Miss Belchamber looked complacently at her crossed Parian-marble

ankles. Then she raised one of them, and her fingers explored the

common tendon of the soleus and gastrocnemius.

"The soleus," she said, "acts when the knee-joint is flexed. In 'Rufty

Tufty' it acts. Both of them, of course. And the manage-ment of the

breath is very important. It would be a very good thing if every-body

opened their windows and took a hun-dred deep breaths before the

Saturn-alia begins. I shall, and I shall make Corin and Bonniebell. Or

won't they be able to go if it's very late? If it's after their bedtime

I could bring them away early and then go back. I am so looking forward

to it."

Cosimo made a third attempt.--"Britomart--", he said gravely.

"What?" said Miss Belchamber.

"I want to tell you about a rather important discussion we've been

having----"

"Then shall I go and turn the tap off? The water will run cold. Then

the sweat-ducts would have to be closed before they are opened, and

that's wrong."

But this time Amory had moved towards the door. Cosimo, and not she,

had wanted Miss Belchamber down, and now that he had got her he might

amuse her. She thought he looked extremely foolish, but that was his

lookout; she was going to bed. It seemed an entirely satisfactory

moment in which to do so. She had managed better than she had hoped.

The question of the fund had been satisfactorily raised, and it was

obvious that the "Novum" would gain by having somebody on the spot,

somebody perhaps less biassed than Mr. Prang, to advise upon its Indian

policy. At the door she turned her nasturtium-coloured head.

"You might think over what I've been saying," she said. "We can talk of

it again in a day or two. Especially my second suggestion, that about

the 'Novum.' That seems to me very well worth considering. Good night."

And she passed out, leaving Cosimo plucking his lip irresolutely, and

Miss Britomart Belchamber deeply interested in the common tendon of the

other soleus and gastrocnemius.

PART III

I

LITMUS

It was on an afternoon in May, and the window of Dorothy's flat

overlooking the pond was wide open. Ruffles of wind chased one another

from moment to moment across the water, and the swans, guarding their

cygnets, policed the farther bank, where dogs ran barking. The two

elder Bits played in the narrow strip of garden below; again the frieze

of the room was a soft net of rippling light; and the brightness of the

sun--or so Ruth Mossop declared--had put the fire out.

Ruth was alone in the flat. As she passed between the pond-room and the

kitchen, re-lighting the fire, "sweeping in," and preparing tea, she

sang cheerfully to herself, "_A few more years shall roll, a few more

sorrows come._" Ruth considered that the sorrows would probably come by

means of the youngest Bit. He ought (she said) to have been a little

girl. Then, in after years, he might have been a bit of comfort to his

mother. Boys, in Ruth's experience, were rarely that.

As she put the cakes for tea into the oven of the stove there came a

milk-call from below. Ruth leaned out of the lift-window, and there

ensued a conversation with the white-jacketed milk-boy.

"Saw your guv'nor last night," the boy grinned.

"Where's that cream I ordered, and that quart of nursery milk? You

can't mind your business for thinking of picture palaces."

"Keep your 'air on; coming up now.--I say, they put 'is 'ead under a

steam-'ammer. I said it was a dummy, but Gwen said it wasn't. _Was_ it

'im?"

"You mind your own interference, young man, and leave others to mind

theirs; you ought to have something better to do with your threepences

than collecting cigarette cards and taking girls to the pictures."

"It was in '_Bullseye Bill: A Drarmer of Love an' 'Ate_'--'Scoundrel,

'ow dare you speak those words to a pure wife an' mother on the very

threshold of the 'Ouse of----'"

"That's enough, young man--we don't want language Taken in Vain

here--and you can tell 'em at your place we're leaving soon."

"But _was_ that 'im in the long whiskers at the end, when the powder

magazine blew up?"

But Ruth, taking her cans, shut down the window and returned to the

kitchen.

"'Then O, my Lord, prepare----'" she crooned as she gave a peep into

the oven and then clanged the door to again, "'My soul for that blest

day----'"

They were leaving soon. Already the sub-letting of the flat was in an

agent's hands, and soon Stan would be braving the perils of his career

no longer. Dorothy had unfolded her idea to her aunt, and Lady Tasker

had raised no objection, provided Dorothy could raise the money by

bringing Aunt Eliza into line.

"It's as good as Maypoles and Village Players anyway," she had said,

"and I'm getting too old to run about as I have done.--By the way, is

it true that Cosimo Pratt's gone to India?"

Dorothy had replied that it was true.

"Hm! What for? To dance round another Maypole?"

"I don't know, auntie. I've seen very little of them."

"Has she gone?"

"No."

"No more babies yet, I suppose?"

"No."

"Well ... you'd better see your Aunt Eliza. She's got all the money

that's left.--But I don't see how you're going to get any very much out

of Tony and Tim."

"Oh, I'll see they don't impose on me as they've been imposing on

you!... So I may move that billiard-table, and alter the gun-room?"

"Yes, if you pay for it."

"Thanks--you are a dear!..."

By what arts Dorothy had contrived to lay Aunt Eliza under contribution

doesn't matter very much here. Among themselves the Lennards and

Taskers might quarrel, but they presented an unbroken front to the

world--and Dorothy, for Aunt Eliza's special benefit, managed to make

the world in some degree a party to her project. That is to say, that

a paragraph had appeared in certain newspapers, announcing that an

experiment of considerable interest, etc., the expenses of which were

already guaranteed, and so forth, was about to be tried in the County

of Shropshire, where "The Brear," the residence of the late Sir Noel

Tasker, was already in course of alteration. And so on, in Dorothy's

opinion, neither too much nor too little for her design.... It had been

a public committance of the family, and it had worked the oracle with

Aunt Eliza. Rather than have a public squabble about it, she had come

in with her thousand, the work was now well advanced, and the venerable

sinner who had recited the poems printed by Cosimo Pratt's Village

Press was in charge of the job. Dorothy, hurriedly weaning the youngest

Bit, had run down to Ludlow for the express purpose of announcing to

him that it _was_ a job, and not an aesthetic jollification.

Moreover, at that time she had half a hundred other matters to attend

to; for Stan, escaping from powder-magazines as the last inch of fuse

sputtered, and fervently hoping that the man had made no mistake about

the length of stroke of the Nasmyth hammer under which he put his

devoted head, could give her little help. Besides her own approaching

_déménagement_, she had much of the care of that of her aunt. As

Stan's earnings were barely sufficient for the current expenses of

the household, she still had to turn to odds and ends of her old

advertisement work. She had--Quis custodiet?--the nurse to look after,

and the tradesmen, and letters, and callers, and Ruth. In short, a

simple inversion of her aunt's dictum about the Pratts--"Too much money

and not enough to do"--would have fitted Dorothy's case to a nicety.

Therefore, as another burden more or less would make little difference

to one already so burdened, Dorothy had added still further to her

cares. Ever since that day when Lady Tasker had come bare-headed out of

her house and had spoken to Amory Pratt outside the Victoria and Albert

Museum, Dorothy had had her sometime friend constantly on her mind. She

had spoken of her to her aunt, who had again shown herself deplorably

illiberal and incisive.

"I don't pretend to understand the modern young woman," she had

remarked carelessly. "Half of 'em seem to upset their bodies with too

much study, and the other half to play hockey till they're little

better than fools. I suppose it's all right, and that somebody knows

what they're about.... I often wonder what they'd have done, though,

if it hadn't been for Sappho and Madame Curie.... By the way," she

had gone irrelevantly on without a break, "does she _want_ any more

children besides those twins?"...

Nevertheless, Dorothy had had Amory so much on her mind that twice

since Cosimo's departure for India she had been up to The Witan in

search of her. After all, if anybody was to blame for anything it was

Cosimo. But on neither occasion had Amory been at home. Dorothy had

left messages, to which she had received no reply; and so she had gone

a third time--had gone, as it happened, on that very afternoon when

Ruth sang "A few more years shall roll" as she made the hot cakes for

tea. This time she had persuaded Katie Deedes to come with her--for

Katie had left the Eden, was out of a job, and for the time being had

afternoon hours to spare.

But again they had failed to find Amory, and Dorothy and Katie took

a turn round the Heath before returning to the flat for tea. As they

walked along the hawthorn hedge that runs towards Parliament Hill

and South Hill Park they talked. Kites were flying on the Hill; the

Highgate Woods and the white spire showed like a pale pastel in the

Spring sunshine; and from the prows of a score of prams growing babies

leaned out like the figure-heads of ships.

"That's where Billie was born," said Dorothy, nodding towards the backs

of the houses that make the loop of South Hill Park.

Katie only said "Oh?" She too had caught the uneasiness about Amory.

And what Katie thought was very soon communicated.

"You see, Dot," she broke suddenly out, "you've no idea of what a--what

a funny lot they are really.... No, I haven't told you--I haven't told

you _half_! It's everything they do. Why, the nurse practised for

months and months at a school where they washed a celluloid baby--I'm

not joking--she did--a life-sized one--they did it in class, and

dressed it, and put it to sleep--as if _that_ would be any good at all

with a real one!... And really--I'm not prudish, as you know, Dot--but

the way they used to sit about, in a dressing-gown or a nightgown or

anything--I don't mean when there was a _big_ crowd there, of course,

but just a few of them--Walter, and Mr. Brimby, and Edgar Strong--and

all of them going quite red in the face with puremindedness! At any

rate, I never did _think_ that was quite the thing!"

She spoke with great satisfaction of the point of the New Law she had

not broken. It seemed to make up for those she had.

"And those casts and paintings and things about--it's all right being

an artist, of course, but if I ever got married, _I_ shouldn't like

casts and paintings of me about for everybody to see like that!----"

"Oh, just look at that hawthorn!" Dorothy interrupted.

"Yes, lovely.--And Walter talking about Dionysus, and what Lycurgus

thought would be a very good way of preventing jealousy, and a lot

more about Greeks and Romans and Patagonians and Esquimaux! Do you

know, Dot, I don't believe they know anything at all about it--not

_really_ know, I mean! I don't see how they can! One man might know

a little bit about a part of it, and another man a little bit about

another part--and that would be rather a lot, seeing how long ago it

all is--but Walter knows it _all_! At any rate nobody can contradict

him. But what does it matter to us to-day, Dorothy? What _does_ it

matter?... Of course I don't mean they're wicked. But--but--in some

ways I can't help thinking it would be better to _be_ wicked as long as

you didn't say anything about it----!"

"Oh, I don't think they're wicked," said Dorothy placidly. But the

'vert went eagerly on.

"That's just it!" she expounded. "Walter says 'wicked's' only a

relative term. If you face the truth boldly, all the time, lots of

things wouldn't be wicked at all, he says. And I believe he's really

awfully devoted to Laura--in his way--though he does talk about these

things with Britomart Belchamber sitting there in her nightgown. But

it's always the _same bit_ of truth they face boldly. They never think

of going in for astronomy--or crystal-what-is-it--crystallography--or

something chilly--and face that boldly----"

Dorothy laughed.--"You absurd girl!"

"--but no. It's always whether people wear clothes because they're

modest or whether they're modest because they wear clothes, or

something like that.--And Walter begins it--and then Laura chimes in,

and then Cosimo, and then Amory, and then Dickie--and when they've said

it all on Monday they say it again on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and every

day--and I don't know what they've decided even yet----"

"Well, here we are," Dorothy said as she reached her own door. "Let's

have some tea.... Mr. Miller hasn't been in yet, has he, Ruth?"

"No, m'm."

"Well, we'll have tea now, and you can make some fresh when he comes.

And keep some cakes hot."

Mr. Miller's visit that afternoon had to do with a care so trifling

that Dorothy merely took it in her stride. She had not found--she knew

that she would never find--the "Idee" that Mr. Miller wanted; but if

no Idees except real ones were ever called Idees we should be in a

very bad way in this world. She knew that there is always a middling

chance that if you state a pseudo-Idee solemnly enough, and trick it

out with circumstance enough, and set people talking enough about it,

it will prove just as serviceable as the genuine article; and she was

equally familiar, as we have seen, with that beautiful and compensating

Law by which quick and original minds are refused money when they are

producing of their best but overwhelmed with it when their brains have

become as dry as baked sponges. She had given Mr. Miller quite good

Idees in the past; she had no objection to being paid over again for

them now; and if they really had been new ones they would have been of

no use to Mr. Miller for at least ten years to come. That is why the

art of advertisement is so comparatively advanced. Any other art would

have taken twenty years.

Therefore, as she remembered the exceeding flimsiness of the one

poor Idee she had, she had resolved that Mr. Miller's eyes should be

diverted as much as possible from the central lack, and kept to the

bright irrelevancies with which she would adorn it. The Idee was that

of the Litmus Layette ... but here we may as well skip a few of Katie's

artless betrayals of her former friends, and come to the moment when

Mr. Miller, with his Edward the Sixth shoulders, appeared, bowed, was

introduced to Katie, bowed again, sat down, and was regaled with hot

cakes and conversation.--He had risen and bowed again, by the way,

when Dorothy, for certain reasons of policy, had mentioned Katie's

relationship to the great Sir Joseph Deedes, and Katie had told of a

stand-up fight she had had with her uncle's Marshal about admittance to

his lordship's private room.

"Well, now, that's something I've learned to-day," Mr. Miller

magnanimously admitted, sitting down again. "So your English Judges

have Marshals! I was under the impression that that was a military

title, like Marshal Macmann and Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. Well

now.... And how might Judge Deedes' Marshal be dressed, Miss Deedes?"

"Not 'Judge' Deedes," said Katie smiling. "That's a County Court

Judge." And she explained. Mr. Miller opened his eyes wide.

"Is that so-o-o? Well now, if that isn't interessting! That's noos.

He's a Honourable with a 'u' in it, and a Sir, and you call him his

Lordship, and he's Mister Justice Deedes! Ain't that English!...

Now let me see if I'm on the track of it. 'Your Worship'--that's

a Magistrate. 'Your Honour'--that's the other sort of Judge. And

'My Lord'--that's Miss Deedes' uncle. And an English Judge has a

Marshal.... Do you recollect our Marshals, Mrs. Stan?----"

Building (as it now appeared) even better than he knew, Mr. Miller

had, in the past, granted the rank of Marshal to Messrs. Hallowell and

Smiths' shopwalkers.

Dorothy's reason for thus flagrantly introducing Sir Joseph's name was

this:--

Katie had left the Eden, and she herself was presently off to Ludlow.

Thus there was the possible reversion of a job of sorts going

a-begging. Katie might as well have it as anybody else. Dorothy had

strictly enjoined upon her impulsive friend that on no account was she

to contradict or disclaim anything she, Dorothy, might choose to say on

her behalf to Mr. Miller; and she intended that the credit, such as it

was, of the last Idee she even intended to propose to Mr. Miller--the

Litmus Layette--should be Katie's start. Once started she would have to

look after herself.

So when Mr. Miller passed from the subject of Hallowell and Smiths'

Marshals to that of his long-hoped-for Idee, Dorothy was ready for him.

Avoiding the weak spot, she enlarged on the tradition--very different

from a mere superstition--that, in Layettes, blue stood always for a

boy and pink for a girl.

"You see," she said, "this is England when all's said, and we're

_fright_fully conservative. Don't condemn it just because it wouldn't

go in New York.... You've heard of the Willyhams, of course?" she broke

off suddenly to ask.

"I cann't say I have, Mrs. Stan. But I'm sitting here. Tell me. They're

a Fam'ly, I presoom?"

"Yes. Upshire's their title. Now that title's descended in the female

line ever since Charles the First. Ever since then the Willyham

Layettes have been pink as a matter of course. And now, not a month

ago, there was a boy, and they had to rush off and get blue at the very

last moment.... Let me see, your children are little girls, aren't

they?" she again interrupted herself to say.

"Three little goils, Mrs. Stan, with black-and-white check frocks and

large black bows in their hair."

"Well, and mine are boys. Blue for me and pink for you. But we'll come

to that in a moment.--The thing that really strikes me as extraordinary

is that in all these ages, with all the countless babies that have

been born, we don't know _yet_ which it's going to be!... And I don't

think we ever shall. Now just think what that means--not just to a

Royal House, with a whole succession depending on it, and crowns and

dynasties and things--but to _every_ woman! You see the _tremendous_

interest they take in it at once!--But I don't know whether a man can

ever understand that----"

She paused.

"Go on, Mrs. Stan--I want the feminine point of voo," said Mr.

Miller.--"The man ain't broken Post Toasties yet that has more

reverence for motherhood than what I have----"

"I know," said Dorothy bashfully. "But it isn't the same--being a

father. It's--it's different. It's not the same. I doubt whether _any_

man knows what it means to us as we wait and wonder--and wait and

wonder--day after day--day after day----"

Here she dropped her eyes. Here also Mr. Miller dropped his head.

"It isn't the same--being a father--it's different," Dorothy was heard

to murmur.

Mr. Miller breathed something about the holiest spot on oith.

"So you see," Dorothy resumed presently, hoping that Mr. Miller did not

see. "It's the nearest subject of all to us. The very first question we

ask one another is, 'Do you hope it's a little boy or a little girl?'

And as it's impossible to tell, it's impossible for us to make our

preparations. Lady Upshire doesn't know one bit more about it than the

poorest woman in the streets. And this is an age that boasts of its

Science!"

"Well," said Mr. Miller, giving it consideration, "that's ver-ry true.

I ain't a knocker; I don't want to get knocking our men of science; but

it's a fact they cann't tell. I recollect Mrs. Miller saying to me----"

"Yes--look at it from Mrs. Miller's point of view----"

"I remember Mrs. Miller using the ver-ry woids you've just used,

Mrs. Stan. (I hope this don't jolt Miss Deedes too much; it's ver-ry

interessting). And that's one sure thing, that it ain't a cinch

for Mrs. Bradley Martin any more than what it is for any poor lady

stenographer at so many dallars per. But--if you'll pardon me putting

the question in that form--where's the _point_, Mrs. Stan? What's the

reel prapasition?"

This being precisely what Dorothy was rather carefully avoiding, again

she smiled bashfully and dropped her head, as if once more calling on

those profound reserves of Mr. Miller's veneration for motherhood.

These even profounder reserves, of Mr. Miller's veneration for dallars,

were too much to the point altogether.

"I was afraid you wouldn't understand," she sighed.

"But," said Mr. Miller earnestly, "give me something to get a hold

of, Mrs. Stan. I ain't calling the psychological prapasition down

any; a business man has to be psychologist all the time; but he wants

it straight. Straight psychology. The feminine point of voo, but

practical. It ain't for Harvard. It's for Hallowell and Smith's."

"Well," said Dorothy, "it's Miss Deedes' idea really--and it would

never have occurred to her if it hadn't been for Lady Upshire--would

it, Katie?"

"No," said Katie.

"Very well. Suppose Lady Upshire had had the Litmus Layette. All she

would have had to do would have been to take the ribbons out--the work

of a moment--the pink ribbons--dip them in the preparation--and there

they'd have been, ready for immediate use. And blue ones would be

dipped in the other solution and of course they'd have turned pink....

You see, you can't alter the baby, but you can alter the ribbons. And

it isn't only ribbons. A woolly jacket--or a pram-rug--or socks--or

anything--I think it's an exceedingly clever Idea of Miss Deedes!----"

Mr. Miller gave it attention. Then he looked up.

"Would it woik?" he asked.

"Well," said Dorothy ... "it works in chemistry. But that's not the

principal thing. It's its value as an advertisement that's the real

thing. Think of the window-dressing!--Blue and pink, changing before

people's very eyes!--Just think how--I mean, it interests _every_

woman! They'd stand in front of the window, and think--but you're a

man. Mrs. Miller would understand.... Anyhow, you would get crowds

of people, and that's what you want--crowds of people--that's its

advertisement-value.--And then when you got them inside it would be

like having the hooks at one end of the shop and the eyes at the

other--a hook's no good without an eye, so they have to walk past half

a mile of counters, and you sell them all sort of things on the way.

_I_ think there's a great deal in it!"

"It's a Stunt," Mr. Miller conceded, as if in spite of himself he must

admit thus much. "It's soitainly a Stunt. But I'm not sure it's a reel

Idee."

"That," said Dorothy with conviction, "would depend entirely in your

own belief in it. If you did it as thoroughly as you've done lots of

other things----"

"It's soitainly a Stunt, Miss Deedes," Mr. Miller mused....

He was frowningly meditating on the mystic differences between a Stunt

and an Idee, and was perhaps wondering how the former would demean

itself if he took the risk of promoting it to the dignity of the

latter, when the bell was heard to ring. A moment later Ruth opened the

door.

"Lady Tasker," she said.

Lady Tasker entered a little agitatedly, with an early edition of the

"Globe" crumpled in her hand.

II

BY THE WAY

Lady Tasker never missed the "Globe's" _By the Way_ column, and there

was a curious, mocking, unpleasant By-the-Way-ishness about the

announcement she made as she entered. There is a special psychological

effect, in the Harvard and not in the Hallowell and Smith's sense, when

you come unexpectedly in print upon news that affects yourself. The

multiplicity of newspapers notwithstanding, revelation still hits the

ear less harshly than it does the eye; telling is still private and

intimate, type a trumpeting to all the world at once. Dorothy looked at

the pink page Lady Tasker had thrust into her hand as if it also, like

the Litmus Layette, had turned blue before her eyes.

"_Not_ Sir Benjamin who used to come and see father!" she said, dazed.

Lady Tasker had had time, on her way to the flat, to recover a little.

"There's only one Sir Benjamin Collins that I know of," she answered

curtly.

"But--but--it _can't_ be!----"

Of course there was no reason in the world why it couldn't. Quite on

the contrary, there was that best of all reasons why it could--it had

happened. Three bullet-wounds are three undeniable reasons. It was the

third, the brief account said, that had proved fatal.

"They say the finest view in Asia's Bombay from the stern of a

steamer," said Lady Tasker, with no expression whatever. "I think your

friend Mr. Cosimo Pratt will be seeing it before very long."

But Dorothy was white. _Their_ Sir Benjamin!... Why, as a little girl

she had called him "Uncle Ben!" He had not been an uncle really, of

course, but she had called him that. She could remember the smell of

his cigars, and the long silences as he had played chess with her

father, and his hands with the coppery hair on them, and his laugh, and

the way the markhor at the Zoo had sniffed at his old patoo-coat, just

as cats now sniffed at her own set of civet furs. And she had married

him one day in the nursery, when she had been about ten, and he had

taken her to the Pantomime that afternoon for a Honeymoon--and then,

when she had really married Stan, he had given her the very rugs that

were on her bedroom floor at this moment.

And, if this pink paper was to be believed, an Invisible Man had shot

at him three times, and at the third shot had killed him.

She had not heard her aunt's words about Cosimo. She had been standing

with her hand in Mr. Miller's, having put it there when he had risen to

take himself off and forgotten to withdraw it again. Then Mr. Miller

had gone, and Dorothy had stood looking stupidly at her aunt.

"What did you say?" she said. "You said something about Cosimo Pratt."

"Don't you go, Katie; I want to talk to you presently.--Sit down,

Dot.--Get her a drink of water."

Dorothy sat heavily down and put out one hand for the paper

again.--"What did you say?" she asked once more.

"Never mind just now. Put your head back and close your eyes for a

minute."...

* * * * *

That was the rather unpleasant, By-the-Way part of it. For of course

it was altogether By-the-Way when you looked at the matter broadly.

Amory could have explained this with pellucid clearness. The murder of

a Governor?... Of course, if you happened to have known that Governor,

and to have married him in a child's game when you were ten and he

forty, and to have gone on writing letters to him telling him all the

news about your babies, and to have had letters back from him signed

"Uncle Ben"--well, nobody would think it unnatural of you to be a

little shocked at the news of his assassination; but Amory could easily

have shown that that shock, when you grew a little calmer and came to

think clearly about it, would be only a sort of extension of your own

egotism. Governors didn't really matter one bit more because you were

fond of them. Everybody had somebody fond of them. Why, then, make a

disproportionate fuss about a single (and probably corrupt) official,

when thousands suffered gigantic wrongs? The desirable thing was to

look at these things broad-mindedly, and not selfishly. It was selfish,

selfish and egotistical, to expect the whole March of Progress to stop

because you happened to be fond of somebody (who probably hadn't been

one bit better than he ought to have been). These pompous people of the

official classes were always bragging about their readiness to lay down

their lives for their country; very well; they had no right to grumble

when they were taken at their word. Ruskin had expressed much the same

thought rather finely when he had said that a soldier wasn't paid for

killing, but for being killed. Some people seemed to want it both

ways--to go on drawing their money while they were alive, and then to

have an outcry raised when they got shot. In strict justice they ought

to have been, not merely shot, but blown from the mouths of guns; but

of course neither Amory nor anybody else wanted to go quite so far as

that.... Nevertheless, perspective was needed--perspective, and vision

of such scope that you had a clear mental picture, not of misguided

individuals, who must die some time or other and might as well do so

in the discharge of what it pleased them to call their "duty," but

of millions of our gentle and dark-skinned brothers, waiting in rows

with baskets on their heads (and making simply ripping friezes) while

the Banks paid in pennies, and then holding lots of righteous and

picturesque Meetings, all about Tyrant England and throwing off the

Yoke. Amory would have conceded that she had never had an Uncle Ben;

but if she had had fifty Uncle Bens she would still have hoped to keep

some small sense of proportion about these things.

But that again only showed anybody who was anybody how hopelessly

behind the noble movements of her time Dorothy was. The sense of

proportion never entered her head. She gave a little shiver, even

though the day was warm, and then that insufferable old aunt of hers,

who might be a "Lady" but had no more tact than to interfere with

people's liberty in the street, praised her gently when she came round

a bit, and said she was taking it very bravely, when the truth was that

she really ought to have condemned her for her absurd weakness and lack

of the sense of relative values. No, there would have been no doubt at

all about it in Amory's mind: that it was these people, who talked so

egregiously about "firm rule," who were the real sentimentalists, and

the others of the New Imperialism, with their real grasp of the true

and humane principles of government, who were the downright practical

folk....

All this fuss about a single Governor, of whom Mr. Prang himself had

said (and there was no gentler soul living than Mr. Prang) that his

extortions had been a byword and his obstinacy proof positive of his

innate weakness!----

But Amory was not in the pond-room that day, and so Dorothy's sickly

display of emotion went unchecked. The nurse herded the Bits together,

but they were not admitted for their usual tea-time romp. Indeed,

Dorothy said presently, "Do you mind if I leave you for a few minutes

with Katie, auntie?" She went into her bedroom and did not return. Of

all his "nieces" she had been his favourite; her foot caught in one of

his Kabuli mats as she entered the bedroom. She lay down on her bed.

She longed for Stan to come and put his arms about her.

He came in before Lady Tasker had finished her prolonged questioning of

Katie. Aunt Grace told him where Dorothy was. Then she and Katie left

together.

The newspapers showed an excellent sense of proportion about the

incident. In the earlier evening editions the death of Sir Benjamin was

nicely balanced by the 4.30 winners; and then a popular actor's amusing

replies in the witness-box naturally overshadowed everything else.

And, to anticipate a little, on the following day the "Times" showed

itself to be, as usual, hopelessly in the wrong. Indeed there were

those who considered that this journal made a deplorable exhibition

of itself. For it had no more modesty nor restraint than to use the

harsh word "murder," without any "alleged" about it, which was, of

course, a flagrant prejudging of the case. Nobody denied that at a

first glance appearances _were_ a little against the gentle and dusky

brother, who had been seized with the revolver still in his hand; but

that was no reason why a bloated capitalist rag should thus undermine

the principles of elementary justice. It ought to have made it all the

more circumspect.... But anybody who was anybody knew exactly what

was at the bottom of it all. The "Times" was seeking a weapon against

the Government. The staff was no doubt secretly glad that it had

happened, and was gloating, and already calculating its effect on an

impending by-election.... Besides, there was the whole ethical question

of capital punishment. It would not bring Sir Benjamin back to life

to try this man, find him guilty, and do him barbarously to death in

the name of the Law. That would only be two dead instead of one. The

proper way would be to hold an inquiry, with the dusky instrument of

justice (whose faith in his mission must have been very great since

he had taken such risks for it) not presiding, perhaps, but certainly

called as an important witness to testify to the Wrongness of the

Conditions.... Besides, an assassination is a sort of half-negligible

outbreak, regrettable certainly, for which excuse can sometimes be

found: but this other would be deliberate, calculated, measured, and

in flat violation of the most cardinal of all the principles on which

a great Empire should be based--the principle of Mercy stiffened with

exactly the right modicum of Justice....

And besides....

And besides....

And besides....

And when all is said, India is a long way off.

The publication of the news produced a curious sort of atmosphere

at The Witan that afternoon. Everybody seemed desirous of showing

everybody else that they were unconcerned, and yet an observer might

have fancied that they overdid it ever such a little. At about the

time when Lady Tasker left Dorothy with Stan, Mr. Wilkinson drove up

in a cab to the green door in the privet hedge and asked for Amory. He

was told that she had given word that she did not want to see anybody.

But in the studio he found Mr. Brimby and Dickie Lemesurier, and the

three were presently joined by Laura and Walter Wyron. A quorum of

five callers never hesitated to make themselves at home at The Witan.

They lighted the asbestos log, Walter found Cosimo's cigarettes, and

Dickie said she was sure Amory wouldn't mind if she rang for tea. When

they had made themselves quite comfortable, they began to chat about a

number of things, not the murder.

"Seen Strong?" Mr. Brimby asked Mr. Wilkinson.

Mr. Wilkinson was at his most morose and truculent.

"No," he said. "I called at the office, but he was out. Doesn't put

in very much time there, it seems to me. Perhaps he's at the Party's

Meeting."

"How is it you aren't there, by the way?"

Mr. Wilkinson made a little sound of contempt.

"Bah! All talk. Day in and day out, talk, talk, talk. I want action.

The leadership's all wrong. Want a man. I keep my seat because if I

cleared out they'd be no better than a lot of tame Liberal cats, but

I've no use for 'em----"

It was whispered that the members of the Party had no use for Mr.

Wilkinson, and very little for one another; but it doesn't do to give

ear to everything that is whispered.

Then Mr. Brimby appeared suddenly to recollect something.

"Ah yes!... Action. Speaking of action, I suppose you've seen this

Indian affair in to-night's papers?"

Mr. Wilkinson was still fuming.

"That Governor? Yes, I saw it.... But it's too far away. Thousands of

miles too far away. We want something nearer home. A paper that calls a

spade a spade for one thing.... Anybody heard from Pratt this week?"

They discussed Cosimo's latest letter, and then Mr. Brimby said, "By

the way--how will this affect him?"

"How will what affect him?"

"This news, to-night. Collins."

"Oh!... Why should it affect him at all? Don't see why it should. The

'Pall Mall' has a filthy article on it to-night. That paper's getting

as bad as the 'Times.'"

Here Walter Wyron intervened.--"By the way, who _is_ this man Collins?

Just pass me 'Who's Who,' Laura."

They looked Sir Benjamin up in "Who's Who," and then somebody suggested

that their party wasn't complete without Edgar Strong. "I'll telephone

him," said Walter; "perhaps he'll be back by this."--The telephone was

in the hall, and Walter went out. Dickie told Laura how well Walter

was looking. Laura replied, Yes, he was very well indeed; except

for a slight cold, which anybody was lucky to escape in May, he had

never been better; which was wonderful, considering the work he got

through.--Then Walter returned. Strong had not yet come in, but his

typist had said he'd be back soon.--"Didn't know it ran to a typist,"

Walter remarked, helping himself to more tea.

"It doesn't," Mr. Wilkinson grunted.

"Girl's voice, anyway.... I say, I wonder how old Prang's getting on!"

"I wonder!"

"He's gone back, hasn't he?" Dickie asked.

"Oh, a couple of months ago. Didn't Strong give him the push, Wilkie?"

"Don't suppose Strong ever did anything so vigorous," Mr. Wilkinson

growled. "The only strong thing about Strong's his name. He's simply

ruined that paper."

"I agree that it was at its best when Prang was doing the Indian notes."

"Oh, Prang knew what he wanted. Prang's all right in his way. But I

tell you India's too far away. We want something at our own doors, and

somebody made an example of that somebody knows. Now if Pratt had only

been guided by me----"

"Hallo, here's Britomart Belchamber.--Why doesn't Amory come down,

Brit? She's in, isn't she?"

"What?" said Miss Belchamber.

"Isn't Amory coming down?"

"She's gone out," said Miss Belchamber, adjusting her hair. "A min-ute

ago," she added.

Walter Wyron said something about "Cool--with guests----," but Amory's

going out was no reason why they should not finish tea in comfort. No

doubt Amory would be back presently. Laura confided to Britomart that

she hoped so, for the truth was that her kitchen range had gone wrong,

and a man had said he was coming to look at it, but he hadn't turned

up--these people never turned up when they said they would--and so she

had thought it would be nice if they came and kept Amory company at

supper....

"We've got some new cheese-bis-cuits," said Miss Belchamber

ruminatively. "I like them. They make bone. I like to have bone made.

The muscles can't act unless you have bone. That's why these bis-cuits

are so good. Good-bye."

And Miss Belchamber, with a friendly general smile, went off to

open her sweat-ducts by means of a hot bath and to close them again

afterwards with a cold sponge.

* * * * *

Amory had not gone out this time to press amidst strange people

and to look into strange and frightening eyes, various in colour

as the pebbles of a beach, and tipped with arrow-heads of white as

they turned. Almost for the first time in her life she wanted to be

alone--quite alone, with her eyes on nobody and nobody's eyes on her.

She did not reflect on this. She did not reflect on anything. She only

knew that The Witan seemed to stifle her, and that when she had seen

Mr. Wilkinson alight from his cab--and Mr. Brimby and Dickie come--and

the Wyrons--with all the others no doubt following presently--it had

come sharply upon her that these wearisomely familiar people used up

all the air. The Witan without them was bad enough; The Witan with them

had become insupportable.

It was not the assassination of Sir Benjamin that had disturbed

her. Since Cosimo's departure she had glanced at Indian news only

a shade less perfunctorily than before, and she had turned from

this particular announcement to the account of New Greek Society's

production with hardly a change of boredom. No: it was everything in

her life--everything. She felt used up. She thought that if anybody had

spoken to her just then she could only have given the incoherent and

petulant "Don't!" of a child who is interrupted at a game that none but

he understands. She hated herself, yet hated more to be dragged out

of herself; and as she made for the loneliest part of the Heath she

wished that night would fall.

She had to all intents and purposes packed Cosimo off to India in order

to have him out of the way. His presence had become as wearisome as

that of the Wyrons and the rest of them. And that was as much as she

had hitherto told herself. She had taken no resolution about Edgar

Strong. But drifting is accelerated when an obstacle is removed, and

her heart had frequently beaten rapidly at the thought that, merely by

removing Cosimo, she had started a process that would presently bring

her up against Edgar Strong. She had pleased and teased and frightened

herself with the thought of what was to happen then. So many courses

would be open to her. She might actually take the mad plunge from which

she had hitherto shrunk. She might do the very opposite--stare at him,

should he propose it, and inform him that, some thousands of miles

notwithstanding, she was still Cosimo's wife. She might pathetically

urge on him that, now more than ever, she needed a friend and not a

lover--or else that, now more than ever, she needed a lover and not

a friend. She might say that nothing could be done until Cosimo came

back--or that when Cosimo came back would be too late to do anything.

Or she might....

Or she might....

Or she might....

Yet when all was said, Edgar and the "Novum's" offices were perilously

near....

For it was not what she might do, but what he might do, that set her

heart beating most rapidly of all. Her dangerous dreaming always

ended in that. Here was no question of that trumpery subterfuge of the

Wyrons. It struck her with extraordinary force and newness that she

was what was called "a married woman." It was a familiar phrase; it

was as familiar as those other phrases, "No, just living together,"

"Well, as long as there are no children," "Love _is_ Law"--familiar

as the air. Left to herself, the phrases might have remained both her

dissipation and her safeguard.... But he? Would phrases content him?

After she had tempted him as she knew she had tempted him? After that

stern repression of himself in favour of his duty? Or would he ask her

again what she thought he was made of?... It was always the man who was

expected to take the decisive step. The woman simply--offered--and,

if she was clever, did it in such a way that she could always deny it

after the fact. If Edgar should _not_ stretch out his hand--well, in

that case there would be no more to be said. But if he should?...

A little sound came from her closed lips.

Cosimo had been away for nearly three months, and had not yet said

anything about returning; and Amory had smiled when, after many eager

protestings that there was no reason (Love being Law) why he should

go alone, he had after all funked taking his splendid turnip of a

Britomart with him. Of course: when it had come to the point, he had

lacked the courage. Amory could not help thinking that that lack was

just a shade more contemptible than his philanderings. Courage!...

Images of Cleopatra and the carpet rose in her mind again.... But the

images were faint now. She had evoked them too often. Her available

mental material had become stale. She needed a fresh impulse--a new

experience----

But--she always got back to the same point--suppose Edgar should take

her, not at her word, nor against her word, but with words, for once,

left suddenly and entirely out of the question?...

Again the thumping heart----

It was almost worth the misery and loneliness for the sake of that

painful and delicious thrill.

She was sitting on a bench under the palings of Ken Wood, watching a

saffron sunset. A Prince Eadmond's girl in a little green Florentine

cap passed. She reminded Amory of Britomart Belchamber, and Amory

rose and took the root-grown path to the Spaniards Road and the West

Heath. She intended to take a walk as far as Golders Green Park;

but, as it happened, she did not get so far. A newsboy, without any

sense of proportion whatever, was crying cheerfully, "Murder of a

Guv'nor--Special!" This struck Amory. She thought she had read it once

before that afternoon, but she bought another paper and turned to the

paragraph. Yes, it was the same--and yet it was somehow different. It

seemed--she could not tell why--a shade more important than it had

done. Perhaps the newsboy's voice had made it sound more important:

things did seem to come more personally home when they were spoken

than when they were merely read. She hoped it was not very important;

it might be well to make sure. She was not very far from home; her

Timon-guests would still be there; somebody would be able to tell her

all about it....

She walked back to The Witan again, and, still hatted and dressed,

pushed at the studio door.

Nobody had left. Indeed, two more had come--young Mr. Raffinger of the

McGrath, and a friend of his, a young woman from the Lambeth School of

Art, who had Russianized her painting-blouse by putting a leather belt

round it, and who told Amory she had wanted to meet her for such a long

time, because she had done some designs for Suffrage Christmas Cards,

and hoped Amory wouldn't mind her fearful cheek, but hoped she would

look at them, and say exactly what she thought about them, and perhaps

give her a tip or two, and, if it wasn't asking too much, introduce her

to the Manumission League, or to anybody else who might buy them....

Young Raffinger interrupted the flow of gush and apologetics.

"Oh, don't bother her just yet, Eileen. Let her read her cable first."

Amory turned quickly.--"What do you say? What cable?" she asked.

"There's a cable for you."

It lay on the uncleared tea-table, and everybody seemed to know all

about the outside of it at all events. As it was not in the usual

place for letters, perhaps it had been passed from hand to hand. Quite

unaffectedly, they stood round in a ring while Amory opened it, with

all their eyes on her. They most frightfully wanted to know what was

in it, but of course it would have been rude to ask outright. So they

merely watched, expectantly.

Then, as Amory stood looking at the piece of paper, Walter was almost

rude. But in the circumstances everybody forgave him.

"Well?" he said; and then with ready tact he retrieved the solecism.

"Hope it's good news, Amory?"

For all that there was just that touch of _schadenfreude_ in his tone

that promised that he for one would do his best to bear up if it wasn't.

Amory was a little pale. It was the best of news, and yet she was a

little pale. Perhaps she was faint because she had not had any tea.

"Cosimo's coming home," she said.

There was a moment's silence, and then the congratulations broke out.

"Oh, good!"

"Shall be glad to see the old boy!"

"Finished his work, I suppose?"

"Or perhaps it's something to do with this Collins business?"

It was Mr. Brimby who had made this last remark. Amory turned to him

slowly.

"What is this Collins business?" she asked.

Mr. Brimby dropped his sorrowing head.

"Ah, poor fellow," he murmured. "I'm afraid he went to work on the

wrong principles. A _little_ more conciliation ... but it's difficult

to blame anybody in these cases. The System's at fault. Let us not be

harsh. I quite agree with Wilkinson that the 'Pall Mall' to-night is

very harsh."

"Cowardly," said Mr. Wilkinson grimly. "Rubbing it in because they have

some sort of a show of a case. They're always mum enough on the other

side."

Amory lifted her head.

"But you say this might have something to do with Cosimo's coming back.

Tell me at once what's happened.--And put that telegram down, Walter.

It's mine."

They had never heard Amory speak like this before. It was rather cool

of her, in her own house, and quite contrary to the beautiful Chinese

rule of politeness. And somehow her tone seemed, all at once, to

dissipate a certain number of pretences that for the last hour or more

they had been laboriously seeking to keep up. That, at any rate, was a

relief. For a minute nobody seemed to want to answer Amory; then Mr.

Wilkinson took it upon himself to do so--characteristically.

"Nothing's happened," he said, "--nothing that we haven't all been

talking about for a year and more. What the devil--let's be plain

for once. To look at you, anybody'd think you hadn't meant it! By

God, if _I'd_ had that paper of yours!... I told you at the beginning

what Strong was--neither wanted to do things nor let 'em alone; but

_I'd_ have shown you! I'd have had a dozen Prangs! But he didn't want

one--and he didn't want to sack him--afraid all the time something 'ld

happen, but daren't stop--doing too well out of it for that ... and now

that it's happened, what's all the to-do about? You're always calling

it War, aren't you? And it _is_ War, isn't it? Or only Brimby's sort of

War--like everything else about Brimby?----"

Here somebody tried to interpose, but Mr. Wilkinson raised his voice

almost to a shout.

"Isn't it? Isn't it?... Lookee here! A little fellow came here one

Sunday, a little collier, and he said 'Wilkie knows!' And by Jimminy,

Wilkie does know! I tell you it's everybody for himself in this world,

and I'm out for anything that's going! (Yes, let's have a bit o'

straight talk for a change!) War? Of course it's War! What do we all

mean about street barricades and rifles if it isn't War? It's War when

they fetch the soldiers out, isn't it? Or is that a bit more Brimby?

And you can't have War without killing somebody, can you? I tell you we

want it at home, not in India! I've stood at the dock gates waiting to

be taken on, and I know--no fear! To hell with your shillyshallying! If

Collins gets in the way, Collins must get out o' the way. We can't stop

for Collins. I wish it had been here! I can just see myself jumping

off a bridge with a director in my arms--the fat hogs! If I'd had that

paper! There'd have been police round this house long ago, and then the

fun would have started!... Me and Prang's the only two of all the bunch

that _does_ know what we want! And Prang's got his all right--my turn

next--and I shan't ask Brimby to help me----"

Through a sort of singing in her ears Amory heard the rising cries of

dissent that interrupted Mr. Wilkinson--"Oh no--hang it--Wilkinson's

going too far!" But the noise conveyed little to her. Stupidly she was

staring at the blue and yellow jets of the asbestos log, and weakly

thinking what a silly imitation the thing was. She couldn't imagine

however Cosimo had come to buy it. And then she heard Mr. Wilkinson

repeating some phrase he had used before: "There'd have been police

round this house and then the fun would have begun!" Police round The

Witan, she thought? Why? It seemed very absurd to talk like that. Mr.

Brimby was telling Mr. Wilkinson how absurd it was. But Mr. Brimby

himself was rather absurd when you came to think of it....

Then there came another shouted outburst.--"Another Mutiny? Well,

what about it? It _is_ War, isn't it? Or is it only Brimby's sort of

War?----"

Then Amory felt herself grow suddenly cold and resolved. Cosimo was

coming back. Whether he had made India too hot to hold him, as now

appeared just possible, she no longer cared, for at last she knew

what she intended to do. Her guests were wrangling once more; let

them wrangle; she was going to leave this house that Mr. Wilkinson

apparently wanted to surround with police as a preliminary to the

"fun." Edgar might still be at the office; if he was not, she would

sleep at some hotel and find him in the morning. Then she would take

her leap. She had hesitated far too long. She would not go and look at

the twins for fear lest she should hesitate again....

Just such a sense of rest came over her as a swimmer feels who, having

long struggled against a choppy stream, suddenly abandons himself to it

and lets it bear him whither it will.

Unnoticed in the heat of the dispute, she crossed to the studio door.

She thought she heard Laura call, "Can I come and help, Amory?" No

doubt Laura thought she was going to see about supper. But she no

longer intended to stay even for supper in this house of wrangles and

envy and crowds and whispering and crookedness.

Her cheque-book and some gold were in her dressing-table drawer

upstairs. She got them. Then she descended again, opened the front

door, closed it softly behind her again, passed through the door in the

privet hedge, and walked out on to the dark Heath.

III

DE TROP

Those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew that the problem of how to

make the best of both worlds pressed with a peculiar hardship on him.

The smaller rebel must have the whole of infinity for his soul to range

in--and, for all the practical concern that man has with it, infinity

may be defined as the condition in which the word of the weakest is as

good as that of the wisest. Give him scope enough and Mr. Brimby cannot

be challenged. There is no knowledge of which he says that it is too

wonderful for him, that it is high and he cannot attain unto it.

But Edgar Strong knew a little more than Mr. Brimby. He bore his share

of just such a common responsibility as is not too great for you or for

me to understand. Between himself and Mr. Prang had been a long and

slow and grim struggle, without a word about it having been said on

either side; and it had not been altogether Edgar Strong's fault that

in the end Mr. Prang had been one too many for him.

For, consistently with his keeping his three hundred a year (more than

two-thirds of which by one means and another he had contrived to save),

he did not see that he could have done much more than he had done.

Things would have been far worse had he allowed Mr. Wilkinson to oust

him. And now he knew that this was the "Novum's" finish. Whispers

had reached him that behind important walls important questions were

being asked, and a ponderous and slow-moving Department had approached

another Body about certain finportations (Sir Joseph Deedes, Katie's

uncle, knew all about these things). And this and that and the other

were going on behind the scenes; and these deep mutterings meant, if

they meant anything at all, that it was time Edgar Strong was packing

up.

Fruit-farming was the line he fancied; oranges in Florida; and it would

not take long to book passages--passages for two----

He had heard the news in the early afternoon, and had straightway sent

off an express messenger to the person for whom the second passage

was destined. Within an hour this person had run up the stairs,

without having met anybody on a landing whom it had been necessary

to ask whether Mr. So-and-So, the poster artist, had a studio in the

building. Edgar Strong's occupation as she had entered had made words

superfluous. He had been carrying armfuls of papers into the little

room behind the office and thrusting them without examination on the

fire. The girl had exchanged a few rapid sentences with him, had bolted

out again, hailed a taxi, sought a Bank, done some business there on

the stroke of four, and had driven thence to a shipping office. Edgar

Strong, in Charing Cross Road, had continued to feed his fire. The

whole place smelt of burning paper. A mountain of ashes choked the

grate and spread out as far as the bed and the iron washstand in the

corner.

The girl returned. From under the bed she pulled out a couple of bags.

Into these she began to thrust her companion's clothes. Into a third

and smaller bag she crammed her own dressing-gown and slippers, a comb

and a couple of whalebone brushes, and other things. She had brought

word that the boat sailed the day after to-morrow....

"There's the telephone--just answer it, will you?" Strong said, casting

another bundle on the fire....

"Wyron," said the girl, returning.

"Never mind those boots; they're done; and you might get me a

safety-razor; shall want it on the ship.... By the way--I think we'd

better get married."

The girl laughed.--"All right," she said as she crammed a

nightdress-case into the little bag....

* * * * *

Amory walked quickly down the East Heath. As she walked she could not

help wondering what there had been to make such a fuss about. Indeed

she had been making quite a bugbear of the thing she was now doing

quite easily. What, after all, would it matter? Would a single one

of the people she passed so hurriedly think her case in the least

degree special? Had they not, each one of them, their own private and

probably very similar affairs? Was there one of them of whom it could

be said with certainty that he or she was not, at that very moment,

bound on the same errand? She looked at the women. There was nothing to

betray them, but it was quite as likely as not. Nor could they tell by

looking at her. For that matter, the most resolute would hide it the

most. And a person's life was his own. Nobody would give him another

one when he had starved and denied the one he had. There might not

be another one. Some people said that there was, and some that there

wasn't. Meetings were held about that too, but so far they hadn't

seemed to advance matters very much....

Nor was it the urge of passion that was now driving her forward at such

a rate. She could not help thinking that she had been rather silly in

her dreams about carpets and Nubians and those things. If Edgar was

passionate, very well--she would deny him nothing; but in that case she

would feel ever so slightly superior to Edgar. She rather wished that

that was not so; she hoped that after all it might not be so; on the

whole she would have preferred to be a little his inferior. She had

not been inferior to Cosimo. They, she and Cosimo, had talked a good

deal about equality, of course, but, after all, equality was a balance

too nice for the present stressful stage of the struggle between man

and woman; a theoretical equality if you liked, but in practice the

thing became a slight temporary feminine preponderance, which would,

no doubt, settle down in time. Virtually she had been Cosimo's master.

She did not want to be Edgar's. Rather than be that he might--her tired

sensibilities gave a brief flutter--he might even be a little cruel to

her if he wished....

A Tottenham Court Road bus was just starting from the bottom of Pond

Street. She ran to catch it. It moved forward again, with Amory sitting

inside it, between a man in a white muffler and opera-hat and a

flower-woman returning home with her empty baskets.

Many, many times Amory Pratt, abusing her fancy, had rehearsed the

scene to which she was now so smoothly and rapidly approaching; but she

rehearsed nothing now. It would suffice for her just to appear before

Edgar; no words would be necessary; he would instantly understand.

Of course (she reflected) he might have left the office when she got

there; it was even reasonably probable that he would have left; it was

not a press-night; twenty to one he would have left. But her thoughts

went forward again exactly as if she had not just told herself this....

He would be there. She would go up to him and stand before him. As

likely as not not a word would pass between them. She felt that she

had used too many words in her life. She and her set had discussed

subjects simply out of existence. Often, by the time they had finished

talking, not one of them had known what they had been talking about. It

had been sheer dissipation. Men, she had heard, took drinks like that,

and by and by were unable to stand, and then made hideous exhibitions

of themselves. Nobody could say exactly at what point they, the men,

became incapable, nor the point at which the others, Amory and her set,

became word-sodden; in the one case the police (she had heard) made

them walk a chalk-line; but there was no chalk-line for the others.

Their paths were crooked as scribble....

But she was going straight at last--as straight as a pair of tram-lines

could take her--and so far was she from wishing that the tram would go

more slowly, that she would have hastened it had she been able.

The "Mother Shipton"--the Cobden Statue--Hampstead Road--the "Adam and

Eve." At this last stopping-place she descended, crossed the road, and

boarded a bus. She remembered that once before, when she had visited

the office in a taxi, the cab had seemed to go at a terrifying speed;

now the bus seemed to crawl. A fear took her that every stop might

cause her to miss him by just a minute. She tapped with her foot. She

looked almost angrily at those who got in or out. That flower-woman:

why couldn't she have got out at the proper stopping-place, instead of

upsetting everything with her baskets hardly a hundred yards further

on?... Off again; she hoped to goodness that was the last delay. She

had been stupid not to take a taxi after all.

She descended opposite the "Horse Shoe," not three minutes' walk

from the "Novum's" offices. Then again she called herself stupid for

not having sat where she was, since the bus would go straight past

the door. But she could be there as soon as the bus if she walked

quickly.----

The bus overtook her and beat her by twenty yards.

The bookseller's shutters were down, and in the window of the

electric-fittings shop could be dimly seen a ventilating fan, a

desk-lamp, and a switch-board or two. Amory turned in under the arch

that led to the yard behind. Her eyes had gone up to the third floor

almost before she had issued from the narrow alley----

Ah!... So she was not too late. There was a light.

Through the ground-floor cavern in which the sandwich-boards were

stacked she had for the first time to slacken her pace; the floor was

uneven, and the place was crowded with dim shadows. A man smoking a

pipe over an evening paper turned as she entered, but, seeing her make

straight for the stairs, he did not ask her her business. The winding

wooden staircase was black as a flue. On the first landing she paused

for a moment; the man with the pipe had, after all, challenged her,

"Who is it you want, Miss?" he called from below.... But he did not

follow her. A vague light from the landing window showed her the second

flight of wedge-shaped wooden steps. She mounted them, and gained the

corridor hung with the specimens of the poster-artist's work. Ahead

along the passage a narrow shaft of light crossed the floor. She gave

one more look behind, for fear the man below had, after all, followed

her; she was determined, but that did not mean that she necessarily

wished to be seen....

Her life was her own, to do what she liked with. Nobody would give her

another one....

And Edgar might be cruel if he wished....

For one instant longer she hesitated. Then she pushed softly at the

door from which the beam of light came.

The quietness of her approach was wasted after all. There was nobody

in the office. The floor was untidy with scattered leaves of paper,

and Edgar had carelessly left every drawer of his desk open; but that

only meant that he could not be very far away. Probably he was in the

waiting-room. She approached the door of it.

But, as she did so, some slight unfamiliarity about the place struck

her. The first room of the three, or waiting-room, she knew, from

having once or twice pushed at the first door of the passage and having

had to pass through that ante-room. Of the third room she knew nothing

save that it was used as a sort of general lumber-room. But the rooms

seemed somehow to have got changed about. It was from this third room,

and not from the waiting-room, that a bright light came, and the smell

of charred paper. The door was partly open. Amory advanced to it.

As she did so somebody spoke.

For so slight a cause, the start that Amory gave was rather

heartrending. She stopped dead. Her face had turned so chalky a white

that the freckles upon it, which ordinarily scarcely showed, looked

almost unwholesome.

In her mind she had given Edgar Strong leave to be cruel to her,

but not with this cruelty. The cruelty we choose is always another

cruelty. Once a man, who miraculously survived a flogging, said that

by comparison with the anguish of the second stroke that of the first

was almost a sweetness; and after the third, and fourth, men, they say,

have laughed. It happened so to Amory. The voices she heard were not

loud; so much the worse, when a few ordinary, grunted, half expressions

could so pierce her.

"----months ago, but I wasn't ready. I stayed on here for nobody's

convenience but my own, I can tell you." It was Edgar who said this.

Then a woman's voice--

"I don't think this waistcoat's worth taking; I've patched and patched

it----"

"Oh, chuck it under the bed. And I say--we've had nothing to eat. Make

the cocoa, will you?"

"Just a minute till I finish this bag.--What'll Pratt say when he comes

back?"

"As I shan't be here to hear him, it's hardly worth while guessing."

"Will Wilkinson take it over?"

"The 'Novum'?... I don't think there'll be any more 'Novum.' I suppose

these London Indians will be holding a meeting. I don't like 'em,

but let's be fair to them: most of 'em are all right. They've got to

dissociate themselves from this Collins business somehow. But I expect

some lunatic will go and move an amendment.... Well, it won't matter to

us. We shall be well down the Channel by that time."

Then the girl gave a low laugh.--"I _do_ think you might buy me a

trousseau, Ned--the way it's turned out----"

The man's voice grunted.

"I thought that would be the next. Give you something and you all want

something else immediately.... Can't afford it, my dear. I've only

pulled between three and four hundred out of this show, living here,

paying myself space-rates and all the lot; and we shall want all that."

Again the low voice--very soft and low.

"But you'll be a little sorry to leave here, won't you--m'mmm?----"

(This was the second stroke, by comparison with which the first had

been sweet).

Strong spoke brusquely.--"Look here, old girl--we've heaps of things to

do to-night--lots of time before us--don't let's have any nonsense----"

"No-o-o?"----

Amory, besides hearing, might have seen; but she did not. Something

had brought into her head her own words to Walter Wyron of an hour or

two before, when Walter had picked up the cable announcing Cosimo's

return: "Put that down, Walter; it's mine." This other, that was taking

place in that inner room, was theirs. It would have been perfectly easy

to strike them dumb by appearing, just for one moment, in the doorway

of this--lumber-room; but she preferred not to do it. If she had, she

felt that it would have been the remains of a woman they would have

seen. There is not much catch in striking anybody dumb when the process

involves their seeing--that. Much better to steal out quietly....

Noiselessly she turned her back to the half-open door. She tiptoed out

into the corridor again. For a dozen yards she continued to tiptoe--in

order to spare them; and then she found herself at the head of the

steep stairs. She descended. She had not made a single sound. Down

below the man was still reading the paper, and again he looked round.

At another time Amory might have questioned him; but again she did not.

There was nothing to learn. She knew.

It was the first thing she had ever really known.

Bowed with the strangeness of knowledge, she walked slowly out into

Charing Cross Road.

IV

GRAY YOUTH

She continued to walk slowly; the slowness was as remarkable as her

haste had been. She had intended, had she missed Edgar, to go to an

hotel; but home was hotel enough, hotel home. Home--home to a house

without privacy--home to children of whom she was not much more than

technically the mother--home to an asbestos log and to the absence of

a husband that was at least as desirable as his presence: nothing else

remained.

For her lack seemed total--so total as hardly to be a lack. She desired

no one thing, and a desire for everything is an abuse of the term

"desire." So she walked slowly, stopping now and then to look at a

flagstone as if it had been a remarkable object. And as she walked she

wondered how she had come to be as she was.

She could not see where her life had gone wrong. She did not remember

any one point at which she had taken a false and crucial step.

For example, she did not think this gray and harmonious totality

of despondency had come of her marrying Cosimo. They were neither

outstandingly suited nor unsuited to one another, and a thousand

marriages precisely similar were made every day and turned out well

enough. No; it could not be that she had expected too much of

marriage. She had not courted disappointment that way.... (But stay:

had the trouble come of her not expecting largely enough? Of her not

having assumed enough? Of her not having said to life, "Such and such I

intend to have, and you shall provide it?" Would she have fared better

then?).... And if Cosimo had brought her no wonder, neither had her

babes. People were in the habit of saying astonishing things about the

miracle of the babe at the breast, but Amory could only say that she

had never experienced these things. She had wondered that she should

not, when so many others apparently did, but the fact remained, that

bearing had been an anguish and nursing an inconvenience. And so at the

twins she had stopped.

Would it have been better had she not stopped? Would she have been

happier with many children? Without children at all? Or unmarried? Or

ought her painting to have been husband, home and children to her?...

It was a little late in the day to ask these questions now----

And yet there had been no reason for asking them earlier----

It had needed that, her first point of knowledge, to bring it home into

her heart....

But do not suppose that she was in any pain. As a spinally-anaesthetized

subject may have a quite poignant interest in the lopping off of one of

his own limbs, and may even wonder that he feels no local pain, so she

assisted at her own dismemberment. Home, husband, babes, her art--one

after another she now seemed to see them go--or rather, seemed to see

that they had long since gone. She saw this going, in retrospect. It

was as if, though only degree by degree had the pleasant things of life

ticked away from her, the escapement was now removed from her memory,

allowing all with a buzz to run down to a dead stop. She could almost

hear that buzz, almost see that soft rim of whizzing teeth....

Now all was stillness--stillness without pain. She knew now what Edgar

Strong had been doing. She knew that he had been making use of her,

pocketing Cosimo's money, using the "Novum's" office as his lodging,

had had his bed there, his slippers in the fender, his kettle, his

cocoa, his plates, his cups, his.... And she knew now that Edgar Strong

was only one of those who had clustered like leeches about Cosimo....

She forgot how much Cosimo had said that from first to last it had all

cost. She thought twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand pounds, all

vanished between that first Ludlow experiment and that last piece of

amateur sociology, three revolver shots in a man's back! As a price it

was stiffish. She did not quite know what the provider of the money

had had out of it all. At any rate she herself had this curious stilly

state of painless but rather sickening knowledge. And knowledge, they

say, is above rubies. So perhaps it was cheap after all....

But where had she gone wrong? Had she simply been born wrong? Would it

have made any difference whatever she had done? Or had all this been

appointed for her or ever her mother had conceived her?

She asked herself this as she passed Whitefield's Tabernacle; still

walking slowly, she was well up Hampstead Road and still no answer

had occurred to her. But somewhere near the gold-beater's arm on the

right-hand side of the road a thought did strike her. She thought

that she would not go home after all. This was not because to go home

now would be inglorious; it was no attempt to keep up appearances; it

was merely that she would have preferred anything to this horrible

numbness. Pain would be better. It is at any rate a condition of pain

that you must be alive to feel it, and she did not feel quite alive.

This might be a dream from which she would presently awake, or a waking

from which she would by and by drop off to sleep again. In either case

it was more than she could bear for much longer, and, did she go home,

she would have to bear it throughout the night--for days--until Cosimo

came back--after that----

But where else to go, if not to The Witan? To Laura's? To Dickie's?

That would be the same thing as going home: little enough change

from spinal anaesthesia in that! They could not help. Of all her old

associates, there was hardly one but might--that was to say if anything

extraordinary ever happened to them, like suddenly getting to know

something--there was hardly one of them but might experience precisely

this same hopeless perfection of wrongness, and fail to discover any

one point at which it had all begun. It was rather to be hoped (Amory

thought) that they never would get to know anything. They were happier

as they were, in a self-contained and harmonious ignorance. Knowledge

attained too late was rather dreadful; people ought to begin to get it

fairly early or not at all. They ought to begin at about the age of

Corin and Bonniebell....

A month ago the last person she would have gone to with a trouble

would have been Dorothy Tasker. They had not a single view in common.

Moreover, it would have been humiliating. But now that actually became,

in a curious, reflex sort of way, a reason for going. She did not know

that she actually wished to be humiliated; she did not think about

it; but she had been looking at herself, and at people exactly like

herself, for a long, long, long time, and, when you have looked at

yourself too much you can sometimes actually find out something new

about yourself by looking for a change at somebody else as little like

you as can possibly be found. Amory had tried a good many things, but

she had never tried this. It might be worth trying. She hesitated

for one moment longer. This was when she feared that Dorothy might

offer her, not the change from numbness to pain, but a sympathy and

consolation that, something deep down within her told her, would not

help her.... A little more quickly, but not much, she walked up Malden

Road. She turned into Fleet Road, and reached the tram-terminus below

Hampstead Heath Station. Thence to Dorothy's was a bare five minutes.

What she should say when she got to Dorothy's she did not trouble to

think.

And at first it looked as if she would not be allowed to say anything

at all to her, for when she rang the bell of the hall-floor flat Stan

himself opened the door, looked at her with no great favour, and told

her that Dorothy was not to be seen. From that Amory gathered that

Dorothy was at least within.

Now when your need of a thing is very great, you are not to be put off

by a young man who admits that his wife is at home, but tells you that

she has some trifling affair--is in her dressing-gown perhaps, or has

not made her hair tidy--that makes your call slightly inconvenient.

Therefore Amory, in her need, did what the young man would no doubt

have called "an infernally cheeky thing." She repeated her request once

more, and then, seeing another refusal coming, waited for no further

reply, but pushed past Stan and made direct for Dorothy's bedroom. Why

she should have supposed that Dorothy would be in her bedroom she could

not have told. She might equally well have been in the dining-room, or

in the pond-room. But along the passage to the bedroom Amory walked,

while Stan stared in stupefaction after her.

Dorothy was there. She had not gone to bed, but, early as it was,

appeared to have been preparing to do so. Amory knew that because,

though in Britomart Belchamber's case a dressing-gown and plaited hair

might merely have meant that she wanted to listen to Walter Wyron's

talk in looseness and comfort, or else that a plaster cast was to be

taken, they certainly did not mean that in Dorothy's. And she supposed

that differences of that kind were more or less what she had come to

see.

Dorothy was gazing into the fire before which the youngest Bit had

had his bath. Close to her own chair was drawn the chair that had

evidently been lately occupied by Stan. The infant Bit's cot was in a

corner of the room. At first Dorothy did not look up from the fire.

Probably she supposed the person who was looking at her from the

doorway to be Stan.

But as that person neither spoke nor advanced, she turned her head. The

next moment a curious little sound had come from her lips. You see, in

the first place, she had expected nobody less, and in the second place,

she wholeheartedly shared many of her worldly old aunt's prejudices,

among which was the monstrous one that established a connexion between

recently-bibbed politicians in this country and revolver shots in

another. And there was no doubt whatever that her presentable but

brainless young husband had fostered this fallacious conviction. He

might even have gone so far as to say that Amory herself was not

altogether unresponsible....

And that, too, in a sense, was what Amory had come for.

The eyes of the two women met, Amory's at the door, Dorothy's startled

ones looking over her shoulder; blue ones and shallow brook-brown ones;

and then Dorothy half rose.

But whatever the first expression of her face had been, it hardly

lasted for a quarter of an instant. Alarm instantly took its place. She

had begun to get up as a person gets up who would ask another person

what he is doing there. Now it was as if, though she did not yet know

what it was, there was something to be done, something practical and

with the hands, without a moment's delay.

"What's the matter?" she cried. "Cried" is written, but her exclamation

actually gained in emphasis from the fact that, not to wake the Bit,

she voiced it in a whisper.

For a moment Amory wondered why she should speak like that. Then it

occurred to her that the face of a person under spinal anaesthesia

might in itself be a reason. She had forgotten her face.

"May I come in?" she asked.

She took Dorothy's "Shut the door--and speak low, please--what do you

want?" as an intimation that she might. Amory entered. But she was not

asked to sit down. The man who runs with a fire-call, or fetches a

doctor in the night, is not asked to sit down, and some urgency of that

kind appeared to be Dorothy's conception of Amory's visit.

"What do you want?" she demanded again.

Amory herself felt foolish at her own reply. It was so futile, so

piteous, so true. She stood as helpless as a Bit before Dorothy.

"I--I don't know," she said.

"What's the matter? What are you looking like that for? Has anything

happened to Cosimo?"

"No. No. No. He's coming home. No. Nothing's happened."

"Can I be of use to you?" She was prepared to be that.

"No--yes--I don't know----"

Dorothy's eyes had hardened a little.--"_Do_ you want something--and if

you don't--_had_ you to come--to-night?"

Amory spoke quite quickly and eagerly.

"Oh yes--to-night--it had to be to-night--I had to come to-night----"

Dorothy's eyes grew harder still.

"Then I think I know what you mean.... I don't think we'll talk about

it. There's really nothing to be said.--So----"

Amory was vaguely puzzled. Of Dorothy's relation to Sir Benjamin she

knew nothing. Dorothy appeared to be waiting for her to go. That would

mean back to The Witan. But she had come here expressly to avoid going

back to The Witan. Again she spoke foolishly.

"Cosimo's coming back," she said.

"My aunt thought he might be," said Dorothy in an even voice.

"And I was going away--but I'm not now----"

"Oh?"

"May I sit down?"

She did so, with her doubled fists thrust between her knees and her

head a little bowed. Then her eyes wandered sideways slowly round the

room. Dorothy's blouse was thrown on the wide bed; from under the bed

the baby Bit's bath peeped; and on the blouse lay Dorothy's hairbrushes.

Amory was thinking of another bed, a bed she had never seen, with

portmanteaus on it, and a patched old waistcoat cast underneath it, and

a girl busily packing at it, a girl whose voice she had heard pouting

"You might buy me a trousseau--"

Dorothy also had sat down, but only on the edge of her chair. And she

thought it would be best to speak a little more plainly.

"If you'll come to-morrow I shall know better what to say to you," she

said. "You see, you've taken me by surprise. I didn't think you'd come,

and I don't know now what you've come for. It isn't a thing to talk

about, certainly not to-day. I should have liked to-day to myself. But

if you feel that you must--will you come in again to-morrow?"

But Amory hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes were noting the appointments

of the bedroom again. The time had been when she would at once have

denounced the room as overcrowded and unhygienic. A cot, and a bed with

two pillows ... in some respects her own plan was to be preferred. But

this again was the kind of thing she had come to see, and she admitted

that these things were more or less governed by what people could

afford. From the kicked and scratched condition of the front of the

chest of drawers she imagined that Dorothy's children must romp all

over the flat. A parti-coloured ball lay under the cot where the baby

slept. There was a rubber bath-doll near it. The two older boys would

be sleeping in the next room.

She spoke again.--"I was going away," she said, dully, "with somebody."

Once more Dorothy merely said "Oh?"

Then it occurred to Amory that perhaps Dorothy did not quite

understand.

"I mean with--with somebody not my husband."

She had half expected that Dorothy would be shocked, or at least

surprised; but she seemed to take it quite coolly. Dorothy, as a

matter of fact, was not surprised in the very least. She too guessed

at the futility of looking for a starting-point of things that grow by

inevitable and infinitesimal degrees. It was rather sad, but not at all

astonishing. On Amory's own premises, there was simply no reason why

she shouldn't. So again she merely said "Oh?" and added after a moment,

"But you're not?"

"No."

"How's that? Has what we've heard to-day made you change your mind?"

Again Amory was slightly puzzled; and at Dorothy's questions she had,

moreover, a sudden little hesitation. _Was_ it after all necessary that

Dorothy should know everything? Would it not be sufficient, without

going into details, to let Dorothy suppose she had changed her mind?

It came to the same thing in the end.... Besides, Edgar Strong had not

refused her that night. He had not even known of her presence in the

office. Of the rest she would make a clean breast, but it was no good

bothering Dorothy with that other.... She was still plunged into a sort

of stupor, but these reflections stirred ever so slightly under the

surface of it....

Then what "what we've heard to-day" struck her. She repeated the words.

"What we've heard to-day?"

"Oh, if you haven't heard.... I only mean about the murder of my

uncle," said Dorothy coldly.

This was far more than Amory could take in. She reflected for a moment.

Then, "What do you say, Dorothy?" she asked slowly.

"At least he wasn't my uncle really. I liked him better than any of my

uncles."

"Do you mean Sir Benjamin Collins?"

It was as if Amory had not imagined that Sir Benjamin could by any

possibility have been anybody's uncle.

"I called him uncle," said Dorothy, in a voice that she tried to keep

steady. "Before I could say the word--I called him----." But she

decided not to risk the baby-word she had used--"Unnoo"----

It seemed to Amory a remarkable little coincidence.

"I--I didn't know," she said stupidly.

"No."

"You--you mean you--knew him?----"

"Oh ... oh yes."

Amory said again that she hadn't known....

"Then why," Dorothy would have liked to cry aloud, "_have_ you come,

if it isn't to make matters worse by talking about it? That wouldn't

have surprised me very much! I should have been quite prepared for you

to apologize! It's the kind of thing you would do. I don't think very

much of you, you see".... But again that worse than frightened look on

her visitor's face struck her sharply, and again a remark of her aunt's

returned to her: "They puzzle their brains till their bodies suffer,

and overwork their bodies till they're little better than fools."

Suddenly she gave her sometime friend more careful attention.

"Amory--," she said all at once.

Amory had her fists between her knees again.--"What?" she said without

looking up.

"You just said something about--going away. I want to ask you

something. You haven't...?"

The meaning was quite plain.

As if she had been galvanized, Amory looked sharply up.--"How

dare----", she began.

But it was only a flash in the pan. Dorothy was looking into her eyes.

"You're telling me the truth?" She hated to ask the question.

"Yes," Amory mumbled, dropping her head again.

"Has Cosimo been unkind to you?"

"No."

"Nor neglected you?"

"No."

"Has--has anybody been unkind to you?" She could not speak of

"somebody" by name.

Here Amory hesitated, and finally lied. It was rather a good sign that

she did so. It meant returning animation....

"No," she said.

"Then what _has_ happened?"

"Nothing. That's what I asked myself. That's just it. Nothing. Nothing

at all's happened."

Dorothy spoke in a low voice, as if to herself.--"I know," she

murmured....

And, on the chance that she really did know, Amory clutched at the

sleeve of Dorothy's dressing-gown almost excitedly.

"Yes, that's what I mean ... you do know?" she asked in a quick whisper.

"Yes--no--I'm not sure----"

"But you _do_ know that--nothing happening, nothing at all, and

everything happening--everything? That's what I mean--that's what I

want to know--that's why I came----"

"Don't speak so loudly. Put your hands to the fire; they're like ice.

Wait; I'll get you a shawl; you're shivering.... Now I want you to tell

me some things...."

And, first wrapping her up and putting Stan's pillow behind her back,

she began to question her.

* * * * *

What, again, was the purport of her questions? What of those of her

aunt? What of those of a good many others in an age that is producing,

and for some mysterious reason or other counts it a sign of progress to

produce, innumerable Amorys--so many that, stretch out your hand where

you will, and you will touch one?

All is guessing: but it will pass on the time if we hold a Meeting

about it now. Everybody is agreed that the way to arrive at the

best conclusions is to hold a Meeting, and this will be only one

more Meeting added to the cloud of Meetings in which the "Novum"

went up and out--the Meeting which, as Edgar Strong had prophesied,

the loyal London Indians held (in the Imperial Institute) in order

to dissociate themselves from the Collins affair (as Edgar Strong

had also prophesied, Mr. Wilkinson moved an amendment, "That this

Meeting declines to dissociate itself, etc. etc.")--the numerous

secondary Meetings that arose out of that Meeting--the Meetings of

the "Novum's" creditors (for Edgar Strong in his haste to be off had

omitted to pay all the bills)--the Meetings at which (Cosimo Pratt

having withdrawn his support) the Eden and the Suffrage Shop had to be

reconstructed--the Meetings convened to talk about this, that and the

other--as many of them as you like.

Let us too, then, hold a nice, jolly Meeting, in order to find out what

was the matter with Amory--a Meeting with Mr. Brimby in the Chair, to

tell us that there is a great deal to be said on both sides, and that

no party has a monopoly of Truth, and that the words that ought always

to be on our lips as we hurl ourselves into the thickest and hottest of

the fray, whatever it may be, are "To know all is to forgive all."

But let us keep our Meeting as quiet as we can, for we shall have

no end of a crowd of Meeting-lovers there if we don't. The Wyrons

will of course have to be admitted, and Mr. Wilkinson, and Dickie

Lemesurier, and a few of the oldest students of the McGrath; but we do

not particularly want the others--those who feel that in a better and

brighter world they would have been students of the McGrath, but, as

matters stand, are merely young clerks who can draw a little, young

salesmen who can write a little, young auctioneers with an instinct for

the best in sculpture, young foremen who yearn to express themselves

in music, young governesses (or a few of them) who have heard of the

enormous sums of money to be made by playwriting, New Imperialists,

amateur regenerators, social prophets after working-hours, and, in

a word, all the people who have just heard that it is not true that

Satan is yet bound up for his promised stretch of a thousand years. A

terrible number of them will get in whether we wish it or not; but let

the rest be our own little party; and you shall sit next to Britomart

Belchamber, and I will stand by to open the windows in case we feel the

need of a little fresh air.

So Mr. Brimby will open the proceedings. He will say the things

above-mentioned, and presently, with emotion and his sense of the

world's sorrow gaining on him, will come to the case of their dear

friend Amory Pratt. Here, he will say, is a young woman, one of

themselves, who does not know what is the matter with her--who does

not know what has become of her joy--who cannot understand (if Mr.

Brimby may be allowed to express himself a little poetically) why the

bloom of her life has turned to an early rime. And so (Mr. Brimby will

continue), knowing that if two heads are better than one, two hundred

heads must be just one hundred times better still, their friend has

submitted her case to the Meeting. He will beg them to approach that

case sympathetically. Let the extremists of the one part (if there

be any) balance the extremists of the other, leaving as an ideal and

beautiful middle nullity those words he had used before, but did not

apologize for using again--to know all is to forgive all. And with

these few remarks (if we are lucky), Mr. Brimby will say no more, but

will call upon their friend Mr. Walter Wyron to state his view of their

friend's case.

Then Walter will get up, with his hands in the pockets of his knickers,

and it will not be his fault if he does not get off an epigram or two

of the "Love is Law" kind. But you will not fail to notice that Walter

is not his ordinary jaunty self. The withdrawal of Cosimo's support is

going to hit him rather hard, and glances will be exchanged, and one or

two will whisper behind their hands, "Isn't Walter beginning to live a

little on his reputation?" Still, Walter will contribute his quotum.

We shall hear that, in his opinion, the Cause of Synthetic Protoplasm

is making such vast strides to-day that we must revise every one of

our estimates in the light of the most recent knowledge, having done

which we shall probably find that what is really the matter with Amory

is that, by comparison with the mechanical appliances of Loeb and

Delage--appliances which he will take leave to call the Womb of the

Workshop--their friend Amory is over-vitalized.

Then Mr. Wilkinson will spring to his feet. And Mr. Wilkinson also

will be more than a little sore about Cosimo's cowardly backsliding.

He will say first of all that their Chairman, as usual, is talking out

of his hat, and that anybody with a grain of sense knew that to know

all was to have a contempt for all; and then he will point out that all

the trouble had come of shillyshallying with the wrong policy. Under

Strong's direction of the "Novum," he will say, Amory had been hitting

the air to no purpose; whereas had he, Mr. Wilkinson, been allowed

a chance, they would have had the proletariat armed with rifles by

this, and Pratt's wife would have been a _tricoteuse_, doing a bit of

knitting conspiratoriably and domestically useful at one and the same

time--would have worn a Phrygian cap, and carried a pike, and sung "A

la Lanterne," and put a bit of fire into the men! That's what she ought

to have done, and have had a bit of a run for her money, instead of

shillyshallying about with that idiot Strong----

And then a maiden speech will be given us. Mr. Raffinger, of the

McGrath, will get timidly but resolutely up, and we shall all applaud

him when he says that the bad old _régime_ at the McGrath was at the

bottom of all the mischief. The stupid old Professors of the past had

tried to drill instruction into the students instead of allowing each

one to do exactly as he pleased and so to find his own soul. Amory had

been crushed under the cruel old Juggernaut of discipline. But that,

happily, was a thing of the past at the McGrath. Now they went on the

more enlightened principles laid down by Séguin, who cured a child

of destructiveness by giving it a piece of priceless Venetian glass

to play with, and when he broke it gave it another unique piece, and

then another, and another after that, and another, until by degrees

the child learned, _and would never have to unlearn_ (that was the

important thing!) that it was very naughty to break valuable Venetian

glass. (A "hear hear" from Mr. Brimby, which will probably prove so

disconcerting to young Mr. Raffinger that he will sit down as suddenly

as if Mr. Wilkinson had discharged two bullets at him).

And then Laura Wyron will speak, saying tremulously that she can't

understand why Amory isn't happy when she has those two lovely babies;

but she is not happy, and never will be again, because she has turned

her back on her art; and Britomart Belchamber (who will be hoisted

to her feet because she has lived in the same house with Amory, and

may have something interesting and intimate to say) will doubt whether

Amory has always quite closed the sweat-ducts with a cold sponge;

and then the crowd will rush in--the governess playwrights will say

what they think, the clerk sculptors what they think, and everybody

else what he or she thinks--and presently they will have strayed a

little from the business in hand, and will be discussing Cubism, or

Matriarchy, or Toe-posts, or the Revival of the Ballad, or Rufty

Tufty, quite beyond Mr. Brimby's power to hale them back to the proper

subject. And so the Meeting will have to be adjourned, and we shall all

go again to-morrow night, when Mr. Wilkinson will be in the Chair, and

there ought to be some fun----

But Edgar Strong will not be there, because he will be on the water,

and Cosimo will not be there, because he will be anxiously counting

what money remains to him, and Mr. Prang will not be there, because he

will be under arrest in Bombay. But, except for these absences, it will

be a perfectly ripping Meeting----

* * * * *

But none of these things were Dorothy's business. Instead, by the time

she had finished her questioning of Amory, there was no thought at all

in her breast, save only the pitiful desire to help. She saw before her

an old young woman, more drained and disillusioned and with less to

look forward to at thirty-odd than her aunt had at seventy. Her very

presence in Dorothy's house that night was a confession of it. It was

the last house she would willingly have gone to, and yet there she

was, begging Dorothy to tell her what had happened to her. And there

was nothing for Dorothy to say in reply....

She knew that Stan, in the dining-room, was waiting to come to bed, but

he must wait; Dorothy had the fire to mend, and Amory's cold hands to

chafe, and to get her something hot to drink, and a dozen other things

to do that had never had a beginning either, yet there they were, mere

helpful habit and nothing more. Presently she set a cup of hot soup to

Amory's lips.

"Drink this," she said, "and when you're rested my husband will take

you home."

But that did not happen either. Amory spoke very tiredly.

"I should like--I don't want to trouble you--anywhere would do--but I

don't want to go home to-night----"

Dorothy made a swift and doubting mental calculation. Where could she

put her?----

"I'm simply done up," muttered Amory closing her eyes.

"I'm afraid we could only give you a shakedown in the dining-room----"

"Yes--that would do----"

Dorothy went out to give Stan his orders. Stan swore. "Rather cool, one

of _that_ crew coming here, to-night of all nights!" But Dorothy was

peremptory.

"It isn't cool at all. You don't know anything about it. You'll find

blankets in the chest in your dressing-room, and mind you don't wake

Noel. Then get some cushions--I'll air a pillow case--and then you

must go up there and tell them where she is--they'll be anxious----"

"Shall I bring those twins of hers back with me while I'm about it?"

Stan asked satirically. "May as well put the lot up."

When he heard Dorothy's reply he thought that his wife really had gone

mad.

"I've arranged that," she said. "We shall be putting the twins up for

a time at Ludlow by and by while she and her husband go away somewhere

for a change. It's the least we can do. Don't stand gaping there,

Stan----"

"Hm! May I ask what's up?"

"You may if you like, but I shan't tell you."

"Hm!... Well--it's a dog's life--but I suppose it's no good my saying

anything----"

"Not a bit."

So Amory was put to bed, most unhygienically, in Dorothy's dining-room;

but in the middle of the night she woke, quite unable to remember where

she was. There was a narrow opening between the drawn curtains; through

it a glimmer of light shone on the Venetian blinds from the street-lamp

outside; and without any other light Amory got out of her improvised

couch. She felt her way along the wall to a switch, and then suddenly

flooded the room with light.

Blinking, she looked around. She herself wore one of Dorothy's

nightgowns. On Stan's armchair, near his pipe-rack, was her hat, and

her clothing lay in a heap where she had stepped out of it. Dorothy's

slippers lay by the fender, and Dorothy had been too occupied to

remember to remove the photograph of Uncle Ben from the mantelpiece.

It seemed to be watching Amory as she stood, only half awake, in her

borrowed nightgown.

It was odd, the way things came about----

If you had asked Amory at six o'clock the evening before where she

intended to spend the night, she would not have replied "In Dorothy

Tasker's flat----"

But she felt frightfully listless, and the improvised bed was very

warm----

She switched off the light and crept back.

TAILPIECE

Along the terrace of the late Sir Noel Tasker's house--"The Brear,"

Ludlow--there rushed a troop of ten or twelve urchins. They were

dressed anyhow, in variously-coloured jerseys, shirts, jackets and

blazers, and the legs of half of them were bare, and brown as sand.

Their ages varied from five to fifteen, and it is hardly necessary to

say that as they ran they shouted. A retriever, two Irish terriers, an

Airedale and a Sealyham tore barking after them. It was a July evening,

amber and windless, and the shouting and barking diminished as the

horde turned the corner of the long low white house and disappeared

into the beech plantation. Their tutor was enjoying a well-earned pipe

in the coach-house.

From the tall drawing-room window there stepped on to the terrace a

group of older people. The sound of wheels slowly ascending the drive

could be heard. Lady Tasker came out first; she was followed by Cosimo

and Amory and Dorothy and Stan. A little pile of labelled bags stood

under the rose-grown verandah; the larger boxes had already gone on to

the station by cart.

Stan took a whistle from his pocket and blew two shrill blasts; then he

drew out his watch. The sounds of shouting drew near again.

"I give 'em thirty seconds," Stan remarked.... "Twenty-five,

twenty-six--leg it, Corin!--ah; twenty-eight!... Company--fall in!"

The young Tims and the young Tonys, Corin and Bonniebell and the

terriers, stood (dogs and all, save for their tails) stiff as ramrods.

Stan replaced his watch. He had been fishing, and still wore his tweed

peaked cap, with a spare cast or two wound round it.

"Company--'Shun! Stand a-a-at--ease! 'S you were! Stand a-a-at--ease!

Stand easy.... Tony, fall out and see to the bags. Tim, hold the horse.

Corin--Corin!--What do you keep in the trenches?"

"Silence," piped up Corin. He had a rag round one brown knee, his head

was half buried in an old field-service cap, and he refused to be

parted, day nor night, from the wooden gun he carried.

"Not so much noise then.--Who hauls down the flag to-night?"

"Billie."

"Billie stand by. The rest of you dismiss, but don't go far--'Evening,

Richards----"

The trap drew up in front of the house. Tim held the horse's head, Tony

stood among the bags. The leavetaking began.

Amory and Cosimo were going to Cumberland for the rest of the summer.

They would have liked to go to Norway, but the money would no longer

run to it. They seemed a little shy of one another. They had been at

the Brear a fortnight, and had had the little room over the porch. The

twins were remaining behind for the present. Dorothy had said they

would be no trouble. This was entirely untrue. They were more trouble

than all the rest put together. Corin, near the schoolroom window, was

wrangling with an eight years old Woodgate now.

"They do, there! On Hampstead Heath! I've seen them, an' they've hats,

an' waterbottles, an' broomsticks!"

"Pooh, broomsticks! My father has a big elephant-gun!"

"Well ... mine goes to great big Meetings, an' says 'Hear hear!'"

"My father's in India!"

"Well, so was mine!"

"_I've_ seen them troop the Colour at the Horse Guards' Parade!"

"So've I!" Corin mendaciously averred.

The other boy opened his eyes wide and protruded his mouth. It is

rarely that one boy does not know when another boy is lying.

"Oh, what a big one! _You'd_ catch it if Uncle Stan heard you!"

"Well," Corin pouted, "--I will--or else I'll cry all night--hard--and

I'll make Bonnie cry too!--"

"Well, an' so shall I, again, an' then I'll have seen it twice, an'

you'll only have seen it once, an' if I see it every time you do you'll

_never_ have seen it as often as me!"

Then Stan's voice was heard.

"Corin, come here."

It was an atmosphere of insensate militarism, but the Pratts were

content to leave their offspring to breathe it for the present. They

had another matter to attend to--their own marital relations. It had

at last occurred to them that you cannot rule others until you can

govern yourself, and they were going to see what could be done about

it. They had secured a cottage miles away from anywhere, at the head of

a narrow-gauge railway, and it remained to be seen whether quiet and

privacy and the resources they might find within themselves would avail

them better than the opposites of these things had done. There was just

the chance that they might--their only chance. The twins, if all went

well, would join them by and by. In the meantime they must see red, and

learn to do things with once telling.

So Amory took the struggling Corin into her arms--he wanted to go to

the armoury of wooden guns--and kissed him. Then he ran unconcernedly

off. Dorothy saw the sad little lift of Amory's bosom, guessed the

cause, and laughed.

"Shocking little ingrates!" she said. "Noel's joy when I go away is

sometimes indecent.--But don't be afraid they'll be any trouble to us

here. You see the rabble we have in any case."

"It's very good of you," Amory murmured awkwardly.

"Nothing of the sort. Stan loves to manage them--it keeps his hand in

for managing me, he says.... Now, I don't want to hurry you, but you'd

better be off if you're going to get as far as Liverpool to-night.

Good-bye, dear----"

"Good-bye, Dorothy----"

"So long, Pratt--up with those bags, Tim----"

"Good-bye, Bonnie----"

"Corin! Corin!--(Hm! See if I don't have you in hand in another week or

two, my boy!)--Come and say good-bye to your father."

"Good-bye, Lady Tasker----"

"All right?"

The wheels crunched; hands were waved; the rabble gave a shockingly

undisciplined cheer; and young Arthur Woodgate, who had run along the

terrace and stood holding the gate at the end open, saluted. Stan took

out his watch again.

"Four minutes to sunset," he announced.

But there was no need to tell Billie to stand by to strike the flag

that hung motionless above the gable where the old billiard-room and

gun-room had been thrown together to make the schoolroom. The halyards

were already in his hands.

"Here, Corin," Stan called, "you shall fire the gun to-night."

Corin gave a wild yell of joy. Well out of reach, there was an electric

button on one of the rose-grown verandah posts. Stan lifted his newest

recruit to it, who put a finger-tip on it and shut his eyes----

"BANG!" went the little brass carronade in the locked enclosure behind

the woodshed----

And hand over hand Billie hauled the flag down.

But it would be run up again in the morning.

THE END

Transcriber's note

Extra titles were removed. The family tree on page 329 was adapted

to a limited page width. Words in italics have been surrounded with

_underscores_ and smalll capitals changed to all capitals. Errors in

punctuation were corrected silently. Also the following changes were

made, on page

72 "flash" changed to "flask" (opened the flask of Chianti)

182 "Hamlton" changed to "Hamilton" (she had suggested Mr. Hamilton

Dix instead)

210 "Cest" changed to "C'est" (C'est ça!)

252 "than" changed to "that" (spring a thing like that on you)

311 "represnt" changed to "represent" (It should represent the

Earthly Authority)

527 "I'amour" changed to "l'amour" (Comment l'amour revient aux

vieillards)

538 "excepted" changed to "accepted" (broke one of their tacitly

accepted rules)

590 "woman" changed to "women" (She looked at the women. There was

nothing to betray them).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including unusual or archaic

words and expressions, and inconsistent spelling and hyphenation.