PART III (continued 2)

And the parties themselves!... Arthur and Miss Umpleby were among the first to breakfast and then, to the strains of the Wedding March from the string band, to take their souvenirs from the Bell; but on the following day Mr. Nolan, of the Satteens, took Miss Feather, of the Fancies Counters, to have and to hold, and the whole of those two Departments took tea in relays in the room where Sir Walter spread the Cloak, and Mr. Miller himself presided at the tea, and gave Mr. Nolan an advance of salary, and the reporters, too, joined in the applause that greeted the announcement. Mr. Miller would have given his ears to have dared to suggest to Dorothy that she and Mr. Stanhope, Lady Tasker’s nephew and niece, should eat their cake and enter the Bell along with the others; but though he guessed an understanding to exist, he knew no more than that, and in the end funked it. Moreover, to his chagrin, he was losing Mr. Stanhope. His swellest Marshal of all had handed in his paper. In vain had Mr. Miller offered to confer on him the title of Field-Marshal; Stan had told him that he really didn’t feel up to the job, and had refused to reconsider his decision. But that drop of mortification was as nothing in the buckets and buckets of good business the Wedding Week was doing. If Stan was leaving, there was still Sir Walter, and a daily drilling of Marshals for an hour before that inspiring picture might be expected to work wonders. They had really performed very creditably at the Nolan-Feather wedding-tea, and a touch here and there of the easy negligence Dorothy had used when she had introduced him to Lady Tasker in the simple words, “Mr. Miller,” should presently give their deportment its consummation and crown.

Thus, from a hundred churches, east and west and south and north, the newly joined couples came to Hallowells’ to make merry with their friends. They came from Fulham and Wimbledon, from Kilburn and Epping, from Finchley and Streatham and Woolwich and Denmark Hill; and the hinges of the Bell wore loose with much work, and parcels’ delivery vans took the cakes away in great loads each evening, and the strains of the Wedding Marches never ceased, and enough champagne was opened to have converted the great silver-and-white Central Hall into a swimming-bath. And besides the wedding parties, sightseers came also. One of these came daily, occupying a chair under the garlanded and cherubimed twenty-four-hours’ clock. His eyes were agog; sometimes, as one in a dream, he half rose from his chair, grasped the hand of some passing bride or bridegroom, murmured something unintelligible, and sat down again, once more watching in a sort of stupid ecstasy. He was Mr. Wellcome.... And Walter Wyron came with Laura Beamish, and they clutched one another, and, both speaking at once, said that Amory and Cosimo must on no account miss this, and Walter sent Cosimo a postcard that very night. Amory and Cosimo came on the morrow, but missed Walter and Laura in the crush, and retired to a sort of recess on the second floor, past which the lift-well ascended. There, sitting down on a narrow padded bench without a back, they talked. Cosimo had all but won Amory. Only a few points remained on which it was necessary that their understanding should be quite clear.

“You see, Cosimo,” Amory explained earnestly, while the noisy parties went up and down in the lift, “in one sense two rational beings have hardly the right to marry at all as long as the Divorce Laws are in their present chaotic condition. Even a Judicial Separation places a quite unjust stigma on the woman, and the Restitution Decree has become a mere formal step to Divorce itself. There’s absolutely no Equality in the contract. As Equity it’s a farce from beginning to end. I’m not sure that the wisest thing to do wouldn’t be to wait until the Law is altered. I want that one-sided plea of cruelty done away with, or else made the same for both. It’s anomalous—it belongs to the Stone Age.”

“I quite agree,” said Cosimo slowly. “But we have our private arrangement about that. It’s quite understood that if it isn’t a success we each go our own way. You’re to be as free as I am, Amory. I’ve no right to choose your friends for you, male or female. If things come to the worst, I fancy I’m not altogether without a sense of fairness and rationalness and philosophy. So our eyes are quite open.”

Amory mused. “It’s a risk for all that,” she murmured. “There may be all sorts of things about both of us that neither of us knows. In a sense, we’re complete strangers.”

“Then,” Cosimo urged, “let us be brave and take it. There’s very little doubt that they’ll reform those ridiculous laws before long. They’re bound to. With the spread of Democracy cheaper Divorce is inevitable; and when it becomes quite common much of the stigma you speak of will disappear. Look here: I’ve an idea!... Why shouldn’t we start a sort of private Insurance against not getting on together—put away a sum each year for the contingency, so that the expenses of Divorce would be met out of a fund? We could arrange some means of drawing on it, too, in case we decided to live apart. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

“Ye-es,” said Amory slowly. “Ye-es. It’s certainly a Law, I should say, that the only real way of keeping people together is to leave them perfectly free to separate whenever they like. The day of force, whether physical or legal, is over. That’s what makes all that downstairs so exquisitely funny. They think that the way to bind yourself is to tie yourself fast! So of course it’s our duty to dissociate ourselves as far as ever we can from all that.... Isn’t it nearly time ’Orris and Jellies were here?”...

“Oh, they aren’t due for half an hour yet. Now about Incompatibility, Amory——”

And their love-making went on.

The remark about ’Orris and Jellies had to do with their dissociation from the semi-communal feasting that was going on in the Central Hall. It had been Amory’s idea that this dissociation would be more complete if ’Orris and Jellies also feasted with the rest of the world, and the joke had been cheap at the cost of the qualifying purchase at Hallowells’ of Jellies’ wedding-veil. So ’Orris, Jellies, Mrs. ’Ill, a woman who lent a hand at the Creek sometimes, together with one or two friends, had been told off to a table midway between Hymen and the Bell. Amory and Cosimo intended to watch from the gallery. They still regarded the world and its happenings much as they might have regarded a stereoscope, to be taken up for a few minutes when they found themselves in the humour for it, and put down again when it no longer amused them; and if Dorothy did not like the presence of this particular party at Hallowells’, that could only be because Dorothy was a snob.

So Amory and Cosimo, presently descending by the lift again, watched Jellies’ nuptial party from the balcony, and went on to discuss their own affairs again. They would be married—unless even yet they amicably agreed that it would be best that they should not marry—at a Registry Office; and if they did happen to feel hungry afterwards (certainly not unless) they would go to the Lettuce Grill. The noise that came up from the vast oval below was no doubt a mere reaction from the false religiosity in the church an hour or so before, and champagne certainly heated the blood. Amory drank nothing at meals, Cosimo only barley-water. Jellies’ husband, as they could see from where they leaned over the rail, was already a little drunk on champagne; there was no doubt whatever that he would presently be quite drunk on beer. And these were the people to whom England looked for a eugenically begotten race! Black eyes were in front of Jellies, and intervals of returning to her mother when ’Orris happened to be “in,” and a shamefully large family, and work at the Jelly Factory as before, and very little prospect indeed of ever having either the money or the initiative to obtain a Divorce. It made Amory sad....

And as she stood, with Cosimo by her side, looking down on the laughing, moving crowd below, she thought of a picture that should move the best women and men of her land as even “Barrage” had not moved them. It was this:—

She would take a large canvas, and would rough out upon it that very oval down on which she now looked. And she would fill it with figures, even as it was filled with figures now. But they should not be giggling, guffawing, gesticulating figures such as these, uttering the inanities about lifelong happiness that they themselves knew to be untrue, and filling and refilling their glasses with the blood-heating champagne. No. They should be the enlightened men and women of To-morrow; rational, responsible, of a nobler-moulded flesh and a more ardent spirit; they should average about nine heads high. And their eyes should be centred, not on their own selfish and private parties, but on the figure in the centre of the room that she would put where that absurd Hymen now stood. This figure should be symbolic, colossal, twenty-five heads high. It should represent the Earthly Authority of the marriage-contract. Its feet should be set upon broken figures, each one of which should typify some marriage-form of the past—hedge-priests, broomstick-weddings, handfastings, morganatic unions, savage rites (from Primitive Culture), ecclesiastical rites, even the Registry Office; and the fragments of such pagan emblems as hearts and torches and Cupids and bells should appear all about it. And in her right hand the figure should bear, as it were, a crystal with a flame in it, which should be Marriage, and in her left another crystal with a flame in it, no less perfect, no less honourable, which should be Divorce. And these she should offer to the Children of the Morrow together, both at the same time. Either should be the warranty of the other, as the olive-branch justifies the sword, the sword maintains the olive-branch. So should that figure be set up. And benignly brooding over all, exactly where she and Cosimo now stood, should be two larger and vaguer shapes, rather difficult to do, but probably to be achieved by scraping and scumbling and pumice. These should symbolize the Divine Sanction. Soft and reassuring rays should shoot from their angelic eyes and rest upon the Earthly figure below; this should turn up its glad gaze to receive the rays. In one sense, it was true, Amory did not approve of this paraphernalia of angel-shapes, but merely as emblems they might prove serviceable. They were prejudices that must be accepted pro tem. Though she dreamed of To-morrow, she must paint her picture in terms of To-day.

Rapidly and earnestly she began to describe the picture to Cosimo....

“Oh! By Jove, Amory——” he breathed, wellnigh breathless before the daring of her genius.

“And those two wonderful shapes, just here, exactly where we are.”...

“Looking down and comprehending everything——”

“Oh—like you, Amory!”

“Like you, too, Cosimo—for, if you don’t actually paint the picture, you help in other ways——”

“Shall I, Amory,” he breathed—“shall I always be there to help in those other ways?”

Her eyelids fluttered and dropped.

“You do understand me as nobody else does.”...

“I do—I do—I’m sure I do——”

“And you understand, too, that there’s always that other kiss—the kiss of the Antinöus——”

“It shall be our picture, Amory—all three of us,” he said, with ardour.

“I hope we’re not acting in haste, Cosimo.”

“I’m quite sure we’re not. Oh, let it be soon, Amory!”

He had put his hand on her arm, but she drew a little away.

“Don’t touch me just yet, Cosimo, please,” she asked him.

“No—I beg your pardon,” he said humbly. “I know that in a sense you aren’t here—you’re creating. By Jove, it is wonderful!”

He would have felt unworthy of her had he wanted to kiss her just then.

And, down below them, Jellies and her party rose, and a Marshal made a signal, and the conductor gave a couple of taps with his baton, and the bored musicians reached for their instruments, and their eyes rested sullenly on the tip of the poised stick....

“Hooray—let ’er go!” ’Orris roared huskily....

And once more the Wedding March broke forth.

END OF BOOK ONE

ENTR’ ACTE

Two men turned out of the gateway of the McGrath and walked up the street that led to the Euston Road. Just before they reached the corner one of them stopped and gave a lingering, but sardonic, look behind him. He was Jowett, the Professor of Painting, and his companion was the friend who had once talked with him at a students’ dance, while the Discobolus and the Gladiator had held the shawls and fans of the dancers. Then they went forward together again.

“So you’re shaking the dust off your feet?” Jowett’s friend said. “How many years has it been?”

“Twenty-odd. Twenty-two or three. Twenty-three years next March, to be precise. Nice way for a man to spend twenty-three years of his life, isn’t it?”

“A very nice way, I should say. Beautiful things about you all the time—lots of pleasant young people and so on. One gets older, of course, but you have the fun of starting ’em in the world and seeing how far they go.”

With an “Eh?” Jowett looked sideways at his companion; then he looked before him again.

“The world? That place hasn’t got anything to do with the world,” he said.

“No? Well, one of your old students seemed to be making quite a stir in it not so long ago—that girl who painted ‘Barrage’—what’s her name—Miss Towers, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Amory Towers. A small red-haired girl. I fancy I pointed her out to you once. She was married a year or so ago; married another of our students. Pratt, his name was.”

“Then she’s in the world now, at any rate.”

“Think so? I very much doubt it. Of course she is, in one sense; I can’t deny that; but this is what I mean: There’s too much paper in their lives. They read too much. Draw too much. Especially reading. Lord, the books they get hold of! Weeks and months together I’ve heard ’em: Myers says this, and Galton says that, and Tolstoi says the other; and they make up a sort of world out of all that, and think it’s the real one, or is soon going to be, and they live in it, and go on living in it, and never get out of it. I hope I’ve heard the last of Myers and Galton and Tolstoi.”

“But—my good chap!”

Jowett glared. “Well?”

“Well!”

“You mean these are the great men? Well, I’m not a great man myself, so what does it matter to me? And what does it matter to those infants? Oh, it’s all in the old Greek tag: ‘A great book is a great evil.’... You’re laughing; look here: I’ll tell you the kind of thing that used to happen half a dozen times a day. I used to set these boys and girls to draw a simple object—simple, but more than they could do, for all that, or ever would be able to do; it all depends on how much you see in a simple object. And I’d even show ’em how to do it—for there are one or two simple things I really know and can do myself. Well, presently I’d look up, and there would be sweet seventeen, giving me a pitying sort of smile. I’d ask her what she was smiling at, and then she’d coo, ‘Oh, but Degas didn’t draw like that!’—or Beardsley, or the newest man from Montmartre (but the chances were it was somebody rather corrupt). ‘But you don’t happen to be his pupil just at this moment,’ I’d say.... Anyhow, the point is, that an adorable young female person, or a decent young fellow for that matter, with no more use for an idea than I have for Moses’ Rod, would throw one of these names at my head as soon as look at me. And the bigger the duffer the bigger the name: get that well into your head: that was unvarying. They used to think it was a joke when I asked them, whether they could make an omelette—of course, I really meant make a baby’s shirt and contrive to get a baby inside it, but I couldn’t exactly say that, so I used to say ‘omelette’ very slowly and distinctly, and look hard at ’em.... A baby? If I had said it, another piece of paper would have come in. They wouldn’t have been able to get a baby until they’d seen what Strindberg or Nietzsche or somebody had to say about it first! And even if they did manage it, then there’d be more paper—systematics—newest methods of this and that and the other—lectures on proteids before they dared to feed it—paper, paper, paper—I know—I’ve had twenty-three years of it——”

His friend twinkled. “Has the little red-haired girl any family yet?” he asked.

“I don’t know; but”—something like a twinkle flickered for a moment under Jowett’s shaggy brows also—“perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps Pratt knows at least one little bit about Life by this time. One of the girls there used to sing some song or other, I remember—something about—

and I shouldn’t be surprised—I don’t know, of course, but at a guess——”

“Oh?... You mean she’ll be likely to be jealous?”

“Well, I fancy she’ll have him safe under her pretty little thumb. I suppose there’s nothing new about the whole thing really—same old twig, same old lime, same old bird. But a vast deal more paper—I still stick to that.”

Jowett’s friend twinkled again. “I know what’s the matter with you and me,” he chuckled. “We’re both on the wrong side of five-and-forty. That’s all that’s the matter with us.”

Jowett had been muttering within his shaggy moustache some extempore Litany or other; his friend caught the words, “From all young women who talk paper with their hair down—From all young men who think the New Woman isn’t just the same as the Old one—And from all day-nurseries for the children of the well-to-do middle classes——” He stopped short.

“Think so?” he said. “You think that’s it? Perhaps you’re right.... Well, it’s not my habit, but suppose—if it was only for the sake of the name——”

He indicated an establishment with large hanging lamps——

And they entered the Adam and Eve.