A Crooked Mile Part 17

"Amory!" he called imperiously. "I tell you it won't do--not at this juncture! I'd just begun to find a kind of drug in my work; I've locked myself up here; and now you come and undo it all again with a look! I see we must have this out. Let me think."

He began to pace the floor.

When he did speak again, his phrases came in detached jerks. He kept looking sharply up and then digging his chin into his red tie again.

"It was different before," he said. "It might have been all right before. We were free then--in a way. It was different in every way....

(Mind your dress in that tea).... But we can't do anything now. Not at present. There's this crisis. That's suddenly sprung upon us. There's got to be somebody at the wheel--the 'Novum's' wheel, I mean. I hate talking about my duty, but you've read the 'Times' there. The 'Times' is always wrong, and if we desert our posts the whole game's up--U.P.

Prang's no good here. Prang can't be trusted at a pinch. And Wilkinson's no better. Neither of 'em any good in an emergency. Weak man at bottom, Wilkinson--the weakness of violence--effeminate, like these strong-word poets. We can't rely on Wilkinson and Prang. And who is there left? Eh?"

But he did not wait for an answer.

"Starving thousands, and no Imperial Grant." His voice grew pa.s.sionate.

"Imperial Grant must be pressed for without delay. What's to happen to the Real Empire if you and I put our private joys first? Eh? Answer me.... There they are, paying in pennies--and us dallying here.... No.

Dash it all, no. May be good enough for some of these tame males, but it's a bit below a man. I won't--not now. Not at present. It would be selfish. They've trusted me, and----," a shrug. "No. That's flat. I see _my_ nights being spent over figures and telegrams and all that sort of thing for some time to come.... Don't think I've forgotten. I understand perfectly. I suppose that sooner or later it _will_ have to be the Continent and so on--but not until this job's settled. Not till then.

Everything else--everything--has got to stand down. You do see, don't you, Amory? I hope you do."

As he had talked there had come over Amory a sense of what his love must be if nothing but his relentless sense of duty could frustrate it even for a day. And that was more thrilling than all the rest put together.

It lifted their whole relation exactly where she had tried to put it without knowing how to put it there--into the regions of the heroic. Not that Edgar put on any frills about it. On the contrary. He was simple and plain and straight. And how perfectly right he was! Naturally, since the "Times" and its servile following of the capitalist Press would not help, Edgar had to all intents and purposes the whole of India to carry on his shoulders. It was exactly like that jolly thing of Lovelace's, about somebody not loving somebody so much if he didn't love Honour more. He did love her so much, and he had as much as said that there would be plenty of time to talk about the Continent later. Besides, his dear, rough, unaffected way of calling this heroic work his "job!" It was just as if one of those knights of old had called slaying dragons and delivering the oppressed his "job!"

Amory was exalted as she had never been exalted. She turned to him where he stood on the hearth, and laved him with a fond and exultant look.

"I see," she said bravely. "I was wretchedly selfish. But remember, won't you, when you're fighting this great battle against all those odds, and saying all those lovely things to the Indians, and getting their confidence, and just showing all those other people how stupid they are, that _I_ didn't stop you, dear! I know it would be beastly of me to stop you! I shouldn't be worthy of you.... But I think you ought to appoint a Committee or something, and have the meetings reported in the 'Novum,' and I'm sure Cosimo wouldn't grudge the money. Oh, how I wish I could help!----"

But he did not say, as she had half hoped he would say, that she did help, by inspiring. Instead, he held out his hand. As she took it in both of hers she wondered what she ought to do with it. If it had been his foot, and he had been the old-fashioned sort of knight, she could have fastened a spur on it. Or she might have belted a sword about his waist. But to have filled his fountain-pen, which was his real weapon, would have been rather stupid.... He was leading her, ever so sympathetically, to the door. He opened it, took from it the notice that had kept Mr. Prang away, and stood with her on the landing.

"Good-bye," she said.

He glanced over his shoulder, and then almost hurt her hands, he gripped them so hard.

"Good-bye," he said, his eyes looking into hers. "You _do_ understand, don't you, Amory?"

"Yes, Edgar."

Even then he seemed loth to part from her. He accompanied her to the top of the stairs.--"You'll let me know when you're coming again, won't you?" he asked.

"Yes. Good-bye."

And she tore herself away.

At the first turning of the stairs Amory stood aside to allow a rather untidy young woman to pa.s.s. This young woman had a long bare neck that reminded Amory of an artist's model, and her hands were thrust into the fore-pockets of a brown knitted coat. She was whistling, but she stopped when she saw Amory.

"Do you know whether Mr. d.i.c.kinson, the poster artist, is up here?" she asked.

"The next floor, I think," Amory replied.

"Thanks," said the girl, and pa.s.sed up.

IV

THE OUTSIDERS

"No, not this week," Dorothy said. "Dot wrote a fortnight ago. This one's from Mollie. (You remember Mollie, Katie? She came to that funny little place we had on Cheyne Walk once, but of course she was only about twelve then. She's nearly nineteen now, and _so_ tall! They've just gone to Kohat).--Shall I read it, auntie?"

And she read:--

"'I'm afraid I wrote you a hatefully skimpy letter last time--,'"

h'm, we can skip that; here's where they started: "'It was the beastliest journey that I ever made. To begin with, we were the eighteenth tonga that day, so we got tired and wretched ponies; we had one pair for fifteen miles and couldn't get another pair for love or money. We left Murree at two o'clock and got to Pindi at nine. The dust was ghastly. Mercifully Baba slept like a lump in our arms from five till nine, so he was all right. We had from nine till one to wait in Pindi Station, and had dinner, and Baba had a wash and clean-up and a bottle, and we got on board the train and off. Baba's cot, etc.; and we settled down for the night. Nurse and Baba and Mary and I were in one carriage and Jim next door. I slept beautifully till one o'clock, and then I woke and stayed awake. The b.u.mping was terrific, and it made me so angry to look down on the others and see them fast asleep! I had an upper berth. Baba slept from eleven-thirty till six-thirty! So we had no trouble at all with him----'

"Well, and so they got to Kohat. (I hope this isn't boring you, Katie.)"

"'It was most beautifully cool and fresh, and we had the mess tonga and drove to the bungalow. The flowering shrubs here would delight Auntie Grace. I've fallen in love with a bush of hibiscus in the compound, but find it won't live in water, but droops directly one picks it. The trees are mostly the palmy kind, and so green, and the ranges of hills behind are exactly like the Red Sea ranges. The outside of our bungalow is covered with purple convolvulus, and the verandah goes practically all round it.

Jim's room is just like him--heads he's shot, study, dressing-room, and workshop, all in one, and it's quite the fullest room in the house. Beyond that there's my room, looking out over the Sinai Range----'

"Then there are the drawing and dining-rooms----"

"'The curtains are a pale terra-cotta pink over the door and dark green in the bay-windows, with white net in front. The drawing-room is all green. The durrie (that's the carpet) is green, with a darker border, and the sofa and chairs and mantelpiece-cover and the screen behind the sofa all green.

There's another bay-window, with far curtains of green and the near ones chintz, an awfully pretty cream spotted net with a green hem let in. That makes three lots, two in the window itself and a third on a pole where the arch comes into the room. Then over the three doors there are chintz curtains, cream, with a big pattern of pink and green and blue, just like Harrods'

catalogue----'

"Can't you _see_ it all!--H'm, h'm!... Then on the Sunday morning they got the mess tonga and went out to Dhoda, with b.u.t.terfly-nets, and Jim went fishing--h'm, h'm--and she says--

"'It's just like the Old Testament; I shouldn't have been in the least surprised to meet Abraham and Jacob. It's the flatness of it, and the flocks and herds. There are women with pitchers on their heads, and a man was making scores of bricks with mud and straw--exactly like the pictures of the Children of Israel in "_Line upon Line_." And about a hundred horses and mules and donkeys and carts all stopped at midday, because it was so hot, and it was just what I'd always imagined Jacob doing. But inside cantonments it isn't a bit Biblical, but rather too civilized, etc.'

("Isn't Katie patient, listening to all this, auntie!")

"'But you can't go far afield at Kohat. At Murree you could always get a three or four mile walk round Pindi Point, but here it's just to the Club and back. We go to the Central G.o.down and the Fancy G.o.down to shop. The Central is groceries, and the Fancy tooth-powder, Scrubb's Ammonia, etc. On Sat.u.r.day they were afraid Captain Horrocks had smallpox, and so we all got vaccinated, but now that we've all taken beautifully it seems it isn't smallpox after all, and we've all got swelled arms, but Captain Horrocks is off the sick-list to-morrow. Colonel Wade is smaller than ever. Mrs. Wade is coming out by the "Rewa." Mrs. Beecher came to tea on Sunday----'

("Is that _our_ Mrs. Beecher, when Uncle d.i.c.k was at Chatham, auntie?")--

"'--and I forgot to say that Dot's parrots stood the journey awfully well, but they've got at the loquat trees and destroyed all the young shoots. Jim saw us safely in and is now off on his Indus trip. The 56th are going in March, and the 53rd come instead. I'm sure the new baby's a little darling; what are you going to call him?----'

"And so on. I _do_ think she writes such good letters. Now let's have yours, Aunt Grace (and that really _will_ be the end, Katie)."

And Lady Tasker's letters also were "put in."

It was a Sunday afternoon, at Cromwell Gardens. Stan was away with his film company for the week-end, and Dorothy had got Katie to stay with her during his absence and had proposed a call on Lady Tasker. They had brought the third Bit with them, and he now slept in one of the cots upstairs. Lady Tasker sat with her crochet at the great first-floor window that looked over its balcony out along the Brompton Road. On the left stretched the long and grey and red and niched and statued facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the failing of the western flush was leaving the sky chill and sharp as steel and the wide traffic-polished road almost of the same colour. Inside the lofty room was the still glow of a perfect "toasting fire," and Lady Tasker had just asked Katie to be so good as to put more coal on before it sank too low.

Katie Deedes had made no scruple whatever about changing her coat in more senses of the words than one. She had bought a navy-blue costume and a new toque (with a wing in it), and since then had got into the way of expressing her doubts whether Britomart Belchamber's hockey legs and Dawn of Freedom eye were in the truest sense feminine. Nay, that is altogether to understate the change in Katie. She had now no doubt about these things whatever. As Saul became Paul, so Katie now not only reviled that which she had cast off, but was even prepared, like the Apostle at Antioch, to withstand the older Peters of Imperialism to their faces, did she detect the least sign of temporizing in them. And this treason had involved the final giving-way of every one of her old a.s.sociates. She was all for guns and grim measures; and while she looked fondly on Boy Scouts in the streets, and talked about "the thin end of the wedge of Conscription," she scowled on the dusky-skinned sojourners within London's gates, and advocated wholesale deportations.

And in all this Katie Deedes was only returning to her own fold, though her people were not soldiers, but lawyers. For the matter of that, her father's cousin was a very august personage indeed, for whose comfort, when he travelled, highly-placed railway officials made themselves personally responsible, and whose solemn progress to a.s.size was snapshotted for the ill.u.s.trated papers and thrown on five hundred cinema screens. In the past Katie had been privileged to call this kingpost of the Law "Uncle Joe."...

And then Mr. Strong had got hold of her....