A Crooked Mile Part 35

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 d.i.c.kie Lemesurier, and a few of the older 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 s.h.i.+llyshallying 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 s.h.i.+llyshallying 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 _regime_ 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 Seguin, who cured a child of destructiveness by giving it a piece of priceless Venetian gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. (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 cus.h.i.+ons--I'll air a pillowcase--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, s.h.i.+rts, 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 fis.h.i.+ng, 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.