"Why, now, this is comfortable," he went on, drawing up the chair to

which Dorothy pointed. "I like your English fires. They may not have

all the advantages of steam-heat, but they got a look about 'em--the

Home-Idee. And you're looking just about right in health, Mrs. Tasker,

if I may say so. You English women have our N'York ladies whipped when

it comes to complexion, you have for sure. And how's the family----?"

But here Mr. Miller suddenly stopped and looked at Dorothy again.

If the look that came into his eyes had come into those of a young

unmarried woman, Dorothy would have fled there and then. He dropped his

head for a moment as people do who enter a church; then he raised it

again.

"If you'll pardon an old married man and the father of three little

goils," Mr. Miller said, his eyes reverently lifted and his voice

suddenly altered, "--but am I right in supposing that ... another

little gift from the storks, as my dear old Mamie--that was my dear old

negro nurse--used to say?" Then, without waiting for the unrequired

answer, he straightened his back and squared his deltoids in a way that

would have made any of Holbein's portraits of Henry the Eighth look

like that of a slender young man. His voice dropped three whole tones,

and again he showed Dorothy the little bald spot on the crown of his

head.

"I'm glad. I say I'm glad. I'm vurry glad. I rejoice. And I should like

to shake Mr. Stan by the hand. I should like to shake you by the hand

too, Mrs. Tasker." Then, when he had done so: "It's the Mother-Idee.

The same, old-fashioned Idee, like our own mothers. It makes one feel

good. Reverent. I got no use for a young man but what he shows lats

of reverence for his mother. The old Anglo-Saxon-Idee--reverence

for motherhood.... And when, if an old married man may ask the

question----?"

Dorothy laughed and blushed and told him. Mr. Miller, dropping his

voice yet another tone, told her in return that he knew of no holier

place on oith than the chamber in which the Anglo-Saxon-Idee of

veneration for motherhood was renewed and sustained. And then, after he

had said once more that he rejoiced, there fell a silence.

Dorothy liked Mr. Miller. Once you got over his remarkable aptitude

for sincerities he had an excellent heart. Nevertheless she could not

imagine why he had come. She shuddered as he seemed for a moment to be

once more on the point of removing his shoes at the door of the Mosque

of Motherhood, but apparently he thought better of it. Squaring his

shoulders again, and no doubt greatly fortified by his late exercise,

he said, "Well, I always feel more of a man after I felt the throb of a

fellow-creature's heart. That's so. And now you'll be wondering what's

brought me up here? Well, the fact is, Mrs. Tasker, I'm wurried. I got

wurries. You can see the wurry-map on my face. Hallowells' is wurrying

me. I ain't going to tell you Hallowells' ain't what it was in its

pammy days; it may be, or it may not; mebbe you've heard the talk

that's going around?"

"No," said Dorothy.

"Is that so? Well, there is talk going around. There's a whole push

of people, knocking us all the time. They ain't of much account

themselves, but they knock us. It's a power the inferior mind has. And

I say I'm wurried about it."

Dorothy, in spite of her "No," had heard of the "knocking" of Hallowell

and Smiths', and her heart gave an excited little jump at the thought

that flashed across her mind. Did Hallowells' want her back? The firm

had been launched upon London with every resource of publicity; Dorothy

herself had been the author of its crowning device; and whereas the

motto of older firms had been "Courtesy Costs Nothing," Hallowells'

had vastly improved upon this. Courtesy had, as a matter of fact,

cost them a good deal; but the rewards of the investment had been

magnificent. Mr. Miller had known that if you say to people often

enough "See how courteous I am," you are to all intents and purposes

courteous. But what Mr. Miller had not known had been the precise point

at which it is necessary to begin to build up a strained reputation

again. Commercial credit too, like those joints Stan carved, comes in

in twopence-halfpennies but goes out in threepences.... And so the

"knocking" had begun. Rumours had got about that Hallowells' was a

shop where you were asked, after a few unsuitable articles had been

shown to you, whether you didn't intend to buy anything, and where you

might wait for ten minutes at a counter while two assistants settled a

private difference behind it. Did Mr. Miller want her help in restoring

the firm's fair name? Did he intend to offer her another contract? Were

there to be more of Hallowells' plump, ringing sovereigns--that she

would know better how to take care of this time? It was with difficulty

that she kept her composure as Mr. Miller continued:

"There's no denying but what inferior minds have that power," he went

sorrowfully on. "They can't build up an enterprise, but they can knock,

and they been good and busy. You haven't heard of it? Well, that's

good as far as it goes, but they been at it for all that. Now I don't

want to knock back at your country, Mrs. Tasker, but it seems to me

that's the English character. You're hostile to the noo. The noo gives

you cold feet. You got a terrific capacity for stopping put. Your King

Richard Core de Lion did things in a certain way, and it ain't struck

you yet that he's been stiff and straight quite a while. And so when

you see something with snap and life to it you start knocking." Mr.

Miller spoke almost bitterly. "But I ain't holding you personally

responsible, Mrs. Tasker. I reckon you're a wonderful woman. Yours is

a reel old family, and if anybody's the right to knock it's you; but

_you_ appreciate the noo. _You_ look at it in the light of history.

_You_ got the sense of world-progress. _You're_ a sort of Lady Core de

Lion to-day. I haven't forgotten the Big Idee you started us off with.

And so I come to you, and tell you, straight and fair, we want you."

Dorothy was tingling with excitement; but she took up a piece of

sewing--the same piece on which she had bent her modest gaze when she

had machinated against her aunt on the afternoon on which Lady Tasker

had come on, weary and thirsty, from the Witan. It was a piece she kept

for such occasions as these. She stitched demurely, and Mr. Miller went

on again:--

"We want you. We want those bright feminine brains of yours, Mrs.

Tasker. And your ladies' intooition. We're stuck. We want another

Idee like the last. And so we come to the department where we got

satisfaction before."

Dorothy spoke slowly. She was glad the pond-room was beautifully

furnished--glad, too, that the hours Ruth spent over her "brights" were

not spent in vain. The porcelain gleamed in her cabinets and the silver

twinkled on her tables. At any rate she did not look poor.

"This is rather a surprise," she said. "I hardly know what to say. I

hadn't thought of taking on another contract."

But here Mr. Miller was prompt enough.

"Well, I don't know that we were thinking of a noo contract exactly.

You're a lady with a good many responsibilities now, and ain't got too

much time for contracts, I guess. No, it ain't a contract. It's an Idee

we want."

Far more quickly than Dorothy's hopes had risen they dropped again

at this. "An Idee:" naturally!... Everybody wanted that. She had

not had to hawk an idea like the last--so simple, so shapely, so

beauty-bright. And she had learned that it is not the ideas, but what

follows them, that pays--the flat and uninspired routine that forms the

everyday work of a lucrative contract. It is the irony of this gipsy

life of living by your wits. You do a stately thing and starve; you

follow it up--or somebody else does--with faint and empty echoes of

that thing, and you are overfed. An Idea--but not a contract; a picking

of her brains, but no permanent help against that tide of tradesmen's

books that flowed in at the front door.... And Dorothy knew already

that for another reason Mr. Miller had sought her out in vain. Ideas

are _not_ repeated. They visit us, but we cannot fetch them. And as

for echoes of that former inspiration of hers, no doubt Mr. Miller had

thought of all those for himself and had rejected them.

"I see," she said slowly....

"Well," said Mr. Miller, his worry-map really piteous, "I wish you

could tell me where we've gone wrong. It must be something in the

British character we ain't appreciated, but what, well, that gets

me. We been Imperialistic. There ain't been one of our Monthly House

Dinners but what we've had all the Loyal Toasts, one after the

other. There ain't been a Royal Wedding but what we've had a special

window-display, and christenings the same, and what else you like.

We ain't got gay with the Union Jack nor Rotten Row nor the House of

Lords. We've reminded folk it was your own King George who said 'Wake

up, England----!'"

But at this point Mr. Miller's doleful recital was cut short by a

second ring at the bell. Again Ruth's step was heard in the passage

outside, and again Ruth, loftily sulky but omitting no point of her

duty, stood with the door-knob in her hand.

"Mrs. Pratt," she announced; and Amory entered.

Seeing Mr. Miller, however, she backed again. Mr. Miller had risen and

bowed as if he was giving some invisible person a "back" for leapfrog.

"Oh, I do so beg your pardon!" said Amory hurriedly. "I didn't know

you'd anybody here. But--if I could speak to you for just a moment,

Dorothy--it won't take a minute----"

"Please excuse me," said Dorothy to Mr. Miller; and she went out.

She was back again in less than three minutes. Her face had an unusual

pinkness, but her voice was calm. She did not sit down again. Neither

did she extend her hand to Mr. Miller in a too abrupt good-bye.

Nevertheless, that worried man bowed again, and looked round for his

hat and stick.

"I shall have to think over what you've been saying," Dorothy said.

"I've no proposal to make off-hand, you see--and I'm rather afraid that

just at present I shan't be able to come and see you----"

There were signs in Mr. Miller's bearing of another access of reverence.

"So I'll write. Or better still, if it's not too much trouble for you

to come and see me again----? Perhaps I'd better write first.--But

you'll have tea, won't you?"

Mr. Miller put up a refusing hand.--"No, I thank you.--So you'll do

your possible, Mrs. Tasker? That's vurry good of you. I'm wurried, and

I rely on your sharp feminine brains. As for the honorarium, we shan't

quarrel about that. I wish I could have shaken hands with Mr. Stan.

There ain't a happier and prouder moment in a man's life than----"

"Good-bye."

And the father of the three little goils of his own took his leave.

No sooner had he gone than Dorothy's brows contracted. She took

three strides across the room and rang for Ruth. Never before had

she realized the inferiority, as a means of expressing temper, of an

electric bell to a hand-rung one or to one of which a yard or two of

wire can be ripped from the wall. Only by mere continuance of pressure

till Ruth came did she obtain even a little relief. To the high resolve

on Ruth's face she paid no attention whatever.

"A parcel will be coming from Mrs. Pratt," she said. "Please see that

it goes back at once."

Ruth's head was heroically high. The late Mr. Mossop had had his

faults, but he had not kept his finger on electric-bell buttons till

she came.

"No doubt there's them as would give better satisfaction, m'm," she

said warningly.

But Dorothy rushed on her fate.--"There seems very little satisfaction

anywhere to-day," she answered.

"Then I should wish to give the usual notice," said Ruth.

"Very well," said the reckless mistress.... "Ruth!" (Ruth returned).

"You forgot what I said about always shutting the door quietly."

This time the door closed so quietly behind Ruth that Dorothy heard her

outburst into tears on the other side of it.

Second-hand woollies for her Bits!... Of course Amory Pratt had made

the proposal with almost effusive considerateness. No doubt the twins,

Corin and Bonniebell, _had_ outgrown them. Dorothy did not suppose for

a moment that they were _not_ the best of their kind that money could

buy; the Pratts seemed to roll in money. And beyond all dispute the

winter _might_ come any morning now, and the garments _would_ just fit

Jackie. But--her own Bits! ... she had had her back to the bedroom

window when the offer had been made; she knew that her sudden flush had

not showed; and her voice had not changed as she had deliberately told

her lie--that she had bought the children's winter outfits only the day

before....

"I'm sure you won't have any difficulty in giving them away," she had

concluded as she had passed to the bedroom door.

"Far less difficulty than you'll find here," she might have added, but

had forborne....

Other children's woollies for her little Jackie!----

What gave sting to the cut was that Jackie sorely needed them; but

then it was not like Amory Pratt, Dorothy thought bitterly, to make a

graceful gift of an unrequired thing. She must blunder into people's

necessities. A gift of a useless Teddy Bear or of a toy that would be

broken in a week Dorothy might not have refused; but mere need!--"Oh!"

Dorothy exclaimed, twisting in her chair with anger....

What a day! What a life! And what a little thing thus to epitomize the

whole hopeless standstill of their circumstances!

And because it was a little thing, it had a power over Dorothy that

twenty greater things would not have had. She was about to call the

precious and disparaged Jackie when she thought better of it. Instead,

she dropped her face into her hands and melted utterly. What Ruth did

in the kitchen she did in the pond-room; and Jackie, who caught the

contagion, filled the passage between with an inconsolable howling.

It was into this house of lamentation that Stan entered at half-past

four.

"Steady, there!" he called to his younger son; and Jackie's bellow

ceased instantaneously.

"Ruth's c'ying, so I c'ied too," he confided solemnly to his father;

and the two entered the pond-room together, there to find Dorothy also

in tears.

"Hallo, what's this?" said Stan. "Jackie, run and tell Ruth to hurry up

with tea.... Head up, Dot--let's have a look at you----"

Perhaps he meant that Dot should have a look at him, for his face shone

with an--alas!--not unwonted excitement. Dorothy had seen that shining

before. It usually meant that he had been let in on the ground floor of

the International Syndicate for the manufacture of pig-spears, or had

secured an option on the world's supply of wooden pips for blackberry

jam, or an agency for a synthesized champagne. And she never dashed

the perennial hopefulness of it. The poor old boy would have been

heartbroken had he been allowed to suppose that he was not, in intent

at any rate, supporting his wife and children.

"What is it, old girl?" he said. "Just feeling low, eh? Never mind.

I've some news for you."

Dorothy summoned what interest she could.--"Not an agency or anything?"

she asked, wiping her eyes.

"Better than that."

"Well, some agencies are very good."

"Not as good as this!"

"Put your arm round me. I've been feeling _so_ wretched!"

"Come and sit here. There. Wretched, eh? Well, would three hundred a

year cheer you up any?"

It would have, very considerably; but Stan's schemes were seldom

estimated to produce a sum less than that.

"Eh?" Stan continued. "Paid weekly or monthly, whichever I like, and a

month's screw to be going on with?"

Suddenly Dorothy straightened herself in his arms. She knew that Stan

was trying to rouse her, but he needn't use a joke with quite so sharp

a barb. She sank back again.

"Don't, dear," she begged. "I know it's stupid of me, but I'm so dull

to-day. You go out somewhere this evening, and I'll go to bed early and

sleep it off. I shall be all right again in the morning."

But from the pocket into which she herself had put four half-crowns

that very morning--all she could spare--Stan drew out a large handful

of silver, with numerous pieces of gold sticking up among it. A glance

told her that Stan was not likely to have backed a winner at any such

price as that. Other people did, but not Stan. She had turned a little

pale.

"Tell me, quick, Stan!" she gasped.

"You laughed rather at the Fortune & Brooks idea, didn't you?"

"Oh, don't joke, darling!----"

"Eh?... I say, you're upset. Anything been happening to-day? Look here,

let me get you a drink or something!"

"Do you mean--you've got a job, Stan?"

"Rather!--I say, do let me get you a drink----"

"I shall faint if you don't tell me----"

She probably would....

Stan had got a job. What was it, this job that had enabled Stan to come

home, before he had lifted a finger to earn it, with masses of silver

in his pocket, and the clean quids sticking up out of the lump like

almonds out of a trifle?

--He would have to lift more than a finger before that money was

earned. He would have to hang on wires by his toes, and to swim

streams, and to be knocked down by runaway horses, and to dash into

burning houses, and to fling himself on desperate men, and to ascend

into the air in water-planes and to descend in submarines into the

deep. Hydrants would be turned on him, and sacks of flour poured on

him, and hogsheads of whitewash and bags of soot. Not for his brains,

but for his good looks and steady nerves and his hard physical

condition had he been the chosen one among many. For Stan had joined

a Film Producing Company, less as an actor than as an acrobat. Go and

see him this evening. He is as well worth your hour as many a knighted

actor. And the scene from "Quentin Durward," in which Bonthron is

strung up with the rope round his neck, is not fake. They actually did

string Stan up, in the studio near Barnet that had been a Drill Hall,

and came precious near to hanging him into the bargain.

But he passed lightly over these and other perils as he poured it all

out to Dorothy at tea. Pounds, not perils, were the theme of his song.

"I didn't say anything about it for fear it didn't come off," he

said, "but I've been expecting it for weeks." He swallowed tea and

cake at a rate that must have put his internal economy to as severe

a strain as "Mazeppa" (Historical Film Series, No. XII) afterwards

did his bones and muscles. "I start on Monday, so breakfast at

eight, sharp, Dot. 'Lola Montez.' They've got a ripping little girl

as Lola; took her out to tea and shopping the other day; I'll bring

her round." ("No you don't--not with me sitting here like a Jumping

Bean," quoth Dorothy). "Oh, that's all right--she's getting married

herself next month--furnishing her flat now--I helped her to choose

her electric-light fittings--you'd like her.... _Ain't_ it stunning,

Dot!----"

It was stunning. Part of the stunningness of it was that Dorothy, with

an abrupt "Excuse me a moment," was enabled to cross to her desk and to

dash off a note to Harrods. Second-hand woollies for her Bits! Oh no,

not if she knew it!... "Yes, go on, dear," she resumed, returning to

the tea-table again. "No, I don't wish it was something else. If we're

poor we're poor, and the Services are out of the question, and it's

just as good as lots of other jobs.--And oh, that reminds me: I had Mr.

Miller in this afternoon!"...

"And oh!" said Stan ten minutes later; "I forgot, too! I met a chap,

too--forgotten all about it. That fellow I gave a dressing-down about

India to up at the Pratts' there. He stopped me in the street, and

what do you think? It was all I could do not to laugh. He asked me

whether I could put him on to a job! Me, who haven't started myself

yet!... I said I could put him on to a drink if that would do--I had to

stand somebody a drink, just to wet my luck, and I didn't see another

soul--and I fetched it all out of my pocket in a pub in St. Martin's

Lane--," he fetched it all out of his pocket again now, "--fetched it

out as if it was nothing--you should have seen him look at it!--Strong

his name is--didn't catch it that day he was burbling such stuff----"

Dorothy's eyes shone. Dear old Stan! That too pleased her. No doubt

the Pratts would be told that Stan was going about so heavily laden

with money that he had to divide the weight in order not to walk

lop-sided----

Worn woollies for His Impudence's Bits!----

Rather not! There would be a parcel round from Harrods' to-morrow!

VI

POLICY

Amory would have been far less observant than she was had it not

occurred to her, as she left Dorothy's flat that day, that she had

been hustled out almost unceremoniously. She hoped--she sincerely

hoped--that she did not see the reason. To herself, as to any other

person not absolutely case-hardened by prejudice, the thing that

presented itself to her mind would not have been a reason at all;

but these conventional people were so extraordinary, and in nothing

more extraordinary than in their regulations for receiving callers

of the opposite sex. That was what she meant by the vulgarizing of

words and the leaping to ready-made conclusions. A conventional

person coming upon herself and Mr. Strong closeted together would

have his stereotyped explanation; but that was no reason why anybody

clearer-eyed and more open-minded and generous-hearted should fall

into the same degrading supposition. It would be ridiculous to suppose

that there was "anything" between Dorothy and Mr. Miller. Amory knew

that in the past Dorothy had had genuine business with Mr. Miller. And

so now had she herself with Mr. Strong. And as for Stan's going about

in open daylight with a "dark Spanish type"--a type traditionally

wickeder than any other--Amory thought nothing of that either. Stan

had as much right to go about with his Spanish female as Cosimo had to

take Britomart Belchamber to a New Greek Society matinée or to one of

Walter's Lectures. Amory would never have dreamed of putting a false

interpretation on these things.

Nevertheless, her visit _had_ been cut singularly short, and Dorothy

plainly _had_ wanted to be rid of her. Because hearts are kind eyes

need not necessarily be blind. Amory could not conceal from herself

that in magnanimously passing these things over as nothing, she was,

after all, making Dorothy a present of a higher standard than she had

any right to. Judged by her own standards (which was all the judgment

she could strictly have claimed), there was--Amory would not say a

fishiness about the thing--in fact she would not say anything about

it at all. The less said the better. Pushed to its logically absurd

conclusion, Dorothy's standard meant that whenever people of both

sexes met they should not be fewer than three in number. In Amory's

saner view, on the other hand, two, or else a crowd, was far more

interesting. Nobody except misanthropists talked about the repulsion of

sex. Very well: if it was an attraction, it _was_ an attraction. And if

it was an attraction to Amory, it was an attraction to Dorothy also; if

to Cosimo, then to Stan as well. The only difference was that she and

Cosimo openly admitted it and acted upon it, while Stan and Dorothy did

not admit it, but probably acted furtively on it just the same.

It was very well worth the trouble of the call to have her ideas on

the subject so satisfactorily cleared up.

At the end of the path between the ponds she hesitated for a moment,

uncertain whether to keep to the road or to strike across the sodden

Heath. She decided for the Heath. Mr. Strong had said that he might

possibly come in that afternoon to discuss the Indian policy, and she

did not want to keep him waiting.

Then once more she remembered her unceremonious dismissal, and

reflected that after all that had left her with time on her hands. She

would take a turn. It would only bore her to wait in The Witan alone,

or, which was almost the same thing, with Cosimo. The Witan was rather

jolly when there were crowds and crowds of people there; otherwise it

was dull.

She turned away to the right, passed the cricket-pitch, found the cycle

track, and wandered down towards the Highgate ponds.

She had reached the model-yacht pond, and was wondering whether

she should extend her walk still further, when she saw ahead of

her, sitting on a bench beneath an ivied stump, two figures deep in

conversation. She recognized them at a glance. They were the figures of

Cosimo and Britomart Belchamber. Britomart was looking absently away

over the pond; Cosimo was whispering in her ear. Another second or two

and Amory would have walked past them within a yard.

Now Amory and Cosimo had married on certain express understandings, of

which a wise and far-sighted anticipation of the various courses that

might be taken in the event of their not getting on very well together

had formed the base. Therefore the little warm flurry she felt suddenly

at her heart could not possibly have been a feeling of liberation.

How could it, when there was nothing to be liberated from? Just as

much liberty as either might wish had been involved in the contract

itself, and a formal announcement of intention on either part was to be

considered a valid release.

And so, in spite of that curious warm tingle, Amory was not one atom

more free, nor one atom less free, to develop (did she wish it) a

relationship with anybody else--Edgar Strong or anybody--than she had

been before. She saw this perfectly clearly. She had talked it all over

with Cosimo scores of times. Why, then, did she tingle? Was it that

they had not talked it over enough?

No. It was because of a certain furtiveness on Cosimo's part. Evidently

he wished to "take action" (if she might use the expression without

being guilty of a vulgarized meaning) _without_ having made his

formal announcement. That she had come upon them so far from The

Witan was evidence of this. They had deliberately chosen a part of

the Heath they had thought it unlikely Amory would visit. They could

have done--whatever they were doing--under her eyes had they wished,

but they had stolen off together instead. It was a breach of the

understanding.

Before they had seen her, she left the path, struck across the grass

behind them, and turned her face homewards. She was far, far too proud

to look back. Certainly it was his duty to have let her know. Never

mind. Since he hadn't....

Yet the tingling persisted, coming and going in quite pleasurable

little shocks. Then all at once she found herself wondering how far

Cosimo and Britomart had gone, or would go. Not that it was any

business of hers. She was not her husband's keeper. It would be futile

to try to keep somebody who evidently didn't want to be kept. It would

also take away the curious subtle pleasure of that thrill.

She was not conscious that she quickened the steps that took her to the

studio, where by this time Edgar Strong probably awaited her.

Most decidedly Cosimo ought to have given her warning----

As for Britomart Belchamber--sly creature--no doubt she had persuaded

him to slink away like that----

Well, there would be time enough to deal with her by and bye----

Amory reached The Witan again.

As she entered the hall a maid was coming out of the dining-room. Amory

called her.

"Has Mr. Strong been in?"

"He's in the studio, m'm," the maid replied.

"Are the children with Miss Belchamber?"

"No, m'm. They're with nurse, m'm."

"Is Miss Belchamber in her room?"

"No, m'm. She's gone out."

"How long ago?"

"About an hour, m'm."

"Is Mr. Pratt in?"

"I think so, m'm. I'll go and inquire."

"Never mind. I'm going upstairs."

Ah! Then they had gone out separately, by pre-arrangement! More

slyness! And this was Cosimo's "pretence" at being Miss Belchamber's

devoted admirer! Of course, if there had been any pretence at all about

it, it would have had to be that he was not her admirer. Very well;

they would see about that, too, later!----

She went quickly to her own room, changed her blouse for a tea-gown,

and then, with that tingling at her heart suddenly warm and crisp

again, descended to the studio.

It was high time (she told herself) that the "Novum's" Indian policy

was definitely settled. Mr. Strong also said so, the moment he had

shaken hands with her and said "Good afternoon." But Mr. Strong spoke

bustlingly, as if the more haste he made the more quickly the job would

be over.

"Now these are the lines we have to choose from," he said....

And he enumerated a variety of articles they had in hand, including Mr.

Prang's.

"Then there's this," he said....

He told Amory about a crisis in the Bombay cotton trade, and of a scare

in the papers that very morning about heavy withdrawals of native

capital from the North Western Banks....

"But I think the best thing of all would be for me to write an article

myself," he said, "and to back it up with a number of Notes. What I

really want cleared up is our precise objective. I want to know what

that's to be."

"We'll have tea in first, and then we shall be undisturbed," said Amory.

"Better wait for Cosimo, hadn't we?"

"He's out," said Amory, passing to the bell.

She sat down on the corner of the sofa, and watched the maid bring in

tea. Mr. Strong, who had placed himself on the footstool and was making

soughing noises by expelling the air from his locked hands, appeared to

be brooding over his forthcoming number. But that quick little tingle

of half an hour before had had a curious after-effect on Amory. How it

had come about she did not know, but the fact remained that she was

not, now, so very sure that even the "Novum" was quite as great a thing

as she had supposed it to be. Or rather, if the "Novum" itself was no

less great, she had, quite newly, if dimly, foreseen herself in a more

majestic rôle than that of a mere technical _directrice_.

Politics? Yes, it undoubtedly was the Great Game. Strong men fancied

themselves somewhat at it, and conceited themselves, after the fashion

of men, that it was they who wrought this marvel or that. But was

it? Had there not been women so much stronger than they that, doing

apparently nothing, their nothings had been more potent than all the

rest? She began to give her fancy play. For example, there was that

about a face launching a thousand ships. That was an old story, of

course; if a face could launch a thousand ships so many centuries ago,

there was practically no limit to its powers with the British Navy at

its present magnificent pitch of numerical efficiency. But that by the

way. It was the idea that had seized Amory. Say a face--Helen's, she

thought it was--had launched a thousand, or even five hundred ships;

where was the point? Why, surely that that old Greek Lord High Admiral,

whoever he was--(Amory must look him up; chapter and verse would

be so very silencing if she ever had occasion to put all this into

words)--surely he had thought, as all men thought, that he was obeying

no behest but his own. The chances were that he had hardly wasted a

thought on Helen's face as a factor in the launching....

Yet Helen's face had been the real launching force, or rather the

brain behind Helen's face ... but Amory admitted that she was not

quite sure of her ground there. Perhaps she was mixing Helen up with

somebody else. At any rate, if she was wrong about Helen she was not

wrong about Catherine of Russia. Nor about Cleopatra. Nor about the

Pompadour. These had all had brains, far superior to the brains of

their men, which they had used through the medium of their beauty.

She knew this because she had been reading about them quite recently,

and could put her finger on the very page; she had a wonderful memory

for the places in books in which passages occurred.... So there were

Catherine the Second, and Cleopatra, and the Pompadour, even if she had

been wrong about Helen. That was a curious omission of Homer's, by the

way--or was it Virgil?--the omission of all reference to the brain

behind. Perhaps it had seemed so obvious that he took it for granted.

But barring that, the notion of a face launching the ships was very

fine. It was the Romantic Point of View. Hitherto Amory had passed over

the Romantic Point of View rather lightly, but now she rather thought

there was a good deal in it. At any rate that about the face of a woman

being the real launching-force of a whole lot of ships--well, it was an

exaggeration, of course, and in a sense only a poetic way of putting

it--but it was quite a ripping idea.

So if a ship could be launched, apparently, not by a mere material

knocking away of the thingummy, but by the timeless beauty of a face,

an Indian policy ought not to present more difficulties. At all events

it was worth trying. Perhaps "trying" was not exactly the word. These

things happened or they didn't happen. But anybody not entirely stupid

would know what Amory meant.

The maid lighted the little lamp under the water-vessel that kept the

muffins hot and then withdrew. Amory turned languidly to Mr. Strong.

"Would you mind pouring out the tea? I'm so lazy," she said.

She had put her feet up on the sofa, and her hands were clasped behind

her head. The attitude allowed the wide-sleeved tea-gown into which

she had changed to fall away from her upper arm, showing her satiny

triceps. The studio was warm; it might be well to open the window a

little; and Amory, from her sofa, gave the order. It seemed to her

that she had not given orders enough from sofas. She had been doing

too much of the work herself instead of lying at her ease and stilly

willing it to be done. She knew better now. It was much better to take

a leaf out of the book of _les grandes maitresses_. She recognized that

she ought to have done that long ago.

So Mr. Strong brought her tea, and then returned to his footstool

again, where he ate enormous mouthfuls of muffin, spreading

anchovy-paste over them, and drank great gulps of tea. He fairly made a

meal of it. But Amory ate little, and allowed her tea to get cold. The

cast which Stan had coarsely called "the fore-quarter" had been hung up

on the wall at the sofa's end, and her eyes were musingly upon it. The

trotter lay out of sight behind her.

"Well, about that thing of Prang's," said Mr. Strong when he could eat

no more. "Hadn't we better be settling about it?"

"Don't shout across the room," said Amory languidly, and perhaps a

little pettishly. She was wondering what was the matter with her hand

that Mr. Strong had not kissed it when he had said good afternoon. He

had kissed it on a former occasion.

"Head bad?" said Mr. Strong.

"No, my head's all right, but there's no reason we should edit the

'Novum' from the house-tops."

"Was I raising my voice? Sorry."

Mr. Strong rose from his footstool and took up a station between the

tea-table and the asbestos log.

Amory was getting rather tired of hearing about that thing of Prang's.

She did not see why Mr. Strong should shuffle about it in the way

he did. The article had been twice "modified," that was to say more

or less altered, and Amory could hardly be expected to go on reading

it in its various forms for ever. What did Mr. Strong want? If he

whittled much more at Mr. Prang's clear statement of a point of view

of which the single virtue was its admitted extremeness, he would be

reducing the "Novum" to the level of mere Liberalism, and they had

long ago decided that, of the Conservative who opposed and the Liberal

who killed by insidious kindnesses, the former was to be preferred as

a foe. Besides, there was an alluring glow about Mr. Prang's way of

writing. No doubt that was part and parcel of the glamour of the East.

The Eastern style, like the Eastern blood, had more sun in it. Keats

had put that awfully well, in the passage about "parched Abyssinia" and

"old Tartary the Fierce," and so had that modern man, who had spoken

of Asia as lying stretched out "in indolent magnificence of bloom."

Yes, there was a funny witchery about Asia. In all sorts of ways they

"went it" in Asia. Bacchus had had a spree there, and it was there--or

was that Egypt?--that Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba or somebody had

smuggled her satiny self into a roll of carpets and had had herself

carried as a present to King Solomon or Mark Antony or whoever it was.

It seemed to be in the Asian atmosphere, and Mr. Prang's prose style

had a smack of it too. Mr. Strong--his literary style, of course, she

meant--might have been all the better for a touch of that blood-warmth

and thrill....

And there were ripping bits of reckless passion in Herodotus too.

But Mr. Strong continued to stand between the tea-table and the

asbestos log, and to let fall irresolute sentences from time to time.

Prang, he said, really was a bit stiff, and he, Mr. Strong, wasn't

sure that he altogether liked certain responsibilities. Not that he

had changed his mind in the least degree. He only doubted whether in

the long run it would pay the "Novum" itself to acquire a reputation

for exploiting what everybody else knew as well as they did, but left

severely alone. In fact, he had assumed, when he had taken the job on,

that the work for which he received only an ordinary working-salary

would be conditioned by what other editors did and received for doing

it.... At that Amory looked up.

"Oh? But I thought that the truth, regardless of consequences, was our

motto?"

"Of course--without fear or favour in a sense--but where there are

extra risks----"

What did this slow-coach of a man mean?----"What risks?" Amory asked

abruptly.

"Well, say risks to Cosimo as proprietor."

"You mean he might lose his money?" she said, with a glance round the

satiny triceps and the apple-bud of an elbow.

"Well--does he _want_ to lose his money?--What I mean is, that we

aren't paying our way--we've scarcely any advertisements, you see----"

"I think that what you mean is that we ought to become Liberals?"

There was a little ring in Amory's voice.

Mr. Strong made no reply.

"Or Fabians, perhaps?"

Still Mr. Strong did not answer.

"Because if you _do_ mean that, I can only say I'm--disappointed in

you!"

Now those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew how exceedingly sensitive

he was to those very words--"I'm disappointed in you." In his large and

varied experience they were invariably the prelude to the sack. And

he very distinctly did not want the sack--not, at any rate, until he

had got something better. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that, of

himself and Prang, he would be the more discreet editor, and so lifted

the question a whole plane morally higher. Perhaps, if it came to the

next worst, he was prepared to accept the foisting of Prang upon him

and to take his chance. Anyway, his face grew very serious, and he

reached for the footstool, drew it close up to Amory's couch, and sat

down on it.

"I wonder," he said slowly, looking earnestly at his folded hands,

"whether you'll put the worst interpretation on what I'm going to say."

Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper arm. Mr. Strong

resumed, more slowly still--

"It's this. We're risking things. Cosimo's risking his money, but he

may be risking more than that. And if he risks it, so do I."

Into Amory's pretty face had come the look of the woman who prefers men

to take risks rather than to talk about them.--"What do you risk?" she

asked in tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong.

"Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang's rather a whole-hogger.

It's what I said before--we want to use him, not have him use us."

"Oh?" said Amory with a faint smile. "And can't you manage Mr. Prang?"

There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong's mind what that meant.

"Because if you can't," it plainly meant, "I dare say we can find

somebody who can." Without any qualification whatever, she really

was beginning to be a little disappointed in him. She wondered how

Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba would have felt (had such a thing been

conceivable) if, when that carpet had been carried by the Nubians into

her lover's presence and unrolled, Antony or whatever his name was had

blushed and turned away, too faint-hearted to take the gift the gods

offered him? Risks! Weren't--Indian policies--worth a little risk?...

Besides, no doubt Cosimo was still with Britomart Belchamber....

She put her hands behind her head again and gave a little laugh.

Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it in the days when his

conversation had been slangier than it was now), it was up to him to

make good pretty quickly or else to say good-bye to the editorship of a

rag that at least did one bit of good in the world--paid Edgar Strong

six pounds a week. And if it must be done it must, that was all. Damn

it!...

Perhaps the satiny upper arm decided his next action. Once before

he had made its plaster facsimile serve his turn, and on the whole

he would have preferred to be able to do so again; but even had that

object not been out of reach on the wall and its original not eighteen

inches away at the sofa's end, three hundred pounds a year in jeopardy

must be made surer than that. He would have given a month's screw could

Cosimo have come in at that moment. He actually did give a quick glance

in the direction of the door....

But no help came.

Damn it----!

The next moment he had kissed that satiny surface, and then, gloomily,

and as one who shoulders the consequences of an inevitable act, stalked

away and stood in the favourite attitude of Mr. Brimby's heroes under

great stress of emotion--with his head deeply bowed and his back to

Amory. There fell between them a silence so profound that either became

conscious at the same moment of the soft falling of rain on the studio

roof.

Then, after a full minute and a half, Mr. Strong, still without

turning, walked to the table on which his hat lay. Always without

looking at Amory, he moved towards the door.

"Good-bye," he said over his shoulder.

There was the note of a knell in his tone. He meant good-bye for ever.

All in a moment Amory knew that on the morrow Cosimo would receive

Edgar Strong's formal resignation from the "Novum's" editorial chair,

and that, though Edgar might retain his hold on the paper until his

successor had been found, he would never come to The Witan any more. He

had called Mr. Prang a whole-hogger, but in Love he himself appeared to

be rather a whole-hogger. He had all but told her that to see her again

would mean ... she trembled. The alternative was not to see her again.

His whole action had said, more plainly than any words could say,

"After that--all or nothing."

She had not moved. She hardly knew the voice for her own in which she

said, still without turning her head, "Wait--a minute----"

Mr. Strong waited. The minute for which she asked passed.

"One moment----," murmured Amory again.

At last Mr. Strong lifted his head.--"There's nothing to say," he said.

"I'm thinking," Amory replied in a low voice.

"Really nothing."

"Give me just a minute----"

For she was thinking that it was her face, nothing else, that had

launched him thus to the door. For a moment she felt compunction for

its tyranny. Poor fellow, what else had he been able to do?... Yet

what, between letting him go and bidding him stay, was she herself to

do? At his touch her heart had swelled--been constricted--either--both;

even had she not known that she was a pretty woman, now at any rate she

had put it to the proof; and the chances seemed real enough that if he

turned and looked at her now, he must give a cry, stride across the

studio floor, and take her in his arms. Dared she provoke him?...

The moment she asked herself whether she dared she did dare. Not

to have dared would to have been to be inferior to those great and

splendid and reckless ones who had turned their eyes on their lovers

and had whispered, "Antony--Louis--I am here!" If she courted less

danger than she knew, her daring remained the same. And the room itself

backed her up. So many doctrines were enunciated in that studio, the

burden of one and all of which was "Why not?" The atmosphere was

charged with permissions ... perhaps for him too. He was at the door

now. It was only the turning of a key....

Amory's low-thrilled voice called his name across the studio.

"Edgar----"

But he had thought no less quickly than she. He had turned. Shrewdly

he guessed that she meant nothing; so much the better--damn it!

There was something female about Edgar Strong; he knew more about

some things than a young man ought to know; and in an instant he had

found the "line" he meant to take. It was the "line" of honour rooted

in dishonour--the "line" of Cosimo his friend--the "line" of black

treachery to the hand that fed him with muffins and anchovy paste--or,

failing these, the all-or-nothing "line."... But on the whole he would

a little rather go straight than not....

Nor did he hesitate. Amory had turned on the sofa. "Edgar!" she had

called softly again. He swung round. The savagery of his reply--there

seemed to Amory to be no other word to describe it--almost frightened

her.

"Do you know what you're doing?" he broke out. "Haven't you done enough

already? What do you suppose I'm made of?"

The moment he had said it he saw that he had made no mistake. It would

not be necessary to go the length of turning the key. He glared at her

for a moment; then he spoke again, less savagely, but no less curtly.

"You called me back to say something," he said. "What is it?"

Instinctively Amory had covered her face with her hands. It was

fearfully sweet and dangerous. Flattery could hardly have gone further

than that tortured cry, "What do you think I'm made of?" Her heart was

thumping--thump, thump, thump, thump. A lesser woman would have taken

refuge in evasions, but not she--not she, with Cosimo carrying on with

Britomart, and Dorothy Tasker no doubt whispering to her Otis or Wilbur

or whatever her American's name might be, and Stan perhaps deep in

an intrigue with his Spanish female at that very moment. No, she had

provoked him, and he had now every right to cry, not "Have you read

'_The Tragic Comedians_'?" but "Do you know what you're doing?"... And

he was speaking again now.

"Because," he was saying quietly, "if _that's_ it ... I must know. I

must have a little time. There will be things to settle. I don't quite

know how it happened; I suddenly saw you--and did it. Anyway, it's

done--or begun.... But I won't stab Cosimo in the back.... It will

have to be the Continent, I suppose. Paris. There's a little hotel I

know in the Boulevard Montparnasse. It's not very luxurious, but it's

cheap and fairly clean. Seven francs a day, but it would come rather

less for the two of us. And you wouldn't have to spend much on dress in

the Quartier. Or there's Montmartre. Or some of those out-of-the-way

seaside places. I should like to take you to the sea first, and then to

a town----"

He stopped, and began to walk up and down the studio.

Amory was suddenly pale. She had not thought of this. She had thought

that perhaps Mr. Strong might give a cry, rush across the studio, and

take her in his arms; but of this cold and almost passionless prevision

of details she had not dreamed. And yet that was magnificent too. Edgar

wasted no time in dalliance when there was planning to be done. There

would be time enough for softer delights when the whole of the Latin

Quarter lay spread out before them in indolent magnificence of bloom.

He was terrifying and superb. Such a man not manage Mr. Prang! Why,

here he was, ready to bear her off that very night at a word!

Paris--Montmartre--the Quartier!

It was Romance with a vengeance!

Then at a thought she grew paler still. The children! What about Corin

and Bonniebell? It didn't matter so much about Cosimo; it would serve

him right; but what about the twins? Were they also to be included in

the seven francs a day? And wouldn't it matter how they dressed either

in the Quarter? Or, did Edgar propose that they should be left behind

in Cosimo's keeping, with Britomart Belchamber for a stepmother?

Edgar had reached the door again now. He was not hurrying her, but

there was a look on his face that seemed to say that all she needed was

a hat and a rug for the steamer.

Such a very different thing from a carpet to roll round her----

She had risen unsteadily from the sofa. She crossed the floor and stood

before Edgar, looking earnestly up into his blue eyes. She moistened

her lips.

"What's happened----" she began in a whisper....

He interrupted her only to make the slightest of forbidding gestures

with his hand; her own hands had moved, as if she would have put them

on his shoulders. And she saw that he was quite right. At the touch

of her his control would certainly have broken down. She went on,

appealingly and almost voicelessly.

"What's happened--had to happen, hadn't it?" she whispered. "_You_

felt it sweeping us away too--didn't you?... But need we say any more

about it to-night?... I want to think, Edgar. We must both think.

There's--there's a lot to think about--and talk over. We mustn't be too

rash. It _would_ be rash, wouldn't it? Look at me, Edgar----"

"Oh--I must go----," he said with an impatience that he had not to

assume.

"But look at me," she begged. "I shan't sleep a wink to-night. I shall

think about it all night. It will be lovely--but torturing--dear!--But

you'll sleep, I expect...." She pouted this last.

"I'm going away," he announced abruptly.

"Oh!" she cried, startled.... "But you'll come in to-morrow?"

"I shall go away for a few days. Perhaps longer."

"But--but--we haven't settled about the paper!----"

He was grim.--"You don't suppose I can think about the paper _now_, do

you?"

"No, no--of course not--but it _must_ be done to-day, Edgar! Or

to-morrow at the very latest!... Can't we _try_ to put this on one

side, just for an hour?"

He shook his head before the impossibility....

And that was how it came about that the Indian policy of the "Novum"

was left in the hands of Mr. Suwarree Prang.

PART II

I

THE PIGEON PAIR

Amory had been at a great deal of trouble to gather all the opinions

she could get about the education of her twins, Corin and Bonniebell;

but it was not true, as an unkind visitor who had been once only to

The Witan had said, that they were everybody's children. Just because

Amory had taken Katie Deedes' advice and had had their hair chopped

off short at the nape like a Boutet de Monvel drawing--and had not

disdained to accept the spelling-books which Dickie Lemesurier had

given them (books in which the difficult abstraction of the letter

"A" was visualized for their young eyes as "Little Brown Brother,"

"B" as "Tabby Cat," and so on)--and had listened to Mr. Brimby when

he had said what a good thing it would be to devote an hour on Friday

afternoons to the study of Altruism and Camaraderie--and, in a word,

had not been too proud and egotistical to make use of a good suggestion

wherever she found it--because she had done these things, it did not at

all follow that she had shirked her duties. If she did not influence

them directly, having other things to do, she influenced those who

did influence them, which came to the same thing. She influenced the

Wyrons, for example, and nobody could say that the Wyrons had not made

a particularly careful study of children. They had, and Walter had

founded at least two Lectures directly on the twins and their education.

But the Wyrons, who had submitted to the indignity of marriage for the

sake of the race, laboured and lectured under an obvious disadvantage;

they had no children of their own. And so Amory had to fill up the gaps

in their experience for herself. Still, it was wonderful how frequently

the Wyron's excogitations and the things Amory had found out for

herself coincided. They were in absolute accord, for example, about the

promise of the immediate future and the hope that lay in the generation

to come. The Past was dead and damned; the Present at best was an

ignoble compromise; but the Morrow was to be bright and shining.

"Walter and I," Laura sometimes said sadly, "aren't anything to brag

about. There is much of the base in us. Our lives aren't what they

should be. We're in the grip of inherited instincts too. We strive for

the best, but the worst's sometimes too much for us. It's like Moses

seeing the Promised Land from afar. We're just in the position of

Moses. But these young Aarons----"

Amory thought that very modest and dignified of poor old Laura. She

frequently thought of her as 'poor old Laura,' but of course she didn't

mean her actual age, which was only two years more than Amory's own.

And that was very good, if a little sad, about Moses. The Wyrons did

look forth over a Canaan they weren't very likely ever to tread.

Lately--that is to say since that secret and tremendous moment between

herself and Edgar Strong in the studio--Amory had fallen into the habit

of musing long over the sight of the twins at lessons, at play, or at

that more enlightened combination that makes lessons play and play

lessons. Sometimes Mr. Brimby, the novelist, had come up to her as she

had mused and had asked her what she was thinking about.

"Your little Pigeon Pair, eh?" he had said. "Ah, the sweetness; ah,

lucky mother! Grey books have to be the children of some of us; ah, me;

yours is a pleasanter path!"

Then he would fondle the little round topiary trees of their heads.

Amory was almost as sorry for Mr. Brimby as she was for Laura. His

books sold only moderately well, and she had more than once thought

she would like the "Novum" to serialize one of them--the one with the

little boy rather like Corin and the little girl rather like Bonniebell

in it--if Mr. Brimby didn't want too much money for it.

Edgar Strong, on the other hand, never fondled the children, and

Amory's heart told her why. How could he be expected to do anything

but hate those poor innocents who had come between him and his desire?

He must have realized that only the twins had frustrated that flight

to Paris. Of course he was polite about it; he said that he was not

very fond of children at all; but Amory was not deceived. She was, in

a way, flattered that he did not fondle them. It was such an eloquent

abstention. But it would have been more eloquent still had he come to

the Witan and not-fondled them oftener.

Therefore it was that Amory looked on Corin and Bonniebell as the

precious repositories of her own relinquished joys, and heirs to a

happier life than she herself had known. She dreamed over them and

their future. Laura Wyron was quite right: by the time they had grown

up the fogs of cowardice and prejudice and self-seeking would have

disappeared for ever. Perhaps even by that time, as in Heaven, there

would be no more marrying nor giving in marriage. Things would have

adjusted themselves out of the rarer and sweeter and more liberal

atmosphere. Corin, grown to be twenty, would one day meet with some

mite who was still in her cradle or not yet born, and the two would

look at one another with amazement and delight, and the Ideal Love

would be born in their eyes, and Corin would recite a few of those

brave and pure and unashamed things out of "Leaves of Grass" to her,

and--well, and there they would be.... And Bonniebell, too, would

do the same, on a Spring morning very likely, simply clad, cool and

without immodest blushes--yes, she too would see somebody, and she

would say, gladly and simply, "I am here" (for there would be no

reason, then, why she should wait for the youth to speak first),

and--well, and there they would be too. And it would be Exogamy, or

whatever the word was that Walter used. Either would go forth from

the family on the appointed day--or perhaps only Corin would go, and

Bonniebell remain behind--but anyway, one, if not both of them would

go forth, and rove the morning-flushed hills, alone and free and

singing and on the look-out for somebody, and they would look just like

pictures of young Greeks, and nobody would laugh, as they did at the

poor lady who walked in Greek robes down the Strand....

And Amory herself? Alas! She would be left with the tribe. She would

be old then--say fifty-something on the eleventh of October. And Edgar

would be old too. They would have to recognize that _their_ youth had

been spent in the night-time of ignorance and suspicion. _They_ would

only be able to think of those spirited young things quoting "Leaves of

Grass" to one another and wondering what had happened to them....

No wonder Amory was sometimes pensive....

Mr. Wilkinson, the Labour Member, had been to all intents and purposes

asked not to fondle the twins. He was a tall spare man with a great

bush of pepper-and-salt hair, a Yorkshire accent, and an eye that

hardly rested on any single object long enough to get more than a

fleeting visual impression of it. He wrote on the first and third weeks

of the month the "Novum's" column of "Military Notes," and on the

alternate weeks filled the same column with officially inspired "Trade

Union Echoes." Between these two activities of Mr. Wilkinson's there

was a connexion. He, in common with everybody else at the Witan, was

loud in decrying the jobberies and vested interests of Departments,

with the War Office placed foremost in the shock of his wrath. But

the Trade Unions were another matter, and never a billet-creating

measure came before Parliament but he strove vehemently to have its

wheels cogged in with those of the existing Trade Union machine. That

is to say, that while in theory he was for democratic competitive

examination, in practice he found something to be said for jobbery,

could the fitting Trade Unionist but be found. He was, moreover, a

firebrand by temperament, and this is where the connexion between

the "Military Matters" and the "Echoes" appears. Trade Unionists he

declared, ought to learn to shoot. The other side, with their cant

about "Law and Order," never hesitated to call out the regular troops;

therefore, until the Army itself should have been won over by means of

the leaflets that were disseminated for the purpose, they ought in the

event of a strike to be prepared to throw up barricades, to shoot from

cellar-windows, and to throw down chimney-stacks from the house-tops.

Capitalist-employed troops would not destroy more property than they

need; in a crooked-streeted town the advantage of long-range fire

would be gone; and Mr. Wilkinson was prepared to demonstrate that a

town defended on his lines could hold out, in the event of Industrial

War pushed to an extreme, until it was starved into surrender.--These

arguments, by the way, had impressed Mr. Prang profoundly.

Now (to come back to the twins) on Corin's fourth birthday Mr.

Wilkinson, moved by these considerations, had given him a wooden gun,

and in doing so had committed a double error in Amory's eyes. His first

mistake had been to suppose that even if, under the present lamentable

(but nevertheless existing) conditions of militarism, Corin should ever

become a soldier at all, he would be the uncommissioned bearer of a gun

and not the commissioned bearer of a sword. And his second mistake had

been like unto it, namely, to think that, in the case of a proletariat

uprising say in Cardiff or York, Corin would not similarly have held

some post of weight and responsibility on the other side. Corin shoot

up through the street-trap of a coal-hole or pot somebody from behind a

chimney-stack!... But Amory admitted that it must be difficult for Mr.

Wilkinson to shake off the effects of his upbringing. That upbringing

had been very different from, say, Mr. Brimby's. Mr. Brimby had been at

Oxford, and in nobly stooping to help the oppressed brought as it were

a fragrant whiff of graciousness and culture with him. Mr. Wilkinson

was a nobody. He came from the stratum of need, and, when it came to

fondling the twins, must not think himself a Brimby.... Therefore,

Amory had had to ask him to take the gun back (a deprivation which had

provoked a mighty outcry from Corin), and to give him, if he must give

him something, a Nature book instead.

Katie Deedes and Dickie Lemesurier were both permitted to fondle the

twins, though in somewhat different measure. This difference of measure

did not mean that either Katie or Dickie suffered from a chronic cold

that the twins might have contracted. Here again the case was almost

as complicated as the case of Mr. Wilkinson. Cases had a way of being

complicated at The Witan. It was this:--

Both of these ladies, as Amory had assured Mr. Brimby, were "quite all

right." She meant socially. No such difference was to be found between

them in this respect as that which yawned between Mr. Brimby and Mr.

Wilkinson. Indeed as far as Dickie was concerned, Amory had given a

little apologetic laugh at the idea of her having to place and appraise

a Lemesurier of Bath at all. The two girls had equally to work for

their living, and--but perhaps it was here that the difference came in.

There are jobs and jobs. It was a question of tone. Dickie, running

the Suffrage Book Shop, enjoyed something of the glamour of Letters;

but Katie, as manageress of the Eden Restaurant, was, after all,

only a caterer. It was not Amory's fault that Romance had pronounced

arbitrarily and a little harshly on the relative dignity of these

occupations. She could not help it that books are books and superior,

while baked beans are only baked beans, necessary, but not to be talked

about. If Dickie had, by her calling, a shade more consideration than

was strictly her due, while Katie, by hers, was slightly shorn of

something to which she would otherwise have been entitled, well, it was

not Amory who had arranged it so.

But between books and baked beans the twins did not hesitate for an

instant. They saw from no point of view but their unromantic own.

Dickie, overhauling the remainder stock at the Suffrage Shop, was able

to bring them a book from time to time; but Katie, whose days were

spent in a really interesting place full of things to eat, brought them

sweetened Proteids, and cold roasted chestnuts, and sugared Filbertine,

and sometimes a pot of the Eden Non-Neurotic Honey for tea. And because

the flesh was stronger in them than Amory thought it ought to be (at

any rate until the day should come when they must leave the tribe with

a copy of "Leaves of Grass" in their hands), they adored Katie and

thought very much less of Dickie.

Now this belly-guided preference was a thing to be checked in them;

and one day Amory had asked Katie (quite nicely and gently) whether

she would mind _not_ bringing the children things that spoiled their

appetites, not to speak of their tempers when they clamoured for these

comestibles at times when they were not to be had. Then, one afternoon

in the nursery, Amory actually had to repeat her request. Half an hour

later, when the children had been brought down into the studio for

their after-tea hour, she learned that Katie had left the house. It was

Corin himself who informed her of this.

"Auntie Katie was crying," he said. "About the vertisements," he added.

"_Ad_-vertisements, dear," Amory corrected him. "Say _ad_-vertisements,

not vertisements."

"_Ad_-vertisements," said Corin sulkily. "But--" and he cheered up

again,"--she _was_, mother."

"Nonsense," said Amory. "And you're not to say 'Auntie' to Katie. It

isn't true. Your Auntie is your father's or your mother's sister, and

we haven't any.... And now you've played enough. Say good-night, both

of you, and take Auntie Dickie's book, and ask Miss Belchamber to read

you the story of the Robin and her Darling Eggs, and then you must have

your baths and go to bed."

"I want the tale about Robin Hood, that Mr. Strong once told me," Corin

demurred.

"No, you must have the one about the dear Dickie Bird, who had a wing

shot off by a cruel man one day, and had to hide her head under the

other one, so that when her Darling Eggs were hatched out the poor

little birds were all born with crooked necks--you remember what I

told you about the fortress in a horrible War, when the poor mothers

were all so frightened that all the little boys and girls were born

lame--it's the same thing--"

"Were there guns, that went bang?" Corin demanded. He had forgotten

that the story contained this really interesting detail.

"Yes."

"Great big ones?" Corin's eyes were wide open.

"Very big. It was very cruel and anti-social."

But Corin's momentary interest waned again.--"I want Robin Hood," he

said sullenly.

"Now you're being naughty, and I shall have to send you to bed without

any nice reading at all."

"I want Robin Hood." The tone was ominous....

"And I want some chestnuts," Bonniebell chimed in, her face also

puckering....

And so Amory, who had threatened to send them bookless to bed, must

keep her word. It is very wrong to tell falsehoods to children. She

dismissed them, and they went draggingly out, their Boutet de Monvel

hair and fringed _éponge_ costumes giving them the appearance of two

luckless pawns that had been pushed off the board in some game of chess

they did not understand.

Amory thought it very foolish of Katie to take on in this way. She

might have known that her advertisements had not been refused without

good reason. Amory had fully intended to explain all about it to

Katie, but she really had had so many things to do. Nor ought it to

have needed explaining. Surely Katie could have seen for herself that

Dickie's Bookshop List, with its names of Finot and Forel and Mill and

the rest, was a distinction and an embellishment to the paper, while

her own Filbertines and Protolaxatives were a positive disfigurement.

The proper place for these was, not in the columns of the "Novum,"

but in the "Please take One" box at the Eden's door.... But if Katie

intended to sulk and cry about it, well, so much the worse.... (To jump

forward a little: Katie did elect to sulk. Or rather, she did worse.

She was so ill-advised as to go behind Amory's back and to speak to

Cosimo himself about the advertisements. With that Katie's goose--or

perhaps one should say her Anserine--was cooked. Amory did not allow

that kind of thing. She certainly did not intend to explain anything

after that. It was plain as a pikestaff that Katie was jealous of

Dickie. Amory was bitterly disappointed in Katie. Of course she would

not forbid her the house; she was still free to come to The Witan

whenever she liked; but--somehow Katie only came once more. She found

herself treated so very, very kindly.... So she gulped down a sob,

fondled the twins once more, and left.)

Miss Britomart Belchamber saw enough of the twins not to wish to fondle

them very much. Amory was not yet absolutely sure that she fondled

Cosimo instead, but she was welcome to do so if she could find any

satisfaction in it. Cosimo fondled the twins to a foolish extreme. Mr.

Prang could never get near enough to them to fondle them. Both Corin

and Bonniebell displayed a most powerful interest in Mr. Prang, and

would have stood stock-still gazing at him for an hour had they been

permitted; but the moment he approached them they fled bellowing.

And in addition to these various fondlings there were casual fondlings

from time to time whenever the more favoured of the "Novum's"

contributors were asked to tea.

But the Wyrons remained, so to speak, the _ex-officio_ fondlers, and

perhaps childless Laura felt a real need to fondle at her heart. It

was she who first asked Amory whether she hadn't noticed that, while

Mr. Brimby and Dickie frequently fondled the twins separately, more

frequently still they did so together.

"No!" Amory exclaimed. "I hadn't noticed!"

"Walter thinks they would be a perfect pair," Laura mused....

II

THE 'VERT

Stan saw very little in the scheme that Dorothy darkly meditated

against her aunt. He seldom saw much in Dorothy's schemes. Perhaps

she did not make quite enough fuss about them, but went on so quietly

maturing them that her income seemed to be merely something that

happened in some not fully explained but quite natural order of events.

Stan thought it rather a lucky chance that the money usually had come

in when it was wanted, that was all.

But of his own job he had quite a different conception. _That_ took

thought. This appeared plainly now that he was able to dismiss his own

past failures with a light and almost derisive laugh.

"I don't know whatever made me think there was anything in them," he

said complacently one night within about ten days of Christmas. He had

put on his slippers and his pipe, and was drowsily stretching himself

after a particularly hard "comic film" day, in the course of which he

had been required to fall through a number of ceilings, bringing the

furniture with him in his downward flight. He had come home, had had a

shampoo and a hot bath, and the last traces of the bags of flour and

the sacks of soot had disappeared.

"I don't think now they'd ever have come to very much."

"Hush a moment," said Dorothy, listening, her needle arrested half-way

through the heel of one of his socks.... "All right. I thought I heard

him--Yes?"

She could face young girls now. The third Bit had turned out to be yet

another boy.

"I mean," Stan burbled comfortably, "there wouldn't have been the

money in them I thought there would. Now take those salmon-flies, Dot.

Of course I can tie 'em in a way. But what I mean is, it's a limited

market. Not like the boot-trade, I mean, or soap, or films. Everybody

wears boots and sees films. There's more scope, more demand. But

everybody doesn't carry a salmon-rod. Comparatively few people do. And

the same with big-game shooting. Or deer-stalking. Everybody can't

afford 'em."

"No, dear," said Dorothy, her eyes downcast.

"Then there was Fortune and Brooks," Stan continued with a great air of

discovery. "_I_ see their game now. You see it, too, don't you?--They

just wanted orders. New accounts. That's what they wanted. If I could

have put 'em on to a chap who'd have spent say five hundred a year on

Chutney and things--well, what I mean is, where would they be without

customers like that?"

"Nowhere, dear," said the dutiful Dorothy.

"Exactly. Nowhere. That's what I was leading up to. They wouldn't be

anywhere. They just wanted to be put on to these things. And it's just

struck me how _I_ should have looked going out to dinner somewhere,

strange house very likely, and I'd said to somebody I'd perhaps met for

the first time, 'Don't think much of these salted almonds; our hostess

ought to try the F. and B. Brand, a Hundred Gold Medals, and see that

the blessed coupon isn't broken.'--Eh? See what I mean?"

"I was never very keen on the idea," Dorothy admitted gravely.

"No, and I'm blessed if I see why I was, now," Stan conceded

cheerfully....

She loved this change in him which a real job with real money had

brought about. Poor old darling, she thought, it must have been pretty

rotten for him before, borrowing half-crowns from her in the morning,

which he would spend with an affected indifference on drinks and cab

fares in the evening. And he _should_ speak with a new authority if he

wished. Not for worlds would she have smiled at His Impudence's new

air of being master in his own house. He _should_ be a Sultan if he

liked--provided he didn't want more than one wife.

Moreover, his bringing in of money had been a relief so great that

even yet she had hardly got out of the habit of reckoning on her own

earnings only. It had taken her weeks to realize that now the twopences

came in just a little more quickly than they went out, and that she

could actually afford herself the luxury of keeping Mr. Miller waiting

for his Idea, or even of not giving it to him at all. She really

had no Idea to give him. She was entirely wrapped up now in her plot

against Lady Tasker.

That plot, summarized from several conversations with Stan, was as

follows:--

"You see, there's the Brear, with all that land, Aunt Grace's very

own. The Cromwell Gardens lease is up in June, and it's all very well

for auntie to say she doesn't hate London, but she does. She spends

half a rent, with one and another of them, in travelling backwards and

forwards, and she's getting old, too.--Then there's us. We can't go on

living here, and the Tonys will be home just as Tim's leave's up, and

they're sure to leave their Bits behind. Very well. Now the Tims and

the Tonys can't afford to pay much, but they can afford something, and

I think they ought to pay. They're sure to want those boys to go into

the Army, and they'd _have_ to pay for that anyway.--So there ought to

be a properly-managed Hostel sort of place, paying its way, and a fund

accumulating, and Aunt Gracie at the head of it, poor old dear, but

somebody to do the work for her.--I don't see why we shouldn't clear

out that old billiard-table that nobody ever uses, and throw that and

the gun-room into one, and make that the schoolroom, and have a proper

person down--a sort of private preparatory school for Sandhurst and

Woolwich, and the money put by to help with the fees afterwards. It

would be much easier if we all clubbed together. And I should jolly

well make Aunt Eliza give us at least a thousand pounds--selfish old

thing."

"Frightful rows there'd be," Stan usually commented, thinking less

of Dorothy's plan than of his own last trick-tumble. "Like putting

brothers into the same regiment; always a mistake. And we're all rather

good at rows you know."

"Well, they're our _own_ rows anyway. We keep 'em to ourselves. And we

_do_ all mean pretty much the same thing when all's said. I'm going to

work it all out anyway, and then tackle Aunt Grace.... _I_ shall manage

it, of course."

She did not add that her Lennards and Taskers and Woodgates would

sink their private squabbles precisely in proportion as the outside

attacks on their common belief rendered a closing-up of the ranks

necessary. But she _had_ been to The Witan and had kept her eyes open

there, and knew that there were plenty of other Witans about. If stupid

Parliament, with its votes and what not, couldn't think of anything to

do about it, that was no reason why she should not do something, and

make stingy old Aunt Eliza pay for the training of her Bits into the

bargain.

She had not seen Amory since that day when the episode of the winter

woollies had made her angry, for, though Amory had called once at

the Nursing Home soon after the birth of the third Bit, Dorothy had

really not felt equal to the hair-raising tale of the twins all over

again, and had sent a message down to her by the nurse. There was this

difference between this tragic recital of Amory's and the fervour with

which Ruth Mossop always hugged to her breast the thought of the worst

that could happen--that Ruth _had_ known brutality, and so might be

forgiven for getting "a little of her own back"; but Amory had known

one hardish twelvemonths perhaps, a good many years ago and when she

had been quite able to bear it, and had since magnified that period of

discomfort by a good many diameters. Amory, Dorothy considered, didn't

really know she was born. She was unfeignedly sorry for that. Whatever

measure of contempt was in her she kept for Cosimo.

For she considered that Cosimo was at the bottom of all the trouble.

If Stan, at his most impecunious and happy-go-lucky, could still

stalk about the house saying "Dot, I won't have this," or "Look here,

Dorothy, that has got to stop," it seemed to her that Cosimo, with

never a care on his mind that was not his own manufacture, might

several times have prevented Amory from making rather a fool of

herself. But it seemed to Dorothy that kind of man was springing up

all over the place nowadays. Mr. Brimby was another of them. Dorothy

had read one of Mr. Brimby's books--"_The Source_," and hadn't liked

it. She had thought it terribly dismal. In it a pretty and rich young

widow, who might almost have been Amory herself, went slumming, and

spent a lot of money in starting a sort of Model Pawn Shop, and by and

by there came a mysterious falling-off in her income, and she went

to see her lawyer about it, and learned, of course, that her source

of income was that very slum in which she had stooped to labour so

angelically.... Dorothy didn't know very much about pawnshops, but then

she didn't believe that Mr. Brimby did either; and if her interest in

them ever should become really keen, she didn't think she should go

to Oxford for information about them. And Mr. Brimby himself seemed

to feel this "crab," as Stan would have called it, for after "_The

Source_" he had written a Preface for a book by a real and genuine

tramp.... And it had been Amory who had recommended "_The Source_" to

Dorothy. She had said that it just showed, that with vision and thought

and heart and no previous experience ("no prejudice" had been her exact

words), there need be none of these dreadful grimy establishments,

with their horrible underbred assistants who refused a poor woman

half a crown on her mattress and made a joke about it, but airy and

hygienic rooms instead, with rounded corners so that the dust could be

swept away in two minutes (leaving a balance of at least twenty-eight

minutes in which the sweeper might improve himself), and really

courtly-mannered attendants, full of half crowns and pity and Oxford

voice, who would give everybody twice as much as they asked for and a

tear into the bargain.

And Amory knew just as much about real pawnshops as did Dorothy and Mr.

Brimby.

For the life of her Dorothy could not make out what all these people

were up to.

And--though this was better now that Stan was earning--the thought

of the money that was being squandered at The Witan had sometimes

made her ready to cry. For at the Nursing Home she had had one other

visitor, and this visitor had opened her eyes to the appalling rate at

which Cosimo's inheritance must be going. This visitor had been Katie

Deedes. Katie too, was an old fellow-student of Dorothy's; it had

not taken Dorothy long to see that Katie was full of a grievance; and

then it had all come out. There had been some sort of a row. It had

been simply and solely because Katie ran a Food Shop. Amory thought

that _infra dig_. And just because Katie had given the children a few

chestnuts Amory had practically said so.

"_I_ shan't go there again," Katie had said, trying on Dorothy's

account to keep down her tears. "_I_ didn't marry a man with lots of

money, and turn him round my finger, and make him write my _Life and

Works_, and then snub my old friends! And none of the people who go

there are really what she thinks they are. _She_ thinks they go to see

_her_, but Mr. Brimby only goes because Dickie does, and because he

wants to sell the "Novum" something or other, and Mr. Strong of course

has to go, and Mr. Wilkinson goes because he wants Cosimo to stop the

"Novum" and start something else with him as editor, and Laura goes

because they get things printed about Walter's Lectures, and I don't

know what those Indians are doing there at all, and anyway _I've_ been

for the last time! I'm just as good as she is, and I should like to

come and see you instead, Dorothy, and of course I won't bring your

babies chestnuts if you don't want.... But I'm frightfully selfish; I'm

tiring you out.... May an A B C girl come to see you?"

And Katie had since been. There is no social reason why the manager of

a Vegetarian Restaurant may not visit the house of a film acrobat.

As it happened, Katie came in that very night when the weary

breadwinner was painstakingly explaining to his thoughtful spouse his

reasons for doubting whether he would ever have got very rich had he

remained one of Fortune and Brooks' well-dressed drummers. Katie had

a round face and puzzled but affectionate eyes, and Stan was just

beginning to school his own eyes not to rest with too open an interest

on her Greenaway frocks and pancake hats. Katie for her part was

intensely self-conscious in Stan's presence. She felt that when he

wasn't looking at her clothes he was, expressly, _not_-looking at them,

and that was worse.... But she couldn't have worn a hobble skirt and

an aigrette at the "Eden."... Stan had told Dorothy that when he knew

Katie better he intended to get out of her the remaining gruesome and

Blue-Beard's-Chamber details which the hoof and the forequarter seemed

to him to promise.

"Poor little darlings!" Dorothy exclaimed compassionately by and

by--Katie had been relating some anecdote in which Corin and Bonniebell

had played a part. "I _do_ think it's wrong to dress children

ridiculously! The other day _I_ saw a little girl--she must have been

quite six or seven--and _she'd_ knickers like a little boy, and long

golden hair all down her back! What _is_ the good of pretending that

girls are boys?"

"Awful rot," Stan remarked with a mighty stretch. "I say, I'm off to

bed; I shall be yawning in Miss Deedes' face if I don't. Is there any

arnica in the house, Dot?... Good night----"

"Good night," said Katie; and as the door closed behind the master of

the house she settled more comfortably in her chair. "Now that he's

stopped not-looking at me we can have a good talk," her gesture seemed

to say; "how _does_ he expect I can get any other clothes till I've

saved the money?"...

They did talk. They talked of the old days at the McGrath, and who'd

married who, and who hadn't married who after all, and, in this

connection, of Laura Beamish and Walter Wyron, whom they had both

known.... And it just showed how little glory and fame were really

worth in the world. For Dorothy, who had been living in London all

this time, had not heard as much as a whisper of that memorable revolt

of the Wyrons against the Marriage Service, and, though she did know

vaguely that Walter lectured, had not the ghost of an idea of what his

lectures were about. She had been too busy minding her own petty and

private and selfish affairs. Katie couldn't believe it. She thought

Dorothy was joking.

"You've never heard of Walter's Lecture on '_Heads or Tails in the

Trying Time_,' nor his '_Address on the Chromosome_'?" she gasped....

"No; do tell me. What is a Chromosome?"

"A Chromosome? Why, it's a--it's a--well, you know when you've a

cell--or a nucleus--or a gland or something--but it isn't a gland--it's

the--but you _do_ astonish me, Dorothy!"

"But surely you're joking about Walter and Laura?" Dorothy exclaimed in

her turn.

"Indeed I'm not! Why, I thought _every_body knew!..."

"(It's all right--he won't come in again). But _why_ did they pretend

not to be married?" Dorothy asked in amazement.

"I don't know--I mean I forget for the moment--it seemed perfectly

clear the way Walter explained it--you ought to go and hear him----"

"But what difference could being married--I mean not being

married--make?"

"Ah!" said Katie, with satisfaction at having found her bearings again.

"Walter's got a whole Lecture on that. It always thrills everybody.

Amory thinks it's almost his best--after the '_Synthetic Protoplasm_'

one, of course--that's admitted by everybody to be quite _the_ best!"[1]

[1] I have been charged with the invention of these facetiæ.

Here is the Synthetic Protoplasm idea:--

"The dream of creating offspring without the concurrence

of woman has always haunted the imagination of the human

race. The miraculous advances which the chemical synthesis

has accomplished in these latter days seem to justify the

boldest hopes, but we are still far from the creation of

living protoplasm. The experiences of Loeb or of Delage are

undoubtedly very confounding. But in order to produce life

these scientists were obliged, nevertheless, to have recourse

to beings already organized. Thousands of centuries undoubtedly

separate us from any possibility of realizing the most

magnificent and most disconcerting dream ever engendered in

the human brain. In the meantime, as the Torch of Life must be

transmitted to the succeeding generations, woman will continue

gloriously to fulfil her character of mother."--"Problems of

the Sexes," Jean Finot; 12_s._ 6_d._ net; p. 352.

Lightly worked up and chattily treated, this theme, as Katie

said, drew quiet smiles of appreciation from every cultured

audience which Walter addressed.

O. O.

"Proto ... but I thought those were a kind of oats!" said poor Dorothy,

utterly bewildered.

"Oats!" cried Katie in a sort of whispered shriek. "Why, it's--it's--but

I don't know even how to _begin_ to explain it! Do you mean to say you

haven't read about these things?"

"No," murmured Dorothy, abashed.

"Not Monod, nor Ellen Key, nor Sebastian Faure, nor Malom!----"

"N-o." Dorothy felt horribly ashamed of herself.

"But--but--those _lovely_ little boys of yours!----"

She gazed wide-eyed at the disconcerted Dorothy....

* * * * *

It was the humiliating truth: Dorothy had never heard of the existence

of a single one of these writers and leaders of thought. She had borne

Noel in black ignorance of what they had had to say about the Torch of

the Race, and Jackie and the third Bit for all the world as if they had

never set pen to paper. Monod had not held her hand, nor Faure been

asked for his imprimatur; Key had hymned Love superfluously, and the

Synthesists, equally superfluously, its supersession. For a moment she

anxiously hoped that it was all right, and then, as Katie went on, the

marvel of it all overwhelmed her again.

The dictum that desirable children could be born only _out_ of

wedlock! That stupendous suggestion of Walter's to millionaires who

did not know what to do with their money, that, for the improvement

of the Race, they should endow with a thousand pounds every poor

little come-by-chance that weighed eleven pounds at birth! That other

proposal, that twenty years could straightway be added to woman's

life and beauty by a mere influencing of her thoughts about the

Chromosome--whatever it was!... Poor uncultured Dorothy did not know

whether she was on her head or her heels. She had never dreamed, until

Katie told her, that before marrying Stan she ought to have gone to the

insect-world, or to the world of molluscs and crustacæ, to learn how

_they_ maintained the integrity of their own highest type--whether by

pulling their wings off after the flight, or devouring their husbands,

or--or--or what! She had heard of the moral lessons that can be learned

of the ant, but it had not struck her that she and Stan might, by means

of a little more study and care, have lifted up the economy of their

little flat to the level of the marvellously-organized domesticity you

see when you kick over a stone.

But Katie's hesitations and great gaps of confessed ignorance gave her

a little more courage. Katie was at pains to explain that all that she

herself knew about it all was that these things were what they _said_,

and Dorothy must go to Walter and the books for the rest.

"They're all very expensive books, and I may not really have understood

them," she said wistfully. "They must be awfully deep and so on if

they're so dear--twelve and fifteen and twenty shillings! But I did try

so hard, and sometimes it seemed quite reasonable and plain, especially

when the print was nice and big.... Close print always seems so

frightfully learned.... And I know I've explained it badly; I haven't

Walter's gift of putting things. Amory has, of course. When she and

Walter have a really good set-to it makes one feel positively _abject_

about one's ignorance. I doubt if Cosimo can always _quite_ follow

them, and I'm quite sure Mr. Strong can't--I know he's only hedging

when he says, 'Ah, yes, have you read Fabre on the Ant or Maeterlinck

on the Bee?'--and I believe he just glances at the review books that

come to the "Novum" instead of really studying them, as Walter and

Amory do. And it's very funny about Mr. Strong," she rattled artlessly

on. "Sometimes I've thought that it isn't just that Amory doesn't know

what they all go to The Witan for, but that everybody else _does_ know.

They all seem to want it to themselves. Of course if Mr. Wilkinson

wants Cosimo to stop the "Novum," and to start something else for him,

it's only natural that he and Mr. Strong should be a little jealous

of one another; but Dickie and Mr. Brimby are jealous of the Wyrons,

and I suppose I was jealous of Dickie too--and everybody seems jealous

of everybody, and Amory of Cosimo, and Amory's always interfering

between Britomart Belchamber and the twins' lessons, and that _can't_

be a very good thing for discipline, but Britomart's like me in being

rather stupid, and I wish I'd her screw--she gets nearly twice as much

as I do. The only people who don't seem jealous of anybody are those

Indians. They're _always_ affable. I suppose it's rather nice for them,

so far from their own country, having a house to go to...."

But here Dorothy's humility and self-distrust ended. The moment it

came to India, she shared her aunt's deplorable narrow-mindedness and

propensity to make a virtue of her intolerance. It seemed to her that

it was one thing for the Tims and Tonys, in India, to have to employ a

native interpreter (and to be pretty severely rooked by him) when they

had their Urdu Higher Proficiency to pass, but quite another for these

same natives to come over here, and to learn our law and language, and

our excellent national professions, and our somewhat mitigated ways of

living up to them. No, she was not one whit better than her hide-bound

old aunt, and she did not intend to have too practical a brotherly love

taught at that meditated foundation at the Brear....

She became silent as she thought of that foundation again, and

presently Katie rose.

"I suppose I couldn't see him in his cot?" she said wistfully.

Dorothy smiled. Katie meant the youngest Bit.

"Well ... I'm afraid he's in _our_ room, you see...," she said.

Katie had been thinking of The Witan. She coloured a little.

"Sorry," she murmured; and then she broke out emphatically.

"I _like_ coming to see you, Dorothy. I don't feel so--such a _fool_

when I'm with you.... And do tell me where you got that frock, and

how much it was; I _must_ have another one as soon as I can raise

the money! I do wish I could make what Britomart Belchamber makes!

Two-twenty a year! Think of that!... But of course Prince Eadmond

teachers do come expensive----"

More and more it was coming to seem to Dorothy that the whole thing was

terrifically expensive.

III

THE IMPERIALISTS

They were great believers in the Empire, they on the "Novum." Indeed,

they were the only true Imperialists, since they recognized that ideas,

and not actions, were by far and away the most potent instruments in

the betterment of mankind. Everybody who was anybody knew that, a

mere sporadic outbreak here and there (such as the one in Manchuria)

notwithstanding, war had been virtually impossible ever since the

publication of M. Bloch's book declaring it to be so. What, they

asked, _was_ war, more than an unfortunate miscalculation on the part

of the lamb that happened to lie down with the lion? And what made

the miscalculation so unfortunate? Why, surely the possession by the

lion of teeth and claws. Draw his teeth and cut his claws, and the two

would slumber peacefully together. So with the British lion. He only

fought because he had things ready to fight with. Philosophically, his

aggressions were not much more than a kind of sportive manifestation

of the joy of life, that happened, rather inconsequentially, to take

the form of the joy of death. Take away the ships and guns, then, and

everything would be all right.

These views on the Real Empire were in no way incompatible with Mr.

Wilkinson's desire to see all Trade Unionists armed. For a war at

home, about shorter hours and higher wages, would at any rate be a war

between equals in race. It was wars between unequals that had made of

the Old Empire so hideous a thing. Amory herself had more than once

stated this rather well.

"I call it cowardice," she had said. "Every fine instinct in us tells

us to stick up for the weaker side. It makes my blood boil! Think

of those gentle and dusky millions, all being, to put it in a word,

bullied--just bullied! We all know the kind of man who goes abroad--the

conventional 'adventurer.' (I like 'adventurer!') He's just a common

bully. He drinks disgustingly, and swears, and kicks people who don't

get out of his way--but he's always careful to have a revolver in his

pocket for fear they should hit him back!... And he makes a tremendous

fuss about his white women, but when it comes to their black or brown

ones ... well, anyway, _I_ think he's a brute, and we want a better

class of man than _that_ for our readers!"

And that was briefly why, at the "Novum," they tried to reduce

armaments at home, and gave at least moral encouragement to the other

side whenever there was a dust-up abroad.

But it had been some time ago that Amory had said all this, and her

attitude since then had undergone certain changes. One of these changes

had been her acquisition of the Romantic Point of View; another had

been that suspended state of affairs between herself and Mr. Strong.

The first of these curtailed a good deal of the philosophy in which Mr.

Strong always seemed anxious to enwrap the subject (in order, as far

as Amory could see, to avoid action). It also made a little more of the

position of women, white, black or brown, and especially when rolled up

in carpets, in Imperial affairs. And the second, that hung-up relation

between Edgar Strong and herself, had left her constantly wondering

what would have happened had she taken Mr. Strong at his word and fled

to Paris with him, and exactly where they stood since she had not done

so.

For naturally, things could hardly have been expected to be the same

after that. Since Edgar had ceased to come quite so frequently to

The Witan, Amory had thought the whole situation carefully over and

had come to her conclusion. Perhaps the histories of _les grandes

maitresses_ and the writings of Key had helped her; or, more likely,

Key in Sweden (or wherever it was) and herself in England had arrived

at the same conclusion by independent paths. That conclusion, stated in

three words, was the Genius of Love.

It was perfectly simple. Why had Amory Towers, the painter of that

picture ("Barrage") so enthusiastically acclaimed by the whole of

Feminist England, now for so long ceased to paint? What had become of

the Genius that had brought that picture into being? It is certain that

Genius cannot be stifled. Deny it one opportunity and it will break out

somewhere else--in another art, in politics, in leadership in one form

or another, or it may be even in crime.

Even so, Amory was conscious, her own Genius had refused to be

suppressed. It had found another outlet in politics, directed in a

recumbent attitude from a sofa.

Yet that had landed her straightway in a dilemma--the dilemma of Edgar

and the twins, of Paris on seven francs a day and the comforts Cosimo

allowed her, of a deed that was to have put even that of the Wyrons

into the shade and a mere settling down to the prospect of seeing Edgar

when it pleased him to put in an appearance.

She had not seen this protean property of Genius just at first. That

could only have been because she had not examined herself sufficiently.

She had been introspective, but not introspective enough.

And lest she should be mistaken in the mighty changes that were going

on within herself, at first she had tried the painting again. Her

tubes were dry and her brushes hard, but she had got new ones, and one

after another she had taken up her old half-finished canvases again. A

single glance at them had filled her with astonishment at the leagues

of progress, mental and emotional, that she had made since then. She

had laughed almost insultingly at those former attempts. That large

canvas on the "_Triumph of Humane Government_" was positively frigid!

And Edgar had liked it!... Well, that only showed what a power she now

had over Edgar if she only cared to use it. If he had liked that chilly

piece of classicism, he would stand dumb before the canvas that every

faculty in her was now straining to paint. She began to think that

canvas out....

It must be Eastern, of course; nay, it must be The East--tremendously

voluptuous and so on. She would paint it over the "_Triumph_." It

should be bathed in a sunrise, rabidly yellow (they had no time for

decaying mellowness in those vast and kindling lands to which Amory's

inner eye was turned)--and of course there ought to be a many-breasted

what-was-her-name in it, the goddess (rather rank, perhaps, but that

was the idea, a smack at effete occidental politeness). And there ought

to be a two-breasted figure as well, perhaps with a cord or something

in her hand, hauling up the curtain of night, or at any rate showing in

some way or other that her superb beauty was actually responsible for

the yellow sunrise....

And above all, she must get _herself_ into it--the whole of herself--all

that tremendous continent that Cosimo had not had, that her children

had not had, that her former painting had left unexpressed, that

politics had not brought out of her....

The result of that experiment was remarkable. Two days later she had

thrown the painting aside again. It was a ghastly failure. But only for

a moment did that depress her; the next moment she had seen further.

She was a Genius; she knew it--felt it; she was so sure about it that

she would never have dreamed of arguing about it; she had such thoughts

sometimes.... And Genius could never be suppressed. Very well; the

Eastern canvas was a total failure; she admitted it. Ergo, her Genius

was for something else than painting.

That was all she had wanted to know.

For what, then? No doubt Edgar Strong, who had enlightened her about

herself before, would be able to enlighten her again now. And if he

would not come to see her, she must go and see him. But already she saw

the answer shining brightly ahead. She must pant, not paint; live, not

limn. Her Genius was, after all, for Love.

True, at the thought of those offices in Charing Cross Road she had

an instinctive shrinking. Their shabbiness rather took the shine out

of the voluptuousnesses she had tried, and failed, to get upon her

canvas. But perhaps there was a fitness in that too. Genius, whether

in Art or in Love, is usually poor. If she could be splendid there she

could be so anywhere. No doubt heaps and heaps of grand passions had

transfigured grimy garrets, and had made of them perfectly ripping

backgrounds....

So on an afternoon in mid-January Amory put on her new velvet costume

of glaucous sea-holly blue and her new mushroom-white hat, and went

down to the "Novum's" offices in a taxi. It seemed to her that she got

there horribly quickly. Her heart was beating rapidly, and already she

had partly persuaded herself that if Edgar wasn't in it might perhaps

be just as well, as she had half-promised the twins to have tea with

them in the nursery soon, and anyway she could come again next week.

Or she might leave Edgar a note to come up to The Witan. There were

familiar and supporting influences at The Witan. But here she felt

dreadfully defenceless.... She reached her destination. Slowly she

passed through the basement-room with the sandwich-boards, ascended the

dark stairs, and walked along the upper corridor that was hung with

the specimens of poster-art.

Edgar was in. He was sitting at his roll-top desk, with his feet thrust

into the unimaginable litter of papers that covered it. He appeared to

be dozing over the "Times," and had not drunk the cup of tea that stood

at his elbow with a sodden biscuit and a couple of lumps of sugar awash

in the saucer.--Without turning his head he said "Hallo," almost as if

he expected somebody else. "Did you bring me some cigarettes in?" he

added, still not turning. And this was a relief to Amory's thumping

heart. She could begin with a little joke.

"No," she said. "I didn't know you wanted any."

There was no counterfeit about the start Mr. Strong gave. So swiftly

did he pluck his feet away from the desk that twenty sheets of paper

planed down to the floor, bringing the cup of tea with them in their

fall.

But Mr. Strong paid no attention to the breakage and mess. He was on

his feet, looking at Amory. He looked, but he had never a word to say.

And she stood looking at him--charming in her glaucous blue, the glint

of rich red that peeped from under the new white hat, and her slightly

frightened smile.

"Haven't you any?" she said archly.

At that Mr. Strong found his tongue.

"Excuse me just a moment," he muttered, striding past her and picking

up something from his desk as he went. "Sit down, won't you?" Then

he opened the door by which Amory had entered, did something behind

it, and returned, closing the door again. "Only so that we shan't be

disturbed," he said. "They go into the other office when they see the

notice.--I wasn't expecting you."

Nor did he, Amory thought, show any great joy at her appearance. On

the contrary, he had fixed a look very like a glare on her. Then he

walked to the hearth. A big fire burned there behind a wire guard, and

within the iron kerb stood the kettle he had boiled to make tea. He put

his elbows on the mantelpiece and turned his back to her. Again it was

Mr. Brimby's sorrowing Oxford attitude. Amory had moved towards his

swivel chair and had sat down. Her heart beat a little agitatedly. He

remembered!...

He spoke without any beating about the bush,--"Ought you to have done

this?" he said over his shoulder.

She fiddled with her gloves.--"To have done what?" she asked nervously.

"To have come here," came in muffled tones back. It was evident that he

was having to hold himself in.

Then suddenly he wheeled round. This time there was no doubt about

it--it was a glare, and a resolute one.

But he had not been able to think of any new line. It was the one he

had used before. He made it a little more menacing, that was all.

"I'm only flesh and blood--," he said quickly, his hands ever so

slightly clenching and unclenching and his throat apparently swallowing

something.

Her heart was beating quickly enough now.--"But--but--," she

stammered,--"if you only mean my coming here--I've been here lots of

times before----"

He wasted few words on that.

"Not since----" he rapped out. He was surveying her sternly now.

"But--but--," she faltered again, "--it's only me, Edgar--I _am_

connected with the paper, you know--that is to say my husband is----"

"That's true," he groaned.

"And--and--I should have come before--I've been intending to come--but

I've been so busy----"

But that also he brushed aside for the little it was worth. "_Must_

you compromise yourself like this?" he demanded. "Don't you see? I'm

not made of wood, and I suppose your eyes are open too. Prang may be

here at any moment. He'll see that notice on the door and wait ... and

then he'll see you go out. You oughtn't to have come," he continued

gloomily. "Why did you, Amory?"

Once more she quailed before the blue mica of his eye. Her words came

now a bit at a time. The victory was his.

"Only to--to see--how the paper was going on--and to--to talk things

over--," she said.

"Oh!" He nodded. "Very well."

He strode forward from the mantelpiece and approached the desk at which

she sat.

"I suppose Cosimo wants to know; very well. As a matter of fact I'm

rather glad you've come. Look here----"

He grabbed a newspaper from the desk and thrust it almost roughly into

her hands.

"Read that," he said, stabbing the paper with his finger.

The part in which he stabbed it was so unbrokenly set that it must have

struck Katie Deedes as overwhelmingly learned.--"There you are--read

that!" he ordered her.

Then, striding back to the mantelpiece, he stood watching her as if he

had paid for a seat in a playhouse and had found standing-room only.

Amory supposed that it must be something in that close and grey-looking

oblong that was at the bottom of his imperious curtness. She was sure

of this when, before she had read half a dozen lines, he cut it with a

sharp "Well? I suppose you see what it means to us?"

"Just a moment," she said bewilderedly; "you always did read quicker

than I can----"

"Quicker!--" he said. "Just run your eye down it. That ought to tell

you."

She did so, and a few capitals caught her eye.

"Do you mean this about the North-West Banks?" she asked diffidently.

"Do I mean----! Well, yes. Rather."

"I do wish you'd explain it to me. It seems rather hard."

But he did not approach and point out particular passages. Instead he

seemed to know that leaden oblong by heart. He gave a short laugh.

"Hard? It's hard enough on the depositors out there!... They've been

withdrawing again, and of course the Banks have had to realize."

"Yes, I saw that bit," said Amory.

"A forced realization," Mr. Strong continued. "Depreciation in values,

of course. And it's spreading."

It sounded to Amory rather like smallpox, but, "I suppose that's the

Monsoon?" she hazarded.

"Partly, of course. Not altogether. There's the rupee too, of course.

At present that's at about one and twopence, but then there are these

bi-metallists.... So until we know what's going to happen, it seems to

me we're bound hand and foot."

Amory was awed.--"What--what do you think will happen?" she asked.

Edgar gave a shrug.--"Well--when a Bank begins paying out in pennies

it's as well to prepare for the worst, you know."

"Are--are they doing that?" Amory asked in a whisper. "Really? And

is that the bi-metallists' doing--or is it the Home Government?

Do explain it to me so that I can visualize it. You know I always

understand things better when I can visualize them. That's because I'm

an artist.--Does it mean that there are long strings of natives, with

baskets and things on their heads to put the pennies in, all waiting at

the Banks, like people in the theatre-queues?"

"I dare say. I suppose they have to carry the pennies somehow. But I'm

afraid I can't tell you more than's in the papers."

Amory's face assumed an expression of contempt. On the papers she was

quite pat.

"The papers! And how much of the truth can we get from the capitalist

press, I should like to know! Why, it's a commonplace among us--one is

almost ashamed to say it again--that the 'Times' is always wrong! We

have _no_ Imperialist papers really; only Jingo ones. Is there _no_ way

of finding out what this--crisis--is really about?"

This was quite an easy one for Mr. Strong. Many times in the past, when

pressed thus by his proprietor's wife for small, but exact, details,

he had wished that he had known even as much about them as seemed to

be known by that smart young man who had once come to The Witan in a

morning coat and had told Edgar Strong that he didn't know what he was

talking about. But he had long since found a way out of these trifling

difficulties. Lift the issue high enough, and it is true of most things

that one man's opinion is as good as another's; and they lifted issues

quite toweringly high on the "Novum." Therefore in self-defence Mr.

Strong flapped (so to speak) his wings, gave a struggle, cleared the

earth, and was away in the empyrean of the New Imperialism.

"The 'Times' always wrong. Yes. We've got to stick firmly to that,"

he said. "But don't you see, that very fact makes it in its way quite

a useful guide. It's the next best thing to being always right, like

us; we can depend on its being wrong. We've only got to contradict it,

and then ask ourselves why we do so. There's usually a reason.... So

there is in this--er--crisis. Of course you know their argument--that

a lot of these young native doctors and lawyers come over here, and

stop long enough to pick up the latest wrinkles in swindling--the

civilized improvements so to speak--and then go back and start these

wildcat schemes, Banks and so on, and there's a smash. I think that's

a fair statement of their case.--But what's ours? Why, simply that

what they're really doing is to give the Home Government a perfectly

beautiful opportunity of living up to its own humane professions....

But we know what that means," he added sadly.

"You mean that it just shows," said Amory eagerly, "that we aren't

humane at all really? In fact, that England's a humbug?"

Mr. Strong smiled. He too, in a sense, was paying out in pennies, and

so far quite satisfactorily.

"Well ... take this very crisis," he returned. "Oughtn't there to be a

grant, without a moment's loss of time, from the Imperial Exchequer?

I'm speaking from quite the lowest point of view--the mere point of

view of expediency if you like. Very well. Suppose one or two natives

_are_ scoundrels: what about it? Are matters any better because we know

that? Don't the poverty and distress exist just the same? And isn't

that precisely our opportunity, if only we had a statesman capable of

seeing it?... Look here: We've only got to go to them and say, 'We are

full of pity and help; here are a lot of--er--lakhs; lakhs of rupees;

rupee one and twopence: you may have been foolish, but it isn't for

us to cast the first stone; it's the conditions that are wrong; go

and get something to eat, and don't forget your real friends by and

by.'--Isn't that just the way to bind them to us? By their gratitude,

eh? Isn't getting their gratitude better than blowing them from the

muzzles of guns, eh? And isn't that the real Empire, of which we all

dream? Eh?..."

He warmed up to it, while keeping one ear open for anybody who might

come along the passage; and when he found himself running down he

grabbed the newspaper again. He doubled it back, refolded it, and again

thrust it under Amory's nose.... There! That put it all in a nutshell,

he said! The figures spoke for themselves. The Home Government, he

said, knew all about it all the time, but of course they came from that

hopeless slough of ineptitude that humorists were pleased to call the

"governing classes," and that was why they dragged such red herrings

across the path of true progress as--well, as the Suffrage, say....

What! Hadn't Amory heard that all this agitation for the Suffrage was

secretly fomented by the Government itself? Oh, come, she must know

that! Why, of course it was! The Government knew dashed well what they

were doing, too! It was a moral certainty that there was somebody

behind the scenes actually planning half these outrages! Why? Why,

simply because it got 'em popular sympathy when a Minister had his

windows smashed or a paper of pepper thrown in his face. They were only

too glad to have pepper thrown in their faces, because everybody said

what a shame it was, and forgot all about what fools they'd been making

of themselves, and when a real--er--crisis came, like this one, people

scarcely noticed it.... But potty little intellects like Brimby's and

Wilkinson's didn't see as deep as that. It was only Edgar Strong and

Amory who saw as deep as that. That was why they, Edgar and Amory, were

where they were--leaders of thought, not subordinates....

"Just look rather carefully at those figures," he concluded....