LITMIR.BIZ

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and whatever Mr. Strong's other failings might have been, nobody had ever said of him that he did not recognize a good thing when he saw it. The Cause itself had served as an introduction between him and Cosimo; it had also been a sufficient reason for his inviting himself to Cosimo's house for a couple of days and remaining there for three weeks; and then he had got rid of the Van and had come again. He was a rapturous talker, when there was an end to be gained, and he had expressed himself as strongly of the opinion that, magnificent a field for the sowing of the good seed as the country-side was, there was simply stupendous propaganda to be done in London. He knew (he had gone on) that Mrs. Pratt would forgive him (he had a searching blue eye and an actor's smile) if he appeared for a moment to speak disparagingly of what he might call the mere graces of the Movement, (alluring as these were in Mrs. Pratt's capable and very pretty hands); it was not disparagement really; he only meant that these garlands would burgeon a hundred-fold if the stern and thankless work was got out of the way first. Mr. Strong had a valuable trick of suddenly making those searching blue eyes of his more searching, and of switching off the actor's smile altogether; both of these things had happened as he had gone on to point out that what the Cause was really languishing for was a serious and responsible organ; and then, and only then, when they had got (so to speak) the diapason, there would be time enough for the trills and appoggiaturas of the Hurdy-gurdy Band.

      Before the end of Mr. Strong's second visit Cosimo had put up the greater part of the money for the "Novum."

      So you see just where the feather-pated Stan was wrong. The Cosimo Pratts were not outfaced from anything; they had merely seen a new and heralding light. They did not so much recede from the Rural Experiment, and discussions of the Suffrage, and eating buns on the floor at assemblies of the Poets' Club, and a hundred and twenty other such things, as become as it were translated. They still shed over these activities the benignity of their approval, but from on high now. Amory could no longer be expected actually to "run" the Suffrage Shop herself—Dickie Lemesurier did that; nor the "Eden" (the new offshoot off the Lettuce Grill)—that she left to Katie Deedes; nor the "Lectures on Love" Agency—that was quite safe in the hands of her friends, Walter Wyron and Laura Beamish. Amory merely shed approval down. She was hors concours. She … but you really must read Cosimo's book. You will find it all there (or at any rate a good deal of it).

      For Amory Pratt, in so far as Cosimo was the proprietor of the "Novum," was the proprietor of the proprietor of a high-class weekly review that was presently going to put the two older parties out of business entirely. She had more than a Programme now; she had a Policy. She had crossed the line into the haute politique. Her At Homes were already taking on the character of the political salon, and between herself and the wives of ministers and ambassadors were differences, in degree perhaps, but not in kind. And that even these differences should become diminished she had taken on, ever since her settling-down at The Witan, slight, but significant, new attitudes and condescensions. She was kinder and more gracious to her sometime equals than before. She gave them encouraging looks, as much as to say that they need not be afraid of her. But it was quite definitely understood that when she took Mr. Strong apart under the copper beech or retired with him into the studio at the back of the house, she must on no account be disturbed.—Mr. Strong, by the way, always dressed in the same Norfolk jacket, red tie and soft felt hat, and his first caution to Cosimo and Amory had been that Brimby, the novelist, was an excellent chap, but not always to be taken very seriously.

      Amory did not often put in an appearance at the "Novum's" offices. This was not that she thought it more befitting that Mr. Strong should wait on her, for she went about a good deal with Mr. Strong, and did not always trouble him to come up to The Witan to fetch her. It was, rather, if the truth must be told, that she found the offices rather dingy. Her senses loved the newly-machined smell of each new issue of the paper, but not the mingled odour of dust and stale gum and Virginia cigarettes of the place whence it came. Moreover, the premises were rather difficult to find. They lay at the back of Charing Cross Road. You dodged into an alley between a second-hand bookseller's and a shop where electric-light fittings were sold, entered a narrow yard, and, turning to the right into a gas-lighted cavern where were stacked hundreds and hundreds of sandwich-boards, some back-and-fronts, some with the iron forks for the bearer's shoulders, you ascended by means of a dark staircase to the second floor. There, at the end of a passage which some poster-artist had half papered with the specimens of his art, you came upon the three rooms. The first of these was the general office; the second was Mr. Strong's private office; and the third was a room which, the "Novum" having no need of it, Mr. Strong had thought he might as well use as a rent-free bedroom as not. The door of this room Mr. Strong always kept locked. It was more prudent. He was supposed to live somewhere in South Kentish Town, and gave this address to certain of his correspondents. The letters of these reached him sooner or later, through the agency of a barber, in whose window was a placard, "Letters may be addressed here."

      Perhaps, too, the extraordinary people who visited Mr. Strong in the way of business helped to keep Amory away. For an endless succession of the queerest people came—contributors, and would-be contributors, and friends of the Cause who "were just passing and thought they'd look in," and artists seeking a paper with the courage to print really stinging caricatures, and article-writers who were out of a job only because they dared to tell the truth about things, and Russian political exiles, and Armenians who wanted passages to America, and Eurasians who wanted rifles, and tramps, and poets, and the boy from the milkshop who brought in the bread and butter and eggs for Mr. Strong's breakfast. And out of these strange elements had grown up the paper's literary style. This was unique in London journalism: philosophical, yet homely; horizon-wide of outlook, yet never without hope that the shining thing in the gutter might prove to be a jewel; and, despite its habitual omissions of the prefix "Mr." from the names of statesmen, and its playful allusions to this personage's nose or the waist-measurement of the other, with more than a little of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine about it. "Damn" and "Hell" were words the "Novum" commonly used. Once Amory had demurred at the use of a word stronger still. But Mr. Strong had merely replied, "If I can say it to you I think I can say it to them." He was no truckler to his proprietors, and anyhow, the man whom the word had encarnadined was only a colliery-owner.

      The "Novum" had hardly been six weeks old when a certain desire on Amory's part to make experiment of her power had, putatively at any rate, lost it money. The little collision of wills had come about over the question of whether the "Novum" should admit advertisements to its columns or not. Now as most people know, that is a question that seldom arises in journalism. A question far more likely to arise is whether the advertisements can be got. But when a journal sets out to do something that hitherto has not only not been done, but has not even been attempted, you will admit that the case is special. The experience of other papers is useless; their economics do not apply. What did apply was the fact that Mrs. Pratt had been an artist, looked on sheets of paper from another angle than that of the mere journalist and literary man, and loved symmetry and could not endure unsightliness. Besides, "No Compromise" was the "Novum's" motto, and what was the good of having a motto like that if you compromised in the very form of your expression? … A "shoulder-piece," "The Little Mary Emollient," had brought out all Mrs. Pratt's finer artistic instincts. Here was a journal consecrated to a great and revolutionary cause, and the very first thing to catch a reader's eye was, not only an advertisement, but a facetious advertisement at that—a Pill, without a Pill's robust familiarity—a commercial cackle issuing from the "Novum's" august and oracular mouth. … For the first time in her life Mrs. Pratt had wielded the blue pencil, tearing the rubbishy proof-paper in the energy with which she did so. Mr. Strong's blue eyes, bluer for the contrast with his red knot of a tie, had watched her face, but he had said nothing. He was willing to humour her. …

      But when all was said and done he was an editor, and no sooner was Amory's back turned than he had restored the announcement. The paper had appeared, and there had been a row. …

      "Then I appeal to Pratt," Mr. Strong had said, with all the good-nature in the world. "I take it the 'Novum's' a serious enterprise, and not just a hobby?"

      Cosimo had glanced a little timidly at his wife. Then he had replied thoughtfully.

      "I don't know. I'm not so sure. That is, I'm not so sure it oughtn't to be a serious enterprise and

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