A Crooked Mile Part 29

"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 Ups.h.i.+re--would it Katie?"

"No," said Katie.

"Very well. Suppose Lady Ups.h.i.+re 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 princ.i.p.al thing. It's its value as an advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt-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, n.o.body would think it unnatural of you to be a little shocked at the news of his a.s.sa.s.sination; 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 cla.s.ses 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 n.o.ble movements of her time Dorothy was. The sense of proportion never entered her head. She gave a little s.h.i.+ver, 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 pre-judging of the case. n.o.body 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 circ.u.mspect.... 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 modic.u.m 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 d.i.c.kie 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 d.i.c.kie 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?"