A Crooked Mile Part 34

She had half expected that Dorothy would be shocked, or at least surprised; but she seemed to take it quite coolly. Dorothy, as a matter of fact, was not surprised in the very least. She too guessed at the futility of looking for a starting-point of things that grow by inevitable and infinitesimal degrees. It was rather sad, but not at all astonis.h.i.+ng. On Amory's own premises, there was simply no reason why she shouldn't. So again she merely said "Oh?" and added after a moment, "But you're not?"

"No."

"How's that? Has what we've heard to-day made you change your mind?"

Again Amory was slightly puzzled; and at Dorothy's question she had, moreover, a sudden little hesitation. _Was_ it after all necessary that Dorothy should know everything? Would it not be sufficient, without going into details, to let Dorothy suppose she had changed her mind? It came to the same thing in the end.... Besides, Edgar Strong had not refused her that night. He had not even known of her presence in the office. Of the rest she would make a clean breast, but it was no good bothering Dorothy with that other.... She was still plunged into a sort of stupor, but these reflections stirred ever so slightly under the surface of it....

Then "what we've heard to-day" struck her. She repeated the words.

"What we've heard to-day?"

"Oh, if you haven't heard.... I only mean about the murder of my uncle,"

said Dorothy coldly.

This was far more than Amory could take in. She reflected for a moment.

Then, "What do you say, Dorothy?" she asked slowly.

"At least he wasn't my uncle really. I liked him better than any of my uncles."

"Do you mean Sir Benjamin Collins?"

It was as if Amory had not imagined that Sir Benjamin could by any possibility have been anybody's uncle.

"I called him uncle," said Dorothy, in a voice that she tried to keep steady. "Before I could say the word--I called him----." But she decided not to risk the baby-word she had used--"Unnoo"----

It seemed to Amory a remarkable little coincidence.

"I--I didn't know," she said stupidly.

"No."

"You--you mean you--knew him?----"

"Oh ... oh yes."

Amory said again that she hadn't known....

"Then why," Dorothy would have liked to cry aloud, "_have_ you come, if it isn't to make matters worse by talking about it? That wouldn't have surprised me very much! I should have been quite prepared for you to apologize! It's the kind of thing you would do. I don't think very much of you, you see"... But again that worse than frightened look on her visitor's face struck her sharply, and again a remark of her aunt's returned to her: "They puzzle their brains till their bodies suffer, and overwork their bodies till they're little better than fools." Suddenly she gave her sometime friend more careful attention.

"Amory--," she said all at once.

Amory had her fists between her knees again.--"What?" she said without looking up.

"You just said something about--going away. I want to ask you something.

You haven't ...?"

The meaning was quite plain.

As if she had been galvanized, Amory looked sharply up.--"How dare----", she began.

But it was only a flash in the pan. Dorothy was looking into her eyes.

"You're telling me the truth?" She hated to ask the question.

"Yes," Amory mumbled, dropping her head again.

"Has Cosimo been unkind to you?"

"No."

"Nor neglected you?"

"No."

"Has--has anybody been unkind to you?" She could not speak of "somebody"

by name.

Here Amory hesitated, and finally lied. It was rather a good sign that she did so. It meant returning animation....

"No," she said.

"Then what _has_ happened?"

"Nothing. That's what I asked myself. That's just it. Nothing. Nothing at all's happened."

Dorothy spoke in a low voice, as if to herself.--"I know," she murmured....

And, on the chance that she really did know, Amory clutched at the sleeve of Dorothy's dressing-gown almost excitedly.

"Yes, that's what I mean ... you do know?" she asked in a quick whisper.

"Yes--no--I'm not sure----"

"But you _do_ know that--nothing happening, nothing at all, and everything happening--everything? That's what I mean--that's what I want to know--that's why I came----"

"Don't speak so loudly. Put your hands to the fire; they're like ice.

Wait; I'll get you a shawl; you're s.h.i.+vering.... Now I want you to tell me some things...."

And, first wrapping her up and putting Stan's pillow behind her back, she began to question her.

What, again, was the purport of her questions? What of those of her aunt? What of those of a good many others in an age that is producing, and for some mysterious reason or other counts it a sign of progress to produce, innumerable Amorys--so many that, stretch out your hand where you will, and you will touch one?

All is guessing: but it will pa.s.s on the time if we hold a Meeting about it now. Everybody is agreed that the way to arrive at the best conclusions is to hold a Meeting, and this will be only one more Meeting added to the cloud of Meetings in which the "Novum" went up and out--the Meeting which, as Edgar Strong had prophesied, the loyal London Indians held (in the Imperial Inst.i.tute) in order to dissociate themselves from the Collins affair (as Edgar Strong had also prophesied, Mr. Wilkinson moved an amendment, "That this Meeting declines to dissociate itself, etc. etc.")--the numerous secondary Meetings that arose out of that Meeting--the Meetings of the "Novum's" creditors (for Edgar Strong in his haste to be off had omitted to pay all the bills)--the Meetings at which (Cosimo Pratt having withdrawn his support) the Eden and the Suffrage Shop had to be reconstructed--the Meetings convened to talk about this, that and the other--as many of them as you like.

Let us too, then, hold a nice, jolly Meeting, in order to find out what was the matter with Amory--a Meeting with Mr. Brimby in the Chair, to tell us that there is a great deal to be said on both sides, and that no party has a monopoly of Truth, and that the words that ought always to be on our lips as we hurl ourselves into the thickest and hottest of the fray, whatever it may be, are "To know all is to forgive all."