The Incomplete Amorist

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He went up to town, and found Madame Gautier, the widow of a French
pastor, established in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. She was a woman
after his own heart--severe, simple, earnest. If he had to part with
his Lizzie, he told himself in the returning train, it could be to no
better keeper than this.

He himself announced his decision to Betty.

"I have decided," he said, and he spoke very coldly because it was so
very difficult to speak at all, "to grant you the wish you expressed
some time ago. You shall go to Paris and learn drawing."

"Do you really mean it?" said Betty, as coldly as he.

"I am not in the habit of saying things which I do not mean."

"Thank you very much," said Betty. "I will work hard, and try that the
money shan't be wasted."

"Your aunt has kindly offered to pay your expenses."

"When do I go?" asked Betty.

"As soon as your garments can be prepared. I trust that I shall not
have cause to regret the confidence I have decided to place in you."

His phrasing was seldom well-inspired. Had he said, "I trust you, my
child, and I know I shan't regret it," which was what he meant, she
would have come to meet him more than half-way. As it was she said,
"Thank you!" again, and left him without more words. He sighed.

"I don't believe she is pleased after all; but she sees I am doing it
for her good. Now it comes to the point her heart sinks at the idea of
leaving home. But she will understand my motives."

The one thought Betty gave him was:

"He can't bear the sight of me at all now! He's longing to be rid of
me! Well, thank Heaven I'm going to Paris! I will have a grass-lawn
dress over green, with three rows of narrow lace insertion, and a hat
with yellow roses and--oh, it can't be true. It's too good to be true.
Well, it's a good thing to be hated sometimes, by some people, if they
only hate you enough!"

* * * * *

"'So you're going to foreign parts, Miss,' says I."

Mrs. Symes had flung back her bonnet strings and was holding a
saucerful of boiling tea skilfully poised on the fingers of one hand.
"'Yes, Mrs. Symes,' says she, 'don't you wish you was going too?' she
says. And she laughed, but I'm not easy blinded, and well I see as she
only laughed to 'ide a bleedin' 'art. 'Not me, Miss,' says I; 'nice
figure I should look a-goin' to a furrin' boardin' school at my time
of life.'

"'It ain't boardin' school,' says she. 'I'm a-going to learn to paint
pictures. I'll paint your portrait when I come home,' says she, and
laughs again--I could see she done it to keep the tears back.

"'I'm sorry for you, Miss, I'm sure,' I says, not to lose the chance
of a word in season, 'but I hope it'll prove a blessing to you--I do
that.'"

"'Oh, it'll be a blessing right enough,' says she, and keeps on
laughing a bit wild like. When the art's full you can't always stop
yourself. She'd a done better to 'ave a good cry and tell me 'er
troubles. I could a cheered her up a bit p'raps. You know whether I'm
considered a comfort at funerals and christenings, Mrs. James."

"I do," said Mrs. James sadly; "none don't know it better."

"You'd a thought she'd a bin glad of a friend in need. But no. She
just goes on a-laughing fit to bring tears to your eyes to hear her,
and says she, 'I hope you'll all get on all right without me.'"

"I hope you said as how we should miss her something dreadful," said
Mrs. James anxiously, "Have another cup."

"Thank you, my dear. Do you take me for a born loony? Course I did.
Said the parish wouldn't be the same without her, and about her pretty
reading and all. See here what she give me."

Mrs. James unrolled a violet petticoat.

"Good as new, almost," she said, looking critically at the hem.
"Specially her being taller'n me. So what's not can be cut away, and
no loss. She kep' on a-laughing an' a-smiling till the old man he come
in and he says in his mimicking way, 'Lizzie,' says 'e, 'they're
a-waitin' to fit on your new walkin' costoom,' he says. So I come
away, she a-smiling to the last something awful to see."

"Dear, dear," said Mrs. James.

"But you mark my words--she don't deceive _me_. If ever I see a
bruised reed and a broken 'art on a young gell's face I see it on
hers this day. She may laugh herself black in the face, but she won't
laugh me into thinking what I knows to be far otherwise."

"Ah," said Mrs. James resignedly, "we all 'as it to bear one time or
another. Young gells is very deceitful though, in their ways, ain't
they?"

Book 2.--The Man

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ONE AND THE OTHER.

"Some idiot," remarked Eustace Vernon, sipping Vermouth at a little
table, "insists that, if you sit long enough outside the Cafe de la
Paix, you will see everyone you have ever known or ever wanted to know
pass by. I have sat here for half-an-hour--and--_voila_."

"You met me, half an hour ago," said the other man.

"Oh, _you_!" said Vernon affectionately.

"And your hat has gone off every half minute ever since," said the
other man.

"Ah, that's to the people I've known. It's the people I've wanted to
know that are the rarity."

"Do you mean people you have wanted to know and not known?"

"There aren't many of those," said Vernon; "no it's--Jove, that's a
sweet woman!"

"I hate the type," said the other man briefly: "all clothes--no real
human being."

The woman was beautifully dressed, in the key whose harmonies are only
mastered by Frenchwomen and Americans. She turned her head as her
carriage passed, and Vernon's hat went off once more.

"I'd forgotten her profile," said Vernon, "and she's learned how to
dress since I saw her last. She's quite human, really, and as charming
as anyone ought to be."

"So I should think," said the other man. "I'm sorry I said that, but I
didn't know you knew her. How's trade?"

"Oh, I did a picture--well, but a picture! I did it in England in the
Spring. Best thing I've done yet. Come and see it."

"I should like to look you up. Where do you hang out?"

"Eighty-six bis Rue Notre Dame des Champs," said Vernon. "Everyone in
fiction lives there. It's the only street on the other side that
authors seem ever to have dreamed of. Still, it's convenient, so I
herd there with all sorts of blackguards, heroes and villains and what
not. Eighty-six bis."

"I'll come," said the other man, slowly. "Do you know, Vernon, I'd
like awfully to get at your point of view--your philosophy of life?"

"Haven't you got one, my dear chap!--'sufficient unto' is my motto."

"You paint pictures,", the other went on, "so very much too good for
the sort of life you lead."

Vernon laughed.

"My dear Temple," he said, "I live, mostly, the life of a vestal
virgin."

"You know well enough I'm not quarrelling with the way you spend your
evenings," said his dear Temple; "it's your whole outlook that doesn't
match your work. Yet there must be some relation between the two,
that's what I'd like to get at."

There is a bond stronger than friendship, stronger than love--a bond
that cannot be forged in any other shop than the one--the bond between
old schoolfellows. Vernon had sometimes wondered why he "stood so
much" from Temple. It is a wonder that old schoolfellows often feel,
mutually.

"The subject you've started," said he, "is of course, to me, the most
interesting. Please develop your thesis."

"Well then, your pictures are good, strong, thorough stuff, with
sentiment--yes, just enough sentiment to keep them from the brutality
of Degas or the sensualism of Latouche. Whereas you, yourself, seem to
have no sentiment."

"I? No sentiment! Oh, Bobby, this is too much! Why, I'm a mass of it!
Ask--"

"Yes, ask any woman of your acquaintance. That's just it--or just part
of it. You fool them into thinking--oh, I don't know what; but you
don't fool me."

"I haven't tried."

"Then you're not brutal, except half a dozen times in the year when
you--And I've noticed that when your temper goes smash your morals go
at the same time. Is that cause or effect? What's the real you like,
and where do you keep it?"

"The real me," said Vernon, "is seen in my pictures, and--and
appreciated by my friends; you for instance, are, I believe, genuinely
attached to me."

"Oh, rot!" said Bobby.

"I don't see," said Vernon, moving his iron chair to make room for two
people at the next table, "why you should expect my pictures to rhyme
with my life. A man's art doesn't rhyme with his personality. Most
often it contradicts flatly. Look at musicians--what a divine art, and
what pigs of high priests! And look at actors--but no, one can't; the
spectacle is too sickening."

"I sometimes think," said Temple, emptying his glass, "that the real
you isn't made yet. It's waiting for--"

"For the refining touch of a woman's hand, eh? You think the real me
is--Oh, Temple, Temple, I've no heart for these childish imaginings!
The real me is the man that paints pictures, damn good pictures, too,
though I say it."

"And is that what all the women think?

"Ask them, my dear chap; ask them. They won't tell you the truth."

"They're not the only ones who won't. I should like to know what you
really think of women, Vernon."

"I don't think about them at all," lied Vernon equably. "They aren't
subjects for thought but for emotion--and even of that as little as
may be. It's impossible seriously to regard a woman as a human being;
she's merely a dear, delightful, dainty--"

"Plaything?"

"Well, yes--or rather a very delicately tuned musical instrument. If
you know the scales and the common chords, you can improvise nice
little airs and charming variations. She's a sort of--well, a penny
whistle, and the music you get depends not on her at all, but on your
own technique."

"I've never been in love," said Temple; "not seriously, I mean," he
hastened to add, for Vernon was smiling, "not a life or death matter,
don't you know; but I do hate the way you talk, and one of these days
you'll hate it too."

Miss Desmond's warning floated up through the dim waters of half a
year.

"So a lady told me, only last Spring," he said. "Well, I'll take my
chance. Going? Well, I'm glad we ran across each other. Don't forget
to look me up."

Temple moved off, and Vernon was left alone. He sat idly smoking
cigarette after cigarette, and watched the shifting crowd. It was a
bright October day, and the crowd was a gay one.

Suddenly his fingers tightened on his cigarette,--but he kept the
hand that held it before his face, and he bent his head forward.

Two ladies were passing, on foot. One was the elder Miss Desmond--she
who had warned him that one of these days he would be caught--and the
other, hanging lovingly on her aunt's arm, was, of course, Betty. But
a smart, changed, awakened Betty! She was dressed almost as
beautifully as the lady whose profile he had failed to recognise, but
much more simply. Her eyes were alight, and she was babbling away to
her aunt. She was even gesticulating a little, for all the world like
a French girl. He noted the well-gloved hand with which she emphasized
some point in her talk.

"That's the hand," he said, "that I held when we sat on the plough in
the shed and I told her fortune."

He had risen, and his feet led him along the road they had taken. Ten
yards ahead of him he saw the swing of the aunt's serviceable brown
skirt and beside it Betty's green and gray.

"I am not breaking my word," he replied to the Inward Monitor. "Who's
going out of his way to speak to the girl?"

He watched the brown gown and the green all the way down the Boulevard
des Capucines, saw them cross the road and go up the steps of the
Madeleine. He paused at the corner. It was hard, certainly, to keep
his promise; yet so far it was easy, because he could not well recall
himself to the Misses Desmond on the ground of his having six months
ago involved the one in a row with her relations, and discussed the
situation afterwards with the other.

"I do wonder where they're staying, though," he told himself. "If one
were properly introduced--?" But he knew that the aunt would consider
no introduction a proper one that should renew his acquaintance with
Betty.

"Wolf, wolf," he said, "let the fold alone! There's no door for you,
and you've pledged your sacred word as an honourable wolf not to jump
any more hurdles."

And as he stood musing, the elder Miss Desmond came down the church
steps and walked briskly away.

Some men would, doubtless, have followed her example, if not her
direction. Vernon was not one of these. He found himself going up the
steps of the great church. He had as good a right to go into the
Madeleine as the next man. He would probably not see the girl. If he
did he would not speak. Almost certainly he would not even see her.

But Destiny had remembered Mr. Vernon once more. Betty was standing
just inside the door, her face upturned, and all her soul in her eyes.
The mutterings of the organ and the voices of boys filled the great
dark building.

He went and stood close by her. He would not speak. He would keep his
word. But she should have a chance of speaking. His eyes were on her
face. The hymn ended. She exhaled a held breath, started and spoke.

"You?" she said, "_you_?" The two words are spelled alike. Spoken,
they are capable of infinite variations. The first "you" sent Vernon's
blood leaping. The second froze it to what it had been before he met
her. For indeed that little unfinished idyll had been almost forgotten
by the man who sat drinking Vermouth outside the Cafe de la Paix.

"How are you?" he whispered. "Won't you shake hands?"

She gave him a limp and unresponsive glove.

"I had almost forgotten you," she said, "but I am glad to see
you--because--Come to the door. I don't like talking in churches."

They stood on the steps behind one of the great pillars.

"Do you think it is wise to stand here?" he said. "Your aunt might see
us."

"So you followed us in?" said Betty with perfect self-possession.
"That was very kind. I have often wished to see you, to tell you how
much obliged I am for all your kindness in the Spring. I was only a
child then, and I didn't understand, but now I quite see how good it
was of you."

"Why do you talk like that?" he said. "You don't think--you can't
think it was my fault?"

"Your fault! What?"

"Why, your father finding us and--"

"Oh, _that_!" she said lightly. "Oh, I had forgotten that! Ridiculous,
wasn't it? No, I mean your kindness in giving so many hours to
teaching a perfect duffer. Well, now I've seen you and said what I had
to say, I think I'll go back."

"No, don't go," he said. "I want to know--oh, all sorts of things! I
can see your aunt from afar, and fly if she approaches."

"You don't suppose," said Betty, opening her eyes at him, "that I
shan't tell her I've seen you?"

He had supposed it, and cursed his clumsiness.

"Ah, I see," she went on, "you think I should deceive my aunt now
because I deceived my step-father in the Spring. But I was a child
then,--and besides, I'm fond of my aunt."

"Did you know that she came to see me?"

"Of course. You seem to think we live in an atmosphere of deceit, Mr.
Vernon."

"What's the matter with you?" he said bluntly, for finer weapons
seemed useless. "What have I done to make you hate me?"

"I hate you? Oh, no--not in the least," said Betty spitefully. I am
very grateful to you for all your kindness."

"Where are you staying?" he asked.

"Hotel Bete," said Betty, off her guard, "but--"

The "but" marked his first score.

"I wish I could have called to see your aunt," he said carelessly,
"but I am off to Vienna to-morrow."

Betty believed that she did not change countenance by a hair's
breadth.

"I hope you'll have a delightful time," she said politely.

"Thanks. I am sure I shall. The only consolation for leaving Paris is
that one is going to Vienna. Are you here for long?"

"I don't know." Betty was on her guard again.

"Paris is a delightful city, isn't it?"

"Most charming."

"Have you been here long?"

"No, not very long."

"Are you still working at your painting? It would be a pity to give
that up."

"I am not working just now."

"I see your aunt," he said hurriedly. "Are you going to send me away
like this? Don't be so unjust, so ungenerous. It's not like you--my
pupil of last Spring was not unjust."

"Your pupil of last Spring was a child and a duffer, Mr. Vernon, as I
said before. But she is grateful to you for one thing--no, two."

"What's the other?" he asked swiftly.

"Your drawing-lessons," she demurely answered.

"Then what's the one?"

"Good-bye," she said, and went down the steps to meet her aunt. He
effaced himself behind a pillar. In spite of her new coldness, he
could not believe that she would tell her aunt of the meeting. And he
was right, though Betty's reasons were not his reasons.

"What's the good?" she asked herself as she and her aunt walked across
to their hotel. "He's going away to-morrow, and I shall never see him
again. Well, I behaved beautifully, that's one thing. He must simply
loathe me. So that's all right! If he were staying on in Paris, of
course I would tell her."

She believed this fully.

He waited five minutes behind that pillar, and then had himself driven
to the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, choosing as driver a man with a
white hat, in strict accordance with the advice in Baedeker, though he
had never read any of the works of that author.

This new Betty, with the smart gown and the distant manner, awoke at
the same time that she contradicted his memories of the Betty of Long
Barton. And he should not see her again. Of course he was not going to
Vienna, but neither was he going to hang round the Hotel Bete, or to
bribe Franz or Elise to smuggle notes to Miss Betty.

"It's never any use trying to join things on again," he told himself.
"As well try to mend a spider's web when you have put your boot
through it."

'No diver brings up love again
Dropped once
In such cold seas!'

"But what has happened? Why does she hate me so? You acted very
nicely, dear, but that wasn't indifference. It was hatred, if ever
I've seen it. I wonder what it means? Another lover? No--then she'd be
sorry for me. It's something that belongs to me--not another man's
shadow. But what I shall never know. And she's prettier than ever,
too. Oh, hang it!"

His key turned in the lock, and on the door-mat shewed the white
square of an envelope--a note from the other woman, the one whose
profile he had not remembered. She was in Paris for a time. She had
seen him at the Paix, had wondered whether he had his old rooms, had
driven straight up on the chance of being able to leave this--wasn't
that devotion?--and would he care to call for her at eight and they
could dine somewhere and talk over old times? One familiar initial,
that of her first name, curled in the corner and the card smelt of
jasmine--not of jasmine-scent in bottles, but of the real flower. He
had never known how she managed it.

Vernon was not fond of talking over old times, but Betty would be
dining at the Hotel Bete--some dull hole, no doubt; he had never heard
of it. Well, he could not dine at the Bete, and after all one must
dine somewhere. And the other woman had never bored him. That is a
terrible weapon in the hands of a rival. And Betty had been most
unjust. And what was Betty to him, anyway? His thoughts turned to the
American girl who had sketched with him in Brittany that Summer. Ah,
if she had not been whisked back to New York by her people, it would
not now be a question of Betty or of the Jasmine lady. He took out
Miss Van Tromp's portrait and sat looking at it: it was admirable, the
fearless poise of the head, the laughing eyes, the full pouting lips.
Then Betty's face and the face of the Jasmine lady came between him
and Miss Van Tromp.

"Bah," he said, "smell, kiss, wear--at last throw away. Never keep a
rose till it's faded." A little tide of Breton memories swept through
him.

"Bah," he said again, "she was perfectly charming, but what is the use
of charm, half the world away?"

He pulled his trunk from the front of the fire-place, pushed up the
iron damper, and made a little fire. He burned all Miss Van Tromp's
letters, and her photograph--but, from habit, or from gratitude, he
kissed it before he burned it.

"Now," said he as the last sparks died redly on the black embers, "the
decks are cleared for action. Shall I sentimentalise about
Betty--cold, cruel, changed Betty--or shall I call for the Jasmine
lady?"

He did both, and the Jasmine lady might have found him dull. As it
happened, she only found him _distrait_, and that interested her.

"When we parted," she said, "it was I who was in tears. Now it's you.
What is it?"

"If I am in tears," he roused himself to say, "it is only because
everything passes, 'tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse.'"

"What's broken now?" she asked; "another heart? Oh, yes! you broke
mine all to little, little bits. But I've mended it. I wanted
frightfully to see you to thank you!

"This is a grateful day for women," thought Vernon, looking the
interrogatory.

"Why, for showing me how hearts are broken," she explained; "it's
quite easy when you know how, and it's a perfectly delightful game. I
play it myself now, and I can't imagine how I ever got on before I
learned the rules."

"You forget," he said, smiling. "It was you who broke my heart. And
it's not mended yet."

"That's very sweet of you. But really, you know, I'm very glad it was
you who broke my heart, and not anyone else. Because, now it's mended,
that gives us something to talk about. We have a past. That's really
what I wanted to tell you. And that's such a bond, isn't it? When it
really _is_ past--dead, you know, no nonsense about cataleptic
trances, but stone dead."

"Yes," he said, "it is a link. But it isn't the past for me, you know.
It can never--"

She held up a pretty jewelled hand.

"Now, don't," she said. "That's just what you don't understand. All
that's out of the picture. I know you too well. Just realize that I'm
the only nice woman you know who doesn't either expect you to make
love to her in the future or hate you for having done it in the past,
and you'll want to see me every day. Think of the novelty of it."

"I do and I do," said he, "and I won't protest any more while you're
in this mood. Bear with me if I seem idiotic to-night--I've been
burning old letters, and that always makes me like a funeral."

"Old letters--mine?"

"I burned yours long ago."

"And it isn't two years since we parted! How many have there been
since?"

"Is this the Inquisition or is it Durand's?"

"It's somewhere where we both are," she said, without a trace of
sentiment; "that's good enough for me. Do you know I've been married
since I saw you last? _And_ left a widow--in a short three months it
all happened. And--well I'm not very clever, as you know, but--can you
imagine what it is like to be married to a man who doesn't understand
a single word you say, unless it's about the weather or things to eat?
No, don't look shocked. He was a good fellow, and very happy till the
motor accident took him and left me this."

She shewed a scar on her smooth arm.

"What a woman it is for surprises! So he was very happy? But of course
he was."

"Yes, of course, as you say. I was a model wife. I wore black for a
whole year too!"

"Why did you marry him?"

"Well, at the time I thought you might hear of it and be disappointed,
or hurt, or something."

"So I am," said Vernon with truth.

"You needn't be," said she. "You'll find me much nicer now I don't
want to disappoint you or hurt you, but only to have a good time, and
there's no nonsense about love to get in the way, and spoil
everything."

"So you're--But this isn't proper! Here am I dining with a lady and I
don't even know her name!"

"I know--I wouldn't put it to the note. Didn't that single initial
arouse your suspicions? Her name? Her title if you please! I married
Harry St. Craye. You remember how we used to laugh at him together."

"That little--I beg your pardon, Lady St. Craye."

"Yes," she said, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum: of the dead nothing but
the bones. If he had lived he would certainly have beaten me. Here's
to our new friendship!"

"Our new friendship!" he repeated, raising his glass and looking in
her eyes. Lady St. Craye looked very beautiful, and Betty was not
there. In fact, just now there was no Betty.

He went back to his room humming a song of Yvette Guilbert's. There
might have been no flowering May, no buttercup meadows in all the
world, for any thought of memory that he had of them. And Betty was a
thousand miles away.

That was at night. In the morning Betty was at the Hotel Bete, and the
Hotel Bete was no longer a petty little hotel which he did not know
and never should know. For the early post brought him a letter which
said:

"I am in Paris for a few days and should like to see you if you can
make it convenient to call at my hotel on Thursday."

This was Tuesday.

The letter was signed with the name of the uncle from whom Vernon had
expectations, and at the head of the letter was the address:

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