A Crooked Mile Part 3

But His Impudence went on, with his mouth full of bread and b.u.t.ter.

"I've only seen the fore-quarter and the trotter, but you see I haven't been over the house. Did they show you the Bluebeard's Chamber? What is there there? By Jove, it's like Jezebel and the dogs.... But I don't suppose they'll have me up again. There was some chap there, and I got him by himself and told him he didn't know what he was talking about; rotten of me, I know, but you should have heard him! Anarchist--Votes for Women--all the lot; whew!... More tea, Ruth, please----"

Lady Tasker felt the years beginning to ebb away from her again. She had remembered the hammock and the Invisible Men.

"I hope he was--English?" she murmured.

"Who?"

"The man you say you were rude to."

"English? Yes. Why? English? Rather! No end of gas about the Empire.

Said it was on a wrong basis or something. Why do you ask?"

"I only wondered."

But Stan was perspicacious; he could see anything that was as closely thrust under his nose as is the comparative rarity of the Englishman in Hampstead. He laughed.

"Oh, that! We're used to that. We've all sorts up here.... By Jove, I believe Aunt Grace has been thrown into the arms of a j.a.p or a n.i.g.g.e.r or something! Well, if that doesn't put the lid on!... So of course you wondered what I meant by the fore-quarter and Jezebel and the dogs.

Those are just some things they used to have.... Well, I'll tell you what you can do about it next time, auntie. You talk to 'em about Ludlow. That shuts 'em up. Sore spot, Ludlow; they're trying to forget about Ye Olde Englysshe Maypole, and that row with old Wynn-Jenkins, and old Griffin letting his hair grow and reciting those poems. They look at you as if it never happened. But they didn't shut _me_ up."

"You seem to have been thoroughly rude," Lady Tasker remarked.

"Well, dash it all, they ask for it. She used to be some sort of a pal of Dorothy's----"

"She's very clever, and she was always very kind to me," Dorothy interpolated over her sewing.

"When, I should like to know? But never mind. I was going to say, Aunt Grace, that I've had to put my foot down. I won't have the Bits meeting those kids of Pratt's. It's perfectly awful; why, those children know as much as I do--and I know a bit! They'll be wanting latchkeys presently.

That day I was up there I heard one of 'em say that little boys weren't the same as little girls. I forget how she put it, but she knew all right; think of that, at about four! I wish I could remember the words, but it was a bit thick for four!----"

A restrained smile, perhaps at the thought of Stan putting his foot down, had crossed Lady Tasker's face; no doubt it was part of the smile that she presently said, toying with the little gold-rimmed gla.s.s, "Quite right, Stan.... Anything fresh about Fortune & Brooks? Dorothy told me."

Stan's feelings on any subject were never so strong but that at a word he was quite ready to talk about something else. "Eh? Rather!" he said heartily, and went straightway off at score.--New? Yes. He'd seen old Brooks the day before; not a bad chap at all really; and they quite understood one another, he and old Brooks. He'd told Stan things, old Brooks had, (which Stan wasn't at liberty to disclose) about the commissions they paid for really first-cla.s.s introductions, things that would astonish Lady Tasker!----

"You see," he explained, "as Brooks himself said, they can't afford to advertise in the ordinary way; _infra dig_. They'd actually lose custom if they put an ad. in the 'Daily Spec.' I don't mean that they don't put a thing now and then into the right kind of paper, but just being mentioned in general conversation, at dinners and tamashas and so on, that's _their_ kind of advertis.e.m.e.nt! For instance--but just a minute, and I'll show you----"

He jumped up and dashed out of the room. Lady Tasker took advantage of his absence to give a discreet glance at Dorothy, but Dorothy's head remained bent demurely over her work. Stan returned, carrying a small parcel.

"Here we are," he said, unfastening the package: and then suddenly his voice and manner changed remarkably. He took a small pot from the parcel and set it on the palm of his left hand; he pointed at it with the index-finger of his right hand; and a bright and poster-like smile overspread his face. He spoke slightly loudly, and very, very persuasively.

"Now I have here, Aunt Grace, one of our newest lines--Pickled Banyan.

Now I'm not going to ask you to take my word for it; I want you to try it for yourself. It isn't what this man says or what that man says; tasting's believing. Give me your teaspoon."

"My _dear_ Stan!" the astonished Lady Tasker gasped.

"We're selling a great many of this particular article, and are prepared to stake our reputation on it," Stan went on. "Established 1780; more than One Hundred Gold Medals. Those are our credentials.

Those are what we lose.--Pa.s.s your spoon."

Lady Tasker was rigid. Perhaps Stan would have been better advised to cast his spell over those who were going up in the world, and not on those who, like themselves, were coming down or barely holding their own. Again he went on, pointing engagingly at the small pot.

"But just try it," he urged, pushing the pot under his aunt's nose. "It isn't what this man says or--I mean, it doesn't cost you anything to try it. A free trial invited. Here's the recipe, look, on the bottle--carefully selected Banyans, best cane sugar, lemon-juice refined by a patent process, and a touch of tabasco. The makers' guarantee on every label--none genuine without it--have a go!"

With a "Really, Stan!" Lady Tasker had turned away in her chair, revolted. "And do you expect to go to a house again after an exhibition like that?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Eh?" said Stan, a little discomfited. "Too much salesman about it, d'you think? Brooks warned me about that. Fact is, he had a chap in as a sort of object-lesson. This chap came in--I didn't know they had schools and cla.s.ses for this kind of thing, did you?--this chap came in, and I was supposed to be somebody who didn't want the stuff at any price, and he'd got to sell it to me whether I wanted it or not, and old Brooks said to me, 'Now ask him how much the beastly muck is,' and a lot of facers like that, and so we'd a set-to.... Then, when the fellow had gone, he said he'd had him in just to show me how _not_ to do it.... But he was an ingenious sort of beast, and I can't get his talk out of my head. I'd thought of having a shot at it to-night, but perhaps I'd better practise a bit more first. Thanks awfully for the criticism, Aunt Grace. If you don't mind I'll practise on you as we go along. I'm dining with a man to-night, but I'd better be sure of my ground.--Now what about having the Bits in, Dot?"

"I think I hear them coming," said Dorothy, whose demureness had not given as much as a flicker. Perhaps she was wondering whether she could spare the sovereign His Impudence would presently ask her for.

The door opened, and Noel and Jackie stood there with a nurse behind them. Noel walked stoutly in. Jackie, not yet very firm on his pins, b.u.mbled after him like an overladen bee.

III

THE "NOVUM"

Stan was quite right in supposing that the Cosimo Pratts wished to forget all about the Ludlow experiment that had disturbed the Shropshire country-side a year or more before, but he was wrong in the reason he a.s.signed them. They were not in the least ashamed of it. As a stage in their intellectual development, the experiment had been entirely in its place. Especially in Mrs. Pratt's career--as an old student of the McGrath School of Art, a familiar (for a time) with Poverty in cheap studios, the painter of the famous Feminist picture "Barrage," and so forward--had this been true. Cosimo, in "The Life and Work of Miss Amory Towers," a labour to which he devoted himself intermittently, pointed out the naturalness and inevitability of the sequence with real eloquence. Step had led to step, and the omission of any one step would have ruined the whole.

But n.o.body with work still in them lingers long over the past. They had dropped the task of regenerating rural England, or rather had handed it over to others, only when it had been pointed out to them that capacity so rare as theirs ought to be directed to larger ends. One evening there had put in an appearance at one of the Ludlow meetings--a meeting of the Hurdy-gurdy Octette, which afterwards gave instrumental performances with such success at Letchworth, Bushey and Golder's Green--Mr. Strong, the original founder and present editor of the "Novum Organum," or, as it was usually called, the "Novum." Mr. Strong, as it happened, was the man whom the scatter-brained Stan had met at The Witan, and of whom he had expected that impossibility of any man whomsoever--an admission that he did not know what he was talking about.

At that time Mr. Strong had been perambulating the country with a Van, holding meetings and distributing literature; and whatever Mr. Strong's other failings might have been, n.o.body had ever said of him that he did not recognize a good thing when he saw it. The Cause itself had served as an introduction between him and Cosimo; it had also been a sufficient reason for his inviting himself to Cosimo's house for a couple of days and remaining there for three weeks; and then he had got rid of the Van and had come again. He was a rapturous talker, when there was an end to be gained, and he had expressed himself as strongly of the opinion that, magnificent a field for the sowing of the good seed as the country-side was, there was simply stupendous propaganda to be done in London. He knew (he had gone on) that Mrs. Pratt would forgive him (he had a searching blue eye and an actor's smile) if he appeared for a moment to speak disparagingly of what he might call the mere graces of the Movement, (alluring as these were in Mrs. Pratt's capable and very pretty hands); it was not disparagement really; he only meant that these garlands would burgeon a hundred-fold if the stern and thankless work was got out of the way first. Mr. Strong had a valuable trick of suddenly making those searching blue eyes of his more searching, and of switching off the actor's smile altogether; both of these things had happened as he had gone on to point out that what the Cause was really languishing for was a serious and responsible organ; and then, and only then, when they had got (so to speak) the diapason, there would be time enough for the trills and appoggiaturas of the Hurdy-gurdy Band.

Before the end of Mr. Strong's second visit Cosimo had put up the greater part of the money for the "Novum."

So you see just where the feather-pated Stan was wrong. The Cosimo Pratts were not outfaced from anything; they had merely seen a new and heralding light. They did not so much recede from the Rural Experiment, and discussions of the Suffrage, and eating buns on the floor at a.s.semblies of the Poets' Club, and a hundred and twenty other such things, as become as it were translated. They still shed over these activities the benignity of their approval, but from on high now. Amory could no longer be expected actually to "run" the Suffrage Shop herself--d.i.c.kie Lemesurier did that; nor the "Eden" (the new offshoot off the Lettuce Grill)--that she left to Katie Deedes; nor the "Lectures on Love" Agency--that was quite safe in the hands of her friends, Walter Wyron and Laura Beamish. Amory merely shed approval down. She was _hors concours_. She ... but you really must read Cosimo's book. You will find it all there (or at any rate a good deal of it).

For Amory Pratt, in so far as Cosimo was the proprietor of the "Novum,"

was the proprietor of the proprietor of a high-cla.s.s weekly review that was presently going to put the two older parties out of business entirely. She had more than a Programme now; she had a Policy. She had crossed the line into the _haute politique_. Her At Homes were already taking on the character of the political salon, and between herself and the wives of ministers and amba.s.sadors were differences, in degree perhaps, but not in kind. And that even these differences should become diminished she had taken on, ever since her settling-down at The Witan, slight, but significant, new att.i.tudes and condescensions. She was kinder and more gracious to her sometime equals than before. She gave them encouraging looks, as much as to say that they need not be afraid of her. But it was quite definitely understood that when she took Mr.

Strong apart under the copper beech or retired with him into the studio at the back of the house, she must on no account be disturbed.--Mr.

Strong, by the way, always dressed in the same Norfolk jacket, red tie and soft felt hat, and his first caution to Cosimo and Amory had been that Brimby, the novelist, was an excellent chap, but not always to be taken very seriously.

Amory did not often put in an appearance at the "Novum's" offices. This was not that she thought it more befitting that Mr. Strong should wait on her, for she went about a good deal with Mr. Strong, and did not always trouble him to come up to The Witan to fetch her. It was, rather, if the truth must be told, that she found the offices rather dingy. Her senses loved the newly-machined smell of each new issue of the paper, but not the mingled odour of dust and stale gum and Virginia cigarettes of the place whence it came. Moreover, the premises were rather difficult to find. They lay at the back of Charing Cross Road. You dodged into an alley between a second-hand bookseller's and a shop where electric-light fittings were sold, entered a narrow yard, and, turning to the right into a gas-lighted cavern where were stacked hundreds and hundreds of sandwich-boards, some back-and-fronts, some with the iron forks for the bearer's shoulders, you ascended by means of a dark staircase to the second floor. There, at the end of a pa.s.sage which some poster-artist had half papered with the specimens of his art, you came upon the three rooms. The first of these was the general office; the second was Mr. Strong's private office; and the third was a room which, the "Novum" having no need of it, Mr. Strong had thought he might as well use as a rent-free bedroom as not. The door of this room Mr. Strong always kept locked. It was more prudent. He was supposed to live somewhere in South Kentish Town, and gave this address to certain of his correspondents. The letters of these reached him sooner or later, through the agency of a barber, in whose window was a placard, "Letters may be addressed here."

Perhaps, too, the extraordinary people who visited Mr. Strong in the way of business helped to keep Amory away. For an endless succession of the queerest people came--contributors, and would-be contributors, and friends of the Cause who "were just pa.s.sing and thought they'd look in,"

and artists seeking a paper with the courage to print really stinging caricatures, and article-writers who were out of a job only because they dared to tell the truth about things, and Russian political exiles, and Armenians who wanted pa.s.sages to America, and Eurasians who wanted rifles, and tramps, and poets, and the boy from the milkshop who brought in the bread and b.u.t.ter and eggs for Mr. Strong's breakfast. And out of these strange elements had grown up the paper's literary style. This was unique in London journalism: philosophical, yet homely; horizon-wide of outlook, yet never without hope that the shining thing in the gutter might prove to be a jewel; and, despite its habitual omissions of the prefix "Mr." from the names of statesmen, and its playful allusions to this personage's nose or the waist-measurement of the other, with more than a little of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine about it.

"d.a.m.n" and "h.e.l.l" were words the "Novum" commonly used. Once Amory had demurred at the use of a word stronger still. But Mr. Strong had merely replied, "If I can say it to you I think I can say it to them." He was no truckler to his proprietors, and anyhow, the man whom the word had encarnadined was only a colliery-owner.

The "Novum" had hardly been six weeks old when a certain desire on Amory's part to make experiment of her power had, putatively at any rate, lost it money. The little collision of wills had come about over the question of whether the "Novum" should admit advertis.e.m.e.nts to its columns or not. Now as most people know, that is a question that seldom arises in journalism. A question far more likely to arise is whether the advertis.e.m.e.nts can be got. But when a journal sets out to do something that hitherto has not only not been done, but has not even been attempted, you will admit that the case is special. The experience of other papers is useless; their economics do not apply. What did apply was the fact that Mrs. Pratt had been an artist, looked on sheets of paper from another angle than that of the mere journalist and literary man, and loved symmetry and could not endure unsightliness. Besides, "No Compromise" was the "Novum's" motto, and what was the good of having a motto like that if you compromised in the very form of your expression?... A "shoulder-piece," "_The Little Mary Emollient_," had brought out all Mrs. Pratt's finer artistic instincts. Here was a journal consecrated to a great and revolutionary cause, and the very first thing to catch a reader's eye was, not only an advertis.e.m.e.nt, but a facetious advertis.e.m.e.nt at that--a Pill, without a Pill's robust familiarity--a commercial cackle issuing from the "Novum's" august and oracular mouth.... For the first time in her life Mrs. Pratt had wielded the blue pencil, tearing the rubbishy proof-paper in the energy with which she did so. Mr. Strong's blue eyes, bluer for the contrast with his red knot of a tie, had watched her face, but he had said nothing. He was willing to humour her....

But when all was said and done he was an editor, and no sooner was Amory's back turned than he had restored the announcement. The paper had appeared, and there had been a row....

"Then I appeal to Pratt," Mr. Strong had said, with all the good-nature in the world. "I take it the 'Novum's' a serious enterprise, and not just a hobby?"

Cosimo had glanced a little timidly at his wife. Then he had replied thoughtfully.

"I don't know. I'm not so sure. That is, I'm not so sure it oughtn't to be a serious enterprise _and_ a hobby. The world's best work is always done for love--that's another way of calling it a hobby--you see what I mean--Nietzsche has something about it somewhere or other--or if he hasn't Ruskin has----"

Any number of effective replies had been open to Mr. Strong, but he had used none of them. Instead his eyes had given as it were a flick to Amory's face. The proprietor's proprietor had continued indignantly.