The Incomplete Amorist

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"Hotel Bete,
Cite de Retraite,
Rue Boissy d'Anglais."

"Now bear witness!" cried Vernon, appealing to the Universe, "bear
witness that this is _not_ my fault!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE OPPORTUNITY.

Vernon in those two days decided that he did not wish to see Betty
again. She was angry with him, and, though he never for an instant
distrusted his power to dissipate the cloud, he felt that the lifting
of it would leave him and her in that strong light wherein the frail
flower of sentiment must wither and perish. Explications were fatal to
the delicate mystery, the ethereal half-lights, that Vernon loved.
Above all things he detested the _trop dit_.

Already a mood of much daylight was making him blink and shrink. He
saw himself as he was--or nearly--and the spectacle did not please
him. The thought of Lady St. Craye was the only one that seemed to
make for any sort of complacency. The thought of Temple rankled oddly.

"He likes me, and he dislikes himself for liking me. Why does he like
me? Why does anyone like me? I'm hanged if I know!"

This was the other side of his mood of most days, when the wonder
seemed that everyone should not like him. Why shouldn't they?
Ordinarily he was hanged if he knew that.

He had expected a note from Lady St. Craye to follow up his dinner
with her. He knew how a woman rarely resists the temptation to write
to the man in whom she is interested, even while his last words are
still ringing in her ears. But no note came, and he concluded that
Lady St. Craye was not interested. This reassured while it piqued.

The Hotel Bete is very near the Madeleine, and very near the heart of
Paris--of gay Paris, that is,--yet it might have been a hundred miles
from anywhere. You go along the Rue Boissy, and stopping at a gateway
you turn into a dreary paved court, which is the Cite de la Retraite.
Here the doors of the Hotel Bete open before you like the portals of a
mausoleum. There is no greeting from the Patronne; your arrival gives
rise to no pleasant welcoming bustle. The concierge receives you, and
you see at once that her cheerful smile is assumed. No one could
really be cheerful at the Hotel Bete.

Vernon felt as though he was entering a family vault of the highest
respectability when he passed through its silent hall and enquired for
Mr. James Vernon.

Monsieur Vernon was out. No, he had charged no one with a billet for
monsieur. Monsieur Vernon would doubtless return for the dejeuner; it
was certain that he would return for the diner. Would Monsieur wait?

Monsieur waited, in a little stiff salon with glass doors, prim
furniture, and an elaborately ornamental French clock. It was silent,
of course. One wonders sometimes whether ornamental French Ormolu
clocks have any works, or are solid throughout. For no one has ever
seen one of them going.

There were day-old English papers on the table, and the New York
Herald. Through the glass doors he could see everyone who came in or
went out. And he saw no one. There was a stillness as of the tomb.

Even the waiter, now laying covers for the dejeuner, wore list
slippers and his movements were silent as a heron's ghost-gray flight.

He came to the glass door presently.

"Did Monsieur breakfast?"

Vernon was not minded to waste two days in the pursuit of uncles. Here
he was, and here he stayed, till Uncle James should appear.

Yes, decidedly, Monsieur breakfasted.

He wondered where the clients of the hotel had hidden themselves. Were
they all dead, or merely sight-seeing? As his watch shewed him the
approach of half-past twelve he found himself listening for the tramp
of approaching feet, the rustle of returning skirts. And still all was
silent as the grave.

The sudden summoning sound of a bell roused him from a dreamy wonder
as to whether Betty and her aunt had already left. If not, should he
meet them at dejeuner? The idea of the possible meeting amused more
than it interested him. He crossed the hall and entered the long bare
salle a manger.

By Heaven--he was the only guest! A cover was laid for him only--no,
at a distance of half the table for another. Then Betty and her aunt
had gone. Well, so much the better.

He unfolded his table-napkin. In another moment, doubtless, Uncle
James would appear to fill the vacant place.

But in another moment the vacant place was filled--and by Betty--Betty
alone, unchaperoned, and bristling with hostility. She bowed very
coldly, but she was crimson to the ears. He rose and came to her
holding out his hand.

With the waiter looking on, Betty had to give hers, but she gave it in
a way that said very plainly:

"I am very surprised and not at all pleased to see you here."

"This is a most unexpected pleasure," he said very distinctly, and
added the truth about his uncle.

"Has Monsieur Vernon yet returned?" he asked the waiter who hovered
anxiously near.

"No, Monsieur was not yet of return."

"So you see," his look answered the speech of her hand, "it is not my
doing in the least."

"I hope your aunt is well," he went on, the waiter handing baked eggs
the while.

"Quite well, thank you," said Betty. "And how is your wife? I ought to
have asked yesterday, but I forgot."

"My wife?"

"Oh, perhaps you aren't married yet. Of course my father told me of
your engagement."

She crumbled bread and smiled pleasantly.

"So _that's_ it," thought Vernon. "Fool that I was to forget it!"

"I am not married," he said coldly, "nor have I ever been engaged to
be married."

And he ate eggs stolidly wondering what her next move would be. It was
one that surprised him. For she leaned towards him and said in a
perfectly new voice:

"Couldn't you get Franz to move you a little more this way? One can't
shout across these acres of tablecloth, and I've heaps of things to
tell you."

He moved nearer, and once again he wronged Betty by a mental
shrinking. Was she really going to own that she had resented the news
of his engagement? She was really hopeless. He began to bristle
defensively.

[Illustration: "'Ah, don't be cross!' she said"]

"Anything you care to tell me will of course be of the greatest
possible interest," he was beginning, but Betty interrupted him.

"_Ah, don't be cross_!" she said. "I know I was perfectly horrid
yesterday, but I own I was rather hurt."

"Hold back," he adjured her, inwardly, "for Heaven's sake, hold back!"

"You see," she went on, "you and I were such good friends--you'd been
so kind--and you told me--you talked to me about things you didn't
talk of to other people,--and when I thought you'd told my step-father
a secret of yours that you'd never told me, of course I felt
hurt--anyone would have."

"I see," said he, beginning to.

"Of course I never dreamed that he'd lied, and even now I don't see--"
Then suddenly she did see and crimsoned again.

"He didn't lie," said Vernon carefully, "it was I. But I would never
have told him anything that I wouldn't have told you--nor half that I
did tell you."

The waiter handed pale meat.

"Yes, the scenery in Brittany is most charming; I did some good work
there. The people are so primitive and delightful too."

The waiter withdrew, and Betty said:

"How do you mean--he didn't lie?"

"The fact is," said Vernon, "he--he did not understand our friendship
in the least. I imagine friendship was not invented when he was young.
It's a tiresome subject, Miss Desmond; let's drop it--shall we?"

"If you like," said she, chilly as December.

"Oh, well then, just let me say it was done for your sake, Miss
Desmond. He had no idea that two people should have any interests in
common except--except matters of the heart, and the shortest way to
convince him was to tell him that my heart was elsewhere. I don't like
lies, but there are some people who insist on lies--nothing else will
convince them of the truth. Here comes some abhorrent preparation of
rice. How goes it with art?"

"I have been working very hard," she said, "but every day I seem to
know less and less."

"Oh, that's all right! It's only that every day one knows more and
more--of how little one does know. You'll have to pass many milestones
before you pass out of that state. Do they always feed you like this
here?"

"Some days it's custard," said Betty, "but we've only been here a
week."

"We're friends again now, aren't we?" he questioned suddenly.

"Yes--oh, yes!"

"Then I may ask questions. I want to hear what you've been doing since
we parted, and where you've been, and how you come to Paris--and where
your aunt is, and what she'll say to me when she comes in."

"She likes you," said Betty, "and she won't come in, but Madame
Gautier will. Aunt Julia went off this morning--she couldn't delay any
longer because of catching the P. & O. at Brindisi; and I'm to wait
here till Madame Gautier comes at three. Auntie came all the way back
from America to see whether I was happy here. She _is_ a dear!"

"And who is Madame Gautier? Is she also a dear? But let's have our
coffee in the salon--and tell me everything from the beginning."

"Yes," said Betty, "oh, yes!"

But the salon window was darkened by a passing shape.

"My uncle, bless him!" said Vernon. "I must go. See, here's my card!
Won't you write and tell me all about everything? You will, won't
you?"

"Yes, but you musn't write to me. Madame Gautier opens all our
letters, and friendships weren't invented when she was young either.
Good-bye."

Vernon had to go towards the strong English voice that was filling the
hall with its inquiries for "Ung Mossoo--ung mossoo Anglay qui avoir
certainmong etty icy ce mattan."

Five minutes later Betty saw two figures go along the pavement on the
other side of the decorous embroidered muslin blinds which, in the
unlikely event of any happening in the Cite de la Retraite, ensure its
not being distinctly seen by those who sojourn at the Hotel Bete.

Betty instantly experienced that feminine longing which makes women
write to lovers or friends from whom they have but now parted, and she
was weaker than Lady St. Craye. There was nothing to do. Her trunks
were packed. She had before her two hours, or nearly, of waiting for
Madame Gautier. So she wrote, and this is the letter, erasures and
all. Vernon, when he got it, was most interested in the erasures here
given in italics.

Dear Mr. Vernon:

I am very glad we are good friends again, and I should like to tell
you everything that has happened. (_After you, after he--when my
step-father_). After the last time I saw you (_I was very unhappy
because I wanted to go to Paris_) I was very anxious to go to Paris
because of what you had said. My aunt came down and was very kind.
(_She told me_) She persuaded my step-father to let me go. I think
(_we_) he was glad to get rid of me, for (_somehow_) he never did
care about me, any more than I did about him. There are a great many
(_other_) things that he does not understand. Of course I was wild
with joy and thought of nothing but (_what you_) work, and my aunt
brought me over. But I did not see anything of Paris then. We went
straight on to Joinville where Madame Gautier has a villa, and
(_we_) my aunt left me there, and went to Norway. It was all very
strange at first, but I liked it. Madame Gautier is very strict; it
was like being at school. Sometimes I almost (_forgot_) fancied that
I was at school again. There were three other girls besides me, and
we had great fun. The Professor was very nice and encouraging. He is
very old. So is everybody who comes to the house--(_but_) it
(_was_) is jolly, because when there are four of you everything is
so interesting. We used to have picnics in the woods, and take it in
turn to ride in the donkey-cart. And there were musical evenings
with the Pastor and the Avocat and their wives. It was very amusing
sometimes. Madame Gautier had let her Paris flat, so we stayed at
Joinville till a week ago, and then my Aunt walked in one day and
took me to Paris for a week. I did enjoy that. And now aunt has
gone, and Madame Gautier is taking the inventory and getting the
keys, and presently she will come for me, I shall go with her to the
Rue Vaugirard, Number 62. It will be very nice seeing the other
girls again and telling them all about (_everything_) my week in
Paris. I am so sorry that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing
you again, but I am glad we met--because I do not like to think my
friends do not trust me.

Yours sincerely,

Betty Desmond.

That was the letter which Betty posted. But the first letter she wrote
was quite different. It began:

"You don't know, you never will know what it is to me to know that
you did not deceive me. My dear friend, my only friend! And how I
treated you yesterday! And how nobly you forgave me. I shall see you
again. I must see you again. No one else has ever understood me."
And so on to the "True and constant friend Betty."

She burned this letter.

"The other must go," she said, "that's the worst of life. If I sent
the one that's really written as I feel he'd think I was in love with
him or some nonsense. But a child who was just in two syllables might
have written the other. So _that's_ all right."

She looked at her watch. The same silver watch with which she had once
crossed the hand of one who told her fortune.

"How silly all that was!" she said. "I have learned wisdom now. Nearly
half-past three. I never knew Madame late before."

And now Betty began to watch the windows for the arrival of her
chaperone; and four o'clock came, and five, but no Madame Gautier.

She went out at last and asked to see the Patronne, and to her she
explained in a French whose fluency out-ran its correctness, that a
lady was to have called for her at three. It was now a quarter past
five. What did Madame think she should do?

Madame was lethargic and uninterested. She had no idea. She could not
advise. Probably Mademoiselle would do well to wait always.

The concierge was less aloof.

But without doubt Madame, Mademoiselle's friend had forgotten the
hour. She would arrive later, certainly. If not, Mademoiselle could
stay the night at the hotel, where a young lady would be perfectly
well, and go to Madame her friend in the morning.

But Betty was not minded to stay the night alone at the Hotel Bete.
For one thing she had very little money,--save that in the fat
envelope addressed to Madame Gautier which her aunt had given her. It
contained, she knew, the money to pay for her board and lessons during
the next six months,--for the elder Miss Desmond was off to India,
Japan and Thibet, and her horror of banks and cheques made her very
downright in the matter of money. That in the envelope was all Betty
had, and that was Madame Gautier's. But the other part of the
advice--to go to Madame Gautier's in the morning? If in the morning,
why not now?

She decided to go now. No one opposed the idea much. Only Franz seemed
a little disturbed and the concierge tepidly urged patience.

But Betty was fretted by waiting. Also she knew that Vernon and his
uncle might return at any moment. And it would perhaps be awkward for
him to find her there--she would not for the world cause him a
moment's annoyance. Besides he might think she had waited on the
chance of seeing him again. That was not to be borne.

"I will return and take my trunks," she said; and a carriage was
called.

There was something very exhilarating in driving through the streets
of Paris, alone, in a nice little carriage with fat pneumatic tires.
The street lamps were alight, and the shops not yet closed. Almost
every house seemed to be a shop.

"I wonder where all the people live," said Betty.

The Place de la Concorde delighted her with its many lamps and its
splendid space.

"How glorious it would be to live alone in Paris," she thought, "be
driven about in cabs just when one liked and where one liked! Oh, I am
tired of being a school-girl! I suppose they won't let me be grown up
till I'm so old I shall wish I was a school-girl again."

She loved the river with its reflected lights,--but it made her
shudder, too.

"Of course I shall never be allowed to see the Morgue," she said;
"they won't let me see anything real. Even this little teeny tiny bit
of a drive, I daresay it's not comme il faut! I do hope Madame won't
be furious. She couldn't expect me to wait forever. Perhaps, too,
she's ill, and no one to look after her. Oh, I'm sure I'm right to
go."

The doubt, however, grew as the carriage jolted through narrower
streets, and when it drew up at an open carriage-door, Betty jumped
out, paid the coachman, and went in quite prepared to be scolded.

She went through the doorway and stood looking for the list of names
such as are set at the foot of the stairs leading to flats in London.
There was no such list. From a lighted doorway on the right came a
babel of shrill, high-pitched voices. Betty looked in at the door and
the voices ceased.

"Pardon, Madame," said Betty. "I seek Madame Gautier."

Everyone in the crowded stuffy lamplit little room drew a deep breath.

"Mademoiselle is without doubt one of Madame's young ladies?"

Perhaps it was the sudden hushing of the raised voices, perhaps it was
something in the flushed faces that all turned towards her. To her
dying day Betty will never know why she did not say "Yes." What she
did say was:

"I am a friend of Madame's. Is she at home?"

"No, Mademoiselle,--she is not at home; she will never be at home
more, the poor lady. She is dead, Mademoiselle--an accident, one of
those cursed automobiles ran over her at her very door, Mademoiselle,
before our eyes."

Betty felt sick.

"Thank you," she said, "it is very sudden."

"Will Mademoiselle leave her name?" the concierge asked curiously.
"The brother of Madame, he is in the commerce at Nantes. A telegramme
has been sent--he arrives to-morrow morning. He will give Mademoiselle
details."

Again Betty said what she had not intended to say. She said:

"Miss Brown." Perhaps the brother in the commerce vaguely suggested
the addition, "of Manchester."

Then she turned away, and got out of the light into the friendly dusk
of the street.

"Tiens, but it is droll," said the concierge's friend, "a young girl,
and all alone like that."

"Oh, it is nothing," said the concierge; "the English are mad--all!
Their young girls run the streets at all hours, and the Devil guards
them."

Betty stood in the street. She could not go back to that circle of
harpy faces, all eagerly tearing to pieces the details of poor old
Madame Gautier's death. She must be alone--think. She would have to
write home. Her father would come to fetch her. Her aunt was beyond
the reach of appeal. Her artist-life would be over. Everything would
be over. She would be dragged back to the Parishing and the Mothers'
meetings and the black-cotton-covered books and the Sunday School.

And she would never have lived in Paris at all!

She walked down the street.

"I can't think--I _must_ think! I'll have this night to myself to
think in, anyway. I'll go to some cheap hotel. I have enough for
that."

She hailed a passing carriage, drove to the Hotel Bete, took her
luggage to the Gare du Nord, and left it there.

Then as she stood on the station step, she felt something in her hand.
It was the fat letter addressed to Madame Gautier. And she knew it was
fat with bank notes.

She unfastened her dress and thrust the letter into her bosom,
buttoning the dress carefully over it.

"But I won't go to my hotel yet," she said. "I won't even look for
one. I'll see Paris a bit first."

She hailed a coachman.

"Go," she said, "to some restaurant in the Latin Quarter--where the
art students eat."

"And I'm alone in Paris, and perfectly free," said Betty, leaning back
on the cushions. "No, I won't tell my coachman to drive along the Rue
Notre Dame des Champs, wherever that is. Oh, it is glorious to be
perfectly free. Oh, poor Madame Gautier! Oh dear, oh dear!" She held
her breath and wondered why she could feel sorry.

"You are a wretch," she said, "poor Madame was kind to you in her hard
narrow way, and now is she lying cold and dead, all broken up by that
cruel motor car."

The horror of the picture helped by Betty's excitement brought the
tears and she encouraged them.

"It is something to find one is not entirely heartless," she said at
last, drying her eyes, as the carriage drew up at a place where there
were people and voices and many lights.

CHAPTER X.

SEEING LIFE.

The thoughts of the two who loved her were with Betty that night. The
aunt, shaken, jolted, enduring much in the Paris, Lyons and
Mediterranean express thought fondly of her.

"She's a nice little thing. I must take her about a bit," she mused,
and even encouraged her fancy to play with the idea of a London
season--a thing it had not done for years.

The Reverend Cecil, curtains drawn and lamp alight, paused to think of
her even in the midst of his first thorough examination of his newest
treasure in Seventeenth Century Tracts, "The Man Mouse baited and
trapped for nibbling the margins of Eugenius Philalethes, being an
assault on Henry Moore." It was bound up with, "The Second Wash, or
the Moore scoured again," and a dozen others. A dumpy octavo, in brown
leather, he had found it propping a beer barrel in the next village.

"Dear Lizzie!--I wonder if she will ever care for really important
things. There must be treasures upon treasures in those boxes on the
French quays that one reads about. But she never would learn to know
one type from another."

He studied the fire thoughtfully.

"I wonder if she does understand how much she is to me," he thought.
"Those are the things that are better unsaid. At least I always think
so when she's here. But all these months--I wonder whether girls like
you to _say things_, or to leave them to be understood. It is more
delicate not to say them, perhaps."

Then his thoughts went back to the other Lizzie, about whom he had
never felt these doubts. He had loved her, and had told her so. And
she had told him her half of the story in very simple words--and most
simply, and without at all "leaving things to be understood" they had
planned the future that never was to be. He remembered the day when
sitting over the drawing-room fire, and holding her dear hand he had
said:

"This is how we shall sit when we are old and gray, dearest." It had
seemed so impossibly far-off then.

And she had said:

"I hope we shall die the same day, Cec."

But this had not happened.

And he had said:

"And we shall have such a beautiful life--doing good, and working for
God, and bringing up our children in the right way. Oh, Lizzie, it's
very wonderful to think of that happiness, isn't it?"

And she had laid her head on his shoulder and whispered:

"I hope we shall have a little girl, dear."

And he had said:

"I shall call her Elizabeth, after my dear wife."

"She must have eyes like yours though."

"She will be exactly like both of us," he had said, and they sat hand
in hand, and talked innocently, like two children, of the little child
that was never to be.

He had wanted them to put on her tombstone, Lizzie daughter of ----
and affianced wife of Cecil Underwood, but her mother had said that
_there_ there was no marrying or giving in marriage. In his heart the
Reverend Cecil had sometimes dared to hope that that text had been
misunderstood. To him his Lizzie had always been "as the angels of God
in Heaven."

Then came the long broken years, and then the little girl--Elizabeth,
his step-child.

The pent-up love of all his life spent itself on her: a love so fond,
so tender, so sacred that it seemed only self-respecting to hide it a
little from the world by a mask of coldness. And Betty had never seen
anything but the mask.

"I think, when I see her, I will tell her all about my Lizzie," he
said. "I wonder if she knows what the house is like without her. But
of course she doesn't, or she would have asked to come home, long ago.
I wonder whether she misses me very much. Madame Gautier is kind, she
says; but no stranger can make a home, as love can make it."

Meanwhile Betty dining alone at a restaurant in the Boulevard St.
Michel, within a mile of the Serpent, ordered what she called a nice
dinner--it was mostly vegetables and sweet things--and ate it with
appetite, looking about her. The long mirrors, the waiters were like
the ones in London restaurants, but the people who ate there they were
different. Everything was much shabbier, yet much gayer.
Shopkeeping-looking men were dining with their wives; some of them had
a child, napkin under chin, solemnly struggling with a big soup spoon
or upturning on its little nose a tumbler of weak red wine and water.
There were students--she knew them by their slouched hats and beards a
day old--dining by twos and threes and fours. No one took any more
notice of Betty than was shewn by a careless glance or two. She was
very quietly dressed. Her hat even was rather an unbecoming brown
thing. When she had eaten, she ordered coffee, and began to try to
think, but thinking was difficult with the loud voices and the
laughter, and the clink of glasses and the waiters' hurrying transits.
And at the back of her mind was a thought waiting for her to think it.
And she was afraid.

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