The Incomplete Amorist

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The three dinners that followed in the next fortnight brought none of
that old lighthearted companionship which had been the gayest of
table-decorations. Something was gone--lost--as though a royal rose
had suddenly faded, a rainbow-coloured bubble had broken.

"I'm glad," said Betty; "if he's engaged, I don't want to feel happy
with him."

She did not feel happy without him. The Inward Monitor grew more and
more insistent. She caught herself wondering how Temple, with the
serious face and the honest eyes, would regard the lies, the
trickeries, the whole tissue of deceit that had won her her chance of
following her own art, of living her own life.

Vernon understood, presently, that not even that evening at Thirion's
could give the key to this uncomforting change. He had not seen Lady
St. Craye since the night of the kiss.

It was after the fourth flat dinner with Betty that he said good-night
to her early and abruptly, and drove to Lady St. Craye's.

She was alone. She rose to greet him, and he saw that her eyes were
dark-rimmed, and her lips rough.

"This is very nice of you," she said. "It's nearly a month since I saw
you."

"Yes," he said. "I know it is. Do you remember the last time? Hasn't
that taught you not to play with me?"

The kiss was explained now. Lady St. Craye shivered.

"I don't know what you mean?" she said, feebly.

"Oh, yes, you do! You're much too clever not to understand. Come to
think of it, you're much too everything--too clever, too beautiful,
too charming, too everything."

"You overwhelm me," she made herself say.

"Not at all. You know your points. What I want to know is just one
thing--and that's the thing you're going to tell me."

She drew her dry lips inward to moisten them.

"What do you want to know? Why do you speak to me like that? What have
I done?"

"That's what you're going to tell me."

"I shall tell you nothing--while you ask in that tone."

"Won't you? How can I persuade you?" his tone caressed and stung.
"What arguments can I use? Must I kiss you again?"

She drew herself up, called wildly on all her powers to resent the
insult. Nothing came at her call.

"What do you want me to tell you?" she asked, and her eyes implored
the mercy she would not consciously have asked.

He saw, and he came a little nearer to her--looking down at her
upturned face with eyes before which her own fell.

"You don't want another kiss?" he said. "Then tell me what you've been
saying to Miss Desmond."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TRUTH.

There was a silence.

"Come, my pretty Jasmine lady, speak the truth."

"I will: What a brute you are!"

"So another lady told me a few months ago. Come, tell me."

"Why should I tell you anything?" She tried to touch her tone with
scorn.

"Because I choose. You thought you could play with me and fool me and
trick me out of what I mean to have--"

"What you mean to have?"

"Yes, what I mean to have. I mean to marry Miss Desmond--if she'll
have me."

"_You_--mean to marry? Saul is among the prophets with a vengeance!"
The scorn came naturally to her voice now.

Vernon stood as if turned to stone. Nothing had ever astonished him so
much as those four words, spoken in his own voice, "I mean to marry."
He repeated them. "I mean to marry Miss Desmond, if she'll have me.
And it's your doing."

"Of course," she shrugged her shoulders. "Naturally it would be. Won't
you sit down? You look so uncomfortable. Those French tragedy scenes
with the hero hat in one hand and gloves in the other always seem to
me so comic."

That was her score, the first. He put down the hat and gloves and came
towards her. And as he came he hastily sketched his plan of action.
When he reached her it was ready formed. His anger was always short
lived. It had died down and left him competent as ever to handle the
scene.

He took her hands, pushed her gently into a chair near the table, and
sat down beside her with his elbows on the table and his head in his
hands.

"Forgive me, dear," he said. "I was a brute. Forgive me--and help me.
No one can help me but you."

It was a master-stroke: and he had staked a good deal on it. The stake
was not lost. She found no words.

"My dear, sweet Jasmine lady," he said, "let me talk to you. Let me
tell you everything. I can talk to you as I can talk to no one else,
because I know you're fond of me. You are fond of me--a little, aren't
you--for the sake of old times?"

"Yes," she said, "I am fond of you."

"And you forgive me--you do forgive me for being such a brute? I
hardly knew what I was doing."

"Yes," she said, speaking as one speaks in dreams, "I forgive you."

"Thank you," he said humbly; "you were always generous. And you always
understand."

"Wait--wait. I'll attend to you presently," she was saying to her
heart. "Yes, I know it's all over. I know the game's up. Let me pull
through this without disgracing myself, and I'll let you hurt me as
much as you like afterwards."

"Tell me," she said gently to Vernon, "tell me everything."

He was silent, his face still hidden. He had cut the knot of an
impossible situation and he was pausing to admire the cleverness of
the stroke. In two minutes he had blotted out the last six
months--months in which he and she had been adversaries. He had thrown
himself on her mercy, and he had done wisely. Never, even in the days
when he had carefully taught himself to be in love with her, had he
liked her so well as now, when she got up from her chair to come and
lay her hand softly on his shoulder and to say:

"My poor boy,--but there's nothing for you to be unhappy about. Tell
me all about it--from the very beginning."

There was a luxurious temptation in the idea. It was not the first
time, naturally, that Vernon had "told all about it" with a
sympathetic woman-hand on his shoulder. He knew the strategic value of
confidences. But always he had made the confidences fit the
occasion--serve the end he had in view. Now, such end as had been in
view was gained. He knew that it was only a matter of time now, before
she should tell him of her own accord, what he could never by any
brutality have forced her to tell. And the temptation to speak, for
once, the truth about himself was overmastering. It is a luxury one
can so very rarely afford. Most of us go the whole long life-way
without tasting it. There was nothing to lose by speaking the truth.
Moreover, he must say something, and why not the truth? So he said:

"It all comes of that confounded habit of mine of wanting to be in
love."

"Yes," she said, "you were always so anxious to be--weren't you? And
you never were--till now."

The echo of his hidden thought made it easier for him to go on.

"It was at Long Barton," he said,--"it's a little dead and alive place
in Kent. I was painting that picture that you like--the one that's in
the Salon, and I was bored to death, and she walked straight into the
composition in a pink gown that made her look like a La France rose
that has been rained on--you know the sort of pink-turning-to-mauve."

"And it was love at first sight?" said she, and took away her hand.

"Not it," said Vernon, catching the hand and holding it; "it was just
the usual thing. I wanted it to be like all the others."

"Like mine," she said, looking down on him.

"Nothing could be like _that_," he had the grace to say, looking up at
her: "that was only like the others in one thing--that it couldn't
last.--What am I thinking of to let you stand there?"

He got up and led her to the divan. They sat down side by side. She
wanted to laugh, to sing, to scream. Here was he sitting by her like a
lover--holding her hand, the first time these two years, three years
nearly--his voice tender as ever. And he was telling her about Her.

"No," he went on, burrowing his shoulder comfortably in the cushions,
"it was just the ordinary outline sketch. But it was coming very
nicely. She was beginning to be interested, and I had taught myself
almost all that was needed--I didn't want to marry her; I didn't want
anything except those delicate delightful emotions that come before
one is quite, quite sure that she--But you know."

"Yes," she said. "I know."

"Then her father interfered, and vulgarized the whole thing. He's a
parson--a weak little rat, but I was sorry for him. Then an aunt came
on the scene--a most gentlemanly lady,"--he laughed a little at the
recollection,--"and I promised not to go out of my way to see Her
again. It was quite easy. The bloom was already brushed from the
adventure. I finished the picture, and went to Brittany and forgot the
whole silly business."

"There was some one in Brittany, of course?"

"Of course," said he; "there always is. I had a delightful summer.
Then in October, sitting at the Cafe de la Paix, I saw her pass. It
was the same day I saw you."

"Before or after you saw me?"

"After."

"Then if I'd stopped--if I'd made you come for a drive then and there,
you'd never have seen her?"

"That's so," said Vernon; "and by Heaven I almost wish you had!"

The wish was a serpent in her heart. She said: "Go on."

And he went on, and, warming to his subject, grew eloquent on the
events of the winter, his emotions, his surmises as to Betty's
emotions, his slow awakening to the knowledge that now, for the first
time--and so on and so forth.

"You don't know how I tried to fall in love with you again," he said,
and kissed her hand. "You're prettier than she is, and cleverer and a
thousand times more adorable. But it's no good; it's a sort of
madness."

"You never were in love with me."

"No: I don't think I was: but I was happier with you than I shall ever
be with her for all that. Talk of the joy of love! Love hurts--hurts
damnably. I beg your pardon."

"Yes. I believe it's painful. Go on."

He went on. He was enjoying himself, now, thoroughly.

"And so," the long tale ended, "when I found she had scruples about
going about with me alone--because her father had suggested that I was
in love with her--I--I let her think that I was engaged to you."

"That is too much!" she cried and would have risen: but he kept her
hand fast.

"Ah, don't be angry," he pleaded. "You see, I knew you didn't care
about me a little bit: and I never thought you and she would come
across each other."

"So you knew all the time that I didn't care?" her self-respect
clutched at the spar he threw out.

"Of course. I'm not such a fool as to think--Ah, forgive me for
letting her think that. It bought me all I cared to ask for of her
time. She's so young, so innocent--she thought it was quite all right
as long as I belonged to someone else, and couldn't make love to her."

"And haven't you?"

"Never--never once--since the days at Long Barton when it had to be
'made;' and even then I only made the very beginnings of it. Now--"

"I suppose you've been very, very happy?"

"Don't I tell you? I've never been so wretched in my life! I despise
myself. I've always made everything go as I wanted it to go. Now I'm
like a leaf in the wind--_Pauvre feuille desechee_, don't you know.
And I hate it. And I hate her being here without anyone to look after
her. A hundred times I've had it on the tip of my pen to send that
doddering old Underwood an anonymous letter, telling him all about
it."

"Underwood?"

"Her step-father.--Oh, I forgot--I didn't tell you." He proceeded to
tell her Betty's secret, the death of Madame Gautier and Betty's bid
for freedom.

"I see," she said slowly. "Well, there's no great harm done. But I
wish you'd trusted me before. You wanted to know, at the beginning of
this remarkable interview," she laughed rather forlornly, "what I had
told Miss Desmond. Well, I went to see her, and when she told me that
you'd told her you were engaged to me, I--I just acted the jealous a
little bit. I thought I was helping you--playing up to you. I suppose
I overdid it. I'm sorry."

"The question is," said he anxiously, "whether she'll forgive me for
that lie. She's most awfully straight, you know."

"She seems to have lied herself," Lady St. Craye could not help
saying.

"Ah, yes--but only to her father."

"That hardly counts, you think?"

"It's not the same thing as lying to the person you love. I wish--I
wonder whether you'd mind if I never told her it was a lie? Couldn't I
tell her that we were engaged but you've broken it off? That you found
you liked Temple better, or something?"

She gasped before the sudden vision of the naked gigantic egotism of a
man in love.

"You can tell her what you like," she said wearily: "a lie or two more
or less--what does it matter?"

"I don't want to lie to her," said Vernon. "I hate to. But she'd never
understand the truth."

"You think _I_ understand? It _is_ the truth you've been telling me?"

He laughed. "I don't think I ever told so much truth in all my life."

"And you've thoroughly enjoyed it! You alway did enjoy new
sensations!"

"Ah, don't sneer at me. You don't understand--not quite. Everything's
changed. I really do feel as though I'd been born again. The point of
view has shifted--and so suddenly, so completely. It's a new Heaven
and a new earth. But the new earth's not comfortable, and I don't
suppose I shall ever get the new Heaven. But you'll help me--you'll
advise me? Do you think I ought to tell her at once? You see, she's so
different from other girls--she's--"

"She isn't," Lady St. Craye interrupted, "except that she's the one
you love; she's not a bit different from other girls. No girl's
different from other girls."

"Ah, you don't know her," he said. "You see, she's so young and brave
and true and--what is it--Why--"

Lady St. Craye had rested her head against his coat-sleeve and he knew
that she was crying.

"What is it? My dear, don't--you musn't cry."

"I'm not.--At least I'm very tired."

"Brute that I am!" he said with late compunction. "And I've been
worrying you with all my silly affairs. Cheer up,--and smile at me
before I go! Of course you're tired!"

His hand on her soft hair held her head against his arm.

"No," she said suddenly, "it isn't that I'm tired, really. You've told
the truth,--why shouldn't I?" Vernon instantly and deeply regretted
the lapse.

"You're really going to marry the girl? You mean it?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll help you. I'll do everything I can for you."

"You're a dear," he said kindly. "You always were."

"I'll be your true friend--oh, yes, I will! Because I love you,
Eustace. I've always loved you--I always shall. It can't spoil
anything now to tell you, because everything _is_ spoilt. She'll never
love you like I do. Nobody ever will."

"You're tired. I've bothered you. You're saying this just
to--because--"

"I'm saying it because it's true. Why should you be the only one to
speak the truth? Oh, Eustace--when you pretended to think I didn't
care, two years ago, I was too proud to speak the truth then. I'm not
proud now any more. Go away. I wish I'd never seen you; I wish I'd
never been born."

"Yes, dear, yes. I'll go" he said, and rose. She buried her face in
the cushion where his shoulder had been.

He was looking round for his hat and gloves--more uncomfortable than
he ever remembered to have been.

As he reached the door she sprang up, and he heard the silken swish of
her gray gown coming towards him.

"Say good-night," she pleaded. "Oh, Eustace, kiss me again--kindly,
not like last time."

He met her half-way, took her in his arms and kissed her forehead very
gently, very tenderly.

"My dearest Jasmine lady," he said, "it sounds an impertinence and I
daresay you won't believe it, but I was never so sorry in my life as I
am now. I'm a beast, and I don't deserve to live. Think what a beast I
am--and try to hate me."

She, clung to him and laid her wet cheek against his. Then her lips
implored his lips. There was a long silence. It was she--she was
always glad of that--who at last found her courage, and drew back.

"Good-bye," she said. "I shall be quite sane to-morrow. And then I'll
help you."

When he got out into the street he looked at his watch. It was not yet
ten o'clock. He hailed a carriage.

"Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparnasse," he said.

He could still feel Lady St. Craye's wet cheek against his own. The
despairing passion of her last kisses had thrilled him through and
through.

He wanted to efface the mark of those kisses. He would not be haunted
all night by any lips but Betty's.

He had never called at her rooms in the evening. He had been careful
for her in that. Even now as he rang the bell he was careful, and when
the latch clicked and the door was opened a cautious inch he was
ready, as he entered, to call out, in passing the concierge's door not
Miss Desmond's name, but the name of the Canadian artist who occupied
the studio on the top floor.

He went softly up the stairs and stood listening outside Betty's door.
Then he knocked gently. No one answered. Nothing stirred inside.

"She may be out," he told himself. "I'll wait a bit."

At the same time he tapped again; and this time beyond the door
something did stir.

Then came Betty's voice:

"_Qui est la_?"

"It's me--Vernon. May I come in?"

A moment's pause. Then:

"No. You can't possibly. Is anything the matter?"

"No--oh, no, but I wanted so much to see you. May I come to-morrow
early?"

"You're sure there's nothing wrong? At home or anything? You haven't
come to break anything to me?"

"No--no; it's only something I wanted to tell you."

He began to feel a fool, with his guarded whispers through a locked
door.

"Then come at twelve," said Betty in the tones of finality.
"Good-night."

He heard an inner door close, and went slowly away. He walked a long
way that night. It was not till he was back in his rooms and had
lighted his candle and wound up his watch that Lady St. Craye's kisses
began to haunt him in good earnest, as he had known they would.

* * * * *

Lady St. Craye, left alone, dried her eyes and set to work, with heart
still beating wildly to look about her at the ruins of her world.

The room was quiet with the horrible quiet of a death chamber. And yet
his voice still echoed in it. Only a moment ago she had been in his
arms, as she had never hoped to be again--more--as she had never been
before.

"He would have loved me now," she told herself, "if it hadn't been for
that girl. He didn't love me before. He was only playing at love. He
didn't know what love was. But he knows now. And it's all too late!"

But was it?

A word to Betty--and--

"But you promised to help him."

"That was before he kissed me."

"But a promise is a promise."

"Yes,--and your life's your life. You'll never have another."

She stood still, her hands hanging by her sides--clenched hands that
the rings bit into.

"He will go to her early to-morrow. And she'll accept him, of course.
She's never seen anyone else, the little fool."

She knew that she herself would have taken him, would have chosen him
as the chief among ten thousand.

"She could have Temple. She'd be much happier with Temple. She and
Eustace would make each other wretched. She'd never understand him,
and he'd be tired of her in a week."

She had turned up the electric lights now, at her toilet table, and
was pulling the pins out of her ruffled hair.

"And he'd never care about her children. And they'd be ugly little
horrors."

She was twisting her hair up quickly and firmly.

"I _have_ a right to live my own life," she said, just as Betty had
said six months before. "Why am I to sacrifice everything to
her--especially when I don't suppose she cares--and now that I know I
could get him if she were out of the way?"

She looked at herself in the silver-framed mirror and laughed.

"And you always thought yourself a proud woman!"

Suddenly she dropped the brush; it rattled and spun on the polished
floor.

She stamped her foot.

"That settles it!" she said. For in that instant she perceived quite
clearly and without mistake that Vernon's attitude had been a
parti-pris: that he had thrown, himself on her pity of set purpose,
with an end to gain.

"Laughing at me all the time too, of course! And I thought I
understood him. Well, I don't misunderstand him for long, anyway," she
said, and picked up the hair brush.

"You silly fool," she said to the woman in the glass.

And now she was fully dressed--in long light coat and a hat with, as
usual, violets in it. She paused a moment before her writing-table,
turned up its light, turned it down again.

"No," she said, "one doesn't write anonymous letters. Besides it would
be too late. He'll see her to-morrow early--early."

The door of the flat banged behind her as it had banged behind Vernon
half an hour before. Like him, she called a carriage, and on her lips
too, as the chill April air caressed them, was the sense of kisses.

And she, too, gave to the coachman the address:

Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparnasse.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE TRUTH WITH A VENGEANCE.

In those three weeks whose meetings with Vernon had been so lacking in
charm there had been other meetings for Betty, and in these charm had
not been to seek. But it was the charm of restful, pleasant
companionship illuminated by a growing certainty that Mr. Temple
admired her very much, that he liked her very much, that he did not
think her untidy and countrified and ill-dressed, and all the things
she had felt herself to be that night when Lady St. Craye and her furs
had rustled up the staircase at Thirion's. And she had dined with Mr.
Temple and lunched with Mr. Temple, and there had been an afternoon at
St. Cloud, and a day at Versailles. Miss Voscoe and some of the other
students had been in the party, but not of it as far as Betty was
concerned. She had talked to Temple all the time.

"I'm glad to see you've taken my advice," said Miss Voscoe, "only you
do go at things so--like a bull at a gate. A month ago it was all that
ruffian Vernon. Now it's all Mr. Go-to-Hell. Why not have a change?
Try a Pole or a German."

But Betty declined to try a Pole or a German.

What she wanted to do was to persuade herself that she liked Temple as
much as she liked Vernon, and, further, that she did not care a straw
for either.

Of course it is very wrong indeed to talk pleasantly with a young man
when you think you know that he might, just possibly, be falling in
love with you. But then it is very interesting, too. To be loved, even
by the wrong person, seems in youth's selfish eyes to light up the
world as the candle lights the Japanese lantern. And besides, after
all, one can't be sure. And it is not maidenly to say "No," even by
the vaguest movements of retreat, to a question that has not been
asked and perhaps never will be.

And when she was talking to Temple she was not thinking so much of
Vernon, and of her unselfish friendship for him, and the depth of her
hope that he really _would_ be happy with that woman.

So that it was with quite a sick feeling that her days had been robbed
of something that made them easier to live, if not quite worth living,
that she read and reread the letter that she found waiting for her
after that last unsuccessful dinner with the man whom Temple helped
her to forget.

You will see by the letter what progress friendship can make in a
month between a young man and woman, even when each is half in love
with some one else.

"Sweet friend," said the letter: "This is to say good-bye for a
little while. But you will think of me when I am away, won't you?
I am going into the country to make some sketches and to think. I
don't believe it is possible for English people to think in Paris.
And I have things to think over that won't let themselves be thought
over quietly here. And I want to see the Spring. I won't ask you to
write to me, because I want to be quite alone, and not to have even
a word from my sweet and dear friend. I hope your work will go well.

"Yours,

"Robert Temple."

Betty, in bed, was re-reading this when Vernon's knock came at her
door. She spoke to him through the door with the letter in her hand.
And her real thought when she asked him if he had come to break bad
news was that something had happened to Temple.

She went back to bed, but not to sleep. Try as she would, she could
not keep away the wonder--what could Vernon have had to say that
wanted so badly to get itself said? She hid her eyes and would not
look in the face of her hope. There had been a tone in his voice as he
whispered on the other side of that stupid door, a tone she had not
heard since Long Barton.

Oh, why had she gone to bed early that night of all nights? She would
never go to bed early again as long as she lived!

What?--No, impossible! Yes. Another knock at her door. She sprang out
of bed, and stood listening. There was no doubt about it. Vernon had
come back. After all what he had to say would not keep till morning. A
wild idea of dressing and letting him in was sternly dismissed. For
one thing, at topmost speed, it took twenty minutes to dress. He would
not wait twenty minutes. Another knock.

She threw on her dressing gown and ran along her little passage--and
stooped to the key-hole just as another tap, discreet but insistent,
rang on the door panel.

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