Chapter X: Part III: I (2)

"There you are," she said; "when you say you'd marry a dairymaid, do you mean--that?" She made a little movement of her head. "If you do, Cosimo, by all means marry one. When things come to _that_ pitch I don't see that anything matters very much. Marry a dairymaid, by all means, if _that's_ what you mean by marriage. But"--her laughter suddenly ceased--"don't forget, Cosimo, that there is another side to it. You'd perhaps get all that some men seem to require, and perhaps you are that kind of man, but I shouldn't have thought it. I should have planned something very different for you.... And think what you'd forego. No Societies for the study of those lovely Folk-Songs. No revival of Morrice Dancing. No bringing back the peasantry to those beautiful and rational old smock costumes. No bringing up of the standard of rustic morals to the level of that of the chaste animals. No education of the people up to an enlightened system of Land Tenure. No jolly Socialist Vans, no Pamphlets, nothing fine. Only the extortions of Landlordism and the old hateful Three--Rent, Interest, and Profits.... I'm not saying that to do all this is your work, Cosimo. I'm only pointing out that it's _somebody's_ work. I don't know Shropshire; perhaps Shropshire isn't ripe for it; but it's being done elsewhere. It attracts me. But of course that is no reason why it should attract you. I only mean that I should have said it was worth examining."

Cosimo sat in the falling dusk, thrilled. What a daring and constructive brain!... And still some fools said women had no capacity for affairs! What (he wondered) would they have said could they have heard Amory as she was now--not argumentative, urging nothing, pleading nothing, with nothing to gain, quite detached and disinterested, merely anxious that, as she saw her own work before her, so others should see theirs? He rather thought they would have been silenced!...

And now there was no expressing how much Cosimo wanted her. Alone and of himself he could never have thought of these things, but with Amory by his side!... He seemed to see that Shropshire estate as it might be made. The bright parts of his vision seemed to gather as it were about a Maypole; the Maypole was in the middle; Cosimo knew the very spot for it. And the place really needed a Village Hall, on a contributory basis. In wet weather they could have the Folk-Songs and the Morrice Dancing there, and in fine weather on the green. There might be Vans and Pamphlets too; they might even set up a Village Press. And with these as a beginning the rest would come in time; but he could do nothing without Amory. He must have her. He knew it would not be easy, but he fancied--he was not sure, but he fancied--that there had been suppressed emotion in the tone in which she had called him her Shropshire Lad. Again he glanced at Jellies, whose face had disappeared again. The huddle, as far as he could see in the gloom, was quite motionless. Often and often with Amory he had laughed at this slow and elementary and adhesive love-making of the lower orders; it had always seemed so funny; and of course it was funny still with people of that class; Cosimo was not running away from that. Still, Cosimo had once taken a crossing-sweeper's broom and had swept for half an hour for him, and Amory _was_ temptingly pretty as she sat by his side in the dusk....

Between his dream of a Model Village, of which he was proud, and something else for which he felt a little apologetic, Cosimo did not quite know where he was; but he knew that he wanted Amory. A soft "Ow!" came from the huddle on the other bench; it rather put Cosimo off for a moment or two; but all was silent again, and he took heart. He altered his position, and ran his arm along the back of the bench.

"Do you really think, Amory----" he began huskily.

"Eh?" said Amory. Apparently he had startled her. She had been quite lost in abstraction.

"Do you think that's the choice--for me?"

"The choice?... Oh, I see! You mean what I was saying. Well, Cosimo, what do you think yourself?"

Cosimo spoke spiritlessly.

"I don't know. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth while my thinking when you're here. I want you to tell me."

"I don't think," Amory answered slowly, "that in cases like this one person has really the right to settle things for another. As you know, I hate the word Conscience; I prefer the expression Personal Will; but that's what it seems to me to be."

"But in so many things my will's yours, Amory. You see deeper than I. You're constructive. You're one of the world's Makers of Things. I should be a very good lieutenant or something, but I'm quite without the creative gift. Won't you help me to do all those beautiful things, Amory?"

But evidently Amory didn't understand him. She replied, with quick eagerness--

"Gladly--oh, so gladly! You know you have only to ask, Cosimo, now or at any time."

Cosimo tried again.

"I--I don't mean that exactly," he stammered. "That's splendid, that part in the _Crown of Wild Olive_, I know, but--but--I mean something else, Amory--dear----"

His hand had slipped from the back of the bench; softly it lay on Amory's shoulder. He could hardly believe that it had lain there many times before, it lay so differently softly now. And yet Amory did not seem to recognize the difference in the softness, nor did she appear conscious that he had called her "dear" in a tone he had never used before. She put her finger-tips lightly on his knee. "Wait a bit," she said. "I have it on the tip of my tongue--it's not the _Crown of Wild Olive_; it's _Sesame and Lilies_--you know--that passage about gossiping with housemaids and stableboys when you might be conversing with kings and queens--I shall remember it in a moment----"

For one fleeting instant it did strike Cosimo that if he had not taken down Amory's hair for her and called her "dear" in the past he might have had more resources at his disposal now--at any rate in the sense that Amory would have apprehended him more quickly; and yet that, too, had its little furtive compensation. His hand could remain where it was....

Amory continued to try to recollect the passage from _Sesame and Lilies_.

But suddenly she too gave, not a common "Ow!" but a quite sudden start into perception. She moved a little, but the hand on her shoulder did not. With quiet firmness she put her own hand upon it, but her slight effort to draw it away met with resistance. She had seen. She made as if to rise.

"Isn't it getting late?" she said, looking away over the river.

"Amory--don't go--you know what I mean----" Cosimo pleaded throatily. "It's--it's what I said the other day--you know----"

"Let's be going, Cosimo," said Amory. "I really don't know what you mean by the other day."

"After you'd seen Dorothy--and I wanted you to marry me--do marry me, dear----"

Somehow his hold of her suddenly loosened, and Amory was on her feet. From the bench twenty yards away two faces watched them through the gloom. Amory looked sorrowfully at Cosimo. She was not angry. She did not pretend that she did not understand.

"Cosimo," she said, and her voice was low, "I don't see how you can expect things to be the same after this."

Cosimo sat helplessly, as if still to sit might be construed as an invitation for her also to resume her place.

"I--I don't want them to be the same, dear----" he begged almost abjectly.

"And you mustn't call me dear--not in this new way," Amory commanded, softly, but with decision. "I do see what you mean--now. And I admit it makes matters clearer--too clear, perhaps. In that way our friendship may have been a disadvantage. It's committed us to a certain course, and we must either keep to that course or else undo things. I think you'll admit that's a Law. I----"

"Oh, undo them!" Cosimo cried ardently, catching, as he sat, at her hands.

But Amory drew the hands away and glanced towards Alf and Jellies. Her low voice thrilled, as it were, with the first tones of a tragic scene.

"Cosimo--no, I say. Not now. Not here. Perhaps never, and not anywhere. I'm almost sure it would be better not. I'm quite sure. It's not like that time the other day. I'd seen Dorothy then, you see, and she'd said that horrid thing. Mere pride made us go on as we had been doing in the face of the whole world. It was noble of you to offer it then--noble in a way, but quite impossible; and that's all past. Now our paths seem to lie in different directions, and we must follow them; it's a L--it's our duty. In the sense you mean, the sense of doing a sacred work, I was actually more your wife during that long and beautiful friendship than I can be now that you say you love me----"

"Oh, I do love you!" Cosimo groaned, hearing these words of doom. "I do love you, Amory!"

"Then I bid you love your duty more," Amory replied, with sweet mournfulness, placing her finger-tips ever so lightly for one moment on his shoulder, as it were an accolade. "Go, my Shropshire Lad, and do it. And I will try to do mine. Let that unite us, and let nothing gross and of the earth"--from the next bench came a resounding smack of two mouths placed together--"let nothing of the earth come near. So you will be my Cosimo, and I your Amory. Isn't that the higher and the better way?"

"Oh, but, Amory, it's so hard! You know you've often said yourself that the physical relation has its proper place! How--how would the world go on without it?"

"The world, Cosimo, goes on by the progress of ideas. Ideas can be in a sense our children, yours and mine. And these are born of no contact but the contact of the mingling spirits. I will write to you quite frequently--after a time, when I have forgotten a little; I will write such letters as you'd never, never receive from anybody else! And perhaps, after a number of years, we could meet again. When it was safer. I couldn't meet you until it was safe, and I must leave you now. Don't come with me, dear friend. I am not really going away; only the mortal part of me; everything else is yours, Cosimo. Good night----"

"Amory! Amory!"

"Don't make it harder, dearest thought--you _are_ thought of my thought----"

Cosimo sat still.

"Must that be all, Amory?"

"Is it so little? Oh, you don't know! Have you forgotten what I told you about the Antinöus? You are all _that_ to me!"

"Then----" Cosimo supplicated, his arms outstretched; but Amory turned away her head.

"Ah no! You mean I kissed the Antinöus. But I daren't kiss you, my Shropshire Lad; I might fail utterly. And it would be no good your trying to kiss me; you'd hold my corporeal part for a moment, but think of all you'd lose! Would it be worth while, Cosimo?" She smiled, benign as a star, down on him. "Would it?"

How could he say Yes? How, on the other hand, could he say No? He was between the highest she had ever taught him, and that common, blissful lethargy of the huddle on the neighbouring seat. Thus two Principles run through that multicoloured pattern of the world's web. It is a Law. Cosimo saw that it was a Law. He also saw that it was a hard one.

Suddenly he did the most sensible thing he could have done. He rose.

"Well, I'll walk along with you as far as your place," he said wearily. "I suppose I may do that?"

"Yes," said Amory. She would not have had the heart to refuse him so little. They walked in silence, and stopped before the greengrocer's entry.

"Mayn't I come up?" Cosimo asked.

"No."

"Oh, Amory! You can't mean never again?"

"Never again, I think, Cosimo. I'm going up to think, and to gather my things together. I shall leave to-morrow or the day after."

An "Oh!" broke from Cosimo's lips. So might a prisoner failingly exclaim who, having known that he must die at sunrise, should be ordered forth from his cell before the stars had begun to pale.

"Good night--and good-bye," said Amory, smiling bravely as she held out her little hand.

"Oh!... Not like this! Amory, I can't bear it!"

"It must be borne. I see now that this had to come. I don't say you may not see me just once more."

Even at that Cosimo caught eagerly. "When? To-morrow?"

"No, not to-morrow; I shall be packing. Nor the day after; I shall be busy with the 'Barrage' Committee. I'll write to you, Cosimo."

"Write!"

"Do you get many letters such as I should write to you?" she asked gently. "I'll write, Cosimo; perhaps you may see me once or twice more."

"Oh," Cosimo groaned, "however shall I get through the time!"

The years they had spent together now seemed as nothing compared with these last eternal days before the new order, whatever it was to be, should begin.

III

EPITHALAMIUM

It is not impossible, though it is in the last degree unlikely, that you may have lived in England in those days of Amory Towers' rise to fame without having heard of the furore created by "Barrage," and of its triumphant tour through the country, drawing shillings wherever it went; but you certainly did not live in London that spring without having another and not dissimilar event hammered home on you morning, noon, and night--the astounding series of social functions with which Hallowells' immortalized its Inauguration. "Not dissimilar," one says, and that is the truth, if not the very obvious truth. For both successes were due to the same cause--high, victorious advertisement. It made no difference that the two glories were different glories--that Mr. Miller knew the dignity due to millinery, and the "Barrage" Committee, ably assisted by Mr. Hamilton Dix, had the secret of making art boom. And perhaps the hidden causes that slowly make history decreed that both successes should come to pass at pretty much the same time. You put pressure upon an object, but that object also puts pressure upon you. Mr. Miller recognized the need of commerce for ideals, and the leaders of the Manumission League recognized the need ideals had of business organization. The one would elevate business into a Faith, the others make their Faith into an effective and shilling-producing business. It is a Law. It was also one of the Laws that Amory did not see.

For Amory forgot the slight and constant bitterness of having sold "Barrage" outright in the renown that was now hers. Virtually, by an omission so ludicrously accidental that even Dorothy Lennard had noticed it (so, in these miserable mercenary matters, has the small mind the advantage over the great one), she was pouring streams of gold into the League's war-chest. She solaced herself with that thought--but she intended to see that matters were placed on a very different footing next time. She did not know that there could be no next time. She did not know that though her signature might now be clamoured for by the advertisers of Brain Foods and Hair Washes, Dentifrices and the makers of Portia Caps, the public does not rise to the same fly twice. There was to be no successor to "Barrage." She might paint--she did paint--all those other fiery-cross canvases, the White Slave canvas, the Tuberculosis canvas, the State Motherhood canvas, and the rest, but she remained Miss Amory Towers, the painter of the famous feminist picture, "Barrage." And presently there grew up a cult of her finer but unrecognized masterpieces. Cosimo began it later, when he set about the writing of the _Life and Work of Amory Towers_. It became a test of your knowledge and discrimination. Your lip, if you were really one of the elect, curled a little at the mention of "Barrage"; not (you were expected, if you were a superior person, to say) that "Barrage" was not all very well in its way; popular and so forth; but--did your hearer know the "Tuberculosis" canvas? _That_ was the true Towers. So it was in this pluperfect esteem that Amory by and by came to bask, with Cosimo as her showman.

Benighted Dorothy Lennard, on the other hand, fluked into _her_ wretched success by sheer luck. She had never an ideal to her name, never realized that the best possession to which she could lay claim was a certain knack, a certain low business cunning. And it was only to be expected that this should pay her, in mere despicable cash, twenty times as well as Amory's purer _awen_ had paid. Amory was not in the least envious. Poor Dorothy would need it all, and more. However rich she became, she could never become a prophet; she might become a millionaire, but she could never qualify for the martyr's crown. Amory hoped her money might make her happy. But she did not see how it could.

But to this fluke of Dorothy's:--

When, long, long before, Dorothy Lennard had told Amory Towers that she had an idea that alone had made her wealthy as she stood, she had spoken with a superb confidence. Amory had looked for something of national, nay, more, of feminist value; but later she had begun to think that Dorothy had been merely giving utterance to an idle boast; some people, seeing others achieving something, must needs boast, merely to keep up appearances. Since that day Dorothy had kept her own counsel. She had kept her project even from Mr. Miller, without whom she had known she could do nothing; she had kept it from Miss Benson, and Miss Umpleby, and for long enough, from her cousin Stanhope. But presently she had had to tell Stan. He shared her sandwiches, and must share her ignoble scheming also.

It appeared that Mr. Miller and Hallowells' were to provide the money for them to marry on. They _must_ marry, they told one another twenty times a week--simply must. It was stupid, Stan said, not marrying; what on earth was there _not_ to get married about? He didn't believe in that off-and-on sort of business, as if they didn't know their own minds.... But _ought_ second cousins to marry? Dorothy had urged (scuffling disgustingly for the biggest bite of the sandwich); wasn't it said to be a bad thing? Weren't all these Eugenist people always saying what a bad thing it was? Miss Towers said so--

"Was that Miss Towers, that red-haired little thing you were in such a paddy with that day?"

"What day?"

"The day she caught us--doing this."

"(There, I'm glad you pricked yourself!)... Yes, that was Miss Towers."

"Seemed to creep up rather quietly, didn't she?"

"Stan! Of course she didn't!"

"Oh, all right. I wondered where you picked her up, that's all.... And does she say second cousins oughtn't to marry?"

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps she doesn't. She says so many things."

"Well, you can tell her from me that I don't know anything about 'ought,' but I want to, and I'm jolly well going to. And look here, Dot, I won't have you wearing pins--just look what you've done to my hand."

"_Did_ it tratch its hand!"...

Then, of course, the question of prospects had arisen, and Dorothy had had to tell Stanhope Tasker what was in her mind.

"All right, if you think there's anything in it," Stan had agreed when Dorothy had unfolded her plan. "I don't quite see it, though."

"Idiot!" Dorothy had chuckled, taking a butt at him with her face as if they had been two of the chaste animals at play. "You just wait and see if Mr. Miller doesn't see it, though!"

"Hope he does, that's all," Stan had grunted over the glass of ginger-beer. "Then we'll clear out of this. I've got my eye on a job as secretary to a polo club. Just suit me. And I might get a game sometimes."

Before Dorothy had allowed Mr. Miller either to "see it" or to know anything whatever about it, however, she had first taken good care of the receptivity of Mr. Miller's mind. At that time the Inauguration had occupied him day and night; ideas for cheap stunts had come to him plenty as blackberries; but no idea had occurred to him that combined the flashy and ephemeral attractions of these with that real dignity of which the Throne, the Royal Standard, and the Established Church stood as the outward and visible symbols. And Dorothy had let him fume and fret. The longer he fumed and fretted the higher her price was likely to rise. And presently, by the time Mr. Miller had fumed and fretted himself into a state of nerves lest, after all his vaunting Hallowell & Smith's Inauguration might turn out to be just like any other Inauguration, the price was likely to be very high indeed.

Moreover, Dorothy had seen Mr. Miller's somewhat unscrupulous ways with the originators of other ideas. Mr. Miller was painfully subject to a weakness which might have been constitutional to himself or merely part of the general keenness of his job. This weakness was that he had sometimes been known to help himself to an idea, and to deny its real author as much as an acknowledgment. It was in vain that those authors screened themselves with elaborate and formal contracts drawn up in black and white. The law, by the one master-phrase that there is no copyright in idea, indemnified Mr. Miller. Dorothy knew that if she also did not want to be robbed, she must make herself more secure than any black and white could make her. Now there is only one way of doing this. It is by means of the free and flexible understanding of which agreements and contracts are but the rather clumsy letter. She had seen that, touch by touch, she must so prepare Mr. Miller's attitude that _any_ suggestion of hers would be more likely to appear valuable than not. That had meant such present sacrifices as the leaving of really quite passable "stunts" to others. Dorothy could not afford to suggest ordinary things. An imaginary red carpet, so to speak, was to be laid down before she approached Mr. Miller with a suggestion. And Mr. Miller would think the more highly of it in proportion as he paid highly for it.

So she had carefully "nursed" Mr. Miller, had used her charms when the use of charms would serve a turn and had been businesslike and off when the charm of her sex would have been out of place, had dined and supped with Mr. Miller, had left Mr. Miller alone for a week, had one day dropped a hint that Doubledays' manager was a friend of her people (expressing quite a liking for Doubledays' manager personally), and so on and so forth, until Mr. Miller thought her not only one of the brightest young women that had ever happened, but one with whom it was a pleasure to be seen in the well-dressed assemblies his British heart loved. And, of course, here Dorothy's connexions helped too. Lady Tasker crossed over at the Ritz one evening and sat talking with Dorothy for a full ten minutes, with Mr. Miller standing all the time and bowing whenever he got a chance; and his bow when Lady Tasker left was the bow of Sir Walter with the cloak. Thereafter he kept glancing across in the direction of Lady Tasker's party as if he wondered whether it would be permissible to take wine with Lady Tasker across the width of the room; and he spoke to Dorothy as follows:--

"Now that's the reel thing; I say this is an Experience, Miss Lennard. The way you introdooced me: 'Mr. Miller--,' no more than thaaat, but with a manner, so to say: 'Mr. Miller--,' and then went on conversing about intimate things just as if you'd been at home or in her ladyship's private suite of rooms at this ho-tel ... that's the Note! Now if we could secure Lady Tasker for our Inauguration--not to be on voo, but just to be there--that would be worth dallars, guineas, I mean, both to us and to her ladyship.... And is she Mr. Stan's aunt, if I may use the word, too? Well, now! I have to thank you for a real experience, Miss Lennard. 'Mr. Miller'--just like that--I might have been anybody way up! Some of our Misters make some of our Sirs look poor, if I may use the expression--cheap skates--'bum's' the word they use in America--nooveau. I'm vurry glad to have had the pleasure of Lady Tasker's acquaintance. Now indicate to me who the rest of the party are----"

And when, a week later, Mr. Miller, bowing to Lady Tasker at the theatre, received a bow in return, he certainly felt, if he was not actually, many "dallars" better off. Perhaps actually he was, too. Perhaps his Idea had received confirmation and support, so that he was enabled to go forward with fresh energy and enthusiasm. We must get our inspiration from somewhere, and these things are very difficult to explain.

It may be supposed that this and a few similar things did Dorothy no harm at all; and of course she lied grossly, at any rate by implication, when she introduced the name of Doubledays'. Not that Doubledays', too, were not straining every nerve. They and everybody else knew of the coming Inauguration that was already as completely planned as--say, "Hamlet" without the Prince. Perhaps Dorothy did actually say something to them; perhaps she gave Mr. Miller an account that she thought quite good enough for Mr. Miller; not all of us can take our truth nascent and unsullied from the Fountainhead of all Truth. Mr. Miller at any rate thought she might possibly be dickering with Doubledays', and that was the practical matter. An introduction to Lady Tasker at the Ritz was no good to him if Doubledays' also was going to be introduced to Lady Tasker at the Ritz, and these and other things were Dorothy's to give or to withhold.... You see how it was. You see how time-serving and unprincipled and altogether immoral it was. Amory would not have touched it with the end of a long pole. Had Stan written the "Life and Work of Miss Dorothy Lennard" he would probably have written the most deplorable record of our whole deplorable age.

Apart from these things, however, there was the intrinsic beauty of the idea itself. That went straight to the heart of every woman, and of nearly every man also. And it touched every single being of the future, too. To Mr. Wellcome it peculiarly belonged, and Jellies and the Eugenist might have shaken hands upon it. Actuarially its basis was as sound as it could be. Dorothy went carefully into this. The cost for the whole week would be nothing to Hallowells', and its return would be incalculable. Without it, those shining palatial premises would be as a setting that begged, prayed, implored for its jewel. If Mr. Miller didn't take it, Doubledays'--might. You don't bargain for these things; you show them, and name your price. If you are robbed, it is your own fault before the fact; only the people are robbed who deserve to be robbed. Dorothy didn't guarantee a gem of such water every spring; nevertheless she intended to ask for fifteen hundred pounds a year for a number of years on the strength of it--this time (for contracts have their dull uses) to be clinched by a formal contract. She was not a fashion artist now; she had barely passed her Sealskin; she was a Publicity Adviser, and what she did not know about wheedling and scheming and other gross misuses of her sex was not worth knowing. And she did not care one rap for Emancipation and the Cause. She thought the Cause a very useful thing, merely because it collected all the cranks together, so that you might know where to find them if you happened to want them and how to avoid them when you did not; and, applying her publicity training to the extraordinary success "Barrage" was by this time having, she had no difficulty whatever in seeing to what that success was really due. Given the occasion and the organization, anybody else's picture would have done quite as well as Amory's. Amory was merely lucky to have hit on the idea at the right moment, and foolish if she thought the idea and the moment were likely ever to jump so happily together again. And if Amory didn't know this, the odds were that Mr. Dix did.

This idea of Dorothy's, then (not to beat any longer about the bush), was that of the famous Wedding Week that has now passed into history. "Shopping Weeks" had been tried before, but they had struck Dorothy as "some of our Sirs" had struck Mr. Miller by comparison with the unadorned simplicity of some Misters--as "poor," "nooveau," and (to use the American expression) "bum." And yet they had paid. If those, then, had paid, such an idea as Dorothy's was likely to pay at least as well. It seemed to her that all that these highly-paid Captains of Commerce lacked was inventiveness. They could be trusted with the details, but they had no largeness of conception. They niggled where they should have drawn with a free hand: Dorothy knew that she had ideas enough to keep a dozen of them going.

Hallowell & Smith's, then, were going to provide, for a week, and up to the capacity of their largest hall, free weddings. Subject to certain conditions, that varied from the purchase of a veil to the opening of a monthly account--and even these were imposed only to stem the rush that was confidently anticipated--Hallowells' would supply carriages, the breakfast, flowers, cake, music, wine, silver-paper boxes, awnings, liveries, crimson carpets, souvenirs and what not, entirely without charge, deduction, obligation, or any catch about it whatever. Between the pronouncing of the Benediction at the Church and your stepping on to the footboard of the train that was to take you away, you simply put yourself into Hallowells' hands. Indeed, it was not Hallowells' fault that they were not able to do even more for you. Certainly it was not Mr. Miller's fault. For Mr. Miller simply could not see why, if in Scotland a wedding might be celebrated in an ordinary drawing-room, in England it might not take place in an up-to-date Store. He took advice, both legal and ecclesiastical; he approached both the Church and the Registry Office; and the only result was that he found something more inaccessible even than he had found the Royal Standard to be. Hallowells', dedicated though it was (subject to the Shops' Hours Acts) to that practical form of Faith which the Apostle James offered to show by his works, still remained, in the hidebound sense that is the only one accepted of dogma, an unconsecrated building. Mr. Miller felt this as an injustice. It seemed to him that the Church could not after all be very sure of its own position. If, as it preached, it was the duty of the strong to help the weak, surely it was equally the duty of an Establishment that had dignity enough and to spare to bestow a little of that dignity where there was need of it. Not to do so was a stultification of reel enterprise, and a refusal to give live and go-ahead brains (his brains and Dorothy's) their proper reward. He would have met the Church more than half-way; would have dressed his marshal-celebrant in any way they had wished; cloth-of-gold if they liked; no expense should have been spared: but the authorities of the Chapel Royal and St. George's, Hanover Square, stuck to their cobwebby old monopoly, and in a business sense Mr. Miller was forced to the conclusion that the Church was "bum."

But while the Sacrament itself lay beyond his power, its appurtenances provided an opportunity more glorious than Publicity had dreamed of yet. Never was a Publicity-secret more jealously guarded. Day and night a picket kept the door of the room in the Clerkenwell factory where the gigantic papier-maché Old Shoe was being made; and the white-and-silver hymeneal torches, both the large ones for the trophies and the small ones for table-decoration and the holding of flowers, were allotted to separate firms. All "roughs" given out to printers were red-labelled, like poison-bottles, "Destroy at Once"; and the deliveries of Menus, Souvenirs, Wedding-cake Boxes and so on were sealed with private seals. The theatrical costumiers who supplied the wings and wreaths for the Cupids were given for secrecy's sake, an address in Scotland from which the consignments were brought back by private van by road; and for long enough the Executive of the Wedding Week was divided about the building of an organ in the place. Mr. Miller rather wanted an organ: it would be, he thought, rather a scorching come-back on the Church; but his stunt-advisers persuaded him otherwise, and a string-band carried the day. And before it was absolutely too late for Doubledays' or any other firm to have queered the whole thing and to have got ahead of Hallowell's, Dorothy got her contract. The office of Consultant to Hallowell's for five years was signed, sealed and delivered unto her. Thereafter she might stick to the job or allow it to lapse, as she pleased; in the meantime, not counting contingent benefits that were sure to come, it would start her and Stan very comfortably together.

And so, with London at its fairest and fullest, and the flower-barrows in the Circuses ablaze with tulips and narcissi and gladioli and escholtzsias, and Bond Street blocked with cars and taxis, and the Park on Sunday mornings for all the world as if rivers of confetti and black patches flowed slowly back and forth, all was made in readiness at Hallowell's. And so well had the secret been kept that it was only when Miss Umpleby happened one day to go into the room where the Bell was being unpacked that anybody in the place (outside the Executive) had the faintest notion of what was going on. But the Bell gave it away to Miss Umpleby. Mr. Miller had got the idea of the Bell from that foreign land, America. It was twelve feet high and composed entirely of artificial flowers; and while it had originally been intended that each bridal pair should hew its way out of it with a silver axe, bringing the souvenirs for its particular party out with it, that idea had been abandoned as impracticable, and the Bell opened with two flaps like a roc's egg at a pantomime instead. Miss Umpleby was an intelligent young woman; she had read of the device before in the newspapers; and she flew to Dorothy.

"What are they up to in there, Lennie?" she demanded. "Mr. Miller isn't going to be married, is he?"

Nobody would have known from Dorothy's face that she guessed that the secret had leaked out.

"Mr. Miller get married? Mr. Miller is married. What are you talking about?" she asked.

"That thing in the room at the end of the corridor there. I peeped in."

"Then you'd no business to peep," Dorothy replied; and she denied all knowledge of what was toward.

But presently she was sorry she had done so. Miss Umpleby, being under no obligation of secrecy, told the girls of the fashion studio what she had seen. Dorothy entered the studio as they were discussing it that same afternoon, and the hail of questions that greeted her almost blew her out of the room again.

"Here's Lennie--she knows!"

"Is it going to be like that New York one that was in the papers, Lennie?"

"And who is it?"

"It isn't you, Lennie, is it?"

They paused for breath, and then went on.

"And there's stacks and stacks of mock-orange in boxes----"

"And lots of lace-paper----"

"And they're doing the Central Hall downstairs all in white and silver."

"_Do_ tell us!" they implored.

But it was only some days later, when there was no longer any danger of betrayal, that Dorothy told Miss Umpleby, as a great secret. Miss Umpleby clutched at Dorothy's arm.

"Really?" she cried excitedly. "Do you mean there'll be champagne, and flowers, and a cake, all for nothing?"

"Well, you give Hallowells' an order, and they'll do as many as there's room for."

"_Oh!_... How much is the order?"

"What, do you mean that you'd----?"

"Me and Arthur? Rather! I don't suppose we shall be married this side of the next eclipse if we don't do something of the sort! I'm not proud, as long as they don't mix the husbands up; I've had to watch Arthur, I can tell you, ever since he got his new Sans Souci hat!... But really, Lennie, do you think you could get us a ticket or whatever it is?"

"If you _really_ mean it----"

"Of _course_ I mean it. Oh, I say, you are a brick! What a lark!"

And so Miss Umpleby, who otherwise would have had to wait for another year, put her name down for that public wedding-breakfast.

And so a word was dropped here and a word was dropped there, and the business spies stole back and forth piecing gathered rumours together, and, some days before the announcements appeared in the papers, Doubledays' and the rest of them knew that they were done. No counter-device they could have prepared in the time would have compared for one single instant with that clean-cut and beauty-bright idea of Dorothy's. So some of them touched hidden springs that caused letters on over-advertised business to appear in the papers, but most of them took their defeat magnanimously, merely sending out fresh spies to try to discover "whose notion Miller had stolen that time" and to try to secure the services of that ingenious brain for themselves. Oh, Dorothy would have had no difficulty whatever in selling herself two or three times over! In fact she did so, at varying figures, though of course not to Hallowell's trade competitors. It is quite simple. When you are more anxious to sell your brains than somebody else is to buy them, then your price is a low one; but when people come running to you with their money in their hands, that is the time to stick it on....

Dorothy stuck it on. If Stan got his game of polo once in a while he must have just as good ponies as anybody else's...

And so, you know, in the beginning of the June of that year the famous Wedding Week opened. You do not need to dig deep into your newspaper files in order to read all about it and to remember how, for brilliance and festivity and renown, for crowds and mirth and family gatherings and thundering good business, it by far outdistanced any mere Shopping Week that had ever been held in this island realm. It caught on instantaneously. London talked of nothing else. From eleven o'clock to four daily, Oxford Street was blocked. Folk stood up to watch from the standing buses; streams of traffic were diverted into the side streets; it took you half an hour to walk on foot from Oxford Circus to Tottenham Court Road, and high across the street, all pale blue and silver and white, Hallowell's swinging banner, "OUR WEDDING WEEK," flapped and fluttered in the spring wind. And the evening papers reserved special columns for the daily doings. Press-photographers snapped; descriptive reporting soared; ponderously playful editorials gave the Wedding Week their imprimatur; comedians made it the theme of their choicest "gags." The _Daily Speculum_ rose to a million a day on the strength of its photographs of bridal-parties alone. There were rumours of a Manchester Wedding Week. One couple journeyed all the way from Stornoway to be married by Special Licence and to breakfast at Hallowells'; another couple came from the Potteries. In both these cases Hallowells' handsomely paid for the railway-tickets also. Newly-made husbands and wives were interviewed as they signed the large Bridal Book; they bore testimony that the champagne was excellent, the wedding-cakes not made of plaster of Paris, and that there were absolutely no gratuities whatever. Hallowells' defiantly invited investigation on these points. They issued a public challenge to anybody who could prove that they were not doing all they had undertaken to do. Especially they drove it home that any genuine bride or bridegroom or member of their party might drink just as much champagne as ever he or she wished. Doubts, they said, had been cast upon their _bona fides_, and they considered that they owed it to themselves to set themselves right with the public. And surely you could not blame them.

And inside the great domed Central Hall was the sight of a lifetime. The large twenty-four-hours' clock was embowered with cherubs' heads so that it almost resembled the picture by Reynolds, and quivers and darts and nuptial torches, big and little, were arranged in trophies everywhere. A real sculptor had been commissioned to model the figure of Hymen that stood in the middle of the hall, and at or in among the fifty tables the wedding-parties sat or moved. Ordinarily the parties were limited to a dozen; special notice had to be given of larger parties; _but_ the mirth those dozens made!... Party succeeded party while the chairs were yet warm; as one party ate its fruit those who waited for the vacated chairs stood so close behind them that they also might almost have bitten of the same banana or apple or pear. The room that is now the world-famed Juperies was the reception-room; there those who did not breakfast joined their friends who did; and the Umbrella Department was turned into a smoking-room for the men. And in they came, party after party, to Hallowells' to breakfast. Cheers went up from those whom Hallowells' carriages passed in the streets. An amber-yellow, the same yellow in which their parcels are now done up, was Hallowells' chosen colour; flowers of that colour filled the carriage lamps, rosettes of that colour were tied to the drivers' whips. The souvenirs and favours were tied with ribbons of that colour, and confetti of that colour (unless not desired) was thrown at the parties that descended from Hallowells' vestibule to Oxford Street; this confetti thinned gradually out on the pavements for a quarter of a mile either way, east and west. And every bride and bridegroom who breakfasted was made to enter the great Floral Bell, and to take, from the shelves that lined the structure, the parcel of souvenirs for the party. Two Cupids kept the flap-doors of the Bell. They shot harmless darts at Hallowells' guests. Sometimes these darts had _serpentins_ of coloured paper (amber yellow) attached to them; sometimes they had whistles. These last, as they flew through the air, made a noise like swallows.

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:--