The Incomplete Amorist

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They went into the room desolate with the disorder of half empty cups
and scattered plates with crumbs of cake on them.

"Miss Desmond told me about her meeting you. Well, she gave you the
slip; she went back and got that woman--Lottie what's her name--and
took her to live with her."

"Good God! She didn't know, of course?"

"But she did know--that's the knock-down blow. She knew, and she
wanted to save her."

Temple was silent a moment.

"I say, you know, though--that's rather fine," he said presently.

"Oh, yes," said Vernon impatiently, "it's very romantic and all that.
Well, the woman stayed a fortnight and disappeared to-day. Miss
Desmond is breaking her heart about her."

"So she took her up, and--she's rather young for rescue work."

"Rescue work? Bah! She talks of the woman as the only girl friend
she's ever had. And the woman's probably gone off with her watch and
chain and a collection of light valuables. Only I couldn't tell Miss
Desmond that. So I promised to try and find the woman. She's a
thorough bad lot. I've run up against her once or twice with chaps I
know."

"She's not _that_ sort," said Temple. "I know her fairly well."

"What--Sir Galahad? Oh, I won't ask inconvenient questions." Vernon's
sneer was not pretty.

"She used to live with de Villermay," said Temple steadily; "he was
the first--the usual coffee maker business, you know, though God knows
how an English girl got into it. When he went home to be married--It
was rather beastly. The father came up--offered her a present. She
threw it at him. Then Schauermacher wanted her to live with him. No.
She'd go to the devil her own way. And she's gone."

"Can't something be done?" said Vernon.

"I've tried all I know. You can save a woman who doesn't know where
she's going. Not one who knows and means to go. Besides, she's been at
it six months; she's past reclaiming now."

"I wonder," said Vernon--and his sneer had gone and he looked ten
years younger--"I wonder whether anybody's past reclaiming? Do you
think I am? Or you?"

The other stared at him.

"Well," Vernon's face aged again instantly, "the thing is: we've got
to find the woman."

"To get her to go back and live with that innocent girl?"

"Lord--no! To find her. To find out why she bolted, and to make
certain that she won't go back and live with that innocent girl. Do
you know her address?"

But she was not to be found at her address. She had come back, paid
her bill, and taken away her effects.

It was at the Cafe d'Harcourt, after all, that they found her, one of
a party of four. She nodded to them, and presently left her party and
came to spread her black and white flounces at their table.

"What's the best news with you?" she asked gaily. "It's a hundred
years since I saw you, Bobby, and at least a million since I saw your
friend."

"The last time I saw you," Temple said, "was the night when you asked
me to take care of a girl."

"So it was! And did you?"

"No," said Temple; "she wouldn't let me. She went back to you."

"So you've seen her again? Oh, I see--you've come to ask me what I
meant by daring to contaminate an innocent girl by my society?--Well,
you can go to Hell, and ask there."

She rose, knocking over a chair.

"Don't go," said Vernon. "That's not what we want to ask."

"'_We_' too," she turned fiercely on him: "as if you were a king or a
deputation."

"One and one _are_ two," said Vernon; "and I did very much want to
talk to you."

"And two are company."

She had turned her head away.

"You aren't going to be cruel," Vernon asked.

"Well, send him off then. I won't be bullied by a crowd of you."

Temple took off his hat and went.

"I've got an appointment. I've no time for fool talk," she said.

"Sit down," said Vernon. "First I want to thank you for the care
you've taken of Miss Desmond, and for all your kindness and goodness
to her."

"Oh!" was all Paula could say. She had expected something so
different. "I don't see what business it is of yours, though," she
added next moment.

"Only that she's alone here, and I'm the only person she knows in
Paris. And I know, much better than she does, all that you've done for
her sake."

"I did it for my own sake. It was no end of a lark," said Paula
eagerly, "that little dull pious life. And all the time I used to
laugh inside to think what a sentimental fool she was."

"Yes," said Vernon slowly, "it must have been amusing for you."

"I just did it for the fun of the thing. But I couldn't stand it any
longer, so I just came away. I was bored to death."

"Yes," he said, "you must have been. Just playing at cooking and
housework, reading aloud to her while she drew--yes, she told me that.
And the flowers and all her little trumpery odds and ends about.
Awfully amusing it must have been."

"Don't," said Paula.

"And to have her loving you and trusting you as she did--awfully
comic, wasn't it? Calling you her girl-friend--"

"Shut up, will you?"

"And thinking she had created a new heaven and a new earth for you.
Silly sentimental little school-girl!"

"Will you hold your tongue?"

"So long, Lottie," cried the girl of her party; "we're off to the
Bullier. You've got better fish to fry, I see."

"Yes," said Paula with sudden effrontery; "perhaps we'll look in
later."

The others laughed and went.

"Now," she said, turning furiously on Vernon, "will you go? Or shall
I? I don't want any more of you."

"Just one word more," he said with the odd change of expression that
made him look young. "Tell me why you left her. She's crying her eyes
out for you."

"Why I left her? Because I was sick of--"

"Don't. Let me tell you. You went with her because she was alone and
friendless. You found her rooms, you set her in the way of making
friends. And when you saw that she was in a fair way to be happy and
comfortable, you came away, because--"

"Because?" she leaned forward eagerly.

"Because you were afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Afraid of handicapping her. You knew you would meet people who knew
you. You gave it all up--all the new life, the new chances--for her
sake, and came away. Do I understand? Is it fool-talk?"

Paula leaned her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands.

"You're not like most men," she said; "you make me out better than I
am. That's not the usual mistake. Yes, it _was_ all that, partly. And
I should have liked to stay--for ever and ever--if I could. But
suppose I couldn't? Suppose I'd begun to find myself wishing for--all
sorts of things, longing for them. Suppose I'd stayed till I began to
think of things that I _wouldn't_ think of while _she_ was with me.
_That's_ what I was afraid of."

"And you didn't long for the old life at all?"

She laughed. "Long for that? But I might have. I might have. It was
safer.--Well, go back to her and tell her I've gone to the devil and
it's not her fault. Tell her I wasn't worth saving. But I did try to
save her. If you're half a man you won't undo my one little bit of
work."

"What do you mean?"

"You know well enough what I mean. Let the girl alone."

He leaned forward, and spoke very earnestly. "Look here," he said, "I
won't jaw. But this about you and her--well, it's made a difference to
me that I can't explain. And I wouldn't own that to anyone but _her_
friend. I mean to be a friend to her too, a good friend. No nonsense."

"Swear it by God in Heaven," she said fiercely.

"I do swear it," he said, "by God in Heaven. And I can't tell her
you've gone to the devil. You must write to her. And you can't tell
her that either."

"What's the good of writing?"

"A lie or two isn't much, when you've done all this for her. Come up
to my place. You can write to her there."

This was the letter that Paula wrote in Vernon's studio, among the
half-empty cups and the scattered plates with cake-crumbs on them.

"My Dear Little Betty:

"I must leave without saying good-bye, and I shall never see you
again. My father has taken me back. I wrote to him and he came and
found me. He has forgiven me everything, only I have had to promise
never to speak to anyone I knew in Paris. It is all your doing,
dear. God bless you. You have saved me. I shall pray for you every
day as long as I live.

"Your poor

"Paula."

"Will that do?" she laughed as she held out the letter.

He read it. And he did not laugh.

"Yes--that'll do," he said. "I'll tell her you've gone to England, and
I'll send the letter to London to be posted."

"Then that's all settled!"

"Can I do anything for _you_?" he asked.

"God Himself can't do anything for me," she said, biting the edge of
her veil.

"Where are you going now?"

"Back to the d'Harcourt. It's early yet."

She stood defiantly smiling at him.

"What were you doing there--the night you met her?" he asked abruptly.

"What does one do?"

"What's become of de Villermay?" he asked.

"Gone home--got married."

"And so you thought--"

"Oh, if you want to know what I thought you're welcome! I thought I'd
damn myself as deep as I could--to pile up the reckoning for him; and
I've about done it. Good-bye. I must be getting on."

"I'll come a bit of the way with you," he said.

At the door he turned, took her hand and kissed it gently and
reverently.

"That's very sweet of you." She opened astonished eyes at him. "I
always used to think you an awful brute."

"It was very theatrical of me," he told himself later. "But it summed
up the situation. Sentimental ass you're growing!"

Betty got her letter from England and cried over it and was glad over
it.

"I have done one thing, anyway," she told herself, "one really truly
good thing. I've saved my poor dear Paula. Oh, how right I was! How I
knew her!"

Book 3.--The Other Woman

CHAPTER XV.

ON MOUNT PARNASSUS.

At Long Barton the Reverend Cecil had strayed into Betty's room, now
no longer boudoir and bedchamber, but just a room, swept, dusted,
tidy, with the horrible tidiness of a room that is not used. There
were squares of bright yellow on the dull drab of the wall-paper,
marking the old hanging places of the photographs and pictures that
Betty had taken to Paris. He opened the cupboard door: one or two
faded skirts, a flattened garden hat and a pair of Betty's old shoes.
He shut the door again quickly, as though he had seen Betty's ghost.

The next time he went to Sevenoaks he looked in at the builders and
decorators, gave an order, and chose a wall paper with little pink
roses on it. When Betty came home for Christmas she should not find
her room the faded desert it was now. He ordered pink curtains to
match the rosebuds. And it was when he got home that he found the
letter that told him she was not to come at Christmas.

But he did not countermand his order. If not at Christmas then at
Easter; and whenever it was she should find her room a bower. Since
she had been away he had felt more and more the need to express his
affection. He had expressed it, he thought, to the uttermost, by
letting her go at all. And now he wanted to express it in detail, by
pink curtains, satin-faced wall-paper with pink roses. The paper cost
two shillings a piece, and he gloated over the extravagance and over
his pretty, poetic choice. Usually the wall-papers at the Rectory had
been chosen by Betty, and the price limited to sixpence. He would
refrain from buying that Fuller's Church History, the beautiful brown
folio whose perfect boards and rich yellow paper had lived in his
dreams for the last three weeks, ever since he came upon it in the rag
and bone shop in the little back street in Maidstone. When the rosebud
paper and the pink curtains were in their place, the shabby carpet was
an insult to their bright prettiness. The Reverend Cecil bought an
Oriental carpet--of the bright-patterned jute variety--and was
relieved to find that it only cost a pound.

The leaves were falling in brown dry showers in the Rectory garden,
the chrysanthemums were nearly over, the dahlias blackened and
blighted by the first frosts. A few pale blooms still clung to the
gaunt hollyhock stems; here and there camomile flowers, "medicine
daisies" Betty used to call them when she was little, their whiteness
tarnished, showed among bent dry stalks of flowers dead and forgotten.
Round Betty's window the monthly rose bloomed pale and pink amid
disheartened foliage. The damp began to shew on the North walls of the
rooms. A fire in the study now daily, for the sake of the books: one
in the drawing-room, weekly, for the sake of the piano and the
furniture. And for Betty, in far-away Paris, a fire of crackling twigs
and long logs in the rusty fire-basket, and blue and yellow flames
leaping to lick the royal arms of France on the wrought-iron
fire-back.

The rooms were lonely to Betty now that Paula was gone. She missed her
inexpressibly. But the loneliness was lighted by a glow of pride, of
triumph, of achievement. Her deception of her step-father was
justified. She had been the means of saving Paula. But for her Paula
would not have returned, like the Prodigal son, to the father's house.
Betty pictured her there, subdued, saddened, but inexpressibly happy,
warming her cramped heart in the sun of forgiveness and love.

"Thank God, I have done some good in the world," said Betty.

In the brief interview which Vernon took to tell her that Paula had
gone to England with her father, Betty noticed no change in him. She
had no thought for him then. And in the next weeks, when she had
thoughts for him, she did not see him.

She could not but be glad that he was in Paris. In the midst of her
new experiences he seemed to her like an old friend. Yet his being
there put a different complexion on her act of mutiny. When she
decided to deceive her step-father, and to stay on in Paris alone
Paula had been to be saved, and _he_ had been, to her thought, in
Vienna, not to be met. Now Paula was gone--and he was here. In the
night when Betty lay wakeful and heard the hours chimed by a convent
bell whose voice was toneless and gray as an autumn sky it seemed to
her that all was wrong, that she had committed a fault that was almost
a crime, that there was nothing now to be done but to confess, to go
home and to expiate, as the Prodigal Son doubtless did among the
thorny roses of forgiveness, those days in the far country. But always
with the morning light came the remembrance that it was not her
father's house to which she must go to make submission. It was her
step-father's. And after all, it was her own life--she had to live it.
Once that confession and submission made she saw herself enslaved
beyond hope of freedom. Meanwhile here was the glad, gay life of
independence, new experiences, new sensations. And her step-father was
doubtless glad to be rid of her.

"It isn't as though anyone wanted me at home," she said; "and
everything here is so new and good, and I have quite a few friends
already--and I shall have more. This is what they call seeing life."

Life as she saw it was good to see. The darker, grimmer side of the
student life was wholly hidden from Betty. She saw only a colony of
young artists of all nations--but most of England and America--all
good friends and comrades, working and playing with an equal
enthusiasm. She saw girls treated as equals and friends by the men
students. If money were short it was borrowed from the first friend
one met, and quite usually repaid when the home allowance arrived. A
young man would borrow from a young woman or a young woman from a
young man as freely as school-boys from each other. Most girls had a
special friend among the boys. Betty thought at first that these must
be betrothed lovers. Miss Voscoe, the American, stared when she put
the question about a pair who had just left the restaurant together
with the announcement that they were off to the Musee Cluny for the
afternoon.

"Engaged?" Not that I know of. Why should they be?" she said in a tone
that convicted Betty of a social lapse in the putting of the question.
Yet she defended herself.

"Well, you know, in England people don't generally go about together
like that unless they're engaged, or relations."

"Yes," said Miss Voscoe, filling her glass from the little bottle of
weak white wine that costs threepence at Garnier's, "I've heard that
is so in your country. Your girls always marry the wrong man, don't
they, because he's the first and only one they've ever had the
privilege of conversing with?"

"Not quite always, I hope," said Betty good humouredly.

"Now in our country," Miss Voscoe went on, "girls look around so as
they can tell there's more different sorts of boys than there are of
squashes. Then when they get married to a husband it's because they
like him, or because they like his dollars, or for some reason that
isn't just that he's the only one they've ever said five words on end
to."

"There's something in that," Betty owned; "but my aunt says men never
want to be friends with girls--they always want--"

"To flirt? May be they do, though I don't think so. Our men don't, any
way. But if the girl doesn't want to flirt things won't get very
tangled up."

"But suppose a man got really fond of you, then he might think you
liked him too, if you were always about with him--"

"Do him good to have his eyes opened then! Besides, who's always about
with anyone? You have a special friend for a bit, and just walk around
and see the sights,--and then change partners and have a turn with
somebody else. It's just like at a dance. Nobody thinks you're in love
because you dance three or four times running with one boy."

Betty reflected as she ate her _noix de veau_. It was certainly true
that she had seen changes of partners. Milly St. Leger, the belle of
the students' quarter, changed her partners every week.

"You see," the American went on, "We're not the
stay-at-home-and-mind-Auntie kind that come here to study. What we
want is to learn to paint and to have a good time in between. Don't
you make any mistake, Miss Desmond. This time in Paris is _the_ time
of our lives to most of us. It's what we'll have to look back at and
talk about. And suppose every time there was any fun going we had to
send around to the nearest store for a chaperon how much fun would
there be left by the time she toddled in? No--the folks at home who
trust us to work trust us to play. And we have our little heads
screwed on the right way."

Betty remembered that she had been trusted neither for play nor work.
Yet, from the home standpoint she had been trustworthy, more
trustworthy than most. She had not asked Vernon, her only friend, to
come and see her, and when he had said, "When shall I see you again?"
she had answered, "I don't know. Thank you very much. Good-bye."

"I don't know how _you_ were raised," Miss Voscoe went on, "but I
guess it was in the pretty sheltered home life. Now I'd bet you fell
in love with the first man that said three polite words to you!"

"I'm not twenty yet," said Betty, with ears and face of scarlet.

"Oh, you mean I'm to think nobody's had time to say those three polite
words yet? You come right along to my studio, I've got a tea on, and
I'll see if I can't introduce my friends to you by threes, so as you
get nine polite words at once. You can't fall in love with three boys
a minute, can you?"

Betty went home and put on her prettiest frock. After all, one was
risking a good deal for this Paris life, and one might as well get as
much out of it as one could. And one always had a better time of it
when one was decently dressed. Her gown was of dead-leaf velvet, with
green undersleeves and touches of dull red and green embroidery at
elbows and collar.

Miss Voscoe's studio was at the top of a hundred and seventeen
polished wooden steps, and as Betty neared the top flight the sound of
talking and laughter came down to her, mixed with the rattle of china
and the subdued tinkle of a mandolin. She opened the door--the room
seemed full of people, but she only saw two. One was Vernon and the
other was Temple.

Betty furiously resented the blush that hotly covered neck, ears and
face.

"Here you are!" cried Miss Voscoe. She was kind: she gave but one
fleet glance at the blush and, linking her arm in Betty's, led her
round the room. Betty heard her name and other names. People were
being introduced to her. She heard:

"Pleased to know you,--"

"Pleased to make your acquaintance,--"

"Delighted to meet you--"

and realised that her circle of American acquaintances was widening.
When Miss Voscoe paused with her before the group of which Temple and
Vernon formed part Betty felt as though her face had swelled to that
degree that her eyes must, with the next red wave, start out of her
head. The two hands, held out in successive greeting, gave Miss Voscoe
the key to Betty's flushed entrance.

She drew her quickly away, and led her up to a glaring poster where a
young woman in a big red hat sat at a cafe table, and under cover of
Betty's purely automatic recognition of the composition's talent,
murmured:

"Which of them was it?"

"I beg your pardon?" Betty mechanically offered the deferent defence.

"Which was it that said the three polite words--before you'd ever met
anyone else?"

"Ah!" said Betty, "you're so clever--"

"Too clever to live, yes," said Miss Voscoe; "but before I die--which
was it?"

"I was going to say," said Betty, her face slowly drawing back into
itself its natural colouring, "that you're so clever you don't want to
be told things. If you're sure it's one of them, you ought to know
which."

"Well," remarked Miss Voscoe, "I guess Mr. Temple."

"Didn't I say you were clever?" said Betty.

"Then it's the other one."

Before the studio tea was over, Vernon and Temple both had conveyed to
Betty the information that it was the hope of meeting her that had
drawn them to Miss Voscoe's studio that afternoon.

"Because, after all," said Vernon, "we _do_ know each other better
than either of us knows anyone else in Paris. And, if you'd let me, I
could put you to a thing or two in the matter of your work. After all,
I've been through the mill."

"It's very kind of you," said Betty, "but I'm all alone now Paula's
gone, and--"

"We'll respect the conventions," said Vernon gaily, "but the
conventions of the Quartier Latin aren't the conventions of Clapham."

"No, I know," said she, "but there's a point of honour." She paused.
"There are reasons," she added, "why I ought to be more conventional
than Clapham. I should like to tell you, some time, only--But I
haven't got anyone to tell anything to. I wonder--"

"What? What do you wonder?"

Betty spoke with effort.

"I know it sounds insane, but, you know my stepfather thought you--you
wanted to marry me. You didn't ever, did you?"

Vernon was silent: none of his habitual defences served him in this
hour.

"You see," Betty went on, "all that sort of thing is such nonsense. If
I knew you cared about someone else everything would be so simple."

"Eliminate love," said Vernon, "and the world is a simple example in
vulgar fractions."

"I want it to be simple addition," said Betty. "Lady St. Craye is very
beautiful."

"Yes," said Vernon.

"Is she in love with you?"

"Ask her," said Vernon, feeling like a schoolboy in an examination.

"If she were--and you cared for her--then you and I could be friends:
I should like to be real friends with you."

"Let us be friends," said he when he had paused a moment. He made the
proposal with every possible reservation.

"Really?" she said. "I'm so glad."

If there was a pang, Betty pretended to herself that there was none.
If Vernon's conscience fluttered him he was able to soothe it; it was
an art that he had studied for years.

"Say, you two!"

The voice of Miss Voscoe fell like a pebble into the pool of silence
that was slowly widening between them.

"Say--we're going to start a sketch-club for really reliable girls. We
can have it here, and it'll only be one franc an hour for the model,
and say six sous each for tea. Two afternoons a week. Three, five,
nine of us--you'll join, Miss Desmond?"

"Yes--oh, yes!" said Betty, conscientiously delighted with the idea of
more work.

"That makes--nine six sous and two hours model--how much is that, Mr.
Temple?--I see it written on your speaking brow that you took the
mathematical wranglership at Oxford College."

"Four francs seventy," said Temple through the shout of laughter.

"Have I said something comme il ne faut pas?" said Miss Voscoe.

"You couldn't," said Vernon: "every word leaves your lips without a
stain upon its character."

"Won't you let us join?" asked an Irish student. "You'll be lost
entirely without a Lord of Creation to sharpen your pencils."

"We mean to _work_," said Miss Voscoe; "if you want to work take a box
of matches and a couple of sticks of brimstone and make a little
sketch class of your own."

"I don't see what you want with models," said a very young and shy boy
student. "Couldn't you pose for each other, and--"

A murmur of dissent from the others drove him back into shy silence.

"No amateur models in this Academy," said Miss Voscoe. "Oh, we'll make
the time-honoured institutions sit up with the work we'll do. Let's
all pledge ourselves to send in to the Salon--or anyway to the
Independants! What we're suffering from in this quarter's
git-up-and-git. Why should we be contented to be nobody?"

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