The Incomplete Amorist

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Betty pulled two strong strokes, driving the boat's nose straight for
the nearest island, shipped the sculls with a jerk, stumbled forward
and caught at an alder stump. She flung the chain round it and made
fast. The boat's stern swung round--it was thrust in under the bank
and held there close; the chain clicked loudly as it stretched taut.

"Well!" said Betty. The island was between her and the riverside path.
No one would be able to see her. She must listen and call out when she
heard anyone pass. Then they would get another boat and come and fetch
her away. She would not tempt fate again alone in that boat. She was
not going to be drowned in any silly French river.

She landed, pushed through the saplings, found a mossy willow stump
and sat down to get her breath.

It was very hot on the island. It smelt damply of wet lily leaves and
iris roots and mud. Flies buzzed and worried. The time was very long.
And no one came by.

"I may have to spend the day here," she told herself. "It's not so
safe in the boat, but it's not so fly-y either."

And still no one passed.

Suddenly the soft whistling of a tune came through the hot air. A tune
she had learned in Paris.

"_C'etait deux amants_."

"Hi!" cried Betty in a voice that was not at all like her voice.
"Help!--_Au secours_!" she added on second thoughts.

"Where are you?" came a voice. How alike all Englishmen's voices
seemed--in a foreign land!

"Here--on the island! Send someone out with a boat, will you? I can't
work my boat a bit."

Through the twittering leaves she saw something white waving. Next
moment a big splash. She could see, through a little gap, a white
blazer thrown down on the bank--a pair of sprawling brown boots; in
the water a sleek wet round head, an arm in a blue shirt sleeve
swimming a strong side stroke. It was the lunatic; of course it was.
And she had called to him, and he was coming. She pushed back to the
boat, leaped in, and was fumbling with the chain when she heard the
splash and the crack of broken twigs that marked the lunatic's
landing.

She would rather chance the weir or the waterfall than be alone on
that island with a maniac. But the chain was stretched straight and
stiff as a lance,--she could not untwist it. She was still struggling,
with pink fingers bruised and rust-stained, when something heavy
crashed through the saplings and a voice cried close to her:

"Drop it! What are you doing?"--and a hand fell on the chain.

Betty, at bay, raised her head. Lunatics, she knew, could be quelled
by the calm gaze of the sane human eye.

She gave one look, and held out both hands with a joyous cry.

"Oh,--it's _you_! I _am_ so glad! Where did you come from? Oh, how wet
you are!"

Then she sat down on the thwart and said no more, because of the
choking feeling in her throat that told her very exactly just how
frightened she had been.

"You!" Temple was saying very slowly. "How on earth? Where are you
staying? Where's your party?"

He was squeezing the water out of sleeves and trouser legs.

"I haven't got a party. I'm staying alone at a hotel--just like a man.
I know you're frightfully shocked. You always are."

"Where are you staying?" he asked, drawing the chain in hand over
hand, till a loose loop of it dipped in the water.

"Hotel Chevillon. How dripping you are!"

"Hotel Chevillon," he repeated. "Never! Then it was _you_!"

"What was me?"

"That I was sheep-dog to last night in the forest."

"Then it was _you_? And I thought it was the lunatic! Oh, if I'd only
known! But why did you come after me--if you didn't know it _was_ me?"

Temple blushed through the runnels of water that trickled from his
hair.

"I--well, Madame told me there was an English girl staying at the
hotel--and I heard some one go out--and I looked out of the window and
I thought it was the girl, and I just--well, if anything had gone
wrong--a drunken man, or anything--it was just as well there should be
someone there, don't you know."

"That's very, very nice of you," said Betty. "But oh!"--She told him
about the lunatic.

"Oh, that's me!" said Temple. "I recognise the portrait, especially
about the hat."

He had loosened the chain and was pulling with strong even strokes
across the river towards the bank where his coat lay.

"We'll land here if you don't mind."

"Can't you pull up to the place where I stole the boat?"

He laughed:

"The man's not living who could pull against this stream when the
mill's going and the lower sluice gates are open. How glad I am that
I--And how plucky and splendid of you not to lose your head, but just
to hang on. It takes a lot of courage to wait, doesn't it?"

Betty thought it did.

"Let me carry your coat," said Betty as they landed. "You'll make it
so wet."

He stood still a moment and looked at her.

"Now we're on terra cotta," he said, "let me remind you that we've not
shaken hands. Oh, but it's good to see you again!"

* * * * *

"Look well, my child," said Madame Chevillon, "and when you see
approach the Meess, warn me, that I may make the little omelette at
the instant."

"Oh, la, la, madame!" cried Marie five minutes later. "Here it is that
she comes, and the mad with her. He talks with her, in laughing. She
carries his coat, and neither the one nor the other has any hat."

"I will make a double omelette," said Madame. "Give me still more of
the eggs. The English are all mad--the one like the other; but even
mads must eat, my child. Is it not?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

TEMPERATURES.

"It isn't as though she were the sort of girl who can't take care of
herself," said Lady St. Craye to the Inward Monitor who was buzzing its
indiscreet common-places in her ear. "I've really done her a good turn
by sending her to Grez. No--it's not in the least compromising for a
girl to stay at the same hotel. And besides, there are lots of amusing
people there, I expect. She'll have a delightful time, and get to know
that Temple boy really well. I'm sure he'd repay investigation. If I
weren't a besotted fool I could have pursued those researches myself.
But it's not what's worth having that one wants; it's--it's what one
_does_ want. Yes. That's all."

Paris was growing intolerable. But for--well, a thousand reasons--Lady
St. Craye would already have left it. The pavements were red-hot. When
one drove it was through an air like the breath from the open mouth of
a furnace.

She kept much within doors, filled her rooms with roses, and lived
with every window open. Her balcony, too, was full of flowers, and the
striped sun-blinds beyond each open window kept the rooms in pleasant
shadow.

"But suppose something happens to her--all alone there," said the
Inward Monitor.

"Nothing will. She's not that sort of girl." Her headache had been
growing worse these three days. The Inward Monitor might have had
pity, remembering that--but no.

"You told Him that all girls were the same sort of girls," said the
pitiless voice.

"I didn't mean in that way. I suppose you'd have liked me to write
that anonymous letter and restore her to the bosom of her furious
family? I've done the girl a good turn--for what she did for me. She's
a good little thing--too good for him, even if I didn't happen to--And
Temple's her ideal mate. I wonder if he's found it out yet? He must
have by now: three weeks in the same hotel."

Temple, however, was not in the same hotel. The very day of the river
rescue and the double omelette he had moved his traps a couple of
miles down the river to Montigny.

A couple of miles is a good distance. Also a very little way, as you
choose to take it.

"You know it was a mean trick," said the Inward Monitor. "Why not have
let the girl go away where she could be alone--and get over it?"

"Oh, be quiet!" said Lady St. Craye. "I never knew myself so tiresome
before. I think I must be going to be ill. My head feels like an ice
in an omelette."

Vernon, strolling in much later, found her with eyes closed, leaning
back among her flowers as she had lain all that long afternoon.

"How pale you look," he said. "You ought to get away from here."

"Yes," she said, "I suppose I ought. It would be easier for you if you
hadn't the awful responsibility of bringing me roses every other day.
What beauty-darlings these are!" She dipped her face in the fresh pure
whiteness of the ones he had laid on her knee. Their faces felt cold,
like the faces of dead people. She shivered.

"Heaven knows what I should do without you to--to bring my--my roses
to," he said.

"Do you bring me anything else to-day?" she roused herself to ask.
"Any news, for instance?"

"No," he said. "There isn't any news--there never will be. She's gone
home--I'm certain of it. Next week I shall go over to England and
propose for her formally to her step-father."

"A very proper course!"

It was odd that talking to some one else should make one's head throb
like this. And it was so difficult to know what to say. Very odd. It
had been much easier to talk to the Inward Monitor.

She made herself say: "And suppose she isn't there?" She thought she
said it rather well.

"Well, then there's no harm done."

"He doesn't like you." She was glad she had remembered that.

"He didn't--but the one little word 'marriage,' simply spoken, is a
magic spell for taming savage relatives. They'll eat out of your hand
after that--at least so I'm told."

It was awful that he should decide to do this--heart-breaking. But it
did not seem to be hurting her heart. That felt as though it wasn't
there. Could one feel emotion in one's hands and feet? Hers were ice
cold--but inside they tingled and glowed, like a worm of fire in a
chrysalis of ice. What a silly simile.

"Must you go?" was what she found herself saying. "Suppose she isn't
there at all? You'll simply be giving her away--all her secret--and
he'll fetch her home."

That at least was quite clearly put.

"I'm certain she is at home," he said. "And I don't see why I am
waiting till next week. I'll go to-morrow."

If you are pulling a rose to pieces it is very important to lay the
petals in even rows on your lap, especially if the rose be white.

"Eustace," she said, suddenly feeling quite coherent, "I wish you
wouldn't go away from Paris just now. I don't believe you'd find her.
I have a feeling that she's not far away. I think that is quite
sensible. I am not saying it because I--And--I feel very ill, Eustace.
I think I am--Oh, I am going, to be ill, very ill, I think! Won't you
wait a little? You'll have such years and years to be happy in. I
don't want to be ill here in Paris with no one to care."

She was leaning forward, her hands on the arms of her chair, and for
the first time that day, he saw her face plainly. He said: "I shall go
out now, and wire for your sister."

"Not for worlds! I forbid it. She'd drive me mad. No--but my head's
running round like a beetle on a pin. I think you'd better go now. But
don't go to-morrow. I mean I think I'll go to sleep. I feel as if I'd
tumbled off the Eiffel tower and been caught on a cloud--one side of
it's cold and the other's blazing."

He took her hand, felt her pulse. Then he kissed the hand.

"My dear, tired Jasmine Lady," he said, "I'll send in a doctor. And
don't worry. I won't go to-morrow. I'll write."

"Oh, very well," she said, "write then,--and it will all come
out--about her being here alone. And she'll always hate you. _I_ don't
care what you do!"

"I suppose I can write a letter as though--as though I'd not seen her
since Long Barton." He inwardly thanked her for that hint.

"A letter written from Paris? That's so likely, isn't it? But do what
you like. _I_ don't care what you do."

She was faintly, agreeably surprised to notice that she was speaking
the truth. "It's rather pleasant, do you know," she went on dreamily,
"when everything that matters suddenly goes flat, and you wonder what
on earth you ever worried about. Why do people always talk about cold
shivers? I think hot shivers are much more amusing. It's like a
skylark singing up close to the sun, and doing the tremolo with its
wings. I'm sorry you're going away, though."

"I'm not going away," he said. "I wouldn't leave you when you're ill
for all the life's happinesses that ever were. Oh, why can't you cure
me? I don't want to want her; I want to want you."

"I'm certain," said Lady St. Craye brightly, "that what you've just
been saying's most awfully interesting, but I like to hear things said
ever so many times. Then the seventh time you understand everything,
and the coldness and the hotness turn into silver and gold and
everything is quite beautiful, and I think I am not saying exactly
what you expected.--Don't think I don't know that what I say sounds
like nonsense. I know that quite well, only I can't stop talking. You
know one is like that sometimes. It was like that the night you hit
me."

"I? _Hit you_?"

He was kneeling by her low chair holding her hand, as she lay back
talking quickly in low, even tones, her golden eyes shining
wonderfully.

"No--you didn't call it hitting. But things aren't always what we call
them, are they? You mustn't kiss me now, Eustace. I think I've got
some horrid fever--I'm sure I have. Because of course nobody could be
bewitched nowadays, and put into a body that feels thick and thin in
the wrong places. And my head _isn't_ too big to get through the
door.--Of course I know it isn't. It would be funny if it were. I do
love funny things.--So do you. I like to hear you laugh. I wish I
could say something funny, so as to hear you laugh now."

She was holding his hand very tightly with one of hers. The other held
the white roses. All her mind braced itself to a great exertion as the
muscles do for a needed effort. She spoke very slowly.

"Listen, Eustace. I am going to be ill. Get a nurse and a doctor and
go away. Perhaps it is catching. And if I fall through the floor," she
added laughing, "it is so hard to stop!"

"Put your arms round my neck," he said, for she had risen and was
swaying like a flame in the wind--the white rose leaves fell in
showers.

"I don't think I want to, now," she said, astonished that it should be
so.

"Oh, yes, you do!"--He spoke as one speaks to a child. "Put your arms
round Eustace's neck,--your own Eustace that's so fond of you."

"Are you?" she said, and her arms fell across his shoulders.

"Of course I am," he said. "Hold tight."

He lifted her and carried her, not quite steadily, for carrying a
full-grown woman is not the bagatelle novelists would have us believe
it.

He opened her bedroom door, laid her on the white, lacy coverlet of
her bed.

"Now," he said, "you are to lie quite still. You've been so good and
dear and unselfish. You've always done everything I've asked, even
difficult things. This is quite easy. Just lie and think about me till
I come back."

He bent over the bed and kissed her gently.

"Ah!" she sighed. There was a flacon on the table by the bed. He
expected it to be jasmine. It was lavender water; he drenched her hair
and brow and hands.

"That's nice," said she. "I'm not really ill. I think it's nice to be
ill. Quite still do you mean, like that?"

She folded her hands, the white roses still clasped. The white bed,
the white dress, the white flowers. Horrible!

"Yes," he said firmly, "just like that. I shall be back in five
minutes."

He was not gone three. He came back and--till the doctor came,
summoned by the concierge--he sat by her, holding her hands, covering
her with furs from the wardrobe when she shivered, bathing her wrists
with perfumed water when she threw off the furs and spoke of the fire
that burned in her secret heart of cold clouds.

When the doctor came he went out by that excellent Irishman's
direction and telegraphed for a nurse.

Then he waited in the cool shaded sitting-room, among the flowers.
This was where he had hit her--as she said. There on the divan she had
cried, leaning her head against his sleeve. Here, half-way to the
door, they had kissed each other. No, he would certainly not go to
England while she was ill. He felt sufficiently like a murderer
already. But he would write. He glanced at her writing-table.

A little pang pricked him, and drove him to the balcony.

"No," he said, "if we are to hit people, at least let us hit them
fairly." But all the same he found himself playing with the
word-puzzle whose solution was the absolutely right letter to Betty's
father, asking her hand in marriage.

"Well," he asked the doctor who closed softly the door of the bedroom
and came forward, "is it brain-fever?"

"Holy Ann, no! Brain fever's a fell disease invented by novelists--I
never met it in all _my_ experience. The doctors in novels have
special advantages. No, it's influenza--pretty severe touch too. She
ought to have been in bed days ago. She'll want careful looking
after."

"I see," said Vernon. "Any danger?"

"There's always danger, Lord--Saint-Croix isn't it?"

"I have not the honour to be Lady St. Craye's husband," said Vernon
equably. "I was merely calling, and she seemed so ill that I took upon
myself to--"

"I see--I see. Well, if you don't mind taking on yourself to let her
husband know? It's a nasty case. Temperature 104. Perhaps her husband
'ud be as well here as anywhere."

"He's dead," said Vernon.

"Oh!" said the doctor with careful absence of expression. "Get some
woman to put her to bed and to stay with her till the nurse comes.
She's in a very excitable state. Good afternoon. I'll look in after
dinner."

When Vernon had won the concierge to the desired service, had seen the
nurse installed, had dined, called for news of Lady St. Craye, learned
that she was "_toujours tres souffrante_," he went home, pulled a
table into the middle of his large, bare, hot studio, and sat down to
write to the Reverend Cecil Underwood.

"I mean to do it," he told himself, "and it can't hurt _her_ my doing
it now instead of a month ahead, when she's well again. In fact, it's
better for all of us to get it settled one way or another while she's
not caring about anything."

So he wrote. And he wrote a great deal, though the letter that at last
he signed was quite short:

My Dear Sir:

I have the honour to ask the hand of your daughter in marriage. When
you asked me, most properly, my intentions, I told you that I was
betrothed to another lady. This is not now the case. And I have
found myself wholly unable to forget the impression made upon me
last year by Miss Desmond. My income is about L1,700 a year, and
increases yearly. I beg to apologise for anything which may have
annoyed you in my conduct last year, and to assure you that my
esteem and affection for Miss Desmond are lasting and profound, and
that, should she do me the honour to accept my proposal, I shall
devote my life's efforts to secure her happiness.

I am, my dear Sir, Your obedient servant,

Eustace Vernon.

"That ought to do the trick," he told himself. "Talk of old world
courtesy and ceremonial! Anyhow, I shall know whether she's at Long
Barton by the time it takes to get an answer. If it's two days, she's
there. If it's longer she isn't. He'll send my letter on to
her--unless he suppresses it. Your really pious people are so
shockingly unscrupulous."

There is nothing so irretrievable as a posted letter. This came home
to Vernon as the envelope dropped on the others in the box at the Cafe
du Dome--came home to him rather forlornly.

Next morning he called with more roses for Lady St. Craye, pinky ones
this time.

"Milady was toujours _tres souffrante_. It would be ten days, at the
least, before Milady could receive, even a very old friend, like
Monsieur."

The letter reached Long Barton between the Guardian and a catalogue of
Some Rare Books. The Reverend Cecil read it four times. He was trying
to be just. At first he thought he would write "No" and tell Betty
years later. But the young man had seen the error of his ways. And
L1,700 a year!--

The surprise visit with which the Reverend Cecil had always intended
to charm his step-daughter suddenly found its date quite definitely
fixed. This could not be written. He must go to the child and break it
to her very gently, very tenderly--find out quite delicately and
cleverly exactly what her real feelings were. Girls were so shy about
those things.

Miss Julia Desmond had wired him from Suez that she would be in Paris
next week--had astonishingly asked him to meet her there.

"Paris next Tuesday Gare St. Lazare 6:45. Come and see Betty via
Dieppe," had been her odd message.

He had not meant to go--not next Tuesday. He was afraid of Miss Julia
Desmond. He would rather have his Lizzie all to himself. But now--

He wrote a cablegram to Miss Julia Desmond: "Care Captain S.S. Urania,
Brindisi: Will meet you in Paris." Then he thought that this might
seem to the telegraph people not quite nice, so he changed it to:
"Going to see Lizzie Tuesday."

The fates that had slept so long were indeed waking up and beginning
to take notice of Betty. Destiny, like the most attractive of the
porters at the Gare de Lyon, "_s'occupait d'elle_."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CONFESSIONAL.

The concierge sat at her window under the arch of the porte-cochere at
57 Boulevard Montparnasse. She sat gazing across its black shade to
the sunny street. She was thinking. The last twenty-four hours had
given food for thought.

The trams passed and repassed, people in carriages, people on
foot--the usual crowd--not interesting.

But the open carriage suddenly drawn up at the other side of the broad
pavement was interesting, very. For it contained the lady who had
given the 100 francs, and had promised another fifty on the first of
the month. She had never come with that fifty, and the concierge
having given up all hope of seeing her again, had acted accordingly.

Lady St. Craye, pale as the laces of her sea-green cambric gown, came
slowly up the cobble-paved way and halted at the window.

"Good morning, Madame," she said. "I bring you the little present."

The concierge was genuinely annoyed. Why had she not waited a little
longer? Still, all was not yet lost.

"Come in, Madame," she said. "Madame has the air very fatigued."

"I have been very ill," said Lady St. Craye.

"If Madame will give herself the trouble to go round by the other
door--" The concierge went round and met her visitor in the hall, and
brought her into the closely furnished little room with the high
wooden bed, the round table, the rack for letters, and the big lamp.

"Will Madame give herself the trouble to sit down? Would it be
permitted to offer Madame something--a little glass of sugared water?
No? I regret infinitely not having known that Madame was suffering. I
should have acted otherwise."

"What have you done?" she asked quickly. "You haven't told anyone that
I was here that night?"

"Do not believe it for an instant," said the woman reassuringly.
"'No--after Madame's goodness I held myself wholly at the disposition
of Madame. But when the day appointed passed itself without your
visit, I said to myself: 'The little affaire has ceased to interest
this lady; she is weary of it!' My grateful heart found itself free to
acknowledge the kindness of others."

"Tell me exactly," said Lady St. Craye, "what you have done."

"It was but last week," the concierge went on, rearranging a stiff
bouquet in exactly the manner of an embarrassed ingenue on the stage,
"but only last week that I received a letter from Mademoiselle
Desmond. She sent me her address."

She paused. Lady St. Craye laid the bank note on the table.

"Madame wants the address?"

"I have the address. I want to know whether you have given it to
anyone else."

"No, Madame," said the concierge with simple pride, "when you have
given a thing you have it not any longer."

"Well--pardon me--have you sold it?"

"For the same good reason, no, Madame."

"Take the note," said Lady St. Craye, "and tell me what you have done
with the address."

"This gentleman, whom Madame did not wish to know that she had been
here that night--"

"I didn't wish _anyone_ to know!"

"Perfectly: this gentleman comes without ceasing to ask of me news of
Mademoiselle Desmond. And always I have no news. But when Mademoiselle
writes me: 'I am at the hotel such and such--send to me, I pray you,
letters if there are any of them,'--then when Monsieur makes his
eternal demand I reply: 'I have now the address of Mademoiselle,--not
to give, but to send her letters. If Monsieur had the idea to cause to
be expedited a little billet? I am all at the service of Monsieur.'"

"So he wrote to her. Have you sent on the letter?"

"Alas, yes!" replied the concierge with heartfelt regret. "I kept it
during a week, hoping always to see Madame--but yesterday, even, I put
it at the post. Otherwise.... I beg Madame to have the goodness to
understand that I attach myself entirely to her interests. You may
rely on me."

"It is useless," said Lady St. Craye; "the affair _is_ ceasing to
interest me."

"Do not say that. Wait only a little till you have heard. It is not
only Monsieur that occupies himself with Mademoiselle. Last night
arrives an aunt; also a father. They ask for Mademoiselle, are
consternated when they learn of her departing. They run all Paris at
the research of her. The father lodges at the Haute Loire. He is a
priest it appears. Madame the aunt occupies the ancient apartment of
Mademoiselle Desmond."

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