Chapter V: Part I: Argument (4)

Of course, Cosimo was far too well-bred to say that he wouldn't have Dorothy. Still, she guessed what he meant. Dorothy (he seemed to say) was a perfect dear, but not in that way. Nevertheless, Amory, who sat in the light and could see herself ever so tiny in Cosimo's black-coffee-coloured eyes, looked a little doubtful, and said, "Are you quite sure of that?"

"Perfectly sure," Cosimo repeated, with the same beautiful tact. "Don't suppose she'd look at me if there wasn't another man in London. Besides, if I wanted to be absurd, I might ask you why _you_ don't marry Walter!"

Amory straightened her back and the pretty bluebell-stalk of her neck. She gave a rich little laugh.

"Oh, just at present I'm having enough of marriage to last me for some time to come.... Cosimo," she added, in impressive tones, "Aunt Jerry's--_awful_!"

"How, awful? (Just pull the edge round a bit, will you?")

"Ugh!... But you don't know her: I'll take you round and introduce you: then you'll see for yourself. What about next Wednesday? or no, I'd better have them here.... Really it seems to me to amount to a public gloating? Their engagement was announced in the 'Times,' and ever since they've had nothing but advertisements--advertisements for wedding-cakes, dresses, veils, flowers, furniture, houses, and I don't know what not. The most private things--you wouldn't believe! It's as if every tradesman in London was looking at them as those shopmen looked at us when we bought the bed! But the moment _I_ ask a perfectly plain question, oh, the outraged modesty!... And what do you think her latest is? She hopes that if there are any children at all they'll be boys! Boys! Think of it!"

"Ah, the Feminist Movement was bound to tell," said Cosimo. "If we're doing nothing else, we're driving the reactionaries into the opposite camp and making them declare themselves."

"You think it's that?"

"Think, my dear! I'm quite sure. We're driving them to their last defence. They know that woman's man's equal really, and that's why they're afraid. Why, look at your own case. You needn't go further than that. What's the good of theorizing when one knows? Take the chromosome. If woman's got one and man hasn't, then she has something he hasn't, and is actually his superior. You've a chromosome and I haven't, and look at us.... Yes, that's why the stick-in-the-muds nowadays all want boys. The female disability's going to be removed. You're removing it in your work; the advance-guard are removing it by having girls. It's all right as long as we know who's for us and who's against us. I don't blame your aunt for a single moment. I'm sorry for her, but that's a different thing."

"Dorothy says she'd rather have boys, too," Amory mused.

"Of course she would; so would Jellies; and making allowances for accidentals, Dot and Jellies are intellectually on a par, you know."

("Here's a piece that wants a stitch too.) But oh, Cosimo, isn't that going rather too far? Dorothy--and Jellies----!"

"Not far enough," Cosimo averred stoutly. "The cases are exactly on all-fours. We know what Dorothy is, but we don't know what Jellies might not have been if she'd had the chance. You aren't allowing for Environment, you see...."

And only the arrival of the bed, the bath and the chest of drawers cut short (three-quarters of an hour later) the most illuminating talk about Environment that Amory and Cosimo had ever had.

By seven o'clock that evening the studio was practically ready for Amory to come into it. It certainly looked exceedingly comfortable. A fire had been lighted, more for the sake of decorative effect than from any need of one, and the smell of the excellent little dinner Cosimo had cooked filled the room with a delightfully homelike smell. Potatoes roasted in their jackets in the ashes, liver-and-bacon keeping warm on the two hot plates inside the fender, a pancake ready for pouring into the pan, cheese, fruit, coffee in a little lustre jug only needing the hot water to be poured upon it, and half a bottle of "Veuve Dodo" (an Australian burgundy) from the wineshop in the King's Road--Cosimo had seen to all. Mrs. 'Ill herself, coming in to give a last look round, had found nothing wanting.

"Well, nobody can say as 'ow you won't be snug--can they, Florence?" Mrs. 'Ill said, leaving it delicately in doubt whether she meant the pronoun to be taken as in the plural. "A prettier little 'ome, all things considered, I never see. I always says as it isn't riches as makes contentment; and you 'aven't far to go for your potatoes anyway, which is just downstairs, also apples and oranges. And eggs I can always supply, though my experience is as artists puts too much trust in eggs, which hasn't the nourishment of meat when all's said, and not cheaper when you take your 'ealth into consideration, as all of us must, young or old and married or not. Nor winkles, though I'm fond of 'em myself, but not to rely on. Bring the bucket, Florence, and I 'ope you've taken notice, so you can tell 'Orris when 'e comes out next week.... Oh, thank you, sir; I don't deny it would be acceptable, the smell of turps being that drying--and wishing you good night and sweet dreams...."

And Mrs. 'Ill and Jellies curtsied elaborately and left them.

"She _almost_ said the Creek wasn't five minutes away!" Cosimo laughed when they had gone. "And that idea was a great success of yours, to put the slippers I'd been whitewashing inside the fender. Jellies's eyes nearly fell into them when she saw them! _Aren't_ people funny!... Well, let's have the first meal in the new place...."

He put a pinch of salt into the coffee-jug and reached for the liver-and-bacon.

As they ate and toasted the new studio, in the Veuve Dodo, they discussed the house-warming that, of course, Amory must give. Including the carved wood frame, the two frocks, and more sundries, Amory's installation had cost her in all forty-three pounds. A fresh supply of materials for her work would bring the sum up to forty-eight or more--call it forty-eight, and to all intents and purposes forty-eight was fifty. A party by all means; one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. They talked of it. Laura would bring her guitar again, and--who was that new friend of Walter's, the one with the glasses, who seemed to know Nietzsche by heart?... They would get Walter to bring him. And Katie and Dickie, of course, and Phyllis Hardy, and Amory supposed they'd have to ask Dorothy. They could pull the bed from behind its curtain to sit on; and now, thank goodness, there were plates and glasses enough to go round! Amory's eyes rested on them where they stood in overlapping rows on the rack that Cosimo had put up where the little bookshelf had been. They shone brightly, and the cups twinkled on the new brass hooks below them; and there were tea and coffee in the tins, and milk in a jug, and butter in a little dish, and everything looked so spick-and-span that Amory had half a mind to paint it all. The flat wide kettle Cosimo had bought would boil on the oil-stove in twelve minutes. The bath was under the bed. Cosimo had marked the spare bed and table linen that was neatly folded in the chest of drawers. A curtain drew across the row of pegs on which Amory's clothes hung, and the reflections of the candle-flames in the polished floor-borders made simply ripping shimmers of colour. Amory was quite cross that she must return to Glenerne that night; it was such a long way for poor Cosimo to see her home. Well, she would be nearer to him soon--practically just round the corner. Then they would be able to see quite a lot of each other.

After supper Cosimo washed up, and then they drew up two chairs to the fire; and Amory turned back her new terra-cotta skirt so as not to scorch it, and they talked and ate apples. They talked of poor Herbertson's show (he had died), and Mr. Dix's articles, and Amory's own work; and it was long before Amory yawned sleepily. Then she rose. Return to Glenerne she must. She begged Cosimo, who had had a hard day, to let her go alone; but Cosimo would not hear of it. Then, as Cosimo was putting out the lamp, they both laughed together. The absent-minded fellow had actually been on the point of setting out with her to Shepherd's Bush in the slippers in which he had white-washed, leaving his boots by the side of her bed.

VII

THE VOICE THAT BREATHED O'ER EDEN

The invitations were out for Miss Geraldine Towers' wedding, and the first acceptance Aunt Jerry received was that of Cosimo Pratt. For Amory had kept her promise and had brought them together. It had been at the studio in Cheyne Walk, which Aunt Jerry and Mr. Massey had come to see the very night before Amory had left Glenerne; and really there had seemed something to be said for Mrs. 'Ill's cautious practice of coughing as she ascended the stairs and tapping and waiting before she entered the room. Amory had held a candle at the head of the stairs when they had left, but had not descended with them, and she had re-entered her room to find Cosimo at his funniest and most solemn.

"I trust, Amory," he had said, looking gravely at her, "that my ears deceived me?..."

"Cosimo," Amory had replied, looking as gravely at him, "I greatly fear...."

"It _sounded_ like one, Amory...."

"It _was_ one, Cosimo...."

"You are sure?..."

"If an aquarium, why not a greengrocer's entry?... At their age!" Amory had burst out laughing. "Well, one thing's pretty certain now--you'll be invited to the wedding!"

At this Cosimo's gravity had become profounder and funnier still.

"You _don't_ mean...."

Amory had clapped her hands.

"I do! Didn't you see it in auntie's eyes?... Cosimo, dear, you're approved of--quite an eligible young man!--So that makes Mrs. 'Ill (one), Jellies (two), Dorothy (three), aunt and uncle (five), and the plumber and the chimney-sweep (seven)--seven of these dear, quaint, obsolete souls...."

"All trying to marry you and me, Amory?"

"Yes, Cosimo."

"And I shall be asked to the wedding as--er--one of the family?"

"Quite, if I know anything about auntie."

"Then," said Cosimo, in a deep voice, "I can only say that I shall come."

"Oh, do!" Amory broke out. She clutched his arm. "And I'll make a bet with you, Cosimo! Our great pandjandrum will be there--'Mr. Wellcome Himself,' they call him, with a capital 'h,' almost like God--and I'll bet you anything you like he says, 'May all your troubles be little ones!'"

"You _promise_ me he shall say that?" said Cosimo incredulously.

"Oh, you don't know the atmosphere I've had to keep my art alive in!"

"I shall certainly come," Cosimo had said. He added that he would have gone there barefoot if only Mr. Wellcome would say, "May all your troubles be little ones."

The wedding was to take place at St. Mark's, not far from Mr. Massey's bookshop, and the breakfast was to be given at Glenerne itself. It was to be sent in from Bunters', all but what Mr. Sandys, the baritone, of the Lillie Road branch of the East Midlands Bank, called "the wet." That was to be Mr. Wellcome's wedding-gift. He had vowed that unless he was allowed to stand just one little bottle with a bit of gold foil on it to two of the very best that ever stepped, he would never set foot in Glenerne again; and everybody knew that by "just one little bottle," Mr. Wellcome meant a case, if not two, not to speak of a liqueur for the sake of which an invading general might have sacked a monastery. Mr. Wellcome was also to give Miss Geraldine Towers away.

The clear-eyed Weiniger, the ruthless Strindberg, the hypochondriac Schopenhauer himself--not one of these could have shed a more searching light of criticism on the whole apparatus of Aunt Jerry's wedding than did the bride's pretty and artistic niece. She reduced Cosimo to a state of mere respectful admiration. First there was the age of the contracting parties. It was not even (so to speak) a case of May and December; it was November and December--or, at any rate, October and November. If this was the outcome of young and musical society, what was to be expected of those who really were in the April of their lives? It was a very good thing indeed that Amory and Cosimo were able to set an example of restraint. If age must go a-giddying, youth must show itself sober and responsible. Amory put it fairly and squarely to Cosimo: was that not a Law? Cosimo agreed that it was a Law--the Law of Compensation.

Then there was the Service itself. Amory had just read the Service again for the first time for a number of years, and really the claims it made could only be described as stupendous!... How could you _possibly_ know that you were going to honour somebody until death did you depart? Suppose they turned out to be a different kind of person altogether from what you had supposed? Surely, then, it would be your clear duty, as an open-minded person, not to honour them! And how could you _possibly_ know that you might not be doing a quite criminally improvident thing in promising to endow somebody, as to whose real character you were totally in the dark, with all your worldly goods? Of course, the sensible view was that that person should be endowed with the worldly goods who was best capable of looking after them. And how could you _possibly_ know that you would cleave to one only, and so on? Not that anybody else was likely to take Aunt Jerry away from Mr. Massey, but suppose they _did_ want to? Amory called that stultifying. It was not open-minded: it was a wilful and deliberate shutting of your mind, perhaps to some really wonderful revelation.... And what had Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebecca, and all these dead-and-gone Jews got to do with it all? Pretty records some of _them_ had for that matter!... Oh no, the whole thing was simply fossilized. Strictly speaking, it ought to be looked on paleontologically, as a curious and interesting historic survival. For that matter, people seemed to have their doubts even in going into it, for they usually talked about "the silken cord of Love" in an apologetic sort of way--silken cord, indeed, with all those cast-iron regulations! Amory liked "silken cord!"... Oh no; the Service started out all right; it hit the nail on the head with "First it was ordained," and so on, but the rest, eugenically speaking, was mere--mere----

"Obscurantism," Cosimo suggested, but rather diffidently. Even he had never seen Amory so astonishingly into her stride before. He could have listened to her all day; he did listen to her half the day.

"That's the very word!" Amory praised him. "Signifying darkness, where it's pretending to shed light all the time! If exploded ideas like those can be put into the Prayer Book, it seems to me that a Divorce Service ought to go into the Prayer Book too, instead of having to go to a court of law for it! And look, I ask you, at the position of woman in divorce to-day!" (Amory drove ahead as if it had been a question of Aunt Jerry's divorce already.) "Suppose she gets her decree: there's an odium attaches to her just the same whether it's her fault or not! _I_ call it the fault of Abraham and Sarah, and their stupid old Service! Laws that are too harsh are _bound_ to be broken! It's a duty to break them, so that we can get them altered. What we want is a rational tie, voluntarily entered into, and sweep all these archaic old penalties aside! Not that it's any business of mine; thank goodness _I_ shan't marry...."

None the less, out of a noble love of abstract justice and a hatred of wrong merely because it was wrong, Amory found it intolerable.

Then there was the minor apparatus. From the point of view of Eugenics, Amory would have thought that the worst possible preparation for the perfect race of the future was all this over-eating of indigestible things, and over-drinking of things that were, medically speaking, poisons. "Healths" indeed! Pretty name for them!... And all these buffooneries of throwing rice and confetti, and flinging an old shoe after the "happy" (ahem!) pair. For the wedding presents, Amory conceded, there was something to be said. The present economic conditions made it difficult for the really splendid young people to get married at all, and so it was right that they should be in a sense subsidized by those who had wrested (principally by callousness) more out of the competitive struggle than they (of a more sensitive make) had managed to wrest for themselves. Indeed, Amory's only complaint against the custom of giving presents was that it did not go far enough. What really ought to be done was that the State should pick its best specimens, on the principles laid down by Galton and others, and pension them off for one understood purpose, putting them in the midst of beautiful surroundings ... a sort of Endowment of Motherhood idea, but on a scale of the first magnitude, and not by mere doles, ... and, of course, with everything possible done to ensure the birth of girls.... Science would soon be able to do that at the rate at which it was advancing....

"I say, Amory, you are wonderful!" Cosimo breathed, rapt....

Amory said, "Silly old Cosimo!" But she herself could not help thinking that her lips had rather been touched with the coal.

At Glenerne, nothing but the approaching wedding was talked about. Unhappily, however, the talk was all about those very accidentals that had the least to do with the propagation of a healthy and rational race. True, a knowing eye rested once in a while on the whatnot that contained the photographs of Miss Addams's "grandchildren," and a smile was hidden behind a hand or turned hurriedly into a cough; but for the rest the race was left to look after itself just as if Galton had never been born, and a Eugenic Congress had never been held. Very little whist or dancing went on in the large double drawing-room upstairs. Everybody flocked downstairs again into the dining-room, where the tablecloth and cruets were not now left for the next repast, as usual, but removed to make room for Aunt Jerry's heaps and heaps of linen. Miss Crebbin and Miss Swan marked; Miss Addams and Mrs. Deschamps folded and set all into orderly heaps; and M. Criqui and Mr. Edmondson wrapped the heaps in brown paper and wrote on each package a description of its contents. Mr. Massey was frequently taken by the shoulders by Mrs. Deschamps and turned out of the room, as being only in the way. He either retired to his bedroom and wrote cheques, or else, in the company of other smokers, sat on the garden roller in the little back greenhouse and lighted and threw away again Cubeb cigarettes.

Mr. Edmondson's case was generally commiserated. He had not been quite himself since Amory's departure. He had held rather moping discussions, on such subjects as the progress of illustrated journalism and the decay of respect in the attitude of the young towards the old, with Mr. Rainbow and stout Mr. Waddey, the timber-merchant; and he had more than once dropped a dark hint that he might soon be leaving Glenerne--young musical society becomes a little trying when you yourself are the young and musical society. And he took it rather hardly that he would not be able to be present at the wedding-breakfast, but must rise at five-thirty, clean his boots, make his cup of tea over his spirit-kettle, and lunch in the ticket-office as usual. Mrs. Deschamps told M. Criqui that she thought Mr. Edmondson had had more than a _penchant_ for Amory; M. Criqui, who was in the Lyons silk trade, and had given Aunt Jerry a beautiful dress-length, had raised his brows and said "Si?" M. Criqui's politeness never forsook him. It was as if he asked Mrs. Deschamps where Mr. Edmondson's eyes could have been to have had a _penchant_ for anybody when Mrs. Deschamps herself was there, to be admired almost whether her victim wished it or not.

But if Mr. Edmondson must be absent, a pretty full gathering of the others was to be present. Mr. Waddey, the timber-merchant, had put off the buying of a Gloucestershire wood for the purpose; Mr. Rainbow had put a red line round the date on the hanging calendar in his bedroom; and Mr. Geake and Mr. Sandys had promised to run in, the one from the Estate Office in Goldhawk Road, the other from the Branch Bank. Miss Crebbin, away in the city, was in Mr. Edmondson's case, but Miss Swan was turning her class over to the study of art for the afternoon (a subject in which one of the monitors could be trusted to take them), and Miss Tickell would close her milliner's shop from ten to four. As for five or six of the other ladies, their time was their own. There had been much discussion as to whether the olive-skinned Indians should be invited; finally, they too had been included. Two of them lunched daily at Glenerne. They could hardly be asked to move from their accustomed chairs and wooden napkin-rings; and then there was the solidarity of the Empire to consider. All three had been asked, and were coming. Mr. Massey's brother and his wife were to be the only outsiders, for Mr. and Mrs. Wellcome and the infant Master Wellcome could hardly be called outsiders. Or if there was another outsider at all it would be Mr. Cosimo Pratt, and he (Glenerne had been given vaguely to understand) might not be an outsider very long. Really the most outside of all was Amory herself. It was true she had lived in the house, but in the body only, not in the spirit, if press-cuttings meant anything. She had stooped on the wing from a brighter air. Her art was not the same kind of art as that to which Miss Swan had turned over her Board School class for the afternoon. It brought in cheques for ninety-five pounds.

The wedding was fixed for a Tuesday, and by the Monday night the Glenerne hall was almost impassable with trunks and bags and cases--the trunks and bags for the going away (to the Lake District), the cases containing nobody knew what until Mr. Massey and Miss Geraldine, who had gone to the Vicarage, should return. Two of them, however, were surmised to contain Mr. Wellcome's contribution to the morrow's breakfast, and it was a "wheeze" of the men to attitudinize in mock ecstasies before them and to make luscious noises as of drinking. Another case, a yard square but not very high, was so heavy that the porter had hardly been able to carry it in; and if one might judge from certain conspiratorial whispers, one or two of the borders guessed what that case also contained. Mrs. Deschamps had almost wept over Mr. Massey's special licence; Mr. Waddey, who was a widower, had remarked that it was strange, when you came to think of it, the meaning there might be in a bit of paper you could easily crumple up and throw into the fire. Mr. Edmondson, too, asked to be allowed to look at the licence. Later he was heard going about saying that it was strange, when you really considered it, how much bits of paper, that you could easily tear up into little pieces, stood for sometimes. "A railway ticket's nothing in itself," he said, by way of illustration of what he meant, "but just you try to travel without one...."

The wedding-day dawned. Mr. Massey and his brother (a red-faced, silent man who wore policeman's boots and seemed uncomfortable in his collar) had gone off arm in arm somewhere; and Amory and Mr. Massey's brother's wife were helping Aunt Jerry to dress. Mrs. Deschamps had lent her bedroom for the display of the wedding-presents. The heavy box in the hall had been opened, and had been found to contain, by stupid mistake, a second wedding-cake, all snow and silver, which Mr. Geake and Mr. Sandys had carried into the dining-room and set before the bride's place. You had to look twice at lavender bonnets and white veils and black coats and light gloves before you were quite sure who the wearers were; and the string of cabs outside, with nosegays in the lamps, stretched away to the end of the road and round the corner. And Glenerne that morning was a school for waiters indeed, for six extra ones had come from Bunters', and, with their heads held high, looked as it were through their dropped lids at Glenerne's own Germans and Belgians and the little red-fezzed Omar K.

Then a loud "Hi, Squeegee--Lueegee--Guliulimo! Them things come?" was heard in the hall. Mr. Wellcome, with Mrs. Wellcome bearing a torrent of lace in which the youngest Master Wellcome slept, had arrived. "Brought her after all, you see, Nellie!" Mr. Wellcome cried triumphantly to Mrs. Deschamps, whom he met at the foot of the stairs; and then he spoke behind his hand: "Lucky ... always want one like that at a wedding!"... "_Not_ again!" Mrs. Deschamps whispered back, half shocked, half as if such a man was indeed a creature to be dreaded. "Eh? Why not?" Mr. Wellcome blustered. "We don't adopt 'em at _our_ house! Not while we have our health! Now, time we were off; where's this daughter o' mine _pro tem_?"

The arrival of the Wellcomes was all they had been waiting for. They set off, the line of cabs drawing up at the gate, stopping, starting, stopping again, until the last had driven off with a couple of urchins sitting on the back of it.

Amory and Cosimo heard every word of that preposterous Service from the front pew. The quick glances that passed between them from time to time only emphasized their rock-like gravity between whiles. And after all, there is such a thing as tolerance. If this Sacrament was really the crumbling institution the pure beam of reason showed it to be, so much the less abolition there would be for Amory and Cosimo to do. You teach a lesson to those who do not respect your convictions when you deal gently with their manifest prejudices, and the fewer who shared the joke the more humour there would be for themselves. So Amory merely noted that her aunt made no bones about the word "obey," and wondered, as man and wife knelt, where Uncle George's brother, who was best man, got those extraordinary boots.

But she had promised Cosimo that the real humour should come afterwards, when the wedding-party returned to Glenerne; and her promise was richly fulfilled. There were heads at every window in the street, and they could hardly get in at the gate for the press of watchers about it. And when they had got in and mounted the front steps and passed along the hall, they could hardly get into the dining-room for the crowd of waiters, Bunters' and Glenerne's, who, making an international matter of it, covertly elbowed and shouldered one another and muttered words of contempt under their breath and exchanged malevolent glances. But when they had got in, and had found each his or her name written by Mrs. Deschamps on the half-sheets of notepaper with the silver-lettered Glenerne heading, it was worth coming miles to see and participate in. Regular boarders eyed the table, with its dishes glazed and its dishes garnished, its dishes frilled and crimped and made strange with icing and aspic and cochineal, very much as a man who knew a buttercup and a daisy when he saw them might peep, intimidated, into a house of rare and exotic orchids. These fantastic growths of the same kingdom as the dandelion and the dog-rose? These gemmed and enamelled comestibles food also, like Miss Addams's thin soups and strips of watery fish and semi-transparent slices of Argentine beef and New Zealand lamb?... Each resolved to let his neighbour tackle them first and to see what implement he did so with. For, while fingers might have been made before forks, they were no fewer in number than the bright plated objects of cutlery (including something that seemed to start as a pair of sugar-tongs and to end as a sort of cigar-cutter) that extended for quite six inches on either side of each plate. It might be going too far to say that one must necessarily be born to these things; nevertheless a fellow did feel a bit taken aback when he was confronted with them straight away.

(To anticipate a little: Nobody knew who it was who first discovered that here they had a tower of strength in Mr. Wellcome. But it was presently seen that Mr. Wellcome knew all about fish-knives and finger-bowls, and made nothing of them. Therefore all you had to do was to watch Mr. Wellcome. Then, no idea being so good but that it is capable of improvement, it was discovered that you were quite safe if you watched Mr. Sandys, who watched Mr. Rainbow, who watched Mr. Wellcome. Soon each _plat_ was being attacked with grace and confidence at its proper remove from the fountainhead of good form, the movement passing down the table very much as the cabs had drawn up one by one at the door.)

To ask who occupied Mr. Wellcome's Chair were to ask who occupies the Throne at a Coronation. Mr. Wellcome Himself occupied it. Mrs. George Massey sat on his right hand, George Massey on his left. This arrangement was duplicated at the other end of the long table, where Miss Addams sat between Cosimo and Amory. These constellations of primary and hardly secondary brilliance were united, along either side of the table, by the lesser stars; and, just as a hole appears in the Southern Heavens, so the three Indian students made a sort of Coal Sack among the whiter faces on Miss Addams's right hand. Amory thought it far better that she and Cosimo should not be sitting actually together. Apart, they would have all the more notes to compare afterwards.

Cosimo was gathering these already. As once he had taken the broom from the crossing-sweeper, so now he was talking across the corner of the table to Mrs. Wellcome. He was talking about the only person who breakfasted without taking his cue of deportment from anybody--the child; he got, as he said afterwards, "simply priceless things." Amory, across the other corner, was engaged in a series of lively rallies with Mr. Rainbow. Mr. Rainbow always expanded when Mr. Wellcome came to Glenerne. If he became a little deflated again when Mr. Wellcome had turned his back, nobody thought the less of him on that account. To be able to play up to Mr. Wellcome at all was an achievement beyond the power of most.

Not that Mr. Wellcome Himself showed himself immediately at the top of his form; he husbanded his resources better than that. He had almost reunited the two hostile camps of waiters and set them to make common cause against himself when he had asked which of them knew the top from the bottom of a bottle of G. H. Mumm, and, taking a napkin and a cutter, had shown them how to unwire one and to pour its contents out; and when all the glasses had been filled, and Mr. Wellcome had risen at the head of the table, dark against the bow-window with its indiarubber-plants in the mustard-yellow faience vases, those who rapped with the ends of their knives on the table and called "Order, order!" felt that it would be some minutes yet before he was thoroughly "warm."

And yet he started at a more humorous level than anybody else could have attained. In the first place (he said) he must apologize for speaking at all. It was all Mrs. W.'s fault. As everybody knew, he was not allowed to get a word in edgeways at home (smiles)--led a dog's life, in fact (more smiles)--indeed, as he had said to his old friend Charlie Cutbush only the other day, Charlie Cutbush, who used to travel for Dwu Mawr Whisky and now kept "The Silent Woman" in the Borough, "Charlie," he had said, "you ought to get that sign o' yours altered--it ought to be a man with his head cut off, not a woman!" (A little more laughter, and a gallant remark from Cosimo to the speaker's wife that at any rate Mr. Wellcome looked well on it). But to get on (Mr. Wellcome continued). As they all knew, there was a good deal of giving in connexion with weddings. In his own time at Glenerne it had always been a bit of a puzzle where Miss Addams put 'em all to sleep; but they all knew now where Mrs. Deschamps slept, and a pretty little room it was, and its occupant lots of time before her yet (quite a sudden outburst of mirth at this, and confusion and a cry of "Wretch!" from Mrs. Deschamps). Tut-tut!--What Mr. Wellcome meant to say, if they'd be quiet a bit and not jump down his throat like that, was that they'd all been into Mrs. Deschamps' room to see the wedding-presents. (Laughter.) Now Mr. Wellcome wasn't going to say they weren't, one and all, very handsome wedding-presents, especially Miss Addams's oak-and-silver biscuit-box and the embroidered quilt given by Mrs. Deschamps herself (but Mr. Wellcome would have a word to say to his old friend George Massey, about the comparative inefficacy of embroidered quilts when your feet were really cold, by and by.) (More laughter.) But what Mr. Wellcome _was_ going to say, and he'd say it twice if anybody didn't hear it the first time, was that he'd been giving something away that morning that he hoped and trusted his old friend George would find worth more than all the rest put together--a bonny bride. (Loud applause, and an instant recognition of their error on the part of those who had thought that a humorist couldn't on occasion be serious too.) Mr. Wellcome repeated: a bonnie bride. Mr. Wellcome didn't mean that they didn't all joke about these things sometimes. He did himself, and so would George Massey be doing by and by. But he _did_ say this about marriage, and he spoke as a man who had been married more years than he cared to remember: that there was nothing like it. (Cries of "Hear, hear!" from married and unmarried alike, and a noisy drumming of knives and hands on the table.) And while Mr. Wellcome was about it he was going to say something else. There seemed to be people about who thought themselves very wise nowadays. They wanted this changed and that changed; Mr. Wellcome didn't know what they did want, and he didn't think they themselves did either; sometimes it seemed to him that they just wanted something different--good or bad, but different. In fact he, Mr. Wellcome, called 'em grousers and grizzlers--a pack o' frosty-faces. Now nobody expected the world to stand still. No doubt there was lots of things could be improved on. There was off-licences, for instance. Likewise Clubs. But (here Mr. Wellcome shook a fat forefinger warningly and impressively) Marriage wasn't one of 'em. If an Englishman's house was his castle, Marriage was what Mr. Wellcome might call the front-door key of it! (Applause far more loud and sustained than any mere humorous sally could have called forth.) Now he kept his front-door key on the bunch. (A "Go on with you!" from Mrs. Wellcome.) If the law allowed him two or three wives (and he had only to look round that table to wish ... but that was neither here nor there, and no doubt if he could he'd soon be wishing he hadn't--much laughter)--what he was going to say was that if he had twenty wives he'd keep 'em all on the bunch too.... "But instead o' that one of 'em keeps me on a bit of string," said Mr. Wellcome, dropping his voice so comically and despondingly that the whole table roared with laughter....

"And now," said Mr. Wellcome, beginning to pat his pockets in search of something, "let's cut the cackle and come to the horses.... Where is the dashed thing? Ah, here it is!..."

And, as if his gift of champagne had not been enough, from the bottom of his breeches-pocket he drew forth a gold wrist-watch, ordered Aunt Jerry to hold out her hand, and snapped the chain about her wrist.

It was, too, a "coming to the horses" in a sense quite other than the figurative one in which Mr. Wellcome used the expression. They were real horses to which he came. What else (Mr. Wellcome wanted to know) could be expected of him when Toreador had come in at twelve to one yesterday, and all the money on the favourite, and the bookies' pockets simply spilling gold and notes?... Nay, Mr. Wellcome described the scene. He set himself in an attitude, and his voice dropped to a hush. "I don't know how ever Sammy did it!" he confided to them. "He seemed to pick her together, then ... _hoooosh!_--Short head, and a hundred-and-twenty o' the best for W.W.!... 'Who give _you_ the office?' Dick Marks says to me when I goes to touch; 'if it hadn't been for you, Old Knowall, it'ld ha' been grand slam; _you_ know a bit, _you_ do' ... So now, ladies and gentlemen," Mr. Wellcome concluded, raising his glass, "in asking you all to drink the health of Mr. and Mrs. George Massey, I'll do so in the words of the poet:

What is there in the vale of Life
Half so delightful as a wife,
When friendship, love and peace combine
To stamp the marriage-bond divine?...

I ask you to join me, ladies and gentlemen...."

Then was begun the writing of a page unparalleled for brightness in the annals of Glenerne. Health after health was drunk, and it was Mr. Rainbow who proposed that of the youngest bachelor present--the infant Wellcome. Yesterday, he said, had been a fine day for Toreador's race, but no finer than to-day was for another race--the Human Race!... Such a roar as went up! Nobody had supposed Rainbow had it in him. Aunt Jerry blushed; Mrs. Deschamps, who was sipping champagne at the time, had to have her back slapped by M. Criqui, and did not recover for several minutes; Cosimo's laugh rivalled that of Mr. Wellcome himself. And then Mr. Rainbow rounded on Cosimo likewise.... For nothing succeeds like success, and Mr. Rainbow, having scored once, immediately scored again. If little birds were to be believed, he said, giving the discreetest of glances at Cosimo and Amory, they might be having another jollification before long. He mentioned no names. He would merely say that one of them was not unknown to fame, fame of what he might call an artistic sort; and all he would say, in the words of a song that used to be sung when he was a good many years younger, was, "That's the time to do it--while you're young!"

Then Mr. Rainbow made his best hit of all--he sat down in the perfect moment of his triumph.

"The cake, the cake!" everybody shouted; and one of Bunters' waiters handed Aunt Jerry a knife.

Then there were fresh shrieks of merriment, for when Aunt Jerry tried to cut that formidable cake it was discovered to be of solid plaster-of-Paris--a white grindstone tricked out with silver-paper cupids and spurious sugar-work.

"Beats Mrs. Deschamps and the Kissing Bee hollow!" roared the authors of the imposture.

And so the real cake had to be brought and cut.

They rose from the table and ascended to the drawing-room, and there the merriment became more furious still. For Mr. Wellcome's eyes fell on the whatnot with the photographs of Miss Addams's "grandchildren," and the seed of an idea sprang into being in his mind. It grew; it blossomed; it spread into the Rose of Eugenics itself. Mr. Wellcome approached Amory and Cosimo. He was perhaps just slightly drunk. His fingers moved lovingly on Cosimo's biceps, and passed to his pectoral muscles: his other hand was out, almost as if he would have done the same to Amory: and then he gave them, so to speak, their certificate of physical fitness. Noisily he bade Cosimo kiss Amory there and then.

"Be a man ... kiss her, damme!" he cried, a forcible hand on each; and Amory dropped her lids....

But Cosimo, who was there to see others make exhibitions of themselves but not to make one of himself, hung reluctantly back. But the irresistible Wellcome dragged them both forward again. There was no help for it, and so, knocking his head against Amory's, he gave her a stage kiss only, which, of course, in this tale of Two Kisses, does not count.

"That's the style!" cried Mr. Wellcome heartily, deceived by appearances. "_Hoooosh!_... Short head!--Hi, Bonzoline ... what's your name ... Lorenzo! Hurry up with them liqueurs, and then go downstairs, and feel in the right-hand pocket of my overcoat, and you'll find a bundle of toothpicks--and hi!--see whether my Missis has changed the boy yet ... I want to show 'em his legs, tell her.... Talk about 'legs'!... But you'll see...."

They had seemed to be merry up to then; but all agreed afterwards that only with the bringing up of the coffee and liqueurs and toothpicks did what might be called the _real_ merriment begin.

At six o'clock that evening Amory and Cosimo took tea in the studio in Cheyne Walk and compared notes of the events of the day. Cosimo was ecstatic. He had not believed such things existed. Amory's utterances, too, were as breathless and explosive as his own, but seemed somehow to lack ring. A close observer might have supposed her to be acting a brightness. Then for the twentieth time Cosimo guffawed.

"But you lost your bet, Amory--he _didn't_ say, 'May all your troubles be little ones!'"

"But he showed us the baby's legs."

"I admit he did that. That was rather beyond rubies."

"And he handed the toothpicks round."

"So he did. I shall keep mine--die in defence of it. And you'll find that horse's name written on my heart. A horse-race at a wedding!--Oh, oh, I'm not complaining! It was all you promised, and more!"

"I thought perhaps you were disappointed," Amory remarked.

"Good heavens, no! I wouldn't have missed it for worlds! (But, of course, your aunt was charming.)... _Isn't_ Mr. Massey fond of the police sergeant!"

"Sickly sentiment, I call it," said Amory abruptly.

"Oh no, not if you take it as part of the general show," Cosimo explained. "Damon and Pythias, I suppose; not having a brother, can't say. But the thing can't be taken to bits. It was a perfect whole. I wonder what there _is_ about a perfect whole that makes it far more than the sum of the parts?"

"Eh?... Oh yes, it is more," said Amory.

"More?... Rather! Why, take it in art...."

"Don't talk about art to-night, Cosimo, please," she said. "You always give me so much to think of when you talk about art."

"Tired?" said Cosimo solicitously, bending over the back of her chair.

"A little."

Amory could not have told why she was tired. She only knew that, to-night somehow, Cosimo did not seem as intuitive as he usually was.