A Crooked Mile Part 9

It was into this house of lamentation that Stan entered at half-past four.

"Steady, there!" he called to his younger son; and Jackie's bellow ceased instantaneously.

"Ruth's c'ying, so I c'ied too," he confided solemnly to his father; and the two entered the pond-room together, there to find Dorothy also in tears.

"Hallo, what's this?" said Stan. "Jackie, run and tell Ruth to hurry up with tea.... Head up, Dot--let's have a look at you----"

Perhaps he meant that Dot should have a look at him, for his face shone with an--alas!--not unwonted excitement. Dorothy had seen that shining before. It usually meant that he had been let in on the ground floor of the International Syndicate for the manufacture of pig-spears, or had secured an option on the world's supply of wooden pips for blackberry jam, or an agency for a synthesized champagne. And she never dashed the perennial hopefulness of it. The poor old boy would have been heartbroken had he been allowed to suppose that he was not, in intent at any rate, supporting his wife and children.

"What is it, old girl?" he said. "Just feeling low, eh? Never mind. I've some news for you."

Dorothy summoned what interest she could,--

"Not an agency or anything?" she asked, wiping her eyes.

"Better than that."

"Well, some agencies are very good."

"Not as good as this!"

"Put your arm round me. I've been feeling _so_ wretched!"

"Come and sit here. There. Wretched, eh? Well, would three hundred a year cheer you up any?"

It would have, very considerably; but Stan's schemes were seldom estimated to produce a sum less than that.

"Eh?" Stan continued. "Paid weekly or monthly, whichever I like, and a month's screw to be going on with?"

Suddenly Dorothy straightened herself in his arms. She knew that Stan was trying to rouse her, but he needn't use a joke with quite so sharp a barb. She sank back again.

"Don't, dear," she begged. "I know it's stupid of me, but I'm so dull to-day. You go out somewhere this evening, and I'll go to bed early and sleep it off. I shall be all right again in the morning."

But from the pocket into which she herself had put four half-crowns that very morning--all she could spare--Stan drew out a large handful of silver, with numerous pieces of gold sticking up among it. A glance told her that Stan was not likely to have backed a winner at any such price as that. Other people did, but not Stan. She had turned a little pale.

"Tell me, quick, Stan!" she gasped.

"You laughed rather at the Fortune & Brooks idea, didn't you?"

"Oh, don't joke, darling!----"

"Eh?... I say, you're upset. Anything been happening to-day? Look here, let me get you a drink or something!"

"Do you mean--you've got a job, Stan?"

"Rather!--I say, do let me get you a drink----"

"I shall faint if you don't tell me----"

She probably would....

Stan had got a job. What was it, this job that had enabled Stan to come home, before he had lifted a finger to earn it, with ma.s.ses of silver in his pocket, and the clean quids sticking up out of the lump like almonds out of a trifle?

--He would have to lift more than a finger before that money was earned.

He would have to hang on wires by his toes, and to swim streams, and to be knocked down by runaway horses, and to dash into burning houses, and to fling himself on desperate men, and to ascend into the air in water-planes and to descend in submarines into the deep. Hydrants would be turned on him, and sacks of flour poured on him, and hogsheads of whitewash and bags of soot. Not for his brains, but for his good looks and steady nerves and his hard physical condition had he been the chosen one among many. For Stan had joined a Film Producing Company, less as an actor than as an acrobat. Go and see him this evening. He is as well worth your hour as many a knighted actor. And the scene from "Quentin Durward," in which Bonthron is strung up with the rope round his neck, is not fake. They actually did string Stan up, in the studio near Barnet that had been a Drill Hall, and came precious near to hanging him into the bargain.

But he pa.s.sed lightly over these and other perils as he poured it all out to Dorothy at tea. Pounds, not perils, were the theme of his song.

"I didn't say anything about it for fear it didn't come off," he said, "but I've been expecting it for weeks." He swallowed tea and cake at a rate that must have put his internal economy to as severe a strain as "Mazeppa" (Historical Film Series, No. XII) afterwards did his bones and muscles. "I start on Monday, so breakfast at eight, sharp, Dot. 'Lola Montez.' They've got a ripping little girl as Lola; took her out to tea and shopping the other day; I'll bring her round." ("No you don't--not with me sitting here like a Jumping Bean," quoth Dorothy). "Oh, that's all right--she's getting married herself next month--furnishing her flat now--I helped her to choose her electric-light fittings--you'd like her.... _Ain't_ it stunning, Dot!----"

It was stunning. Part of the stunningness of it was that Dorothy, with an abrupt "Excuse me a moment," was enabled to cross to her desk and to dash off a note to Harrods. Second-hand woollies for her Bits! Oh no, not if she knew it!... "Yes, go on, dear," she resumed, returning to the tea-table again. "No, I don't wish it was something else. If we're poor we're poor, and the Services are out of the question, and it's just as good as lots of other jobs.--And oh, that reminds me: I had Mr. Miller in this afternoon!"...

"And oh!" said Stan ten minutes later; "I forgot, too! I met a chap, too--forgotten all about it. That fellow I gave a dressing-down about India to up at the Pratts' there. He stopped me in the street, and what do you think? It was all I could do not to laugh. He asked me whether I could put him on to a job! Me, who haven't started myself yet!... I said I could put him on to a drink if that would do--I had to stand somebody a drink, just to wet my luck, and I didn't see another soul--and I fetched it all out of my pocket in a pub in St. Martin's Lane--," he fetched it all out of his pocket again now, "--fetched it out as if it was nothing--you should have seen him look at it!--Strong his name is--didn't catch it that day he was burbling such stuff----"

Dorothy's eyes shone. Dear old Stan! That too pleased her. No doubt the Pratts would be told that Stan was going about so heavily laden with money that he had to divide the weight in order not to walk lopsided----

Worn woollies for His Impudence's Bits!----

Rather not! There would be a parcel round from Harrods' to-morrow!

VI

POLICY

Amory would have been far less observant than she was had it not occurred to her, as she left Dorothy's flat that day, that she had been hustled out almost unceremoniously. She hoped--she sincerely hoped--that she did not see the reason. To herself, as to any other person not absolutely case-hardened by prejudice, the thing that presented itself to her mind would not have been a reason at all; but these conventional people were so extraordinary, and in nothing more extraordinary than in their regulations for receiving callers of the opposite s.e.x. That was what she meant by the vulgarizing of words and the leaping to ready-made conclusions. A conventional person coming upon herself and Mr. Strong closeted together would have his stereotyped explanation; but that was no reason why anybody clearer-eyed and more open-minded and generous-hearted should fall into the same degrading supposition. It would be ridiculous to suppose that there was "anything" between Dorothy and Mr. Miller. Amory knew that in the past Dorothy had had genuine business with Mr. Miller. And so now had she herself with Mr. Strong.

And as for Stan's going about in open daylight with a "dark Spanish type"--a type traditionally wickeder than any other--Amory thought nothing of that either. Stan had as much right to go about with his Spanish female as Cosimo had to take Britomart Belchamber to a New Greek Society matinee or to one of Walter's Lectures. Amory would never have dreamed of putting a false interpretation on these things.

Nevertheless, her visit _had_ been cut singularly short, and Dorothy plainly _had_ wanted to be rid of her. Because hearts are kind eyes need not necessarily be blind. Amory could not conceal from herself that in magnanimously pa.s.sing these things over as nothing, she was, after all, making Dorothy a present of a higher standard than she had any right to.

Judged by her own standards (which was all the judgment she could strictly have claimed), there was--Amory would not say a fishiness about the thing--in fact she would not say anything about it at all. The less said the better. Pushed to its logically absurd conclusion, Dorothy's standard meant that whenever people of both s.e.xes met they should not be fewer than three in number. In Amory's saner view, on the other hand, two, or else a crowd, was far more interesting. n.o.body except misanthropists talked about the repulsion of s.e.x. Very well: if it was an attraction, it _was_ an attraction. And if it was an attraction to Amory, it was an attraction to Dorothy also; if to Cosimo, then to Stan as well. The only difference was that she and Cosimo openly admitted it and acted upon it, while Stan and Dorothy did not admit it, but probably acted furtively on it just the same.

It was very well worth the trouble of the call to have her ideas on the subject so satisfactorily cleared up.

At the end of the path between the ponds she hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether to keep to the road or to strike across the sodden Heath. She decided for the Heath. Mr. Strong had said that he might possibly come in that afternoon to discuss the Indian policy, and she did not want to keep him waiting.

Then once more she remembered her unceremonious dismissal, and reflected that after all that had left her with time on her hands. She would take a turn. It would only bore her to wait in The Witan alone, or, which was almost the same thing, with Cosimo. The Witan was rather jolly when there were crowds and crowds of people there; otherwise it was dull.

She turned away to the right, pa.s.sed the cricket-pitch, found the cycle track, and wandered down towards the Highgate ponds.

She had reached the model-yacht pond, and was wondering whether she should extend her walk still further, when she saw ahead of her, sitting on a bench beneath an ivied stump, two figures deep in conversation. She recognized them at a glance. They were the figures of Cosimo and Britomart Belchamber. Britomart was looking absently away over the pond; Cosimo was whispering in her ear. Another second or two and Amory would have walked past them within a yard.

Now Amory and Cosimo had married on certain express understandings, of which a wise and far-sighted antic.i.p.ation of the various courses that might be taken in the event of their not getting on very well together had formed the base. Therefore the little warm flurry she felt suddenly at her heart could not possibly have been a feeling of liberation. How could it, when there was nothing to be liberated from? Just as much liberty as either might wish had been involved in the contract itself, and a formal announcement of intention on either part was to be considered a valid release.

And so, in spite of that curious warm tingle, Amory was not one atom more free, nor one atom less free, to develop (did she wish it) a relationship with anybody else--Edgar Strong or anybody--than she had been before. She saw this perfectly clearly. She had talked it all over with Cosimo scores of times. Why, then, did she tingle? Was it that they had not talked it over enough?

No. It was because of a certain furtiveness on Cosimo's part. Evidently he wished to "take action" (if she might use the expression without being guilty of a vulgarized meaning) _without_ having made his formal announcement. That she had come upon them so far from The Witan was evidence of this. They had deliberately chosen a part of the Heath they had thought it unlikely Amory would visit. They could have done--whatever they were doing--under her eyes had they wished, but they had stolen off together instead. It was a breach of the understanding.