The Incomplete Amorist

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"Kent," said Betty.

"My home's in Devonshire," said Paula.

It was a hard day: so many stairs to climb, so many apartments to see!
And all of them either quite beyond Betty's means, or else little
stuffy places, filled to choking point with the kind of furniture no
one could bear to live with, and with no light, and no outlook except
a blank wall a yard or two from the window.

They kept to the Montparnasse quarter, for there, Paula said, were the
best ateliers for Betty. They found a little restaurant, where only
art students ate, and where one could breakfast royally for about a
shilling. Betty looked with interest at the faces of the students, and
wondered whether she should ever know any of them. Some of them looked
interesting. A few were English, and fully half American.

Then the weary hunt for rooms began again.

It was five o'clock before a _concierge, unexpected amiable_ in face
of their refusal of her rooms, asked whether they had tried Madame
Bianchi's--Madame Bianchi where the atelier was, and the students'
meetings on Sunday evenings,--Number 57 Boulevard Montparnasse.

They tried it. One passes through an archway into a yard where the
machinery, of a great laundry pulses half the week, up some wide
wooden stairs--shallow, easy stairs--and on the first floor are the
two rooms. Betty drew a long breath when she saw them. They were
lofty, they were airy, they were light. There was not much furniture,
but what there was was good--old carved armoires, solid divans
and--joy of joys--in each room a carved oak, Seventeenth Century
mantelpiece eight feet high and four feet deep.

"I _must_ have these rooms!" Betty whispered. "Oh, I could make them
so pretty!"

The rent of the rooms was almost twice as much as the sum they fixed
on, and Paula murmured caution.

"Its no use," said Betty. "We'll live on bread and water if you like,
but we'll live on it _here_."

And she took the rooms.

"I'm sure we've done right," she said as they drove off to fetch her
boxes: "the rooms will be like a home, you see if they aren't. And
there's a piano too. And Madame Bianchi, isn't she a darling; Isn't
she pretty and sweet and nice?"

"Yes," said Paula thoughtfully; "it certainly is something that you've
got rooms in the house of a woman like that."

"And that ducky little kitchen! Oh, we shall have such fun, cooking
our own meals! You shall get the dejeuner but I'll cook the dinner
while you lie on the sofa and read novels 'like a real lady.'"

"Don't use that expression--I hate it," said Paula sharply. "But the
rooms are lovely, aren't they?"

"Yes, it's a good place for you to be in--I'm sure of that," said the
other, musing again.

When the boxes were unpacked, and Betty had pinned up a few prints and
photographs and sketches and arranged some bright coloured Liberty
scarves to cover the walls' more obvious defects--left by the removal
of the last tenant's decorations--when flowers were on table and
piano, the curtains drawn and the lamps lighted, the room did, indeed,
look "like a home."

"We'll have dinner out to-night," said Paula, "and to-morrow we'll go
marketing, and find you a studio to work at."

"Why not here?"

"That's an idea. Have you a lace collar you can lend me? This is not
fit to be seen."

Betty pinned the collar on her friend.

"I believe you get prettier every minute," she said. "I must just
write home and give them my address."

She fetched her embroidered blotting-book.

"It reminds one of bazaars," said Miss Conway.

* * * * *

57 Boulevard Montparnasse.

My dear Father:

This is our new address. Madame Gautier's tenant wanted to keep on
her flat in the Rue de Vaugirard, so she has taken this one which
is larger and very convenient, as it is close to many of the best
studios. I think I shall like it very much. It is not decided yet
where I am to study, but there is an Atelier in the House for ladies
only, and I think it will be there, so that I shall not have to go
out to my lessons. I will write again as soon as we are more
settled. We only moved in late this afternoon, so there is a lot to
do. I hope you are quite well, and that everything is going on well
in the Parish. I will certainly send some sketches for the Christmas
sale. Madame Gautier does not wish me to go home for Christmas; she
thinks it would interrupt my work too much. There is a new girl, a
Miss Conway. I like her very much. With love,

Yours affectionately,

E. Desmond.

She was glad when that letter was written. It is harder to lie in
writing than in speech, and the use of the dead woman's name made her
shiver.

"But I won't do things by halves," she said.

"What's this?" Paula asked sharply. She had stopped in front of one of
Betty's water colours.

"That? Oh, I did it ages ago--before I learned anything. Don't look
at it."

"But _what_ is it?"

"Oh, only our house at home."

"I wonder," said Paula, "why all English Vicarages are exactly alike."

"It's a Rectory," said Betty absently.

"That ought to make a difference, but it doesn't. I haven't seen an
English garden for four years."

"Four years is a long time," said Betty.

"You don't know how long," said the other. "And the garden's been
going on just the same all the time. It seems odd, doesn't it? Those
hollyhocks--the ones at the Vicarage at home are just like them. Come,
let's go to dinner!"

CHAPTER XII.

THE RESCUE.

When Vernon had read Betty's letter--and holding it up to the light he
was able to read the scratched-out words almost as easily as the
others--he decided that he might as well know where she worked, and
one day, after he had called on Lady St. Craye, he found himself
walking along the Rue de Vaugirard. Lady St. Craye was charming. And
she had been quite right when she had said that he would find a
special charm in the companionship of one in whose heart his past
love-making seemed to have planted no thorns. Yet her charm, by its
very nature--its finished elegance, its conscious authority--made him
think with the more interest of the unformed, immature grace of the
other woman--Betty, in whose heart he had not had the chance to plant
either thorns or roses.

How could he find out? Concierges are venal, but Vernon disliked base
instruments. He would act boldly. It was always the best way. He would
ask to see this Madame Gautier--if Betty were present he must take his
chance. It would be interesting to see whether she would commit
herself to his plot by not recognizing him. If she did that--Yet he
hoped she wouldn't. If she did recognize him he would say that it was
through Miss Desmond's relatives that he had heard of Madame Gautier.
Betty could not contradict him. He would invent a niece whose parents
wished to place her with Madame. Then he could ask as many questions
as he liked, about hours and studios, and all the details of the life
Betty led.

It was a simple straight-forward design, and one that carried success
in its pocket. No one could suspect anything.

Yet at the very first step suspicion, or what looked like it, stared
at him from the eyes of the concierge when he asked for Madame
Gautier.

"Monsieur is not of the friends of Madame?" she asked curiously.

He knew better than to resent the curiosity. He explained that he
desired to see Madame on business.

"You will see her never," the woman said dramatically; "she sees no
one any more."

"Is it that she is ill?"

"It is that she is dead,--and the dead do not receive, Monsieur." She
laughed, and told the tale of death circumstantially, with grim relish
of detail.

"And the young ladies--they have returned to their parents?"

"Ah, it is in the young ladies that Monsieur interests himself? But
yes. Madame's brother, who is in the Commerce of Nantes, he restored
instantly the young ladies to their friends. One was already with her
aunt."

Vernon had money ready in his hand.

"What was her name, Madame--the young lady with the aunt?"

"But I know not, Monsieur. She was a new young lady, who had been with
Madame at her Villa--I have not seen her. At the time of the
regrettable accident she was with her aunt, and doubtless remains
there. Thank you, Monsieur. That is all I know."

"Thank you, Madame. I am desolated to have disturbed you. Good day."

And Vernon was in the street again.

So Betty had never come to the Rue Vaugirard! The aunt must somehow
have heard the news--perhaps she had called on the way to the
train--she had returned to the Bete and Betty now was Heaven alone
knew where. Perhaps at Long Barton. Perhaps in Paris, with some other
dragon.

Vernon for a day or two made a point of being near when the
studios--Julien's, Carlorossi's, Delacluse's, disgorged their
students. He did not see Betty, because she was not studying at any of
these places, but at the Atelier Bianchi, of which he never thought.
So he shrugged his shoulders, and dined again with Lady St. Craye, and
began to have leisure to analyse the emotions with which she inspired
him. He had not believed that he could be so attracted by a woman with
whom he had played the entire comedy, from first glance to last
tear--from meeting hands to severed hearts. Yet attracted he was, and
strongly. He experienced a sort of resentment, a feeling that she had
kept something from him, that she had reserves of which he knew
nothing, that he, who in his blind complacency had imagined himself to
have sucked the orange and thrown away the skin, had really, in point
of fact, had a strange lovely fruit snatched from him before his blunt
teeth had done more than nibble at its seemingly commonplace rind.

In the old days she had reared barriers of reserve, walls of reticence
over which he could see so easily; now she posed as having no
reserves, and he seemed to himself to be following her through a
darkling wood, where the branches flew back and hit him in the face so
that he could not see the path.

"You know," she said, "what makes it so delightful to talk to you is
that I can say exactly what I like. You won't expect me to be clever,
or shy, or any of those tiresome things. We can be perfectly frank
with each other. And that's such a relief, isn't it?"

"I wonder whether it would be--supposing it could be?" said he.

They were driving in the Bois, among the autumn tinted trees where the
pale mist wreaths wandered like ghosts in the late afternoon.

"Of course it could be; it is," she said, opening her eyes at him
under the brim of her marvel of a hat: "at least it is for simple folk
like me. Why don't you wear a window in your breast as I do?"

She laid her perfectly gloved hand on her sables.

"Is there really a window? Can one see into your heart?"

"_One_ can--not the rest. Just the one from whom one feareth nothing,
expecteth nothing, hopeth nothing. That's out of the Bible, isn't it?"

"It's near enough," said he. "Of course, to you it's a new sensation
to have the window in your breast. Whereas I, from innocent childhood
to earnest manhood, have ever been open as the day."

"Yes," she said, "you were always transparent enough. But one is so
blind when one is in love."

Her calm references to the past always piqued him.

"I don't think Love is so blind as he's painted," he said: "always as
soon as I begin to be in love with people I begin to see their
faults."

"You may be transparent, but you haven't a good mirror," she laughed;
"you don't see yourself as you are. It isn't when you begin to love
people that you see their faults, is it? It's really when they begin
to love you."

"But I never begin to love people till they begin to love me. I'm too
modest."

"And I never love people after they've done loving me. I'm too--"

"Too what?"

"Too something--forgetful, is it? I mean it takes two to make a
quarrel, and it certainly takes two to make a love affair."

"And what about all the broken hearts?"

"What broken hearts?"

"The ones you find in the poets and the story books."

"That's just where you do find them. Nowhere else.--Now, honestly, has
your heart ever been broken?"

"Not yet: so be careful how you play with it. You don't often find
such a perfect specimen--absolutely not a crack or a chip."

"The pitcher shouldn't crow too loud--can pitchers crow? They have
ears, of course, but only the little pitchers. The ones that go to the
well should go in modest silence."

"Dear Lady," he said almost impatiently, "what is there about me that
drives my friends to stick up danger boards all along my path? 'This
way to Destruction!' You all label them. I am always being solemnly
warned that I shall get my heart broken one of these days, if I don't
look out."

"I wish you wouldn't call me dear Lady," she said; "it's not the mode
any more now."

"What may I call you?" he had to ask, turning to look in her eyes.

"You needn't call me anything. I hate being called names. That's a
pretty girl--not the dark one, the one with the fur hat."

He turned to look.

Two girls were walking briskly under the falling leaves. And the one
with the fur hat was Betty. But it was at the other that he gazed even
as he returned Betty's prim little bow. He even turned a little as the
carriage passed, to look more intently at the tall figure in shabby
black whose arm Betty held.

"Well?" said Lady St. Craye, breaking the silence that followed.

"Well?" said he, rousing himself, but too late. "You were saying I
might call you--"

"It's not what I was saying--it's what you were looking. Who is the
girl, and why don't you approve of her companion?"

"Who says I don't wear a window in my breast?" he laughed. "The girl's
a little country girl I knew in England--I didn't know she was in
Paris. And I thought I knew the woman, too, but that's impossible:
it's only a likeness."

"One nice thing about me is that I never ask impertinent questions--or
hardly ever. That one slipped out and I withdraw it. I don't want to
know anything about anything and I'm sorry I spoke. I see, of course,
that she is a little country girl you knew in England, and that you
are not at all interested in her. How fast the leaves fall now, don't
they?"

"No question of your's could be im--could be anything but flattering.
But since you _are_ interested--"

"Not at all," she said politely.

"Oh, but do be interested," he urged, intent on checking her
inconvenient interest, "because, really, it is rather interesting when
you come to think of it. I was painting my big picture--I wish you'd
come and see it, by the way. Will you some day, and have tea in my
studio?"

"I should love it. When shall I come?"

"Whenever you will."

He wished she would ask another question about Betty, but she
wouldn't. He had to go on, a little awkwardly.

"Well, I only knew them for a week--her and her aunt and her
father--and she's a nice, quiet little thing. The father's a
parson--all of them are all that there is of most respectable."

She listened but she did not speak.

"And I was rather surprised to see her here. And for the moment I
thought the woman with her was--well, the last kind of woman who
could have been with her, don't you know."

"I see," said Lady St. Craye. "Well, it's fortunate that the dark
woman isn't that kind of woman. No doubt you'll be seeing your little
friend. You might ask her to tea when I come to see your picture."

"I wish I could." Vernon's manner was never so frank as when he was
most on his guard. "She'd love to know you. I wish I could ask them to
tea, but I don't know them well enough. And their address I don't know
at all. It's a pity; she's a nice little thing."

It was beautifully done. Lady St. Craye inwardly applauded Vernon's
acting, and none the less that her own part had grown strangely
difficult. She was suddenly conscious of a longing to be alone--to let
her face go. She gave herself a moment's pause, caught at her fine
courage and said:

"Yes, it is a pity. However, I daresay it's safer for her that you
can't ask her to tea. She _is_ a nice little thing, and she might fall
in love with you, and then, your modesty appeased, you might follow
suit! Isn't it annoying when one can't pick up the thread of a
conversation? All the time you've been talking I've been wondering
what we were talking about before I pointed out the fur hat to you.
And I nearly remember, and I can't quite. That is always so worrying,
isn't it?"

Her acting was as good as his. And his perception at the moment less
clear than hers.

He gave a breath of relief. It would never have done to have Lady St.
Craye spying on him and Betty; and now he knew that she was in Paris
he knew too that it would be "him and Betty."

"We were talking," he said carefully, "about calling names."

"Oh, thank you!--When one can't remember those silly little things
it's like wanting to sneeze and not being able to, isn't it? But we
must turn back, or I shall be late for dinner, and I daren't think of
the names my hostess will call me then. She has a vocabulary, you
know." She named a name and Vernon thought it was he who kept the talk
busy among acquaintances till the moment for parting. Lady St. Craye
knew that it was she.

The moment Betty had bowed to Mr. Vernon she turned her head in answer
to the pressure on her arm.

"Who's that?" her friend asked.

Betty named him, and in a voice genuinely unconcerned.

"How long have you known him?"

"I knew him for a week last Spring: he gave me a few lessons. He is a
great favourite of my aunt's, but we don't know him much. And I
thought he was in Vienna."

"Does he know where you are?"

"No."

"Then mind he doesn't."

"Why?"

"Because when girls are living alone they can't be too careful.
Remember you're the person that's responsible for Betty Desmond now.
You haven't your aunt and your father to take care of you."

"I've got you," said Betty affectionately.

"Yes, you've got me," said her friend.

Life in the new rooms was going very easily and pleasantly. Betty had
covered some cushions with the soft green silk of an old evening dress
Aunt Julia had given her; she had bought chrysanthemums in pots; and
now all her little belongings, the same that had "given the _cachet_"
to her boudoir bedroom at home lay about, and here, in this foreign
setting, did really stamp the room with a pretty, delicate,
conventional individuality. The embroidered blotting-book, the silver
pen-tray, the wicker work-basket lined with blue satin, the long
worked pin-cushion stuck with Betty's sparkling hat-pins,--all these,
commonplace at Long Barton were here not commonplace. There was
nothing of Paula's lying about. She had brought nothing with her, and
had fetched nothing from her room save clothes--dresses and hats of
the plainest.

The experiments in cooking were amusing; so were the marketings in odd
little shops that sold what one wanted, and a great many things that
one had never heard of. The round of concerts and theatres and
tram-rides had not begun yet. In the evenings Betty drew, while Paula
read aloud--from the library of stray Tauchnitz books Betty had
gleaned from foreign book-stalls. It was a very busy, pleasant
home-life. And the studio life did not lack interest.

Betty suffered a martyrdom of nervousness when first--a little
late--she entered the Atelier. It is a large light room; a
semi-circular alcove at one end, hung with pleasant-coloured drapery,
holds a grand piano. All along one side are big windows that give on
an old garden--once a convent garden where nuns used to walk, telling
their beads. The walls are covered with sketches, posters, studies.
Betty looked nervously round--the scene was agitatingly unfamiliar.
The strange faces, the girls in many-hued painting pinafores, the
little forest of easels, and on the square wooden platform the
model--smooth, brown, with limbs set, moveless as a figure of wax.

Betty got to work, as soon as she knew how one began to get to work.
It was her first attempt at a drawing from the life, saving certain
not unsuccessful caricatures of her fellow pupils, her professor and
her chaperon. So far she had only been set to do landscape, and
laborious drawings of casts from the antique. The work was much harder
than she had expected. And the heat was overpowering. She wondered how
these other girls could stand it. Their amused, half-patronising,
half-disdainful glances made her furious.

She rubbed out most of the lines she had put in and gasped for breath.

The room, the students, the naked brown girl on the model's throne,
all swam before her eyes. She got to the door somehow, opened and shut
it, and found herself sitting on the top stair with closed eyelids and
heart beating heavily.

[Illustration: "Betty looked nervously around--the scene was
agitatingly unfamiliar"]

Some one held water to her lips. She was being fanned with a
handkerchief.

"I'm all right," she said.

"Yes, it's hotter than usual to-day," said the handkerchief-holder,
fanning vigorously.

"Why do they have it so hot?" asked poor Betty.

"Because of the model, of course. Poor thing! she hasn't got a nice
blue gown and a pinky-greeny pinafore to keep her warm. We have to try
to match the garden of Eden climate--when we're drawing from a girl
who's only allowed to use Eve's fashion plates."

Betty laughed and opened her eyes.

"How jolly of you to come out after me," she said.

"Oh, I was just the same at first. All right now? I ought to get back.
You just sit here till you feel fit again. So long!"

So Betty sat there on the bare wide brown stair, staring at the
window, till things had steadied themselves, and then she went back to
her work.

Her easel was there, and her half-rubbed out drawing--No, that was not
her drawing. It was a head, vaguely but very competently sketched, a
likeness--no, a caricature--of Betty herself.

She looked round--one quick but quite sufficient look. The girl next
her, and the one to that girl's right, were exchanging glances, and
the exchange ceased just too late. Betty saw.

From then till the rest Betty did not look at the model. She looked,
but furtively, at those two girls. When, at the rest-time, the model
stretched and yawned and got off her throne and into a striped
petticoat, most of the students took their "easy" on the stairs: among
these the two.

Betty, who never lacked courage, took charcoal in hand and advanced
quite boldly to the easel next to her own.

How she envied the quality of the drawing she saw there. But envy does
not teach mercy. The little sketch that Betty left on the corner of
the drawing was quite as faithful, and far more cruel, than the one on
her own paper. Then she went on to the next easel. The few students
who were chatting to the model looked curiously at her and giggled
among themselves.

When the rest was over and the model had reassumed, quite easily and
certainly, that pose of the uplifted arms which looked so difficult,
the students trooped back and the two girls--Betty's enemies, as she
bitterly felt--returned to their easels. They looked at their
drawings, they looked at each other, and they looked at Betty. And
when they looked at her they smiled.

"Well done!" the girl next her said softly. "For a tenderfoot you hit
back fairly straight. I guess you'll do!"

"You're very kind," said Betty haughtily.

"Don't you get your quills up," said the girl. "I hit first, but you
hit hardest. I don't know you,--but I want to."

She smiled so queer yet friendly a smile that Betty's haughtiness had
to dissolve in an answering smile.

"My name's Betty Desmond," she said. "I wonder why you wanted to hit a
man when he was down."

"My!" said the girl, "how was I to surmise about you being down? You
looked dandy enough--fit to lick all creation."

"I've never been in a studio before," said Betty, fixing fresh paper.

"My!" said the girl again. "Turn the faucet off now. The model don't
like us to whisper. Can't stand the draught."

So Betty was silent, working busily. But next day she was greeted with
friendly nods and she had some one to speak to in the rest-intervals.

On the third day she was asked to a studio party by the girl who had
fanned her on the stairs. "And bring your friend with you," she said.

But Betty's friend had a headache that day. Betty went alone and came
home full of the party.

"She's got such a jolly studio," she said; "ever so high up,--and
busts and casts and things. Everyone was so nice to me you can't
think: it was just like what one hears of Girton Cocoa parties. We had
tea--such weak tea, Paula, it could hardly crawl out of the teapot! We
had it out of green basins. And the loveliest cakes! There were only
two chairs, so some of us sat on the sommier and the rest on the
floor."

"Were there any young men?" asked Paula.

"Two or three very, very young ones--they came late. But they might as
well have been girls; there wasn't any flirting or nonsense of that
sort, Paula. Don't you think _we_ might give a party--not now, but
presently, when we know some more people? Do you think they'd like it?
Or would they think it a bore?"

"They'd love it, I should think." Paula looked round the room which
already she loved. "And what did you all talk about?"

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