Amory herself would have been the first to confess the weakness that set her wondering how many bedrooms the Shropshire house had, and whether there were rose gardens and fruit trees on the southern walls. Even from thoughts of duty weak mortals must sometimes stoop. Besides, if there was not a village green with a maypole on it, some arrangement would probably have to be made. Amory didn’t think she would want morrice-dancing on the lawn in front of the drawing-room windows, except, of course, on birthdays and festival days and the days when the tenants paid their rent. The people themselves would probably prefer to have their merrymaking to themselves. Very likely they would only be shy before their betters. She would show the tenantry (she did not insist on the name) every consideration, as she should expect them to consider her.... And if there was a lily garden as well as a rose garden, she would send lilies as well as roses to the cottages quite frequently.
But Cosimo must be saved for the Cause quickly, for he was giving up his studio in March, and once he got away again he might fall into the hands of the designing woman whose existence Amory had suspected. She knew those designing women. She knew them by the simple process of inversion of everything that was noble within herself.
Amory had only seen Dorothy Lennard once since the afternoon when Dorothy had promised to see what she could do about Croziers’ contract. That had been when Dorothy had come to tell her of the mitigation of its rigour she had secured from Hamilton Dix. But, finding herself in Oxford Street one afternoon, she sought Hallowells’, and tried to find her way upstairs to the fashion-studio. “Tried,” one says, for nearly twenty minutes Amory was hopelessly lost in the wilderness that seemed to grow ever more and more complicated as the time fixed for the opening drew nearer. It was during her wandering through this labyrinth that Amory received a shock. Passing along a corridor of such vast length that she seemed to be looking at it through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses, she entered a large apartment where three women on their knees polished the floor. There she saw a large historical painting. It was the picture of Queen Bess, Sir Walter, and the Cloak.
Her first impulse was to fall back; her second one, which she obeyed, was to stand her ground, to put her head back and a little on one side, and to smile defiantly, indulgently, truculently, all three. It was as if she said to the picture, “We meet unexpectedly, but since we are here we may as well have a few words together, you and I!”
A certain amount of skill, manual and ocular, had gone to the making of the picture—enough, as we have seen, to “hit” Mr. Miller “right there.” Perhaps that was the reason why it hit Amory right there too, though in the contrary sense. She stepped forward and examined it near; then she stepped back and examined it at a distance. As she did so, a man in an astrachan-collared overcoat and an indented grey hat hurried past, dropping his cigar and uncovering his head as he found himself in the presence of a lady, even one he did not know; and then Amory continued her gazing.
The picture struck her as incredibly funny. First, there was the subject—“Our old friend Chivalry,” Amory mused. Oh yes, Chivalry in other words, those garlands of roses in her own picture beneath which the iron chains peeped forth. Chivalry! Oh yes, Amory knew—any feminist knows—the toils men impose on women when they talk about Chivalry! Amory became cynical.... Let them amend the Divorce Laws, and then Amory would listen to what they had to say about Chivalry! Let them give women equal opportunities with men, and she would excuse the lifting of a hat or the offering of a seat in a train! Chivalry might have had its place in the social organization of the Year Dot (see “Barrage”), but things had moved a bit since then, and woman to-day would walk through puddles if she wished, though twenty cloaks were outspread for her to step on! Thank you very much for your Chivalry ... and now will you give us a little Justice for a change?... And then the complacent handling of the thing! There was really nothing to be said! Nobody could say it wasn’t “finished”; that was just it; it was fatally “finished”; the man had done exactly what he had set out to do, and—there it was. No unseizable desire, no unattainable dream, no Promethean attempt, no suspicion that here was not the last possible word on the subject; and this in a new and straining and eager age, when men were just beginning to know that they knew nothing, and to put off their past boastings, and to take the cave-dweller into their counsels as their equal, perhaps their superior, in knowledge! Here, actually to-day, was a man who truly thought that he knew a thing or two more than the cave-dweller! Oh, the smugness, the self-satisfaction! Really, Amory would not dare to show such a man her “Barrage”; its pure heart of fire, shining even through all its shortcomings, would have shrivelled him and his conceit up! For surely there, in “Barrage,” was the true impulse of the arts to-day. Some called it “propagandist,” but what, Amory wanted to know, had all these Virgins and Children, all these Crucifixions, all these Holy Families of the past been but propaganda? The arts had been shackled to the propagation of superstition and dogma, and of the tenets of a religion that had found its expression one day in seven; but in the Newer Day all days were going to be equally holy, with the abolition of the Sabbath as a first step to the consecration of the other six. To the Virgins and Children of the future a proper comprehension of the Rights of Woman and the Responsibilities of Parentage would be brought. Eugenics would have a word to say about the Holy Families. The Crucifixions would probably be cut out altogether.... To bring that day nearer was Amory’s mission. If she could only sell “Barrage”—and she thought she could now, for the Women’s Manumission Guild had approached her about it, and an Executive was further considering it....
And she would ask a good price for it, for the labourer is worthy of her hire, and she really must study her dress a little more....
Amory turned away from the picture and resumed her search for Dorothy.
But she had hardly left the room where the women polished the floors (showing how, even in physical strength, women were not the inferiors of men), when she received a second shock. She was backing out again from a room where a telescopic ladder rose to a sagging sheet under a skylight when she saw, beyond an oval section of redwood counter, the fair head of Dorothy herself. It was now luncheon time, the workmen had left, and Dorothy appeared to be eating her lunch amid the smell of shavings and varnish and plaster. Amory advanced.
But once more, she started back. She saw that Dorothy was not alone. And not only was Dorothy not alone, but she was sitting with a good-looking but ridiculously smart young man on a box so narrow that from mere necessity the young man had passed his arm about Dorothy’s waist. They were eating sandwiches from a paper bag, and if they were not sharing the same glass of lemonade, the second glass was certainly not visible.