The Incomplete Amorist

E >> E. Nesbit >> The Incomplete Amorist

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

"Go away," she said low and earnestly. "I can't talk to you to-night
_whatever it is_. It must wait till the morning."

"It's I," said the very last voice in all Paris that she expected to
hear, "it's Lady St. Craye.--Won't you let me in?"

"Are you alone?" said Betty.

"Of course I'm alone. It's most important. Do open the door."

The door was slowly opened. The visitor rustled through, and Betty
shut the door. Then she followed Lady St. Craye into the sitting-room,
lighted the lamp, drew the curtain across the clear April night, and
stood looking enquiry--and not looking it kindly. Her lips were set in
a hard line and she was frowning.

She waited for the other to speak, but after all it was she who broke
the silence.

"Well," she said, "what do you want now?"

"I hardly know how to begin," said Lady St. Craye with great truth.

"I should think not!" said Betty. "I don't want to be disagreeable,
but I can't think of anything that gives you the right to come and
knock me up like this in the middle of the night."

"It's only just past eleven," said Lady St. Craye. And there was
another silence. She did not know what to say. A dozen openings
suggested themselves, and were instantly rejected. Then, quite
suddenly, she knew exactly what to say, what to do. That move of
Vernon's--it was a good one, a move too often neglected in this
cynical world, but always successful on the stage.

"May I sit down?" she asked forlornly.

Betty, rather roughly, pushed forward a chair.

Lady St. Craye sank into it, looked full at Betty for a long minute;
and by the lamp's yellow light Betty saw the tears rise, brim over and
fall from the other woman's lashes. Then Lady St. Craye pulled out her
handkerchief and began to cry in good earnest.

It was quite easy.

At first Betty looked on in cold contempt. Lady St. Craye had counted
on that: she let herself go, wholly. If it ended in hysterics so much
the more impressive. She thought of Vernon, of all the hopes of these
months, of the downfall of them--everything that should make it
impossible for her to stop crying.

"Don't distress yourself," said Betty, very chill and distant.

"Can you--can you lend me a handkerchief?" said the other
unexpectedly, screwing up her own drenched cambric in her hand.

Betty fetched a handkerchief.

"I haven't any scent," she said. "I'm sorry."

That nearly dried the tears--but not quite: Lady St. Craye was a
persevering woman.

Betty watching her, slowly melted, just as the other knew she would.
She put her hand at last on the shoulder of the light coat.

"Come," she said, "don't cry so. I'm sure there's nothing to be so
upset about--"

Then came to her sharp as any knife, the thought of what there might
be.

"There's nothing wrong with anyone? There hasn't been an accident or
anything?"

The other, still speechless, conveyed "No."

"Don't," said Betty again. And slowly and very artistically the flood
was abated. Lady St. Craye was almost calm, though still her breath
caught now and then in little broken sighs.

"I _am_ so sorry," she said, "so ashamed.--Breaking down like this.
You don't know what it is to be as unhappy as I am."

Betty thought she did. We all think we do, in the presence of any
grief not our own.

"Can I do anything?" She spoke much more kindly than she had expected
to speak.

"Will you let me tell you everything? The whole truth?"

"Of course if you want to, but--"

"Then do sit down--and oh, don't be angry with me, I am so wretched.
Just now you thought something had happened to Mr. Vernon. Will you
just tell me one thing?--Do you love him?"

"You've no right to ask me that."

"I know I haven't. Well, I'll trust you--though you don't trust me.
I'll tell you everything. Two years ago Mr. Vernon and I were
engaged."

This was not true; but it took less time to tell than the truth would
have taken, and sounded better.

"We were engaged, and I was very fond of him. But he--you know what he
is about Women?"

"No," said Betty steadily. "I don't want to hear anything about him."

"But you must.--He is--I don't know how to put it. There's always some
woman besides the One with him. I understand that now; I didn't then.
I don't think he can help it. It's his temperament."

"I see," said Betty evenly. Her hands and feet were very cold. She was
astonished to find how little moved she was in this interview whose
end she foresaw so very plainly.

"Yes, and there was a girl at that time--he was always about with her.
And I made him scenes--always a most stupid thing to do with a man,
you know; and at last I said he must give her up, or give me up. And
he gave me up. And I was too proud to let him think I cared--and just
to show him how little I cared I married Sir Harry St. Craye. I might
just as well have let it alone. He never even heard I had been married
till last October! And then it was I who told him. My husband was a
brute, and I'm thankful to say he didn't live long. You're very much
shocked, I'm afraid?"

"Not at all," said Betty, who was, rather.

"Well, then I met Him again, and we got engaged again, as he told you.
And again there was a girl--oh, and another woman besides. But this
time I tried to bear it--you know I did try not to be jealous of you."

"You had no cause," said Betty.

"Well, I thought I had. That hurts just as much. And what's the end of
it all--all my patience and trying not to see things, and letting him
have his own way? He came to me to-night and begged me to release him
from his engagement, because--oh, he was beautifully candid--because
he meant to marry you."

Betty's heart gave a jump.

"He seems to have been very sure of me," she said loftily.

"No, no; he's not a hairdresser's apprentice--to tell one woman that
he's sure of another. He said: 'I mean to marry Miss Desmond if she'll
have me.'"

"How kind of him!"

"I wish you'd heard the way he spoke of you."

"I don't want to hear."

"_I_ had to. And I've released him. And now I've come to you. I was
proud two years ago. I'm not proud now. I don't care what I do. I'll
kneel down at your feet and pray to you as if you were God not to take
him away from me. And if you love him it'll all be no good. I know
that."

"But--supposing I weren't here--do you think you could get him back?"

"I know I could. Unless of course you were to tell him I'd been here
to-night. I should have no chance after that--naturally. I wish I knew
what to say to you. You're very young; you'll find someone else, a
better man. He's not a good man. There's a girl at Montmartre at this
very moment--a girl he's set up in a restaurant. He goes to see her.
You'd never stand that sort of thing. I know the sort of girl you are.
And you're quite right. But I've got beyond that. I don't care what he
is, I don't care what he does. I understand him. I can make allowances
for him. I'm his real mate. I could make him happy. You never
would--you're too good. Ever since I first met him I've thought of
nothing else, cared for nothing else. If he whistled to me I'd give up
everything else, everything, and follow him barefoot round the world."

"I heard someone say that in a play once," said Betty musing.

"So did I," said Lady St. Craye very sharply--"but it's true for all
that. Well--you can do as you like."

"Of course I can," said Betty.

"I've done all I can now. I've said everything there is to say. And if
you love him as I love him every word I've said won't make a scrap of
difference. I know that well enough. What I want to know is--_do_ you
love him?"

The scene had been set deliberately. But the passion that spoke in it
was not assumed. Betty felt young, school-girlish, awkward in the
presence of this love--so different from her own timid dreams. The
emotion of the other woman had softened her.

"I don't know," she said.

"If you don't know, you don't love him.--At least don't see him till
you're sure. You'll do that? As long as he's not married to anyone,
there's just a chance that he may love me again. Won't you have pity?
Won't you go away like that sensible young man Temple? Mr. Vernon told
me he was going into the country to decide which of the two women he
likes best is the one he really likes best! Won't you do that?"

"Yes," said Betty slowly, "I'll do that. _Look_ here, I am most
awfully sorry, but I don't know--I can't think to-night. I'll go right
away--I won't see him to-morrow. Oh, no. I can't come between you and
the man you're engaged to," her thoughts were clearing themselves as
she spoke. "Of course I knew you were engaged to him. But I never
thought. At least--Yes. I'll go away the first thing to-morrow."

"You are very, very good," said Lady St. Craye, and she meant it.

"But I don't know where to go. Tell me where to go."

"Can't you go home?"

"No: I won't. That's too much."

"Go somewhere and sketch."

"Yes,--but _where_?" said poor Betty impatiently.

"Go to Grez," said the other, not without second thoughts. "It's a
lovely place--close to Fontainebleau--Hotel Chevillon. I'll write it
down for you.--Old Madame Chevillon's a darling. She'll look after
you. It _is_ good of you to forgive me for everything. I'm afraid I
was a cat to you."

"No," said Betty, "it was right and brave of you to tell me the whole
truth. Oh, truth's the only thing that's any good!"

Lady St. Craye also thought it a useful thing--in moderation. She
rose.

"I'll never forget what you're doing for me," she said. "You're a girl
in thousand. Look here, my dear: I'm not blind. Don't think I don't
value what you're doing. You cared for him in England a little,--and
you care a little now. And everything I've said tonight has hurt you
hatefully. And you didn't know you cared. You thought it was
friendship, didn't you--till you thought I'd come to tell you that
something had happened to him. And then you _knew_. I'm going to
accept your sacrifice. I've got to. I can't live if I don't. But I
don't want you to think I don't know what a sacrifice it is. I know
better than you do--at this moment. No--don't say anything. I don't
want to force your confidence. But I do understand."

"I wish everything was different," said Betty.

"Yes. You're thinking, aren't you, that if it hadn't been for Mr.
Vernon you'd rather have liked me? And I know now that if it hadn't
been for him I should have been very fond of you. And even as it is--"

She put her arms round Betty and spoke close to her ear.

"You're doing more for me than anyone has ever done for me in my
life," she said--"more than I'd do for you or any woman. And I love
you for it. Dear brave little girl. I hope it isn't going to hurt very
badly. I love you for it--and I'll never forget it to the day I die.
Kiss me and try to forgive me."

The two clung together for an instant.

"Good-bye," said Lady St. Craye in quite a different voice. "I'm sorry
I made a scene. But, really, sometimes I believe one isn't quite sane.
Let me write the Grez address. I wish I could think of any set of
circumstances in which you'd be pleased to see me again."

"I'll pack to-night," said Betty. "I hope _you'll_ be happy anyway. Do
you know I think I have been hating you rather badly without quite
knowing it."

"Of course you have," said the other heartily, "but you don't now. Of
course you won't leave your address here? If you do that you might as
well not go away at all!"

"I'm not quite a fool," said Betty.

"No," said the other with a sigh, "it's I that am the fool.
You're--No, I won't say what you are. But--Well. Good night, dear. Try
not to hate me again when you come to think it all over quietly."

CHAPTER XX.

WAKING-UP TIME.

Dear Mr. Vernon. This is to thank you very much for all your help
and criticism of my work, and to say good-bye. I am called away
quite suddenly, so I can't thank you in person, but I shall never
forget your kindness. Please remember me to Lady St. Craye. I
suppose you will be married quite soon now. And I am sure you will
both be very happy.

Yours very sincerely,

Elizabeth Desmond.

This was the letter that Vernon read standing in the shadow of the
arch by the concierge's window. The concierge had hailed him as he
hurried through to climb the wide shallow stairs and to keep his
appointment with Betty when she should leave the atelier.

"But yes, Mademoiselle had departed this morning at nine o'clock. To
which station? To the Gare St. Lazare. Yes--Mademoiselle had charged
her to remit the billet to Monsieur. No, Mademoiselle had not left any
address. But perhaps chez Madame Bianchi?"

But chez Madame Bianchi there was no further news. The so amiable
Mademoiselle Desmond had paid her account, had embraced Madame,
and--Voila! she was gone. One divined that she had been called
suddenly to return to the family roof. A sudden illness of Monsieur
her father without doubt.

Could some faint jasmine memory have lingered on the staircase? Or was
it some subtler echo of Lady St. Craye's personality that clung there?
Abruptly, as he passed Betty's door, the suspicion stung him. Had the
Jasmine lady had any hand in this sudden departure?

"Pooh--nonsense!" he said. But all the same he paused at the
concierge's window.

"I am desolated to have deranged Madame,"--gold coin changed
hands.--"A lady came to see Mademoiselle this morning, is it not?"

"No, no lady had visited Mademoiselle to-day: no one at all in
effect."

"Nor last night--very late?"

"No, monsieur," the woman answered meaningly; "no visitor came in last
night except Monsieur himself and he came, not to see Mademoiselle,
that understands itself, but to see Monsieur Beauchesne an troisieme.
No--I am quite sure--I never deceive myself. And Mademoiselle has had
no letters since three days. Thanks a thousand times, Monsieur. Good
morning."

She locked up the gold piece in the little drawer where already lay
the hundred franc note that Lady St. Craye had given her at six
o'clock that morning.

"And there'll be another fifty from her next month," she chuckled.
"The good God be blessed for intrigues! Without intrigues what would
become of us poor concierges?"

For Vernon Paris was empty--the spring sunshine positively
distasteful. He did what he could; he enquired at the Gare St. Lazare,
describing Betty with careful detail that brought smiles to the lips
of the employes. He would not call on Miss Voscoe. He made himself
wait till the Sketch Club afternoon--made himself wait, indeed, till
all the sketches were criticised--till the last cup of tea was
swallowed, or left to cool--the last cake munched--the last student's
footfall had died away on the stairs, and he and Miss Voscoe were
alone among the scattered tea-cups, blackened bread-crumbs and torn
paper.

Then he put his question. Miss Voscoe knew nothing. Guessed Miss
Desmond knew her own business best.

"But she's so young," said Vernon; "anything might have happened to
her."

"I reckon she's safe enough--where she is," said Miss Voscoe with
intention.

"But haven't you any idea why she's gone?" he asked, not at all
expecting any answer but "Not the least."

But Miss Voscoe said:

"I have a quite first-class idea and so have you."

He could but beg her pardon interrogatively.

"Oh, you know well enough," said she. "She'd got to go. And it was up
to her to do it right now, I guess."

Vernon had to ask why.

"Well, you being engaged to another girl, don't you surmise it might
kind of come home to her there were healthier spots for you than the
end of her apron strings? Maybe she thought the other lady's apron
strings 'ud be suffering for a little show?"

"I'm not engaged," said Vernon shortly.

"Then it's time you were," the answer came with equal shortness.
"You'll pardon me making this a heart-to-heart talk--and anyway it's
no funeral of mine. But she's the loveliest girl and I right down like
her. So you take it from me. That F.F.V. Lady with the violets--Oh,
don't pretend you don't know who I mean--the one you're always about
with when you aren't with Betty. _She's_ your ticket. Betty's not.
Your friend's her style. You pass, this hand, and give the girl a
chance."

"I really don't understand--"

"I bet you do," she interrupted with conviction. "I've sized you up
right enough, Mr. Vernon. You're no fool. If you've discontinued your
engagement Betty doesn't know it. Nor she shan't from me. And one of
these next days it'll be borne in on your friend that she's _the_ girl
of his life--and when he meets her again he'll get her to see it his
way. Don't you spoil the day's fishing."

Vernon laughed.

"You have all the imagination of the greatest nation in the world,
Miss Voscoe," he said. "Thank you. These straight talks to young men
are the salt of life. Good-bye."

"You haven't all the obfuscation of the stupidest nation in the
world," she retorted. "If you had had you'd have had a chance to find
out what straight talking means--which it's my belief you never have
yet. Good-bye. You take my tip. Either you go back to where you were
before you sighted Betty, or if the other one's sick of you too, just
shuffle the cards, take a fresh deal and start fair. You go home and
spend a quiet evening and think it all over."

Vernon went off laughing, and wondering why he didn't hate Miss
Voscoe. He did not laugh long. He sat in his studio, musing till
it was too late to go out to dine. Then he found some biscuits
and sherry--remnants of preparations for the call of a picture
dealer--ate and drank, and spent the evening in the way recommended
by Miss Voscoe. He lay face downward on the divan, in the dark, and
he did "think it all over."

But first there was the long time when he lay quite still--did not
think at all, only remembered her hands and her eyes and her hair, and
the pretty way her brows lifted when she was surprised or
perplexed--and the four sudden sweet dimples that came near the
corners of her mouth when she was amused, and the way her mouth
drooped when she was tired.

"I want you. I want you. I want you," said the man who had been the
Amorist. "I want you, dear!"

When he did begin to think, he moved uneasily in the dark as thought
after thought crept out and stung him and slunk away. The verses he
had written at Long Barton--ironic verses, written with the tongue in
the cheek--came back with the force of iron truth:

"I love you to my heart's hid core:
Those other loves? How can one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no--I never loved before!"

He had smiled at Temple's confidences--when Betty was at hand--to be
watched and guarded. Now Betty was away--anywhere. And Temple was
deciding whether it was she whom he loved. Suppose he did decide that
it was she, and, as Miss Voscoe had said, made her see it? "Damn,"
said Vernon, "Oh, damn!"

He was beginning to be a connoisseur in the fine flavours of the
different brands of jealousy. Anyway there was food for thought.

There was food for little else, in the days that followed. Mr.
Vernon's heart, hungry for the first time, had to starve. He went
often to Lady St. Craye's. She was so gentle, sweet, yet not too
sympathetic--bright, amusing even, but not too vivacious. He approved
deeply the delicacy with which she ignored that last wild interview.
She was sister, she was friend--and she had the rare merit of seeming
to forget that she had been confidante.

It was he who re-opened the subject, after ten days. She had told
herself that it was only a question of time. And it was.

"Do you know she's disappeared?" he said abruptly.

"_Disappeared_?" No one was ever more astonished than Lady St. Craye.
Quite natural, the astonishment. Not overdone by so much as a hair's
breadth.

So he told her all about it, and she twisted her long topaz chain and
listened with exactly the right shade of interest. He told her what
Miss Voscoe had said--at least most of it.

"And I worry about Temple," he said; "like any school boy, I worry. If
he _does_ decide that he loves her better than you--You said you'd
help me. Can't you make sure that he won't love her better?"

"I could, I suppose," she admitted. To herself she said: "Temple's at
Grez. _She's_ at Grez. They've been there ten days."

"If only you would," he said. "It's too much to ask, I know. But I
can't ask anything that isn't too much! And you're so much more noble
and generous than other people--"

"No butter, thanks," she said.

"It's the best butter," he earnestly urged. "I mean that I mean it.
Won't you?"

"When I see him again--but it's not very fair to him, is it?"

"He's an awfully good chap, you know," said Vernon innocently. And
once more Lady St. Craye bowed before the sublime apparition of the
Egoism of Man.

"Good enough for me, you think? Well, perhaps you're right. He's a
dear boy. One would feel very safe if one loved a man like that."

"Yes--wouldn't one?" said Vernon.

She wondered whether Betty was feeling safe. No: ten days are a long
time, especially in the country--but it would take longer than that to
cure even a little imbecile like Betty of the Vernon habit. It was
worse than opium. Who ought to know if not she who sat, calm and
sympathetic, promising to entangle Temple so as to leave Betty free to
become a hopeless prey to the fell disease?

Quite suddenly and to her own intense surprise, she laughed out loud.

"What is it?" his alert vanity bristled in the query.

"It's nothing--only everything! Life's so futile! We pat and pinch our
little bit of clay, and look at it and love it and think it's going to
be a masterpiece.--and then God glances at it--and He doesn't like
the modelling, and He sticks his thumb down, and the whole thing's
broken up, and there's nothing left to do but throw away the bits."

"Oh, no," said Vernon; "everything's bound to come right in the end.
It all works out straight somehow."

She laughed again.

"Optimism--from you?"

"It's not optimism," he asserted eagerly, "it's only--well, if
everything doesn't come right somehow, somewhere, some day, what did
He bother to make the world for?"

"That's exactly what I said, my dear," said she. She permitted herself
the little endearment now and then with an ironical inflection, as one
fearful of being robbed might show a diamond pretending that it was
paste.

"You think He made it for a joke?"

"If He did it's a joke in the worst possible taste," said she, "but I
see your point of view. There can't be so very much wrong with a world
that has Her in it,--and you--and possibilities."

"Do you know," he said slowly, "I'm not at all sure that--Do you
remember the chap in Jane Eyre?--he knew quite well that that Rosamund
girl wouldn't make him the wife he wanted. Yet he wanted nothing else.
I don't want anything but her; and it doesn't make a scrap of
difference that I know exactly what sort of fool I am."

"A knowledge of anatomy doesn't keep a broken bone from hurting," said
she, "and all even you know about love won't keep off the heartache. I
could have told you that long ago."

"I know I'm a fool," he said, "but I can't help it. Sometimes I think
I wouldn't help it if I could."

"I know," she said, and something in her voice touched the trained
sensibilities of the Amorist. He stooped to kiss the hand that teased
the topazes.

"Dear Jasmine Lady," he said, "my optimism doesn't keep its colour
long, does it? Give me some tea, won't you? There's nothing so
wearing as emotion."

She gave him tea.

"It's a sort of judgment on you, though," was what she gave him with
his first cup: "you've dealt out this very thing to so many
women,--and now it's come home to roost."

"I didn't know what a fearful wildfowl it was," he answered smiling.
"I swear I didn't. I begin to think I never knew anything at all
before."

"And yet they say Love's blind."

"And so he is! That's just it. My exotic flower of optimism withers at
your feet. It's all exactly the muddle you say it is. Pray Heaven for
a clear way out! Meantime thank whatever gods may be--I've got _you_."

"Monsieur's confidante is always at his distinguished service," she
said. And thus sealed the fountain of confidences for that day.

But it broke forth again and again in the days that came after. For
now he saw her almost every day. And for her, to be with him, to know
that she had of him more of everything, save the heart, than any other
woman, spelled something wonderfully like happiness. More like it than
she had the art to spell in any other letters.

Vernon still went twice a week to the sketch-club. To have stayed away
would have been to confess, to the whole alert and interested class,
that he had only gone there for the sake of Betty.

Those afternoons were seasons of salutary torture.

He tried very hard to work, but, though he still remembered how a
paint brush should be handled, there seemed no good reason for using
one. He had always found his planned and cultivated emotions strongly
useful in forwarding his work. This undesired unrest mocked at work,
and at all the things that had made up the solid fabric of one's days.
The ways of love--he had called it love; it was a name like
another--had merely been a sort of dram-drinking. Such love was the
intoxicant necessary to transfigure life to the point where all
things, even work, look beautiful. Now he tasted the real draught. It
flooded his veins like fire and stung like poison. And it made work,
and all things else, look mean and poor and unimportant.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21