A Crooked Mile Part 31

"There's a cable for you."

It lay on the uncleared tea-table, and everybody seemed to know all about the outside of it at all events. As it was not in the usual place for letters, perhaps it had been pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Quite unaffectedly, they stood round in a ring while Amory opened it, with all their eyes on her. They most frightfully wanted to know what was in it, but of course it would have been rude to ask outright. So they merely watched, expectantly.

Then, as Amory stood looking at the piece of paper, Walter was almost rude. But in the circ.u.mstances everybody forgave him.

"Well?" he said; and then with ready tact he retrieved the solecism.

"Hope it's good news, Amory?"

For all that there was just that touch of _schadenfreude_ in his tone that promised that he for one would do his best to bear up if it wasn't.

Amory was a little pale. It was the best of news, and yet she was a little pale. Perhaps she was faint because she had not had any tea.

"Cosimo's coming home," she said.

There was a moment's silence, and then the congratulations broke out.

"Oh, good!"

"Shall be glad to see the old boy!"

"Finished his work, I suppose?"

"Or perhaps it's something to do with this Collins business?"

It was Mr. Brimby who had made this last remark. Amory turned to him slowly.

"What is this Collins business?" she asked.

Mr. Brimby dropped his sorrowing head.

"Ah, poor fellow," he murmured. "I'm afraid he went to work on the wrong principles. A _little_ more conciliation ... but it's difficult to blame anybody in these cases. The System's at fault. Let us not be harsh. I quite agree with Wilkinson that the 'Pall Mall' to-night is very harsh."

"Cowardly," said Mr. Wilkinson grimly. "Rubbing it in because they have some sort of a show of a case. They're always mum enough on the other side."

Amory lifted her head.

"But you say this might have something to do with Cosimo's coming back.

Tell me at once what's happened.--And put that telegram down, Walter.

It's mine."

They had never heard Amory speak like this before. It was rather cool of her, in her own house, and quite contrary to the beautiful Chinese rule of politeness. And somehow her tone seemed, all at once, to dissipate a certain number of pretences that for the last hour or more they had been laboriously seeking to keep up. That, at any rate, was a relief. For a minute n.o.body seemed to want to answer Amory; then Mr. Wilkinson took it upon himself to do so--characteristically.

"Nothing's happened," he said, "--nothing that we haven't all been talking about for a year and more. What the devil--let's be plain for once. To look at you, anybody'd think you hadn't meant it! By G.o.d, if _I'd_ had that paper of yours!... I told you at the beginning what Strong was--neither wanted to do things nor let 'em alone; but _I'd_ have shown you! I'd have had a dozen Prangs! But he didn't want one--and he didn't want to sack him--afraid all the time something 'ld happen, but daren't stop--doing too well out of it for that ... and now that it's happened, what's all the to-do about? You're always calling it War, aren't you? And it _is_ War, isn't it? Or only Brimby's sort of War--like everything else about Brimby?----"

Here somebody tried to interpose, but Mr. Wilkinson raised his voice almost to a shout.

"Isn't it? Isn't it?... Lookee here! A little fellow came here one Sunday, a little collier, and he said 'Wilkie knows!' And by Jimminy, Wilkie does know! I tell you it's everybody for himself in this world, and I'm out for anything that's going! (Yes, let's have a bit o'

straight talk for a change!) War? Of course it's War! What do we all mean about street barricades and rifles if it isn't War? It's War when they fetch the soldiers out, isn't it? Or is that a bit more Brimby? And you can't have War without killing somebody, can you? I tell you we want it at home, not in India! I've stood at the dock gates waiting to be taken on, and I know--no fear! To h.e.l.l with your shillyshallying! If Collins gets in the way, Collins must get out o' the way. We can't stop for Collins. I wish it had been here! I can just see myself jumping off a bridge with a director in my arms--the fat hogs! If I'd had that paper! There'd have been police round this house long ago, and then the fun would have started!... Me and Prang's the only two of all the bunch that _does_ know what we want! And Prang's got his all right--my turn next--and I shan't ask Brimby to help me----"

Through a sort of singing in her ears Amory heard the rising cries of dissent that interrupted Mr. Wilkinson--"Oh no--hang it--Wilkinson's going too far!" But the noise conveyed little to her. Stupidly she was staring at the blue and yellow jets of the asbestos log, and weakly thinking what a silly imitation the thing was. She couldn't imagine however Cosimo had come to buy it. And then she heard Mr. Wilkinson repeating some phrase he had used before: "There'd have been police round this house and then the fun would have begun!" Police round The Witan, she thought? Why? It seemed very absurd to talk like that. Mr.

Brimby was telling Mr. Wilkinson how absurd it was. But Mr. Brimby himself was rather absurd when you came to think of it....

Then there came another shouted outburst.--"Another Mutiny? Well, what about it? It _is_ War, isn't it? Or is it only Brimby's sort of War?----"

Then Amory felt herself grow suddenly cold and resolved. Cosimo was coming back. Whether he had made India too hot to hold him, as now appeared just possible, she no longer cared, for at last she knew what she intended to do. Her guests were wrangling once more; let them wrangle; she was going to leave this house that Mr. Wilkinson apparently wanted to surround with police as a preliminary to the "fun." Edgar might still be at the office; if he was not, she would sleep at some hotel and find him in the morning. Then she would take her leap. She had hesitated far too long. She would not go and look at the twins for fear lest she should hesitate again....

Just such a sense of rest came over her as a swimmer feels who, having long struggled against a choppy stream, suddenly abandons himself to it and lets it bear him whither it will.

Unnoticed in the heat of the dispute, she crossed to the studio door.

She thought she heard Laura call, "Can I come and help, Amory?" No doubt Laura thought she was going to see about supper. But she no longer intended to stay even for supper in this house of wrangles and envy and crowds and whispering and crookedness.

Her cheque-book and some gold were in her dressing-table drawer upstairs. She got them. Then she descended again, opened the front door, closed it softly behind her again, pa.s.sed through the door in the privet hedge, and walked out on to the dark Heath.

III

_DE TROP_

Those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew that the problem of how to make the best of both worlds pressed with a peculiar hardship on him.

The smaller rebel must have the whole of infinity for his soul to range in--and, for all the practical concern that man has with it, infinity may be defined as the condition in which the word of the weakest is as good as that of the wisest. Give him scope enough and Mr. Brimby cannot be challenged. There is no knowledge of which he says that it is too wonderful for him, that it is high and he cannot attain unto it.

But Edgar Strong knew a little more than Mr. Brimby. He bore his share of just such a common responsibility as is not too great for you or for me to understand. Between himself and Mr. Prang had been a long and slow and grim struggle, without a word about it having been said on either side; and it had not been altogether Edgar Strong's fault that in the end Mr. Prang had been one too many for him.

For, consistently with his keeping his three hundred a year (more than two-thirds of which by one means and another he had contrived to save), he did not see that he could have done much more than he had done.

Things would have been far worse had he allowed Mr. Wilkinson to oust him. And now he knew that this was the "Novum's" finish. Whispers had reached him that behind important walls important questions were being asked, and a ponderous and slow-moving Department had approached another Body about certain finportations (Sir Joseph Deedes, Katie's uncle, knew all about these things). And this and that and the other were going on behind the scenes; and these deep mutterings meant, if they meant anything at all, that it was time Edgar Strong was packing up.

Fruit-farming was the line he fancied; oranges in Florida; and it would not take long to book pa.s.sages--pa.s.sages for two----

He had heard the news in the early afternoon, and had straightway sent off an express messenger to the person for whom the second pa.s.sage was destined. Within an hour this person had run up the stairs, without having met anybody on a landing whom it had been necessary to ask whether Mr. So-and-So, the poster artist, had a studio in the building.

Edgar Strong's occupation as she had entered had made words superfluous.

He had been carrying armfuls of papers into the little room behind the office and thrusting them without examination on the fire. The girl had exchanged a few rapid sentences with him, had bolted out again, hailed a taxi, sought a Bank, done some business there on the stroke of four, and had driven thence to a shipping office. Edgar Strong, in Charing Cross Road, had continued to feed his fire. The whole place smelt of burning paper. A mountain of ashes choked the grate and spread out as far as the bed and the iron washstand in the corner.

The girl returned. From under the bed she pulled out a couple of bags.

Into these she began to thrust her companion's clothes. Into a third and smaller bag she crammed her own dressing-gown and slippers, a comb and a couple of whalebone brushes, and other things. She had brought word that the boat sailed the day after to-morrow....

"There's the telephone--just answer it, will you?" Strong said, casting another bundle on the fire....

"Wyron," said the girl, returning.

"Never mind those boots; they're done; and you might get me a safety-razor; shall want it on the ship.... By the way--I think we'd better get married."

The girl laughed.--"All right," she said as she crammed a nightdress-case into the little bag....