Chapter IV: Part I: Argument (3)

The sulphur-blue moonlight crept farther along the lattice, and shimmered on the river as if a piece of silver foil had been crumpled and straightened out again; and on the smoky, sagging ceiling the shadows fluctuated, soft and enormous, whenever a head or a hand was moved. Laura had laid aside her guitar now, and they, had drawn more closely together, and were telling ghost-stories. Dickie Lemesurier told one that had happened to somebody her mother knew as well as they knew one another sitting there; and then, as Amory put aside her hair again and began to speak, she gave a little shriek: "No--not that _frrrightful_ one out of Myers, Amory!"... But Amory told it, and Katie Deedes remembered the dark stairs, and said that she would never dare to go down them.... So by and by Cosimo got up and lighted the two candles, and the terrors receded as the flames crept up, and Laura was persuaded to sing just one more song and then (she said) she really must go--her people would be wondering whatever had become of her. But Walter said that that was all right: he'd see her home. And Mr. Bielby would go along with Katie and Dorothy, who went together, and of course Cosimo would take Amory herself. Laura tucked the guitar with the coloured ribbons into its case, and reluctantly they sought their hats and coats. Amory was putting her hair up again. Cosimo took two blazing cobs of coal from the fire, putting them out of harm's way on an iron shovel; and as Dorothy saw her friends out and locked the door, the cheerful glow on the ceiling could still be seen where the upper part of the door warped inwards. They groped their way down the dark stairs, and passed in a body up Oakley Street; and at the corner by the King's Road they said good-night.

"We walk, I suppose?" Cosimo said to Amory.

"Rather!" said Amory.

They turned their faces towards Shepherd's Bush.

It was as they walked up Redcliffe Gardens that Amory suddenly said, with a little sigh of regret, "Poor Dorothy!"

Cosimo nodded. He always understood so quickly; that was the wonderful thing about Cosimo.--"You mean she was a bit out of it?"

"She only spoke about three times, and that was to Mr. Bielby."

Cosimo gave a shrug, and that was delicate of him too. He knew that it would be a pleasure to Amory to defend a lightly disparaged friend. Amory did defend Dorothy.

"You really underrate her, Cosimo. Of course there's that dreadful job of hers, but she does know better really. I do hope she wasn't bored."

"Well, you can't help Dorothy's shortcomings, Amory," Cosimo remarked, as if true artists had sorrows enough of their own without taking those of fashion-artists on their shoulders.

"But I'm worried about her, Cosimo----"

"Of course you are," Cosimo replied promptly. "That's what I always find so fine about you. The stronger _always_ worries about the weaker. It seems to be a Law----"

"Do you think it is a Law?" Amory asked thoughtfully.

"Well, _isn't_ it? Just look at it, now...."

Cosimo began to set it forth. Halfway up North End Road Amory had reluctantly to confess that it did seem to be a Law. She had suspected it before, but never, never had it been made quite so clear to her. She resolved that she must be very gentle with Dorothy. At that moment she was very fond of her indeed.

She continued her walk with Cosimo.

V

POUNDS AND SHILLINGS

When Mr. Hamilton Dix, the renowned critic, had first mentioned Amory in print, he had made a perhaps pardonable error about her sex. But the error itself had been a compliment. In speaking of "Mr. Amory Towers" he had been misled by the rugged masculinity of "The Paviors," her second exhibited picture.

Amory was not sure that she liked Mr. Dix very much. He seemed to her to have a rather remarkable faculty for slightly impairing the value of everything of which he wrote or spoke. His conclusions were undeniable; when Mr. Hamilton Dix had pronounced on a thing Q.E.D. might be written after that thing; there was no more to be said about it. But somehow all the fun had gone out of it. You told yourself, grossly unfairly, that if it interested Mr. Hamilton Dix it had no further interest for you. That was your loss, since Mr. Dix usually fastened on the best things. In appearance he was a big man with an overpowering presence, a promising eye, and brown curls that frothed all over his head like the "top" of a mug of porter; and you wondered whether a person could ever be so glad to see anybody whomsoever as Mr. Hamilton Dix appeared to be to see everybody. He still occasionally called Amory "Mr. Towers" by way of a joke.

Mr. Dix had no official connection with the Crozier Gallery. He frequently wrote of "another admirable Exhibition at the Crozier which no serious student of art must miss," or "the gift of discovering the best among our younger artists which the proprietors of the Crozier seem to possess," but that was all. As a professional critic he was not eligible for membership of the artists' clubs, but he blew like a March gale through their studios, and the smaller and poorer the studio the more he irradiated it with the light of his optimistic eye.

During their earlier interviews he had carried Amory entirely off her feet. Though his tongue had cautioned and disclaimed, there had been no resisting the promise of his eye. Croziers' were going to take her up, and--well, at the present stage "Mr. Towers" (ha, ha) would quite understand that Mr. Dix did not want to say too much about it.--But his very reticence had seemed a guarantee. It was not to be supposed that Messrs. Crozier took people up without a certain amount of belief in them.... And that had kept Amory's head in the clouds for quite a long time.... But little by little it had dawned on Amory that time seemed of very little value to Messrs. Crozier. A thousand years in their sight--or two years, to be precise--was but as yesterday. Delay after delay had occurred; Messrs. Crozier had not judged this time to be quite ripe, had considered that market to be a little overstocked; it was necessary, if the success was to be made for which they hoped, that the time should be chosen to the hour; and so on and so forth.--"You're far from being old yet, if I may say so without offence, Miss Towers," Mr. Dix had remarked, rolling his eye over Amory's small, straight little figure, as if the organ had been mounted on an universal joint....

But lately it had looked as if things really were in motion again. Amory had had several letters with the Crozier embossing on the envelope flap, asking her to state at once in what state of advancement her works were, and once she had even had a prepaid telegram.... Then things had slowed up once more, and Amory had fumed.

Then, on a morning in May, a hansom cab drew up at the greengrocer's in Cheyne Walk, and Mr. Hamilton Dix, seeing Amory look out of the window, had waved his plump hand. He blundered up the stairs, and told Amory that he wished to see the canvases themselves, at once; at once, mind you.... There were between twenty-five and thirty of these canvases; they were stacked round the walls like the slates in a builder's yard; and Mr. Dix rolled his eye over them as Amory set them, one after another, on her easel. Then he rolled the eye over Amory herself again. Again Amory somehow had the impression of gluten. It was as if the eye had left traces where it had rested.

"Excellent. Admirable. Very choice. Very good indeed," said Mr. Dix. "And now, Miss Towers, I'm afraid I've a disappointment for you."

If Mr. Dix spoke of a disappointment it was sure not to be so bad as it sounded. Amory watched him a little anxiously, however. Another postponement would be really too bad.

"It's the old difficulty, the difficulty of fitting in the dates," Mr. Dix said. "Mr. Hugh Crozier is deeply apologetic about it; he's quite as much disappointed as you can possibly be; but--well, I see I shall have to tell you a secret that must on no account pass these four walls."

Mr. Dix told his secret. It was that Herbertson, the brilliant pastelist, was not expected to live through the week.

"Not a word, mind," Mr. Dix cautioned Amory. "It's only because the circumstances in your case are special that I have Mr. Hugh's permission to tell you this at all. But you see the difficulty it places him in. Poor Herbertson's exhibition will be ten times as valuable if it comes while the papers are still full of his obituary--valuable to poor Mrs. Herbertson, I mean--I'm sure you'll see that----"

Even the little thrill of being taken into Mr. Dix's confidence did not altogether compensate for Amory's disappointment. Another postponement now would mean no exhibition until the autumn. Slowly she took down from the easel the canvas she had last placed there.

"In that case I suppose there's no hurry," she said, plunging into dejection once more.

But Mr. Dix's plump white hand went so far as to pat her reassuringly on the shoulder. The touch of his hand was only slightly more a contact than the resting of his eye.

"But you mustn't suppose that that is all I came to tell you," he said. "My dear young lady, Mr. Crozier isn't that kind of man. He quite appreciates the hardship this is on you, and--don't look dismayed--it doesn't at all suit those pretty eyes--he has authorized me to make you a proposal."

"What?" said Amory. She did not like the remark about her pretty eyes. Cosimo never spoke of her pretty eyes.

"It is this: that I am empowered to ask you if it would be convenient to you that he should pay you a sum of money now, in advance and on account of sales, at our customary rate of interest in such cases, the pictures themselves to be our security, at a valuation to be arrived at in consultation between Mr. Crozier and yourself? In fact, substantially the same terms that were accepted by poor Herbertson."

Amory's heart had given a leap. She did not entirely understand, but there was one thing that she did understand, namely, that Mr. Dix was offering her money at once. Money at once would enable her to begin her tenancy at Cheyne Walk at once.... Mr. Dix looked into the pretty eyes again, smiled, and continued.

"Well, what shall we say? If you were to ask my private opinion--but there, I've no right to try to influence you. But a considerable sum now--say a hundren pounds--eh----?"

He almost winked at Amory. It was as if he advised her to cry "Done" at once before Mr. Crozier had time to change his mind.

A hundred pounds! Amory thought....

"Mr. Crozier doesn't mean that he buys the pictures for a hundred pounds, does he?" she asked presently.

Mr. Dix laughed heartily. "My dear Miss Towers!... I can assure you that if Mr. Crozier had meant that he'd have had to find another messenger. No, no. You may regard this, if you like, as a mere _solatium_ for the postponement--to be a first charge, of course, on whatever the pictures may ultimately fetch. That, we trust, will be a far greater sum. We're watching the market very keenly, and you may trust Mr. Crozier to make the most of it when it comes.... Well, what am I to tell him?"

A hundred pounds, now!----

Almost precipitately Amory accepted.

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Dix, as if Amory had performed a deed of bravery. And he bent gallantly over her hand.

Amory was beside herself with importance and delight. She had not now a mere promise from Croziers'--she was to have a proper contract, and a cheque for a hundred pounds posted to her the very moment the contract was signed. All that day she could not sit still for a minute in one place, and in the afternoon she suddenly started up, crammed her hat on her head, and ran out to the confectioner's in the King's Road, where the use of a telephone was to be had for twopence. She must tell Dorothy that she particularly wanted to see her at the studio that afternoon--why, she refused to say. Then, treading on air, she returned to the studio again, humming Laura's song "The Trees they do Grow High" as she went. Still singing, she began to potter about among the tins in the little cupboard, to see in which one the tea was kept.

Dorothy came running in an hour later, just as Amory sat down before the plate of bread-and-butter and the saucerless cup she had placed on the little gate-legged table. Her eyes were as big as the heads of Amory's hatpins.

"What is it?" she cried breathlessly. "Not Cosimo----?"

"How Cosimo?" Amory asked, staring a little.

"I mean, I thought--I thought perhaps he'd proposed----"

Only for a moment or so was Amory a little stiff. "I think Cosimo can be trusted not to do anything quite so obvious," she replied. "You don't seem to understand, Dorothy.... No, it's far more exciting than that----"

And she told her.

Somehow it struck Amory that Dorothy received the news in an unexpectedly critical spirit. She had expected her to jump up with delight, or at least to say that she was glad. But instead of that Dorothy stared at Amory until Amory felt quite uncomfortable, and had to say "Well?" If this was the way Dorothy took it, she was rather sorry she had rung her up.

"Tell me what Mr. Dix said again," said Dorothy, still almost glaring at Amory.

Amory did so.

"And he's sending for the pictures to-morrow?"

"Yes, but you don't understand; this isn't the price of the pictures."

"And he doesn't say when the Show will be?"

Amory spoke gently; of course it must be difficult for Dorothy to realize that Picture Exhibitions were not Catalogues.

"It will be as soon as the market is favourable. They wait for a favourable market and then----" She made an upward gesture with her hands. "And you see, Dorothy," she explained kindly, "pictures aren't much good to a dealer either just to shut up in a cellar and keep. They buy them in order to sell them again. That's their business."

But Dorothy hardly seemed to hear.

"And they've got thirty pictures?" she asked presently.

"Twenty-eight."

"And can you exhibit new ones anywhere else?"

"They'll take the new ones too, at the same rate."

"But can you exhibit them anywhere else if you want?"

"Not for two years."

"Then," said Dorothy slowly, "I don't think I'd sign the contract, Amory."

Amory took a drink of tea; then she leaned back with the air of one who might say, "This is interesting."--"Oh? Why not?" she asked.

"Well, if it's as you say, it seems to me that they just muzzle you for two years."

"Well, I can hardly expect to have dealings with two sets of people at once, can I? I don't want to exhibit anywhere else. That would be to nobody's interest. And my Show would have been next except for----" She checked herself; she had almost forgotten that Herbertson's condition was a secret. "And anyway, Mr. Dix is going to write a number of articles on me at once, and Mr. Dix doesn't write articles for amusement, I can assure you. There are wheels within wheels, Dorothy. I call it a splendid bargain. _I'm_ perfectly satisfied----"

The last words seemed to say, "So if I am, I don't see what anybody else has got to complain about." She was a little disappointed in Dorothy. She thought that friends ought to rejoice at one another's good fortune. She hoped there was not just a trace of jealousy in Dorothy's demeanour.

When Dorothy next spoke Amory wondered, too, whether she had come from Oxford Street entirely in obedience to her telephone-summons. For Dorothy, it appeared, also had something to say. For the last ten days Dorothy had been very little in the studio in Cheyne Walk; the reason for this, Amory understood, was that certain of her fellow-artists (she supposed they called themselves that) had been given a holiday; and now Dorothy was telling Amory that Cheyne Walk was about to see even less of her.

"You see," Dorothy explained, "I've known for some time that Miss Porchester was after a job on the _Daily Speculum_, and now she's got it. That means that Miss Benson takes her place. And as there are all sorts of things going on, I shall simply have to be there most of my time. There's this re-building, you see. Mr. Miller--he's Hallowell's manager, and we're doing one or two of their jobs now--he's making all sorts of new plans. They're going to launch out in all directions, he says; in fact, they're going to waken London up. So what I was going to say--I hope you won't find it inconvenient, and of course there are a few weeks yet----"

There was no need for Dorothy to be more precise. Amory nodded. Dorothy wanted to be released from her share of the Cheyne Walk place. That simplified things. With Amory living there the place certainly would not have been big enough for the pair of them.

"Well, if you hadn't mentioned it I suppose I should have had to do so," she said. "I think I shall be able to manage now."

"You mean you're accepting that offer?"

"Accepting it? Of course I'm accepting it," said Amory with a laugh. "I should be a perfect goose not to accept it."

"Oh, well," said Dorothy with a shrug. "I only meant that if any other dealer happened to want you you're tied hand and foot for two years."

Amory laughed again. "Oh, I'll risk that," she assured Dorothy. "And now," she said unselfishly, "tell me more about the changes at your place."

For of course she was glad that, in her own peculiar line, Dorothy also stood in advancement's way.

On the next day but one she signed her contract.

When, on the day following that, there was brought to Glenerne, by an ordinary postman, along with other ordinary letters, an ordinary envelope addressed to Miss Amory Towers with a cheque for ninety-five pounds inside it, Glenerne felt that it was indeed privileged to participate in the making of history. Amory was a little taken aback to find that interest at the rate of five per cent. had already been deducted from the sum; there seemed, not (of course) an indelicacy, but a very great promptitude about this clipping at the round figure. She would have liked the full hundred, if only to call hers for a day; and she had not _quite_ realized that the euphemism "five per cent." meant five real pounds.--But that was not Glenerne's way of looking at it. The breakfast-table gaped with astonishment. Ninety-five pounds for Miss Amory's pictures!... Pictures, of course, _were_ pictures; they had never denied that; very pretty to look at, and hang on walls and all that, especially water-colours: but--ninety-five pounds!... Had ninety-five tongues of fire settled upon Amory's bright head they could hardly have held her in greater awe. They looked at her anew. They had actually been living in the same house with this prodigious young woman! And Mr. Edmondson had asked her whether she did not get "fed up" with painting towards the end of the day! "Fed up!" _They_ should think so! It would take a lot of feeding up of that sort before the boarders of Glenerne cried "Enough!"... Mr. Edmondson was not there when the cheque arrived; Mr. Edmondson rose at five-thirty, cleaned his boots, made himself a cup of tea over the little spirit-lamp in his bedroom, and was out of the house before half-past six; but Mr. Rainbow missed the nine-two that morning, and Uncle George, who never went to business before ten and (it was reverentially whispered) hardly needed to go before lunch unless he chose, took the whole morning off. He had something to say to Amory.--"He's going to advise her about investments," Mr. Geake murmured to Miss Addams as Mr. Massey and Amory left the breakfast-table together.

What Uncle George had really taken Amory apart for was, in the new turn events had taken, a delight crowning a delight. At any other time she would have had quite a number of interior comments to make on Mr. Massey's bashful communication; her attitude about such as have not the gift of continence was sometimes almost Pauline in its severity: but that morning all was a golden hurly-burly. Mr. Massey, in a corner of the double drawing-room that had been dusted, lisped, blushing, that he and her aunt had been talking matters over--that they had come to the conclusion that there seemed no sufficient reason why their marriage should not take place _earlier_ than July--and so in the circumstances.... Here Mr. Massey had hissed himself to a complete standstill.

"There is really nothing to wait for," he went on presently, recovering a little. "I have taken the house on the Mall from the June quarter, and--and--I am sure you'll understand--at any rate I hope you will some day----"

Amory, hardly hearing, said that she hoped so too.

"So," Mr. Massey continued, "we had come to that decision, and now this happy circumstance has befallen--I think my bed will have been made; if you will come into my bedroom there is a little business we might discuss----"

Mr. Massey's bed had not been made, but Mr. Massey modestly covered its disarray with the counterpane. Then placing a chair for Amory, he plunged into the little matter of business.

An hour later Amory's pecuniary circumstances stood as follows:--

From her godmother she had long had her thirteen pounds a quarter, and now she had her ninety-five pounds. This sum Mr. Massey had begged, with many delicate preliminaries, to be allowed to bring up to the round figure again out of his own pocket--"simply as a slight present, Amory--please don't thank me--it is such a pleasure to be of assistance to those who know how to help themselves." And in view of the hastened marriage Mr. Massey had further to announce that of her aunt's tiny fortune a sum was to be earmarked sufficient to allow Amory the continuance of the pound or so a week that had been paid for her at Glenerne. That, Mr. Massey said, made a steady two pounds a week, plus the very nice little nest-egg of a hundred pounds.

"And dear Geraldine and I fully expect to see you a Kauffman or a Butler or a Rosa Bonheur yet," he beamed in conclusion.

Amory hoped that the event would prove them to be mistaken, but for the first time she kissed Uncle George. The educational bookseller wiped his glasses. Somehow or other Amory had the impression that even his engagement to Aunt Jerry had seemed to him to lack something without this sanction of her own.

All that day Amory did nothing but build palaces of fairy gold, laying them low again only to re-erect them more shining than before. Say her pictures sold at the very lowest figure, ten pounds apiece (but twenty or thirty or more would be nearer the mark--Croziers' didn't dabble in mere ten-pound prices). Some of them she had painted in a day, but call it two days, or even two pictures a week. Why, there, at the most ridiculously low estimate, was a thousand pounds a year! Fifteen hundred would really be nearer the mark, and that without counting the moral encouragement that would come by mere force of success. Two thousand would hardly be too much; but call it a thousand in order to be perfectly safe. Her two pounds a week would be mere glove-money. She could spend that on handkerchiefs. Not real lace ones, of course; she would have to do better even than a thousand before she could afford real lace ones, with everything else to match; but this, after all, was only a beginning. Ten pounds a canvas? Why, Morton, who did not paint half as well as she did, had got three hundred for that rubbishy "Fête Galante" only the other day--a thing shockingly out of drawing, and the colour--oh dear! "Aha!" (Amory smiled). Let them wait just a bit! She would show them at the McGrath! She would make the saturnine Mr. Jowett sit up presently! And she would help the less fortunate, too, provided they were deserving. She would publish a book of Walter's drawings for him; they were really quite good--better, at any rate, than a good deal of the stuff that was published. That was what the country had wanted for a long time; not so much patrons who bought pictures, but patrons who knew what they had got when they had bought them. And even if she only painted a few pictures a year, that, when she had made her name....

Of course she laughed at herself from time to time; she knew she was piling it on, but it was delicious for all that. Like a queen she received their full chorus of congratulations at Glenerne that night--a stately little queen, crowned with the barbaric red gold of her hair. She forbore to ask them whether they had thought that artists painted pictures for the mere sake of killing time; she did not want to rub in their booking-clerkships and estate-agencies too much. It was enough that they saw things now as they really were. Young Mr. Edmondson would no more have dared to speak to her of squeezing at the Crystal Palace now than he would have dared to discuss with her the subjects that made her friendship with Cosimo so wonderful; it was, rather, a quite aged and very much subdued Mr. Edmondson who for a full hour talked of Closing Prices to Mr. Rainbow.... And even when, the felicitations over, Mr. Sandys slapped his hands together in a business-like way and said to Mrs. Deschamps, "Well, what about a tune, Mrs. D.?" that too in its way was a tribute. It meant that even of exalted things poor weak human nature can have more than its fill. Amory knew that she had given Glenerne something to talk about for many, many months to come.

Then, on the morrow, setting her cloud-castle building sternly on one side, she riveted her attention to immediate things. She was going to remove to Cheyne Walk immediately; she had announced the fact to Miss Addams. Not only had no opposition been offered; it had been tacitly accepted that Glenerne was no place for one to whom these stupendous things could happen. Amory would seek Cosimo that morning; without Cosimo nothing could be done. Dorothy, she was afraid, would have to make other arrangements at once; she must telephone to Dorothy that day.

Blithely she tripped down the Glenerne steps and sought the Goldhawk Road tram. It was early; it was not likely that Cosimo would have gone out. She might even have time to call at Katie Deedes's and get _The Golden Ass_ on the way.

When, two days later, there arrived at Glenerne a blue press-cutting envelope containing an article nearly a column long on "The Art of Miss Amory Towers," by Hamilton Dix--and when, a day or two later still, there followed half a dozen quotations from that same article from the provincial papers--Glenerne was almost glad of Amory's translation. The honour was too heavy. It was felt on all hands that the crags of Sinai, and not the boarding-houses of Shepherd's Bush, were the proper habitation for Miss Towers and her renown.

VI

WOMAN'S WHOLE EXISTENCE

There was nobody like Cosimo for beginning at the beginning. "What," he asked, extending a magnificent arm, bare (and black) to the very shoulder, "is the use of doing the floor when you're going to fetch all sorts of cobwebs down from the walls and ceiling, and haven't as much as got the chimney swept? It's simply doing work twice over. No; let that plumber chap finish the sink-pipe first, then, when the things we've bought come, I'll have the men give them a thorough sweeping in the cart and Mrs. 'Ill or Jellies can wash them with ammonia and water downstairs, so that everything'll come in perfectly clean. Jellies, did you get lots of old newspapers? All right, I don't want 'em yet, they're to cover the floor when I distemper the walls. Put 'em out on the landing there.--Now give me that brush, Mrs. 'Ill----"

He took a long brush from Mrs. 'Ill and began at the corner of the ceiling beyond the fireplace.

Dorothy had taken away her black-and-white desk and her other belongings some days before; now the table, the chairs, Amory's easel and a whole clutter of other things filled the landing and staircase outside. The plumber worked crouched half under the sink; but the chimney-sweep who had promised to come that morning at eight had not yet put in an appearance. The floor was an inch deep in dust and cobwebs and débris, and Cosimo's broom fetched down fresh showers moment by moment. He wore an old deer-stalker cap, to keep them out of his tendrilled hair. Amory, too, wore an old dust-bonnet of Mrs. 'Ill's and her oldest painting pinafore. Cosimo gave her loud warnings to stand out of the way as each fall came down. Mrs. 'Ill and Jellies grimaced and spat the dust out of their mouths as they swept the walls.

For a whole week Cosimo had been past telling helpful and enthusiastic. He had not gone out when Amory had called on him that morning; he had been still in bed; but, hearing her knock and knowing her step, he had called, "That you, Amory? Oh, do come in!" So Amory had sat on the edge of Cosimo's bed, and Cosimo had bounded upward into a sitting posture as Amory had told him her great news. "No, by Jove, really, though!" he had shouted joyously. "You've got the money? I say, Amory, that's perfectly glorious! Tell me quickly what you're going to do!"

And they had taken a header into plans, both talking at once.

Cosimo had done the whole of the shopping; Amory had merely stood by and nodded and admired. "Leave it all to me," he had said repeatedly; "you have your own special work that nobody but you can do: I can just about manage this.... Now, have you a bed? And a bath? And what about somewhere for your clothes? Tell me everything you've got, and then we shall know where we are."

So Cosimo had chosen Amory's narrow bed for her, going down into the basement for a slightly out-of-date pattern, much cheaper and probably better made; and since Amory must have a bath, Cosimo had advised her to get one of those oval ones with a lid that served as a travelling trunk as well; they were a little dearer, but much cheaper than buying the bath and the trunk separately. Then he had known where a second-hand chest of drawers was going for next to nothing, also a bowl and basin. And, cleverest of all, he had given orders that these things were to be sent, not at once, but on dates when, he calculated, the place would be just ready for their reception. Amory had ticked off these purchases on a slip of paper, as also she had those of turpentine and paraffin, boiled oil and soap and firewood and tins of distemper. She had read aloud from the list: "Soap, scrubbing-brushes, blacklead, condensed milk----" and Cosimo, laying his hand on each article as she named it, had replied with "Right--right----" It had been great fun.

It was lucky, too, that Jellies was out of work; that gave them somebody to help when Mrs. 'Ill was at the Creek ("or buying winkles for the hens," Amory laughed). And the pair of them were almost as funny as a pantomime about Amory and Cosimo. They waited quite half a minute between knocking at the door and entering the room where the friends were, and if one of them went out again both of them did. It caused Amory the greatest amusement; they were as funny as Dorothy, when she had run in that afternoon thinking Amory wanted to tell her, not about Croziers' and the pictures, but about--Cosimo! Really, these one-ideaed people were killing! It never occurred to them that it was just possible that their narrow, illiberal views were not shared by everybody! There was her aunt, for example: Aunt Jerry was the most comical, mid-Victorian survival imaginable. She had stated flatly, not two nights ago, that if she wasn't married in a church, by two clergymen, with a bouquet and bells and "The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden," she should not consider herself married at all! Bouquets and bells, at this time of day!... Amory (she thanked goodness) intended never to marry. Hers and Cosimo's was a much more rational relation. They had argued it out anthropologically from _Primitive Culture_ and _The Golden Bough_.

The plumber under the sink had a gas-jet and a soldering-iron, and he was raising a smell of warm lead and flux. He, too, seemed to have jumped to the same ludicrous conclusion as Mrs. 'Ill and Jellies. There was an intelligence about his back view, as if that aspect of him said, "I see--I'm minding my business--nearly finished--three's none--'nuff said." And when, as Cosimo swept, Amory approached the plumber and asked him whether the smell of cabbage-water would now cease, he turned round almost with a start.

"Beg pardon, Miss?... Oh, that! Don't you worry your 'ead about that. A S-pipe'll do it if anything will, and I'll explain it to the master afore I go."

The master!... Amory and Cosimo had to go out on to the landing in order to laugh. Otherwise they would have stifled.

Then, at nearly midday, the sweep arrived, and to the smells of dust and hot lead was added that of the soot that rustled down the chimney. Amory and Cosimo, unable to eat in the room itself and too begrimed to lunch at the little restaurant along the Embankment, sat with their glasses of milk and paper bag of sandwiches on the dark stairs.

Amory always devoutly hoped that when Cosimo married he would marry some nice girl whose friend she could be. At present he was as poor as a church mouse, but would not be so when his uncle died; and Cosimo was not the kind of man money would spoil. If he had not known the value of money he would not have been able to do Amory's shopping for her so admirably; and if anything at all could still further have uplifted their beautiful friendship, it would have been that Cosimo should by and by be buying chests of drawers and washbowls for some girl of whom Amory could really approve. Girl after girl--Katie Deedes, Dickie Lemesurier, and others--Amory had suggested them all at one time and another as more or less eligible partners for her "pal"; but Cosimo had only laughed. He supposed he would marry some time or other, he had said, though why he must (now he came to think of it) he didn't quite know. Indeed, he thought he probably wouldn't, after all. "You see," he explained frankly, "it would have to be somebody so awfully like you, and there _isn't_ anybody else so wonderful."--"What rubbish, Cosimo!" Amory usually replied, "there are lots of girls; why, you couldn't find a worse wife than me! What good should _I_ be about a house or nursing a baby?"--"True," Cosimo would then reply,--thoughtfully yet equably: "but you're unique, you see. You have your art."--And that, it always seemed to Amory, was the whole point. An ordinary young man would not have had the perception to recognize her art as the crux of the whole matter. He would have wanted to hold her hand or to put his arm about her, and so would have ruined all.

And Cosimo sometimes, but of course only as a joke, spoke of her art with a sort of humorous resentment, as a man who is allowed much but is still excluded from one favour might speak of the rival in whose preference he after all concurs. Amory thought that a perfecting touch. Seriousness must be unassailable before such gracious, humorous little liberties can be taken with it.

As they drank their milk and ate their sandwiches that day they laughed together over Aunt Jerry's old-fashioned courtship. Cosimo asked to be told again what Aunt Jerry proposed to wear at her wedding. He had already been told several times, but he had the power, so rare among men, of visualizing a dress from a verbal description, and could carry the precise shade of a ribbon "in his eye" for matching purposes better than Amory herself....

"_Doesn't_ it sound like the year of the Great Exhibition!" he chuckled when Amory had told him.

"The dress?" Amory laughed. "The dress is nothing; it's the whole thing that's like the year of the Great Exhibition! Why, when I asked auntie an ordinary, simple question--whether she thought there would be any babies--she blushed as if she really believed the storks brought them, and implored me not to _dream_ of saying anything of the sort to George! Who to, I should like to know, if not to George? Such absurd false shame!... And this to-day, my dear, if you please, with Forel's book to be had at any French bookseller's, and Altruism and Camaraderie taught at even ordinary schools, and everything thrown open to sensible discussion just as you and I discuss these things! It's too funny!"

"There's only one word for it really--'prurient,'" Cosimo opined.

"Oh, but that's taking it too seriously; I prefer the funny side of it. Babies! Is she expecting butterflies, I wonder?... I did my best for her; I tried to explain what a chromosome was; but it was no good. You've never seen Aunt Jerry; I must have you meet her; she's _so_ like the lady who went to see Anthony and Cleopatra and said it was very unlike the homelife of the dear late Queen!"

Cosimo was silent for a moment; then his voice came authoritatively out of the darkness. Cosimo was not much of a painter, but he really had views that were often quite well worth hearing.

"You see, Amory, it's the swing of the pendulum. Action and re-action. Perfectly simple. Take wearing stays, for example. What woman to-day would think of wearing the stays they used to wear? Half the women we know wear none at all, and the other half only these ribbon corsets. And it's just the same with their views on marriage. They make such mysteries about it, and what's the result? Why, in trying to make it impossibly beautiful they miss the real beauty that's there all the time, the beauty of the physical process. We have to rediscover that to-day. And we've got a whole lot of abolishing to do before we can begin. Sorry to have to abolish your aunt, but really, as you say, Amory, we haven't time to-day to waste on people who marry and expect to have butterflies."

Sometimes Amory wondered whether these daring and illuminating talks with Cosimo were altogether a good thing for her art. They sometimes seemed to enlarge her ideas _too_ much. It was difficult, with a common brush and an ordinary canvas and a paint-box like anybody else's, to express the true philosophical meaning of the heart of things as Cosimo sometimes set that meaning forth; or rather, she could explain what she meant, but could not always make it explain itself. She expressed this doubt to Cosimo now, and found him quite extraordinarily full of help.

"I know," he said thoughtfully. "It's hard, but it's what you've got to do, Amory. It's your job. Fundamental brainwork, as Rossetti said. The old traditions are _epuisées_--worn out; in making the new one you must say to yourself, 'Is this that I am doing merely a repetition, or does it belong to the age that has--well, say, wireless telegraphy?' I don't mean that you've got to muddle yourself, of course; that's the other danger: like Scylla and Charybdis; there are always two dangers, underdoing and overdoing; it's a Law. What I mean is that your art must be _the_ thing. See what I mean? Break fresh ground. Do something new. Say to yourself 'I'm going to do something new.' That's what the Pre-Raphaelites did, and look at Ford Madox Brown! As I say, it's the swing of the pendulum; action and re----(Hallo, here's Mrs. 'Ill--listen to her cough).... What a dreadful cold you have, Mrs. 'Ill!"

And they chuckled for a quarter of an hour over Mrs. 'Ill's comical confusion.

That afternoon they had one of their jolliest chats about Heredity. Amory wished she had Galton by her so that she could show Cosimo what she really meant, but Galton, in that topsy-turvy, was not to be laid hands on. Cosimo rested on his broom from time to time to listen, fastened his coffee-brown eyes earnestly on her face, and said that she ought to paint a picture, not necessarily to be called "Heredity," but to have something of Galton's meaning and spirit about it. "Express him in a different medium, if you understand me," he said.... Then he finished his walls, and they washed their begrimed hands and faces together over a bucket and went out to tea. Mrs. 'Ill and Jellies were left to sweep up and to make all ready for Cosimo to distemper the walls and stain the floor to-morrow. They dined, talking ever the more rapidly and brightly as the hours wore on; and Amory went as reluctantly back to Glenerne that night as if she had been going from a glorious liberty to a prison.

Here, however, a piece of bad news awaited her. After dinner Uncle George drew her aside and handed her a paragraph he had cut from a newspaper. Amory read it, and then looked inquiringly up at Mr. Massey. Except that it contained a name with which she was somehow remotely familiar, it conveyed nothing to her. Not many things in newspapers did convey much to Amory. She thought them dull, and wished they had a Cosimo at the head of them to fill them with the really interesting things about the New Movement and criticism and art.

Nor did the scholastic bookseller himself appear to know the full purport of the paragraph. It announced baldly and briefly that a trustee had absconded with certain funds, and Mr. Massey feared that those funds might include the capital sum that hitherto had yielded the thirteen pounds a quarter Amory had had from her godmother. The man might, of course (Mr. Massey said), be--something or other--"extradited" she thought the word was; but, on the other hand, he might not. Even if he were to be extradited, Mr. Massey feared that such delinquents commonly bolted, not with the money, but after the money was spent. So he would not advise Amory to build too much on the recovery of the money.... And Amory discovered something new and rather unexpected in her prospective uncle, namely, that while it was "a pleasure to assist" (as he had softly hissed) a young woman who had shown herself as capable as Amory had of assisting herself, he did not think it necessary to keep hold of her hand once she was set on her feet. She had a hundred pounds in actual cash, on account of a sum that might be very large indeed; and he himself would have thought himself lucky had he been possessed of half that capital at her age.... This mid-Victorian, heavy-father view of Mr. Massey's, that young people should be kept a little short in the very years of their capacity for enjoyment, could, of course, have been demolished in a minute by any modern and rational and hard-up young man: it was manifestly absurd that people should have money only when they were past their pleasures: but it would have taken more than Cosimo to knock it out of Mr. Massey's head for all that.

Amory went to bed moodily that night, first trying to tell herself, and then trying not to tell herself, that her income was in all probability now reduced by a half.

She had begun, too, to be a little alarmed at the rate at which her hundred pounds of actual capital was diminishing. Excellently and cheaply as Cosimo had bought, she simply could not tell herself where nearly thirty pounds had gone. There had been her bed, her bath, her chest of drawers, her washstand, her this, that, and the other; and there had been "sundries." She had had the conception of sundries that they were quite small things, in paper packets and tins, that cost a few pence; it came rather as a shock to her that kettles and frying-pans and cups and saucers and scrubbing-brushes were sundries too. And tablecloths and blankets and sheets and pillow-cases seemed to be very considerable sundries indeed. Still--thirty pounds! She would have thought that thirty pounds would have furnished the Glenerne kitchens twice over. And at tea that afternoon, Cosimo had spoken of a carved wood frame he had seen in Marylebone High Street that it would be positively criminal not to buy for another three!...

Well, living would be cheaper at Cheyne Walk; that would be one thing. Tea and bread-and-butter and a chop or steak once a day would be quite enough for her; and when all these things were bought they were bought, and would not be to buy again. She had another shrinking as she remembered that, now that all her work had gone to Croziers', she had hardly a canvas or stretcher in the place, and that half her paint-tubes were mere flat metal ribbons with a screw-cap on the end, and that she badly wanted a complete set of new brushes. She tried to tell herself that five pounds would refit her, but she knew in her heart that ten or twelve would hardly be too much; artists' colourmen have their sundries too....

And now she must reckon a whole pound a week as good as gone....

But the press-cuttings from the provincial papers were still coming in, and her courage revived as she remembered Mr. Hamilton Dix's newest article on her and her work. He was coming to interview her. The market for her twenty-eight canvases was already being prepared. Mr. Dix would hardly be doing all that unless it was intended that her show should come on in the autumn....

She went to sleep, once more resolved that when, presently, she should come into her kingdom, no poor artist, provided he were really deserving, should ask her help in vain.

Two days later she had cast her money cares almost entirely to the winds. Naturally it was not to be supposed that she could come into a hundred pounds and not buy herself at least one frock; as a matter of fact she had bought two. She hoped she had not offended Dorothy about them. It was one of the advantages of Dorothy's occupation that she was frequently offered clothes, not merely at cost price, but at truly absurd reductions. But then (Amory had thought) they were _such_ clothes--inartistic and irrational in the extreme, conventional Paris and Viennese models, some of them actually resembling those excruciating drawings of Dorothy's, and hats that (to put it bluntly) Amory would not have been found dead in. Dorothy had offered to get her a number of these, and had said that it was a chance to be jumped at!... Why, even Cosimo, a man, had laughed and said, "Dear old Dot--she means awfully well, doesn't she?"... And Cosimo had chosen the two frocks Amory actually had bought. One of them was terra-cotta, the other green; both were exquisitely smocked at yoke and hips, and any of the Pre-Raphaelites (Cosimo said) would have gone half wild with delight over the drawing of the myriad intricate folds. He had made a suggestion or two in the shop itself, and when the things had been, delivered at the studio, Cosimo had not rested until he had seen Amory put them on. Amory had looked round the room; the curtain that was to enclose her new bed was not up yet, but she thanked goodness she was not one of your shrinking prudes.... "I don't suppose a girl's arms will shock you, will they?" she had asked, smiling.... So she had tried, first the terra-cotta, then the green. "Oh, I say, you do look stunning!" Cosimo had flattered her, lifting his fine dark eyes as she had turned this way and that; "but you ought to have a Portia cap, you know----" And that was only another instance of the way their minds jumped together; for Amory, without saying anything to Cosimo, had already got _two_ of the Portia caps, one for each frock.... Then she had got back into the old frock again, and they had discussed the preparation of the studio once more.

As Cosimo said, they had really got most of the work done. The furniture would not arrive until the morrow, but the walls were already distempered a light green colour, almost white, and the ceiling was done, and the floor was a wide frame glassy with boiled oil and paraffin and polish, only awaiting the square of Japanese matting in the centre. The shining brown border was not yet quite dry, and Cosimo had very cleverly built up a sort of gang-plank across it to the door. To see Jellies, herself of a yielding figure, crossing this yielding plank, was very funny indeed. The framing in _passe-partout_ of the photographs of old masters went down as sundries; Amory, with Myers on _Human Personality_ tucked under her arm, had spent half the day in setting the photographs each in the one and only place for it; and now, until the bed and chest of drawers and things should come, she and Cosimo were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the unstained part of the floor. A yard of casement-cloth was between them, which Cosimo deftly ripped up with a pair of scissors. He had brought his own little work-basket. He was as handy with a needle as a sailor. And as he measured the casement-cloth he talked.

"Steady a moment--you've got hold of the wrong end; that's the end, where I've basted it. If I were you I should buttonhole the eyelets.... Look out, you're giving me a finished pair to cut ... and I say, Amory, you want a fresh binding on that skirt--you'll be catching your heel and coming down; I'll put a stitch in it for you as soon as I've finished this.... I say you're quiet; a penny for your thoughts!"

Amory, as a matter of fact, had been once more hoping that Cosimo would by and by find some really nice girl to marry. In his case the wrong one would be dreadfully wrong; he had the woman's point of view so perfectly. That, in a sense, was why he was so exquisitely right in not wanting to marry Amory herself--supposing, that was, that Amory had not definitely decided never to marry at all. They knew one another too well; were too much alike, too beautifully "pals"; somehow they seemed almost to come within the prohibited degrees.... Still, if Amory couldn't marry Cosimo, she could keep, as it were, an eye on him. It would be dreadful if he fell into the hands of some jealous creature or other, worthy neither of him nor of Amory herself. Amory had long thought that it would be rather nice to be "Aunt Amory" to a number of eugenically-selected and rationally-clothed boys and girls, who were not told lies about where they came from, and had moral courage enough, when they were afraid, to say that they were afraid; but she wasn't going to be "come over" by their mother, and permitted as a favour to see Cosimo once in a while, and to be put off with a "Not at Home" when she and Cosimo wished to discuss her art.... So, when Cosimo said, "A penny for your thoughts," Amory was silent for a moment, and then, lifting her pretty brook-brown eyes over the yard of casement-cloth that united their hands, she smiled pensively and said:

"I was wondering, Cosimo, why--why you don't marry Dorothy."

Cosimo dropped his end of the casement-cloth and reached for a needle with black thread in it. He leaned forward.

"Here, let me stitch that binding while I think of it.... What's that? Marry Dorothy?... Why, you don't suppose Dorothy would have me, do you? Because I don't."