disposed now to mince matters. The word
had popped out, and she was not going to run away from it. If Amory
wanted to talk about physical sides, she might; Dorothy's own physique
overshadowed Amory's as a ruffled swan overshadows a duckling. She
turned, her bosom high, her hands stroking down her waist.
"But it's _you_ who drag it in!" she cried. "If only you _weren't_
always talking about it! But you only pretend you're only talking about
something else; it seems to me you _never_ let it alone! What's your
Eugenics, if it isn't that, and your Balance of the Sexes, and your
State Nurseries? You aren't a snuffy old man writing learned treatises
about it all; you're a pretty girl, and I dare say you're quite right,
but I don't see the use of pretending----"
"Do you mean that I'm pretending to be something I'm not?" Amory asked
sharply. "Say what you mean. Perhaps you mean virtuous?"
Dorothy stamped. "Oh ... need we?"
"Because if you really care to know----" said Amory proudly.
"Oh ... I'm going. Good-bye."
"You _can't_ go now," said Amory significantly. "Think for a moment and
you'll see that you can't go now. People can't make charges and then
run away. It isn't done, Dorothy."
"How absurd! Who's made charges?"
"I understood you to say that I was a pretender?"
"Don't be so ridiculous! You know very well what I mean!"
"Then you should be more careful about your expressions, Dorothy.
Expression is all people have to go by, you know; expression's
precisely art, in fact. But I should like you to tell whoever it is
who's been talking about me and Cosimo something."
"What's that?" Dorothy grunted over her shoulder.
"You can tell them that they could be present at every one of those
dreadful meetings and hear every word we say, if that's the idea. They
wouldn't take any harm; in fact, it might take them out of themselves
for a bit. And even if it was as they supposed, I don't admit that
that would be as important as they seem to think. An altogether false
importance is given to these things, Dorothy. My friendship with
Cosimo wouldn't be one bit less beautiful whatever the 'conclusions'
were people drew. Nor one bit more. I'm not a pretender, Dorothy. I
don't pretend to be any wiser than I am. But I do think I'm rational.
I--object--most--strongly" (she gave each word its special emphasis)
"to this really secondary matter of sex being made a thing of the first
importance. I hope that's all going to be changed before very long,
and that more enlightened views will take its place. And, really, the
brave women of the Movement are the very last people who ought to be
talked about in that way. They haven't time for such things. They've
far, far too much to do. I know some are married, but they have the
true conception of marriage; it's the rational conception, not mere
legalized tyranny on the one hand and submission on the other. So
though we don't admit that what's commonly called virtue has anything
to do with it one way or the other, we give you the virtue in as a sort
of present. I think I shall have to lend you John Stuart Mill, Dorothy;
he'd clear your ideas on the subject. I'll lend you _Subjection_.
It's all in there, art and everything. If you read only a quarter of
an hour every night you'll soon feel the benefit. Do read him.... And
now I must go. I'm sorry if our talk has seemed a bit of a wrangle,
but I have to state these things fearlessly, you see. At whatever cost
we have to avoid false positions. The world really doesn't matter
_that_ so long as we have the Right on our side. Do try to see it,
Dorothy.--Good-bye."
She touched Dorothy's hand and turned away to the door; but, for all
her serenity, one thought and one thought only occupied her as she
plunged into Hallowells' labyrinth again and wandered through rooms and
corridors in search of the way out. The more she thought of it the
less it bore thinking of. It was the thought that Dorothy had to all
intents and purposes told her that she allowed Cosimo to admire her and
to help her to take down her glorious hair for the same reason that
Dorothy sat on a box eating sandwiches with her own unenlightened young
man, and that when young men came into the question there was not a pin
to choose between them after all.
"Poor, dear, dull old thing!" she muttered as she left Hallowells'.
"And it's she who pretends, for she'd have given anything to have heard
me coming. All the same, if it _had_ been me and Cosimo...."
It would have been irrational, but she supposed she would have resented
an intrusion too. Inherited prejudice is very strong....