A Crooked Mile Part 11

Bacchus had had a spree there, and it was there--or was that Egypt?--that Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba or somebody had smuggled her satiny self into a roll of carpets and had had herself carried as a present to King Solomon or Mark Antony or whoever it was. It seemed to be in the Asian atmosphere, and Mr. Prang's prose style had a smack of it too. Mr. Strong--his literary style, of course, she meant--might have been all the better for a touch of that blood-warmth and thrill....

And there were ripping bits of reckless pa.s.sion in Herodotus too.

But Mr. Strong continued to stand between the tea-table and the asbestos log, and to let fall irresolute sentences from time to time. Prang, he said, really was a bit stiff, and he, Mr. Strong, wasn't sure that he altogether liked certain responsibilities. Not that he had changed his mind in the least degree. He only doubted whether in the long run it would pay the "Novum" itself to acquire a reputation for exploiting what everybody else knew as well as they did, but left severely alone. In fact, he had a.s.sumed, when he had taken the job on, that the work for which he received only an ordinary working-salary would be conditioned by what other editors did and received for doing it.... At that Amory looked up.

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

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

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

"Well, say risks to Cosimo as proprietor."

"You mean he might lose his money?" she said, with a glance round the satiny triceps and the apple-bud of an elbow.

"Well--does he _want_ to lose his money?--What I mean is, that we aren't paying our way--we've scarcely any advertis.e.m.e.nts, you see----"

"I think that what you mean is that we ought to become Liberals?" There was a little ring in Amory's voice.

Mr. Strong made no reply.

"Or Fabians, perhaps?"

Still Mr. Strong did not answer.

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

Now those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew how exceedingly sensitive he was to those very words--"I'm disappointed in you." In his large and varied experience they were invariably the prelude to the sack. And he very distinctly did not want the sack--not, at any rate, until he had got something better. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that, of himself and Prang, he would be the more discreet editor, and so lifted the question a whole plane morally higher. Perhaps, if it came to the next worst, he was prepared to accept the foisting of Prang upon him and to take his chance. Anyway, his face grew very serious, and he reached for the footstool, drew it close up to Amory's couch, and sat down on it.

"I wonder," he said slowly, looking earnestly at his folded hands, "whether you'll put the worst interpretation on what I'm going to say."

Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper arm. Mr. Strong resumed, more slowly still--

"It's this. We're risking things. Cosimo's risking his money, but he may be risking more than that. And if he risks it, so do I."

Into Amory's pretty face had come the look of the woman who prefers men to take risks rather than to talk about them.--"What do you risk?" she asked in tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong.

"Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang's rather a whole-hogger. It's what I said before--we want to use him, not have him use us."

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

There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong's mind what that meant. "Because if you can't," it plainly meant, "I dare say we can find somebody who can." Without any qualification whatever, she really was beginning to be a little disappointed in him. She wondered how Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba would have felt (had such a thing been conceivable) if, when that carpet had been carried by the Nubians into her lover's presence and unrolled, Antony or whatever his name was had blushed and turned away, too faint-hearted to take the gift the G.o.ds offered him? Risks!

Weren't--Indian policies--worth a little risk?...

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

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

Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it in the days when his conversation had been slangier than it was now), it was up to him to make good pretty quickly or else to say good-bye to the editors.h.i.+p of a rag that at least did one bit of good in the world--paid Edgar Strong six pounds a week. And if it must be done it must, that was all. d.a.m.n it!...

Perhaps the satiny upper arm decided his next action. Once before he had made its plaster facsimile serve his turn, and on the whole he would have preferred to be able to do so again; but even had that object not been out of reach on the wall and its original not eighteen inches away at the sofa's end, three hundred pounds a year in jeopardy must be made surer than that. He would have given a month's screw could Cosimo have come in at that moment. He actually did give a quick glance in the direction of the door....

But no help came.

d.a.m.n it----!

The next moment he had kissed that satiny surface, and then, gloomily, and as one who shoulders the consequences of an inevitable act, stalked away and stood in the favourite att.i.tude of Mr. Brimby's heroes under great stress of emotion--with his head deeply bowed and his back to Amory. There fell between them a silence so profound that either became conscious at the same moment of the soft falling of rain on the studio roof.

Then, after a full minute and a half, Mr. Strong, still without turning, walked to the table on which his hat lay. Always without looking at Amory, he moved towards the door.

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

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

All in a moment Amory knew that on the morrow Cosimo would receive Edgar Strong's formal resignation from the "Novum's" editorial chair, and that, though Edgar might retain his hold on the paper until his successor had been found, he would never come to The Witan any more. He had called Mr. Prang a whole-hogger, but in Love he himself appeared to be rather a whole-hogger. He had all but told her that to see her again would mean ... she trembled. The alternative was not to see her again.

His whole action had said, more plainly than any words could say, "After that--all or nothing."

She had not moved. She hardly knew the voice for her own in which she said, still without turning her head, "Wait--a minute----"

Mr. Strong waited. The minute for which she asked pa.s.sed.

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

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

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

"Really nothing."

"Give me just a minute----"

For she was thinking that it was her face, nothing else, that had launched him thus to the door. For a moment she felt compunction for its tyranny. Poor fellow, what else had he been able to do?... Yet what, between letting him go and bidding him stay, was she herself to do? At his touch her heart had swelled--been constricted--either--both; even had she not known that she was a pretty woman, now at any rate she had put it to the proof; and the chances seemed real enough that if he turned and looked at her now, he must give a cry, stride across the studio floor, and take her in his arms. Dared she provoke him?...

The moment she asked herself whether she dared she did dare. Not to have dared would to have been to be inferior to those great and splendid and reckless ones who had turned their eyes on their lovers and had whispered, "Antony--Louis--I am here!" If she courted less danger than she knew, her daring remained the same. And the room itself backed her up. So many doctrines were enunciated in that studio, the burden of one and all of which was "Why not?" The atmosphere was charged with permissions ... perhaps for him too. He was at the door now. It was only the turning of a key....

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

"Edgar----"

But he had thought no less quickly than she. He had turned. Shrewdly he guessed that she meant nothing; so much the better--d.a.m.n it! There was something female about Edgar Strong; he knew more about some things than a young man ought to know; and in an instant he had found the "line" he meant to take. It was the "line" of honour rooted in dishonour--the "line" of Cosimo his friend--the "line" of black treachery to the hand that fed him with m.u.f.fins and anchovy paste--or, failing these, the all-or-nothing "line."... But on the whole he would a little rather go straight than not....

Nor did he hesitate. Amory had turned on the sofa. "Edgar!" she had called softly again. He swung round. The savagery of his reply--there seemed to Amory to be no other word to describe it--almost frightened her.

"Do you know what you're doing?" he broke out. "Haven't you done enough already? What do you suppose I'm made of?"

The moment he had said it he saw that he had made no mistake. It would not be necessary to go the length of turning the key. He glared at her for a moment; then he spoke again, less savagely, but no less curtly.

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

Instinctively Amory had covered her face with her hands. It was fearfully sweet and dangerous. Flattery could hardly have gone further than that tortured cry, "What do you think I'm made of?" Her heart was thumping--thump, thump, thump, thump. A lesser woman would have taken refuge in evasions, but not she--not she, with Cosimo carrying on with Britomart, and Dorothy Tasker no doubt whispering to her Otis or Wilbur or whatever her American's name might be, and Stan perhaps deep in an intrigue with his Spanish female at that very moment. No, she had provoked him, and he had now every right to cry, not "Have you read '_The Tragic Comedians_'?" but "Do you know what you're doing?"... And he was speaking again now.