But the regret did not last long. She remembered in time that she was bringing herself down to Dorothy’s level. The full reward she might not get, but all the renown would be hers, and, though she was no Dorothy, she was yet not so ignorant of business but that she knew that in other ways her market was now as good as made. And compared with the kudos that would be hers, even the foregone royalty fell away into the background. “Foregone,” she told herself, was the world; for the effect was the same as if she had had the royalty and had magnanimously handed it back again to the Cause. To all intents and purposes, she was subscribing to the Cause’s funds (say) a thousand guineas. Her name would not appear with that figure after it in any list, but it is well to do good by stealth, and the name would ring resoundingly enough in other ways. “Amory Towers, you know, the painter of ‘Barrage’”—“‘Barrage,’ Miss Towers’ great work”—“That feminist picture that everybody’s going to see, ‘Barrage,’ by Amory Towers” ... yes, there would be lots of that. And in the Movement itself she would be a person of consideration and authority. She would have a voice in its councils. “Has Miss Towers given her opinion yet?” the leaders would ask one another on this point or that; and there were the other propagandist pictures yet to come. In the meantime it was a little odd that Amory was not asked to join the “Barrage” Committee. But perhaps that was as well too. Anybody can serve on a Committee, but it takes a somebody to paint a “Barrage.” To inferior minds inferior work. It was better after all that there should be a little mystery about Amory and that she should be shut off from the common gaze as it were by a veil. More than her own exclusion she resented the inclusion of the name of Mr. Hamilton Dix. For Mr. Dix had been called in. Mr. Dix, whose articles on Hallowells’ advertisements had brought him very much to the fore, had evidently been deemed by the Committee to be the very man to act as Art Director for “Barrage” also. And as that man of parts, who had no interest in Croziers’, still never abandoned an attitude of benevolence towards Croziers’ and such artists as they elected to “take up,” Amory’s twenty-odd older pictures also seemed in a fair way for being fetched up out of Croziers’ cellars. One thing brings another. Amory had known it would come, and it had come, or was coming. And it was coming without her having receded from the highest that was in her by as much as a single inch. That (as Cosimo said) was what was so wonderful. In an age of polluted altars she had kept her single taper burning pure and bright.
To anticipate a little: those contingent results of the enormous publicity that was presently given to “Barrage” came duly to pass. Croziers’ sold all but two of those old Saturday-night street-markets of hers at prices that varied from ten to thirty pounds apiece. Their numerous charges and commissions struck Amory as merely capacious; for all that, she received a series of cheques that totted up in all to more than four hundred pounds; and in several articles he wrote on the astonishing combination of human sympathy and pure idealism that distinguished the work of Miss Towers from the work of all other living artists, Mr. Hamilton Dix fairly let himself go. This was when “Barrage” left London for Manchester, Liverpool, and the North, to draw its thousands of visitors per week and to be chosen as a popular and attractive text, though with various applications, by half the Nonconformist ministers in the land; and one of the curious little after-effects of the enterprise was to show how entirely right Mr. Miller was when he said that the mere advertising “stunt” was over, and that advertising, to be effective to-day, must attach itself to something higher than itself. He would have attached a drapery business to the Royal Standard; but the feminist picture did even better. The “Barrage” turnstiles took their toll of shillings that were really the sinews of a Holy War.
Nothing, in Cosimo’s opinion, could have been more simple and unaffected and fine than the way in which Amory still stuck to the shabby little studio in Cheyne Walk. More than once he protested, but she lifted her eyes to him and asked him, Was it not enough? The roof kept out the rain; the door kept out intruders; and she could open the diamond-latticed window and look at the stars whenever she liked. She liked the solitude, she said; out of just such a solitude the strength must be gathered that is to be put to the service of the multitude. She did sometimes sigh for the country; she was not sure that soon she might not take a trip away somewhere, a longish one, quite alone; she had always promised herself such a trip, to Italy, but the loved servitude of her career had never permitted her to get farther than Paris; but now there was nothing to keep her in England. She might even go and live permanently abroad, working for the Cause from wherever it might be. But wherever she went, Cosimo must not suppose she would ever forget him. She would write to him quite frequently. And he must write to her.
The first time Amory allowed Cosimo this peep at her plans his face became blank with dismay. They were sitting together on a bench in the little Embankment garden where the Carlyle statue is. It was an evening early in April, approaching dusk, and on another bench, twenty yards away, a dim huddle under the trees had caused Amory’s lips to curl into a smile; it had reminded her of that horrible hypnotizing evening when she had walked on Clapham Common and had returned to pass a night of starts and tremors, lying dressed on Cosimo’s bed. She could afford to smile now, though she did so a little disdainfully. Things had improved since then—rather! Cosimo, though he had always been splendid, had been somehow a little off-handed at odd times; not exactly casual, but as if, while esteeming her very highly indeed, his esteem had none the less fallen just a little short of her true deserts; but that, too, was being quickly altered now. And she would like to see Rome too. Quite inferior people had seen Rome, and Amory owed it to herself and to her art not to be crowed over by anybody. She told Cosimo so.
“Yes,” he said dejectedly; “I thought that would be the next. You’re rising, Amory. You’ll remember us poor grovellers sometimes, though, won’t you?” Amory’s tone of reproach almost passed reproach; it was as if she had received a twinge of pain.
“I don’t think I’ve deserved that of you, Cosimo,” she could not forbear saying.
But Cosimo persisted sadly.
“I beg your pardon, dear, but it is so. You might remember a little longer than most others, because you’re finer and truer than they are, but time and distance do make a difference, and it’s no good saying they don’t. I know.”
Amory wondered whether Cosimo knew the difference time and distance made because of Pattie Wynn-Jenkins, but she only shook her head on its white hyacinth-stalk of a neck.
“I don’t forget my friends, Cosimo,” she said quietly.