October, and still no Show. More, Mr. Hamilton Dix hardly took the trouble now to promise one immediately. But Mr. Dix need not think that Amory didn’t now see perfectly clearly the trick that had been practised upon her. She knew now why he had come so hurriedly to her that morning and dazzled her with his offer of a hundred pounds. Angiers’, a far better firm than Croziers’, had wanted her; that was why. Croziers’ had bought her merely in order that Angiers’ should not have her. “Dishonest,” Amory called it, and she had told Hamilton Dix so to his face. And his reply had been to take her hand and try to pat it.
Wasn’t it dishonest? she had cried hotly to herself any time this past month. If it wasn’t, she would be glad if somebody would tell her what honesty was! And Mr. Dix in his most odious and soothing voice, had said that she really mustn’t talk like that. “Dishonest?” he had repeated. Why, Miss Towers talked as if Croziers’ had anything to gain by deliberately suppressing her work! Nothing (he had assured her) was further from the truth. Croziers’ were in the hands of circumstances, too, the circumstances that made one time ripe for a particular exhibition and another not.... Messrs. Angier? Mr. Dix knew nothing about Messrs. Angier and their arrangements. They might be all right; Mr. Dix had heard it said that Messrs. Angier were rather in the habit of promising more than they performed, but that was only a rumour, and Mr. Dix wouldn’t give it currency. But he could assure Miss Towers that such “options” as that which Messrs. Crozier had obtained on her work were matters of everyday business.... Come now: would she tell him, as her friend, exactly what the trouble was? Was it money? If so, there was perhaps a chance that Messrs. Crozier might be willing to take over a certain quantity of her more recent work on the same terms as before....
Another “option,” in fact....
Then, successively had come the stages when Mr. Dix had told her that in his opinion she was injudicious to change her style so frequently as she did (“Versatility’s all very well, but it puzzles your public,” he had said, as if it had not been precisely the ground of Amory’s complaint that Croziers’ were seeing to it that she had no public at all)—when he had told her, that, if she really thought Angiers’ could do better for her, Croziers’ might be willing to release her from her obligation on repayment of the sum advanced plus a trifle for the accommodation—and when he had ceased to say anything at all. A pretty “option!”—Amory supposed that other man had called it an “option” when he had run away with her godmother’s fifty-two pounds a year.
And of course this was exactly why she didn’t want to ask Dorothy for money. For Dorothy would be able to say—perhaps to say it as if she was crowing over her a little—that she had warned her about that contract. Not that Dorothy had warned her one bit, really. Dorothy had not known any more than herself that her Show would be put off and put off and put off; and if the Show had not been put off, all would have been well. But Dorothy was so—peculiar. Her ways were peculiar. She had ways, in fact, not principles. Amory didn’t want to be severe on Dorothy, but some of the things she did seemed positively unprincipled. Not to go any further, there was Dorothy’s undignified way of regarding her own sex. She seemed to concur in that view of it that made it merely the plaything of the other sex. Of course (to be quite fair) it wasn’t to be supposed for a moment that Dorothy would have let Mr. Hamilton Dix kiss her, as he had wanted to kiss Amory. Amory was sure she wouldn’t. But for all that there would have been—something—not a kiss—not even a “leading on” perhaps—Amory couldn’t have said what it would have been—but there would have been something.... Put coarsely, it was a sort of exaggerated sex-consciousness in Dorothy—that and lack of principle. Amory ought to know that exaggerated sex-consciousness by this time. Glenerne had been full of it. The world seemed to be full of it. It seemed an odious domination; Amory could not understand it at all. Why, Cosimo did not want to kiss her....
Because, of course, that sham gesture at her aunt’s wedding had not been a kiss.
Cosimo quite understood that she was wedded to her art.
Amory could not conceive where the money had gone. Less than six months ago she had had nearly sixty pounds, not counting her regular pound a week; now she had a few shillings only, and quite a number of small debts. She supposed it was because she was not really familiar with the prices of things. Yes, it must be that, for she remembered how surprised she had been at the cost of the little studio-warming she had given when she had first come into this hateful little room. She had not provided anything at all out of the way. There had been a rather nice Greek wine Walter Wyron had told her about, not to be bought in very small quantities, but of course they had not drunk the whole of it that night—indeed, it had lasted for weeks. And there had been cold sausages and salads from a German charcuterie, in glass, not in tins—it was not true economy to run the risk of ptomaine poisoning. And there had also been a few boxes of figs and candied fruits—she admitted those had been rather dear. And so on. Nor, if the party had been a great success, would she have minded a little extra expenditure just for once; but, somehow, it had not been a success. Laura Beamish had had a cold and had not been able to sing; Dickie Lemesurier had wired at the last minute that she was not able to come; Cosimo had done his best, but Dorothy had turned up in an evening frock and had said she could not possibly stay more than an hour; and Walter’s friend, who could quote Nietzsche, had proved to be domineering and had done nothing but wrangle with Walter the whole of the evening. In fact, the party had fallen miserably flat.
But that, after all, was only one evening, and if Amory had been a little extravagant that time, she had more than made up (or so she should have thought) since. Eggs, sardines (in tins), cold boiled ham (at half a crown a pound), bread, butter, and lots of nice hot tea—it was not possible to live much more cheaply than that. At first Mrs. ’Ill cooked her an occasional joint in her own oven at the Creek, but joints are not cheap when you throw a large portion of them away from sheer weariness of the sight of them. She had spent rather a lot on canvases, nothing on clothes. And twice she had been away with Katie Deedes for weekends. Oh yes, and there had been one other party, a river-party just before everybody went away for the summer, which had been Amory’s, all but the railway-fares and the claret and lemonade. That had been quite a success.
Except for these things Amory had not the vaguest idea where the money had gone.