A Crooked Mile Part 24

"I admit I got the idea from Balzac," he said between mouthfuls (whenever they came to The Witan the Wyrons supped almost as heartily as did Edgar Strong himself). "'Comment l'amour revient aux vieillards,'

you know. But of course that hasn't any earthly interest for anybody.

'Aux vieilles' it ought to be. Then--well, then you've simply got 'em."

"Why not 'vieillards?'" Amory asked, not very genially.

"I say, Cosimo, I'll have another cutlet if I may.--Why not 'vieillards?' Quite obvious. Men aren't the interest. I've tried men, and you can ask Laura how the bookings went.--But 'vieilles' and I've got 'em. Really, Amory, you're getting quite dull if you don't see that!

I'll explain. You see, I've already got the younger ones, like Brit here--shove the claret along, Brit--but the others, of forty or fifty say, well, they've all had their affairs--or if they haven't better still--and it's merely a question of touching the right chord. Regrets, time they've lost, fatal words 'Too late' and so on--it's simply _made_ for me! Touch the chord and they do the rest for themselves. They probably won't hear half of it for sobbing.--Of course I shall probably have to modify my style a bit--not quite so--what shall I say----"

"Jaunty," his wife suggested, "--in the best sense, I mean----"

"Hm--that's not quite the word--but never mind. It's a great field.

Certainly women, not men, are the draw."

Amory made a rather petulant objection, and the argument lasted some minutes. In the end Walter triumphantly gained his first point, that women and not men were the "draw" in the box-office sense, and also his second one, namely, that not the Britomarts, but the older women, who would put their hearts into his hands and pay him for exploiting their helplessness and ache and tenderness and regret, and never suspect that they were being practised upon, were "simply made for him...."

"What do you think of my t.i.tle?" he asked.

And the t.i.tle was discussed.

Amory was beginning to find Walter just a little grasping. She wished that after all she had not asked the Wyrons to stay to supper. Formerly she had thought that marriage-escapade of theirs big and heroic (that too, by the way, had been in the Latin Quarter, and probably on seven francs a day); but now she was less sure about that. Quite apart from the inapplicability of the Wyrons' experience to her own case, she now wondered whether theirs had in fact been experience at all. Now that she came to think of it, they had taken no risks. They _had_ been married, and in the last event could always turn round on their critics and silence them with that fact....

Nor was she quite so ready now to lay even the souls of Britomart and Cosimo on the dissecting-table for the sake of seeing Walter exercise his professional skill upon them. This was not so much that she wanted to spare Cosimo and Britomart as that she did not want to give Walter a gratification. She was inclined to think that if Walter couldn't be a little more careful about contradicting her he might find his advertis.e.m.e.nt omitted from the "Novum" one week, as Katie Deedes' had been omitted, and where would he be then? The way in which he had just said that she was "getting quite dull" had been next door to a rudeness....

But she had to admit that she felt dull. Edgar, who sat next to her, did not speak, and Cosimo, who faced her, was apparently still brooding on people who planned the spending of his money without thinking it necessary to consult him first. She was tired of the whole of the circ.u.mstances of her life. Paris on seven francs a day could hardly be much worse. Nor, if she could but shake off her lethargy, need that sum be fixed as low as seven francs. For she had lately remembered an arrangement made between herself and Cosimo before she had ever consented to become engaged to him. It was a long time since either of them had spoken of this arrangement--so long that Cosimo would have been almost within his rights had he maintained that the circ.u.mstances had so altered as to make it no longer binding; but there it was, or had been, and it had never been expressly revoked. It was the arrangement by which they had set apart a fund to insure themselves, either or both of them, against any evils that might arise from incompatibility. Amory had no idea how the matter now stood. She didn't suppose for a moment that Cosimo had actually set a sum by each week or month; but, hard and fast or loose and fluid, he must have made, or be still ready to make, some provision. It was an inherent part of the contract that a solemn affirmation, with reason shown (spiritual, not mere legal reason) by either one or the other, should const.i.tute a sufficient claim on this fund.

Therefore Paris need not necessarily be the worst penury.

But, for all her new inclination to leave the Wyrons out of it, she still thought it a prudent idea to carry the fight (not that there would be any fight--that was only a low way of expressing the high reasonableness that always prevailed at The Witan) to Cosimo and Britomart, rather than to have it centre about Edgar and herself.

Walter's eyes were mainly on the box-office nowadays. The original virtue of that fine protest of theirs was--there was no use in denying it--gone. He spread his Lectures frankly now as a net. Well, that was only one net more among the many nets of which she was becoming conscious. Edgar too, poor boy, was compelled to regard even the "Novum"

as in some manner a net. Mr. Brimby, Amory more than guessed, had nets to spread. Mr. Wilkinson, in his own way, was out for a catch; and d.i.c.kie fished at the Suffrage Shop; and Katie had fished at the Eden; and the only one who didn't fish was Mr. Prang, who wrote his articles about India for nothing, just to be practising his English.

And all these nets were spread for somebody's money--a good deal of it Cosimo's. It had been the same, though perhaps not quite so bad, at Ludlow. That experiment on the country-side had been alarmingly costly.

And all this did not include the dozens and dozens of nets of narrower mesh. The "Novum" might gulp down money by the hundred, but the lesser things were hardly less formidable in the sum of them--subscriptions, contributions, gifts, loans, investments, shares in the Eden and the Book Shop, mortgages, second mortgages, subsidies, sums to "tide over,"

backings, guarantees, losses cut, more good money sent to bring back the bad, fresh means of spending devised by somebody or other almost every day. It had begun to weary even Amory. The people who came to The Witan became rather curiously better-dressed the longer their visiting continued; but the things they professed to hold dear appeared very little further advanced. All that first brightness and promise had gone.

Amory's interest had gone. She wanted to escape from it all, and to go away with Edgar appeared once more to be the readiest way out.

But, though she might now wish to keep Walter Wyron out of it all, that did not necessarily mean that Walter would be kept out. This _ex-officio_ specialist on the (preferably female) heart, this professional rectifier of unfortunate marriages, had not done a number of years' platform-work without having discovered the peculiar beauties of the _argumentum ad hominem_, and it was one of his practices to enforce his arguments with "Take the case of Brit here"--or "Let's get down to the concrete: suppose Amory--" And these descents to the particular had always a curiously accusatory effect. Walter, interrupting Amory's meditation, broke into one of them now.

"But my dear chap,"--this was to Cosimo,"--I can't imagine what's come over all of you to-night! First Amory, now you! You're usually quicker than this! Let's take a case.--Brit here----"

One sterno-mastoid majestically turned the caryatid's head. Again Miss Belchamber's grand thorax worked as if somebody had put a penny into the slot.

"What?" she said.

"Quiet, Brit; I'm only using you as an ill.u.s.tration.--Suppose Brit here was to develop a pa.s.sion for somebody--Cosimo, say; yes, Cosimo'll do capitally; awfully good instance of the cant that's commonly talked about 'treachery' and 'under his own roof' and all the rest of it--as if a roof wasn't a roof and it hadn't got to be under somebody's--unless they went out on the Heath!--Well, suppose it was to happen to Cosimo and Brit; what then? We're civilized, I hope. We're a little above the animals, I venture to think. Amory wouldn't fly at Brit's eyes, and Brit's father wouldn't come round with a razor to cut Cosimo's throat.

In fact----"

"My fa-ther al-ways uses a safety-razor," said Miss Belchamber with a reminiscent air.

"Don't interrupt, Brit.--I was going to say that the world's got past all that. Nor Brit wouldn't fly at Amory, nor Cosimo kick the old josser out of the house--though we should be much more ready to condone that part of it if they did--if it was only to get quits with the past a bit----"

"My fa-ther's forty-five," Miss Belchamber announced, as the interesting result of an interesting mental process of computation. "Next June," she added.

"More interruptions from the back of the hall.--In fact, I'm not sure that _wouldn't_ be entirely defensible--Brit going for Amory and Cosimo kicking the old dodderer out, I mean. That's the justification of the _crime pa.s.sionel_. It's the Will to Live. And by Live I mean Love. It's the old saying, that kissing lips have no conscience. Or Jove laughs at lovers' oaths. Quite right. It's the New Greek Spirit. But for all that we're modern and rational about these things. If Strong here wanted to take Laura from me I should simply say, 'All you've got to do, my dear chap, is to table your reasons, and if they're stronger than mine you take her.' See?"

At that Edgar Strong, like Britomart, looked up. He spoke for the first time.--"What's that you're saying?" he asked.

"I don't suppose you'd want her, but suppose you did...."

Mr. Strong dropped his eyes to his plate again.--"Ah, yes," he said.

"Ellen Key's got something about that." And he relapsed into silence again.

It sounded to Amory idiotic. Walter was so evidently "trying" it on them in order to see how it would go down with an audience afterwards. She wouldn't have scratched Britomart's eyes out for Cosimo,--but she coloured a little, and bit her lip, at the thought that somebody might want to come between herself and Edgar.... But perhaps that was what Walter meant--real affinities, as distinct from the ordinary vapid a.s.sumptions about marriages being made in Heaven. If so, she agreed with him--not that she was much fonder of him on that account. She wished he would keep his personalities for Cosimo and Britomart, and leave herself and Edgar alone.--Walter went on.

"And then, when you've got your New Greek Certificate, so to speak, it's plainly the duty of everybody else, not to put obstacles in your way and to threaten you with razors and cutting off supplies, but to sink their personal feelings and to do everything they can to help you. And without snivelling either. I shouldn't snivel, I hope, if anybody took Laura, and she wouldn't if anybody took me----"

Here Laura interposed softly.--"I don't want any one to take you, dear,"

she said.

Walter turned sharply.

"Eh?... Now you've put me off my argument.... What was I saying?...

Haven't I told you you must _never_ do that, Laura?... No, it's quite gone.... You see ..."

Laura murmured that she was very sorry....

"No, it's gone," said Walter, almost cheerfully, as if not sorry that for once the worth of what he had been about to say should be measured by the sense of loss. "So since Laura wishes it I'll shut up."

He pa.s.sed up his plate for a second helping of trifle.

By this time Amory was perhaps rather glad that she had had the Wyrons after all. That about people not putting obstacles in the way was quite neat. "A plain duty," he had said. She hoped Cosimo'd heard that, and would remember it when she raised the subject of the fund. And so far was she herself from putting obstacles in _his_ way that, although she could have sent Britomart Belchamber packing with her wages at any moment, she had not done so. That, as Walter had said, would only have been another way of flying at her eyes.... Besides, Amory had been far too deeply occupied to formulate definitely her charges against Cosimo and Britomart. For all she knew it might have gone much, much further than she had thought. Sometimes, when Amory took breakfast in her own room, she did not see Cosimo until the evening, and Britomart too had heaps of time on her hands when she had finished with Corin and Bonniebell. Cosimo must not tell her that the "_Life and Work_" occupied him during every minute of his time....

Then, presently, she was sorry again that the Wyrons had been asked, for Walter had suddenly remembered the thread of his discourse, and, in continuing it, had been almost rude to Laura. She wondered whether he would have turned with a half angry "Why, what's the matter?" had Laura cried. Perhaps it was really a good thing the Wyrons hadn't any children, for this kind of thing would certainly have been a bad example for them. She herself was never rude to Cosimo before Corin and Bonniebell. She was always markedly polite. There were excuses to be made for Pa.s.sion, but none for rudeness.

By this time Edgar Strong had finished his last piece of cheese and was wiping his lips with his napkin. Then he looked at his watch, and for the second time during the course of the meal spoke.

"Look here, Cosimo, I've got to be off presently, and we haven't settled about those advertis.e.m.e.nts yet. And there's something else I want to say to you too. Could we hurry coffee up? Where do we have it?

In the studio, I suppose? Or do the others go into the studio and you and Walter and I have ours here?"

"We might as well all go into the studio," said Cosimo, rising; and they left the sombre room and sought the studio, all except Miss Belchamber, who went upstairs.

The sight of the innumerable cigarette-ends about the asbestos log reminded Walter of Mr. Crabtree again; and for a minute or two--that is to say during the time that Walter, taking her aside, told her of the quiet but penetrating side-light Mr. Crabtree had innocently shed on Mr.

Wilkinson's scheme for some new paper or other that Cosimo was to finance--Amory was once more glad that the Wyrons had come. But the next moment, as Walter loitered away and Laura came and sat softly down beside her, she was sorry again. Laura was gently crying. That struck Amory as stupid. As if she hadn't enough great troubles of her own, without burdening herself with the Wyrons' trivial ones!

So, as she had nothing really helpful to say to Laura, she left her, and sat down on the footstool she had occupied on the day when Edgar Strong had said that he liked the casts and had asked her whether she had read something or other--she forgot what.

Edgar was talking in low tones to Cosimo, and Amory thought she heard the name of Mr. Prang. Then Cosimo, who always thought more Imperially with a map before him, got out the large atlas, and the two of them bent over it together. Walter joined them, and, after an interlude that appeared to be about the Lectures' advertis.e.m.e.nt, Walter strolled away again and joined Laura. Amory heard an "Eh?" and a moment later the word "touchy," and Walter went off to the window with his hands in the pockets of his knickers, whistling. Edgar took not the least notice of Amory's eyes intently fixed upon him. He continued to talk to Cosimo.

Walter, who was examining a j.a.panese print, called over his shoulder, "This a new one, Amory? What is it--Utamaro?" Then he walked up to where Laura sat again. He was speaking in an undertone to her: "Rubbish ...