Part 3 — PART III (continued 2)

And then Laura Wyron will speak, saying tremulously that she can’t understand why Amory isn’t happy when she has those two lovely babies; but she is not happy, and never will be again, because she has turned her back on her art; and Britomart Belchamber (who will be hoisted to her feet because she has lived in the same house with Amory, and may have something interesting and intimate to say) will doubt whether Amory has always quite closed the sweat-ducts with a cold sponge; and then the crowd will rush in—the governess playwrights will say what they think, the clerk sculptors what they think, and everybody else what he or she thinks—and presently they will have strayed a little from the business in hand, and will be discussing Cubism, or Matriarchy, or Toe-posts, or the Revival of the Ballad, or Rufty Tufty, quite beyond Mr. Brimby’s power to hale them back to the proper subject. And so the Meeting will have to be adjourned, and we shall all go again to-morrow night, when Mr. Wilkinson will be in the Chair, and there ought to be some fun——

But Edgar Strong will not be there, because he will be on the water, and Cosimo will not be there, because he will be anxiously counting what money remains to him, and Mr. Prang will not be there, because he will be under arrest in Bombay. But, except for these absences, it will be a perfectly ripping Meeting——

But none of these things were Dorothy’s business. Instead, by the time she had finished her questioning of Amory, there was no thought at all in her breast, save only the pitiful desire to help. She saw before her an old young woman, more drained and disillusioned and with less to look forward to at thirty-odd than her aunt had at seventy. Her very presence in Dorothy’s house that night was a confession of it. It was the last house she would willingly have gone to, and yet there she was, begging Dorothy to tell her what had happened to her. And there was nothing for Dorothy to say in reply....

She knew that Stan, in the dining-room, was waiting to come to bed, but he must wait; Dorothy had the fire to mend, and Amory’s cold hands to chafe, and to get her something hot to drink, and a dozen other things to do that had never had a beginning either, yet there they were, mere helpful habit and nothing more. Presently she set a cup of hot soup to Amory’s lips.

“Drink this,” she said, “and when you’re rested my husband will take you home.”

But that did not happen either. Amory spoke very tiredly.

“I should like—I don’t want to trouble you—anywhere would do—but I don’t want to go home to-night——”

Dorothy made a swift and doubting mental calculation. Where could she put her?——

“I’m simply done up,” muttered Amory closing her eyes.

“I’m afraid we could only give you a shakedown in the dining-room——”

“Yes—that would do——”

Dorothy went out to give Stan his orders. Stan swore. “Rather cool, one of that crew coming here, to-night of all nights!” But Dorothy was peremptory.

“It isn’t cool at all. You don’t know anything about it. You’ll find blankets in the chest in your dressing-room, and mind you don’t wake Noel. Then get some cushions—I’ll air a pillow case—and then you must go up there and tell them where she is—they’ll be anxious——”

“Shall I bring those twins of hers back with me while I’m about it?” Stan asked satirically. “May as well put the lot up.”

When he heard Dorothy’s reply he thought that his wife really had gone mad.

“I’ve arranged that,” she said. “We shall be putting the twins up for a time at Ludlow by and by while she and her husband go away somewhere for a change. It’s the least we can do. Don’t stand gaping there, Stan——”

“Hm! May I ask what’s up?”

“You may if you like, but I shan’t tell you.”

“Hm!... Well—it’s a dog’s life—but I suppose it’s no good my saying anything——”

“Not a bit.”

So Amory was put to bed, most unhygienically, in Dorothy’s dining-room; but in the middle of the night she woke, quite unable to remember where she was. There was a narrow opening between the drawn curtains; through it a glimmer of light shone on the Venetian blinds from the street-lamp outside; and without any other light Amory got out of her improvised couch. She felt her way along the wall to a switch, and then suddenly flooded the room with light.

Blinking, she looked around. She herself wore one of Dorothy’s nightgowns. On Stan’s armchair, near his pipe-rack, was her hat, and her clothing lay in a heap where she had stepped out of it. Dorothy’s slippers lay by the fender, and Dorothy had been too occupied to remember to remove the photograph of Uncle Ben from the mantelpiece. It seemed to be watching Amory as she stood, only half awake, in her borrowed nightgown.

It was odd, the way things came about——

If you had asked Amory at six o’clock the evening before where she intended to spend the night, she would not have replied “In Dorothy Tasker’s flat——”

But she felt frightfully listless, and the improvised bed was very warm——

She switched off the light and crept back.

TAILPIECE

Along the terrace of the late Sir Noel Tasker’s house—“The Brear,” Ludlow—there rushed a troop of ten or twelve urchins. They were dressed anyhow, in variously-coloured jerseys, shirts, jackets and blazers, and the legs of half of them were bare, and brown as sand. Their ages varied from five to fifteen, and it is hardly necessary to say that as they ran they shouted. A retriever, two Irish terriers, an Airedale and a Sealyham tore barking after them. It was a July evening, amber and windless, and the shouting and barking diminished as the horde turned the corner of the long low white house and disappeared into the beech plantation. Their tutor was enjoying a well-earned pipe in the coach-house.

From the tall drawing-room window there stepped on to the terrace a group of older people. The sound of wheels slowly ascending the drive could be heard. Lady Tasker came out first; she was followed by Cosimo and Amory and Dorothy and Stan. A little pile of labelled bags stood under the rose-grown verandah; the larger boxes had already gone on to the station by cart.

Stan took a whistle from his pocket and blew two shrill blasts; then he drew out his watch. The sounds of shouting drew near again.

“I give ’em thirty seconds,” Stan remarked.... “Twenty-five, twenty-six—leg it, Corin!—ah; twenty-eight!... Company—fall in!”

The young Tims and the young Tonys, Corin and Bonniebell and the terriers, stood (dogs and all, save for their tails) stiff as ramrods. Stan replaced his watch. He had been fishing, and still wore his tweed peaked cap, with a spare cast or two wound round it.

“Company—’Shun! Stand a-a-at—ease! ’S you were! Stand a-a-at—ease! Stand easy.... Tony, fall out and see to the bags. Tim, hold the horse. Corin—Corin!—What do you keep in the trenches?”

“Silence,” piped up Corin. He had a rag round one brown knee, his head was half buried in an old field-service cap, and he refused to be parted, day nor night, from the wooden gun he carried.

“Not so much noise then.—Who hauls down the flag to-night?”

“Billie.”

“Billie stand by. The rest of you dismiss, but don’t go far—’Evening, Richards——”

The trap drew up in front of the house. Tim held the horse’s head, Tony stood among the bags. The leavetaking began.

Amory and Cosimo were going to Cumberland for the rest of the summer. They would have liked to go to Norway, but the money would no longer run to it. They seemed a little shy of one another. They had been at the Brear a fortnight, and had had the little room over the porch. The twins were remaining behind for the present. Dorothy had said they would be no trouble. This was entirely untrue. They were more trouble than all the rest put together. Corin, near the schoolroom window, was wrangling with an eight years old Woodgate now.

“They do, there! On Hampstead Heath! I’ve seen them, an’ they’ve hats, an’ waterbottles, an’ broomsticks!”

“Pooh, broomsticks! My father has a big elephant-gun!”

“Well ... mine goes to great big Meetings, an’ says ‘Hear hear!’”

“My father’s in India!”

“Well, so was mine!”

“I’ve seen them troop the Colour at the Horse Guards’ Parade!”

“So’ve I!” Corin mendaciously averred.

The other boy opened his eyes wide and protruded his mouth. It is rarely that one boy does not know when another boy is lying.

“Oh, what a big one! You’d catch it if Uncle Stan heard you!”

“Well,” Corin pouted, “—I will—or else I’ll cry all night—hard—and I’ll make Bonnie cry too!—”

“Well, an’ so shall I, again, an’ then I’ll have seen it twice, an’ you’ll only have seen it once, an’ if I see it every time you do you’ll never have seen it as often as me!”

Then Stan’s voice was heard.

“Corin, come here.”

It was an atmosphere of insensate militarism, but the Pratts were content to leave their offspring to breathe it for the present. They had another matter to attend to—their own marital relations. It had at last occurred to them that you cannot rule others until you can govern yourself, and they were going to see what could be done about it. They had secured a cottage miles away from anywhere, at the head of a narrow-gauge railway, and it remained to be seen whether quiet and privacy and the resources they might find within themselves would avail them better than the opposites of these things had done. There was just the chance that they might—their only chance. The twins, if all went well, would join them by and by. In the meantime they must see red, and learn to do things with once telling.

So Amory took the struggling Corin into her arms—he wanted to go to the armoury of wooden guns—and kissed him. Then he ran unconcernedly off. Dorothy saw the sad little lift of Amory’s bosom, guessed the cause, and laughed.

“Shocking little ingrates!” she said. “Noel’s joy when I go away is sometimes indecent.—But don’t be afraid they’ll be any trouble to us here. You see the rabble we have in any case.”

“It’s very good of you,” Amory murmured awkwardly.

“Nothing of the sort. Stan loves to manage them—it keeps his hand in for managing me, he says.... Now, I don’t want to hurry you, but you’d better be off if you’re going to get as far as Liverpool to-night. Good-bye, dear——”

“Good-bye, Dorothy——”

“So long, Pratt—up with those bags, Tim——”

“Good-bye, Bonnie——”

“Corin! Corin!—(Hm! See if I don’t have you in hand in another week or two, my boy!)—Come and say good-bye to your father.”

“Good-bye, Lady Tasker——”

“All right?”

The wheels crunched; hands were waved; the rabble gave a shockingly undisciplined cheer; and young Arthur Woodgate, who had run along the terrace and stood holding the gate at the end open, saluted. Stan took out his watch again.

“Four minutes to sunset,” he announced.

But there was no need to tell Billie to stand by to strike the flag that hung motionless above the gable where the old billiard-room and gun-room had been thrown together to make the schoolroom. The halyards were already in his hands.

“Here, Corin,” Stan called, “you shall fire the gun to-night.”

Corin gave a wild yell of joy. Well out of reach, there was an electric button on one of the rose-grown verandah posts. Stan lifted his newest recruit to it, who put a finger-tip on it and shut his eyes——

“Bang!” went the little brass carronade in the locked enclosure behind the woodshed——

And hand over hand Billie hauled the flag down.

But it would be run up again in the morning.

THE END