"We can make do for this afternoon, Miss, but the men they're
getting blowed out with shirts. It's the children's shifts as we
can't make shift without much longer." Mrs. James, habitually
doleful, punctuated her speech with sniffs.
"That's a joke, Mrs. James," said Betty. "How
clever you are!"
"I try to be what's fitting," said Mrs. James,
complacently.
"Talk of fitting," said Betty, "If you like I'll
fit on that black bodice for you, Mrs. Symes. If the other ladies
don't mind waiting for the reading a little bit."
"I'd as lief talk as read, myself," said a red-faced
sandy-haired woman; "books ain't what they was in my young
days."
"If it's the same to you, Miss," said Mrs. Symes in a
thick rich voice, "I'll not be tried on afore a room full. If we
are poor we can all be clean's what I say, and I keeps my unders as I
keeps my outside. But not before persons as has real imitation lace on
their petticoat bodies. I see them when I was a
nursing her with her fourth. No, Miss, and thanking you kindly, but begging
your pardon all the same."
"Don't mention it," said Betty absently. "Oh,
Mrs. Smith, you can't have lost your thimble already. Why what's
that you've got in your mouth?"
"So it is!" Mrs. Smith's face beamed at the gratifying
coincidence. "It always was my habit, from a child, to put things
there for safety."
"These cheap thimbles ain't fit to put in your mouth, no more
than coppers," said Mrs. James, her mouth full of pins.
"Oh, nothing hurts you if you like it," said Betty
recklessly. She had been reading the works of Mr. G.K. Chesterton.
A shocked murmur arose.
"Oh, Miss, what about the publy kows?" said Mrs. Symes
heavily. The others nodded acquiescence.
"Don't you think we might have a window open?" said
Betty. The May sunshine beat on the schoolroom windows. The room, crowded
with the stout members of the "Mother's Meeting and Mutual
Clothing Club," was stuffy, unbearable.
A murmur arose far more shocked than the first.
"I was just a-goin' to say why not close the door, that being
what doors is made for, after all," said Mrs. Symes. "I feel a
sort of draught a creeping up my legs as it is."
The door was shut.
"You can't be too careful," said the red-faced woman;
"we never know what a chill mayn't bring forth. My cousin's
sister-in-law, she had twins, and her aunt come in and says she,
'You're a bit stuffy here, ain't you?' and with that
she opens the window a crack, not meaning no harm, Miss, as it might be
you. And within a year that poor unfortunate woman she popped off, when
least expected. Gas-ulsters, the doctor said. Which it's what you call
chills, if you're a doctor and can't speak plain."
"My poor grandmother come to her end the same way," said
Mrs. Smith, "only with her it was the Bible reader as didn't
shut the door through being so set on shewing off her reading. And my
granny, a clot of blood went to her brain, and her brain went to her head
and she was a corpse inside of fifty minutes."
Every woman in the room was waiting, feverishly alert, for the pause
that should allow her to begin her own detailed narrative of disease.
Mrs. James was easily first in the competition.
"Them quick deaths," she said, "is sometimes a
blessing in disguise to both parties concerned. My poor husband--years
upon years he lingered, and he had a bad leg--talk of bad legs, I wish
you could all have seen it," she added generously.
"Was it the kind that keeps all on a breaking out?" asked
Mrs. Symes hastily, "because my youngest brother had a leg that
nothing couldn't stop. Break out it would do what they might. I'm
sure the bandages I've took off him in a morning!"
Betty clapped her hands.
It was the signal that the reading was going to begin, and the matrons
looked at her resentfully. What call had people to start reading when the
talk was flowing so free and pleasant?
Betty, rather pale, began: "This is a story about a little boy
called Wee Willie Winkie."
"I call that a silly sort of name," whispered Mrs.
Smith.
"Did he make a good end, Miss?" asked Mrs. James
plaintively.
"You'll see," said Betty.
"I like it best when they dies forgiving of everybody and singing
hymns to the last."
"And when they says, 'Mother, I shall meet you
'ereafter in the better land'--that's what makes you
cry so pleasant."
"Do you want me to read or not?" asked Betty in
desperation.
"Yes, Miss, yes," hummed the voices heavy and shrill.
"It's her hobby, poor young thing," whispered Mrs.
Smith, "we all 'as 'em. My own is a light cake to my tea,
and always was. Ush."
Betty read.
When the mothers had wordily gone, she threw open the windows, propped
the door wide with a chair, and went to tea. She had it alone.
"Your Pa's out a parishing," said Letitia, bumping down
the tray in front of her.
"That's a let off anyhow," said Betty to herself, and
she propped up a Stevenson against the tea-pot.
After tea parishioners strolled up by ones and twos and threes to change
their books at the Vicarage lending library. The books were covered with
black calico, and smelt of rooms whose windows were never opened.
When she had washed the smell of the books off she did her hair very
carefully in a new way that seemed becoming, and went down to supper.
Her stepfather only spoke once during the meal; he was luxuriating in
the thought of the Summa Theologiæ of Aquinas in
leather, still brown and beautiful, which he had providentially discovered
in the washhouse of an ailing parishioner. When he did speak he said:
"How extremely untidy your hair is, Lizzie. I wish you would take
more pains with your appearance."
When he had withdrawn to his books she covered three new volumes for the
library: the black came off on her hands, but anyway it was clean dirt.
She went to bed early.
"And that's my life," she said as she blew out the
candle.
Said Mrs. James to Mrs. Symes over the last and strongest cup of
tea:
"Miss Betty's ailing a bit, I fancy. Looked a trifle
peaky, it seemed to me. I shouldn't wonder if she was to go off in a
decline like her father did."
"It wasn't no decline," said Mrs. Symes, dropping her
thick voice, "'e was cut off in the midst of his wicked courses.
A judgment if ever there was one."
Betty's blameless father had been killed in the hunting field.
"I daresay she takes after him, only being a female it all turns
to her being pernicketty in her food and allus wanting the windows open.
And mark my words, it may turn into a decline yet, Mrs. Symes, my
dear."
Mrs. Symes laughed fatly. "That ain't no decline," she
said, "you take it from me. What Miss Betty wants is a young man. It
is but nature after all, and what we must all come to, gentle or simple.
Give her a young man to walk out with and you'll see the difference.
Decline indeed! A young man's what she wants. And if I know anything
of gells and their ways she'll get one, no matter how close the old
chap keeps her."
Mrs. Symes was not so wrong as the delicate-minded may suppose.
Betty did indeed desire to fall in love. In all the story-books the main
interest of the heroine's career began with that event. Not that she
voiced the desire to herself. Only once she voiced it in her prayers.
"Oh, God," she said, "do please let something
happen!"
That was all. A girl had her little reticences, even with herself, even
with her Creator.
Next morning she planned to go sketching; but no, there were three more
detestable books to be put into nasty little black cotton coats, the
drawing-room to be dusted with all its hateful china, the peas to be
shelled for dinner.
She shelled the peas in the garden. It was a beautiful green garden, and
lovers could have walked very happily down the lilac-bordered paths.
"Oh, how sick I am of it all!" said Betty. She would not
say, even to herself, that what she hated was the frame without the
picture.
As she carried in the peas she passed the open window of the study
where, among shelves of dull books and dusty pamphlets, her stepfather had,
as usual, forgotten his sermon in a chain of references to the Fathers.
Betty saw his thin white hairs, his hard, narrow face and tight mouth, the
hands yellow and claw-like that gripped the thin vellum folio.
"I suppose even he was young once," she said, "but
I'm sure he doesn't remember it."
He saw her go by, young and alert in the sunshine, and the May air
stirred the curtains. He looked vaguely about him, unlocked a drawer in his
writing-table, and took out a leather case. He gazed long at the face
within, a young bright face with long ringlets above the formal bodice and
sloping shoulders of the sixties.
"Well, well," he said, "well, well," locked it
away, and went back to De Poenis Parvulorum.
"I will go out," said Betty, as she parted with
the peas. "I don't care!"
It was not worth while to change one's frock. Even when one was
properly dressed, at rare local garden-party or flower-show, one never met
anyone that mattered.
She fetched her sketching things. At eighteen one does so pathetically
try to feed the burgeoning life with the husks of polite accomplishment.
She insisted on withholding from the clutches of the Parish the time to
practise Beethoven and Sullivan for an hour daily. Daily, for half an hour,
she read an improving book. Just now it was The French
Revolution, and Betty thought it would last till she was sixty. She
tried to read French and
German--Télémaque and Maria
Stuart. She fully intended to become all that a cultured young
woman should be.
But self-improvement is a dull game when there is no one to applaud your
score.
What the gardener called the gravel path was black earth, moss-grown.
Very pretty, but Betty thought it shabby.
It was soft and cool, though, to the feet, and the dust of the white
road sparkled like diamond dust in the sunlight. She crossed the road and
passed through the swing gate into the park, where the grass was up for
hay, with red sorrel and buttercups and tall daisies and feathery flowered
grasses, their colours all tangled and blended together like ravelled ends
of silk on the wrong side of some great square of tapestry.
Here and there in the wide sweep of tall growing things stood a
tree--a may-tree shining like silver, a laburnum like fine gold. There
were horse-chestnuts whose spires of blossom shewed like fat candles on a
Christmas tree for giant children. And the sun was warm and the tree
shadows black on the grass.
Betty told herself that she hated it all. She took the narrow
path--the grasses met above her feet--crossed the park, and
reached the rabbit warren, where the chalk breaks through the thin dry
turf, and the wild thyme grows thick.
A may bush, overhanging a little precipice of chalk, caught her eye. A
wild rose was tangled round it. It was, without doubt, the most difficult
composition within sight.
"I will sketch that," said Eighteen, confidently.
For half an hour she busily blotted and washed and niggled. Then she
became aware that she no longer had the rabbit warren to herself.
"And he's an artist, too!" said Betty. "How
awfully interesting! I wish I could see his face."
But this his slouched Panama forbade. He was in white, the sleeve and
breast of his painting jacket smeared with many colours; he had a
camp-stool and an easel and looked, she could not help feeling,
much more like a real artist than she did, hunched up as she was on a
little mound of turf, in her shabby pink gown and that hateful garden hat
with last year's dusty flattened roses in it.
She went on sketching with feverish unskilled fingers, and a pulse that
had actually quickened its beat.
She cast little glances at him as often as she dared. He was certainly a
real artist. She could tell that by the very way he held his palette. Was
he staying with people about there? Should she meet him? Would they ever be
introduced to each other?
"Oh, what a pity," said Betty from the heart, "that we
aren't introduced now."
Her sketch grew worse and worse.
"It's no good," she said. "I can't do
anything with it."
She glanced at him. He had pushed back the hat. She saw quite plainly
that he was smiling--a very little, but he was smiling.
Also he was looking at her, and across the fifteen yards of gray turf their
eyes met. And she knew that he knew that this was not her first glance at
him.
She paled with fury.
"He has been watching me all the time! He is making fun of me. He
knows I can't sketch. Of course he can see it by the silly way I hold
everything." She ran her knife around her sketch, detached it, and
tore it across and across.
The stranger raised his hat and called eagerly.
"I say--please don't move for a minute. Do you mind?
I've just got your pink gown. It's coming beautifully. Between
brother artists--Do, please! Do sit still and go on
sketching.--Ah, do!"
Betty's attitude petrified instantly. She held a brush in her hand,
and she looked down at her block. But she did not go on sketching. She sat
rigid and three delicious words rang in her ears. "Between brother
artists!" How very, very nice of
him! He hadn't been mak ing fun, after all. But wasn't it rather
impertinent of him to put her in his picture without asking her? Well, it
wasn't she but her pink gown he wanted. And "between brother
artists." Betty drew a long breath.
"It's no use," he called; "don't bother any
more. The pose is gone."
She rose to her feet and he came towards her.
"Let me see the sketch," he said. "Why did you tear it
up?" He fitted the pieces together. "Why, it's quite good.
You ought to study in Paris," he added idly.
She took the torn papers from his hand with a bow, and turned to go.
"Don't go," he said. "You're not going?
Don't you want to look at my picture?"
Now Betty knew as well as you do that you musn't speak to people
unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother
artists" had played ninepins with her little conventions.
"Thank you. I should like to very much," said Betty.
"I don't care," she said to herself, "and besides,
it's not as if he were a young man, or a tourist, or anything. He must
be ever so old--thirty; I shouldn't wonder if he was
thirty-five."
When she saw the picture she merely said, "Oh," and stood at
gaze. For it was a picture--a picture that, seen in
foreign lands, might well make one sick with longing for the dry turf and
the pale dog violets that love the chalk, for the hum of the bees and the
scent of the thyme. He had chosen the bold sweep of the brown upland
against the sky, and low to the left, where the line broke, the dim violet
of the Kentish hills. In the green foreground the pink figure, just roughly
blocked in, was blocked in by a hand that knew its trade, and was artist to
the tips of its fingers.
"Oh," said Betty again.
"Yes," said he, "I think I've got it this time. I
think it'll make a hole in the wall, eh? Yes: it is good."
"Yes," said Betty; "oh, yes."
"Do you often go a-sketching?" he asked.
"How modest he is," thought Betty; "he changes the
subject so as not to seem to want to be praised." Aloud she answered
with shy fluttered earnestness:
"Yes--no. I don't know. Sometimes."
His lips were grave, but there was the light behind his eyes that goes
with a smile.
"What unnecessary agitation!" he was thinking. "Poor
little thing, I suppose she's never seen a man before. Oh, these
country girls!"
Aloud he was saying: "This is such a perfect country. You ought to
sketch every day."
"I've no one to teach me," said Betty, innocently
phrasing a long-felt want.
The man raised his eyebrows. "Well, after that, here goes!"
he said to himself. "I wish you'd let me teach
you," he said to her, beginning to put his traps together.
"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Betty in real distress.
What would he think of her? How greedy and grasping she must seem! "I
didn't mean that at all."
"No; but I do," he said.
"But you're a great artist," said Betty, watching him
with clasped hands. "I suppose it would be--I
mean--don't you know, we're not rich, and I suppose your
lessons are worth pounds and pounds."
"I don't give lessons for money," his lips tightened,
"only for love."
"That means nothing, doesn't it?" she said, and flushed
to find herself on the defensive feebly against--nothing.
"At tennis, yes," he said, and to himself he added:
"Vieux jeu, my dear, but you did it
very prettily."
"But I couldn't let you give me lessons for
nothing."
"Why not?" he asked. And his calmness made Betty feel
ashamed and sordid.
"I don't know," she answered tremulously, ...
"but I don't think my stepfather would want me to."
"You think it would annoy him?"
"I'm sure it would, if he knew about it."
Betty was thinking how little her stepfather had ever cared to know of
her and her interests. But the man caught the ball as he saw it.
"Then why let him know?" was the next move; and it seemed to
him that Betty's move of rejoinder came with a readiness born of some
practice at the game.
"Oh," she said innocently, "I never thought of that.
But wouldn't it be wrong?"
"She's got the whole thing stereotyped. But it's dainty
type anyhow," he thought. "Of course it wouldn't be
wrong," he said. "It wouldn't hurt him. Don't you
know that nothing's wrong unless it hurts somebody?"
"Yes," she said eagerly, "that's what I think.
But all the same it doesn't seem fair that you should take all that
trouble for me and get nothing in return."
"Well played! We're getting on!" he thought, and added
aloud: "But perhaps I shan't get nothing in return?"
Her eyes dropped over the wonderful thought that perhaps she might do
something for him. But what? She looked straight at him, and the innocent
appeal sent a tiny thorn of doubt through his armour of complacent
cynicism. Was she--after all? No, no novice could play the game so
well. And yet--
"I would do anything I could, you know," she said eagerly,
"because it is so awfully kind of you, and I do so want to be able to
paint. What can I do?"
"What can you do?" he asked, and brought his face a little
nearer to the pretty flushed, freckled face
under the shabby hat. Her eyes met his. He felt a quick relenting and drew
back.
"Well, for one thing you could let me paint your
portrait."
Betty was silent.
"Come, play up, you little duffer," he urged inwardly.
When she spoke her voice trembled.
"I don't know how to thank you," she said.
"And you will?"
"Oh, I will; indeed I will."
"How good and sweet you are," he said. Then there was a
silence.
Betty tightened the strap of her sketching things and said:
"I think I ought to go home now."
He had the appropriate counter ready.
"Ah, don't go yet!" he said; "let us sit down;
see, that bank is quite in the shade now, and tell me--"
"Tell you what?" she asked, for he had made the artistic
pause.
"Oh, anything--anything about yourself."
Betty was as incapable of flight as any bird on a limed twig.
She walked beside him to the bank, and sat down at his bidding, and he
lay at her feet, looking up into her eyes. He asked idle questions: she
answered them with a conscientious tremulous truthfulness that showed to
him as the most finished art. And it seemed to him a very fortunate
accident that he should have found here, in this unlikely spot, so
accomplished a player at his favorite game. Yet it was the variety of his
game for which he cared least. He did not greatly relish a skilled
adversary. Betty told him nervously and in words ill-chosen everything that
he asked to know, but all the while the undercurrent of questions rang
strong within her.
"When is he to teach me? Where? How?" So
that when at last there was left but the bare fifteen minutes needed to get
one home in time for the midday dinner she said abruptly:
"And when shall I see you again?"
"You take the words out of my mouth," said he. And indeed
she had. "She has no finesse
yet," he told himself. "She might have left that move to
me."
"The lessons, you know," said Betty, "and, and the
picture, if you really do want to do it."
"If I want to do it!--you know I want to do it. Yes.
It's like the nursery game. How, when and where? Well, as to the
how--I can paint and you can learn. The where--there's a
circle of pines in the wood here. You know it? A sort of giant fairy
ring?"
She did know it.
"Now for the when--and that's the most important. I
should like to paint you in the early morning when the day is young and
innocent and beautiful--like--like--" He was careful
to break off in a most natural seeming embarrassment. "That's a
bit thick, but she'll swallow it all right. Gone down? Right!"
he told himself.
"I could come out at six if you liked, or--or five,"
said Betty, humbly anxious to do her part.
He was almost shocked. "My good child," he told her
silently, "someone really ought to teach you not to do
all the running. You don't give a man a
chance."
"Then will you meet me here to-morrow at six?" he said.
"You won't disappoint me, will you?" he added
tenderly.
"No," said downright Betty, "I'll be sure to
come. But not to-morrow," she added with undisguised regret;
"to-morrow's Sunday."
"Monday then," said he, "and good-bye."
"Good-bye, and--oh, I don't know how to thank
you!"
"I'm very much mistaken if you don't," he said as
he stood bareheaded, watching the pink gown out of sight. "Well,
adventures to the adventurous! A clergyman's daughter, too. I might
have known it."
She slipped into her place at the foot of the long white dining table, a
table built to serve a dozen guests, and where no guests ever sat, save
rarely a curate or two, and more rarely even, an aunt.
"You are late again, Lizzie," said her stepfather.
"Yes, Father," said she, trying to hide her hands and the
fact that she had not had time to wash them. A long streak of burnt sienna
marked one finger, and her nails had little slices of various colours in
them. Her paint-box was always hard to open.
Usually Mr. Underwood saw nothing. But when he saw anything he saw
everything. His eye was caught by the green smudge on her pink sleeve.
"I wish you would contrive to keep yourself clean, or else wear a
pinafore," he said.
Betty flushed scarlet.
"I'm very sorry," she said, "but it's only
water colour. It will wash out."
"You are nearly twenty, are you not?" the Vicar inquired
with the dry smile that always infuriated his stepdaughter. How was she to
know that it was the only smile he knew, and that smiles of any sort had
long grown difficult to him?
"Eighteen," she said.
"It is almost time you began to think about being a
lady."
This was badinage. No failures had taught the Reverend Cecil that his
stepdaughter had an ideal of him in which badinage had no place. She merely
supposed that he wished to be disagreeable.
She kept a mutinous silence. The old man sighed. It is one's duty
to correct the faults of one's child, but it is not pleasant. The
Reverend Cecil had not the habit of shirking any duty because he happened
to dislike it.
The mutton was taken away.
Betty, her whole being transfigured by the emotions of the morning,
stirred the stewed rhubarb on her plate. She felt rising in her a sort of
wild forlorn courage. Why shouldn't she speak out? Her stepfather
couldn't hate her more than he did, whatever she said. He might even
be glad to be rid of her. She spoke suddenly and rather loudly before she
knew that she had meant to speak at all.
"Father," she said, "I wish you'd let me go to
Paris and study art. Not now," she hurriedly explained with a sudden
vision of being taken at her word and packed off to France before six
o'clock on Monday morning, "not now, but later. In the autumn
perhaps. I would work very hard. I wish you'd let me."
He put on his spectacles and looked at her with wistful kindness. She
read in his glance only a frozen contempt.
"No, my child," he said. "Paris is a sink of iniquity.
I passed a week there once, many years ago. It was at the time of the Great
Exhibition.
You are growing discontented, Lizzie. Work is the cure for that. Mrs. Symes
tells me that the chemises for the mother's sewing meetings are not
cut out yet."
"I'll cut them out to-day. They haven't finished the
shirts yet, anyway," said Betty; "but I do wish you'd just
think about Paris, or even London."
"You can have lessons at home if you like. I believe there are
excellent drawing mistresses in Sevenoaks. Mrs. Symes was recommending one
of them to me only the other day. With certificates from the High School I
seem to remember her saying."
"But that's not what I want," said Betty with a courage
that surprised her as much as it surprised him. "Don't you see,
Father, one gets older every day, and presently I shall be quite old, and I
shan't have been anywhere or seen anything."
He thought he laughed indulgently at the folly of youth. She thought his
laugh the most contemptuous, the cruelest sound in the world. "He
doesn't deserve that I should tell him about Him," she thought,
"and I won't. I don't care!"
"No, no," he said, "no, no, no. The home is the place
for girls.--The safe quiet shelter of the home. Perhaps some day your
husband will take you abroad for a fortnight now and then. If you manage to
get a husband, that is."
He had seen, through his spectacles, her flushed prettiness, and old as
he was he remembered well enough how a face like hers would seem to a young
man's eyes. Of course she would get a husband! So he spoke in kindly
irony. And she hated him for a wanton insult.
"Try to do your duty in that state of life to which you are
called," he went on: "occupy yourself with music and books and
the details of housekeeping. No,--don't have my study turned
out," he added in haste, remembering how this advice about household
details had been followed when last he gave it. "Don't be a
discontented child. Go and cut out the nice little chemises." This
seemed to him almost a touch of kindly humour, and he went back to
Augustine, pleased with himself.
Betty set her teeth and went, black rage in her heart, to cut out the
hateful little chemises.
She dragged the great roll of evil-smelling, grayish unbleached calico
from the school-room cupboard and heaved it on to the table. It was very
heavy. The scissors were blunt and left deep red-blue indentations on
finger and thumb. She was rather pleased that the scissors hurt so
much.
"Father doesn't care a single bit, he hates me," she
said, "and I hate him. Oh, I do."
She would not think of the morning. Not now, with this fire of impotent
resentment burning in her, would she take out those memories and look at
them. Those were not thoughts to be dragged through the litter of
unbleached cotton cuttings. She worked on doggedly, completed the tale of
hot heavy little garments, gathered up the pieces into the wastepaper
basket and put away the roll.
Not till the paint had been washed from her hands, and the crumbled
print dress exchanged for a quite respectable muslin did she consciously
allow the morning's memories to come out and meet her eyes. Then she
went down to the arbour where she had shelled peas only that morning.
"It seems years and years ago," she said. And sitting there,
she slowly and carefully went over everything. What he had said, what she
had said. There were some things she could not quite remember. But she
remembered enough. "Brother artists" were the words she said
oftenest to herself, but the words that sank themselves were, "young
and innocent and beautiful like--like--"
"But he couldn't have meant me, of course," she told
herself.
And on Monday she would see him again,--and he would give her a
lesson.
Sunday was incredibly wearisome. Her Sunday-school class had never been
so tiresome nor so soaked in hair-oil. In church she was shocked to find
herself watching, from her pew in the chancel, the entry of late
comers--of whom He was not one. No afternoon had ever been half so
long. She wrote up her diary. Thursday and Friday were quickly chronicled.
At Saturday she paused long, pen in hand, and there wrote very quickly:
"I went out sketching and met a gentleman, an artist. He was very
kind and is going to teach me to paint and he is going to paint my
portrait. I do not like him particularly. He is rather old and not really
good-looking. I shall not tell father, because he is simply hateful to me.
I am going to meet this artist at six to-morrow. It will be dreadful having
to get up so early. I almost wish I hadn't said I would go. It will be
such a bother."
Then she hid the diary in a drawer, under her confirmation dress and
veil, and locked the drawer carefully.
He was not at church in the evening either. He had thought of it, but
decided that it was too much trouble to get into decent clothes.
"I shall see her soon enough," he thought, "curse my
impulsive generosity! Six o'clock, forsooth, and all to please a
clergyman's daughter."
She came back from church with tired steps.
"I do hope I'm not going to be ill," she said. "I
feel so odd, just as if I hadn't had anything to eat for
days,--and yet I'm not a bit hungry either. I daresay I
shan't wake up in time to get there by six."
She was awake before five.
She woke with a flutter of the heart. What was it? Had anything
happened? Was anyone ill? Then she recognized that she was not unhappy.
And she felt more than ever as though it were days since she had had
anything to eat.
"Oh, dear," said Betty, jumping out of bed. "I'm
going out, to meet Him, and have a drawing-lesson!"
She dressed quickly. It was too soon to start. Not for anything must she
be first at the rendezvous, even though it were only for a drawing-lesson.
That "only" pulled her up sharply.
When she was dressed she dug out the diary and wrote:
"This is terrible. Is it possible that I have fallen in love with
him? I don't know. 'Who ever loved that loved not at first
sight?' It is a most frightful tragedy to happen to one, and at my
age too! What a long life of loneliness stretches in front of me! For of
course he could never care for me. And if this is
love--well, it will be once and forever with me, I know. That's
my nature, I'm afraid. But I'm not,--I can't be. But I
never felt so unlike myself. I feel a sort of calm exultation, as if
something very wonderful was very near me. Dear Diary, what a comfort it is
to have you to tell everything to!"
It seemed to her that she must certainly be late. She had to creep down
the front stairs so very slowly and softly in order that she might not
awaken her stepfather. She had so carefully and silently to unfasten a
window and creep out, to close the window again, without noise, lest the
maids should hear and come running to see why their young mistress was out
of her bed at that hour. She had to go on tiptoe through the shrubbery and
out through the church yard. One could climb its wall, and get into the
park that way, so as not to meet labourers on the road who would stare to
see her alone so early and perhaps follow her. Once in the park she was
safe. Her shoes and her skirts were wet with dew. She made haste. She did
not want to keep him waiting.
But she was first at the rendezvous, after all.
She sat down on the carpet of pine needles. How pretty the early morning
was. The sunlight was quite different from the evening sunlight, so much
lighter and brighter. And the shadows were different. She tried to settle
on a point of view for her sketch, the sketch he was to help her with.
Her thoughts went back to what she had written in her diary. If that
should be true she must be very, very careful. He must never
guess it, never. She would be very cold and distant and polite. Not
hail-fellow well met with a "brother artist," like she had been
before. It was all very difficult indeed. Even if it really did turn out to
be true, if the wonderful thing had happened to her, if she really was in
love, she would not try a bit to make him like her. That would be forward
and "horrid." She would never try to attract any man. Those
things must come of themselves or not at all.
She arranged her skirt in more effective folds, and wondered how it
would look as one came up the woodland path. She thought it would look
rather picturesque. It was a nice heliotrope colour. It would look like a
giant Parma violet against the dark green background. She hoped her hair
was tidy. And that her hat was not very crooked. However little one desires
to attract, one may at least wish one's hat to be straight.
She looked for the twentieth time at her watch, the serviceable silver
watch that had been her mother's. Half-past six and he had not
come.
Well, when he did come she would pretend she had only just got there. Or
how would it be if she gave up being a Parma violet and went a little way
down the path and then turned back when she heard him coming? She walked
away a dozen yards and stood waiting. But he did not come. Was it possible
that he was not coming? Was he ill,--lying uncared for at the Peal of
Bells in the village,
with no one to smooth his pillow or put eau de cologne on his head?
She walked a hundred yards or so towards the village on the spur of this
thought.
Or perhaps he had come by another way to the trysting place. That
thought drove her back. He was not there.
Well, she would not stay any longer. She would just go away, and come
back ever so much later, and let him have a taste of waiting. She had had
her share, she told herself, as she almost ran from the spot. She stopped
suddenly. But suppose he did not wait? She went slowly
back.
She sat down again, schooled herself to patience.
What an idiot she had been. Like any school-girl. Of course he had never
meant to come. Why should he? That page in her diary called out to her to
come home and burn it. Care for him indeed! Not she! Why, she hadn't
exchanged ten words with the man!
"But I knew it was all nonsense when I wrote it," she said.
"I only just put it down to see what it would look like."
Mr. Eustace Vernon roused himself, and yawned.
"It's got to be done, I suppose. Buck up,--you'll
feel better after your bath! Jove! Seven o'clock. Will she have
waited? She's a keen player if she has. It's just worth trying, I
suppose."
The church clock struck the half-hour as he turned into the wood.
Something palely violet came towards him.
"So you are here," he said. "Where's
the pink frock?"
"It's--it's going to the wash," said a stiff
and stifled voice. "I'm sorry I couldn't get here at six. I
hope you didn't wait long?"
"Not very long," he said, smiling; "but--great
Heavens, what on earth is the matter?"
"Nothing," she said.
"But you've been--you are"
"I'm not," she said defiantly,--"besides,
I've got neuralgia. It always makes me look like that."
"My aunt!" he thought, "then she was here
at six and--she's been crying because I wasn't and--oh,
where are we?"
"I'm so sorry you've got neuralgia," he said
gently, "but I'm awfully glad you didn't get here at six.
Because my watch was wrong and I've only just got here, and I should
never have forgiven myself if you'd waited for me a single minute. Is
the neuralgia better now?"
"Yes," she said, smiling faintly, "much better. It was
rather sharp while it lasted, though."
"Yes," he said, "I see it was. I am so glad you did
come. But I was so certain you wouldn't that I didn't bring any
of my traps. So we can't begin the picture to-day. Will you start a
sketch, or is your neuralgia too bad?"
He knew it would be: and it was.
So they merely sat on the pine carpet and talked till it was time for
her to go back to the late Rectory breakfast. They told each other their
names that day. Betty talked very carefully. It was most important that he
should think well of her. Her manner had changed, as she had promised
herself it should do if she found she cared for him. Now she was with him
she knew, of course, that she did not care at all. What had made her so
wretched--no, so angry--that she had actually cried, was simply
the idea that she had been made a fool of that she had kept the tryst and
he hadn't. Now he had come she was quite calm. She did not care in the
least.
He was saying to himself, "I'm not often wrong, but I was off
the line yesterday. All that doesn't count. We take a fresh deal and
start fair. She doesn't know the game, mais elle a
des moyens. She's never played the game before. And she
cried
because I didn't turn up. And so I'm the first--think of it,
if you please--absolutely the first one! Well: it doesn't detract
from the interest of the game. It's quite a different game and
requires more skill. But not more than I have, perhaps."
They parted with another tryst set for the next morning. The brother
artist note had been skilfully kept vibrating.
Betty was sure that she should never have any feeling for him but mere
friendliness. She was glad of that. It must be dreadful to be really in
love.--So unsettling.
The country had been unfortunately barren of interest until his eyes
fell on that sketching figure in
the pink dress. For he respected one of his arts no less than the other,
and would as soon have thought of painting a vulgar picture as of
undertaking a vulgar love-affair. He was no pavement artist. Nor did he
degrade his art by caricatures drawn in hotel bars. Dairy maids did not
delight him, and the mood was rare with him in which one finds anything to
say to a little milliner. He wanted the means, not the end, and was at one
with the unknown sage who said, "The love of pleasure spoils the
pleasure of love."
There is a gift, less rare than is supposed, of wiping the slate clean
of memories, and beginning all over again. A certain virginity of soul,
that makes each new kiss the first kiss, each new love the only love. This
gift was Vernon's, and he had cultivated it so earnestly, so
delicately, that except in certain moods when he lost his temper, and with
it his control of his impulses, he was able to bring even to a conservatory
flirtation something of the fresh emotion of a schoolboy in love.
Betty's awkwardnesses, which he took for advances, had chilled him
a little, though less than they would have done had not one of the
evil-tempered moods been on him. He had dreaded lest the affair should
advance too quickly. His own taste was for the first steps in an affair of
the heart, the delicate doubts, the planned misunderstandings. He did not
question his own ability to conduct the affair capably from start to
finish, but he hated to skip the dainty preliminaries. He had feared that
with Betty he should have to skip them, for he knew that it is only in
their first love affairs that women have the patience to watch the flower
unfold itself. He himself was of infinite patience in that pastime. He bit
his lip and struck with his cane at the buttercup heads. He had made a
wretched beginning, with his "good and sweet," his "young
and innocent and beautiful like--like--" If the girl had
been a shade less innocent
the whole business would have been muffed--muffed hopelessly.
As it was, she had cried because he did not come. That was a little
crude, but she had snatched at the neuralgia veil. He had got back on to
firm land after that first imbecile launching of unseaworthy boats.
To-morrow he would be there early. A ship of promise should be--not
launched--that was weeks away--the first timbers should be felled
to build a ship to carry him, and her too, of course, a little way towards
the enchanted islands.
He knew the sea well, and it would be pleasant to steer on it one to
whom it was all new--all, all.
"Dear little girl," he said, "I don't suppose she
has ever even thought of love."
He was not in love with her, but he meant to be. He carefully thought of
her all that day, of her hair, her eyes, her hands; her hands were really
beautiful, small, dimpled and well-shaped, not the hands he loved best,
those were long and very slender,--but still beautiful. And before he
went to bed he wrote a little poem, to encourage himself:
Yes. I have loved before; I know
This longing that invades my days,
This shape that haunts life's busy ways
I know since long and long ago.
This starry mystery of delight
That floats across my eager eyes,
This pain that makes earth Paradise,
These magic songs of day and night.
I know them for the things they are:
A passing pain, a longing fleet,
A shape that soon I shall not meet,
A fading dream of veil and star.
Yet, even as my lips proclaim
The wisdom that the years have lent,
Your absence is joy's banishment
And life's one music is your name.
I love you to the heart's hid core:
Those other loves? How can one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no--I never loved before!
After that more than ever rankled the memory of that first morning.
"How could I?" he asked himself. "I must indeed have
been in a gross mood. One seems sometimes to act outside oneself
altogether. Temporary possession by some brutal ancestor perhaps. Well,
it's not too late."
Next morning he worked at his picture, in the rabbit-warren, but his
head found itself turning towards the way by which on that first day she
had gone. She must know that on a day like this he would not be wasting the
light,--that he would be working. She would be wanting to see him
again. Would she come out? He wished she would. But he hoped she
wouldn't. It would have meant another readjustment of ideas. He need
not have been anxious. She did not come.
He worked steadily, masterfully. He always worked best at the beginning
of a love affair. All of him seemed somehow more alive, more awake, more
alert and competent. His mood was growing quickly to what he meant it to
be. He was what actors call a quick study. Soon he would be able to play
perfectly, without so much as a thought to the "book," the part
of Paul to this child's Virginia.
Had Virginia, he wondered, any relations besides the stepfather whom she
so light-heartedly consented to hoodwink?--relations who might
interfere and pray and meddle and spoil things?
However ashamed we may be of our relations they cannot forever be
concealed. It must be owned that Betty was not the lonely orphan she
sometimes pre-
tended to herself to be. She had aunts--an accident that may happen to
the best of us.
A year or two before Betty was born, a certain youth of good birth left
Harrow and went to Ealing, where he was received in a family in the
capacity of Crammer's pup. The family was the Crammer and his
daughter, a hard-headed, tight-mouthed, black-haired young woman who knew
exactly what she wanted, and who meant to get it. Poverty had taught her to
know what she wanted. Nature, and the folly of youth--not her own
youth--taught her how to get it. There were several pups. She selected
the most eligible, secretly married him, and to the day of her death spoke
and thought of the marriage as a love-match. He was a dreamy youth, who
wrote verses and called the Crammer's daughter his Egeria. She was too
clever not to be kind to him, and he adored her and believed in her to the
end, which came before his twenty-first birthday. He broke his neck out
hunting, and died before Betty was born.
His people, exasperated at the news of the marriage, threatened to try
to invalidate it on the score of the false swearing that had been needed to
get the boy of nineteen married to the woman of twenty-four. Egeria was
frightened. She compromised for an annuity of two hundred pounds, to be
continued to her child.
The passion of this woman's life was power. One cannot be very
powerful with just two hundred a year, and a doubtful position as the widow
of a boy whose relations are prepared to dispute one's marriage. Mrs.
Desmond spent three years in thought, and in caring severely for the wants
of her child. Then she bought four handsome dresses, and some impressive
bonnets, went to a hydropathic establishment, and looked about her. Of the
eligible men there Mr. Cecil Underwood seemed, on enquiry, to be the most
eligible. So she married him. He
resisted but little, for his parish needed a clergywoman sadly. The two
hundred pounds was a welcome addition to an income depleted by the purchase
of rare editions, and at the moment crippled by his recent acquisition of
the Omiliae of Vincentius in its original oak
boards and leather strings; and, above all, he saw in the three-year-old
Betty the child he might have had if things had gone otherwise with him and
another when they both were young.
Mrs. Desmond had felt certain she could rule a parish. Mrs. Cecil
Underwood did rule it--without compromise. She ruled her husband too.
And Betty. When she caught cold from working all day among damp evergreens
for the Christmas decorations, and, developing pneumonia, died, she died
resentfully thanking God that she had always done her duty, and quite
unable to imagine how the world would go on without her. She felt almost
sure that in cutting short her career of usefulness her Creator was guilty
of an error of judgment which He would sooner or later find reason to
regret.
Her husband mourned her. He had the habit of her, of her strong capable
ways, the clockwork precision of her household and parish arrangements. But
as time went on he saw that perhaps he was more comfortable without her: as
a reformed drunkard sees that it is better not to rely on brandy for
one's courage. He saw it, but of course he never owned it to
himself.
Betty was heart-broken, quite sincerely heart-broken. She forgot all the
mother's hard tyrannies, her cramping rules, her narrow bitter creed,
and remembered only the calm competence, amounting to genius, with which
her mother had ruled the village world, her unflagging energy and patience,
and her rare moments of tenderness. She remembered too all her own lapses
from filial duty, and those memories were not comfortable.
Yet Betty too, when the self-tormenting remorseful
stage had worn itself out, found life fuller, freer without her mother. Her
stepfather she hated--had always hated. But he could be avoided. She
went to a boarding-school at Torquay, and some of her holidays were spent
with her aunts, the sisters of the boy-father who had not lived to see
Betty.
She adored the aunts. They lived in a world of which her village world
did not so much as dream; they spoke of things which folks at home neither
knew of nor cared for; and they spoke a language that was not spoken at
Long Barton. Of course, everyone who was anyone at Long Barton spoke in
careful and correct English, but no one ever troubled to turn a phrase. And
irony would have been considered very bad form indeed. Aunt Nina wore
lovely clothes and powdered her still pretty face; Aunt Julia smoked
cigarettes and used words that ladies at Long Barton did not use. Betty was
proud of them both.
It was Aunt Nina who taught Betty how to spend her allowance, how to buy
pretty things, and, better still, tried to teach her how to wear them. Aunt
Julia it was who brought her the Indian necklaces, and promised to take her
to Italy some day if she was good. Aunt Nina lived in Grosvenor Square and
Aunt Julia's address was most often, vaguely, the Continent of Europe.
Sometimes a letter addressed to some odd place in Asia or America would
find her.
But when Betty had left school her visits to Aunt Nina ceased. Mr.
Underwood feared that she was now of an age to be influenced by trifles,
and that London society would make her frivolous. Besides he had missed her
horribly, all through her school-days, though he had submitted because of
the aunts' importunity. But he had wanted Betty badly. Only of course
it never occurred to him to tell her so.
So Betty had lived on at the Rectory carrying on, with more or less of
success such of her mother's
parish workings as had managed to outlive their author, and writing to the
aunts to tell them how bored she was and how she hated to be called
"Lizzie."
She could not be expected to know that her stepfather had known as
"Lizzie" the girl who if Fate had been kind would have been his
wife or the mother of his child. Betty's letters breathed contempt of
parish matters, weariness of the dulness of the country, and exasperation
at the hardness of a lot where "nothing ever happened."
Well, something had happened now.
The tremendous nature of the secret she was keeping against the world
almost took Betty's breath away. It was to the adventure, far more
than to the man, that her heart's beat quickened. Something had
happened. Long Barton was no longer the dullest place in the world. It was
the centre of the universe. See her diary, an entry following a gap where a
page had been torn out.
"Mr. V. is very kind. He is teaching me to sketch. He says I shall
do very well when I have forgotten what I learned at school. It is so nice
of him to be so straightforward. I hate flattery. He has begun my portrait.
It is beautiful, but he says it is exactly like me. Of course it is his
painting that makes it beautiful, and not anything to do with me. That is
not flattery. I do not think he could say anything unless he really thought
it. He is that sort of man, I think. I am so glad he is so good. If he were
a different sort of person perhaps it would not be quite nice for me to go
and meet him without any one knowing. But there is nothing of that
sort. He was quite different the first day. But I think then he was
off his guard and could not help himself. I don't know quite what I
meant by that. But, anyway, I am sure he is as good as gold, and that is
such a comfort. I revere him. I believe he is really noble and unselfish,
and so few men are, alas."
The noble and unselfish Vernon meanwhile was quite happy. His picture
was going splendidly, and every morning he woke to the knowledge that his
image filled all the thoughts of a good little girl with grey, dark
charming eyes and a face that reminded one of a pretty kitten. Her drawing
was not half bad either. He was spared the mortifying labour of trying to
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. In one of his arts as in the
other he decided that she had talent. And it was pleasant that to him
should have fallen the task of teacher in both departments. Those who hunt
the fox will tell you that Reynard enjoys, equally with the hounds and
their masters, the pleasures of the chase. Vernon was quite of this opinion
in regard to his favourite sport. He really felt that he gave as much
pleasure as he took. And his own forgettings were so easy that the easy
forgetting of others seemed a foregone conclusion. His forgetting always
came first, that was all. But now, the Spring, her charm and his own firm
parti pris working together, it seemed to him
that he could never forget Betty, could never wish to forget her.
Her pretty conscious dignity charmed him. He stood still to look at it.
He took no step forward. His rôle was
that of the deeply respectful "brother artist." If his hand
touched hers as he corrected her drawing, that was accident. If, as he
leaned over her, criticising her work, the wind sent the end of her hair
against his ear, that could hardly be avoided in a breezy English spring.
It was not his fault that the little thrill it gave him was intensified a
hundred fold when, glancing at her, he perceived that her own ears had
grown scarlet.
Betty went through her days in a dream. There were all the duties she
hated--the mothers' meetings, the parish visits when she tried to
adjust the quarrels and calm the jealousies of the stout aggressive
mothers, the carrying round the Parish Magazine. There were
no long hours, now. In every spare moment she
worked at her drawing to please Him. It was the least she could do, after
all his kindness.
Her stepfather surprised her once hard at work with charcoal and board
and plumb-line, a house-maid posing for her with a broom. He congratulated
himself that his little sermon on the advantages of occupation as a cure
for discontent had borne fruit so speedy and so sound.
"Dear child, she only wanted a word in season," he thought.
And he said:
"I am glad to see that you have put away vain dreams, Lizzie. And
your labours will not be thrown away, either. If you go on taking pains I
daresay you will be able to paint some nice blotting-books and screens for
the School Bazaar."
"I daresay," said Betty, adding between her teeth, "if
you only knew!"
"But we mustn't keep Letitia from her work," he added,
vaguely conscientious. Letitia flounced off, and Betty, his back turned,
tore up the drawing.
And, as a beautiful background to the gross realism of Mothers'
meetings and parish tiresomenesses, was always the atmosphere of the golden
mornings, the dew and the stillness, the gleam of his white coat among the
pine-trees. For he was always first at the tryst now.
Betty was drunk; and she was too young to distinguish between vintages.
When she had been sober she had feared intoxication. Now she was drunk, she
thanked Heaven that she was sober.
Betty stood for full five minutes looking out at the straight fine fall,
at the white mist spread on the lawn, the blue mist twined round the trees,
listening to the plash, plash of the drops that gathered and fell from the
big wet ivy leaves, to the guggle of the water-spout, the hiss of smitten
gravel.
"He'll never go," she thought, and her heart sank.
He, shaving, in the chill damp air by his open dimity-draped window, was
saying:
"She'll be there, of course. Women are all perfectly
insensible to weather."
Two mackintoshed figures met in the circle of pines.
"You have come," he said. "I never dreamed you would.
How cold your hand is."
He held it for a moment warmly clasped.
"I thought it might stop any minute," said Betty; "it
seemed a pity to waste a morning."
"Yes," he said musingly, "it would be a pity to waste
a morning. I would not waste one of these mornings for a
kingdom."
Betty fumbled with her sketching things as a sort of guarantee of good
faith.
"But it's too wet to work," said she. "I suppose
I'd better go home again."
"That seems a dull idea--for me," he said;
"it's very selfish, of course, but I'm rather sad this
morning. Won't you stay a little and cheer me up?"
Betty asked nothing better. But even to her a
tête-àtête in a wood, with
rain pattering and splashing on leaves and path and resonant mackintoshes,
seemed to demand some excuse.
"I should think breakfast and being dry would cheer you up better
than anything," said she. "And it's very wet
here."
"Hang breakfast. But you're right about the wetness.
There's a shed in the field yonder. A harrow and a plough live there;
they're sure to be at home on a day like this. Let's go and ask
for their hospitality."
"I hope they'll be nice to us," laughed Betty;
"it's dreadful to go where you're not wanted."
"How do you know?" he asked, laughing too. "Come, give
me your hand and let's run for it."
They ran, hand in hand, the wet mackintoshes flapping and slapping about
their knees, and drew up laughing and breathless in the dry quiet of the
shed. Vernon thought of Love and Mr. Lewisham, but it was
not the moment to say so.
"See, they are quite pleased to see us," said he,
"they don't say a word against our sheltering here. The plough
looks a bit glum, but she'll grow to like us pres ently. As for
harrow, look how he's smiling welcome at you with all his
teeth."
"I'm glad he can't come forward to welcome us,"
said Betty. "His teeth look very fierce."
"He could, of course, only he's enchanted. He used to be able
to move about, but now he's condemned to sit still and only smile
till--till he sees two perfectly happy people. Are you perfectly
happy?" he asked anxiously.
"I don't know," said Betty truly. "Are
you?"
"No--not quite perfectly."
"I'm so glad," said Betty. "I shouldn't like
the
harrow to begin to move while we're here. I'm sure it would bite
us."
He sighed and looked grave. "So you don't want me to be
perfectly happy."
She looked at him with her head on one side.
"Not here," she said. "I can't trust that
harrow."
His eyelids narrowed over his eyes--then relaxed. No, she was
merely playing at enchanted harrows.
"Are you cold still?" he asked, and reached for her hand.
She gave it frankly.
"Not a bit," she said, and took it away again. "The
run warmed me. In fact--"
She unbuttoned the mackintosh and spread it on the bar of the plough and
sat down. Her white dress lighted up the shadows of the shed. Outside the
rain fell steadily.
"May I sit down too? Can Mrs. Plough find room for two children on
her lap?"
She drew aside the folds of her dress, but even then only a little space
was left. The plough had been carelessly housed and nearly half of it was
where the rain drove in on it. Therefore they were very close together. So
close that he had to throw his head back to see clearly how the rain had
made the short hair curl round her forehead and ears, and how fresh were
the tints of face and lips. Also he had to support himself by an arm
stretched out behind her. His arm was not round her, but it might just as
well have been, as far as the look of the thing went. He thought of the arm
of Mr. Lewisham.
"Did you ever have your fortune told?" he asked.
"No, never. I've always wanted to, but father hates gipsies.
When I was a little girl I used to put on my best clothes, and go out into
the lanes and sit about and hope the gipsies would steal me, but they never
did."
"They're a degenerate race, blind to their own interests. But
they haven't a monopoly of chances--fortunately." His eyes
were on her face.
"I never had my fortune told," said Betty. "I'd
love it, but I think I should be afraid, all the same. Something might come
true."
Vernon was more surprised than he had ever been in his life at the
sudden involuntary movement in his right arm. It cost him a conscious
effort not to let the arm follow its inclination and fall across her
slender shoulders, while he should say:
"Your fortune is that I love you. Is it good or bad
fortune?"
He braced the muscles of his arm, and kept it where it was. That sudden
unreasonable impulse was a mortification, an insult to the man whose pride
it was to believe that his impulses were always planned.
"I can tell fortunes," he said. "When I was a boy I
spent a couple of months with some gipsies. They taught me lots of
things."
His memory, excellently trained, did not allow itself to dwell for an
instant on his reason for following those gipsies, on the dark-eyed
black-haired girl with the skin like pale amber, who had taught him, by the
flicker of the camp-fire, the lines of head and heart and life, and other
things beside. Oh, but many other things. That was before he became an
artist. He was only an amateur in those days.
"Did they teach you how to tell fortunes--really and
truly?" asked Betty. "We had a fortune-teller's tent at
the School Bazaar last year, and the youngest Miss Smithson dressed up in
spangles and a red dress and said she was Zara the Eastern Mystic
Hand-Reader, and Foreteller of the Future. But she got it all out of
Napoleon's Book of Fate."
"I don't get my fortune-telling out of anybody's book of
anything," he said. "I get it out of people's hands, and
their faces. Some people's faces are their fortunes, you
know."
"I know they are," she said a little sadly, "but
everybody's got a hand and a fortune, whether they've got that
sort of fortune-face or not."
"But the fortunes of the fortune-faced people are the ones one
likes best to tell."
"Of course," she admitted wistfully, "but what's
going to happen to you is just as interesting to you, even if
your face isn't interesting to anybody. Do you always tell fortunes
quite truly; I mean do you follow the real rules? or do you make up pretty
fortunes for the people with the pretty fortune-faces?"
"There's no need to 'make up.' The pretty
fortunes are always there for the pretty fortune-faces: unless of course
the hand contradicts the face."
"But can it?"
"Can't it? There may be a face that all the beautiful things
in the world are promised to: just by being so beautiful itself it draws
beautiful happenings to it. But if the hand contradicts the face, if the
hand is one of those narrow, niggardly, distrustful hands, one of the hands
that will give nothing and take nothing, a hand without courage, without
generosity--well then one might as well be born without a
fortune-face, for any good it will ever do one."
"Then you don't care to tell fortunes for people who
haven't fortune-faces?"
"I should like to tell yours, if you would let me. Shall
I?"
He held out his hand, but her hand was withheld.
"I ought to cross your hand with silver, oughtn't I?"
she asked.
"It's considered correct--but--"
"Oh, don't let's neglect any proper precaution,"
she said. "I haven't got any money. Tell it me to-morrow, and I
will bring a sixpence."
"You could cross my hand with your watch," he said,
"and I could take the crossing as an I.O.U. of the
sixpence."
She detached the old watch. He held out his hand and she gravely traced
a cross on it.
"Now," he said, "all preliminary formalities being
complied with, let the prophet do his work. Give me your hand, pretty lady,
and the old gipsy will tell you your fortune true."
He held the hand in his, bending back the pink finger-tips with his
thumb, and looked earnestly at its lines. Then he looked in her face,
longer than he had ever permitted himself to look. He looked till her eyes
fell. It was a charming picture. He was tall, strong, well-built and quite
as good-looking as a clever man has any need to be. And she was as pretty
as any oleograph of them all.
It seemed a thousand pities that there should he no witness to such a
well-posed tableau, no audience to such a charming scene. The pity of it
struck Destiny, and Destiny flashed the white of Betty's dress, a
shrill point of light, into an eye a hundred yards away. The eye's
owner, with true rustic finesse, drew back
into the wood's shadow, shaded one eye with a brown rustic hand,
looked again, and began a détour which landed the rustic boots, all
silently, behind the shed, at a spot where a knot-hole served as frame for
the little picture. The rustic eye was fitted to the knot-hole while Vernon
holding Betty's hand gazed in Betty's face, and decided that this
was no time to analyse his sensations.
Neither heard the furtive rustic tread, or noted the gleam of the pale
rustic eye.
The labourer shook his head as he hurried quickly away. He had daughters
of his own, and the Rector had been kind when one of those daughters had
suddenly come home from service, ill, and with no prospect of another
place.
"A-holdin' of hands and a-castin' of sheep's
eyes," said he. "We knows what that's the beginnings of.
Well, well, youth's the season for silliness, but there's
bounds--there's bounds. And all of a mornin' so
early too. Lord above knows what it wouldn't be like of a
evenin'." He shook his head again, and made haste.
Vernon had forced his eyes to leave the face of Betty.
"Your fortune," he was saying, "is, curiously enough,
just one of those fortunes I was speaking of. You will have great chances
of happiness, if you have the courage to take them. You will cross the sea
You've never travelled, have you?"
"No,--never further than Torquay; I was at school there, you
know; and London, of course. But I should love it. Isn't it horrid to
think that one might grow quite old and never have been anywhere or done
anything?"
"That depends on oneself, doesn't it? Adventures are to the
adventurous."
"Yes, that's all very well--girls can't be
adventurous."
"Yes,--it's the Prince who sets out to seek his fortune,
isn't it? The Princess has to sit at home and wait for hers to come to
her. It generally does if she's a real Princess."
"But half the fun must be the seeking for it," said
Betty.
"You're right," said he, "it is."
The labourer had reached the park-gate. His pace had quickened to the
quickening remembrance of his own daughter, sitting at home silent and
sullen.
"Do you really see it in my hand?" asked
Betty,--"about my crossing the sea, I mean."
"It's there; but it depends on yourself, like everything
else."
"I did ask my stepfather to let me go," she said,
"after that first day, you know, when you said I ought to study in
Paris."
"And he wouldn't, of course?"
"No; he said Paris was a wicked place. It isn't really is
it?"
"Every place is wicked," said he, "and every place is
good. It's all as one takes things."
The Rectory gate clicked sharply as it swung to behind the labourer. The
Rectory gravel scrunched beneath the labourer's boots.
Yes, the Master was up; he could be seen.
The heavy boots were being rubbed against the birch broom that, rooted
at Kentish back doors, stands to receive on its purple twigs the scrapings
of Kentish clay from rustic feet.
"You have the artistic lines very strongly marked," Vernon
was saying. "One, two, three--yes, painting--music
perhaps?"
"I am very fond of music," said Betty, thinking of the
hour's daily struggle with the Mikado and the Moonlight Sonata.
"But three arts. What could the third one be?" Her thoughts
played for an instant with unheard-of triumphs achieved behind
footlights--rapturous applause, showers of bouquets.
"Whatever it is, you've enormous talent for it," he
said; "you'll find out what it is in good time. Perhaps
it'll be something much more important than the other two put
together, and perhaps you've got even more talent for it than you have
for others."
"But there isn't any other talent that I can think
of."
"I can think of a few. There's the stage,--but it's
not that, I fancy, or not exactly that. There's
literature--confess now, don't you write poetry sometimes when
you're all alone at night? Then there's the art of being amusing,
and the art of being--of being liked."
"Shall I be successful in any of the arts?"
"In one, certainly."
"Ah," said Betty, "if I could only go to
Paris!"
"It's not always necessary to go to Paris for success in
one's art," he said.
"But I want to go. I'm sure I could do better
there."
"Aren't you satisfied with your present Master?"
"Oh," it was a cry of genuine distress, of heartfelt
disclaim, "you know I didn't mean that. But you
won't always be here, and when you've gone--why
then--"
Again he had to control the involuntary movement of his left arm.
"But I'm not going for months yet. Don't let us cross a
bridge till we come to it. Your head-line promises all sorts of wonderful
things. And your heartline--" he turned her hand more fully to
the light.
In the Rector's study the labourer was speaking, standing
shufflingly on the margin of the Turkey carpet. The Rector listened, his
hand on an open folio where fat infants peered through the ornamental
initials.
"And so I come straight up to you, sir, me being a father and you
the same, sir, for all the difference betwixt our ways in life. Says I to
myself, says I, and bitter hard I feels it too, I says,
'George,' says I, 'you've got a daughter as begun
that way, not a doubt of it--holdin' of hands and sittin'
close alongside, and you know what's come to her.'"
The Rector shivered at the implication.
"Then I says, says I, 'Like as not the Rector won't
thank you for interferin'. Least said soonest mended,' says
I."
"I'm very much obliged to you," said the Rector
difficultly, and his hand shook on Ambrosius's yellow page.
"You see, sir," the man's tone held all that deferent
apology that truth telling demands, "gells is gells, be they never so
up in the world, all the world over, bless their hearts; and young men is
young men, damn them, asking your pardon, sir, I'm sure, but the word
slipped out. And I shouldn't ha' been easy if anything had have
gone wrong with Miss, God bless her, all along of the want of a word in
season. Asking your pardon, sir, but even young ladies is flesh and blood,
when it comes to the point. Ain't they now?" he ended
appealingly.
The Rector spoke with an obvious effort, got his hand off the page and
closed the folio.
"You've done quite right, George," he said, "and
I'm greatly obliged to you. Only I do ask you to keep this to
yourself. You wouldn't have liked it if people had heard a thing like
that about your Ruby before--I mean when she was at home."
He replaced the two folios on the shelf.
"Not me, sir," George answered. "I'm mum, I do
assure you, sir. And if I might make so bold, you just pop on your hat and
step acrost directly minute. There's that little hole back of the shed
what I told you of. You ain't only got to pop your reverend eye to
that there, and you'll see for yourself as I ain't give tongue
for no dragged scent."
"Thank you, George," said the Rector, "I will. Good
morning. God bless you."
The formula came glibly, but it was from the lips only that it came.
Lizzie--his white innocent lily-girl. In a shed--a man, a
stranger, holding her hand, his arm around her, his eyes--his lips
perhaps, daring--
The Rector was half way down his garden drive.
"Your heart-line," Vernon was saying, "it's a
little difficult. You will be deeply beloved."
To have one's fortune told is disquieting. To keep silence during
the telling deepens the disquiet curiously. It seemed good to Betty to
laugh.
"Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor," she said, "which am
I going to marry, kind gipsy?"
"I don't believe the gipsies who say they can see marriage in
a hand," he answered quickly, and Betty feared he had thought her
flippant, or even vulgar; "what one sees are not the shadows of
coming conventions. One sees the great emotional events, the things that
change and mould and develop
character. Yes, you will be greatly beloved, and you will love
deeply."
"I'm not to be happy in my affairs of the heart then?"
Still a careful flippancy seemed best to Betty.
"Did I say so? Do you really think that there are no happy love
affairs but those that end in a wedding breakfast and bridesmaids, with a
bazaar show of hideous silver and still more hideous crockery, and all
one's relations assembled to dissect one's most sacred
secrets?"
Betty had thought so, but it seemed coarse to own it.
"Can't you imagine," he went on dreamily, "a love
affair so perfect that it could not but lose its finest fragrance if the
world were called to watch the plucking of love's flower? Can't
you imagine a love so great, so deep, so tender, so absolutely possessing
the whole life of the lover that he would almost grudge any manifestation
of it? Because such a manifestation must necessarily be a repetition of
some of the ways in which unworthy loves have been manifested, by less
happy lovers? I can seem to see that one might love the one love of a
life-time, and be content to hold the treasure in one's heart, a
treasure such as no other man ever had, and grudge even a word or a look
that might make it less the single perfect rose of the world."
"Oh, dear!" said Betty to herself.
"But I'm talking like a book," he said, and laughed.
"I always get dreamy and absurd when I tell fortunes. Anyway, as I
said before, you will be greatly beloved. Indeed, unless your hand is very
untruthful, which I'm sure it never could be, you are beloved now, far
more than you can possibly guess."
Betty caught at her flippancy, but it evaded her, and all she found to
say was, "Oh," and her eyes fell.
There was a silence. Vernon still held her hand, but he was no longer
looking at it.
A black figure darkened the daylight.
The two on the plough started up--started apart. Nothing more was
wanted to convince the Rector of all that he least wished to believe.
"Go home, Lizzie," he said, "go to your room,"
and to her his face looked the face of a fiend. It is hard to control the
muscles under a sudden emotion compounded of sorrow, sympathy and an
immeasurable pity. "Go to your room and stay there till I send for
you." Betty went, like a beaten dog.
The Rector turned to the young man.
"Now, sir," he said.
He regretted, of course, deeply, this unfortunate misunderstanding.
Accident had made him acquainted with Miss Desmond's talent, he had
merely offered her a little of that help which between brother
artists-- The well-worn phrase had not for the Rector the charm it had
had for Betty.
The Rector spoke again, and Mr. Vernon listened, bareheaded, in deepest
deference.
No, he had not been holding Miss Desmond's hand--he had merely
been telling her fortune. No
one could regret more profoundly than he,--and so on. He was much
wounded by Mr. Underwood's unworthy suspicions.
The Rector ran through a few texts. His pulpit denunciations of
iniquity, though always earnest, had lacked this eloquence.
Vernon listened quietly.
"I can only express my regret that my thoughtlessness should have
annoyed you, and beg you not to blame Miss Desmond. It was perhaps a little
unconventional, but--"
"Unconventional? To try to ruin--"
Mr. Vernon held up his hand: he was genuinely shocked.
"Forgive me," he said, "but I can't hear such
words in connection with--with a lady for whom I have the deepest
respect. You are heated now, sir, and I can make every allowance for your
natural vexation. But I must ask you not to overstep the bounds of
decency."
The Rector bit his lip, and Vernon went on.
"I have listened to your abuse--yes, your abuse--without
defending myself, but I can't allow anyone, even her father, to say a
word against her."
"I am not her father," said the old man bitterly. And on the
instant Vernon understood him as Betty had never done. The young man's
tone changed instantly.
"Look here," he said, and his face grew almost boyish,
"I am really most awfully sorry. The whole thing--what there is
of it, and it's very little--was entirely my doing. It was
inexcusably thoughtless. Miss Desmond is very young and very innocent. It
is I who ought to have known better,--and perhaps I did. But the
country is very dull, and it was a real pleasure to teach so apt a
pupil."
He spoke eagerly, and the ring of truth was in his voice. But the Rector
felt that he was listening to the excuses of a serpent.
"Then you'd have me believe that you don't even love
her?"
"No more than she does me," said Vernon very truly.
"I've never breathed a word of love to her," he went on;
"such an idea never entered our heads. She's a charming girl,
and I admire her immensely, but--" he sought hastily for a
weapon, and defended Betty with the first that came to hand, "I am
already engaged to another lady. It is entirely as an artist that I am
interested in Miss Betty."
"Serpent," said the Rector within himself, "lying
serpent."
Vernon was addressing himself silently in terms not more flattering.
"Fool, idiot, brute to let the child in for this!--for it's
going to be a hell of a time for her, anyhow. And as for me--well, the
game is up, absolutely up."
"I am really most awfully sorry," he said again.
"I find it difficult to believe in the sincerity of your
repentance," said the Rector frowning.
"My regret you may believe in," said Vernon stiffly.
"There is no ground for even the mention of such a word as
repentance."
"If your repentance is sincere," he underlined the word,
"you will leave Long Barton to-day."
Leave without a word, a sign from Betty--a word or a sign to her?
It might be best--if--
"I will go, sir, if you will let me have your assurance that you
will say nothing to Miss Desmond, that you won't make her unhappy,
that you'll let the whole matter drop."
"I will make no bargains with you," cried the Rector.
"Do your worst! Thank God I can defend her from you."
"She needs no defence. It's not I who am lacking in respect
and consideration for her," said Vernon a little hotly, "but,
as I say, I'll go--if you'll just promise to be gentle with
her."
"I do not need to be taught my duty by a villain, sir," the
old clergyman was trembling with rage. "I wish to God I were a
younger man, that I might chastise you for the hound you are." His
upraised cane shook in his hand. "Words are thrown away on you!
I'm sorry I can't use the only arguments that can come home to a
puppy!"
"If you were a younger man," said Vernon slowly, "your
words would not have been thrown away on me. They would have had the answer
they deserved. I shall not leave Long Barton, and I shall see Miss Desmond
when and how I choose."
"Long Barton shall know you in your true character, sir, I promise
you."
"So you would blacken her to blacken me? One sees how it is that
she does not love her father."
He meant to be cruel, but it was not till he saw the green shadows round
the old man's lips that he knew just how cruel he had been. The
quivering old mouth opened and closed and opened, the cold eyes gleamed.
And the trembling hand in one nervous movement raised the cane and struck
the other man sharply across the face. It was a hysterical blow, like a
woman's, and with it the tears sprang to the faded eyes.
Then it was that Vernon behaved well. When he thought of it afterwards
he decided that he had behaved astonishingly well.
With the smart of that cut stinging on his flesh, the mark of it rising
red and angry across his cheek, he stepped back a pace, and without a word,
without a retaliatory movement, without even a change of facial expression
he executed the most elaborately courteous bow, as of one treading a
minuet, recovered the upright and walked away bareheaded. The old clergyman
was left planted there, the cane still jigging up and down in his shaking
hand.
"A little theatrical, perhaps," mused Vernon, when
the cover of the wood gave him leave to lay his fingers to his throbbing
cheek, "but nothing could have annoyed the old chap more."
However effective it may be to turn the other cheek, the turning of it
does not cool one's passions, and he walked through the wood angrier
than he ever remembered being. But the cool rain dripping from the hazel
and sweet-chestnut leaves fell pleasantly on his uncovered head and flushed
face. Before he was through the wood he was able to laugh, and the laugh
was a real laugh, if rather a rueful one. Vernon could never keep angry
very long.
"Poor old devil!" he said. "He'll have to put a
special clause in the general confession next Sunday. Poor old devil! And
poor little Betty! And poorest me! Because, however, we look at it, and
however we may have dam well bluffed over it, the game is
up--absolutely up."
When one has a definite end in view--marriage, let us say, or an
elopement,--secret correspondences, the surmounting of garden walls,
the bribery of servants, are in the picture. But in a small sweet idyll,
with no backbone of intention to it, these things are inartistic. And
Vernon was, above and before all, an artist. He must go away and he knew
it. And his picture was not finished. Could he possibly leave that
incomplete? The thought pricked sharply. He had not made much progress with
the picture in these last days. It had been pleasanter to work at the
portrait of Betty. If he moved to the next village?--Yes, that must be
thought over.
He spent the day thinking of that and of other things.
The Reverend Cecil Underwood stood where he was left till the man he had
struck had passed out of sight. Then the cane slipped through his hand and
fell rattling to the ground. He looked down at it curiously. Then he
reached out both hands vaguely and touched the shaft of the plough. He
felt his way along it, and sat down, where they had sat, staring dully
before him at the shadows in the shed, and at the steady fall of the rain
outside. Betty's mackintosh was lying on the floor. He picked it up
presently and smoothed out the creases. Then he watched the rain again.
An hour had passed before he got stiffly up and went home, with her
cloak on his arm.
Yes, Miss Lizzie was in her room. Had a headache. He sent up her
breakfast, arranging the food himself, and calling back the maid because
the tray lacked marmalade.
Then he poured out his own tea, and sat stirring it till it was
cold.
She was in her room, waiting for him to send for her. He must send for
her. He must speak to her. But what could he say? What was there to say
that would not be a cruelty? What was there to ask that would not be a
challenge to her to lie, as the serpent had lied?
"I am glad I struck him," the Reverend Cecil told himself
again and again; "that brought it home to him. He was
quite cowed. He could do nothing but bow and cringe away. Yes, I am
glad."
But the girl? The serpent had asked him to be gentle with her--had
dared to ask him. He could think of no way gentle enough for dealing with
this crisis. The habit of prayer caught him. He prayed for guidance.
Then quite suddenly he saw what to do.
"That will be best," he said; "she will feel that
less."
He rang and ordered the fly from the Peal of Bells, went to his room to
change his old coat for a better one, since appearances must be kept up,
even if the heart be breaking. His thin hair was disordered, and his tie,
he noticed, was oddly crumpled, as though strange hands had been busy with
his throat. He put on a fresh tie, smoothed his hair, and went
down again. As he passed, he lingered a moment outside her door.
Betty watching with red eyes and swollen lips saw him enter the fly, saw
him give an order, heard the door bang. The old coachman clambered clumsily
to his place, and the carriage lumbered down the drive.
"Oh, how cruel he is! He might have spoken to me now.
I suppose he's going to keep me waiting for days, as a penance. And I
haven't really done anything wrong. It's a shame! I've a
good mind to run away!"
Running away required consideration. In the meantime, since he was out
of the house, there was no reason why she should not go downstairs. She was
not a child to be kept to her room in disgrace. She bathed her distorted
face, powdered it, and tried to think that the servants, should they see
her, would notice nothing.
Where had he gone? For no goal within his parish would a hired carriage
be needed. He had gone to Sevenoaks or to the station. Perhaps he had gone
to Westerham--there was a convent there, a Protestant sisterhood.
Perhaps he was going to make arrangements for shutting her up there.
Never!--Betty would die first. At least she would run away first. But
where could one run to?
The aunts? Betty loved the aunts, but she distrusted their age. They
were too old to sympathise really with her. They would most likely
understand as little as her stepfather had done. An inward monitor told
Betty that the story of the fortune-telling, of the seven stolen meetings
with no love-making in them, would sound very unconvincing to any ears but
those of the one person already convinced. But she would not be shut up in
a convent--no, not by fifty aunts and a hundred stepfathers.
She would go to Him. He would understand. He was the only person who
ever had understood.
She would go straight to him and ask him what to do. He would advise her.
He was so clever, so good, so noble. Whatever he advised would be
right.
Trembling and in a cold white rage of determination, Betty fastened on
her hat, found her gloves and purse. The mackintosh she remembered had been
left in the shed. She pictured her stepfather trampling fiercely upon it as
he told Mr. Vernon what he thought of him. She took her golf cape.
At the last moment she hesitated. Mr. Vernon would not be idle. What
would he be doing? Suppose he should send a note? Suppose he had watched
Mr. Underwood drive away and should come boldly up and ask for her? Was it
wise to leave the house? But perhaps he would be hanging about the church
yard, or watching from the park for a glimpse of her. She would at least go
out and see.
"I'll leave a farewell letter," she said, "in
case I never come back."
She found her little blotting-book--envelopes, but no paper. Of
course! One can't with dignity write cutting farewells on envelopes.
She tore a page from her diary.
"You have driven me to this," she wrote. "I am going
away, and in time I shall try to forgive you all the petty meannesses and
cruelties of all these years. I know you always hated me, but you might
have had some pity. All my life I shall bear the marks on my soul of the
bitter tyranny I have endured here. Now I am going away out into the world,
and God knows what will become of me."
She folded, enveloped, and addressed the note, stuck a long hat-pin
fiercely through it, and left it patent, speared to her pin-cushion, with
her stepfather's name uppermost.
"Good-bye, little room," she said. "I feel I shall
never see you again."
Slowly and sadly she crossed the room and turned the handle of the door.
The door was locked.
Once, years ago, a happier man than the Reverend Cecil had been Rector
of Long Barton. And in the room that now was Betty's he had had iron
bars fixed to the two windows, because that room was the nursery.
That evening, after dinner, Mr. Vernon sat at his parlour window looking
idly along the wet bowling-green to the belt of lilacs and the pale gleams
of watery sunset behind them. He had passed a disquieting day. He hated to
leave things unfinished. And now the idyll was ruined and the picture
threatened,--and Betty's portrait was not finished, and never
would be.
"Come in," he said; and his landlady heavily followed up her
tap on his door.
"A lady to see you, sir," said she with a look that seemed
to him to be almost a wink.
"A lady? To see me? Good Lord!" said Vernon. Among all the
thoughts of the day this was the one thought that had not come to him.
"Shall I show her in?" the woman asked, and she eyed him
curiously.
"A lady," he repeated. "Did she give her
name?"
"Yes, sir. Miss Desmond, sir. Shall I shew her in?"
"Yes; shew her in, of course," he answered irritably.
And to himself he said:
"The devil!"
All the little familiar objects, the intimate associations of the
furniture of a room that has been for years your boudoir as well as your
sleeping room, all the decorations that you fondly dreamed gave to your
room a cachet--the mark of a distinctive
personality, these are of no more comfort to you than would be strange bare
stone walls and a close unfamiliar iron grating.
Betty tried to shake the window bars, but they were immovable. She tried
to force the door open, but her silver buttonhook was an insufficient
lever, and her tooth-brush handle broke when she pitted it in conflict
against the heavy, old-fashioned lock. We have all read how prisoners,
outwitting their gaolers, have filed bars with their pocket nail-scissors,
and cut the locks out of old oak doors with the small blade of a pen-knife.
Betty's door was only of pine, but her knife, made in Germany, broke
off short; and the file on her little scissors wore itself smooth against
the first unmoved bar.
She paced the room like a caged lioness. We read that did the lioness
but know her strength her bars were easily shattered by one blow of her
powerful paw. Betty's little pink paws were not powerful like
the lioness's, and when she tried to make them help her, she broke her
nails and hurt herself.
It was this moment that Letitia chose for rapping at the door.
"You can't come in. What is it?" Betty was prompt to
say.
"Mrs. Edwardes's Albert, Miss, come for the maternity
bag."
"It's all ready in the school-room cupboard," Betty
called through the door. "Number three."
She resisted an impulse to say that she had broken the key in the lock
and to send for the locksmith. No: there should be no scandal at Long
Barton,--at least not while she had to stay in it.
She did not cry. She was sick with fury, and anger made her heart beat
as Vernon had never had power to make it.
"I will be calm. I won't lose my head," she told
herself again and again. She drank some water. She made herself eat the
neglected breakfast. She got out her diary and wrote in it, in a
handwriting that was not Betty's, and with a hand that shook like
totter-grass.
"What will become of me? What has become of him? My
stepfather must have done something horrible to him. Perhaps he has had him
put in prison; of course he couldn't do that in these modern times
like in the French revolution just for talking to some one he hadn't
been introduced to, but he may have done it for trespassing or damage to
the crops or something. I feel quite certain something has happened to him.
He would never have deserted me like this in my misery if he were free. And
I can do nothing to help him--nothing. How shall I live through the
day? How can I bear it? And this awful trouble has come upon him just
because he was kind to another artist. The world is very, very, very cruel.
I wish I were dead!" She blotted the words and locked away the book.
Then she
burnt that farewell note and went and sat in the window-seat to watch for
her stepfather's return.
The time was long. At last he came. She saw him open the carriage door
and reach out a flat foot, feeling for the carriage step. He stepped out,
turned and thrust a hand back into the cab. Was he about to hand out a
stern-faced Protestant sister, who would take her to Westerham, and she
would never be heard of again? Betty set her teeth and waited anxiously to
see if the sister seemed strong. Betty was, and she would fight for her
liberty. With teeth and nails if need were.
It was no Protestant sister to whom the Reverend Cecil had reached his
hand. It was only his umbrella. Betty breathed again.
"Well, now at least he'll come and speak to me: he must come
himself; even he couldn't give the key to the servants
and say: 'Please go and unlock Miss Lizzie and bring her
down.'"
Betty would not move. "I shall just stay here and pretend I
didn't know the door was locked," said she.
But her impatience drove her back to the caged-lioness walk. and when at
last she heard the key turn in the door she had only just time to spring to
the window-seat and compose herself in an attitude of graceful
defiance.
It was thrown away.
The door only opened wide enough to admit a dinner tray pushed in by a
hand she knew. Then the door closed again.
The same thing happened with tea and supper.
It was not till after supper that Betty, gazing out on the pale watery
sunset, found it blurred to her eyes. There was no more hope now. She was a
prisoner. If He was not a prisoner he ought to be. It was the only thing
that could excuse his silence. He might at least have gone by the gate and
waved a handkerchief, Well, all was over between them,
and Betty was alone in the world. She had not cried all day, but now she
did cry.
Vernon always prided himself on having a heart for any fate, but this
was one of the interviews that one would rather have avoided. All day he
had schooled himself to resignation, had almost reconciled himself to the
spoiling of what had promised to be a masterpiece. Explications with Betty
would brush the bloom off everything. Yet he must play the part well. But
what part? Oh, hang all meddlers!
"Miss Desmond," said the landlady; and he braced his nerves
to meet a tearful, an indignant, or a desperate Betty.
But there was no Betty to be met; no Betty of any kind.
Instead, a short squarely-built middle-aged lady walked briskly into the
room, and turned to see the door well closed before she advanced towards
him.
He bowed with indescribable emotions.
"Mr. Eustace Vernon?" said the lady. She wore a sensible
short skirt and square-toed brown boots. Her hat was boat-shaped and her
abundant hair was screwed up so as to be well out of her way. Her face was
square and sensible like her shoulders, and her boots. Her eyes dark, clear
and near sighted. She wore gold-rimmed spectacles and carried a
crutch-handled cane. No vision could have been less like Betty.
Vernon bowed, and moved a chair towards her.
"Thank you," she said, and took it. "Now, Mr. Vernon,
sit down too, and let's talk this over like reasonable beings. You may
smoke if you like. It clears the brain."
Vernon sat down and mechanically took out a cigarette, but he held it
unlighted.
"Now," said the square lady, leaning her elbows on the table
and her chin on her hands, "I am Betty's aunt."
"It is very good of you to come," said Vernon
helplessly.
"Not at all," she briskly answered. "Now tell me all
about it."
"There's nothing to tell," said Vernon.
"Perhaps it will clear the ground a little if I say at once that I
haven't come to ask your intentions, because of course you
haven't any. My reverend brother-in-law, on the other hand, insists
that you have, and that they are strictly dishonourable."
Vernon laughed, and drew a breath of relief.
"I fear Mr. Underwood misunderstood,--" he said,
"and--"
"He is a born misunderstander," said Miss Julia Desmond.
"Now, I'm not. Light your cigarette, man; you can give me one if
you like, to keep you in countenance. A light--thanks. Now will you
speak, or shall I?"
"You seem to have more to say than I, Miss Desmond."
"Ah, that's because you don't trust me. In other words,
you don't know me. That's one of the most annoying things in
life. To be really an excellent sort, and to be quite unable to make people
see it at the first go-off. Well, here goes. My worthy brother-in-law finds
you and my niece holding hands in a shed."
"We were not," said Vernon. "I was telling her
fortune--"
"It's my lead now," interrupted the lady. "Your
turn next. He being what he is--to the pure all things are impure, you
know--instantly draws the most harrowing conclusions, hits you with a
stick, by the way, you behaved uncommonly decently about that."
"Thank you," said Vernon, smiling a little. It is pleasant
to be appreciated.
"Yes, really very decently, indeed. I daresay it wouldn't
have hurt a fly, but if you'd been the sort
of man he thinks you are-- However that's neither here nor there.
He hits you with a stick, locks the child into her room-- What did you
say?"
"Nothing," said Vernon.
"All right. I didn't hear it. Locks her in her room, and
wires to my sister. Takes a carriage to Sevenoaks to do it too, to avoid
scandal. I happen to be at my sister's, on my way from Cairo to
Norway, so I undertake to run down. He meets me at the station, and wants
me to go straight home and blackguard Betty. But I prefer to deal with
principals."
"You mean--"
"I mean that I know as well as you do that whatever has happened
has been your doing and not that dear little idiot's. Now, are you
going to tell me about it?"
He had rehearsed already a form of words in which "brother
artists" should have loomed large. But now that he rose, shrugged his
shoulders and spoke, it was in words that had not been rehearsed.
"Look here, Miss Desmond," said he, "the fact is,
you're right. I haven't any intentions. Certainly not
dishonourable ones. But I was frightfully bored in the country, and your
niece is bored, too--more bored than I am. No one ever understands or
pities the boredom of the very young," he added pensively.
"Well?"
"Well, that's all there is to it. I liked meeting her, and
she liked meeting me."
"And the fortune-telling? Do you mean to tell me you didn't
enjoy holding the child's hand and putting her in a silly
flutter."
"I deny the flutter," he said, "but--well, yes,
of course I enjoyed it. You wouldn't believe me if I said I
didn't."
"No," said she.
"I enjoyed it more than I expected to," he added with a
frankness that he had not meant to use, "much more. But I didn't
say a word of love--only perhaps--"
"Only perhaps you made the idea of it underlie every word you did
speak. Don't I know?" said Miss Desmond. "Bless the man,
I've been young myself."
"Miss Betty is very charming," said he, "and--and
if I hadn't met her--"
"If you hadn't met her some other man would. True; but I
fancy her father would rather it had been some other man."
"I didn't mean that in the least," said Vernon with
some heat. "I meant that if I hadn't met her she would have gone
on being bored, and so should I. Don't think me a humbug, Miss
Desmond. I am more sorry than I can say that I should have been the means
of causing her any unhappiness."
"'Causing her unhappiness,'--poor little Betty,
poor little trusting innocent silly little girl? That's about it,
isn't it?"
It was so like it that he hotly answered:
"Not in the least."
"Well, well," said Miss Desmond, "there's no
great harm done. She'll get over it, and more's been lost on
market days. Thanks."
She lighted a second cigarette and sat very upright, the cigarette in
her mouth and her hands on the handle of her stick.
"You can't help it, of course. Men with your coloured eyes
never can. That green hazel--girls ought to be taught at school that
it's a danger-signal. Only, since your heart's not in the
business any more than hers is--as you say, you were both bored to
death--I want to ask you, as a personal favour to me, just to let the
whole thing drop. Let the girl alone. Go right away."
"It's an unimportant detail, and I'm ashamed to
mention it," said Vernon, "but I've got a picture on
hand--I'm painting a bit of the Warren."
"Well, go to Low Barton and put up there and finish your precious
picture. You won't see Betty again unless you run after
her."
"To tell the truth," said Vernon, "I had already
decided to let the whole thing drop. I'm ashamed of the trouble
I've caused her and--and I've taken rooms at Low
Barton."
"Upon my word," said Miss Desmond, "you are the
coldest lover I've ever set eyes on."
"I'm not a lover," he answered swiftly. "Do you
wish I were?"
"For Betty's sake, I'm glad you aren't. But I think
I should respect you more if you weren't quite so arctic."
"I'm not an incendiary, at any rate," said he,
"and that's something, with my coloured eyes, isn't
it?"
"Well," she said, "whatever your temperature is, I
rather like you. I don't wonder at Betty in the least."
Vernon bowed.
"All I ask is your promise that you'll not speak to her
again."
"I can't promise that, you know. I can't be rude to her.
But I'll promise not to go out of my way to meet her again." He
sighed.
"As, yes--it is sad--all that time wasted and no rabbits
caught." Again Miss Desmond had gone unpleasantly near his thought.
Of course he said:
"You don't understand me."
"Near enough," said Miss Desmond; "and now I'll
go."
"Let me thank you for coming," said Vernon eagerly;
"it was more than good of you. I must own that my heart sank when I
knew it was Miss Betty's aunt who honoured me with a visit. But I am
most glad you came. I never would have
believed that a lady could be so reasonable and--and--"
"And gentlemanly?" said the lady.
"Yes,--it's my brother-in-law who is the old woman, poor
dear. You see, Mr. Vernon, I've been running round the world alone for
five and twenty years, and I've kept my eyes open. And when I was of
an age to be silly, the man I was silly about had your coloured eyes. He
married an actress, poor fellow,--or rather, she married him, before
he could say 'knife.' That's the sort of thing
that'll happen to you, unless you're uncommonly careful. So
that's settled. You give me your word not to try to see
Betty?"
"I give you my word. You won't believe in my
regret--"
"I believe in that right enough. It must be simply sickening to
have the whole show given away like this. Oh, I believe in your
regrets."
"My regret," said Vernon steadily, "for any pain I may
have caused your niece. Do please see how grateful I am to you for having
seen at once that it was not her fault at all, but wholly mine."
"Very nicely said: good boy!" said Betty's aunt.
"Well, my excellent brother-in-law is waiting outside in the fly,
gnashing his respectable teeth, no doubt, and inferring all sorts of
complications from the length of our interview. Good-bye. You're just
the sort of young man I like, and I'm sorry we haven't met on a
happier footing. I'm sure we should have got on together. Don't
you think so?"
"I'm sure we should," said he truly. "Mayn't
I hope--"
She laughed outright.
"You have indeed the passion for acquaintance without
introduction," she said. "No, you may not call on
me in town. Besides, I'm never there. Good-bye. And take care of
yourself. You're bound to be bitten some day, you know, and bitten
badly."
"I wish I thought you forgave me."
"Forgive you? Of course I forgive you! You can no more help making
love, I suppose--no, don't interrupt: the thing's the same
whatever you call it--you can no more help making love than a cat can
help stealing cream. Only one day the cat gets caught, and badly beaten;
and one day you'll get caught, and the beating will be a bad one,
unless I'm a greater fool than I take myself for. And now I'll go
and unlock Betty's prison and console her. Don't worry about her.
I'll see that she's not put upon. Good-night. No, in the
circumstances you'd better not see me to my
carriage."
She shook hands cordially, and left Vernon to his thoughts.
Miss Desmond had done what she came to do, and he knew it. It was almost
a relief to feel that now he could not try to see Betty however much he
wished it,--however much he might know her to wish it. He shrugged his
shoulders and lighted another pipe.
Betty, worn out with crying, had fallen asleep. The sound of wheels
roused her. It seemed to rain cabs at the Rectory to-day.
There were voices in the hall, steps on the stairs. Her door was
unlocked and there entered no tray of prisoner's fare, no reproachful
stepfather, no Protestant sister, but a brisk and well-loved aunt, who shut
the door, and spoke.
"All in the dark?" she said. "Where are you,
child?"
"Here," said Betty.
"Let me strike a light. Oh, yes, there you are!"
"Oh, aunt,--has he sent for you?" said Betty fearfully.
"Oh, don't scold me, auntie. I am so tired. I don't think I
can bear any more."
"I'm not going to scold you, you silly little kitten,"
said the aunt cheerfully. "Come, buck up. It's
nothing so very awful, after all. You'll be laughing at it all before
a fortnight's over."
"Then he hasn't told you?"
"Oh, yes, he has; he's told me everything there was to tell,
and a lot more, too. Don't worry, child. You just go straight to bed
and I'll tuck you up, and we'll talk it all over in the
morning."
"Aunty," said Betty, obediently beginning to unfasten her
dress, "did he say anything about Him?"
"Well, yes--a little."
"He hasn't--hasn't done anything to him, has
he?"
"What could he do? Giving drawing lessons isn't a hanging
matter, Bet."
"I haven't heard anything from him all day,--and I
thought--"
"You won't hear anything more of him, Betty, my dear.
I've seen your Mr. Vernon, and a very nice young man he is, too.
He's frightfully cut up about having got you into a row, and he sees
that the only thing he can do is to go quietly away. I needn't tell
you, Betty, though I shall have to explain it very thoroughly to your
father, that Mr. Vernon is no more in love with you than you are with him.
In fact he's engaged to another girl. He's just interested in you
as a promising pupil."
"Yes," said Betty, "of course I know that."
"Do the things good to lay a bit in the rinse-water," said
Mrs. James, also leaning on the fence, "sorter whitens them's
what I always say. I don't mind if I lend you a hand with the wringing
after. What's turned out like you said it was going to?"
"Miss Betty's decline." Mrs. Symes laughed low and
huskily. "What did I tell you, Mrs. James?"
"I don't quite remember not just at the minute," said
Mrs. James; "you tells so many things."
"And well for some people I do. Else they wouldn't never know
nothing. I told you as it wasn't no decline Miss Betty was setting
down under. I said it was only what's natural, her being the age she
is. I said what she wanted was a young man, and I said she'd get one.
And what do you think?"
"I don't know, I'm sure."
"She did get one," said Mrs. Symes impressively, "that
same week, just as if she'd been a-listening to my very words. It was
as it might be Friday you and me had that little talk. Well, as it might be
the Saturday, she meets the young man, a-painting pictures in the
Warren--my Ernest's youngest saw 'em a-talking, and told his
mother when he come home to his tea."
"To think of that, and me never hearing a word!" said Mrs.
James with frank regret.
"I knew it ud be 'whistle and I'll come to you, my
lad,'" Mrs. Symes went on with cumbrous enjoyment, "and
so it was. They used to keep their rondyvoos in the wood--six
o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Wilson's Tom used to see 'em
reg'lar every day as he went by to his work."
"Lor," said Mrs. James feebly.
"Of course Tom he never said nothing, except to a few friends of
his over a glass. They enjoyed the joke, I promise you. But old George
Marbould--he ain't never been quite right in his head, I
don't
think, since his Ruby went wrong. Pity, I always think. A great clumsy
plain-faced girl like her might a kept herself respectable. She hadn't
the temptation some of us might have had in our young days."
"No indeed," said Mrs. James, smoothing her hair, "and
old George--what silliness was he up to this time?"
"Why he sees the two of 'em together one fine morning and
'stead of doing like he'd be done by he ups to the Vicarage and
tells the old man. "You come alonger me, sir,' says he,
'and have a look at your daughter a kissin' and huggin' up
in Beale's shed, along of a perfect stranger.' So the old man he
says, 'God bless you,'--George is proud of him saying
that--and off he goes, in a regular fanteague, beats the young Master
to a jelly, for all he's an old man and feeble, and shuts Miss up in
her room. Now that wouldn't a been my way."
"No, indeed," said Mrs. James, "nor yet
mine!".
"I should a asked him in," said Mrs. Symes,
"if it had been a gell of mine, and give him a good meal with a glass
of ale to it, and a tiddy drop of something to top up with, and I'd a
let him light his nasty pipe,--and then when he was full and contented
I'd a up and said, 'Now my man, you've 'ad time to
think it over, and no one can't say as I've hurried you nor
flurried you. But it's time as we began talking. So just you tell me
what you're a-goin to do about it. If you 'ave the feelings of a
man,' I'd a said, 'you'll marry the
girl.'"
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. James with emotion.
"Instead of which, bless your 'art, he beats the young man
off with a stick, like as if he was a mad dog; and young Miss is a
goin' to be sent to furrin parts to a strick boardin' school, to
learn her not to have any truck with young chaps."
"'Ard, I call it," said Mrs. James.
"An' well you may--crooil 'ard. How's he
expect
the girl to get a husband if he drives the young fellers away with
walking-sticks? Pore gell! I shouldn't wonder but what she lives and
dies a maid, after this set-out."
"We shall miss 'er when she goes," said Mrs. James.
"I don't say we shan't. But there ain't no one as
you can't get on without if you're put to it. And whether or not,
she's going to far foreign parts where there ain't no young
chaps."
"Poor young thing," said Mrs. James, very sympathetic.
"I think I'll drop in as I'm passing, and see how she takes
it."
"If you do," said Mrs. Symes, unrolling her arms, white and
wrinkled with washing, to set them aggressively on her lips,
"it's the last word as passes between us, Mrs. James, so now you
know."
"Lord, Maria, don't fly out at me that way," Mrs. James
shrank back; "how was I to know you'd take it like
that?"
"Do you suppose," asked Mrs. Symes, "as no one
ain't got no legs except you? I'm a going up, soon
as I've got the things on the line and cleaned myself. I only heard it
after I'd got every blessed rag in soak, or I'd a gone up
afore."
"Mightn't I step up with you for company?" Mrs. James
asked.
"No, you mightn't. But I don't mind dropping in as I
come home, to tell you about it. One of them Catholic nunnery schools, I
expect, which it's sudden death to a man but to set his foot
into."
"Poor young thing," said Mrs. James again.
Betty was going to Paris.
There had been much talk about and about the project. Now it was to
be.
There had been interviews.
There was the first in which the elder Miss
Desmond told her brother-in-law in the plain speech she loved exactly what
sort of a fool he had made of himself in the matter of Betty and the
fortune-telling.
When he was convinced of error--it was not easily done,--he
would have liked to tell Betty that he was sorry, but he belonged to a
generation that does not apologise to the next.
The second interview was between the aunt and Betty. That was the one in
which so much good advice was given.
"You know," the aunt wound up, "all young women want
to be in love, and all young men too. I don't mean that there was
anything of that sort between you and your artist friend. But there might
have been. Now look here,--I'm going to speak quite straight to
you. Don't you ever let young men get monkeying about with your hands;
whether they call it fortune-telling or whether they don't, their
reason for doing so is always the same--or likely to be. And you want
to keep your hand--as well as your lips--for the man you're
going to marry. That's all, but don't you forget it. Now
what's this I hear about your wanting to go to Paris?"
"I did want to go," said Betty, "but I don't care
about anything now. Everything's hateful."
"It always is," said the aunt, "but it won't
always be."
"Don't think I care a straw about not seeing Mr. Vernon
again," said Betty hastily. "It's not that."
"Of course not," said the aunt sympathetically.
"No,--but Father was so hateful--you've no idea. If
I'd--if I'd run away and got married secretly he
couldn't have made more fuss."
"You're a little harsh--just a little. Of course you and
I know exactly how it was, but remember how it looked to him. Why, it
couldn't have looked worse if you really had been
arranging an elopement."
"He hadn't got his arm around me,"
insisted Betty;
"it was somewhere right away in the background. He was holding
himself up with it."
"Don't I tell you I understand all that perfectly? What I
want to understand is how you feel about Paris. Are you absolutely off the
idea?"
"I couldn't go if I wasn't."
"I wonder what you think Paris is like," mused the aunt.
"I suppose you think it's all one wild razzle-dazzle--one
delirious round of--of museums and picture galleries."
"No, I don't," said Betty rather shortly.
"If you went you'd have to work."
"There's no chance of my going."
"Then we'll put the idea away and say no more about it. Get
me my continental Bradshaw out of my dressing-bag: I'm no use here.
Nobody loves me, and I'll go to Norway by the first omnibus to-morrow
morning."
"Don't," said Betty; "how can you say nobody
loves you?"
"Your stepfather doesn't, anyway. That's why I can make
him do what I like when I take the trouble. When people love you
they'll never do anything for you,--not even answer a plain
question with a plain yes or no. Go and get the Bradshaw. You'll be
sorry when I'm gone."
"Aunt Julia, you don't really mean it."
"Of course not. I never mean anything except the things I
don't say. The Bradshaw!"
Betty came and sat on the arm of her aunt's chair.
"It's not fair to tease me," she said, "and
tantalise me. You know how mizzy I am."
"No. I don't know anything. You won't tell me anything.
Go and get--"
"Dear darling pretty kind clever Aunt," cried Betty,
"I'd give my ears to go."
"Then borrow a large knife from cook, and sharpen it on the front
door-step! No--I don't mean to use it on your stepfather.
I'll have your pretty
ears mummified and wear them on my watch-chain. No--mind my
spectacles! Let me go. I daresay it won't come to anything."
"Do you really mean you'd take me?"
"I'd take you fast enough, but I wouldn't keep you. We
must find a dragon to guard the Princess. Oh, we'll get a nice tame
kind puss-cat of a dragon,--but that dragon will not be your Aunt
Julia. Let me go, I say. I thought you didn't care about anything any
more?"
"I didn't know there could be anything to care for,"
said Betty honestly, "especially Paris. Well, I won't if you
hate it so, but oh, aunt--" She still sat on the floor by the
chair her aunt had left, and thought and thought. The aunt went straight
down to the study.
"Now, Cecil," she said, coming briskly in and shutting the
door, "you've made that poor child hate the thought of you and
you've only yourself to thank."
"I know you think so," said he, closing the heavy book over
which he had been stooping.
"I don't mean," she added hastily, for she was not a
cruel woman, "that she really hates you, of course. But you've
frightened her, and shaken her nerves, locking her up in her room like
that. Upon my word, you are old enough to know better."
"I was so alarmed, so shaken myself," he began, but she
interrupted him.
"I didn't come in and disturb your work just to say all that,
of course," she said, "but really, Cecil, I understand things
better than you think. I know how fond you really are of Betty."
The Reverend Cecil doubted this; but he said nothing.
"And you know that I'm fond enough of the child myself. Now,
all this has upset you both tremendously. What do you propose to
do?"
"I--I--nothing I thought. The less said about
these deplorable affairs the better. Lizzie will soon recover her natural
tone, and forget all about the matter."
"Then you mean to let everything go on in the old way?"
"Why, of course," said he uneasily.
"Well, it's your own affair naturally," she spoke with
a studied air of detachment which worried him exactly as it was meant to
do.
"What do you mean?" he asked anxiously. He had never been
able wholly to approve Miss Julia Desmond. She smoked cigarettes, and he
could not think that this would have been respectable in any other woman.
Of course, she was different from any other woman--but still. Then the
Reverend Cecil could not deem it womanly to explore, unchaperoned, the less
well-known quarters of four continents, to penetrate even to regions where
skirts were considered improper and side-saddles were unknown. Even the
nearness of Miss Desmond's fiftieth birthday hardly lessened at all
the poignancy of his disapproval. Besides, she had not always been fifty,
and she had always, in his recollection of her, smoked cigarettes and
travelled alone. Yet he had a certain well-founded respect for her
judgment, and for that fine luminous common-sense of hers which had more
than once shewn him his own mistakes. On the rare occasions when he and she
had differed he had always realized, later, that she had been in the right.
And she was "gentlemanly" enough never once to have said:
"I told you so!"
"What do you mean?" he asked again, for she was silent, her
hands in the pockets of her long coat, her sensible brown shoes sticking
straight out in front of her chair.
"If you really want to know, I'll tell you," she said,
"but I hate to interfere in other people's business. You see, I
know how deeply she has felt this, and of course I know you have too, so I
wondered
whether you hadn't thought of some little plan for--for altering
the circumstances a little, so that everything will blow over and settle
down, so that when you and she come together again you'll be better
friends than ever."
"Come together again," he repeated, and the paper-knife was
still restless, "do you want me to let her go away? To
London?"
Visions of Lizzie, in unseemly low-necked dresses surrounded by crowds
of young men--all possible Vernons--lent a sudden firmness to his
voice, a sudden alertness to his manner."
"No, certainly not," she answered the voice and the manner
as much as the words. "I shouldn't dream of such a thing. Then
it hadn't occurred to you?"
"It certainly had not."
"You see," she said earnestly, "it's like
this.--At least this is how I see it. She's all shaken and upset,
and so are you, and when I've gone--and I must go in a very
little time--you'll both of you simply settle down to thinking
over it all, and you'll grow farther and farther apart."
"I don't think so," said he; "things like this
always right themselves if one leaves them alone. Lizzie and I have always
got on very well together, in a quiet way. We are neither of us
demonstrative."
"Now Heaven help the man!" was the woman's thought. She
remembered Betty's clinging arms, her heartfelt kisses, the fervency
of the voice that said, "Dear darling, pretty, kind, clever Aunt!
I'd give my ears to go."--Betty not demonstrative! Heaven
help the man!
"No," she said, "I know. But when people are young
these thinks rankle."
"They won't with her," he said. "She has a
singularly noble nature, under that quiet exterior."
Miss Desmond drew a long breath and began afresh.
"Then there's another thing. She's fretting over
this--thinks now that it was something to be ashamed of; she
didn't think so at the time, of course."
"You mean that it was I who--"
This was thin ice again. Miss Desmond skated quickly away from it with,
"Well, you see, I've been talking to her. She really
is fretting. Why she's got ever so much thinner in the
last week."
"I could get a locum," he said slowly, "and take her
to a hydropathic establishment for a fortnight."
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Miss Desmond to herself. Aloud she
said: "That would be delightful, later. But just
now--well, of course it's for you to decide,--but it seems
to me that it would be better for you two to be apart for a while. If
you're here alone together--well, the very sight of you will
remind each other-- That's not grammar, as you say,
but--"
He had not said anything. He was thinking, fingering the brass bosses on
the corners of the divine Augustine, and tracing the pattern on the stamped
pigskin.
"Of course if you care to risk it," she went on still with
that fine air of detachment,--"but I have seen breaches that
nothing could heal arise in just that way. Two people sitting down together
and thinking over everything they had against each other."
"But I've nothing against Lizzie."
"I daresay not," Miss Desmond lost patience at last,
"but she has against you, or will have if you let her stay here
brooding over it. However if you like to risk it--I'm sorry I
spoke." She got up and moved to the door.
"No, no," he said hastily, "do not be sorry you spoke.
You have given me food for reflection. I will think it all over quietly
and--and--" he did not like to talk about prayers to Miss
Desmond somehow, "and--calmly, and if I see that you are
right--I am sure you mean most kindly by me."
"Indeed I do," she said heartily, and gave him her hand in
the manly way he hated. He took it, held it limply an instant, and
repeated:
"Most kindly."
He thought it over for so long that the aunt almost lost hope.
"I have to hold my tongue with both hands to keep it quiet. And if
I say another word I shall spoil the song," she told Betty.
"I've done my absolute best. If that doesn't fetch him,
nothing will!"
It had "fetched him." At the end of two interminable days he
sent to ask Miss Desmond to speak to him in the study. She went.
"I have been thinking carefully," he said, "most
carefully. And I feel that you are right. Perhaps I owe her some amends. Do
you know of any quiet country place?"
Miss Desmond thought Betty had perhaps for the moment had almost enough
of quiet country places.
"She is very anxious to learn drawing," he said, "and
perhaps if I permitted her to do so she might understand it as a sign that
I cherish no resentment on account of what has passed.
But--"
"I know the very thing," said the Aunt, and went on to tell
of Madame Gautier, of her cloistral home in Paris where she received a few
favoured young girls, of the vigilant maid who conducted them to and from
their studies, of the quiet villa on the Marne, where in the summer an able
master--at least sixty or sixty-five years of age--conducted
sketching parties, to which the students were accompanied either by madame
herself, or by the dragon-maid.
"I'll stand the child six months with her," she said,
"or a year even. So it won't cost you anything. And Madame
Gautier is in London now. You could run up and talk to her
yourself."
"Does she speak English?" he asked, anxiously, and being
reassured, questioned further.
"And you?" he asked. And when he heard that Norway for a
month and then America en route for Japan
formed Miss Desmond's programme for the next year he was only just
able to mask, with a cough, his deep sigh of relief. For, however much he
might respect her judgment, he was always easier when Lizzie and her Aunt
Julia were not together.
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 agoing 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?"
"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."
"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 Dégas 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 born 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, dam 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 grey.
"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 turned, and her eyes raised to the roof. 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 Café 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 stepfather 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 Bête," 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 Bête, 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.
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!"
'No diver brings up love again
Dropped once ...
In such cold seas.'
His key turned in the lock, and on the doormat 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 Bête--some dull
hole, no doubt; he had never heard of it. Well, he could not dine at the
Bête, 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--old, 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 Bête, and
the Hotel Bête was no longer a paltry 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:
"Hôtel Bête,
Cité de la Retraite,
Rue Boissy d'Anglas.
"Now bear witness!" cried Vernon, appealing to the Universe,
"bear witness that this is not my fault!"
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 Bête 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 Cité de la
Retraite. Here the doors of the Hotel Bête 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 Bête.
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
déjeûner, it was certain that he
would return for the dinner. 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
déjeûner, wore list slippers and
his movements were silent as a heron's ghost-grey 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 déjeûner? The idea of the
possible meeting amused more than it interested him. He crossed the hall
and entered the long bare salle á
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.
"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 stepfather 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 Cité de la Retraite, ensure its not
being distinctly seen by those who sojourn at the Hotel Bête.
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 stepfather 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 stepfather 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.
"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."
"The other's all right," 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 outran 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
Bête. 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 tyres. 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 dare-
say 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
porte-cochère, 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 protects 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, must 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 Bête, 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.
"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 grey,
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 stepchild.
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."
And so his thoughts, as Aunt Julia's thoughts, hung about the girl,
but it was about a girl sheltered, cared for, watched over, vigilantly
chaperoned and guarded. Not about Betty dining alone at a restaurant in the
Boulevard St. Michel, within a mile of the serpent.
Betty 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.
So presently she paid her bill, and went out, and found a tram, and rode
on the top of it through the lighted streets, on the level of the first
floor windows and the brown leaves of the trees in the Boulevards, and went
away and away through the heart of Paris; and still all her mind could do
nothing but thrust off, with both hands, the Thought that was pushing
forward towards her thinking. When the tram stopped at its journey's
end she did not alight, but paid for, and made, the return journey, and
found her feet again in the Boulevard St. Michel.
Of course, she had read her Trilby, and other works
dealing with the Latin Quarter. She knew that in that quarter everyone is
not respectable, but everyone is kind. It seemed good to her to go to a
café, to sit at a marble topped table, and drink--not the
strange liqueurs which men drink in books, but homely hot milk, such as
some of the other girls there had before them. It would be perfectly
simple, as well as
interesting, to watch the faces of the students, boys and girls, and when
she found a nice girl-face, to speak to it, asking for the address of a
respectable hotel.
So she walked up the wide, tree-planted street feeling very Parisian
indeed as she called it the "Boule Miche" to herself. And she
stopped at the first café she came to, which happened to be the
Café d'Harcourt.
She did not see its name, and if she had it would naturally not have
conveyed any idea to her. The hour was not yet ten, and the Café
d'Harcourt was very quiet. There were not a dozen people at the little
tables. Most of them were women. It would be easy to ask her little
questions, with so few people to stare and wonder if she addressed a
stranger.
She sat down, and ordered her hot milk and, with a flutter, awaited it.
This was life. And to-morrow she must telegraph to her stepfather, and
everything would end in the old round of parish duties; all her hopes and
dreams would be submerged in the heavy morass of meeting mothers. The
Thought leapt up.--Betty hid her eyes and would not look at it.
Instead, she looked at the other people seated at the tables--the
women. They were laughing and talking among themselves. One or two looked
at Betty and smiled with frank friendliness. Betty smiled back, but with
embarrassment. She had heard that French ladies of rank and fashion would
as soon go out without their stockings as without their paint, but she had
not supposed that the practice extended to art students. And all these
ladies were boldly painted--no mere soupçon of carmine and
pearl powder, but good solid masterpieces in body colour, black, white and
red. She smiled in answer to their obvious friendliness, but she did not
ask them for addresses. A handsome black-browed scowling woman sitting
alone frowned at her. She felt quite hurt. Why should anyone want to be
unkind?
Men selling flowers, toy rabbits, rattling cardboard balls, offered
their wares up and down the row of tables. Betty bought a bunch of fading
late roses and thought, with a sudden sentimentality that shocked her, of
the monthly rose below the window at home. It always bloomed well up to
Christmas. Well, in two days she would see that rose bush.
The trams rattled down the Boulevard, carriages rolled by. Every now and
then one of these would stop, and a couple would alight. And people came on
foot. The café was filling up. But still none of the women seemed to
Betty exactly the right sort of person to know exactly the right sort of
hotel.
Of course she knew from books that hotels keep open all night,--but
she did not happen to have read any book which told of the reluctance of
respectable hotels to receive young women without luggage late at night. So
it seemed to her that there was plenty of time.
A blonde-haired girl with jet black brows and eyes like big black beads
was leaning her elbows on her table and talking to her companions, two
tourist-looking Germans in loud checks. They kept glancing at Betty, and it
made her nervous to know that they were talking about her. At last her eyes
met the eyes of the girl, who smiled at her and made a little gesture of
invitation to her, to come and sit at their table. Betty out of sheer
embarrassment might have gone, but just at that moment the handsome
scowling woman rose, rustled quickly to Betty, knocking over a chair in her
passage, held out a hand, and said in excellent English:
"How do you do?"
Betty gave her hand, but "I don't remember you," said
she.
"May I join you?" said the woman, sitting down. She wore
black and white and red, and she was frightfully smart, Betty thought. She
glanced at the
others--the tourists and the blond; they were no longer looking at
her.
"Look here," said the woman, speaking low, "I
don't know you from Adam, of course, but I know you're a decent
girl. For God's sake go home to your friends. I don't know what
they're about to let you out alone like this."
"I'm alone in Paris just now," said Betty.
"Good God in Heaven, you little fool! Get back to your lodging.
You've no business here."
"I've as much business as anyone else," said Betty.
"I'm an artist, too, and I want to see life."
"You've not seen much yet," said the woman with a laugh
that Betty hated to hear. "Have you been brought up in a convent? You
an artist! Look at all of us! Do you need to be told what our
trade is?"
"Don't," said Betty; "oh, don't."
"Go home," said the woman, "and say your
prayers--I suppose you do say your prayers?--and
thank God that it isn't your trade too."
"I don't know what you mean," said Betty.
"Well then, go home and read your Bible. That'll tell you the
sort of woman it is that stands about the corners of streets, or sits at
the Café d'Harcourt. What are your people about?"
"My father's in England," said Betty; "he's
a clergyman."
"I generally say mine was," said the other, "but I
won't to you, because you'd believe me. My father was church
organist, though. And the Vicarage people were rather fond of me. I used to
do a lot of parish work." She laughed again.
Betty laid a hand on the other woman's.
"Couldn't you go home to your
father--or--or--something?" she asked feebly.
"He's cursed me forever--Put it all down in black and
white--a regular commination service. It's you that have got to
go home, and do it now, too." She
shook off Betty's hand and waved her own to a man who was passing.
"Here, Mr. Temple--"
The man halted, hesitated and came up to them.
"Look here," said the black-browed woman, "look what a
pretty flower I've found,--and here of all places."
She indicated Betty by a look. The man looked too, and took the third
chair at their table. Betty wished that the ground might open and cover
her, but the Boule Miche asphalte is solid. The new-comer was tall and
broad-shouldered, with a handsome, serious, boyish face, and fair hair.
"She won't listen to me--"
"Oh, I did!" Betty put in reproachfully.
"You talk to her like a father. Tell her where naughty little
girls go who stay out late at the Café d'Harcourt--fire
and brimstone, you know. She'll understand; she's a
clergyman's daughter."
"I really do think you'd better go home," said the
new-comer to Betty with gentle politeness.
"I would, directly," said Betty, almost in tears,
"but--the fact is I haven't settled on a hotel, and I came
to this café. I thought I could ask one of these art students to
tell me a good hotel, but--so that's how it is."
"I should think not," Temple answered the hiatus. Then he
looked at the black-browed, scowling woman, and his look was very kind.
"Nini and her German swine were beginning to be amiable,"
said the woman in an aside which Betty did not hear. "For
Christ's sake take the child away, and put her safely for the night
somewhere, if you have to ring up a Mother Superior or a Governesses'
Aid Society."
"Right. I will." He turned to Betty.
"Will you allow me," he said, "to find a carriage for
you, and see you to a hotel?"
"Thank you," said Betty.
He went out to the curbstone and scanned the road for a passing
carriage.
"Look here," said the black-browed woman, turning suddenly
on Betty, "I daresay you'll think it's not my place to
speak--oh, if you don't think so you will some day, when
you're grown up,--but look here. I'm not chaffing. It's
deadly earnest. You be good. See? There's nothing else that's any
good really."
"Yes," said Betty, "I know. If you're not good
you won't be happy."
"There you go," the other answered almost fiercely;
"it's always the way. Everyone says it--copybooks and Bible
and everything--and no one believes it till they've tried the
other way, and then it's no use believing anything."
"Oh, yes, it is," said Betty comfortingly, "and
you're so kind. I don't know how to thank you. Being kind
is being good too, isn't it?"
"Well, you aren't always a devil, even if you are in hell. I
wish I could make you understand all the things I didn't understand
when I was like you. But nobody can. That's part of the hell. And you
don't even understand half I'm saying."
"I think I do," said Betty.
"Keep straight," the other said earnestly; "never mind
how dull it is. I used to think it must be dull in Heaven. God knows
it's dull in the other place! Look, he's got a carriage. You can
trust him just for once, but as a rule I'd say 'Don't you
trust any of them--they're all of a piece.' Good-bye;
you're a nice little thing."
"Good-bye," said Betty; "oh, good-bye! You
are kind, and good. People can't all be good the same
way," she added, vaguely and seeking to comfort.
"Women can," said the other, "don't you make any
mistake. Good-bye."
She watched the carriage drive away, and turned
to meet the spiteful chaff of Nini and her German friends.
"Now," said Mr. Temple, as soon as the wheels began to
revolve, "perhaps you will tell me how you come to be out in Paris
alone at this hour."
Betty stared at him coldly.
"I shall be greatly obliged if you can recommend me a good
hotel," she said.
"I don't even know your name," said he.
"No," she answered briefly.
"I cannot advise you unless you will trust me a little," he
said gently.
"You are very kind,--but I have not yet asked for
anyone's advice."
"I am sorry if I have offended you," he said, "but I
only wish to be of service to you."
"Thank you very much," said Betty: "the only service I
want is the name of a good hotel."
"You are unwise to refuse my help," he said. "The
place where I found you shews that you are not to be trusted about
alone."
"Look here," said Betty, speaking very fast, "I dare
say you mean well, but it isn't your business. The lady I was speaking
to--"
"That just shews," he said.
"She was very kind, and I like her. But I don't intend to be
interfered with by any strangers, however well they mean."
He laughed for the first time, and she liked him better when she had
heard the note of his laughter.
"Please forgive me," he said. "You are quite right.
Miss Conway is very kind. And I really do want to help you, and I
don't want to be impertinent. May I speak plainly?"
"Of course."
"Well the Café d'Harcourt is not a place for a
respectable girl to go to."
"I gathered that," she answered quietly. "I won't
go there again."
"Have you quarreled with your friends?" he persisted;
"have you run away?"
"No," said Betty, and on a sudden inspiration, added:
"I'm very, very tired. You can ask me any questions you like in
the morning. Now: will you please tell the man where to go?"
The dismissal was unanswerable.
He took out his card-case and scribbled on a card.
"Where is your luggage?" he asked.
"Not here," she said briefly.
"I thought not," he smiled again. "I am discerning, am
I not? Well, perhaps you didn't know that respectable hotels prefer
travellers who have luggage. But they know me at this place. I have said
you are my cousin," he added apologetically.
He stopped the carriage. "Hotel de l'Unicorne," he told
the driver and stood bareheaded till she was out of sight.
The Thought came out and said: "There will be an end of Me if you
see that well-meaning person again." Betty would not face the
Thought, but she was roused to protect it.
She stood up and touched the coachman on the arm.
"Go back to the Café d'Harcourt," she said.
"I have forgotten something."
That was why, when Temple called, very early, at the Hôtel de
l'Unicorne he heard that his cousin had not arrived there the night
before. Had not, indeed, arrived at all.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"It's a pity," he said. "Certainly she had run
away from home. I suppose I frightened her. I was always a clumsy brute
with women."
"What the devil!--you shouldn't do that!" she said
roughly; "You frightened me out of my wits."
"I'm so sorry," said Betty, who was pale too.
"Come away, won't you? I want to talk to you."
"Your little friend is charming," said one of the men in
thick German-French. "May I order for her a bock or a
cerises?"
"Do come," she urged. The other woman rose then, caught her
by the arm and whirled her through the chairs on to the pavement.
"Let's walk," she said. "What's the matter?
Where's young Temple? Don't tell me he's like all the
others."
"He meant to be kind," said Betty, "but he asked a lot
of questions, and I don't want to know him. I like you
better."
"You must be a born fool, then," said the woman
scornfully.
"Don't talk like that," said Betty, and a lump rose in
her throat, "or I shan't be able to say anything. Isn't
there anywhere we can be quiet, and talk? I'm all alone here in Paris,
and I do want help. And I'd rather you'd help me than anyone
else. Can't I come home with you?"
"No you can't."
"Well then, will you come with me?--not to the hotel he told
me of, but to some other--you must know of one."
"What will you do if I don't?"
"I don't know," said Betty very forlornly, "but
you will, won't you. You don't know how tired I am.
Come with me, and then in the morning we can talk. Do--do."
The other woman took some thirty or forty steps in silence. Then she
asked abruptly:
"Have you plenty of money?"
"Yes, lots."
"And you're an artist?"
"Yes--at least I'm a student."
Again the woman reflected. At last she shrugged her shoulders and
laughed. "Set a thief to catch a thief," she said. "I
shall make a dragon of a chaperon, I warn you. Yes, I'll come, just
for this one night, but you'll have to pay the hotel bill."
"Of course," said Betty.
"This is an adventure. Where's your
luggage?"
"It's at the station, but I want you to promise not to tell
that Temple man a word about me. I don't want to see him again.
Promise."
"Queer child. But I'll promise. Now look here: if I go into a
thing at all I go into it heart and soul; so let's do the thing
properly. We must have some luggage. I've got an old portmanteau
somewhere. Will you wait for me somewhere while I get it?"
"I'd rather not," said Betty, remembering the Germans
and Nini.
"Well then,--there'd be no harm for a few minutes. You
can come with me. This is really rather a lark!"
Five minutes' walking brought the two to a dark house. The woman
rang a bell; a latch clicked and a big door swung open. She grasped
Betty's hand. "Don't say a word," she said, and
pulled her through.
It was very dark.
The other woman called out a name as they passed
the door of the concièrge, a name that was not Conway, and her hand
pulled Betty up flight after flight of steep stairs. On the fifth floor she
opened a door with a key, and left Betty standing at the threshold till she
had lighted a lamp.
Then "Come in," she said, and shut the door and bolted
it.
The room was small and smelt of white rose scent; the looking-glass had
a lace drapery fastened up with crushed red roses; and there were
voluminous lace and stuff curtains to bed and window.
"Sit down," said the hostess. She took off her hat and
pulled the scarlet flowers from it. She washed her face till it shewed no
rouge and no powder, and the brown of lashes and brows was free from the
black water-paint. She raked under the bed with a faded sunshade till she
found an old brown portmanteau. Her smart black and white dress was changed
for a black one, of a mode passée
these three years. A grey chequered golf cape and the dulled hat completed
the transformation.
"How nice you look," said Betty.
The other bundled some linen and brushes into the portmanteau.
"The poor old Gladstone's very thin still," she said,
and folded skirts; "we must plump it out somehow."
When the portmanteau was filled and strapped, they carried it down
between them, in the dark, and got it out on to the pavement.
"I am Miss Conway now," said the woman, "and we will
drive to the Hotel de Lille. I went there one Easter with my
father."
With the change in her dress a change had come over Miss Conway's
voice.
At the Hotel de Lille it was she who ordered the two rooms,
communicating, for herself and her cousin, explained where the rest of the
luggage was, and gave orders for the morning chocolate.
"This is very jolly," said Betty, when they were alone.
"It's like an elopement."
"Exactly," said Miss Conway. "Good night."
"It's rather like a dream, though. I shan't wake up and
find you gone, shall I?" Betty asked anxiously.
"No, no. We've all your affairs to settle in the
morning."
"And yours?"
"Mine were settled long ago. Oh, I forgot--I'm Miss
Conway, at the Hotel de Lille. Yes, we'll settle my affairs in the
morning, too. Good night, little girl."
"Good night, Miss Conway."
"They call me Lotty."
"My name's Betty and--look here, I can't wait till
the morning." Betty clasped her hands, and seemed to be holding her
courage between them. "I've come to Paris to study art, and I
want you to come and live with me. I know you'd like it, and I've
got heaps of money--will you?"
She spoke quickly and softly, and her face was flushed and her eyes
bright.
There was a pause.
"You silly little duffer--you silly dear little
duffer."
The other woman had turned away and was fingering the chains of an
ormolu candlestick on the mantelpiece.
Betty put an arm over her shoulders.
"Look here," she said, "I'm not such a duffer as
you think. I know people do dreadful things--but they needn't go
on doing them, need they?"
"Yes, they need," said the other; "that's just
it."
Her fingers were still twisting the bronze chains.
"And the women you talked about--in the Bible--they
weren't kind and good, like you; they were just only horrid and not
anything else. You told me to be good. Won't you let me help you? Oh,
it does seem such cheek of me, but I never knew anyone
before who--I don't know how to say it. But I am so sorry, and I
want you to be good, just as much as you want me to. Dear, dear
Lotty!"
"My name's Paula."
"Paula dear, I wish I wasn't so stupid, but I know it's
not your fault, and I know you aren't like that woman with the
Germans."
"I should hope not indeed," Paula was roused to flash back;
"dirty little French gutter-cat."
"I've never been a bit of good to anyone," said Betty,
adding her other arm and making a necklace of the two round Paula's
neck, "except to parishioners perhaps. Do let me be a bit of good to
you. Don't you think I could?"
"You dear little fool." said Paula gruffly.
"Yes, but say yes--you must! I know you want to. I've
got lots of money. Kiss me, Paula."
"I won't--don't kiss me--I won't have it!
Go away," said the woman, clinging to Betty and returning her
kisses.
"Don't cry," said Betty gently. "We shall be ever
so happy. You'll see. Good night, Paula. Do you know I've never
had a friend--a girl-friend, I mean?"
"For God's sake hold your tongue, and go to bed.
Good-night."
Betty, alone, faced at last, and for the first time, The Thought. But it
had changed its dress when Miss Conway changed hers. It was no longer a
Thought: it was a Resolution.
Twin-born with her plan for saving her new friend was the plan for a
life that should not be life at Long Barton.
All the evening she had refused to face The Thought. But it had been
shaping itself to something more definite than thought. As a Resolution, a
Plan, it now unrolled itself before her. She sat in the stiff arm-chair
looking straight in front of her, and she saw what she meant to do. The
Thought had been
wise not to insist too much on recognition. Earlier in the evening it would
have seemed merely a selfish temptation. Now it was an opportunity for a
good and noble act. And Betty had always wanted so much to be noble and
good.
Here she was in Paris, alone. Her aunt, train-borne, was every moment
further and further away. As for her stepfather:
"I hate him," said Betty, "and he hates me. He only
let me come to get rid of me. And what good could I do at Long Barton
compared with what I can do here? Any one can do parish work. I've got
the money Aunt left for Madame Gautier. Perhaps it's stealing. But is
it? The money was meant to pay to keep me in Paris to study art. And
it's not as if I were staying altogether for selfish
reasons--there's Paula. I'm sure she has really a noble
nature. And it's not as if I were staying because He is in Paris. Of
course, that would be really wrong. But he said he was going
to Vienna. I suppose his uncle delayed him, but he'll certainly go.
I'm sure it's right. I've learned a lot since I left home.
I'm not a child now. I'm a woman, and I must do what I think is
right. You know I must, mustn't I?"
She appealed to the inward monitor, but it refused to be
propitiated.
"It only seems not quite right because it's so
unusual," she went on; "that's because I've never
been anywhere or done anything. After all, it's my own life, and I
have a right to live it as I like. My stepfather has never written to
Madame Gautier all these months. He won't now. It's only to tell
him she has changed her address--he only writes to me on Sunday
nights. There's just time. And I'll keep the money, and when Aunt
Julia comes back I'll tell her everything. She'll
understand."
"Do you think so?" said the inward monitor.
"Any way," said Betty, putting her foot down on the inward
monitor, "I'm going to do it. If it's
only for Paula's sake. We'll take rooms, and I'll go to a
Studio, and work hard; and I won't make friends with gentlemen I
don't know, or anything silly, so there," she added defiantly.
"Auntie left the money for me to study in Paris. If I tell my
stepfather that Madame Gautier is dead, he'll just fetch me home, and
what'll become of Paula then?"
Thus and thus, ringing the changes on resolve and explanation, her
thoughts ran. A clock chimed midnight.
"Is it possible," she asked herself, "that it's
not twelve hours since I was at the Hotel Bête--talking to Him?
Well, I shall never see him again, I suppose. How odd that I don't
feel as if I cared whether I did or not. I suppose what I felt about him
wasn't real. It all seems so silly now. Paula is real, and all that I
mean to do for her is real. He isn't."
She prayed that night as usual, but her mind was made up, and she prayed
outside a closed door.
Next morning, when her chocolate came up she carried it into the next
room, and, sitting on the edge of her new friend's bed, breakfasted
there.
Paula seemed dazed when she first woke, but soon she was smiling and
listening to Betty's plans.
"How young you look," said Betty, "almost as young as
me."
"I'm twenty-five."
"You don't look it--with your hair in those pretty
plaits, and your nightie--you do have lovely nightgowns."
"I'll get up now," said Paula. "Look out--I
nearly upset the tray."
Betty had carefully put away certain facts and labelled them: "Not
to be told to anyone, even Paula." No one was to know anything about
Vernon. "There is nothing to know really," she told herself. No
one was to know that she was alone in Paris without the knowledge of her
relations. Lots
of girls came to Paris alone to study art. She was just one of these.
She found the lying wonderfully easy. It did not bring with it, either,
any of the shame that lying should bring, but rather a sense of triumphant
achievement, as from a difficult part played excellently.
She paid the hotel bill, and then the search for rooms began.
"We must be very economical, you know," she said, "but
you won't mind that, will you? I think it will be rather
fun."
"It would be awful fun," said the other. "You'll
go and work at the studio, and when you come home after your work I shall
have cooked the déjeûner, and we
shall have it together on a little table with a nice white cloth and a
bunch of flowers on it."
"Yes; and in the evening we'll go out, to concerts and
things, and ride on the tops of trams. And on Sundays--what does one
do on Sundays?"
"I suppose one goes to church," said Paula.
"Oh, I think not when we're working so hard all the week.
We'll go into the country."
"We can take the river steamer and go to St. Cloud, or go out on
the tram to Clamart--the woods there are just exactly like the woods
at home. What part of England do you live in?"
"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, unexpectedly 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
déjeûner 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.
"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!"
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 recognising him. If she did that-- Yet he hoped she
wouldn't. If she did recognise 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 Bête, 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, Dela-
cluse'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 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 inconvenient
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 her self sitting on the top stair with closed eyelids and heart
beating heavily.
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?"
"Work," said Betty, "work and work and work and work
and work: everyone talked about their work, and everyone else listened and
watched for the chance to begin to talk about theirs. This is real life, my
dear. I am so glad I'm beginning to know people. Miss Voscoe is very
queer, but she's a dear. She's the one who caricatured me the
first day. Oh, we shall do now, shan't we?"
"Yes," said the other, "you'll do now."
"I said 'we,'" Betty corrected softly.
"I meant we, of course," said Miss Conway,
But when he gave tea-parties he had store of draperies to pull out from
his carved cupboard, deeply coloured things embroidered in rich silk and
heavy gold--Chinese, Burmese, Japanese, Russian.
He came in to-day with an armful of fair chrysanthemums, deftly set them
in tall brazen jars, pulled out his draperies and arranged them swiftly.
There was a screen to be hung with a Chinese mandarin's dress, where,
on black, gold dragons writhed squarely among blue roses; the couch was
covered by a red burnous with a gold border. There were Persian praying
mats to lay on the bare floor, kakimonos to be fastened with drawing pins
on the bare walls. A tea cloth worked by Russian peasants lay under the
tea-cups--two only--of yellow Chinese egg-shell ware. His tea-pot
and cream-jug were Queen Anne silver, heirlooms at which he mocked. But he
saw to it that they were kept bright.
He lighted the spirit-lamp.
"She was always confoundedly punctual," he said.
But to-day Lady St. Craye was not punctual. She arrived half an hour
late, and the delay had given her host time to think about her.
He heard her voice in the courtyard at last--but the only window
that looked that way was set high in the wall of the little corridor, and
he could not see who it was to whom she was talking. And he wondered,
because the inflection of her voice was
English--not the exquisite imitation of the French inflexion which he
had so often admired in her.
He opened the door and went to the stair head. The voices were coming up
the steps.
"A caller," said Vernon, and added a word or two. However
little you may be in love with a woman, two is better company than
three.
The voices came up. He saw the golden brown shimmer of Lady St.
Craye's hat, and knew that it matched her hair and that there would be
violets somewhere under the brim of it--violets that would make her
eyes look violet too. She was coming up--a man just behind her. She
came round the last turn, and the man was Temple.
"What an Alpine ascent!" she exclaimed, reaching up her hand
so that Vernon drew her up the last three steps. "We have been
hunting you together, on both the other staircases. Now that the chase is
ended, won't you present your friend? And I'll bow to him as soon
as I'm on firm ground!"
Vernon made the presentation and held the door open for Lady St. Craye
to pass. As she did so Temple behind her raised eyebrows which said:
"Am I inconvenient? Shall I borrow a book or something and
go?"
Vernon shook his head. It was annoying, but inevitable. He could only
hope that Lady St. Craye also was disappointed.
"How punctual you are," he said. "Sit here, won't
you?--I hadn't finished laying the table." He deliberately
brought out four more cups. "What unnatural penetration you have,
Temple. How did you find out that this is the day when I sit 'at
home' and wait for people to come and buy my pictures?"
"And no one's come?" Lady St. Craye had sunk into the
chair and was pulling off her gloves. "That's very
disappointing. I thought I should meet dozens of clever and interesting
people, and I only meet two."
Her brilliant smile made the words seem neither banal nor
impertinent.
Vernon was pleased to note that he was not the only one who was
disappointed.
"You are too kind," he said gravely.
Temple was looking around the room.
"Jolly place you've got here," he said, "but
it's hard to find. I should have gone off in despair if I hadn't
met Lady St. Craye."
"We kept each other's courage up, didn't we, Mr. Temple?
It was like Arctic explorers. I was beginning to think we should have to
make a camp and cook my muff for tea."
She held out the sable and Vernon laid it on the couch when he had held
it to his face for a moment.
"I love the touch of fur," he said; "and your fur is
scented with the scent of summer gardens, 'open jasmine muffled
lattices,'" he quoted softly. Temple had wandered to the
window.
"What ripping roofs," he said. "Can one get out on
them?"
"Now what," demanded Vernon, "is the hidden mainspring
that impels every man who comes into these rooms to ask, instantly, whether
one can get out on to the roof? It's only Englishmen, by the way;
Americans never ask it, nor Frenchmen."
"It's the exploring spirit, I suppose," said Temple
idly; "the spirit that has made England the Empire which,
etcetera."
"On which the sun never sets. Yes--but I think the sunset
would be one of the attractions of your roof, Mr. Vernon."
"Sunset is never attractive to me," said he, "nor
autumn. Give me sunrise, and spring."
"Ah, yes," said Lady St. Craye, "you only like
beginnings. Even summer--"
"Even summer, as you say," he answered equably. "The
sketch is always so much better than the picture."
"I believe that is your philosophy of life," said
Temple.
"This man," Vernon explained, "spends his days in
doing ripping etchings and black and white stuff and looking for my
philosophy of life."
"One would like to see that in black and white. Will you etch it
for me, Mr. Temple, when you find it?"
"I don't think the medium would be adequate," Temple
said. "I haven't found it yet, but I should fancy it would be
rather highly coloured."
"Iridescent, perhaps. Did you ever speculate as to the colour of
people's souls? I'm quite sure every soul has a
colour."
"What is yours?" asked Vernon of course.
"I'm too humble to tell you. But some souls are
thick--body-colour, don't you know--and some are clear like
jewels."
"And mine's an opal, is it?"
"With more green in it, perhaps; you know the lovely colour on the
dykes in the marshes?"
"Stagnant water? Thank you!"
"I don't know what it is. It has some hateful chemical name,
I daresay. They have vases the colour I mean, mounted in silver, at the
Army and Navy Stores."
"And your soul--it is a pearl, isn't it?"
"Never! Nothing opaque. If you will force my modesty to the
confession I believe in my heart that it is a sapphire. True blue,
don't you know!"
"And Temple's--but you've not known him long enough
to judge."
"So it's no use my saying that I am sure his soul is a
dewdrop."
"To be dried up by the sun of life?" Temple questioned.
"No--to be hardened into a diamond--by the fire of life.
No, don't explain that dewdrops don't harden into diamonds. I
know I'm not scientific, but
I honestly did mean to be complimentary. Isn't your kettle boiling
over, Mr. Vernon?"
Lady St. Craye's eyes, while they delicately condoled with Vernon
on the spoiling of his
tête-à-tête with her, were
also made to indicate a certain interest in the spoiler. Temple was more
than six feet high, well built. He had regular features and clear grey
eyes, with well-cut cases and very long dark lashes. His mouth was firm and
its lines were good. But for his close-cropped hair and for a bearing at
once frank, assured, and modest, he would have been much handsomer than a
man has any need to be. But his expression saved him. No one had ever
called him a barber's block or a hairdresser's apprentice.
To Temple Lady St. Craye appeared the most charming woman he had ever
seen. It was an effect which she had the habit of producing. He had said of
her in his haste that she was all clothes and no woman. Now he saw that on
the contrary the clothes were quite intimately part of the woman, and took
such value as they had from her.
She carried her head with the dainty alertness of a beautiful bird. She
had a gift denied to most Englishwomen--the genius for wearing
clothes. No one had ever seen her dress dusty or crushed, her hat crooked.
No uncomfortable accidents ever happened to her. Blacks never settled on
her face, the buttons never came off her gloves, she never lost her
umbrella, and in the windiest weather no loose, untidy wisps escaped from
her thick, heavy, shining hair to wander unbecomingly round the ears that
were pearly and pink, like the little shells of Vanessae. Some of the women
who hated her used to say that she dyed her hair. It was certainly very
much lighter than her brows and lashes. To-day she was wearing a corduroy
dress of a gold some shades greyer than the gold of her hair. Sable trimmed
it, and violet silk lined the loose sleeves and the coat, now unfastened
and thrown back. There were, as Vernon had known
there would be, violets under the brim of the hat that matched her
hair.
The chair in which she sat wore a Chinese blue drapery. The yellow
tea-cups gave the highest note in the picture.
"If I were Whistler, I should ask you to let me paint your
portrait like that--yes, with my despicable yellow tea-cup in your
honourable hand."
"If you were Mr. Whistler--or anything in the least like Mr.
Whistler--I shouldn't be drinking tea out of your honourable
tea-cup," she said. "Do you really think, Mr. Temple, that one
ought not to say one doesn't like people just because they're
dead?"
He had been thinking something a little like it. "Well," he
said rather awkwardly, "you see dead people can't hit
back."
"No more can live ones when you don't hit them, but only
stick pins in their effigies. I'd rather speak ill of the dead than
the living."
"Yet it doesn't seem fair, somehow," Temple
insisted.
"But why? No one can go and tell the poor things what people are
saying of them. You don't go and unfold a shroud just to whisper in a
corpse's ear, 'It was horrid of her to say it, but I thought you
ought to know, dear.'--And if you did, they wouldn't lie
awake at night worrying over it as the poor live people do.--No more
tea, thank you."
"Do you really think anyone worries about what anyone
says?"
"Don't you, Mr: Temple?"
He reflected.
"He never has anything to worry about," Vernon put in;
"no one ever says anything unkind about him. The cruelest thing
anyone ever said of him was that he would make as excellent a husband as
Albert the Good."
"The white flower of a blameless life? My felicitations,"
Lady St. Craye smiled them.
Temple flushed.
"Now isn't it odd," Vernon asked, "that however
much one plumes oneself on one's blamelessness, one hates to hear it
attributed to one by others? One is good by stealth and blushes to find it
fame. I myself--"
"Yes!" said Lady St. Craye with an accent of finality.
"What a man really likes is to be saint with the reputation of
being a bit of a devil."
"And a woman likes, you think, to be a bit of a devil, with the
reputation of a saint?"
"Or a bit of a saint with a reputation that rhymes to the reality.
It's the reputation that's important, isn't it?"
"Isn't the inward truth the really important thing?"
said Temple rather heavily.
Lady St. Craye looked at him in such a way as to make him understand
that she understood. Vernon looked at them both, and turning to the window
looked out on his admired roofs.
"Yes," she said very softly, "but one doesn't
talk about that, any more than one does of one's religion or
one's love affairs."
The plural vexed Temple, and he told himself how unreasonable the
vexation was.
Lady St. Craye turned her charming head to look at him, to look at
Vernon.
One had been in love with her. The other might be. There is in the world
no better company than this. Temple, always deeply uninterested in
women's clothes, was noting the long, firm folds of her skirt. Vernon
had turned from the window to approve the loving closeness of those violets
against her hair. Lady St. Craye in her graceful attitude of conscious
unconsciousness was the focus of their eyes.
"Here comes a millionaire, to buy your pictures," she said
suddenly,--"no--a millionairess, by the
sound of her high-heeled shoes. How beautiful are the
feet--"
The men had heard nothing, but following hard on her words came the
sound of footsteps along the little corridor. An agitated knock on the
door.
Vernon opened the door--to Betty.
"Oh--come in," he said cordially, and his pause of
absolute astonishment was brief as an eye-flash. "This is
delightful--"
And as she passed into the room he caught her eyes and, looking a
warning, said: "I am so glad to see you. I began to be afraid you
wouldn't be able to come."
"I saw you in the Bois the other day," said Lady St. Craye,
"and I have been wanting to know you ever since."
"You are very kind," said Betty. Her hat was on one side,
her hair was very untidy, and it was not a becoming untidiness either. She
had no gloves, and a bit of the velvet binding of her skirt was loose. Her
eyes were red and swollen with crying. There was a black smudge on her
cheek.
"Take this chair," said Vernon, and moved a comfortable one
with its back to the light.
"Temple--let me present you to Miss Desmond."
Temple bowed, with no flicker of recognition visible in his face. But
Betty, flushing scarlet, said:
"Mr. Temple and I have met before."
There was the tiniest pause. Then Temple said: "I am so glad to
meet you again. I thought you had perhaps left Paris."
"Let me give you some tea," said Vernon.
Tea was made for her,--and conversation. She drank the tea, but she
seemed not to know what to do with the conversation.
It fluttered aimlessly, like a bird with a broken wing. Lady St. Craye
did her best, but talk is not easy when each one of a party has its own
secret preoccupying interest, and an overlapping interest in the
preoccupation of the others. The air was too electric.
Lady St. Craye had it on her lips that she must go--when Betty rose
suddenly.
"Good-bye," she said generally, looking round with miserable
eyes that tried to look merely polite.
"Must you go?" asked Vernon, furious with the complicated
emotions that, warring in him, left him just as helpless as anyone
else.
"I do hope we shall meet again," said Lady St. Craye.
"Mayn't I see you home?" asked Temple unexpectedly,
even to himself.
Betty's "No, thank you," was most definite.
She went. Vernon had to let her go. He had guests. He could not leave
them. He had lost wholly his ordinary control of circumstances. All through
the petrifying awkwardness of the late talk he had been seeking an excuse
to go with Betty--to find out what was the matter.
He closed the door and came back. There was no help for it.
But there was help. Lady St. Craye gave it. She rose as Vernon came
back.
"Quick!" she said, "Shall we go? Hadn't you
better bring her back here? Go after her at once."
"You're an angel," said Vernon. "No, don't
go. Temple, look after Lady St. Craye. If you'll not think me
rude?--Miss Desmond is in trouble, I'm afraid."
"Of course she is--poor little thing. Oh, Mr. Vernon, do run.
She looks quite despairing. There's your hat. Go--Go."
The door banged behind her.
The other two, left alone, looked at each other.
"I wonder--" said she.
"Yes," said he, "it's certainly
mysterious."
"We ought to have gone at once," said she. "I should
have done, of course, only Mr. Vernon so
elaborately explained that he expected her. One had to play up. And so
she's a friend of yours?"
"She's not a friend of mine," said Temple rather
ruefully, "and I didn't know Vernon was a friend of hers. You
saw that she wouldn't have my company at any price."
"Mr. Vernon's a friend of her people, I believe. We saw her
the other day in the Bois, and he told me he knew them in England. Did you
know them there too? Poor child, what a woe-begone little face it
was."
"No, not in England. I met her in Paris about a fortnight ago, but
she didn't like me, from the first, and our acquaintance broke off
short."
There was a silence. Lady St. Craye perceived a ring-fence of reticence
round the subject that interested her, and knew that she had no art strong
enough to break it down.
She spoke again suddenly:
"Do you know you're not a bit the kind of man I expected you
to be, Mr. Temple. I've heard so much of you from Mr. Vernon.
We're such old friends, you know."
"Apparently he can't paint so well with words as he does with
oils. May I ask exactly how flattering the portrait was?"
"It wasn't flattering at all. In fact it wasn't a
portrait."
"A caricature?"
"But you don't mind what people say of you, do
you?"
"You are trying to frighten me."
"No, really," she said with pretty earnestness;
"it's only that he has always talked about you as his best
friend, and I imagined you would be like him."
Temple's uneasy wonderings about Betty's trouble, her
acquaintance with Vernon, the meaning of her visit to him, were pushed to
the back of his mind.
"I wish I were like him," said he,--"at any rate,
in his paintings."
"At any rate--yes. But one can't have everything, you
know. You have qualities which he hasn't--qualities that you
wouldn't exchange for any qualities of his."
"That wasn't what I meant; I--the fact is, I like old
Vernon, but I can't understand him."
"That philosophy of life eludes you still? Now, I understand him,
but I don't always like him--not all of him."
"I wonder whether anyone understands him?"
"He's not such a sphinx as he looks!" her tone betrayed
a slight pique. "Now, your character would be much harder to read.
That's one of the differences."
"We are all transparent enough--to those who look through the
right glasses," said Temple. "And part of my character is my
inability to find any glass through which I could see him
clearly."
This comparison of his character and Vernon's, with its sudden
assumption of intimacy, charmed yet embarrassed him,
She saw both emotions and pitied him a little. But it was necessary to
interest this young man enough to keep him there till Vernon should return.
Then Vernon would see her home, and she might find out something, however
little, about Betty. But if this young man went she too must go. She could
not outstay him in the rooms of his friend. So she talked on, and Temple
was just as much at her mercy as Betty had been at the mercy of the brother
artist in the rabbit warren at Long Barton.
But at seven o'clock Vernon had not returned, and it was, after
all, Temple who saw her home.
Temple, free from the immediate enchantment of her presence, felt the
revival of a resentful curiosity.
Why had Betty refused his help? Why had she
sought Vernon's? Why did women treat him as though he were a curate
and Vernon as though he were a god? Well--Lady St. Craye at least had
not treated him as curates are treated.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's the
matter?"
"Oh, go back to your friends," said Betty angrily.
"My friends are all right. They'll amuse each other. Tell
me."
"Then you must come with me," said she. "If I try to
tell you here I shall begin to cry again. Don't speak to me. I
can't bear it."
He got into the carriage. It was not until Betty had let herself into
her room and he had followed her in--not till they stood face to face
in the middle of the carpet that he spoke again.
"Now," he said, "what is it? Where's your aunt,
and--"
"Sit down, won't you?" she said, pulling off her hat
and throwing it on the couch; "it'll take rather a long time to
tell, but I must tell you all about it, or else you can't help me. And
if you don't help me I don't know what I shall do."
Despair was in her voice.
He sat down. Betty, in the chair opposite his, sat with hands nervously
locked together.
"Look here," she said abruptly, "you're sure to
think that everything I've done is wrong, but it's no use your
saying so."
"I won't say so."
"Well, then--that day, you know, after I saw you at the
Bête--Madame Gautier didn't come to fetch me, and I waited
and waited, and at last I went to her flat, and she was dead,--and I
ought to have telegraphed to my stepfather to fetch me, but I thought I
would like to have one night in Paris first--you know I hadn't
seen Paris at all, really."
"Yes," he said, trying not to let any anxiety into his
voice. "Yes--go on."
"And I went to the Café d'Harcourt-- What did you
say?"
"Nothing."
"I thought it was where the art students went. And I met a girl
there, and she was kind to me."
"What sort of a girl? Not an art student?"
"No," said Betty hardly, "she wasn't an art
student. She told me what she was."
"Yes?"
"And I--I don't think I should have done it just for me
alone, but--I did want to stay in Paris and work--and I wanted to
help her to be good--she is good really, in spite of
everything. Oh, I know you're horribly shocked, but I can't help
it. And now she's gone,--and I can't find her."
"I'm not shocked," he said deliberately, "but
I'm extremely stupid. How 'gone'?"
"She was living with me here. Oh, she found the rooms and showed
me where to go for meals and gave me good advice--oh, she did
everything for me. And now she's gone. And I don't know what to
do. Paris is such a horrible place. Perhaps she's been kidnapped or
something. And I don't know even how to tell the police. And all this
time I'm talking to you is wasted time."
"It isn't wasted. But I must understand. You met this girl
and she--"
"She asked your friend Mr. Temple--he was passing and she
called out to him--to tell me of a decent
hotel, but he asked so many questions. He gave me an address, and I
didn't go. I went back to her, and we went to a hotel and I persuaded
her to come and live with me."
"But your aunt?"
Betty explained about her aunt.
"And your father?"
She explained about her father.
"And now she has gone, and you want to find her?"
"Want to find her?" Betty started up and began to walk up
and down the room.--"I don't care about anything else in
the world. She's a dear; you don't know what a dear she
is,--and I know she was happy here--and now she's gone! I
never had a girl friend before--what?"
Vernon had winced, just as Paula had winced, and at the same words.
"You've looked for her at the Café
d'Harcourt?"
"No; I promised her that I'd never go there again."
"She seems to have given you some good advice."
"She advised me not to have anything to do with
you," said Betty, suddenly spiteful.
"That was good advice--when she gave it," said Vernon,
quietly; "but now it's different."
He was silent a moment, realising with a wonder beyond words how
different it was. Every word, every glance between him and Betty had,
hitherto, been part of a play. She had been a charming figure in a charming
comedy. He had known, as it were by rote, that she had feelings--a
heart, affections--but they had seemed pale, dream-like, just a
delightful background to his own sensations, strong and conscious and
delicate. Now for the first time he perceived her as real, a human being in
the stress of a real human emotion. And he was conscious of a feeling of
protective tenderness, a real, open-air primitive sentiment, with no smell
of
the footlights about it. He was alone with Betty. He was the only person in
Paris to whom she could turn for help. What an opportunity for a fine scene
in his best manner! And he found that he did not want a scene. He wanted to
help her.
"Why don't you say something?" she said impatiently.
"What am I to do?"
"You can't do anything. I'll do everything. You say she
knows Temple. Well, I'll find him, and we'll go to her lodgings
and find out if she's there. You don't know the
address?"
"No," said Betty. "I went there, but it was at night
and I don't even know the street."
"Now look here." He took both her hands and held them
firmly. "You aren't to worry. I'll do everything. Perhaps
she has been taken ill. In that case, when we find her, she'll need
you to look after her. You must rest. I'm certain to find her. You
must eat something. I'll send you in some dinner. And then lie
down."
"I couldn't sleep," said Betty, looking at him with the
eyes of a child that has cried its heart out.
"Of course you couldn't. Lie down, and make yourself read.
I'll get back as soon as I can. Good-bye." There was something
further that wanted to get itself said, but the words that came nearest to
expressing it were "God bless you,"--and he did not say
them.
On the top of his staircase he found Temple lounging.
"Hullo--still here? I'm afraid I've been a devil of
a time gone, but Miss Desmond's--"
"I don't want to shove my oar in," said Temple,
"but I came back when I'd seen Lady St. Craye home. I hope
there's nothing wrong with Miss Desmond."
"Come in," said Vernon. "I'll tell you the whole
thing."
They went into the room desolate with the disorder
of half empty cups and scattered plates with crumbs of cake on them.
"Miss Desmond told me about her meeting you. Well, she gave you
the slip; she went back and got that woman--Lottie what's her
name--and took her to live with her."
"Good God! She didn't know, of course?"
"But she did know--that's the knock-down blow. She knew,
and she wanted to save her."
Temple was silent a moment.
"I say, you know, though--that's rather fine," he
said presently.
"Oh, yes," said Vernon impatiently, "it's very
romantic and all that. Well, the woman stayed a fortnight and disappeared
to-day. Miss Desmond is breaking her heart about her."
"So she took her up, and--she's rather young for rescue
work."
"Rescue work? Bah! She talks of the woman as the 'only girl
friend she's ever had.' And the woman's probably gone off
with her watch and chain and a collection of light valuables. Only I
couldn't tell Miss Desmond that. So I promised to try and find the
woman. She's a thorough bad lot. I've run up against her once or
twice with chaps I know."
"She's not that sort," said Temple.
"I know her fairly well."
"What--Sir Galahad? Oh, I won't ask inconvenient
questions." Vernon's sneer was not pretty.
"She used to live with de Villermay," said Temple steadily;
"he was the first--the usual coffee-maker business, you know,
though God knows how an English girl got into it. When he went home to be
married--it was rather beastly. The father came up--offered her a
present. She threw it at him. Then Schauermacher wanted her to live with
him. No. She'd go to the devil her own way. And she's
gone."
"Can't something be done?" said Vernon.
"I've tried all I know. You can save a woman who doesn't
know where she's going. Not one who knows and means to go. Besides,
she's been at it six months; she's past reclaiming
now."
"I wonder," said Vernon; his sneer had gone and he looked
ten years younger, "I wonder whether anybody's past reclaiming?
Do you think I am? Or you?"
The other stared at him.
"Well," Vernon's face aged again instantly, "the
thing is we've got to find the woman."
"To get her to go back and live with that innocent
girl?"
"Lord--no! To find her. To find out why she bolted, and to
make certain that she won't 'go back and live with that innocent
girl.' Do you know her address?"
But she was not to be found at her address. She had come back, paid her
bill, and taken away her effects.
It was at the Café d'Harcourt, after all, that they found
her, one of a party of four. She nodded to them, and presently left her
party and came to spread her black and white flounces at their table.
"What's the best news with you?" she asked gaily.
"It's a hundred years since I saw you, Bobby, and at least a
million since I saw your friend."
"The last time I saw you," Temple said, "was the night
when you asked me to take care of a girl."
"So it was! And did you?"
"No," said Temple; "she wouldn't let me. She went
back to you."
"So you've seen her again? Oh, I see--you've come
to ask me what I meant by daring to contaminate an innocent girl by my
society?--Well, you can go to Hell, and ask there."
She rose, knocking over a chair.
"Don't go," said Vernon. "That's not what we
want to ask."
"'We' too," she turned fiercely on
him: "as if you were a king or a deputation."
"One and one are two," said Vernon; "and
I did very much want to talk to you."
"And two are company."
She had turned her head away.
"You aren't going to be cruel," Vernon asked.
"Well, send him off then. I won't be bullied by a crowd of
you."
Temple took off his hat and went.
"I've got an appointment. I've no time for fool
talk," she said.
"Sit down," said Vernon. "First I want to thank you
for the care you've taken of Miss Desmond, and for all your kindness
and goodness to her."
"Oh," was all Paula could say. She had expected something so
different. "I don't see what business it is of yours,
though," she added next moment.
"Only that she's alone here, and I'm the only person she
knows in Paris. And I know, much better than she does, all that you've
done for her sake."
"I did it for my own sake. It was no end of a lark," said
Paula eagerly, "that little dull, pious life. And all the time I used
to laugh inside to think what a sentimental fool she was."
"Yes," said Vernon slowly, "it must have been amusing
for you."
"I just did it for the fun of the thing. But I couldn't stand
it any longer, so I just came away. I was bored to death."
"Yes," he said, "you must have been. Just playing at
cooking and housework, reading aloud to her while she drew--yes, she
told me that. And the flowers and all her little trumpery odds and ends
about. Awfully amusing it must have been."
"Don't," said Paula.
"And to have her loving you and trusting you as
she did--awfully comic, wasn't it? Calling you her
girlfriend--"
"Shut up, will you?"
"And thinking she had created a new heaven and a new earth for
you. Silly sentimental little school-girl!"
"Will you hold your tongue?"
"So long, Lottie," cried the girl of her party;
"we're off to the Bullier. You've got better fish to fry, I
see."
"Yes," said Paula with sudden effrontery; "perhaps
we'll look in later."
The others laughed and went.
"Now," she said, turning furiously on Vernon, "will
you go? Or shall I? I don't want any more of you."
"Just one word more," he said with the odd change of
expression that made him look young. "Tell me why you left her.
She's crying her eyes out for you."
"Why I left her? Because I was sick of--"
"Don't. Let me tell you. You went with her because she was
alone and friendless. You found her rooms, you set her in the way of making
friends. And when you saw that she was in a fair way to be happy and
comfortable, you came away, because--"
"Because?" she leaned forward eagerly.
"Because you were afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Afraid of handicapping her. You knew you would meet people who
knew you. You gave it all up--all the new life, the new
chances--for her sake, and came away. Do I understand? Is it
fool-talk?"
Paula leaned her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands.
"You're not like most men," she said; "you make
me out better than I am. That's not the usual mistake. Yes, it
was all that, partly. And I should
have liked to stay--for ever and ever--if I could. But suppose I
couldn't? Suppose I'd begun to find myself wishing for--all
sorts of things, longing for them. Suppose I'd stayed till I began to
think of things that I wouldn't think of while
she was with me. That's what I was afraid
of."
"And you didn't long for the old life at all?"
She laughed. "Long for that? But I might have. I might have. It
was safer.--Well, go back to her and tell her I've gone to the
devil and it's not her fault. Tell her I wasn't worth saving. But
I did try to save her. If you're half a man you won't undo my one
little bit of work."
"What do you mean?"
"You know well enough what I mean. Let the girl alone."
He leaned forward, and spoke very earnestly. "Look here," he
said, "I won't jaw. But this about you and her--well,
it's made a difference to me that I can't explain. And I
wouldn't own that to anyone but her friend. I mean to be
a friend to her too, a good friend. No nonsense."
"Swear by God in Heaven," she said fiercely.
"I do swear it," he said, "by God in Heaven. And I
can't tell her you've gone to the devil. You must write to her.
And you can't tell her that either."
"What's the good of writing?"
"A lie or two isn't much, when you've done all this for
her. Come up to my place. You can write to her there."
This was the letter that Paula wrote in Vernon's studio, among the
half-empty cups and the scattered plates with cake-crumbs on them.
"My dear little Betty,
I must leave without saying good-bye, and I shall never see you again. My father has taken me back. I wrote to him and he came and found me. He has forgiven me everything, only I have had to promise never to speak to anyone I knew in Paris. It is all your doing, dear. God bless you. You have saved me. I shall pray for you every day as long as I live.
Your poor PAULA."
He read it. And he did not laugh.
"Yes--that'll do," he said. "I'll tell
her you've gone to England, and I'll send the letter to London to
be posted."
"Then that's all settled!"
"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.
"God Himself can't do anything for me," she said,
biting the edge of her veil.
"Where are you going now?"
"Back to the d'Harcourt. It's early yet."
She stood defiantly smiling at him.
"What were you doing there--the night you met her?" he
asked abruptly.
"What does one do?"
"What's become of de Villermay?" he asked.
"Gone home--got married."
"And so you thought--"
"Oh, if you want to know what I thought you're welcome! I
thought I'd damn myself as deep as I could--to pile up the
reckoning for him; and I've about done it. Good-bye. I must be getting
on."
"I'll come a bit of the way with you," he said.
At the door he turned, took her hand and kissed it gently and
reverently.
"That's very sweet of you." She opened astonished eyes
at him. "I always used to think you an awful brute."
"It was very theatrical of me," he told himself later.
"But it summed up the situation. Sentimental ass you're
growing!"
Betty got her letter from England and cried over it and was glad over
it.
"I have done one thing, anyway," she told herself,
"one really truly good thing. I've saved my poor dear Paula. Oh,
how right I was! How I knew her!"
The next time he went to Sevenoaks he looked in at the builders and
decorators, gave an order, and chose a wall-paper with little pink roses on
it. When Betty came home for Christmas she should not find her room the
faded desert it was now. He ordered pink curtains to match the rosebuds.
And it was when he got home that he found the letter that told him she was
not to come at Christmas.
But he did not countermand his order. If not at Christmas, then at
Easter; and whenever it was she should find her room a bower. Since she had
been away he had felt more and more the need to express his affection. He
had expressed it, he thought,
to the uttermost, by letting her go at all. And now he wanted to express it
in detail, by pink curtains, satin-faced wall-paper with pink roses. The
paper cost two shillings a piece, and he gloated over the extravagance and
over his pretty poetic choice. Usually the wall-papers at the Rectory had
been chosen by Betty, and the price limited to sixpence. He would refrain
from buying that Fuller's Church History, the beautiful
brown folio whose perfect boards and rich yellow paper had lived in his
dreams for the last three weeks, ever since he came upon it in the rag and
bone shop in the little back street in Maidstone. When the rosebud paper
and the pink curtains were in their place the shabby carpet was an insult
to their bright prettiness. Tht Reverend Cecil bought an Oriental carpet,
of the bright-patterned jute variety, and was relieved to find that it only
cost a pound.
The leaves were falling in brown dry showers in the Rectory garden, the
chrysanthemums were nearly over, the dahlias blackened and blighted by the
first frosts. A few pale blooms still clung to the gaunt hollyhock stems,
here and there camomile flowers, "medicine daisies" Betty used
to call them when she was little, their whiteness tarnished, showed among
bent dry stalks of flowers dead and forgotten. Round Betty's window
the monthly rose bloomed pale and pink amid disheartened foliage. The damp
began to shew on the north walls of the rooms. A fire in the study now
daily, for the sake of the books: one in the drawing-room, weekly, for the
sake of the piano and the furniture. And for Betty, in far-away Paris, a
fire of crackling twigs and long logs in the rusty fire-basket, and blue
and yellow flames leaping to lick the royal arms of France on the wrought
iron fire-back.
The rooms were lonely to Betty now that Paula was gone. She missed her
inexpressibly. But the loneliness was lighted by a glow of pride, of
triumph, of achievement. Her deception of her stepfather was
justified. She had been the means of saving Paula. But for her Paula would
not have returned, like the prodigal son, to the father's house. Betty
pictured her there, subdued, saddened, but inexpressibly happy, warming her
cramped heart in the sun of forgiveness and love.
"Thank God, I have done some good in the world," said
Betty.
In the brief interview which Vernon took to tell her that Paula had gone
to England with her father, Betty noticed no change in him. She had no
thought for him then. And in the next weeks, when she had thoughts for him,
she did not see him.
She could not but be glad that he was in Paris. In the midst of her new
experiences he seemed to her like an old friend. Yet his being there put a
different complexion on her act of mutiny. When she decided to deceive her
stepfather, and to stay on in Paris alone, Paula had been to be saved, and
he had been, to her thought, in Vienna, not to be met. Now
Paula was gone--and he was here. In the night when Betty lay wakeful
and heard the hours chimed by a convent bell whose voice was toneless and
grey as an autumn sky it seemed to her that all was wrong, that she had
committed a fault that was almost a crime, that there was nothing now to be
done but to confess, to go home and to expiate, as the prodigal son
doubtless did among the thorny roses of forgiveness, those days in the far
country. But always with the morning light came the remembrance that it was
not her father's house to which she must go to make submission. It was
her stepfather's. And after all, it was her own life--she had to
live it. Once that confession and submission made she saw herself enslaved
beyond hope of freedom. Meanwhile here was the glad, gay life of
independence, new experiences, new sensations. And her stepfather was
doubtless glad to be rid of her.
"It isn't as though anyone wanted me at home,"
she said; "and everything here is so new and good, and I have quite a
few friends already--and I shall have more. This is what they call
seeing life."
Life as she saw it was good to see. The darker, grimmer side of the
student life was wholly hidden from Betty. She saw only a colony of young
artists of all nations--but most of England and America--all good
friends and comrades--working and playing with an equal enthusiasm.
She saw girls treated as equals and friends by the men students. If money
were short it was borrowed from the first friend one met, and quite usually
repaid when the home allowance arrived. A young man would borrow from a
young woman or a young woman from a young man as freely as schoolboys from
each other. Most girls had a special friend among the boys. Betty thought
at first that these must be betrothed lovers. Miss Voscoe stared when she
put the question about a pair who had just left the restaurant together
with the announcement that they were off to the Musée Cluny for the
afternoon.
"Engaged? Not that I know of. Why should they be?" she said
in a tone that convicted Betty of a social lapse in the putting of the
question. Yet she defended herself.
"Well, you know, in England people don't generally go about
together like that unless they're engaged, or relations."
"Yes," said Miss Voscoe, filling her glass from the little
bottle of weak white wine that costs threepence at Garnier's,
"I've heard that is so in your country. Your girls always marry
the wrong man, don't they, because he's the first and only one
they've ever had the privilege of conversing with?"
"Not quite always, I hope," said Betty good humouredly.
"Now in our country," Miss Voscoe went on, "girls look
around so as they can tell there's more different sorts of boys than
there are of squashes.
Then when they get hitched up to a husband it's because they like him,
or because they like his dollars, or for some reason that isn't just
that he's the only one they've ever said five words on end
to."
"There's something in that," Betty owned; "but my
aunt says men never want to be friends with girls--they always
want--"
"To flirt? May be they do, though I don't think so. Our men
don't, any way. But if the girl doesn't want to flirt things
won't get very tangled up."
"But suppose a man got really fond of you, then he might think you
liked him too, if you were always about with him--"
"Do him good to have his eyes opened then! Besides, who's
always about with anyone? You have a special friend for a bit, and just
walk around and see the sights,--and then change partners and have a
turn with somebody else. It's just like at a dance. Nobody thinks
you're in love because you dance three or four times running with one
boy."
Betty reflected as she ate her noix de
veau. It was certainly true that she had seen changes of
partners. Milly St. Leger, the belle of the students' quarter, changed
her partners every week.
"You see," the American went on, "we're not the
stay-at-home-and-mind-auntie kind that come here to study. What we want is
to learn to paint and to have a good time in between. Don't you make
any mistake, Miss Desmond. This time in Paris is the time of
our lives to most of us. It's what we'll have to look back at and
talk about. And suppose every time there was any fun going we had to send
around to the nearest store for a chaperon how much fun would there be left
by the time she toddled in? No--the folks at home who trust us to work
trust us to play. And we have our little heads screwed on the right
way."
Betty remembered that she had been trusted neither for play nor work.
Yet, from the home standpoint
she had been trustworthy, more trustworthy than most. She had not asked
Vernon, her only friend, to come and see her, and when he had said,
"When shall I see you again?" she had answered, "I
don't know. Thank you very much. Good-bye."
"I don't know how you were raised," Miss
Voscoe went on, "but I guess it was in the pretty, sheltered home
life. Now I'd bet my bottom dollar you fell in love with the first man
that said three polite words to you!"
"I'm not twenty yet," said Betty, with ears and face of
scarlet.
"Oh, you mean I'm to think nobody's had time to say
those three polite words yet? You come right along to my studio, I've
got a tea on, and I'll see if I can't introduce my friends to you
by threes, so as you get nine polite words at once. You can't fall in
love with three boys a minute, can you? Or perhaps you'd like to prink
a bit first?"
Betty admitted the desire when she understood what it was. She went home
and put on her prettiest frock. After all, one was risking a good deal for
this Paris life, and one might as well get as much out of it as one could.
And one always had a better time of it when one was decently dressed. Her
gown was of dead-leaf velvet, with green under-sleeves and touches of dull
red and green embroidery at elbows and collar.
Miss Voscoe's studio was at the top of a hundred and seventeen
polished wooden steps, and as Betty neared the top flight the sound of
talking and laughter came down to her, mixed with the rattle of china and
the subdued tinkle of a mandoline. She opened the door--the room
seemed full of people, but she only saw two. One was Vernon and the other
was Temple.
Betty furiously resented the blush that hotly covered neck, ears and
face.
"Here you are! You look real sweet!" cried
Miss Voscoe. She was kind: she gave but one fleet glance at the blush, and,
linking her arm in Betty's, led her round the room. Betty heard her
name and other names. People were being introduced to her. She heard:
"Pleased to know you,"--
"Pleased to make your acquaintance,"--
and realised that her circle of American acquaintances was widening. When Miss Voscoe paused with her before the group of which Temple and Vernon formed part Betty felt as though her face had swelled to that degree that her eyes must, with the next red wave, start out of her head. The two hands, held out in successive greeting, gave Miss Voscoe the key to Betty's flushed entrance.
"Delighted to meet you"--
She drew her quickly away, and led her up to a glaring poster where a
young woman in a big red hat sat at a café table, and under cover of
Betty's purely automatic recognition of the composition's talent,
murmured:
"Say! Which of them was it?"
"I beg your pardon?" Betty mechanically offered the deferent
defence.
"Which was it that said the three polite words--before
you'd ever met anyone else?"
"Ah!" said Betty, "you're so
clever--"
"Too clever to live, yes," said Miss Voscoe; "but
before I die--which was it?"
"I was going to say," said Betty, her face slowly drawing
back into itself its natural colouring, "that you're so clever
you don't want to be told things. If you're sure it's one of
them, you ought to know which."
"There are no flies on you," remarked Miss Voscoe with
simple Transatlantic appreciation, "I lay my money on Mr.
Temple."
"Didn't I say you were clever," said Betty.
"Then it's the other one."
"Too clever to live, didn't you say?"
"That takes me," replied the American girl, "but the
three-polite-word man is never, just never, the real right one, and
don't you forget it, Miss Daisy-face."
Before the studio tea was over Vernon and Temple both had conveyed to
Betty the information that it was the hope of meeting her that had drawn
them to Miss Voscoe's studio that afternoon.
"Because, anyhow," said Vernon, "we do
know each other better than either of us knows anyone else in Paris. And,
if you'd let me, I could put you to a thing or two in the matter of
your work. After all, I've been through the mill."
"It's very kind of you," said Betty, "but
I'm all alone now Paula's gone, and--"
"We'll respect the conventions," said Vernon gaily,
"but the conventions of the Quartier Latin aren't the
conventions of Clapham."
"No, I know," said she, "but there's a point of
honour." She paused. "There are reasons," she added,
"why I ought to be more conventional than Clapham. I should like to
tell you, some time, only-- But I haven't got anyone to tell
anything to. I wonder--"
"What? What do you wonder?"
Betty spoke with effort.
"I know it sounds insane, but, you know my stepfather thought
you--you wanted to marry me. You didn't ever, did you?"
Vernon was silent: none of his habitual defences served him in this
hour.
"You see," Betty went on, "all that sort of thing is
such nonsense. If I knew you cared about someone else everything would be
so simple."
"Eliminate love," said Vernon, "and the world is a
simple example in vulgar fractions."
"I want it to be simple addition," said Betty. "Lady
St. Craye is very beautiful."
"Yes," said Vernon.
"Is she in love with you?"
"Ask her," said Vernon, feeling like a schoolboy in an
examination.
"If she were--and you cared for her--then you and I
could be friends: I should like to be real friends with you."
"Let us be friends," said he when he had paused a moment. He
made the proposal with every possible reservation.
"Really?" she said. "I'm so glad."
If there was a pang, Betty pretended to herself that there was none. If
Vernon's conscience fluttered him he was able to soothe it; it was an
art that he had studied for years.
"Say, you two!"
The voice of Miss Voscoe fell like a pebble into the pool of silence
that was slowly widening between them.
"Say--we're going to start a sketch club for really
reliable girls. We can have it here, and it'll only be one franc an
hour for the model, and say six sous each for tea. Two afternoons a week.
Three, five, nine of us--you'll join, Miss Desmond?"
"Yes--oh, yes," said Betty, conscientiously delighted
with the idea of more work.
"That makes--nine six sous and two hours'
model--how much is that, Mr. Temple?--I see it written on your
speaking brow that you took the mathematical wranglership at Oxford
College."
"Four francs seventy," said Temple through the shout of
laughter.
"Have I said something comme il ne faut
pas?" said Miss Voscoe.
"You couldn't," said Vernon: "every word leaves
your lips without a stain upon its character."
"Won't you let us join?" asked an Irish student.
"You'll be lost entirely without a Lord of Creation to sharpen
your pencils."
"We mean to work," said Miss Voscoe; "if
you want to work take a box of matches and a couple of sticks of brimstone
and make a little sketch class of your own."
"I don't see what you want with models," said a very
young and shy boy student. "Couldn't you pose for each other,
and--"
A murmur of dissent from the others drove him back into shy silence.
"No amateur models in this Academy," said Miss Voscoe.
"Oh, we'll make the time-honoured institutions sit up with the
work we'll do. Let's all pledge ourselves to send in to the
Salon--or anyway to the Indépendants! What we're suffering
from in this quarter's git-up-and-git. Why should we be contented to
be nobody?"
"On the contrary," said Vernon, "Miss Voscoe is
everybody--almost!"
"I'm the nobody who can't get a word in edgeways
anyhow," she said. "What I've been trying to say ever
since I was born--pretty near--is that what this class wants is a
competent professor, some bully top-of-the-tree artist, to come and pull
our work all to pieces and wipe his boots on the bits. Mr. Vernon,
don't you know any one who's pining to give us free
crits?"
"Temple is," said Vernon. "There's no mistaking
that longing glance of his."
"As a bully top-of-the-tree artist I make you my bow of
gratitude," said Temple, "but I should never have the courage
to criticise the work of nine fair ladies."
"You needn't criticise them all at once," said a large
girl from Minneapolis, "nor yet all in the gaudy eye of heaven.
We'll screen off a corner for our professor--sort of confessional
business. You sit there and we'll go to you one by one with our sins
in our hand."
"That would scare him some, I surmise," said
Miss Voscoe.
"Not at all," said Temple, a little nettled, he hardly knew
why.
"I didn't know you were so brave," said the Minneapolis
girl.
"Perhaps he didn't want you to know," said Miss Voscoe;
"perhaps that's his life's dark secret."
"People often pretend to a courage that they haven't,"
said Vernon. "A consistent pose of cowardice, that would be novel
and--I see the idea developing--more than useful."
"Is that your pose?" asked Temple, still rather
tartly; "because if it is, I beg to offer you, in the name of these
ladies, the chair of professor-behind-the-screen."
"I'm not afraid of the nine muses," Vernon laughed
back, "as long as they are nine. It's 'the light that lies
in woman's eyes' that I've always had such a nervous dread
of."
"It does make you blink, bless it," said the Irish student,
"but not from nine pairs at once, as you say. It's the light
from one pair that turns your head."
"Mr. Vernon isn't weak in the head," said the shy boy
suddenly.
"No," said Vernon, "it's the heart that's
weak with me. I have to be very careful of it."
"Well, but will you?" said a downright girl.
"Will I what? I'm sorry, but I've lost my cue, I think.
Where were we--at losing hearts, wasn't it?"
"No," said the downright girl, "I didn't mean
that. I mean will you come and criticise our drawings?"
"Fiddle," said Miss Voscoe luminously. "Mr.
Vernon's too big for that. We were only pulling his
leg--"
"Only what?" asked the downright one.
"Pulling his leg: jollying him. Of course he won't; we might
as well ask him to make us a present of a few of his pictures."
"Oh, well," said Vernon, "if you don't think I
should be competent!"
"You don't mean to say you would?"
"Who wouldn't jump at the chance of playing Apollo to the
fairest set of muses in the Quartier?" said Temple; "but after
all, I had the refusal of the situation--I won't
renounce--"
"Bobby, you unman me," interrupted Vernon, putting down his
cup, "you shall not renounce the altruistic pleasure
which you promise to yourself in yielding this professorship to me. I
accept it."
"I'm hanged if you do," said Temple. "You
proposed me yourself, and I'm elected--aren't I, Miss
Voscoe?"
"That's so," said she; "but Mr. Vernon's
president too."
"I've long been struggling with the conviction that Temple
and I were as brothers. Now I yield--Temple, to my arms!"
They embraced, elegantly, enthusiastically, almost as Frenchmen use; and
the room applauded the faithful burlesque.
"What's come to me that I should play the goat like
this?" Vernon asked himself, as he raised his head from Temple's
broad shoulder. Then he met Betty's laughing eyes, and no longer
regretted his assumption of that difficult rôle.
"It's settled then. Tuesdays and Fridays, four to six,"
he said. "At last I am to be--"
"The light of the harem," said Miss Voscoe.
"Can there be two lights?" asked Temple anxiously. "If
not, consider the fraternal embrace withdrawn."
"No, you're the light, of course," said
Betty. "Mr. Vernon's the ancient light. He's older than you
are, isn't he?"
The roar of appreciation of her little joke surprised Betty, and, a
little, pleased her--till Miss Voscoe whispered under cover of it:
"Ancient light? Then he was the
three-polite-word man?"
Betty explained her little jest.
"All the same," said the other, "it wasn't any
old blank walls you were thinking about. I believe he is the
one."
"It's a great thing to be able to believe anything,"
said Betty; and the talk broke up into duets. She found that Temple was
speaking to her.
"I came here to-day because I wanted to meet you, Miss
Desmond," he was saying. "I hope you don't think it's
cheek of me to say it, but there's something about you that reminds me
of the country at home."
"That's a very pretty speech," said Betty. He reminded
her of the Café d'Harcourt, but she did not say so.
"You remind me of a garden," he went on, "but I
don't like to see a garden without a hedge round it."
"You think I ought to have a chaperone," said Betty bravely,
"but chaperones aren't needed in this quarter."
"I wish I were your brother," said Temple.
"I'm so glad you're not," said Betty. She wanted
no chaperonage, even fraternal. But the words made him shrink, and then
sent a soft warmth through him. On the whole he was not sorry that he was
not her brother.
At parting Vernon, at the foot of the staircase, said:
"And when may I see you again?"
"On Tuesday, when the class meets."
"But I didn't mean when shall I see the class. When shall I
see Miss Desmond?"
"Oh, whenever you like," Betty answered gaily;
"whenever Lady St. Craye can spare you."
He let her say it.
"Won't you dine with me somewhere to-night?" said
he.
"I am going to Garnier's," she said. Not even for him,
friend of hers and affianced of another as he might be, would she yet break
the rule of a life Paula had instituted.
"Fallen as I am," he answered gaily, "I am not yet so
low as to be incapable of dining at Garnier's."
So when Betty passed through the outer room of the restaurant and along
the narrow little passage where eyes and nose attest strongly the
neighbourhood of the kitchen, she was attended by a figure that aroused the
spontaneous envy of all her acquaintances. In the inner room where they
dined it was remarked that such a figure would be more at home at
Durand's or the Café de Paris than at Garnier's. That
night the first breath of criticism assailed Betty. To afficher oneself with a fellow-student--a
"type," polish or otherwise--that was all very well, but
with an obvious Boulevardier, a creature from the other side, this dashed
itself against the conventions of the Artistic Quartier. And
conventions--even of such quarters--are iron-strong.
"Fiddle-de-dee," said Miss Voscoe to her companions'
shocked comments, "they were raised in the same village, or
something. He used to give her peanuts when he was in short jackets, and
she used to halve her candies with him. Friend of childhood's
hour, that's all. And besides he's one of the presidents of our
Sketch Club."
But all Garnier's marked that whereas the habitués contented
themselves with an omelette aux champignons, sauté potatoes and a
Petit Suisse, or the like modest menu, Betty's new friend ordered for
himself, and for her, a real regular dinner, beginning with hors
d'oeuvre and ending with "mendiants."
"Mendiants" are raisins and nuts, the nearest to dessert that
at this season you could get at Garnier's. Also he passed over with
smiling disrelish the little carafons of weak wine for which one pays five
sous if the wine be red, and six if it be white. He went out and
interviewed Madame at her little desk among the flowers and nuts and
special sweet dishes, and it was a bottle of real wine with a real cork to
be drawn that adorned the table between him and Betty. To her the whole
thing was of the nature of a festival. She enjoyed the little sensation
created by her companion; and the knowledge which she thought she had of
his relations to Lady St. Craye absolved her from any fear that in dining
with him tête-à-tête she was doing anything "not
quite nice." To her the thought of his engagement was as good or as
bad as a chaperone. For Betty's innocence was deeply laid, and had
survived the shock of all the waves that had beaten against it since her
coming to Paris. It was more than innocence, it was a very honest,
straightforward childish naiveté. "It's almost the same
as if he was married," she said: "there can't be any harm
in having dinner with a man who's married--or almost
married."
So she enjoyed herself. Vernon exerted himself to amuse her. But he was
surprised to find that he was not so happy as he had expected to be. It was
good that Betty had permitted him to dine with her alone, but it was flat.
After dinner he took her to the Odéon, and she said good-night to
him with a lighter heart than she had known since Paula left her.
It was lonely in these rooms now, and sometimes it was hard to keep
one's eyes shut. And to keep her eyes shut was now Betty's aim in
life, even more than the art for which she pretended to herself that she
lived. For now that Paula had gone, the deception of her father would have
seemed less justifiable, had she ever allowed herself to face the thought
of it for more than a moment; but she used to fly the thought and go round
to one of the girls' rooms to talk about Art with a big A, and forget
how little she liked or admired Betty Desmond.
She was now one of a circle of English, American and German students.
The Sketch-club had brought her eight new friends, and they went about in
parties by twos and threes or even sevens and eights, and Betty went with
them, enjoying the fun of it all, which she liked, and missing all that she
would not have liked if she had seen it. But Vernon was the only man with
whom she dined tête-à-tête or went to the theatre
alone.
To him the winter passed in a maze of doubt and self-contempt. He could
not take what the gods held out: could not draw from his constant
companionship of Betty the pleasure which his artistic principles, his
trained instincts taught him to expect. He had now all the
tête-à-têtes he cared to
ask for, and he hated that it should be so. He almost wanted her to be in a
position where such things should be impossible to her. He wanted her to be
guarded, watched, sheltered. And he had never wanted that for any woman in
his life before.
"I shall be wishing her in a convent next," he said,
"with high walls with spikes on the top. Then I should walk round and
round the outside of the walls and wish her out. But I should not be able
to get at her. And nothing else would either."
Lady St. Craye was more charming than ever. Vernon knew it and sometimes
he deliberately tried to let her charm him. But though he perceived her
charm, he
could not feel it. Always before he had felt what he chose to feel. Or
perhaps--he hated the thought and would not look at it--perhaps
all his love affairs had been just pictures, perhaps he had never felt
anything but an artistic pleasure in their grouping and lighting? Perhaps
now he was really feeling natural human emotion, didn't they call it?
But that was just it. He wasn't. What he felt was resentment,
dissatisfaction, a growing inability to control events or to pre-arrange
his sensations. He felt that he himself was controlled. He felt like a wild
creature, caught in a trap. The trap was not gilded, and he was very
uncomfortable in it. Even the affairs of others almost ceased to amuse him.
He could hardly call up a cynical smile at Lady St. Craye's evident
misapprehension of those conscientious efforts of his to be charmed by her.
He was only moved to a very faint amusement when one day Bobbie Temple,
smoking in the studio, broke a long silence abruptly to say, "Look
here. Someone was saying the other day that a man can be in love with two
women at a time. Do you think it's true?"
"Two? Yes. Or twenty."
"Then it's not love," said Temple wisely.
"'They call it love,'" said Vernon.
"I don't know what they mean by it. What do
you mean?"
"By love?"
"Yes."
"I don't exactly know," said Temple slowly. "I
suppose it's wanting to be with a person, and thinking about nothing
else. And thinking they're the most beautiful and all that. And going
over everything that they've ever said to you, and
wanting--"
"Wanting?"
"Well, I suppose if it's really love you want to marry
them."
"You can't marry them, you know," said
Vernon; "at least not simultaneously. That's just it.
Well?"
"Well that's all. If that's not love, what
is?"
"I'm hanged if I know," said Vernon.
"I thought you knew all about those sort of things."
"So did I," said Vernon to himself. Aloud he said:
"If you want a philosophic definition--it's passion
transfigured by tenderness--at least I've often said
so."
"But can you feel that for two people at once?"
"Or," said Vernon, getting interested in his words,
"it's tenderness intoxicated by passion, and not knowing that
it's drunk--"
"But can you feel that for two--"
"Oh, bother," said Vernon, "every sort of fool-fancy
calls itself love. There's the pleasure of pursuit--there's
vanity, there's the satisfaction of your own amour-propre,
there's desire, there's intellectual attraction, there's the
love of beauty, there's the artist's joy in doing what you know
you can do well, and getting a pretty woman for sole audience. You might
feel one or two or twenty of these things for one woman, and one or two or
twenty different ones for another. But if you mean do you love two women in
the same way, I say no. Thank Heaven it's new every time!"
"It mayn't be the same way," said Temple, "but
it's the same thing to you--if you feel you can't bear to
give either of them up."
"Well, then, you can marry one and keep on with the other. Or be
'friends' with both and marry neither. Or cut the whole show
and go to the Colonies."
"Then you have to choose between being unhappy or being a
blackguard."
"My good chap, that's the situation in which our emotions are
always landing us--our confounded emotions and the conventions of
society."
"And how are you to know whether the thing's love--or
all those other things?"
"You don't know: you can't know till it's too late
for your knowing to matter. Marriage is like spinach. You can't tell
that you hate it till you've tried it. Only--"
"Well?"
"I think I've heard it said," Vernon voiced his own
sudden conviction, very carelessly, "that love wants to give and
passion wants to take. Love wants to possess the beloved object--and
to make her happy. Desire wants possession too--but the happiness is
to be for oneself; and if there's not enough happiness for both so
much the worse. If I'm talking like a Sunday School book you've
brought it on yourself."
"I like it," said Temple.
"Well, since the dissenting surplice has fallen on me, I'll
give you a test. I believe that the more you love a woman the less your
thoughts will dwell on the physical side of the business. You want to take
care of her."
"Yes," said Temple.
"And then often," Vernon went on, surprised to find that he
wanted to help the other in his soul-searchings, "if a chap's
not had much to do with women--the women of our class, I mean--he
gets a bit dazed with them. They're all so nice, confound them. If a
man felt he was falling in love with two women at once, say Miss Voscoe and
Minneapolis Mamie--"
"Why bring them in? They're not even ladies."
"Quite so. And as you so discerningly remark, men never fall in
love with women unless they are ladies. Witness--"
"You don't, any way. And I never
should. They're very jolly those Americans, and straight and all that,
but--"
"Ah," said Vernon, and he gave a sigh and a
tender thought to Brittany and Miss Van Tromp, "you've never
known an American lady, most likely. Lucky for you, perhaps. They're
spirit, fire, and dew. They're everything--"
"Oh, yes," said Temple impatiently, "I know all that.
You were saying that if a man felt he was falling in love--"
"So I was. Thank you for recalling my wandering heart. If a man
felt he was falling in love with two women at once, and he had the tiresome
temperament that takes these things seriously, it wouldn't be a bad
thing for him to go away into the country, and moon about for a few weeks,
and see which was the one that bothered his brain most. Then he'd know
where he was, and not be led like a lamb to the slaughter by the wrong one.
They can't both get him, you know, unless his intentions are strictly
dishonourable."
"I wasn't putting the case that either of them wished to get
him," said Temple carefully.
Vernon nodded.
"Of course not. The thing simplifies itself wonderfully if neither
of them wants to get him. Even if they both do, matters are less
complicated. It's when only one of them wants him that it's the
very devil for a man not to be sure what he wants. That's
very clumsily put--what I mean is--"
"I see what you mean," said Temple impatiently.
"--It's the devil for him because then he lets himself
drift, and the one who wants him collars him, and then of course she always
turns out to be the one he didn't want. My observations are as full of
wants as an advertisement column. But the thing to do in all relations of
life is to make up your mind what it is that you do want, and
then to jolly well see that you get it. What I want is a pipe."
He filled and lighted one.
"You talk," said Temple slowly, "as though a man could
get anyone--I mean anything, he wanted."
"So he can, my dear chap, if he only wants her badly
enough."
"Badly enough?"
"Badly enough to make the supreme sacrifice to get her."
"?" Temple enquired.
"Marriage," Vernon answered; "there's only one
excuse for marriage."
"Excuse?"
"Excuse. And that excuse is that one couldn't help it. The
only excuse one will have to offer, some day, to the recording angel, for
all one's other faults and follies. A man who can help
getting married, and doesn't, deserves all he gets."
"I don't agree with you in the least," said
Temple,--"about marriage, I mean. A man ought to
want to get married--"
"To anybody? Without its being anybody in particular?"
"Yes," said Temple stoutly. "If he gets to thirty
without wanting to marry any one in particular, he ought to look about till
he finds some one he does want. It's the right and proper thing to
marry and have kiddies."
"Oh, if you're going to be patriarchal," said Vernon.
"What a symbolic dialogue! We begin with love and we end with
marriage! There's the tragedy of romance, in a nutshell. Yes,
life's a beastly rotten show, and the light won't last more than
another two hours."
"Your hints are always as delicate as gossamer," said
Temple. "Don't throw anything at me. I'm going."
He went, leaving his secret in Vernon's hands.
"Poor old Temple! That's the worst of walking carefully all
your days: you do come such an awful cropper when you do come one. Two
women. The jasmine lady must have been practising on his poor little heart.
Heigh-ho, I wish she could do
as much for me! And the other one? Her--I
suppose."
The use of the pronoun, the disuse of the grammar, pulled him up
short.
"By Jove," he said, "that's what people say
when-- But I'm not in love--with anybody. I want to
work."
But he didn't work. He seldom did now. And when he did the work was
not good. His easel held most often the portrait of Betty that had been
begun at Long Barton--unfinished, but a disquieting likeness. He
walked up and down his room not thinking, but dreaming. His dreams took him
to the Warren, in the pure morning light; he saw Betty; he told himself
what he had said, what she had said.
"And it was I who advised her to come to Paris. If only I'd
known then--"
He stopped and asked himself what he knew now that he had not known
then, refused himself the answer, and went to call on Lady St. Craye.
Christmas came and went; the black winds of January swept the
Boulevards, and snow lay white on the walls of court and garden.
Betty's life was full now. The empty cage that had opened its door to
love at Long Barton had now other occupants. Ambition was beginning to grow
its wing feathers. She could draw--at least some day she would be able
to draw. Already she had won a prize with a charcoal study of a bare back.
But she did not dare to name this to her father, and when he wrote to ask
what was the subject of her prize drawing she replied with misleading truth
that it was a study from nature. His imagination pictured a rustic cottage,
a water-wheel, a castle and mountains in the distance and cows and a
peasant in the foreground.
But though her life was now crowded with new interests that first-comer
was not ousted. Only he had changed his plumage and she called him
Friend-
ship. She blushed sometimes and stamped her foot when she remembered those
meetings in the summer mornings, her tremors, her heart-beats. And oh, the
drivel she had written in her diary!
"Girls ought never to be allowed to lead that 'sheltered
home life,'" she said to Miss Voscoe, "with nothing real
in it. It makes your mind all swept and garnished, and then you hurry to
fill it up with rubbish."
"That's so," said her friend.
"If ever I have a daughter," said Betty,
"she shall set to work at something definite the very
instant she leaves school--if it's only Hebrew or Algebra. Not
just parish duties that she didn't begin, and doesn't want to go
on with. But something that's her own work."
"You're beginning to see straight. I surmised you would by
and by. But don't you go to the other end of the see-saw, Miss
Daisy-Face!"
"What do you mean?" asked Betty. It was the morning interval
when students eat patisserie out of folded
papers. The two were on the window ledge of the Atelier, looking down on
the convent garden where already the buds were breaking to green leaf.
"Why, there's room for the devil even if your flat ain't
swept and garnished. He folds up mighty small, and gets into less space
than a poppy-seed."
"What do you mean?" asked Betty again.
"I mean that Vernon chap," said Miss Voscoe downrightly.
"I told you to change partners every now and then. But with you
it's that Vernon this week and last week and the week after
next."
"I've known him longer than I have the others, and I like
him," said Betty.
"Oh, he's all right; fine and dandy," replied Miss
Voscoe. "He's a big man, too, in his own line. Not the kind you
expect to see knocking about at a students' crémerie. Does he
give you lessons?"
"He did at home," said Betty.
"Take care he doesn't teach you what's the easiest thing
in creation to learn about a man."
"What's that?" Betty did not like to have to ask the
question.
"Why, how not to be able to do without him, of course," said
Miss Voscoe.
"You're quite mistaken," said Betty eagerly: "one
of the reasons I don't mind going about with him so much is that
he's engaged to be married."
"Acquainted with the lady?"
"Yes," said Betty, sheltering behind the convention that an
introduction at a tea-party constitutes acquaintanceship. She was glad Miss
Voscoe had not asked her if she knew Lady St. Craye.
"Oh, well," Miss Voscoe jumped up and shook the flakes of
pastry off her pinafore, "if she doesn't mind I guess I've
got no call to. But why don't you give that saint in the go-to-hell
collar a turn?"
"Meaning?"
"Mr. Temple. He admires you no end. He'd be always in your
pocket if you'd let him. He's worth fifty of the other man
as a man, if he isn't as an artist. I keep my eyes
skinned--and the Sketch-club gives me a chance to tot them both up. I
guess I can size up a man, some. The other man isn't
fast. That's how it strikes me."
"Fast?" echoed Betty, bewildered.
"Fast dye: fast colour. I suspicion he'd go wrong a bit in
the wash. Temple's fast colour, warranted not to run."
"I know," said Betty, "but I don't care for the
colour, and I'm rather tired of the pattern."
"I wish you'd tell me which of the two was the
three-polite-word man."
"I know you do. But surely you see now?"
"You're too 'cute. Just as likely it's the Temple
one and that's why you're so sick of the pattern by
now."
"Didn't I tell you you were clever?" laughed Betty.
But, all the same, next evening when Vernon called to take her to
dinner, she said:
"Couldn't we go somewhere else? I'm tired of
Garnier's."
Vernon was tired of Garnier's, too.
"Do you know Thirion's?" he said. "Thirion's
in the Boulevard St. Germain, Thirion's where Du Maurier used to go,
and Thackeray, and all sorts of celebrated people; and where the host
treats you like a friend, and the waiter like a brother?"
"I should love to be treated like a waiter's brother. Do,
let's go," said Betty.
"He's a dream of a waiter," Vernon went on as they
turned down the lighted slope of the Rue de Rennes, "has a voice like
a trumpet, and takes a pride in calling twenty orders down the
speaking-tube in one breath, ending up with a shout. He never makes a
mistake either. Shall we walk, or take the tram, or a carriage?"
The Fate who was amusing herself by playing with Betty's destiny
had sent Temple to call on Lady St. Craye that afternoon, and Lady St.
Craye had seemed bored, so bored that she had hardly appeared to listen to
Temple's talk, which, duly directed by her quite early into the
channel she desired for it, flowed in a constant stream over the name, the
history, the work, the personality of Vernon. When at last the stream ebbed
Lady St. Craye made a pretty feint of stifling a yawn.
"Oh, how horrid I am!" she cried with instant penitence,
"and how very rude you will think me! I think I have the blues
to-day, or, to be more French and more poetic, the black butterflies. It
is so sweet of you to have let me talk to you. I know
I've been as stupid as an owl. Won't you stay and dine with me?
I'll promise to cheer up if you will."
Mr. Temple would, more than gladly.
"Or no," Lady St. Craye went on, "that'll be dull
for you, and perhaps even for me if I begin to think I'm boring you.
Couldn't we do something desperate--dine at a Latin Quarter
restaurant for instance? What was that place you were telling me of, where
the waiter has a wonderful voice and makes the orders he shouts down the
tube sound like the recitative of the basso at the opera."
"Thirion's," said Temple; "but it wasn't I,
it was Vernon."
"Thirion's, that's it," Lady St. Craye broke in
before Vernon's name left his lips. "Would you like to take me
there to dine, Mr. Temple?"
It appeared that Mr. Temple would like it of all things.
"Then I'll go and put on my hat," said she and trailed
her sea-green tea-gown across the room. At the door she turned to say:
"It will be fun, won't it?" and to laugh delightedly, like
a child who is promised a treat.
That was how it happened that Lady St. Craye, brushing her dark furs
against the wall of Thirion's staircase, came, followed by Temple,
into the room where Betty and Vernon, their heads rather close together,
were discussing the menu.
This was what Lady St. Craye had thought of more than a little. Yet it
was not what she had expected. Vernon, perhaps, yes: or the girl. But not
Vernon and the girl together. Not now. At her very first visit. It was not
for a second that she hesitated. Temple had not even had time to see who it
was to whom she spoke before she had walked over to the two and greeted
them.
"How perfectly delightful!" she said. "Miss Desmond,
I've been meaning to call on you, but it's been so cold, and
I've been so cross, I've called on nobody. Ah, Mr. Vernon, you
too?"
She looked at the vacant chair near his, and Vernon had to say:
"You'll join us, of course?"
So the two little parties made one party, and one of the party was angry
and annoyed, and no one of the party was quite pleased, and all four
concealed what they felt, and affected what they did not feel, with as much
of the tact of the truly well-bred as each could call up. In this polite
exercise Lady St. Craye was easily first.
She was charming to Temple, she was very nice to Betty, and she spoke to
Vernon with a delicate, subtle, faint suggestion of proprietorship in her
tone. At least that was how it seemed to Betty. To Temple it seemed that
she was tacitly apologising to an old friend for having involuntarily
broken up a dinner à deux. And each of
these interpreted her tone exactly as she meant that one to interpret it.
But to Vernon it seemed to spell out an all but overmastering jealousy
proudly overmastered. All that pretty fiction of there being now no
possibility of sentiment between him and her flickered down and died. And
with it the interest that he had felt in her. "She have
unexplored reserves? Bah!" he told himself, "she is just like
the rest!" He felt that she had not come from the other side of the
river just to dine with Temple. He knew she had been looking for him. And
the temptation assailed him to reward her tender anxiety by devoting
himself wholly to Betty. Then he remembered what he had let Betty believe,
as to the relations in which he stood to this other woman.
His face lighted up with a smile of answering tenderness. Without
neglecting Betty he seemed to lay the real homage of his heart at the feet
of that heart's lady.
"By Jove!" he thought, as the dark, beautiful eyes met his
in a look of more tenderness than he had seen in them this many a day,
"if only she knew how she's playing my game for me."
Betty, for her part, refused to recognise a little pain that gnawed at
her heart, and stole all taste from
the best dishes of Thirion's. She talked as much as possible to
Temple, because it was the proper thing to do, she told herself, and she
talked very badly. Lady St. Craye was transfigured by Vernon's
unexpected acceptance of her delicate advances, intoxicated by the sudden
flutter of a dream she had only known with wings in full flight, into the
region where dreams, clasped to the heart, become realities. She grew
momently more beautiful. The host, going from table to table, talking
easily to his guests, could not keep his fascinated eyes from her face. The
proprietor of Thirion's has good taste, and knew a beautiful woman
when he sees her.
Betty's eyes, too, strayed more and more often from her plate, and
from Temple to the efflorescence of this new beauty-light. She felt mean
and poor, ill-dressed, shabby, dowdy, dull, weary and uninteresting. Her
face felt tired. It was an effort to smile.
When the dinner was over she said abruptly:
"If you'll excuse me--I've got a dreadful
headache--no, I don't want anyone to see me home. Just put me in
a carriage."
She insisted, and it was done.
When the carriage drew up in front of the closed porte cochère of
57 Boulevard Montparnasse, Betty was surprised and wounded to discover that
she was crying.
"Well, you knew they were engaged!" she said as
she let herself into her room with her latchkey. "You knew they were
engaged. What did you expect?"
Temple could not remember afterwards exactly how he got separated from
the others. It just happened as such unimportant things will. He missed
them some how, at a crossing, looked about him in vain, shrugged his
shoulders and went home.
Lady St. Craye hesitated a moment with her latchkey in her hand. Then
she threw open the door of her flat.
"Come in, won't you?" she said, and led the way
into her fire-warm, flower-scented, lamplit room. Vernon also hesitated a
moment. Then he followed. He stood on the hearth-rug with his back to the
wood fire. He did not speak.
Somehow it was difficult for her to take up their talk at the place and
in the strain where it had broken off when Betty proclaimed her
headache.
Yet this was what she must do, it seemed to her, or lose all the ground
she had gained.
"You've been very charming to me this evening," she
said at last, and knew as she said it that it was the wrong thing to
say.
"You flatter me," said Vernon.
"I was so surprised to see you there," she went on.
Vernon was surprised that she should say it. He had thought more highly
of her powers.
"The pleasure was mine," he said in his most banal tones,
"the surprise, alas, was all for you--and all you
gained."
"Weren't you surprised?"--Lady St.
Craye was angry and humiliated. That she--she--should find
herself tremulous, at fault, find herself playing the game as crudely as
any shopgirl.
"No," said Vernon.
"But you couldn't have expected me?" She knew quite
well what she was doing, but she was too nervous to stop herself.
"I've always expected you," he said deliberately,
"ever since I told you that I often dined at
Thirion's."
"You expected me to--"
"To run after me?" said Vernon with paraded ingenuousness;
"yes, didn't you?"
"I run after you? You--" she
stopped short, for she saw in his eyes that, if she let him quarrel with
her now, it was forever.
He at the same moment awoke from the trance of anger that had come upon
him when he found him-
self alone with her; anger at her, and at himself, fanned to fury by the
thought of Betty and of what she, at this moment, must be thinking. He
laughed:
"Ah, don't break my heart," he said, "I've
been so happy all the evening fancying that you had--you
had--"
"Had what?" she asked with dry lips, for the caress in his
tone was such as to deceive the very elect.
"Had felt just the faintest little touch of interest in me. Had
cared to know how I spent my evenings, and with whom!"
"You thought I could stoop to spy on you?" she asked.
"Monsieur flatters himself."
The anger in him was raising its head again.
"Monsieur very seldom does," he said.
She took that as she chose to take it.
"No, you're beautifully humble."
"And you're proudly beautiful."
She flushed and looked down.
"Don't you like to be told that you're
beautiful?"
"Not by you. Not like that!"
"And so you didn't come to Thirion's to see me? How one
may deceive oneself. The highest hopes we cherish here! Another beautiful
illusion gone!"
She said to herself: "I can do nothing with him in this
mood," and aloud she could not help saying:
"Was it a beautiful one?"
"Very," he answered gaily. "Can you doubt
it?"
She found nothing to say. And even as she fought for words she suddenly
found that he had caught her in his arms, and kissed her, and that the
sound of the door that had banged behind him was echoing in her ears.
She put her hands to her head. She could not see clearly.
Had it meant...? What had it meant? Was it the crown of her hopes, her
dreams? Was it possible that now, at last, after all that had gone before,
she might win him--had won him, even?
The sex-instinct said No.
Then, if "no" were the answer to that question, the kiss had
been mere brutality. It had meant just:
"You chose to follow me--to play the spy. What the deuce do
you want? Is it this? God knows you're welcome," the kiss
following.
The kiss stung. It was not the first. But the others--even the last
of them, two years before, had not had that sting.
Lady St. Craye, biting her lips in lonely dissection of herself and of
him, dared take no comfort. Also, she no longer dared to follow him, to
watch him, to spy on him.
In her jasmine-scented leisure Lady St. Craye analysed herself, and him
and Her. Above all Her--who was Betty. To find out how it all seemed
to her--that, presently, seemed to Lady St. Craye the one possible,
the one important thing. So after she had given a few days to the analysis
of that kiss, had failed to reach certainty as to its elements, had writhed
in her insuccess, and bitterly resented the mysteries constituent that
falsified all her calculations, she dressed herself beautifully, and went
to call on the constituent, Betty.
Betty was at home. She was drawing at a table, cunningly placed at right
angles to the window. She
rose with a grace that Lady St. Craye had not seen in her. She was dressed
in a plain gown, that hung from the shoulders in long, straight, green
folds. Her hair was down.--And Betty had beautiful hair. Lady St.
Craye's hair had never been long. Betty's fell nearly to her
knees.
"Oh, was the door open?" she said. "I didn't
know, I've--I'm so sorry--I've been washing my
hair."
"It's lovely," said the other woman, with an
appreciation quite genuine. "What a pity you can't always wear
it like that?"
"It's long," said Betty disparagingly, "but the
colour's horrid. What Miss Voscoe calls boy-colour."
"Boy-colour?"
"Oh, just nothing in particular. Mousy."
"If you had golden hair, or black, Miss Desmond, you'd have a
quite unfair advantage over the rest of us."
"I don't think so," said Betty very simply; "you
see, no one ever sees it down."
"What a charming place you've got here," Lady St. Craye
went on.
"Yes," said Betty, "it is nice," and she thought
of Paula.
"And do you live here all alone?"
"Yes: I had a friend with me at first, but she's gone back to
England."
"Don't you find it very dull?"
"Oh, no. I know lots of people now."
"And they come to see you here?"
Lady St. Craye had decided that it was not necessary to go delicately.
The girl was evidently stupid, and one need not pick one's words.
"Yes," said Betty.
"Mr. Vernon's a great friend of yours, isn't
he?"
"Yes."
"I suppose you see a great deal of him?"
"Yes. Is there anything else you would like to know?"
The scratch was so sudden, so fierce, so feline that for a moment Lady
St. Craye could only look blankly at her hostess. Then she recovered
herself enough to say:
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Was I asking a lot of questions? It's
a dreadful habit of mine, I'm afraid, when I'm interested in
people."
Betty scratched again quite calmly and quite mercilessly.
"It's quite natural that Mr. Vernon should interest you. But
I don't think I'm likely to be able to tell you anything about
him that you don't know. May I get you some tea?"
It was impossible for Lady St. Craye to reply: "I meant that I was
interested in you--not in Mr. Vernon;" so she
said:
"Thank you--that will be delightful."
Betty went along the little passage to her kitchen and her visitor was
left to revise her impressions.
When Betty came back with the tea-tray her hair was twisted up. The
kettle could be heard hissing in the tiny kitchen.
"Can't I help you?" Lady St. Craye asked, leaning back
indolently in the most comfortable chair.
"No, thank you: it's all done now."
Betty poured the tea for the other woman to drink. Her own remained
untasted. She exerted herself to manufacture small-talk, was very amiable,
very attentive. Lady St. Craye almost thought she must have dreamed those
two sharp cat-scratches at the beginning of the interview. But presently
Betty's polite remarks came less readily. There were longer intervals
of silence. And Lady St. Craye for once was at a loss. Her nerve was gone.
She dared not tempt the claws again. After the longest pause of all Betty
said suddenly:
"I think I know why you came to-day."
"I came to see you, because you're a friend of Mr.
Vernon's."
"You came to see me because you wanted to find out exactly how
much I'm a friend of Mr. Vernon's. Didn't you?"
Candour is the most disconcerting of the virtues.
"Not in the least," Lady St. Craye found herself saying.
"I came to see you--because--as I said."
"I don't think it is much use your coming to see me,"
Betty went on, "though, if you meant it kindly... But you
didn't--you didn't. If you had it wouldn't have made
any difference. We should never get on with each other, never."
"Really, Miss Desmond," Lady St. Craye clutched her
card-case and half rose, "I begin to think we never
should."
Betty's ignorance of the usages of good society stood her friend.
She ignored, not consciously, but by the prompting of nature, the social
law which decrees that one should not speak of things that really interest
one.
"Do sit down," she said. "I'm glad you
came--because I know exactly what you mean, now."
"If the knowledge were only mutual!" sighed Lady St. Craye,
and found courage to raise eyebrows wearily.
"You don't like my going about with Mr. Vernon. Well,
you've only to say so. Only when you're married you'll find
you've got your work cut out to keep him from having any friends
except you."
Lady St. Craye had the best of reasons for believing this likely to be
the truth. She said:
"When I'm married?"
"Yes," said Betty firmly. "You're jealous;
you've no cause to be--and I tell you that because I think being
jealous must hurt. But it would have been nicer of you, if you'd come
straight to me and said: 'Look here, I don't like you going
about with the man I'm engaged to.' I should have understood
then and respected you. But to come like a child's Guide to
Knowledge--"
The other woman was not listening. "Engaged to him." The
words sang deliciously, disquietingly in her ears.
"But who said I was engaged to him?"
"He did, of course. He isn't ashamed of it--if you
are."
"He told you that?"
"Yes. Now aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
Country-bred Betty, braced by the straightforward directness of Miss
Voscoe, and full of the nervous energy engendered by a half-understood
trouble, had routed, for a moment, the woman of the world. But only for a
moment. Then Lady St. Craye, unable to estimate the gain or loss of the
encounter, pulled herself together to make good her retreat.
"Yes," she said, with her charming smile. "I am
ashamed of myself. I was jealous--I own it. But I
shouldn't have shewn it as I did if I'd known the sort of girl
you are. Come, forgive me. Can't you understand--and
forgive?"
"It was all my fault." The generosity of Betty hastened to
meet what it took to be the generosity of the other. "Forgive me. I
won't see him again at all--if you don't want me
to."
"No, no." Even at that moment, in one illuminating flash,
Lady St. Craye saw and abhorred the explications that must follow the
announcement of that renunciatory decision. "No, no. If you do that I
shall feel sure that you don't forgive me for being so silly. Just let
everything go on--won't you? And please, please don't tell
him anything about--about to-day."
"How could I?" asked Betty.
"But promise you won't. You know--men are so vain. I
should hate him to know"--she hesitated and then finished the
sentence with fine art--"to know--how much I
care."
"Of course you care," said Betty downrightly.
"You ought to care. It would be horrid of you if you
didn't."
"But I don't, now. Now I know you, Miss Desmond. I understand
so well--and I like to think of his being with you."
Even to Betty's ears this did not ring quite true.
"You like--?" she said.
"I mean I quite understand now. I thought--I don't know
what I thought. You're so pretty, you know. And he has had so very
many--love-affairs."
"He hasn't one with me," said Betty briefly.
"Ah, you're still angry. And no wonder. Do forgive me, Miss
Desmond, and let's be friends."
Betty's look as she gave her hand was doubtful. But the hand was
given.
"And you'll keep my poor little secret?"
"I should have thought you would have been proud for him to know
how much you care."
"Ah, my dear," Lady St. Craye became natural for an instant
under the transfiguring influence of her real thoughts as she spoke them,
"my dear, don't believe it. When a man's sure of you he
doesn't care any more. It's while he's not quite sure that
he cares."
"I don't think that's so always," said Betty.
"Ah, believe me, there are 'more ways of killing a cat than
choking it with butter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a
lover of your own--or perhaps you have now?"
"Perhaps I have." Betty stood on guard with a steady
face.
"Well, when you have--or if you have--remember never to
let him be quite sure. It's the only way."
The two parted, with a mutually kindly feeling that surprised one as
much as the other. Lady St. Craye drove home contrasting bitterly the
excellence of her maxims with the ineptitude of her practice. She had let
him know that she cared. And he had left her.
That was two years ago. And, now that she had met him again, when she might
have played the part she had recommended to that chit with the long hair,
the part she knew to be the wise one, she had once more suffered passion to
overcome wisdom, and had shewn him that she loved him. And he had kissed
her.
She blushed in the dusk of her carriage for the shame of that kiss.
But he had told that girl that he was engaged to her.
A delicious other flush replaced the blush of shame. Why should he have
done that unless he really meant--? In that case the kiss was nothing
to blush about. And yet it was. She knew it.
She had time to think in the days that followed, days that brought
Temple more than once to her doors, but Vernon never.
Betty left alone let down her damp hair and tried to resume her drawing.
But it would not do. The emotion of the interview was too recent. Her heart
was beating still with anger, and resentment, and other feelings less
easily named.
Vernon was to come to fetch her at seven. She would not face him. Let
him go and dine with the woman he belonged to!
Betty went out at half-past six. She would not go to Garnier's, nor
to Thirion's. That was where he would look for her.
She walked steadily on, down the Boulevard. She would dine at some place
she had never been to before. A sickening vision of that first night in
Paris swam before her. She saw again the Café d'Harcourt, heard
the voices of the women who had spoken to Paula, saw the eyes of the men
who had been the companions of those women. In that rout the face of Temple
shone--clear cut, severe. She remembered the instant resentment that
had thrilled her at his protective attitude, remembered it and wondered at
it a little. She would not have felt that
now. She knew her Paris better than she had done then.
And with the thought the face of Temple came towards her out of the
crowd. He raised his hat in response to her bow, and had almost passed her,
when she spoke on an impulse that surprised herself.
"Oh--Mr. Temple."
He stopped and turned.
"I was looking for a place to dine. I'm tired of
Garnier's and Thirion's."
He hesitated. And he, too, remembered the night at the Café
d'Harcourt, when she had disdained his advice and gone back to take
the advice of--Paula.
He caught himself assuring himself that a man need not be ashamed to
risk being snubbed--making a fool of himself even--if he could do
any good. So he said: "You know I have horrid old-fashioned ideas
about women," and stopped short.
"Don't you know of any good, quiet place near here?"
said Betty.
"I think women ought to be taken care of. But some of
them--Miss Desmond, I'm so afraid of you--I'm afraid of
boring you--"
Remorse stirred her.
"You've always been most awfully kind," she said
warmly. "I've often wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about
that first time I saw you--I'm not sorry for what I
did," she added in haste; "I can never be anything
but glad for that. But I'm sorry I seemed ungrateful to
you."
"Now you give me courage," he said. "I do know a quiet
little place quite near here. And, as you haven't any of your friends
with you, won't you take pity on me and let me dine with
you?"
"You're sure you're not giving up some nice
engagement--just to--to be kind to me?" she asked. And the
forlornness of her tone made him almost forget that he had half promised to
join a party of
Lady St. Craye's at the Théâtre Français that
evening.
"I should like to come with you--I should like it of all
things," he said; and he said it convincingly.
They dined together, and the dinner was unexpectedly pleasant to both of
them. They talked of England, of wood, field and meadow, and Betty found
herself talking to him of the garden at home and of the things that grew
there, as she had talked to Paula, and as she had never talked to
Vernon.
"It's so lovely all the year," she said. "When
the last mignonette's over, there are the chrysanthemums, and then the
Christmas roses, and ever so early in January the winter aconite and the
snow-drops, and the violets under the south wall. And then the little green
daffodil leaves come up and the buds, though it's weeks before they
turn into flowers. And if it's a mild winter the primroses--just
little baby ones--seem to go on all the time."
"Yes," he said, "I know. And the wallflowers,
they're green all the time.--And the monthly roses, they flower
at Christmas. And then when the real roses begin to bud, and when June
comes, and you're drunk with the scent of red roses--the kind you
always long for at Christmas."
"Oh, yes," said Betty--"do you feel like that
too? And if you get them, they're soft limp-stalked things, like
caterpillars half disguised as roses by some incompetent fairy. Not like
the stiff, solid, heavy velvet roses with thick green leaves and heaps of
thorns. Those are the roses one longs for."
"Yes," he said. "Those are the roses one longs
for." And a pause punctuated the sentence.
But the pause did not last. There was so much to talk of, now that old
barrier of resentment wattled with remorse was broken down. It was an odd
revelation to each--the love of the other for certain authors, certain
pictures, certain symphonies, certain dramas. The discovery of this sort of
community of
tastes is like the meeting in far foreign countries of a man who speaks the
tongue of one's Mother land. The two lingered long over their coffee,
and the Grand Marnier which their liking for "The Garden of
Lies" led to their ordering. Betty had forgotten Vernon, forgotten
Lady St. Craye, in the delightful interchange of,
"Oh, I do like--"
"And don't you like--?"
"And isn't--splendid?"
These simple sentences, interchanged, took on the value of intimate
confidences.
"I've had such a jolly time," Temple said. "I
haven't had such a talk for ages."
And yet all the talk had been mere confessions of faith--in Ibsen,
in Browning, in Maeterlinck, in English gardens, in Art for Art's
sake, and in Whistler and Beethoven.
"I've liked it too," said Betty.
"And it's awfully jolly," he went on, "to feel
that you've forgiven me"--the speech suddenly became
difficult,--"at least I mean to say." He ended lamely.
"It's I who ought to be forgiven," said Betty.
"I'm very glad I met you. I've enjoyed our talk ever so
much."
Vernon spent an empty evening, and waylaid Betty as she left her class
next day.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't help it.
I suddenly felt I wanted something different. So I dined at a new
place."
"Alone?" said Vernon.
"No," said Betty with her chin in the air.
Vernon digested, as best he might, his first mouthful of
jealousy--real, downright sickening jealousy. The sensation astonished
him so much that he lacked the courage to dissect it.
"Will you dine with me to-night?" was all he found to
say.
"With pleasure," said Betty. But it was not with
pleasure that she dined. There was something between her and Vernon. Both
felt it, and both attributed it to the same cause.
The three dinners that followed in the next fortnight brought none of
that old light-hearted companionship which had been the gayest of
table-decorations. Something was gone, lost; as though a royal rose had
suddenly faded, a rainbow-coloured bubble had broken.
"I'm glad," said Betty. "If he's engaged, I
don't want to feel happy with him."
She did not feel happy without him. The inward monitor grew more and
more insistent. She caught herself wondering how Temple, with the serious
face and the honest eyes, would regard the lies, the trickeries, the whole
tissue of deceit that had won her her chance of following her own art, of
living her own life.
Vernon understood, presently, that not even that evening at
Thirion's could give the key to this uncomforting change. He had not
seen Lady St. Craye since the night of the kiss.
It was after the fourth flat dinner with Betty that he said good-night
to her early and abruptly, and drove to Lady St. Craye's.
She was alone. She rose to greet him, and he saw that her eyes were
dark-rimmed, and her lips rough.
"This is very nice of you," she said. "It's
nearly a month since I saw you."
"Yes," he said. "I know it is. Do you remember the
last time? Hasn't that taught you not to play with me?"
The kiss was explained now. Lady St. Craye shivered.
"I don't know what you mean?" she said, feebly.
"Oh, yes, you do. You're much too clever not to understand.
Come to think of it, you're much too everything--too clever, too
beautiful, too charming, too everything."
"You overwhelm me," she made herself say.
"Not at all. You know your points. What I want to know is just one
thing--and that's the thing you're going to tell
me."
She drew her dry lips inward to moisten them.
"What do you want to know? Why do you speak to me like that? What
have I done?"
"That's what you're going to tell me."
"I shall tell you nothing--while you ask in that
tone."
"Won't you? How can I persuade you?" his tone caressed
and stung. "What arguments can I use? Must I kiss you
again?"
She drew herself up, called wildly on all her powers to resent the
insult. Nothing came at her call.
"What do you want me to tell you?" she asked, and her eyes
implored the mercy she would not consciously have asked.
He saw, and he came a little nearer to her, looking down at her upturned
face with eyes before which her own fell.
"You don't want another kiss?" he said. "Then
tell me what you've been saying to Miss Desmond."
"Come, my pretty Jasmine lady, speak the truth."
"I will. What a brute you are."
"So another lady told me a few months ago. Come, tell
me."
"Why should I tell you anything?" She tried to touch her
tone with scorn.
"Because I choose. You thought you could play with me and fool me
and trick me out of what I mean to have--"
"What you mean to have?"
"Yes, what I mean to have. I mean to marry Miss Desmond--if
she'll have me."
"You--mean to marry? Saul is among the prophets with a
vengeance!" The scorn came naturally to her voice now.
Vernon stood as if turned to stone. Nothing had ever astonished him so
much as those four words, spoken in his own voice, "I mean to
marry."
He repeated them. "I mean to marry Miss Desmond, if she'll
have me. And it's your doing."
"Of course," she shrugged her shoulders. "Naturally:
it would be. Won't you sit down? You look so uncomfortable. Those
French tragedy scenes with the hero, hat in one hand and gloves in the
other, always seem to me so comic."
That was her score, the first. He put down the hat and gloves and came
towards her. And as he came he hastily sketched his plan of action. When he
reached her it was ready formed. His anger was always short lived. It had
died down and left him competent as ever to handle a scene.
He took her hands, pushed her gently into a chair near the table, and
sat down beside her with his elbows on the table and his head in his
hands.
"Forgive me, dear," he said. "I was a brute. Forgive
me--and help me. No one can help me but you."
It was a master-stroke: and he had staked a good deal on it. The stake
was not lost. She found no words.
"My dear, sweet Jasmine lady," he said, "let me talk
to you. Let me tell you everything. I can talk to you as I can talk to no
one else, because I know you're fond of me. You are fond of me--a
little, aren't you--for the sake of old times?"
"Yes," she said, "I am fond of you."
"And you forgive me--you do forgive me for being such a
brute? I hardly knew what I was doing."
"Yes," she said, speaking as one speaks in dreams, "I
forgive you."
"Thank you," he said humbly; "you were always
generous. And you always understand."
"Wait--wait. I'll attend to you presently," she
was saying to her heart. "Yes, I know it's all over. I know the
game's up. Let me pull through this without disgracing myself, and
I'll let you hurt me as much as you like afterwards."
"Tell me," she said gently to Vernon, "tell me
everything."
He was silent, his face still hidden. He had cut the knot of an
impossible situation and he was pausing to admire the cleverness of the
stroke. In two minutes he had blotted out the last six months--months
in which he and she had been adversaries. He had thrown himself on her
mercy, and he had done wisely. Never, even in the days when he had
carefully taught himself to be in love with her, had he liked her so well
as now, when she got up from her chair to come and lay her hand softly on
his shoulder and to say:
"My poor boy,--but there's nothing for you to be unhappy
about. Tell me all about it--from the very beginning."
There was a luxurious temptation in the idea. It was not the first time,
naturally, that Vernon had "told all about it" with a
sympathetic woman-hand on his shoulder. He knew the strategic value of
confidences. But always he had made the confidences fit the
occasion--serve the end he had in view. Now, such end as had been in
view was gained. He knew that it was only a matter of time now, before she
should tell him of her own accord, what he could never by any brutality
have forced her to tell. And the temptation to speak, for once, the truth
about himself
was overmastering. It is a luxury one can so very rarely afford. Most of us
go the whole long life-way without tasting it. There was nothing to lose by
speaking the truth. Moreover, he must say something, and why not the truth?
So he said:
"It all comes of that confounded habit of mine of wanting to be in
love."
"Yes," she said, "you were always so anxious to
be--weren't you? And you never were--till now."
The echo of his hidden thought made it easier for him to go on.
"It was at Long Barton," he said,--"it's a
little dead-and-alive place in Kent. I was painting that picture that you
like--the one that's in the Salon, and I was bored to death, and
she walked straight into the composition in a pink gown that made her look
like a La France rose that has been rained
on--you know the sort--pink-turning-to-mauve."
"And it was love at first sight?" said she, and took away
her hand.
"Not it," said Vernon, catching the hand and holding it;
"it was just the usual thing. I wanted it to be like all the
others."
"Like mine," she said, looking down on him.
"Nothing could be like that," he had the grace
to say, looking up at her: "that was only like the others in one
thing--that it couldn't last.--What am I thinking of to let
you stand there?"
He got up and led her to the divan. They sat down side by side. She
wanted to laugh, to sing, to scream. Here was he sitting by her like a
lover--holding her hand, the first time these two years, three years
nearly--his voice tender as ever. And he was telling her about
Her.
"No," he went on, burrowing his shoulder comfortably in the
cushions, "it was just the ordinary outline sketch. But it was coming
very nicely. She was beginning to be interested, and I had taught myself
almost all that was needed--I didn't want to marry
her; I didn't want anything except those delicate, delightful emotions
that come before one is quite, quite sure that she-- But you
know."
"Yes," she said. "I know."
"Then her father interfered, and vulgarized the whole thing.
He's a parson, a weak little rat, but I was sorry for him. Then an
aunt came on the scene, a most gentlemanly lady,"--he laughed a
little at the recollection, "and I promised not to go out of my way
to see Her again. It was quite easy. The bloom was already brushed from the
adventure. I finished the picture, and went to Brittany and forgot the
whole silly business."
"There was some one in Brittany, of course?"
"Of course," said he; "there always is. I had a
delightful summer. Then in October, sitting at the Café de la Paix,
I saw her pass. It was the same day I saw you."
"Before or after you saw me?"
"After."
"Then if I'd stopped--if I'd made you come for a
drive then and there, you'd never have seen her?"
"That's so," said Vernon; "and by Heaven I almost
wish you had."
The wish was a serpent in her heart. She said, "Go on."
And he went on, and, warming to his subject, grew eloquent on the events
of the winter, his emotions, his surmises as to Betty's emotions, his
slow awakening to the knowledge that now for the first time--and so on
and so forth.
"You don't know how I tried to fall in love with you
again," he said, and kissed her hand. "You're prettier
than she is, and cleverer and a thousand times more adorable. But it's
no good; it's a sort of madness."
"You never were in love with me."
"No: I don't think I was: but I was happier with you than I
shall ever be with her, for all that. Talk
of the joy of love! Love hurts--hurts damnably. I beg your
pardon."
"Yes. I believe it's painful. Go on."
He went on. He was enjoying himself, now, thoroughly.
"And so," the long tale ended, "when I found she had
scruples about going about with me alone--because her father had
suggested that I was in love with her--I--I let her think that I
was engaged to you."
"That is too much," she cried and would have risen: but he
kept her hand fast.
"Ah, don't be angry," he pleaded. "You see I knew
you didn't care about me a little bit: and I never thought you and she
would come across each other."
"So you knew all the time that I didn't care?" her
self-respect clutched at the spar he threw out.
"Of course. I'm not such a fool as to think-- Ah,
forgive me for letting her think that. It bought me all I cared to ask for
of her time. She's so young, so innocent--she thought it was
quite all right as long as I belonged to someone else, and couldn't
make love to her."
"And haven't you?"
"Never--never once--since the days at Long Barton when
it had to be 'made;' and even then I only made the very
beginnings of it. Now--"
"I suppose you've been very, very happy?"
"Don't I tell you? I've never been so wretched in my
life! I despise myself. I've always made everything go as I wanted it
to go. Now I'm like a leaf in the wind--Pauvre feuille désechée, don't you
know? And I hate it. And I hate her being here without anyone to look after
her. A hundred times I've had it on the tip of my pen to send that
doddering old Underwood an anonymous letter, telling him all about
it."
"Underwood?"
"Her stepfather.--Oh, I forgot--I didn't tell
you." He proceeded to tell her Betty's secret, the death of
Madame Gautier and Betty's bid for freedom.
"I see," she said slowly. "Well, there's no great
harm done. But I wish you'd trusted me before. You wanted to know, at
the beginning of this remarkable interview," she laughed rather
forlornly, "what I had told Miss Desmond. Well, I went to see her,
and when she told me that you'd told her you were engaged to me,
I--I just acted the jealous a little bit. I thought I was helping
you--playing up to you. I suppose I overdid it. I'm
sorry."
"The question is," said he anxiously, "whether
she'll forgive me for that lie. She's most awfully straight, you
know."
"She seems to have lied herself," Lady St. Craye could not
help saying.
"Ah, yes--but only to her father."
"That hardly counts, you think?"
"It's not the same thing as lying to the person you love. I
wish-- I wonder whether you'd mind if I never told her it was a
lie? Couldn't I tell her that we were engaged but you've broken
it off? That you found you liked Temple better, or something?"
She gasped before the sudden vision of the naked, gigantic egotism of a
man in love.
"You can tell her what you like," she said wearily: "a
lie or two more or less--what does it matter?"
"I don't want to lie to her," said Vernon. "I
hate to. But she'd never understand the truth."
"You think I understand? It is the truth
you've been telling me?"
He laughed. "I don't think I ever told so much truth in all
my life."
"And you've thoroughly enjoyed it! You always did enjoy new
sensations!"
"Ah, don't sneer at me. You don't understand--not
quite. Everything's changed. I really do feel as though I'd been
born again. The point of view
has shifted--and so suddenly, so completely. It's a new Heaven
and a new earth. But the new earth's not comfortable, and I don't
suppose I shall ever get the new Heaven. But you'll help
me--you'll advise me? Do you think I ought to tell her at once.
You see, she's so different from other
girls--she's--"
"She isn't," Lady St. Craye interrupted, "except
that she's the one you love; she's not a bit different from other
girls. No girl's different from other girls."
"Ah, you don't know her," he said. "You see,
she's so young and brave and true and--what is it--
Why--"
Lady St. Craye had rested her head against his coat-sleeve, and he knew
that she was crying.
"What is it? My dear, don't--you musn't
cry."
"I'm not.--At least I'm very tired."
"Brute that I am!" he said with late compunction, "and
I've been worrying you with all my silly affairs. Cheer up,--and
smile at me before I go! Of course you're tired!"
His hand on her soft hair held her head against his arm.
"No," she said suddenly, "it isn't that I'm
tired, really. You've told the truth,--why shouldn't
I?"
Vernon instantly and deeply regretted the lapse.
"You're really going to marry the girl? You mean
it?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll help you. I'll do everything I can for
you."
"You're a dear," he said kindly. "You always
were."
"I'll be your true friend--oh yes, I will. Because I
love you, Eustace. I've always loved you--I always shall. It
can't spoil anything now to tell you, because everything
is spoilt. She'll never love you like I do. Nobody ever
will."
"You're tired. I've bothered you. You're saying
this just to--because--"
"I'm saying it because it's true. Why should you be the
only one to speak the truth? Oh, Eustace--when you pretended to think
I didn't care, two years ago, I was too proud to speak the truth then.
I'm not proud now any more. Go away. I wish I'd never seen you; I
wish I'd never been born."
"Yes, dear, yes. I'll go," he said, and rose. She
buried her face in the cushion where his shoulder had been.
He was looking round for his hat and gloves--more uncomfortable
than he ever remembered to have been.
As he reached the door she sprang up, and he heard the silken swish of
her grey gown coming towards him.
"Say good-night," she pleaded. "Oh, Eustace, kiss me
again--kindly, not like last time."
He met her half-way, took her in his arms and kissed her very gently,
very tenderly.
"My dearest Jasmine Lady," he said, "it sounds an
impertinence and I daresay you won't believe it, but I was never so
sorry in my life as I am now. I'm a beast, and I don't deserve to
live. Think what a beast I am--and try to hate me."
She clung to him and laid her wet cheek against his. Then her lips
implored his lips. There was a long silence. It was she--she was
always glad of that--who at last found her courage, and drew back.
"Good-bye," she said. "I shall be quite sane
to-morrow. And then I'll help you."
When he got out into the street he looked at his watch. It was not yet
ten o'clock. He hailed a carriage.
"Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparnasse," he said.
He could still feel Lady St. Craye's wet cheek against his own. The
despairing passion of her last kisses had thrilled him through and
through.
He wanted to efface the mark of those kisses. He would not be haunted
all night by any lips but Betty's.
He had never called at her rooms in the evening. He had been careful for
her in that. Even now as he rang the bell he was careful, and when the
latch clicked and the door was opened a cautious inch he was ready, as he
entered, to call out, in passing the concierge's door, not Miss
Desmond's name, but the name of the Canadian artist who occupied the
studio on the top floor.
He went softly up the stairs and stood listening out side Betty's
door. Then he knocked gently. No one answered. Nothing stirred inside.
"She may be out," he told himself. "I'll wait a
bit."
At the same time he tapped again; and this time beyond the door
something did stir.
Then came Betty's voice:
"Qui est la?"
"It's me--Vernon. May I come in?"
A moment's pause. Then:
"No. You can't possibly. Is anything the matter?"
"No--oh, no, but I wanted so much to see you. May I come
to-morrow early?"
"You're sure there's nothing wrong? At home or anything?
You haven't come to break anything to me?"
"No--no; it's only something I wanted to tell
you."
He began to feel a fool, with his guarded whispers through a locked
door.
"Then come at twelve," said Betty in the tones of finality.
"Good-night."
He heard an inner door close, and went slowly away. He walked a long way
that night. It was not till he was back in his rooms and had lighted his
candle and wound up his watch that Lady St. Craye's kisses began to
haunt him in good earnest, as he had known they would.
Lady St. Craye, left alone, dried her eyes and set to work, with heart
still beating wildly to look about her at the ruins of her world.
The room was quiet with the horrible quiet of a death chamber. And yet
his voice still echoed in it. Only a moment ago she had been in his arms,
as she had never hoped to be again; more, as she had never been before.
"He would have loved me now," she told herself, "if it
hadn't been for that girl. He didn't love me before. He was only
playing at love. He didn't know what love was. But he knows now. And
it's all too late."
But was it?
A word to Betty--and--
"But you promised to help him."
"That was before he kissed me."
"But a promise is a promise."
"Yes,--and your life's your life. You'll never have
another."
She stood still, her hands hanging by her sides--clenched hands
that the rings bit into.
"He will go to her early to-morrow. And she'll take him, of
course. She's never seen anyone else, the little fool."
She knew that she herself would have taken him, would have chosen him as
the chief among ten thousand.
"She could have Temple. She'd be much happier with Temple.
She and Eustace would make each other wretched. She'd never understand
him, and he'd be tired of her in a week."
She had turned up the electric lights now at her toilet table, and was
pulling the pins out of her ruffled hair.
"And he'd never care about her children. And they'd be
ugly little horrors."
She was twisting her hair up quickly and firmly.
"I have a right to live my own life," she said,
just
as Betty had said six months before. "Why am I to sacrifice
everything to her--especially when I don't suppose she
cares--and now that I know I could get him if she were out of the
way?"
She looked at herself in the silver-framed mirror and laughed.
"And you always thought yourself a proud woman!"
Suddenly she dropped the brush; it rattled and spun on the polished
floor.
She stamped her foot.
"That settles it!" she said. For in that instant she
perceived quite clearly and without mistake that Vernon's attitude had
been a parti-pris: that he had thrown himself
on her pity of set purpose, with an end to gain.
"Laughing at me all the time too, of course! And I thought I
understood him. Well, I don't misunderstand him for long,
anyway," she said, and picked up the hair brush.
"You silly fool," she said to the woman in the glass.
And now she was fully dressed--in long light coat and a hat with,
as usual, violets in it. She paused a moment before her writing-table,
turned up its light, turned it down again.
"No," she said, "one doesn't write anonymous
letters. Besides it would be too late. He'll see her tomorrow
early--early."
The door of the flat banged behind her as it had banged behind Vernon
half an hour before. Like him, she called a carriage, and on her lips too,
as the chill April air caressed them, was the sense of kisses.
And she, too, gave to the coachman the address:
57 Boulevard Montparnasse.
"I'm glad to see you've taken my advice," said
Miss Voscoe; "only you do go at things so--like a bull at a
gate. A month ago it was all that ruffian Vernon. Now it's all Mr.
Go-to-Hell. Why not have a change? Try a Pole or a German."
But Betty declined to try a Pole or a German.
What she wanted to do was to persuade herself that she liked Temple as
much as she liked Vernon, and, further, that she did not care a straw for
either.
Of course it is very wrong indeed to talk pleasantly with a young man
when you think you know that he might, just possibly, be falling in love
with you. But then it is very interesting, too. To be loved, even by the
wrong person, seems in youth's selfish eyes to light up the world as
the candle lights the Japanese lantern. And besides, after all, one
can't be sure. And it is not maidenly to say "No," even
by the vaguest movements of retreat, to a question that has not been asked
and perhaps never will be.
And when she was talking to Temple she was not thinking so much of
Vernon, and of her unselfish friendship for him, and the depth of her hope
that he really would be happy with that woman.
Therefore it was with quite a sick feeling that her days had been robbed
of something that made them easier to live, if not quite worth living, that
she read and reread the letter that she found waiting for her after that
last unsuccessful dinner with the man whom Temple helped her to forget.
You will see by the letter what progress friendship can make in a month
between a young man and woman, even when each is half in love with someone
else.
"Sweet friend," said the letter. "This is to say good-bye for a little while. But you will think of me when I am away, won't you? I am going into the country to make some sketches and to think. I don't believe it is possible for English people to think in Paris. And I have things to think over that won't let themselves be thought over quietly here. And I want to see the spring. I won't ask you to write to me, because I want to be quite alone, and not to have even a word from my sweet and dear friend. I hope your work will go well.
Yours, ROBERT TEMPLE."
She went back to bed, but not to sleep. Try as she would, she could not
keep away the wonder--what could Vernon have had to say that wanted so
badly to get itself said? She hid her eyes and would not
look in the face of her hope. There had been a tone in his voice as he
whispered on the other side of that stupid door, a tone she had not heard
since Long Barton.
Oh, why had she gone to bed early that night of all nights? She would
never go to bed early again as long as she lived!
What? no, impossible! Yes. Another knock at her door. She sprang out of
bed, and stood listening. There was no doubt about it. Vernon had come
back. After all what he had to say would not keep till morning. A wild idea
of dressing and letting him in was sternly dismissed. For one thing, at
topmost speed, it took twenty minutes to dress. He would not wait twenty
minutes. Another knock.
She threw on her dressing gown and ran along her little
passage,--and stooped to the key-hole just as another tap, discreet
but insistent, rang on the door panel.
"Go away," she said low and earnestly. "I can't
talk to you to-night whatever it is. It must wait till the
morning."
"It's I," said the very last voice in all Paris that
she expected to hear, "it's Lady St. Craye.--Won't you
let me in?"
"Are you alone?" said Betty.
"Of course I'm alone. It's most important. Do open the
door."
The door was slowly opened. The visitor rustled through, and Betty shut
the door. Then she followed Lady St. Craye into the sitting-room, lighted
the lamp, drew the curtain across the clear April night, and stood looking
enquiry--and not looking it kindly. Her lips were set in a hard line
and she was frowning.
She waited for the other to speak, but after all it was she who broke
the silence.
"Well," she said, "what do you want now?"
"I hardly know how to begin," said Lady St. Craye with great
truth.
"I should think not!" said Betty. "I don't want
to be disagreeable, but I can't think of anything that gives you the
right to come and knock me up like this in the middle of the
night."
"It's only just past eleven," said Lady St. Craye. And
there was another silence. She did not know what to say. A dozen openings
suggested themselves, and were instantly rejected. Then, quite suddenly,
she knew exactly what to say, what to do. That move of
Vernon's--it was a good one, a move too often neglected in this
cynical world, but always successful on the stage.
"May I sit down?" she asked forlornly.
Betty, rather roughly, pushed forward a chair.
Lady St. Craye sank into it, looked full at Betty for a long minute; and
by the lamp's yellow light Betty saw the tears rise, brim over and
fall from the other woman's lashes. Then Lady St. Craye pulled out her
handkerchief and began to cry in good earnest.
It was quite easy.
At first Betty looked on in cold contempt. Lady St. Craye had counted on
that: she let herself go, wholly. If it ended in hysterics so much the more
impressive. She thought of Vernon, of all the hopes of these months, of the
downfall of them--everything that should make it impossible for her to
stop crying.
"Don't distress yourself," said Betty, very chill and
distant.
"Can you--can you lend me a handkerchief?" said the
other unexpectedly, screwing up her own drenched cambric in her hand.
Betty fetched a handkerchief.
"I haven't any scent," she said. "I'm
sorry."
That nearly dried the tears--but not quite: Lady St. Craye was a
persevering woman.
Betty watching her, slowly melted, just as the other
knew she would. She put her hand at last on the shoulder of the light
coat.
"Come," she said, "don't cry so. I'm sure
there's nothing to be so upset about--"
Then came to her sharp as any knife, the thought of what there might
be.
"There's nothing wrong with anyone? There hasn't been an
accident or anything?"
The other, still speechless, conveyed "No."
"Don't," said Betty again. And slowly and very
artistically the flood was abated. Lady St. Craye was almost calm, though
still her breath caught now and then in little broken sighs.
"I am so sorry," she said, "so
ashamed.--Breaking down like this. You don't know what it is to
be as unhappy as I am."
Betty thought she did. We all think we do, in the presence of any grief
not our own.
"Can I do anything?" She spoke much more kindly than she had
expected to speak.
"Will you let me tell you everything? The whole truth?"
"Of course, if you want to, but--"
"Then do sit down--and oh, don't be angry with me, I am
so wretched. Just now you thought something had happened to Mr. Vernon.
Will you just tell me one thing?--Do you love him?"
"You've no right to ask me that."
"I know I haven't. Well, I'll trust you--though you
don't trust me. I'll tell you everything. Two years ago Mr.
Vernon and I were engaged."
This was not true; but it took less time to tell than the truth would
have taken, and sounded better.
"We were engaged, and I was very fond of him. But he--you
know what he is about women?"
"No," said Betty steadily. "I don't want to know
anything about him."
"But you must.--He is--I don't know how to put it.
There's always some woman besides The One
with him. I understand that now; I didn't then. I don't think he
can help it. It's his temperament."
"I see," said Betty evenly. Her hands and feet were very
cold. She was astonished to find how little moved she was in this interview
whose end she foresaw so very plainly.
"Yes, and there was a girl at that time--he was always about
with her. And I made him scenes--always a most stupid thing to do with
a man, you know; and at last I said he must give her up, or give me up. And
he gave me up. And I was too proud to let him think I cared--and just
to show him how little I cared I married Sir Harry St. Craye. I might just
as well have let it alone. He never even heard I had been married till last
October! And then it was I who told him. My husband was a brute, and
I'm thankful to say he didn't live long. You're very much
shocked, I'm afraid?"
"Not at all," said Betty, who was, rather.
"Well, then I met Him again, and we got engaged again, as he told
you. And again there was a girl--oh, and another woman besides. But
this time I tried to bear it--you know I did try not to be jealous of
you."
"You had no cause," said Betty.
"Well, I thought I had. That hurts just as much. And what's
the end of it all--all my patience and trying not to see things, and
letting him have his own way? He came to me to-night and begged me to
release him from his engagement, because--oh, he was beautifully
candid--because he meant to marry you."
Betty's heart gave a jump.
"He seems to have been very sure of me," she said
loftily.
"No, no; he's not a hairdresser's apprentice--to
tell one woman that he's sure of another. He said: 'I mean to
marry Miss Desmond if she'll have me.'"
"How kind of him!"
"I wish you'd heard the way he spoke of you."
"I don't want to hear."
"I had to. And I've released him. And now
I've come to you. I was proud two years ago. I'm not proud now. I
don't care what I do. I'll kneel down at your feet and pray to
you as, if you were God, not to take him away from me. And if you love him
it'll all be no good. I know that."
"But--supposing I weren't here--do you think you
could get him back?"
"I know I could. Unless of course you were to tell him I'd
been here to-night. I should have no chance after that--naturally. I
wish I knew what to say to you. You're very young; you'll find
someone else, a better man. He's not a good man. There's a girl
at Montmartre at this very moment--a girl he's set up in a
restaurant. He goes to see her. You'd never stand that sort of thing.
I know the sort of girl you are. And you're quite right. But I've
got beyond that. I don't care what he is, I don't care what he
does. I understand him. I can make allowances for him. I'm his real
mate. I could make him happy. You never would--you're too good.
Ever since I first met him I've thought of nothing else, cared for
nothing else. If he whistled to me I'd give up everything else,
everything, and follow him barefoot round the world."
"I heard someone say that in a play once," said Betty
musing.
"So did I," said Lady St. Craye very
sharply--"but it's true for all that. Well--you can do
as you like."
"Of course I can," said Betty.
"I've done all I can now. I've said everything there is
to say. And if you love him as I love him every word I've said
won't make a scrap of difference. I know that well enough. What I want
to know is--do you love him?"
The scene had been set deliberately. But the passion that spoke in it
was not assumed. Betty felt young, school-girlish, awkward in the presence
of this love--so different from her own timid dreams. The emotion of
the other woman had softened her.
"I don't know," she said.
"If you don't know, you don't love him.--At least
don't see him till you're sure. You'll do that? As long as
he's not married to anyone, there's just a chance that he may
love me again. Won't you have pity? Won't you go away? Like that
sensible young man Temple. Mr. Vernon told me he was going into the country
to decide which of the two women he likes best is the one he really likes
best! Won't you do that?"
"Yes," said Betty slowly, "I'll do that. Look
here, I am most awfully sorry, but I don't know--I can't
think to-night. I'll go right away--I won't see him
to-morrow. Oh, no. I can't come between you and the man you're
engaged to," her thoughts were clearing themselves as she spoke.
"Of course I knew you were engaged to him. But I never thought. At
least-- Yes. I'll go away the first thing to-morrow."
"You are very, very good," said Lady St. Craye, and she
meant it.
"But I don't know where to go. Tell me where to
go."
"Can't you go home?"
"No: I won't. That's too much."
"Go somewhere and sketch."
"Yes,--but where?" said poor Betty
impatiently.
"Go to Grez," said the other, not without second thoughts.
"It's a lovely place--close to Fontainebleau--Hotel
Chévillon. I'll write it down for you.--Old Madame
Chévillon's a darling. She'll look after you. It
is good of you to forgive me for everything. I'm afraid I
was a cat to you."
"No," said Betty, "it was right and brave of you
to tell me the whole truth. Oh, truth's the only thing that's any
good!"
Lady St. Craye also thought it a useful thing--in moderation. She
rose.
"I'll never forget what you're doing for me," she
said. "You're a girl in thousand. Look here, my dear: I'm
not blind. Don't think I don't value what you're doing. You
cared for him in England a little,--and you care a little now. And
everything I've said tonight has hurt you hatefully. And you
didn't know you cared. You thought it was friendship, didn't
you--till you thought I'd come to tell you that something had
happened to him. And then you knew. I'm going to accept
your sacrifice. I've got to. I can't live if I don't. But I
don't want you to think I don't know what a sacrifice it is. I
know better than you do--at this moment. No--don't say
anything. I don't want to force your confidence. But I do
understand."
"I wish everything was different," said Betty.
"Yes. You're thinking, aren't you, that if it
hadn't been for Mr. Vernon you'd rather have liked me? And I know
now that if it hadn't been for him I should have been very fond of
you. And even as it is--"
She put her arms round Betty and spoke close to her ear.
"You're doing more for me than anyone has ever done for me in
my life," she said, "more than I'd do for you or any
woman. And I love you for it. Dear brave little girl. I hope it isn't
going to hurt very badly. I love you for it--and I'll never
forget it to the day I die. Kiss me and try to forgive me."
The two clung together for an instant.
"Good-bye," said Lady St. Craye in quite a different voice.
"I'm sorry I made a scene. But, really, sometimes I believe one
isn't quite sane. Let me write the Grez address. I wish I could think
of
any set of circumstances in which you'd be pleased to see me
again."
"I'll pack to-night," said Betty. "I hope
you'll be happy anyway. Do you know I think I have been
hating you rather badly without quite knowing it."
"Of course you have," said the other heartily, "but
you don't now. Of course you won't leave your address here? If
you do that you might as well not go away at all!"
"I'm not quite a fool," said Betty.
"No," said the other with a sigh, "it's I that am
the fool. You're-- No, I won't say what you are. But--
Well. Good night, dear. Try not to hate me again when you come to think it
all over quietly!"
DEAR MR. VERNON,--This is to thank you very much for all your help and criticism of my work, and to say good-bye. I am called away quite suddenly, so I can't thank you in person, but I shall never forget your kindness. Please remember me to Lady St. Craye. I suppose you will be married quite soon now. And I am sure you will both be very happy.
Yours very sincerely, ELIZABETH DESMOND.
But yes, Mademoiselle had departed this
morning at nine o'clock. To which station? To the Gare St. Lazare.
Yes--Mademoiselle had charged her to remit the billet to Monsieur. No,
Mademoiselle had not left any address. But perhaps chez Madame
Bianchi?"
But chez Madame Bianchi there was no further news. The so amiable
Mademoiselle Desmond had paid her account, had embraced Madame,
and--voilà she was gone. One
divined that she had been called suddenly to return to the family roof. A
sudden illness of Monsieur her father without doubt.
Could some faint jasmine memory have lingered on the staircase? Or was
it some subtler echo of Lady St. Craye's personality that clung there?
Abruptly, as he passed Betty's door, the suspicion stung him. Had the
Jasmine Lady had any hand in this sudden departure?
"Pooh--nonsense," he said. But all the same he paused
at the concierge's window.
"I am desolated to have deranged Madame,"--gold coin
changed hands.--"A lady came to see Mademoiselle this morning,
is it not?"
"No, no lady had visited Mademoiselle to-day: no one at all in
effect."
"Nor last night--very late?"
"No, monsieur," the woman answered meaningly; "no
visitor came in last night except Monsieur himself and he came, not to see
Mademoiselle, that understands itself, but to see Monsieur
Beauchèsne au troisième.
No--I am quite sure--I never deceive myself. And Mademoiselle has
had no letters since three days. Thanks a thousand times, Monsieur. Good
morning."
She locked up the gold piece in the little drawer where already lay the
hundred franc note that Lady St. Craye had given her at six o'clock
that morning.
"And there'll be another fifty from her next month,"
she chuckled. "The good God be blessed
for intrigues! Without intrigues what would become of us poor
concierges?"
For Vernon Paris was empty--the spring sunshine positively
distasteful. He did what he could; he enquired at the Gare St. Lazare,
describing Betty with careful detail that brought smiles to the lips of the
employés. He would not call on Miss Voscoe. He made himself wait
till the Sketch-club afternoon--made himself wait, indeed, till all
the sketches were criticised, till the last cup of tea was swallowed, or
left to cool, the last cake munched, the last student's footfall had
died away on the stairs, and he and Miss Voscoe were alone among the
scattered tea-cups, blackened bread-crumbs and torn paper.
Then he put his question. Miss Voscoe knew nothing. Guessed Miss Desmond
knew her own business best.
"But she's so young," said Vernon; "anything
might have happened to her."
"I reckon she's safe enough--where she is," said
Miss Voscoe with intention.
"But haven't you any idea why she's gone?" he
asked, not at all expecting any answer but "Not the least."
But Miss Voscoe said:
"I have a quite first-class idea and so have you."
He could but beg her pardon interrogatively.
"Oh, you know well enough," said she. "She'd got
to go. And it was up to her to do it right now, I guess."
Vernon had to ask why.
"Well, you being engaged to another girl, don't you surmise
it might kind of come home to her there were healthier spots for you than
the end of her apron strings? Maybe she thought the other lady's apron
strings 'ud be suffering for a little show?"
"I'm not engaged," said Vernon shortly.
"Then it's time you were," the answer came with equal
shortness. "You'll pardon me making this a
heart-to-heart talk--and anyway it's no funeral of mine. But
she's the loveliest girl, and I right down like her. So you take it
from me. That F.F.V. Lady with the violets--oh, don't pretend you
don't know who I mean--the one you're always about with when
you aren't with Betty. She's your ticket.
Betty's not. Your friend's her style. You pass, this hand, and
give the girl a chance."
"I really don't understand--"
"I bet you do," she interrupted with conviction.
"I've sized you up right enough, Mr. Vernon. You're no
fool. If you've discontinued your engagement Betty doesn't know
it. Nor she shan't from me. And one of these next days it'll be
borne in on your friend that she's the girl of his
life--and when he meets her again he'll get her to see it his
way. Don't you spoil the day's fishing."
Vernon laughed.
"You have all the imagination of the greatest nation in the world,
Miss Voscoe," he said. "Thank you. These straight talks to
young men are the salt of life. Good-bye."
"You haven't all the obfuscation of the stupidest nation in
the world," she retorted. "If you had had you'd have had a
chance to find out what straight talking means--which it's my
belief you never have yet. Good-bye. You take my tip. Either you go back to
where you were before you sighted Betty, or if the other one's sick of
you too, just shuffle the cards, take a fresh deal and start fair. You go
home and spend a quiet evening and think it all over."
Vernon went off laughing, and wondering why he didn't hate Miss
Voscoe. He did not laugh long. He sat in his studio, musing till it was too
late to go out to dine. Then he found some biscuits and sherry, remnants of
preparations for the call of a picture dealer, ate and drank, and spent the
evening in the way recommended by Miss Voscoe. He lay face downward on the
divan in the dark, and he did
"think it all over." But first there was the long time when he
lay quite still--did not think at all, only remembered her hands and
her eyes and her hair, and the pretty way her brows lifted when she was
surprised or perplexed, and the four sudden, sweet dimples that came near
the corners of her mouth when she was amused, and the way her mouth drooped
when she was tired.
"I want you. I want you. I want you," said the man who had
been the Amorist. "I want you, dear."
When he did begin to think he moved uneasily in the dark as thought
after thought crept out and stung him and slunk away. The verses he had
written at Long Barton, ironic verses, written with the tongue in the
cheek--came back with the force of iron truth:
He had smiled at Temple's confidences; when Betty was at hand, to be watched and guarded. Now Betty was away--anywhere. And Temple was deciding whether it was she whom he loved. Suppose he did decide that it was she, and, as Miss Voscoe had said, made her see it? "Damn," said Vernon, "Oh, damn!"
"I love you to my heart's hid core:
Those other loves? How can one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no--I never loved before!"
He was beginning to be a connoisseur in the subtle flavours of the
different brands of jealousy. Anyway there was food for thought.
There was food for little else in the days that followed. Mr.
Vernon's heart, hungry for the first time, had to starve. He went
often to Lady St. Craye's. She was so gentle, sweet, yet not too
sympathetic; bright, amusing even, but not too vivacious. He approved
deeply the delicacy with which she ignored that last wild interview. She
was sister, she was friend--and she had the rare merit of seeming to
forget that she had been confidante.
It was he who re-opened the subject, after ten days. She had told
herself that it was only a question of time. And it was.
"Do you know she's disappeared?" he said abruptly.
"Disappeared?" No one was ever more astonished
than Lady St. Craye. Quite natural, the astonishment. Not overdone by so
much as a hair's breadth.
So he told her all about it, and she twisted her long topaz chain and
listened with exactly the right shade of interest. He told her what Miss
Voscoe had said--at least most of it.
"And I worry about Temple," he said; "like any school
boy, I worry. If he does decide that he loves her better than
you-- You said you'd help me. Can't you make sure that he
won't love her better?"
"I could, I suppose," she admitted. To herself she said:
"Temple's at Grez. She's at Grez. They've
been there ten days."
"If only you would," he said. "It's too much to
ask, I know. But I can't ask anything that isn't too much! And
you're so much more noble and generous than other
people--"
"No butter, thanks," she said.
"It's the best butter," he earnestly urged. "I
mean that I meant it. Won't you?"
"When I see him again--but it's not very fair to him, is
it?"
"He's an awfully good chap, you know," said Vernon
innocently. And once more Lady St. Craye bowed before the sublime
apparition of the Egoism of Man.
"Good enough for me, you think? Well, perhaps you're right.
He's a dear boy. One would feel very safe if one loved a man like
that."
"Yes--wouldn't one?" said Vernon.
She wondered whether Betty was feeling safe. No: ten days are a long
time, especially in the
country--but it would take longer than that to cure even a little
imbecile like Betty of the Vernon habit. It was worse than opium. Who ought
to know if not she, who sat, calm and sympathetic, promising to entangle
Temple so as to leave Betty free to become a hopeless prey to the fell
disease?
Quite suddenly and to her own intense surprise, she laughed out
loud.
"What is it?" his alert vanity bristled in the query.
"It's nothing--only everything! Life's so futile!
We pat and pinch our little bit of clay, and look at it and love it and
think it's going to be a masterpiece.--and then God glances at
it, and He doesn't like the modelling, and He sticks his thumb down,
and the whole thing's broken up, and there's nothing left to do
but throw away the bits."
"Oh, no," said Vernon, "everything's bound to
come right in the end. It all works out straight somehow."
She laughed again.
"Optimism--from you?"
"It's not optimism," he asserted eagerly,
"it's only--well, if everything doesn't come right
somehow, somewhere, some day, what did He bother to make the world
for?"
"That's exactly what I said, my dear," said she. She
permitted herself the little endearment now and then with an ironical
inflection, as one fearful of being robbed might show a diamond pretending
that it was paste.
"You think He made it for a joke?"
"If He did it's a joke in the worst possible taste,"
said she, "but I see your point of view. There can't be so very
much wrong with a world that has Her in it,--and you--and
possibilities."
"Do you know," he said slowly, "I'm not at all
sure that-- Do you remember the chap in Jane
Eyre?--he knew quite well that that Rosamund girl
wouldn't make him the wife he wanted. Yet he wanted nothing else. I
don't want anything but her; and it doesn't make a scrap of
difference that I know exactly what sort of thing it is."
"A knowledge of anatomy doesn't keep a broken bone from
hurting," said she, "and all even you know about love
won't keep off the heartache. I could have told you that long
ago."
"I know I'm a fool," he said, "but I can't
help it. Sometimes I think I wouldn't help it if I could."
"I know," she said, and something in her voice touched the
trained sensibilities of the Amorist. He stooped to kiss the hand that
teased the topazes.
"Dear Jasmine Lady," he said, "my optimism
doesn't keep its colour long, does it? Give me some tea, won't
you? There's nothing so wearing as emotion."
She gave him tea.
"It's a sort of judgment on you, though," was what she
gave him with his first cup: "you've dealt out this very thing
to so many women,--and now it's come home to roost."
"I didn't know what a fearful wildfowl it was," he
answered smiling. "I swear I didn't. I begin to think I never
knew anything at all before."
"And yet they say love's blind."
"And so he is! That's just it. My exotic flower of optimism
withers at your feet. It's all exactly the muddle you say it is. Pray
Heaven for a clear way out! Meantime thank whatever gods may
be--I've got you."
"Monsieur's confidante is always at his distinguished
service," she said. And thus sealed the fountain of confidences for
that day.
But it broke forth again and again in the days that came after. For now
he saw her almost every day. And for her, to be with him, to know that she
had of him more of everything, save the heart, than any other woman,
spelled something wonderfully like
happiness. More like it than she had the art to spell in any other
letters.
Vernon still went twice a week to the Sketch-club. To have stayed away
would have been to confess, to the whole alert and interested class, that
he had only gone there for the sake of Betty. Those afternoons were seasons
of salutary torture. He tried very hard to work, but, though he still
remembered how a paint brush should be handled, there seemed no good reason
for using one. He had always found his planned and cultivated emotions
strongly useful in forwarding his work. This undesired unrest mocked at
work, and at all the things that had made up the solid fabric of one's
days. The draught of love--he had called it love--it was a name
like another--had merely been a sort of dram-drinking. Such love was
the intoxicant necessary to transfigure life to the point where all things,
even work, look beautiful. Now he tasted the real wine. It flooded his
veins like fire and stung like poison. And it made work, and all things
else, look mean and poor and unimportant.
"I want you--I want you--I want you," said Vernon
to the vision with the pretty kitten face, and the large gray eyes.
"I want you more than everything in the world," he said,
"everything in the world put together. Oh, come back to
me--dear, dear, dear."
He remembered again the little poem he had written when he was training
himself to be in love with Betty:
"I love you to my heart's hid core:
Those other loves? How can one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no--I never loved before!"
Miss Conway's name, moving through his thought, left the trail of a
new hope.
Next day he breakfasted at Montmartre.
The neatest little Crèmerie; white
paint, green walls stenciled with fat white geraniums. On each small table
a vase of green Bruges ware or Breton pottery holding not a crushed,
crowded bouquet, but one single flower--a pink tulip, a pink
carnation, a pink rose. On the desk from behind which the Proprietress
ruled her staff, enormous pink peonies in a tall pot of
Grèz de Flandre.
Behind the desk Paula Conway, incredibly neat and business-like, her
black hair severely braided, her plain black gown fitting a figure grown
lean as any greyhound's, her lace collar a marvel of fine laundry
work.
Dapper-waisted waitresses in black, with white aprons, served the
customers. Vernon was served by Madame herself. The
clientèle formed its own opinion of
the cause of this, her only such condescension.
"Well, and how's trade?" he asked over his
asparagus.
"Trade's beautiful," Paula answered, with the frank
smile that Betty had seen, only once or twice, and had loved very much:
"if trade will only go on behaving like this for another six weeks my
cruel creditor will be paid every penny of the money that launched
me."
Her eyes dwelt on him with candid affection.
"Your cruel creditor's not in any hurry," he said.
"By the way, I suppose you've not heard anything of Miss
Desmond?"
"How could I? You know you made me write that she wasn't to
write."
"I didn't make you write anything."
"You approved. But anyway she hasn't my address.
Why?"
"She's gone away: and she also has left no
address."
"You don't think?--Oh, no--nothing
could have happened to her."
"No, no," he hastened to say. "I expect her father
sent for her, or fetched her."
"The best thing too," said Paula. "I always wondered
he let her come."
"Yes,"--Vernon remembered how little Paula knew.
"Oh, yes, she's probably gone home."
"Look here," said Miss Conway very earnestly, "there
wasn't any love business between you and her, was there?"
"No," he answered strongly.
"I was always afraid of that. Do you know--if you don't
mind, when I've really paid my cruel creditor everything, I should
like to write and tell her what he's done for me. I should like her to
know that she really did save me--and how. Because if it
hadn't been for her you'd never have thought of helping me. Do
you think I might?"
"It could do no harm," said Vernon after a silent moment.
"You'd really like her to know you're all right. You
are all right?"
"I'm right; as I never thought I could be ever
again."
"Well, you needn't exaggerate the little services of your
cruel creditor. Come to think of it, you needn't name him. Just say it
was a man you knew."
But when Paula came to write the letter that was not just what she
said.
"Why did you promise?" she asked herself. And herself
replied:
"Don't you bother. We'll talk about all that when
we've got away from Paris. He was quite right. You can't think
here."
"You'd better tell the cabman some other station. That cat of
a concierge is sure to be listening."
"Ah, right. I don't want to give him any chance
of finding me, even if he did say he wanted to marry me."
A fleet, lovely picture of herself in bridal smart travelling clothes
arriving at the Rectory on Vernon's arm: "Aren't you sorry
you misjudged him so, father?" Gentle accents refraining from
reproach. A very pretty picture. Yes. Dismissed.
Now the carriage, swaying under the mound of Betty's luggage,
starts for the Gare du Nord. In the Rue Notre Dame des Champs Betty opens
her mouth to say, "Gare de Lyons." No: this is His street.
Better cross it as quickly as may be. At the Church of St.
Germain--yes.
The coachman smiles at the new order: like the concierge, he scents an
intrigue, whips up his horse, and swings round to the left along the
prettiest of all the Boulevards, between the full-leafed trees. Past
Thirion's. Ah!
That thought, or pang, or nausea--Betty doesn't quite know
what it is, keeps her eyes from the streets till the carriage is crossing
the river. Why--there is Notre Dame! It ought to be miles away.
Suppose Vernon should have been leaning out of his window when she passed
across the street, seen her, divined her destination, followed her in the
fleetest carriage accessible? The vision of a meeting at the station:
"Why are you going away? What have I done?" The secret of
this, her great renunciation, the whole life's sacrifice to that
life's idol--honour,--wrung from her. A hand that would hold
hers, under pretence of taking her bundle of rugs to carry.--She
wished the outermost rug were less shabby: Vernon's voice.
"But I can't let you go. Why ruin two lives--nay, three?
For it is you only that I--"
Dismissed.
It is very hot. Paris is the hottest place in the world. Betty is glad
she brought lavender-water in her bag. Wishes she had put on her other hat.
This brown one is hot; and besides, if Vernon were to be at
the station. Interval. Dismissed.
Betty has never before made a railway journey alone. This gives one a
forlorn feeling. Suppose she has to excess on her luggage, or to wrangle
about contraband? She has heard all about the Octroi. Is lavender water
smuggling? And what can they do to you for it? Vernon would know all these
things. And if he were going into the country he would be wearing that
almost-white rough suit of his and the Panama hat. A rose--Madame Abel
de Chatenay--would go well with that coat. Why didn't brides
consult their bridegrooms before they bought their trousseaux? You should
get your gowns to rhyme with your husband's suits. A dream of a dress
that would be, with all the shades of Madame Abel cunningly blended. A
honeymoon lasts at least a month. The roses would all be out at Long Barton
by the time they walked up that moss-grown drive, and stood at the Rectory
door, and she murmured in the ear of the Reverend Cecil, "Aren't
you sorry you--"
Dismissed. And perforce, for the station was reached.
Betty, even in the brown hat, attracted the most attractive of the
porters--also, of course, the most attractable. He thought he spoke
English, and though this was not so, yet the friendly blink of his
Breton-blue eyes and his encouraging smile gave to his:
"Bourron? Mais oui--dix heures vingt. Par
ici, Meess. Je m'occupe de vous. Et des bagages
aussi--all right," quite the ring of one's Mother
tongue.
He made everything easy for Betty, found her a carriage without company
("I can cry here if I like," said the Betty that Betty liked
least), arranged her small packages neatly in the rack, took her fifty
centime piece as though it had been a priceless personal souvenir, and ran
half the length of the platform to get a rose from another porter's
button-
hole. He handed it to her through the carriage window.
"Pour égayer le voyage de
Meess. All right!" he smiled, and was gone.
She settled herself in the far corner, and took off her hat. The
carriage was hot as any kitchen. With her teeth she drew the cork of the
lavender water bottle, and with her handkerchief dabbed the perfume on
forehead and ears.
"Ah, Mademoiselle--De grace!"--the voice came
through the open window beside her. A train full of young soldiers was
beside her train, and in the window opposite hers three boys' faces
crowded to look at her. Three hands held out three handkerchiefs--not
very white certainly, but--
Betty smiling reached out the bottle and poured lavender water on each
outheld handkerchief.
"Ah, le bon souvenir!" said
one.
"We shall think of the beauty of an angel of Mademoiselle every
time we smell the perfume so delicious," said the second.
"And longer than that--oh, longer than that by all a
life!" cried the third.
The train started. The honest, smiling boy faces disappeared.
Instinctively she put her head out of the window to look back at them. All
three threw kisses at her.
"I ought to be offended," said Betty, and instantly kissed
her hand in return.
"How nice French people are!" she said as she
sank back on the hot cushions.
And now there was leisure to think--real thoughts, not those
broken, harassing dreamings that had buzzed adout her between 57 Boulevard
Montparnasse and the station. Also, as some one had suggested, one could
cry.
She leaned back, eyes shut. Her next thought was:
"I have been to sleep."
She had. The train was moving out of a station labelled
Fontainebleau.
"And oh! the trees!" said Betty, "the green, thick
trees! And the sky. You can see the sky."
Through the carriage window she drank delight from the far grandeur of
green distances, the intimate beauty of green rides, green vistas, as a
thirsty carter drinks beer from the cool lip of his can--a thirsty
lover madness from the warm lips of his mistress.
"Oh, how good! How green and good!" she told herself over
and over again till the words made a song with the rhythm of the blundering
train and the humming metals.
"Bourron!"
Her station. Little, quiet, sunlit, like the station at Long Barton; a
flaming broom bush and the white of may and acacia blossom beyond prim
palings. No platform--a long leap to the dusty earth. The train went
on, and Betty and her boxes seemed dropped suddenly at the world's
end.
The air was fresh and still. A chestnut tree reared its white blossoms
like the candles on a Christmas tree for giant children. The white dust of
the platform sparkled like diamond dust. In a meadow behind the station the
grass was up for hay, with red sorrel and buttercups and tall daisies and
feathery flowered grasses, their colours all blended and tangled together
like the ravelled ends of silk on the wrong side of some great square of
tapestry. May trees and laburnums shone like silver and gold. And the sun
was warm and the tree-shadows black on the grass. And Betty loved it
all.
"Oh!" she said suddenly, "it's a
year ago to-day since I met Him--in the warren."
A shadow caressed and stung her. She would have liked it to wear the
mask of love foregone--to breathe plaintively of hopes defeated and a
broken heart. Instead it shewed the candid face of a real homesickness, and
it spoke with con-
vincing and abominably aggravating plainness--of Long Barton.
The little hooded diligence was waiting in the hot white dust outside
the station.
"But yes. It is I who transport all the guests of Madame
Chevillon," said the smiling brown-haired bonnetless woman who held
the reins.
Betty climbed up beside her.
"Ah, how it is good after Paris to see the country. It is all
green," said she in her slip-shod French.
"It is not badly," said the other woman, and chirruped to
the lazy white horse. He shook himself into a jog-trot, and the rusty black
harness creaked and the bells jangled. "Not badly,--but for me
it is Paris that I love. When my husband has enough gained it is to Paris
that we shall go. I love life, me!"
Along a straight road that tall ranks of trees guarded but did not
shade, through the patchwork neatness of the little culture that makes the
deep difference between peasant France and pastoral England, down a steep
hill into a little white town, where vines grew out of the very street to
cling against the faces of the houses and wistaria hung its mauve pendants
from every arch and lintel.
The Hotel Chevillon is a white-faced house, with little unintelligent
eyes of windows, burnt blind, it seems, in the sun--neat with the
neatness of provincial France.
Betty felt a little shiver of dread. She had but small experience of
hotels, and she remembered the patronne of the Hotel Bête, her tepid
uninterestedness, her cool, aloof air.
Out shuffled an old peasant woman in short skirt, heavy shoes and big
apron, her arms bared to the elbow, a saucepan in one hand, a ladle in the
other. She beamed at Betty.
"I wish to see Madame Chevillon."
"You see her, ma belle et
bonne," chuckled the old woman. "It is me, Madame
Chevillon. You will
rooms, is it not? You are artist? All who come to the hotel are artist.
Rooms? Marie shall shew you the rooms, at the instant even. All the
rooms--except one--that is the room of the English
artist--all that there is of most amiable, but quite mad. He wears no
hat, and his brain boils in the sun. Mademoiselle can chat with him: it
will prevent that she bores herself here in the Forest."
Betty disliked the picture.
"I think perhaps," she said, translating mentally as she
spoke, "that I should do better to go to another hotel, if there is
only one man here and he is--"
She saw days made tiresome by the dodging of a lunatic--nights made
tremulous by a lunatic's yelling soliloquies.
"Ah," said Madame Chevillon comfortably, "I thought
Mademoiselle was artist; and for the artists and the Spaniards the
convenances exist not. But Mademoiselle is also English. They eat the
convenances every day with the soup.--See then, my cherished. The
English man, he is not a dangerous fool, only a beast of the good God; he
has the atelier and the room at the end of the corridor. But there is,
besides the hotel, the Garden Pavilion, un
appartement of two rooms, exquisite, on the first, and the garden
room that opens big upon the terrace. It is there that Mademoiselle will be
well!"
Betty thought so too, when she had seen the "rooms exquisite on
the first"--neat, bare, well-scrubbed rooms with red-tiled
floors, scanty rugs and Frenchly varnished furniture. The garden room too,
with big open hearth and no furniture but wicker chairs and tables.
"Mademoiselle can eat all alone on the terrace. The English mad
shall not approach. I will charge myself with that. Mademoiselle may repose
herself here as on the bosom of the mother of Mademoiselle."
Betty had her déjeûner on the
little stone terrace with rickety rustic railings. Below lay the garden,
thick with trees. Cool shadow lay on terrace and table--just a glint
of sun to strike sparkles from glass and knives. There is no sun that can
strike a sparkle from the spoons and forks at the Hotel Chevillon.
Away among the trees to the left an arbour. She saw through the leaves
the milk-white gleam of flannels, heard the chink of china and cutlery.
There, no doubt, the mad Englishman was even now breakfasting. There was
the width of the garden between them. She sat still till the flannel gleam
had gone away among the trees. Then she went out and explored the little
town. She bought some picture post-cards, and learned from them that Grez
has a river. She bought a little packet of cigarettes. Miss Voscoe had
often tried to persuade her to smoke. Most of the girls did. Betty had not
wanted to do it any more for that. She had had a feeling that Vernon would
not like her to smoke.
And in Paris one had to be careful. But now--
"I am absolutely my own master," she said. "I am
staying by myself at a hotel, exactly like a man. I shall feel more at home
if I smoke. And besides, no one can see me. It's just for me. And it
shows I don't care what he likes."
Lying in a long chair reading one of her Tauchnitz books and smoking,
Betty felt very manly indeed.
The long afternoon wore on. The trees of the garden crowded round Betty
with soft whispers in a language not known of the trees on the
Boulevards.
"I am very, very unhappy," said Betty with a deep sigh of
delight.
She went in, unpacked, arranged everything neatly. She always arranged
everything neatly, but nothing ever would stay arranged. She wrote to her
father, explaining that Madame Gautier had brought her and the other girls
to Grez for the summer, and she gave as her address:
Chez Madame Chevillon,
Pavillon du Jardin, Grez.
"I shall be very, very unhappy to-morrow," said Betty,
laying her face against the coarse cool linen of her pillow; "to-day
I have been stunned--I haven't been able to feel anything. But
to-morrow."
To-morrow, she knew, would be golden and green even as to-day. But she
should not care. She did not want to be happy. How could she be happy, now
that she had of her own free will put away the love of her life? She called
and beckoned to all the thoughts that the green world shut out, and they
came at her call, fluttering black wings to hide the sights and sounds of
field and wood and green garden, and making their nest in her heart.
"Yes," she said, turning the hot rough pillow, "now it
begins to hurt again. I knew it would."
It hurt more than she had meant it to hurt, when she beckoned those
black-winged thoughts. It hurt so much that she could not sleep. She got up
and leaned from the window of her pavilion. A nightingale was singing in
the garden. The night was still, and very, very dark.
She wondered where Vernon was. It was quite
early. Not eleven. Lady St. Craye had called that quite early.
"He's with her, of course," said Betty,
"sitting at her feet, no doubt, and looking up at her hateful eyes,
and holding her horrid hand, and forgetting that he ever knew a girl named
Me."
The nightingale had stopped singing.
All the silent voices of the night called to her. "Come
out--come out. It is peaceful out here,--the great sky--the
great forest. You are small and silly, but I will let you come to me; I
shall know how to help you."
Betty dressed and went out.
She crossed the garden. It was very dark among the trees. It would be
lighter in the road.
The big yard door was ajar. She pushed it softly. It creaked and let her
through into the silent street. There were no lights in the hotel, no
lights in any of the houses.
She stood a moment, hesitating. A door creaked inside the hotel. She
took the road to the river.
"I wonder if people ever do drown themselves for
love," said Betty: "he'd be sorry then."
Her eyes, growing used to the darkness, discerned the white ribbon of
road unrolling before her. The trees were growing thicker. This must be the
forest. Certainly it was the forest. Great banks of solid silence and
darkness, fringed with black trees, rose up to right and left. The road
grew narrower; the branches met above her head. She was not thinking any
more now, only listening to the silence and to the pat, pat of her feet in
the road. Taller trees, and with thicker foliage, arched the road.
"How dark it is," she said, "how dear and dark! And
how still! I suppose the trams are running just the same along the
Boulevard Montparnasse,--and all the lights and people, and the noise.
And I've been there all these months--and all the time this was
here. This."
Paris was going on--all that muddle and maze of worried people. And
she was out of it all. Here, alone.
Alone? A quick terror struck at the heart of her content. An abrupt
horrible certainty froze her--the certainty that she was not alone.
There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near
her--something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet,
dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre long before she heard
that faint light sound that was not one of the forest noises. She stood
still and listened.
No--it was not fancy: nor was it just the throbbing of her heart in
her throat. She held her breath, and she heard, quite surely, the soft pad
pad of feet that followed.
No: she heard nothing. It was fancy, or her heart, that
would beat so thickly.
She had never been frightened of the dark--of the out of doors
dark. At Long Barton she had never been afraid even to go past the
church-yard in the dark night--the free night that had never held any
terrors, only dreams.
But now: she quickened her pace, and--yes--the pad, pad came
on behind her. And in front the long straight ribbon of the road unwound,
grey now in the shadow. There seemed to be no road turning to right or
left. She could not go on for ever. She would have to turn back, some
time--if not now, yet some time, in this black darkness, and then she
would meet this thing that trod so softly, so stealthily behind her.
"Don't be an idiot," she advised; "it's only
some French peasant going home from his wine."
But she knew quite well that French peasants wear shoes of hard wood, or
hard leather. The thing that was following her wore neither. Its feet fell
with the stealthy softness of a wild beast's pads, and the rhythm of
its tread was human.
She ran a few steps: stopped, walked on steadily.
"No," she told herself, "if you run
it will run. And besides, you would go mad."
And still no turning to right or left offered the faintest chance of
getting back by any save the road she had travelled by.
She looked behind her. She knew it was not wise, but she could not help
it. There was nothing to be seen but the grey ribbon of road that unwound
now in such short lengths, because the trees overhead were solid black; but
the creeping horror softly padded along behind her. She could hear, though
she could not see.
Every ghost story she had ever heard clamoured to be listened to again:
stories about houses were horrible, some of them, and about vaults; but was
there not another story, more horrible than these, of a trail found in a
wood,--a trail not of man or of beast--of something with soft,
mis-shapen feet, that must have made a noise just like--oh, she knew
the sort of noise those feet made! And at the end of the track a lair of
leaves still warm, covered with branches woven as no clean wood-creature
has the skill to weave, and a large flat stone with blood on it. Human
blood, the analysts had declared from their safe laboratories with walls
and shutters and doors. And children had been lost in that wood.
And she was alone here in the wood with--what? Something that
followed, followed, something she could hear--oh plainly through the
throbbing of her pulses, but could not see.
The warm, lighted Boulevards--where there were people, live warm
people, who wore leather shoes that tapped the pavement honestly!
Before she knew that she had ceased to walk, she was crouched in the
black between two bushes. She had leapt as the deer leaps, and crouched,
still as any deer.
Her dark blue linen gown was one with the forest shadows. She breathed
noiselessly--her eyes were turned to the grey ribbon of road that had
been behind her. She had heard. Now she would see.
Pad pad, pad pad, very even and steady. And now something white and tall
and straight. Oh, the relief of the tallness and straightness and
whiteness! She had thought of something dwarfed and clumsy--dark,
mis-shapen, slouching beast-like on two shapeless feet. Why were people
afraid of tall white ghosts?
It passed. It was a man--in a white suit. Just an ordinary man. No,
not ordinary. The ordinary man in France does not wear white. Nor in
England, except for boating and tennis and--
Flannels. Yes. The lunatic who boiled his brains in the sun!
Betty's terror changed colour as the wave changes from green to
white, but it lost not even so much of its force as the wave loses by the
change. It held her moveless till the soft padding step (tennis shoes, of
course-- Idiot. Oh, yes--but--) died away. Then softly and
hardly moving at all, moving so little that not a leaf of those friendly
bushes rustled, she slipped off her shoes: took them in her hand, made one
leap through the crackling, protesting undergrowth and fled back along the
road, fleet as a greyhound. She ran and she walked, very fast, and then she
ran again and never once did she pause to look or listen. If the lunatic
caught her; well, he would catch her, but it should not be her fault if he
did.
The trees were thinner. Ahead she saw glimpses of a world that looked
quite light. Ah, the bull-frog field,--but the bull-frogs were quiet
now; the bridge ahead. With one last spurt she ran across it, tore up the
little bit of street, slipped through the door, and between the garden
trees to her pavilion.
If that horror that had its lair in woods--nonsense--she was
only afraid of the lunatic, and he was miles away, going, please Heaven, in
the opposite direction.
All the same she looked very carefully in every corner--all was
still and empty. She locked the door, and fell face downward on her
bed.
Vernon in his studio was "thinking things over" after the
advice of Miss Voscoe, in much the same attitude.
"Oh," said Betty, "I will never go out at night again.
And I will leave this horrible, horrible place the very first thing
to-morrow morning."
But to-morrow morning touched the night's events with new colours
from its shining palette.
"After all, even a lunatic has a right to walk out in the forest
if it wants to," she told herself, "and it didn't know I
was there, I expect, really. But I think I'll go and stay at some
other hotel."
She asked, when her "complete coffee" came to her, what the
mad gentleman did all day.
"He is not so stupid as Mademoiselle supposes," said Marie.
"All the artists are insane, and he, he is only a little more insane
than the others. He is not a real mad, all the same, see you. To-day he
makes drawings at Montigny."
"Which way is Montigny?" asked Betty. And, learning,
strolled, when her coffee was finished, by what looked like the other
way.
It took her to the river.
"I might have gone out in one of the hotel boats," she
thought,--but the wind dimpled the long grass, the may bushes shone
like silver, and along the river banks were yellow irises, and loose-strife
breaking to dull red bud. Weeping willows trailed their long hair in the
stream, there were alders and aspens and poplars and pussy-willows.
"It's like the Medway," said Betty, stooping to the fat
cowslips at her feet, "only prettier; and I never saw any cowslips
there.--You dears."
She passed a mill, white and working. The miller gave her good-day. A
woman kneeling in a washing-shed lifted a face wrinkled and brown as a
walnut shell, to call a greeting across the little river.
"In the country," said Betty, "one is somebody--a
real human being all by oneself. In Paris one is a grain of dust--just
that--among the other horrid grains. To people that don't know
you--I mean, of course," she added.
The face of the country met her flat and smiling as the face of any
Dutch dairymaid. The meadows lay green and open,--the trees held no
secrets but the pretty secrets of spring. As far as one could see, nothing
but frank pastures, fields with no concealments. That evil forest of last
night might have been a thousand leagues away. She followed the track by
the river side--the sorrel and buttercups brushed her
gown to the knee, and the seeds of feathery grasses powdered her shoes, wet
already with the dew.
On the gritty floor of the Atelier Bianchi, the three chalk crosses that
marked the spot where her easel was used to stand were already rubbed out.
The clever red-haired Polish Jewess had her place.
Betty would not look at her sorrow in this gay, glad world. But she knew
at last what her sorrow's name was. She saw now that it was love that
had stood all the winter between her and Vernon, holding a hand of each. In
her blindness she had called it friendship,--but now she knew its real
royal name.
She felt that her heart was broken. Even the fact that her grief was a
thing to be indulged or denied at will brought her no doubts. She had
always wanted to be brave and noble. Well, now she was being both.
"I came away: I came away at once. And I am going to bear it
bravely. If I can't bear it--there's always the river. I
wish I'd been to the Morgue. They say drowned people look so calm and
beautiful. But he'd never see me--only read about it in the
papers--the
faits divers part. Oh--how perfectly
lovely!"
A turn of the river brought to sight a wide reach dotted with green
islands, each a tiny forest of willow saplings and young alders.
There was a boat moored under an aspen. A great clumsy boat, but it had
sculls in it. It would be pleasant to go out to the islands.
She got into the boat, loosened the heavy, rattling chain and flung it
in board, took up the sculls and began to pull. It was easy work.
"I didn't know I was such a good oar," said Betty as
the boat crept swiftly down the river.
As she stepped into the boat, she noticed the long river reeds straining
down stream like the green hair of hidden water-nixies.
She would land at the big island--the boat steered easily and
lightly enough for all its size--but before she could ship her oars
and grasp at a willow root she shot past the island.
Then she remembered the streaming green weeds.
"Why, there must be a frightful current!" she said. What
could make the river run at this pace--a weir--or a
waterfall?
She turned the boat's nose up stream and pulled. Ah, this was work!
Then her eyes, fixed in the exertion of pulling, found that they saw no
moving banks, but just one picture: a willow, a clump of irises, three
poplars in the distance; and the foreground of the picture did not move.
All her pulling only sufficed to keep the boat from going with the stream.
And now, as the effort relaxed a little it did not even do this. The
foreground did move--the wrong way. The boat was slipping slowly down
stream. She turned and made for the bank, but the stream caught her
broadside on, whirled the boat round, and swept it calmly and gently down;
towards the weir--or the waterfall.
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'était 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," she said 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?"
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
sunblinds beyond each open window kept the rooms in pleasant shadow. The
heat always made one languid, but those sunblinds ought to keep headaches
away--at least devilish headaches like this one.
"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
stepfather."
"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. Heartbreaking. 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 tomorrow. 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."
"Oh, Lord," said Vernon to himself.
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 flaçon 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.
Her eyes, discreet as eyes could be, yet could not help noting the
dainty details of her bed-chamber,--the sparkle of the toilet
table's furniture, the fresh, bright chintz of curtains and
chair-cover, the cool glimmer of the tiled walls of the bath-room that a
two-inch open door gave a little glimpse of.
When the doctor came, Vernon, by that excellent Irishman's
direction, went out 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 très
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 £1700 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 Café
du Dôme, came home to him rather forlornly.
Next morning he called with more roses for Lady St. Craye, pinky ones
this time.
"Miladi was toujours très
souffrante. It would be ten days, at the least, before Miladi
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 £1700 a year!--
The surprise-visit with which the Reverend Cecil had always intended to
charm his stepdaughter 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, c/o 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."
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 of the intrigue,
the lady who had given the 100 francs, and had promised another 50 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 ingénue 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 hearfelt 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. Madame 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. A priest, and has a daughter, and he lodges at the Haute Loire!
The English are--a thousand pardons, but I forget at each instant that
Madame is not a French. He lodges there among the
étudiantes. Madame the aunt occupies
the ancient apartment of Mademoiselle Desmond."
"An instant," said Lady St. Craye; "let me
reflect."
The concierge ostentatiously went back to her flowers.
"You have not given them Miss Desmond's
address?"
"Madame forgets," said the concierge, wounded virtue
bristling in her voice, "that I was, for the moment, devoted to the
interest of Monsieur. No. I am a loyal soul. I have told
nothing. Only to despatch the letter. Behold all."
"I will give myself the pleasure of offering you a little present
next week," said Lady St. Craye; "it is only that you should
say nothing, nothing, and send no more letters. And--the
address?"
"Madame knows it--by what she says."
"Yes, but I want to know if the address you have is the same that
I have. Hotel Chevillon, Grez sur Loing. Is it so?"
"It is exact. I thank you, Madame. Madame would do well to return
chez elle and to repose herself a little.
Madame is all pale."
"Is the aunt in Miss Desmond's rooms now?"
"Yes; she writes letters without end, and telegrams; and the
priest-father he runs with them like a sad old black dog that has not the
habit of towns."
"I shall go up and see her," said Lady St. Craye,
"and I shall most likely give her the address. But do not give
yourself anxiety. You will gain more by me than by any of the others. They
are not rich. Me, I am, God be praised."
She went out and along the courtyard. At the foot of the wide, shallow
stairs she paused and leaned on the dusty banisters.
"I feel as weak as any rat," she said, "but I must go
through with it--I must."
She climbed the stairs, and stood outside the brown door. The nails that
had held the little card "Miss E. Desmond" still stuck there,
but only four corners of the card remained.
The door was not shut--it always shut unwillingly. She tapped.
"Come in," said a clear, pleasant voice. And she went
in.
The room was not as she had seen it on the two occasions when it had
been the battle ground where she and Betty fought for a man. Plaid
travelling-rugs covered the divans. A gold-faced watch in a leather
bracelet ticked on the table among scattered stationery. A lady in a short,
sensible dress rose from the table, and the room was scented with the smell
of Hungarian cigarettes.
"I beg your pardon. I thought it was my brother-in-law. Did you
call to see Miss Desmond? She is away for a short time."
"Yes," said Lady St. Craye. "I know. I wanted to see
you. The concierge told me--"
"Oh, these concièrges! They tell everything! It's what
they were invented for, I believe. And you wanted--" She
stopped, looked hard at the young woman and went on. "What you want
is a good stiff brandy and soda. Here, where's the head of the
pin?--I always think it such a pity bonnets went out. One could undo
strings. That's it. Now, put your feet up. That's right,
I'll be back in half a minute."
Lady St. Craye found herself lying at full length
on Betty's divan, her feet covered with a Tussore driving-rug, her
violet-wreathed hat on a table at some distance.
She closed her eyes. It was just as well. She could get back a little
strength--she could try to arrange coherently what she meant to say.
No: it was not unfair to the girl. She ought to be taken care of. And,
besides, there was no such thing as unfair. All was fair in-- Well,
she was fighting for her life. All was fair when one was fighting for
one's life--that was what she meant. Meantime, to lie quite still
and draw long, even breaths--telling oneself at each breath: "I
am quite well, I am quite strong," seemed best.
There was a sound, a dull plop, the hiss and fizzle of a spurting
syphon. Then
"Drink this: that's right. I've got you."
A strong arm round her shoulders--something buzzing and spitting in
a glass under her nose.
"Drink it up, there's a good child."
She drank. A long breath.
"Now the rest." She was obedient.
"Now shut your eyes and don't bother. When you're better
we'll talk."
Silence--save for the fierce scratching of a pen.
"I'm better," announced Lady St. Craye as the pen
paused for the folding of the third letter.
The short-skirted woman came and sat on the edge of the divan, very
upright.
"Well then. You oughtn't to be out, you poor little
thing."
The words brought the tears to the eyes of one weak with the
self-pitying weakness of convalescence.
"I wanted--"
"Are you a friend of Betty's?"
"Yes--no--I don't know."
"A hated rival perhaps," said the elder woman cheerfully.
"You didn't come to do her a good turn, anyhow, did
you?"
"I--I don't know," again this was all that would
come.
"I do, though. Well, which of us is to begin? You see, child, the
difficulty is that we neither of us know how much the other knows, and we
don't want to give ourselves away. It's so awkward to talk when
it's like that."
"I think I know more than you do. I--you needn't think I
want to hurt her. I should have liked her awfully, if it hadn't
been--"
"If it hadn't been for the man. Yes, I see. Who was
he?"
Lady St. Craye felt absolutely defenceless. Besides, what did it
matter?"
"Mr. Vernon," she said.
"Ah, now we're getting to the horses. My dear child,
don't look so guilty. You're not the first; you won't be the
last--especially with eyes the colour his are. And so you hate
Betty?"
"No, I don't. I should like to tell you all about
it--all the truth."
"You can't," said Miss Desmond, "no woman can.
But I'll give you credit for trying to, if you'll go straight
ahead. But first of all--how long is it since you saw her?"
"Nearly a month."
"Well; she's disappeared. Her father and I got here last
night. She's gone away and left no address. She was living with a
Madame Gautier and--"
"Madame Gautier died last October," said Lady St. Craye,
"the twenty-fifth."
"I had a letter from her brother--it got me in Bombay. But I
couldn't believe it. And who has Betty been living with?"
"Look here," said Lady St. Craye. "I came to give the
whole thing away, and hand her over to you. I know where she is. But now I
don't want to. Her father's a brute, I know."
"Not he," said Miss Desmond; "he's only a man and
a very, very silly one. I'll pledge you my word he'll never
approach her, whatever she's done. It's not anything too awful
for words, I'm certain. Come, tell me."
Lady St. Craye told Betty's secret at some length.
"Did she tell you this?"
"No."
"He did then?"
"Yes."
"Oh, men are darlings! The souls of honour--unsullied blades!
My word! Do you mind if I smoke?"
She lighted a cigarette.
"I suppose I'm very dishonourable too,"
said Lady St. Craye.
"You? Oh no; you're only a woman. And then?"
"Well, at last I asked her to go away, and she went."
"Well, that was decent of her, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"And now you're going to tell me where she is and I'm to
take her home and keep her out of his way. Is that it?"
"I don't know," said Lady St. Craye very truly,
"why I came to you at all. Because it's all no good. He's
written and proposed for her to her father,--and if she
cares--"
"Well, if she cares--and he cares-- Do you really mean
that you'd care to marry a man who's in love with
another woman?"
"I'd marry him if he was in love with fifty other
women."
"In that case," said Miss Desmond, "I should say you
were the very wife for him."
"She isn't," said Lady St. Craye sitting
up. "I feel like a silly school-girl talking to you like this. I
think I'll go now. I'm not really so silly as I seem.
I've been ill--influenza, you know--and I got so frightfully
tired. And I don't think I'm so strong as I used to be. I've
always thought I was strong enough to play any part I wanted to play.
But--you've been very kind. I'll go." She lay
back.
"Don't be silly," said Miss Desmond briskly. "You
are a school-girl compared with me, you know. I suppose
you've been trying to play the rôle of the designing heroine,--to part
true lovers and so on, and then you found you couldn't."
"They're not true lovers," said Lady St.
Craye eagerly; "that's just it. She'd never make him happy.
She's too young and too innocent. And when she found out what a man
like him is like, she'd break her heart. And he told me he'd be
happier with me than he ever had been with her."
"Was that true, or--?"
"Oh, yes, it was true enough, though he said it. You've met
him--he told me. But you don't know him."
"I know his kind though," said Miss Desmond. "And so
you love him very much indeed, and you don't care for anything
else,--and you think you understand him,--and you could forgive
him everything? I wonder how much you've had to forgive
already?"
"Not that," said Lady St. Craye, flushing
scarlet; "he's not that sort of man."
"Then, you may get him yet, if you care so very much. That is, if
Betty doesn't care."
"She doesn't. She doesn't. She thinks she does, but she
doesn't. If only he hadn't written to her--"
"And--you needn't be afraid of me..."
"I'm not."
"He's never been your lover? You know what I mean."
"No," said Lady St. Craye.--"I wish to God he
had! I should have had something to hold him by,
then. If he'd been my lover, as you call it--I-- It's
not my fault that he wasn't. If he'd held out his hand I'd
have gone to him, and thanked God for the chance. Now, say I'm afraid
of you!"
"My dear," said Miss Desmond, "I'm not afraid of
you either. I was a fool myself once, about a man with eyes his colour. You
can't tell me anything that I don't know. Does he know how much
you care?"
"Yes."
"Ah, that's a pity--still-- Well, is there anything
else you want to tell me?"
"I don't want to tell anyone anything. Only--when she
said she'd go away, I advised her where to go--and I told her of
a quiet place--and Mr. Temple's there. He's the other man
who admires her."
"I see. How Machiavelian of you!" Miss Desmond touched the
younger woman's hand with brusque gentleness, "and?"
"And I didn't quite tell her the truth about Mr. Vernon and
me," said Lady St. Craye, wallowing in the abject joys of the
confessional. "And I am a beast and not fit to live. But," she
added with the true penitent's instinct of self-defence, "I
know it's only--oh, I don't know what--not
love, with her. And it's my life."
"Yes. And what about him?"
"It's not love with him. At least it is,--but she'd
bore him. He said he was like St. John Rivers about Rosamund Oliver.
It's really his waking-up time. He's been playing the game just
for counters all the while. Now he's learning to play with
gold."
"And it'll stay learnt. I see," said Miss Desmond.
"Look here, I like you. I know we shouldn't have said all we
have if you weren't ill, and I weren't
anxious. But I'm with you in one thing. I don't want him to marry
Betty. She wouldn't understand an artist in emotion. Is this Temple
straight?"
"As a yardstick."
"And as wooden? Well, that's better. I'm on your side.
But--we've been talking without the veils on--tell me one
thing. Are you sure you could get him if Betty were out of the
way?"
"He kissed me once--since he's loved her," said
Lady St. Craye, "and then I knew I could. He liked me better than he
liked her--in all the other ways--before. I'm a shameless
idiot; it's really only because I'm so feeble."
She rose and stood before the glass, putting on her hat.
"I do respect a woman who has the courage to speak the truth to
another woman," said Miss Desmond. "I hope you'll get
him--though it's not a very kind wish."
Lady St. Craye let herself go completely,--in a phrase whose memory
stung and rankled for many a long day.
"Ah," she said, "even if he gets tired of me, I shall
have got his children. You don't know what it is to want a child.
Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Miss Desmond. "No--of course I
don't."
"He was mine," she told herself; "he meant to
be-- And I have given him up to her. It hurts--yes--but I
did the right thing."
She thought she hoped that he would soon forget her. And almost all that
was Betty tried quite sincerely, snatching at every help, to forget
him.
Sometimes the Betty that Betty did not want to be would, quite
deliberately and of set purpose, take out the nest of hungry memories, look
at them, play with them, and hand over her heart for them to feed on. But
always when she had done this she felt, afterwards, a little sorry, a
little ashamed. It was too like the diary at Long Barton.
She had been a fool--all this winter and spring what a fool she had
been! She had always been an idiot about Vernon--yes--she must
have known it really,--and she had pretended it was friendship, and it
wasn't, and it all served her right, thoroughly right. And it was very
hard indeed.
Betty's was not the nature that sits down to weep over spilt milk.
She would not hug sorrow, a real sorrow, however tenderly she might nurse
imaginary ones. Like all healthy young animals, she resented unhappiness,
resented it deeply and bitterly, and fought against it fiercely, claiming
as allies her youth, the summer glory, the river, the forest, and Mr.
Robert Temple.
Consciously or unconsciously one must make some concessions to every
situation or every situation would be impossible. Temple was
here--interested, pleased to see her, glad to talk to her. But he was
not at all inclined to be in love with her: that had been only a silly
fancy of hers--in Paris. He had made up his mind by now who it was
that he cared for. And it wasn't Betty. Probably she hadn't even
been one of the two he came to Grez to think about. He was only a good
friend--and she wanted a good friend. If he were not just a good
friend the situation would be impossible. And Betty chose that the
situation should be possible. For it was pleasant. It was a
shield and a shelter from all the thoughts that she wanted to hide
from.
"If she thinks I'm going to break my heart about
him, she's mistaken. And so's He. I must be
miserable for a bit," said Betty bravely, "but I'll not be
miserable forever, so he needn't think it. Of course, I shall never
care for anyone ever again,--unless he were to love me for years and
years before he ever said a word, and then I might say I would
try.--And try. But fall in love?--never again! Oh,
good gracious, there he is,--and I've not begun to
get ready."
Temple was whistling Deux Amants very softly in the
courtyard below. She put her head out of the window.
"I shan't be two minutes," she said, "You might
get the basket from Madame; and my sketching things are on the terrace all
ready strapped up."
The hoofs of the smart grey pony slipped and rattled on the
cobble-stones of the hotel entry.
"Au revoir: amuse yourselves well,
my children." Madame Chevillon stood, one hand on fat hip, the other
shading old eyes that they might watch the progress of the cart up the
blinding whiteness of the village street.
"To the forest, and yet again to the forest, and to the forest
always," she said, turning into the darkened billiard room.
"Marie, beware thou of the forest. The good God created it express
for the lovers,--but it is permitted to the devil to promenade himself
there also."
"Those two there," said Marie--"it is very
certain that they are in love?"
"How otherwise?" said Madame. "The good God made us
women that the men should be in love with us,--and afterwards, to take
care of the children. There is no other use that a man has for a woman.
Friendship? The art?-- Bah, when a man wants
those he demands them of a man. Of a woman he demands but love, and one
gives it to him--good God of mercy! one gives it to him without
question, as one gives the breast to a child."
"Me, I should not give the heart to the first come," said
Marie, with a toss of brown head.
"And I did not say it. But to the man, your man that
God made express for you, to him you give all, all, refusing
nothing--all as you would not refuse the milk to the child, your
child-to-you."
"Must it then that one speaks never to anyone till one can say,
'I am at the orders of Monsieur?' Is it that one shall give
nothing till one cannot prevent oneself from giving all?"
"It is thus that men would wish that it should be, for the girls
that they will espouse."
"But these two,--they talk of art and many friends; I hear
the names--English and abominable--of their friends, and the
names of those who paint. Messieurs Meissonier, Corot, Watteau, what do I
know--me? And in the forest they sit always and do the painting. My
cousin watched them from behind a rock for an hour. Then he slept, so much
he bored himself to contemplate them that worked--always worked, and
did not amuse themselves at all. And when he awoke, hours had passed
themselves, and still they made the painting furiously and without ceasing.
I believe not that they are lovers."
"It is true," said Madame, leaning back against the billiard
table and polishing the red ball on her apron, "that the English are,
on all the sides, beings of the most extraordinary. When I speak of men and
women, I have the intention to indicate to you the man and woman healthy
and natural. Can I know, me, whether perhaps the good God has made them of
a paste inferior? It may be that the English blood warms itself only on the
steps of the altar, and that love is to them unknown until it has been
named by the priest and sprinkled with holy water. But
come, my child, to the work. The vegetables will not prepare themselves
while we stand like to pensionnaires and
babble of l'amour."
The two who had departed for the forest drove on through the swimming,
spinning heat in silence.
It was not till they reached the little old well by Marlotte that Betty
spoke.
"Don't let's work to-day, Mr. Temple," she said;
"my hands are so hot I could never hold a brush. And your sketch is
really finished, you know."
"What would you like to do?" asked Temple:
"river?"
"Oh, no,--not now that we've started for the forest. Its
feelings would be hurt if we turned back. I am sure it loves us to love it,
although it is so big.--Like God, you know."
"Yes: I'm sure it does. Do you really think God
cares?"
"Of course," said Betty, "because everything would be
so silly if He didn't, you know. I believe He likes us to love Him,
and what's more, I believe He likes us to love all the pretty things
He's made--trees and rivers and sunsets and seas."
"And each other," said Temple, and flushed to the ears:
"human beings, I mean, of course," he added hastily.
"Of course," said Betty, unconscious of the flush;
"but religion tells you that--it doesn't tell you about the
little things.--It does say about herbs of the field and the floods
clapping their hands and all that,--but that's only His works
praising Him, not us loving all His works. I think He's most awfully
pleased when we love some little nice tiny thing that He never thought
we'd notice."
"Did your father teach you to think like this?"
"Oh, dear no," said Betty; "he doesn't like the
little pretty things. He likes Hell-fire,--and the God who's so
cross He can't forgive us anything without taking it out of someone
else-- The Atonement, they call it, don't they?"
"Yes," said Temple, "it's odd. Look at those
yellow roses all over that hideous villa."
"My stepfather would only see the villa. Well, must we work
to-day?"
"What would you like to do?"
"I should like to go to those big rocks--the
Rochers des Demoiselles, aren't
they?--and tie up the pony, and climb up, and sit in a black shadow
and look out over the green tops of the trees. You see things when
you're idle that you never see when you're working, even if
you're trying to paint those very things."
So, by and by, the gray pony was unharnessed and tied to a tree in a
cool, grassy place where he also could be happy, and the two others took
the winding stony path that leads between pine-trees and great rocks round
and back and up and down and up again--under little arches, where the
big rocks lean towards each other till their foreheads touch,--past
little caves filled with dead, drifted leaves that rustle a little as one
goes by, rustles to the stir of someone thin and long and quick and deadly,
who lives there,--past fat, round cushions of heather from which now
and then someone darts of his own slender tongue from his own wicked mouth.
And everywhere between the grey of rocks, when green lizards bask on yellow
lichen, glimpses of the vast sea of tree-tops, moveless by the still air,
yet trembling to the sight in the blue haze of heat.
A turn in the smooth, worn way brought them to a platform overhanging
the precipice that fell a sheer thirty feet to the tops of the trees on the
slope below. White silvery sand carpeted the ledge, and on the sand the
shadow of a leaning rock fell blue.
"Here," said Betty, and sank down. Her sketchbook scooped
the sand with its cover. "Oh, I am hot!" She threw
off her hat.
"You don't look it," said Temple, and pulled the big
bottle of weak claret and water from the luncheon basket.
"Drink!" he said, offering the little glass when he had
filled it.
Betty drank in little sips.
"How extraordinarily nice it is to drink when you're
thirsty," she said, "and how heavenly this shadow
is."
"The shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land," said
Temple.
"Isn't it odd," said Betty, "that it's only
since I've been in Paris and not going to church or hearing family
prayers or anything that I've begun to see how beautiful the Bible
really is?"
"Nothing's really beautiful unless you collar it for
yourself: it's the same with everything. Perhaps there's some way
of collaring the Atonement and all that business."
"There must be," said Betty, "and that's what
people mean by being born again and getting converted, I suppose. But
it's all very difficult, especially when you live with people who
won't let you talk about things, and just say 'things are so,
and you must believe them because I say it.' As if that was any
reason! How violet the forest is over there."
A long silence. Temple filled and lighted a pipe. From a slope of dry
grass a little below them came the dusty rattle of grasshoppers'
talk.
"It is very good here," said Betty. "Oh, how glad I am
I came away from Paris. Everything looks different here-- I mean the
things that look as if they mattered there don't matter
here,--and the things that didn't matter there--oh, here,
they do."
"Yes," said Temple, making little mounds of sand with the
edge of his hand as he lay, "I never expected
to have such days in this world as I've had here with you. We've
grown to be very good friends here, haven't we?"
"We were very good friends in Paris," said Betty,
remembering the letter that had announced his departure.
"But it wasn't the same," he persisted. "When did
we talk in Paris as we've talked here?"
"I talked to you even in Paris more than I've ever talked to
anyone else, all the same," said Betty.
"Thank you," he said; "that's the nicest thing
you've ever said to me."
"It wasn't meant to be nice," said Betty;
"it's true. Don't you know there are some people you never
can talk to without wondering what they'll think of you, and whether
you hadn't better have said something else? It's nothing to do
with whether you like them or not," she went on, thinking of talks
with Vernon, many talks, and in all of them she had been definitely and
consciously on guard. "You may like people quite frightfully, and yet
you can't talk to them."
"Yes," he said, "but you couldn't talk to a
person you disliked, could you? Real talk, I mean?"
"Of course not," said Betty. "Do you know I'm
dreadfully hungry."
It was after lunch that Temple said:
"When are you going home, Miss Desmond?" She looked up, for
his use of her name was rare.
"I don't know: some time," she answered absently. But
the question ran through her mind like a needle drawing after it the thread
on which were strung all the little longings for Long Barton, for the
familiar fields and flowers, that had gathered there since she first saw
the silver may and the golden broom at Bourron station. That was nearly a
month ago. What a month it had been--the gleaming river, the neat
intimate simplicity of the little culture, white
roads, and roses and rocks, and more than all--trees, and trees and
trees again.
And with all this--Temple. He lodged at Montigny, true. And she at
Grez. But each day brought to her door the best companion in the world. He
had never even asked how she came to be at Grez. After that first,
"Where's your party?" he had guarded his lips. It had
seemed so natural, and so extremely fortunate that he should be here. If
she had been all alone she would have allowed herself to think too much of
Vernon--of what might have been.
"I am going to England next week!" he said. Betty was
shocked to perceive that this news hurt her. Well, why shouldn't it
hurt her? She wasn't absolutely in sensible to friendship, she
supposed. And sensibility to friendship was nothing to be ashamed of. On
the contrary,
"I shall miss you most awfully," said she with the air of
one flaunting a flag.
"I wish you'd go home," he said. "Haven't
you had enough of your experiment, or whatever it was, yet?"
"I thought you'd given up interfering," she said
crossly. At least she meant to speak crossly.
"I thought I could say anything to you now without your--your
not understanding."
"So you can." She was suddenly not cross again.
"Ah, no I can't," he said. "I want to say things
to you that I can't say here. Won't you go home? Won't you
let me come to see you there? Say I may. You will let me?"
If she said Yes--she refused to pursue that train of thought
another inch. If she said No--then a sudden end, and forever an end,
to this good companionship. "I wish I had never, never seen
Him," she told herself.
Then she found that she was speaking.
"The reason I was all alone in Paris," she was saying. The
reason took a long time to expound.--
The shadow withdrew itself and they had to shift the camp just when it came
to the part about Betty's first meeting with Temple himself.
"And so," she said, "I've done what I meant to
do,--and I'm a hateful liar,--and you'll never want to
speak to me again."
She rooted up a fern and tore it into little ribbons.
"Why have you told me all this?" he said slowly.
"I don't know." said she.
"It is because you care, a little bit about--about my
thinking well of you?"
"I can't care about that, or I shouldn't have told you,
should I? Let's get back home. The pony's lost by this time, I
expect."
"Is it because you don't want to have any--any secrets
between us?"
"Not in the least," said Betty, chin in the air. "I
shouldn't dream of telling you my secrets; or anyone else
of course, I mean," she added politely.
He sighed. "Well," he said, "I wish you'd go home
to England."
"Why don't you say you're disappointed in me, and that
you despise me, and that you don't care about being friends any more,
with a girl who's told lies and taken her aunt's money and done
everything wrong you can think of? Let's go back. I don't want to
stay here any more, with you being silently contemptuous as hard as ever
you can. Why don't you say something?"
"I don't want to say the only thing I want to say. I
don't want to say it here. Won't you go home and let me come and
tell you at Long Barton?"
"You do think me horrid. Why don't you say so?"
"No. I don't."
"Then it's because you don't care what I am or what I
do. I thought a man's friendship didn't mean much!" She
crushed the fern into a rough ball and threw it over the edge of the
rock.
"Oh, hang it all," said Temple. "Look here, Miss
Desmond. I came away from Paris because I didn't know what was the
matter with me. I didn't know who it was I really cared about. And
before I'd been here one single day I knew. And then I met you. And I
haven't said a word, because you're here alone,--and besides
I wanted you to get used to talking to me and all that. And now you say I
don't care. No, confound it all, it's too much. I wanted to ask
you to marry me. And I'd have waited any length of time till there was
a chance for me." He had almost turned his back on her, and leaning
his chin on his elbow was looking out over the tree-tops far below.
"And now you've gone and rushed me into asking you
now, when I know there isn't the least chance for
me,--and anyhow I ought to have held my tongue. And now it's all
no good, and it's your fault. Why did you say I didn't
care?"
"You knew it was coming," Betty told herself, "when he
asked if he might come to Long Barton to see you. You knew it. You might
have stopped it. And you didn't. And now what are you going to
do?"
What she did was to lean back to reach another fern--to pluck and
smooth its fronds.
"Are you very angry?" asked Temple in gloom.
"No," said Betty; "how could I be? But I wish you
hadn't. It's spoiled everything."
"Do you think I don't know all that?"
"I wish I could," said Betty very sincerely, "but
I'm afraid it's too late."
"Of course," he said bitterly. "I knew
that."
"He doesn't care about me," said Betty:
"he's engaged to someone else,"
"And you care very much?" He kept his face turned away.
"I don't know," said Betty; "sometimes I think
I'm getting not to care at all."
"Then--look here: may I ask you again some time, and
we'll go on just like we have been?"
"No," said Betty. "I'm going back to England at
the end of the week. Besides, you aren't quite sure it's me you
care for.--At least you weren't when you came away from Paris.
How can you be sure you're sure now?"
He turned and looked at her.
"I beg your pardon," she said instantly. "I think I
didn't understand. Let's go back now, shall we?"
"For Heaven's sake," he said, "don't let
this break up everything. Don't avoid me in the little time
that's left. I won't talk about it any more--I won't
worry you--"
"Don't be silly," she said, and she smiled at him a
little sadly; "you talk as though I didn't know you."
"Don't let's go straight back to Grez," said Betty
when the pony was harnessed, "let's go on to Fontainebleau and
have dinner and drive back by moonlight. Don't you think it would be
fun? We've never done that."
"Thank you," he said. "You are
good."
His eyes met hers in the green shadow, and she was satisfied because he
had understood that this was her
reply to his appeal to her "not to avoid him in the little time there
was left."
Both were gay as they drove along the golden roads, gayer than ever they
had been. The nearness of a volcano has never been a bar to gaiety. Dinner
was a joyous feast, and when it was over, and the other guests had strolled
out, Temple sang all the songs Betty liked best. Betty played for him. It
was all very pleasant, and both pretended, quite beautifully, that they
were the best of friends, and that it had never, never been a question of
anything else. The pretence lasted through all the moonlight of the home
drive, lasted indeed till the pony was trotting along the straight avenue
that leads down into Grez. And even then it was not Temple who broke it. It
was Betty, and she laid her hand on his arm.
"Look here," she said. "I've been thinking about
it ever since you said it. And I'm not going to let it spoil anything.
Only I don't want you to think I don't understand. And I'm
most awfully proud that you should--I am really. And I'd rather
be liked by you than by anyone--"
"Almost," said Temple a little bitterly.
"I don't feel sure about that part of it--really. One
feels and thinks such a lot of different things--and they all
contradict everything else, till one doesn't know what anything means,
or what it is one really--I can't explain. But I don't want
you to think your having talked about it makes any difference. At least I
don't mean that at all. What I mean is that of course I like you ever
so much better now I know that you like me, and--oh, I don't want
to-- I don't want you to think it's all no good, because
really and truly I don't know."
All this time she had kept her hand on his wrist.
Now he laid his other hand over it.
"Dear," he said, "that's all I want, and more
than I hoped for now. I won't say another word about
it--ever, if you'd rather not,--only if ever you feel that
it is me, and not that other chap, then you'll tell me, won't
you?"
"I'll tell you now," said Betty, "that I wish
with all my heart it was you, and not the other."
When he had said good-night at the deserted door of the courtyard Betty
slipped through the trees to her pavilion. The garden seemed more crowded
with trees than it had ever been. It was almost as though new trees from
the forest had stolen in while she was at Fontainebleau, and joined the
ranks of those that stood sentinel round the pavilion. There was a lamp in
the garden room--as usual. Its light poured out and lay like a yellow
carpet on the terrace, and lent to the foliage beyond that indescribable
air of festivity, of light-heartedness that green leaves can always borrow
from artificial light.
"I'll just see if there are any letters," she told
herself. "There always might be: from Aunt Julia or Miss Voscoe
or--someone."
She went along the little passage that led to the stairs. The door that
opened from it into the garden room was narrowly ajar. A slice of light
through the chink stood across the passage.
Oh!
There was someone in the room. Someone was speaking. She knew the voice.
"She must be in soon," it said. It was her Aunt Julia's
voice. She stopped dead. And there was silence in the room.
Oh! to be caught like this! In a trap. And just when she had decided to
go home! She would not be caught. She would steal up to her room, get her
money, leave enough on the table to pay her bill, and go. She
could walk to Marlotte--and go off by train in the morning to
Brittany--anywhere. She would not be dragged back like a prisoner to
be all the rest of her life with a hateful old man who detested her. Aunt
Julia thought she was very clever. Well, she would just find out that she
wasn't. Who was she
talking to? Not Madame, for she spoke in English. To some one from Paris?
Who could have betrayed her? Only one person knew. Lady St. Craye. Well,
Lady St. Craye should not betray her for nothing. She would not go to
Brittany: she would go back to Paris. That woman should be taught what it
costs to play the traitor.
All this in the quite small pause before her aunt's voice spoke
again.
"Unless she's got wind of our coming and flown," it
said.
"Our" coming? Who was the other?
Betty was eavesdropping then? How dishonourable! Well, it is. And she
was.
"I hope to God she's safe," said another voice.
Oh--it was her stepfather. He had come--then he must
know everything. She moved, quite without meaning to move; her
knee touched the door and it creaked. Very, very faintly, but it creaked.
Would they hear? Had they heard? No--the aunt's voice again.
"The whole thing's inexplicable to me! I don't
understand it. You let Betty go to Paris."
"By your advice."
"By my advice, but also because you wanted her to be
happy."
"Yes--Heaven knows I wanted her to be happy." The old
man's voice was sadder than Betty had ever heard it.
"So we found Madame Gautier for her--and when Madame Gautier
dies, she doesn't write to you, or wire to you, to come and find her a
new chaperone. Why?"
"I can't imagine why?"
"Don't you think it may have been because she was afraid of
you, thought you'd simply make her come back to Long
Barton?"
"It would surely have been impossible for her to imagine that I
should lessen the time which I had
promised her on account of an unfortunate accident. She knows the depth of
my affection for her. No, no--depend upon it there must have been some
other reason for the deceit. I almost fear to conjecture what the reason
may have been. Do you think it possible that she has been seeing that man
again?"
There was a sound as of a chair impatiently pushed back. Betty fled
noiselessly to the stairs. No footstep followed the movement of the chair.
She crept back.
"--when you do see her?" her aunt was asking, "I
suppose you mean to heap reproaches on her, and take her home in
disgrace?"
"I hope I shall have strength given me to do my duty," said
the Reverend Cecil.
"Have you considered what your duty is?"
"It must be my duty to reprove, to shew her her deceit in its full
enormity,--to try to lead her as a penitent to the Throne of
Grace."
"You'll enjoy that, won't you? It'll gratify your
sense of power. You'll stand in the place of God to the child, and
you'll be glad to see her humbled and ashamed."
"Because a thing is painful to me it is none the less my
duty."
"Nor any the more," snapped Miss Desmond, "nor any the
more. That's what you won't see. She knows you don't care
about her, and that's why she kept away from you as long as she
could."
"She can't know it. It isn't true."
"She thinks it is."
"Do you think so? Do you imagine I
don't care for her? Have you been poisoning her mind
and--"
"Oh, don't let's talk about poison." said Miss
Desmond. "If she's lost altogether it won't matter to you.
You'll have done your duty."
"If she's lost I--if she were lost I should not
care to be saved. I am aware that the thought is sinful. But I fear that it
is so."
"Of course," said Miss Desmond. "She's not your
child--why should you care? You never had a child."
"What have I done to you that you should try to torture me like
this?" It was her stepfather's voice, but Betty hardly knew it.
"For pity's sake, woman, be quiet. Let me bear what I have to
bear without your chatter."
"I'm sorry," said Miss Desmond very gently.
"Forgive me if I didn't understand. And you do really care about
her a little?"
"Care about her a little! She's the only living thing I do
care for--or ever have cared for except one. Oh, it is like a woman to
cast it up at me as a reproach that I have no child! Why have I no child?
Because the woman whom Almighty God made for my child's mother was
taken from me--in her youth--before she was mine. Her name was
Lizzie. And my Lizzie, my little Lizzie that's lied and deceived us,
she is my child--the one we should have had.
She's my heart's blood. Do you think I want to scold her; do you
think I want to humble her? Do you not perceive how my own heart will be
torn? But it is my duty. I will not spare the rod. And she will understand
as you never could. Oh, my little Lizzie!--Oh, pray God she is safe.
If it please God to restore her safely to me, I will not yield to the
wicked promptings of my own selfish affection. I will show her her sin, and
we will pray for forgiveness together. Yes, I will not shrink, even if it
break my heart--I will tell her--"
"I should tell her," said Miss Desmond, "just what
you've told me."
The old man was walking up and down the room. Betty could hear every
movement.
"It's been the struggle of my life not to spoil her--not
to let my love for her lead me to neglect her
eternal welfare. Not to lessen her modesty by my praises. Not to condone
the sin because of my love for the sinner. My love has not been
selfish.--It has been the struggle of my life not to let my affection
be a snare to her."
"Then I must say," said Miss Desmond, "that you might
have been better employed."
"Thank God I have done my duty. You don't understand. But my
Lizzie will understand."
"Yes, she will understand," cried Betty, bursting open the
door and standing between the two with cheeks that flamed. "I do
understand, Father dear! Auntie, I don't understand you!
You're cruel,--and it's not like you. Will you mind going
away, please?"
The cruel aunt smiled, and moved towards the door. As she passed Betty
she whispered, "I thought you were never going to come
from behind that door. I couldn't have kept it up much
longer."
Then she went out and closed the door firmly.
Betty went straight to her stepfather and put her arms round his
neck.
"You do forgive me--you will forgive me, won't
you?" she said breathlessly.
He put an arm awkwardly round her.
"There's nothing you could do that I couldn't
forgive," he said in a choked voice. "But it is my duty not
to--"
She interrupted him by drawing back to look at him, but she kept his arm
where it was, by her hand on his.
"Father," she said, "I've heard everything
you've been saying. It's no use scolding me, because you
can't possibly say anything that I haven't said to myself a
thousand times. Sit down and let me tell you everything, every single
thing. I did mean to come home this week, and tell you; I
truly did. I wish I'd gone home before."
"Oh, Lizzie," said the old man, "how could you? How
could you?"
"I didn't understand. I didn't know. I was a blind
idiot. Oh, Father, you'll see how different I'll be now! Oh, if
one of us had died--and I'd never known?"
"Known what, my child? Oh, thank God I have you safe.--Known
what?"
"Why, that you--how fond you are of me."
"You didn't know that?"
"I--I wasn't always sure," Betty hastened to say.
A miracle had happened. She could read now in his eyes the appeal that she
had always misread before, "but now I shall always be
sure--always. And I'm going to be such a good daughter to
you--you'll see--if you'll only forgive me. And you
will forgive me. Oh, you don't know how I trust you now!"
"Didn't you always?"
"Not enough--not nearly enough. But I do now. Let me tell
you--Don't let me ever be afraid of you--oh, don't let
me!"
She had pushed him gently into a chair, and was half kneeling on the
floor beside him.
"Have you ever been afraid of me?"
"Oh, I don't know; a little perhaps sometimes. You don't
know how silly I am. But not now. You are glad to see
me?"
"Lizzie," he said, "God knows how glad I am.
But--it's my duty to ask you at once whether you've done
anything wrong?"
"Everything wrong you can think of!" she answered
enthusiastically, "only nothing really wicked, of course. I'll
tell you all about it. And oh, do remember you can't think worse of me
than I do. Oh, it's glorious not to be afraid!"
"Of me?" his tone pleaded again.
"No, no--of anything! Of being found out. I'm glad
you've come for me. I'm glad I've got to tell you
everything. I did mean to go home next week, but I'm glad it's
like this. Because now I know how much you care, and I might never have
found that
out if I hadn't listened at the door like a mean, disgraceful cat. I
ought to be miserable because I've done wrong,--but I'm not.
I can't be. I'm really most frightfully happy."
"Thank God you can say that," he said, timidly stroking her
hair with the hand that she was not holding. "Now I'm not afraid
of anything you may have to tell me, my child--my dear
child."
To four persons the next day was one of the oddest in their lives.
Arriving early to take Betty to finish her sketch, the stricken Temple
was greeted on the doorstep by a manly looking lady in gold-rimmed
spectacles, short skirts, serviceable brown boots and a mushroom hat.
"I know who you are," said she; "you're Mr.
Temple. I'm Betty Desmond's aunt. Would you like to take me on
the river? Betty is busy this morning making the aquaintance of her
stepfather. She's taken him out in the little cart."
"I see," said Temple. "I shall be delighted to take
you on the river."
"Nice young man. You don't ask questions. An excellent
trait."
"An acquired characteristic, I assure you," said Temple,
remembering his first meeting with Betty.
"Then you won't be able to transmit it to your children.
That's a pity. However, since you don't ask, I'll tell you.
The old man has persistently concealed his real nature from Betty.
You'd think it was impossible, living in the same house all these
years, but the clerical nature is deceitful above all things and
desperately misleading. Last night she found him out. She's as charmed
with the discovery as a girl child with a doll that opens and shuts its
eyes,--or a young man with the nonentity he calls his ideal. Come
along. She'll spend the morning
playing with her new toy. Cheer up. You shall see her at
déjeûner."
"I do not need cheering," said the young man. "And I
don't want you to tell me things you'd rather not. On the
contrary--"
"You want me not to tell you the things I'd rather tell
you?"
"No: I should like to tell you all about--"
"All about yourself. My dear young man, there is nothing I enjoy
more; the passion for confidences is my only vice. It was really to indulge
that that I asked you to come on the river with me."
"I thought," said Temple as they reached the landing stage,
"that perhaps you had asked me to console me for not seeing your
niece this morning."
"Thank you kindly." Miss Desmond stepped lightly into the
boat. "I rather like compliments, especially when you're solidly
built--like myself. Oh, yes, I'll steer; pull hard, bow,
she's got no way on her yet, and the stream's strong just here
under the bridge. I gather that you've been proposing to my
niece."
"I didn't mean to," said Temple, pulling a racing
stroke in his agitation.
"Gently, gently! The diamond sculls aren't at stake. She led
you on, you mean?"
He rested on his oars a moment and laughed.
"What is there about you that makes me feel that I've known
you all my life?"
"Possibly it's my enormous age. Or it may be that I nursed
you when you were a baby. I have nursed one or two in my time, though I
mayn't look it. So Betty entrapped you into a proposal?"
"Are you trying to make me angry? It's a dangerous river. Can
you swim."
"Like any porpoise. But, of course, I misunderstand people if they
won't explain themselves. You needn't tremble like that.
I'll be gentle with you."
"If I tremble it's with pleasure," said Temple.
"Come, moderate your transports, and unfold your tale. My ears are
red, I know, but they are small, well-shaped and sympathetic."
"Well then," said Temple; and the tale began. By the time it
was ended the boat was at a standstill on the little backwater below the
pretties of the sluices.
There was a silence.
"Well?" said Temple.
"Well," said Miss Desmond, dipping her hand in the
water--"what a stream this is, to be sure!--Well, your
means are satisfactory, and you seem to me to have behaved quite
beautifully. I don't think I ever heard of such profoundly correct
conduct."
"If I've made myself out a prig," said Temple,
"I'm sorry. I could tell you lots of things."
"Please spare me! Why are people always so frightfully ashamed of
having behaved like decent human beings? I esteem you immensely."
"I'd rather you liked me."
"Well, so I do. But I like lots of people I don't esteem. If
I'd married anyone it would probably have been someone like that. But
for Betty it's different. I shouldn't have needed to esteem my
own husband. But I must esteem hers."
"I'll try not to deserve your esteem more than I'm
obliged," said Temple, "but your liking--what can I do to
deserve that--?"
"Go on as you've begun, my dear young man, and you'll be
Aunt Julia's favourite nephew. No. don't blush. It's an
acknowledgement of a tender speech that I always dispense with."
"Advise me," said he, red to the ears and hands. "She
doesn't care for me, at present. What can I do?"
"What most of us have to do--when we want anything worth
wanting. Wait. We're going home the day after to-morrow. If you turn
up at Long Barton about the middle of September--you might
come down for the harvest festival; it's the yearly excitement.
That's what I should do."
"Must I wait so long as that?" he asked.
"Why?"
"Let me whisper in your ear," said Miss Desmond, loud above
the chatter of the weir. "Long Barton is very dull! Now let's go
back."
"I don't want her to accept me because she's
bored."
"No more do I. But one sees the proportions of things better when
one's dull. And--yes. I esteem you; I like you. You are
ingenuous, and innocuous.--No, really that was a yielding to the devil
of alliteration. I mean you are a real good sort. The other man has the
harmlessness of the serpent. As for me, I have the wisdom of the dove. You
profit by it, and come to Long Barton in September."
"It seems like a plot to catch her," said Temple.
"A friend of yours told me you were straight. And you are. I
thought perhaps she flattered you."
"Who?--No, I'm not to ask questions."
"Lady St. Craye."
"Do you know," he said, slowly pulling downstream,
"there's one thing I didn't tell you. I came away from
Paris because I wasn't quite sure that I wasn't in love with
her."
"Not you," said Miss Desmond. "She'd never have
suited you. And now she'll throw herself away on the man with the
green eyes and the past. I mean pasts. And it's a pity. She's a
woman after my own heart."
"She's extraordinarily charming," said Temple with a
very small sigh.
"Yes extraordinarily, as you say. And so you came away from Paris!
I begin to think you have a little of the wisdom of the dove
too. Pull now, or we shall be late for breakfast."
He pulled.
"Now that," said the Reverend Cecil that
evening to his sister-in-law, "that is the kind of youth I should
wish to see my Lizzie select for her help-mate."
"Well," said Miss Desmond, "if you keep that wish
strictly to yourself, I should think it had a better chance than most
wishes of being gratified."
The days went by,--days occupied in these fruitless gold-edged
enquiries, in the other rose-accompanied enquiries after the health of Lady
St. Craye, and in watching for the postman who should bring the answer to
his formal proposal of marriage.
To his deep surprise and increasing disquietude no answer came. Was the
Reverend Cecil dead, or merely inabordable? Had Betty despised his offer
too deeply to answer it? The lore learned in, as it seemed, another life
assured him that a woman never despises an offer too much to say
"No" to it.
Watch for the postman. Look at Betty's portrait. Call on the
concierge. (He had been used to dislike the employment of dirty
instruments.) Call on the florist. (There was a decency in things, even if
all one's being were contemptibly parched for the sight of another
woman.) Call and enquire for the poor Jasmine Lady. Studio; think of Betty;
look at her portrait; pretend to work. Meals at fairly
correct intervals. Call on the concierge. Look at the portrait again.
Such were the recurrent incidents of Vernon's life. Between the
incidents came a padding of futile endeavour. Work, he had always asserted,
was the cure for inconvenient emotions. Only now the cure was not
available.
And the postman brought nothing interesting, except a letter, post-mark
Denver, Col., a letter of tender remonstrance from the Brittany girl, Miss
Van Tromp.
Then came the morning when the concierge, demurely assuring him of her
devotion to his interests, offered to post a letter. No bribe--and he
was shameless in his offers--could wring more than that from her. And
even the posting of the letter cost a sum that the woman chuckled over
through all the days during which the letter lay in her locked drawer,
under Lady St. Craye's bank note and the divers tokens of "ce
monsieur's" interest in the intrigue--whatever the intrigue
might be--its details were not what interested.
Vernon went home, pulled the table into the middle of the bare studio
and wrote. This letter wrote itself without revision.
"Why did you go away?" it said. "Where are you? where can I see you? What has happened? Have your people found out?"
"I want to have no lies or deceit any more between us. I must tell you the truth. I have never been engaged to anyone. But you would not let me see you without that, so I let you think it. Will you forgive me? Can you? For lying to you? If you can't I shall know that nothing matters at all. But if you can forgive me--then I shall let myself hope for impossible things.
"Dear, whether it's all to end here or not, let me write this once without thinking of anything but you and me. I have written to your father asking his permission to ask you to marry me. To you I want to say that I love you, love you, love you--and I have never loved anyone else. That's part of my punishment for--I don't know what exactly. Playing with fire, I suppose. Dear--can you love me? Ever since I met you at Long Barton" (Pause: what about Miss Van Tromp? Nothing, nothing, nothing!) "I've not thought of anything but you. I want you for my very own. There is no one like you, my love, my princess.
You'll write to me. Even if you don't care a little bit you'll write. Dear, I hardly dare hope that you care, but I daren't fear that you don't. I shall count the minutes till I get your answer. I feel like a schoolboy.
"Dear, it's my very heart I'm sending you here. If I didn't love you, love you, love you I could write a better letter, tell you better how I love you. Write now. You will write?
"Did someone tell you something or write you something that made you go away? It's not true, whatever it is. Nothing's true but that I want you. As I've never wanted anything. Let me see you. Let me tell you. I'll explain everything--if anyone has been telling lies.
"If you don't care enough to write I don't care enough to go on living. Oh, my dear Dear, all the words and phrases have been used up before. There's nothing new to say, I know. But what's in my heart for you--that's new, that's all that matters--that and what your heart might hold for me. Does it? Tell me. If I can't have your love, I can't bear my life. And I won't.--You'll think this letter isn't like me. It isn't, I know. But I can't help it. I am a new man: and you have made me. Dear,--can't you love the man you've made? Write, write, write.
Yours--as I never thought I could be anyone's,
EUSTACE VERNON."
And that was the letter that lay in the locked drawer for a week. And
through that week the watching for the postman went on--went on. And
the enquiries, mechanically.
And no answer came at all, to either of his letters. Had the concierge
deceived him? Had she really no address to which to send the letter?
"Are you sure that you posted the letter?"
"Altogether, monsieur," said the concierge, fingering the
key of the drawer that held it.
And the hot ferment of Paris life seethed and fretted all around him. If
Betty were at Long Barton--oh, the dewy grey grass in the
warren--and the long shadows on the grass!
Three days more went by.
"You have posted the letter?"
"But yes, Monsieur. Be tranquil. Without doubt it was a letter
that should exact time for the response."
It was on the fifth day that he met Mimi Chantal, the prettiest model on
the left bank.
"Is monsieur by chance painting the great picture which shall put
him between Velasquez and Caran d'Ache on the last day?"
"I am painting nothing," said Vernon. "And why is the
prettiest model in Paris not at work?"
"I was in lateness but a little quarter of an hour, Monsieur. And
behold me--chucked."
"It wasn't for the first time, then?"
"A nothing one or two days last week. Monsieur had better begin to
paint that chef
d'oeuvre--to-day even. It isn't often that
the prettiest model in Paris is free to sit at a moment's
notice."
"But," said Vernon, "I haven't an idea for a
picture even. It is too hot for ideas. I'm going into the country at
the end of the month to do landscape."
"To paint a picture it is then absolutely necessary to have an
idea?"
"An idea--or a commission."
"There is always something that lacks! With me it is the technique
that is to seek; with you the ideas! Otherwise we should both be masters.
For you have technique both hands full; I have ideas, me."
"Tell me some of them," said Vernon, strolling along by her
side. It was not his habit to stroll along beside models. But to-day he was
fretted and chafed by long waiting for that answer to his letter. Anything
seemed better than the empty studio where one waited.
"Here is one! I have the idea that artists have no eyes. How they
pose me ever as l'Été or
La Source or Leda, or that clumsy Suzanne
with her eternal old men. As if they knew better than I do how a woman
holds herself up or sits herself down, or nurses a duck, or defends herself
from old gentlemen."
"Your idea is probably correct. I understand you to propose that I
should paint a picture called The Blind Artist?"
"Don't do the imbecile. I propose for subject Me--not
posed; me as I am in the Rest. Is it not that it is then that I am the most
pretty, the most chic?"
"It certainly is," said he; "and you propose that I
should paint you as you appear in the Rest?"
"Perfectly," she interrupted. "Tender rose
colour--it goes to a marvel with my Cléo de Mérode hair.
And if you want a contrast--or one of those little tricks to make
people say what does it mean--?"
"I don't, thank you," he laughed.
"Paint that white drowned girl's face that hangs behind your
stove. Paint her and me looking at each other. She has the air of
felicitating herself that she is dead. Me, I will have the air of
felicitating myself that I am alive. You will see, Monsieur. Essay but
one sole little sketch, and you will think of nothing else. One might
entitle it 'The Rivals.'"
"Or 'The Rest,'" said Vernon, a little
interested. "Oh, well, I'm not doing anything.--I'll
make a sketch and give it you as a present. Come in an hour."
"Auntie, wake up, wake up!" Betty, white-faced and
determined, was pulling back the curtain with fingers that rigidly would
not tremble.
"Shut the door and spare my blushes," said her aunt.
"What's up now?" She looked at the watch on the bed-table.
"Why its only just six."
"I can't help it," said Betty; "you've had
all the night to sleep in. I haven't. I want you to get up and dress
and come to Paris with me by the early train."
"Sit down," said the aunt. "No, not on the bed. I hate
that. In this chair. Now remember that we all parted last night in the best
of spirits, and that as far as I know nothing has happened
since."
"Oh, no--nothing of course," said Betty.
"Don't be ironical," said Miss Desmond; "at six
in the morning it's positively immoral. Tell me all--let me hear
the sad sweet story of your life."
"Very well," said Betty, "if you're only going to
gibe I'll go alone. Or I'll get Mr. Temple to take me."
"To see the other man? That will be nice."
"Who said anything about--?"
"You did, the moment you came in. Come child; sit down and tell
me. I'm not unsympathetic. I'm only very, very sleepy. And I
did think everything was arranged. I was dreaming of orange
blossoms and the voice that breathed. And the most beautiful trousseau
marked E.T. And silver fish-knives, and salt-cellars in a case lined with
purple velvet."
"Go on," said Betty, "if it amuses you."
"No, no. I'm sorry. Forgive the ravings of delirium. Go on.
Poor little Betty. Don't worry. Tell its own aunt."
"It's not a joke," said Betty.
"So I more and more perceive, now that I'm really waking
up," said the aunt, sitting up and throwing back her thick blond
hair. "Come, I'll get up now. Give me my stockings--and
tell me--"
"They were under my big hat," said Betty, doing as she was
told; "the one I wore the night you came. And I'd thrown it down
on the chest of drawers--and they were underneath."
"My stockings?"
"No--my letters. Two of them. And one of them's from
Him. It's a week old. And he says he won't live if I don't
love him."
"They always do," said Miss Desmond, pouring water into the
basin. "Well?"
"And he wants me to marry him, and he was never engaged to Lady
St. Craye; and that other woman at Montmartre, that that woman told me
about,--Lady St. Craye, I mean. It was a lie. I've had a letter
from her."
"I can't understand a word you say," said Miss Desmond
through splashings.
"My friend Paula, that I told you about. She never went home to
her father. Mr. Vernon set her up in a restaurant,--and he's
saved her. Oh, how good and noble he is! And Paula's the woman I was
so jealous of, that Lady St. Craye told me about--Here are your
shoes--and he says he won't live without me; and I'm going
straight off to him, and I wouldn't go without telling you. It's
no use telling father yet, but I did think you'd
understand."
"Hand me that green silk petticoat. Thank you. What
did you think I'd understand?"
"Why, that I--that it's him I love."
"You do, do you?"
"Yes, always, always! And I must go to him. But
I won't go and leave Bobbie to think I'm going to marry him some
day. I must tell him first, and then I'm going straight to Paris to
find Him, and give him the answer to his letter."
"You must do as you like. It's your life, not mine. But
it's a pity," said her aunt, "and I should send a telegram
to prepare him."
"The office won't be open. There's a train at seven
forty-five. Oh, do hurry. I've ordered the pony. We'll call and
tell Mr. Temple."
It was not the 7.45 that was caught, however, but the 10.15, because
Temple was, naturally, in bed. When he had been roused, and had dressed and
come out to them, in the gay terrace overhanging the river where the little
tables are and the flowers in pots and the vine-covered trellis, Miss
Desmond turned and positively fled before the gay radiance of his face.
"This is dear and sweet of you," he said to Betty.
"What lovely scheme have you come to break to me? But what's the
matter? You're not ill?"
"Oh, don't," said Betty; "don't look like
that! I couldn't go without telling you. It's all over,
Bobbie."
She had never before called him by that name, and now she did not know
what she had called him.
"What's all over?" he asked mechanically.
"Everything," she said; "your thinking I was going to,
perhaps, some time, and all that. Because now I never shall. O, Bobbie, I
do hate hurting you, and I do like you so frightfully much. But he's
written to me: the letter's been delayed. And it's all a mistake.
And I'm going to him now. Oh,--I hope you'll be able to
forgive me."
"It's not your fault," he said. "Wait a minute.
It's so sudden. Yes, I see. Don't you worry about me, dearest. I
shall be all right. May I know who it is?"
"It's Mr. Vernon," said Betty.
"Oh, my God!" Temple's hand clenched. "No, no,
no, no!"
"I am so very, very sorry," said Betty in the tone one uses
who has trodden on another's foot in an omnibus.
He had sat down at one of the little tables, and was looking out over
the shining river with eyes half shut.
"But it's not true," he said. "It can't be
true. He's going to marry Lady St. Craye."
"That's all a mistake," said Betty eagerly; "he
only said that because--I haven't time to tell you all about it
now. But it was all a mistake."
"Betty, dear," he said, using in his turn, for the first
time, her name, "don't do it. Don't marry him. You
don't know."
"I thought you were his friend."
"So I am," said Temple. "I like him right enough. But
what's all the friendship in the world compared with your happiness?
Don't marry him--dear. Don't."
"I shall marry whom I choose," said Betty, chin in air,
"and it won't be you." ("I don't care if I am
vulgar and brutal," she told herself, "it serves him
right.")
"It's not for me, dear. It's not for me--it's
for you. I'll go right away and never see you again. Marry some
straight chap--anyone--but not Vernon."
"I am going to marry Mr. Vernon," said Betty with lofty
calm, "and I am very sorry for any annoyance I may have caused you.
Of course, I see now that I could never--I mean," she added
angrily, "I hate people who are false to their friends. Yes--and
now I've missed my train."
She had.
"Forgive me," said Temple when the fact was substantiated,
and the grey pony put up, "after all, I was your friend before
I--before you--before all this that
can't come to anything. Let me give you both some coffee and see you
to the station. And Betty, don't you go and be sorry about me
afterwards. Because, really, it's not your fault and," he
laughed and was silent a moment, "and I'd rather have loved you
and have it end like this, dear, than never have known you. I truly
would."
The journey to Paris was interminable. Betty had decided not to think of
Temple, yet that happy morning face of his would come between her and the
things she wanted to think of. To have hurt him like that. It hurt her
horribly. Much more than she would have believed possible. And she had been
cruel. "Of course it's natural that he should say things about
Him. He must hate anyone that-- He nearly cried when he said that
about rather have loved me than not-- Yes--" A lump came in
Betty's own throat, and her eyes pricked.
"Come, don't cry," said her aunt briskly;
"you've made your choice, and you're going to your lover.
Don't be like Lot's wife. You can't eat your cake and have
it too."
Vernon's concierge assured these ladies that Monsieur was at
home.
"He makes the painting in this moment," she said.
"Mount then, my ladies."
They mounted.
Betty remembered her last--her first--visit to his studio:
when Paula had disappeared and she had gone to him for help. She remembered
how the velvet had come off her dress, and how awful her hair had been when
she had looked in the glass afterwards. And Lady St. Craye--how
beautifully dressed, how smiling and superior.
"Hateful cat!" said Betty on the stairs.
"Eh?" said her aunt.
Now there would be no one in the studio but Vernon. He would be reading
over her letters; nothing in them--only little notes about whether she
would or wouldn't be free on Tuesday--whether she could or
couldn't dine with him on Wednesday. But he would be reading them
over--perhaps--
The key was in the door.
"Do you mind waiting on the stairs, auntie dear," said Betty
in a voice of honey; "just the first minute.--I would like to
have it for us two--alone. You don't mind?"
"Do as you like," said the aunt rather sadly. "I
should knock if I were you."
Betty did not knock. She opened the studio door softly. She would like
to see him before he saw her.
She had her wish.
A big canvas stood on the easel, a stool in front of it. The table was
in the middle of the room, a yellow embroidered cloth on it. There was food
on the cloth--little breads, pretty cakes and strawberries and
cherries, and wine in tall, beautiful, topaz-coloured glasses.
Vernon sat in his big chair. Betty could see his profile. He sat there,
laughing. On the further arm of the chair sat, laughing also, a very pretty
young woman. Her black hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a
jewelled pin. The sunlight played in the jewels. She wore a pink silk
garment that shewed white ankles and pink feet; the garment was slipping
down on one shoulder like a modern ball-dress. She held cherries in her
hand.
"V'la cheri!" she said,
and put one of the twin cherries in her mouth; then she leant over him
laughing, and Vernon reached his head forward to take in his mouth the
second cherry that dangled below her chin.
"Alors ne bouge pas," he said,
and caught her arms in his two hands. His mouth was on the cherry, and his
eyes in the black eyes of the girl in pink.
Betty banged the door.
"Come away!" she said to Miss Desmond. And
she, who had seen, too, the pink picture, came away, holdng Betty's
arm tight.
"I wonder," she said as they reached the bottom of the
staircase, "I wonder he didn't come after us
to--to--try to explain."
"I locked the door," said Betty. "Don't speak to
me, please."
They were in the train before either broke silence. Betty's face
was white and she looked old--thirty almost her aunt thought.
It was Miss Desmond who spoke.
"Betty," she said, "I know how you feel. But
you're very young. I think I ought to say that that
girl--"
"Don't," said Betty.
"I mean what we saw doesn't necessarily mean that he
doesn't love you."
"Perhaps not," said Betty, fierce as a white flame.
"Anyhow, it means that I don't love him."
Miss Desmond's tact, worn by three days of anxiety and agitation,
broke suddenly, and she said what she regretted for some months:
"Oh, you don't love him now? Well, the other man
will console you."
"I hate you," said Betty, "and I hate him; and I hope
I shall never see a man again as long as I live."
He looked with extreme content at the picture on the easel.
He had worked quickly and well. The thing was coming splendidly. Mimi
had been right. She could pose herself as no artist had ever posed her. He
would make a picture of the thing after all.
The next morning brought him a letter. That he, who had hated letters,
should have come to care for a letter more than for anything that could
have come to him except a girl! He kissed the letter before he opened it.
"At last," he said. "Oh, this minute was worth waiting
for!" He opened the envelope with a smile mingled of triumph and
something better than triumph--and read:
"Dear Mr. Vernon:
I hope that nothing in my manner has led you to expect any other answer than the one I must give. That answer is, of course, no. Although thanking you sincerely for your flattering offer, I am obliged to say that I have never thought of you except as a friend. I was extremely surprised by your letter. I hope I have not been in any way to blame. With every wish for your happiness, and regrets that this should have happened,
I am yours faithfully, ELIZABETH DESMOND."
"Damn," he said, "oh, damn!"
That night he gave Mimi a supper, the memory of which is still the most
priceless of her recollections. And next day he went to Spain. A bunch of
roses bigger and redder than any roses he had ever sent her came to Lady
St. Craye with his card--P.D.A. in the corner.
She, too, shrugged her shoulders, bit her lip and--arranged the
roses in water. Presently she tried to take up her life at the point where
she had laid it down when, last October, Vernon had taken it into his
hands. Succeeding as one does succeed in such enterprises.
It was May again when Vernon found himself once more sitting at one of
the little tables in front of the Café de la Paix.
"Sit here long enough," he said, "and you see every
one you have ever known or ever wanted to know. Last year it was the
Jasmine Lady--and that girl--on the same one and wonderful day.
This year it's--by Jove."
He rose and moved among the closely set chairs and tables to the
pavement. The sightless stare of light-blanched spectacles met his eyes. A
gentlemanly-looking lady in short skirts stood awaiting him.
"How are you?" she said. "Yes, I know you didn't
see me, but I thought you'd like to."
"I do like to, indeed. May I walk with you--or--"
he glanced back at the table where his Vermouth stood untasted.
"The impertinence of it! Frightfully improper to sit outside
cafés, isn't it?--for women, I mean--and this
café in particular. Yes, I'll join you with the greatest
pleasure. Coffee please."
"It's ages since I saw you," he said amiably,
"not since--"
"Since I called on you at your hotel. How frightened you
were?"
"Not for long," he answered, looking at her with
the eyes she loved, the eyes of someone who was not Vernon--"Ah,
me, a lot of water has run--"
"Not under the bridges," she pleaded: "say off the
umbrellas."
"Since," he pursued, "we had that good talk. You
remember I wanted to call on you in London and you wouldn't let me.
You might let me now."
"I will," she said. "97 Curzon Street. Your eyes
haven't changed colour a bit. Nor your nature, I suppose. Yet
something about you's changed. Got over Betty yet?"
"Quite, thanks," he said tranquilly. "But last time we
met, you remember we agreed that I had no intentions."
"Wrong lead," she said, smiling frankly at him; "and
besides I hold all the trumps. Ace, King, Queen; and Ace, Knave and Queen
of another suit."
"Expound, I implore."
"Aces equal general, definite and decisive information. King and
Queen of hearts equal Betty and the other man."
"There was another man then?"
"There always is, isn't there? Knave--your honoured
self. Queen--where is the Queen, by the way,--the beautiful Queen
with the sad eyes, quite blind to everything but the abominable
Knave?"
"Meaning me?"
"It's not an unbecoming cap," she said, stirring her
coffee, "and you wear it with an air. Where's the Queen of your
suit?"
"I confess I'm at fault."
"The odd trick is mine. And the honours. You may as well throw
down your hand. Yes. I play whist. Not bridge. Where is your
Queen--Lady St. what is it?"
"I haven't seen her," he said steadily, "since
last June. I left Paris on a sudden impulse, and I hadn't time to say
good-bye to her."
"Didn't you even leave a card? That's not like your
eyes."
"I think I sent a tub of hydrangeas or something,
pour dire adieu."
"That was definite. Remember the date?"
"No," he said, remembering perfectly.
"Not the eleventh, was it? That was the day when you would get
Betty's letter of rejection."
"It may have been the eleventh.--In fact it
was."
"Ah, that's better. And the tenth--who let you out of
your studio on the tenth? I've often wondered."
"I've often wondered who locked me in. It
couldn't have been you, of course?"
"As you say. But I was there."
"It wasn't?"
"But it was. I thought you'd guess that. She got your letter
and came up ready to fall into your arms,--opened the door softly like
any heroine of fiction--I told her to knock--but no: beheld the
pink silk picture and fled the happy shore forever."
"Damn," he said. "Oh, damn. I do beg your pardon, but
really--"
"Don't waste those really convincing damns on ancient
history. I told her it didn't mean that you didn't love
her."
"That was clear-sighted of you."
"It was also quite futile. She said it means she
didn't love you at any rate. I suppose she wrote and told
you so."
A long pause. Then--
"As you say," said Vernon, "it's ancient history.
But you said something about another man."
"Oh, yes--your friend Temple.--Say 'damn'
again if it's the slightest comfort to you--I've heard worse
words."
"When?" asked Vernon, and he sipped his Vermouth; "not
straight away?"
"Bless me, no! Months and months. That pink-
silk composition gave her the distaste for all men for quite a long time.
We took her home, her father and me: by the way, he and she are tremendous
chums now."
"Well?"
"You don't want me to tell you the sweet secret tale of their
betrothal? He just came down--at Christmas it was. She was decorating
the church. Her father had a transient gleam of commonsense and sent him
down to her. 'Is it you?' 'Is it you?'--All
was over! They returned to that Rectory an engaged couple. They were made
for each other.--Same tastes, same sentiments. They love the same
things--gardens scenery, the simple life, lofty ideals, cathedrals and
Walt Whitman."
"And when are they to be married?"
"They are married. 'What are we waiting for, you and
I?' No, I don't know which of them said it. They were married at
Easter. Sunday-school children throwing cowslips--Quite idyllic. All
the old ladies from the Mother's Mutual Twaddle Club came and shed fat
tears. They presented a tea-set. Maroon with blue roses. Most 'igh
class and select."
"Easter?" said Vernon, refusing interest to the maroon and
blue tea-cups. "She must indeed have been extravagantly fond of
me."
"Not she! She wanted to be in love. We all do, you know. And you
were the first. But she'd never have suited you. I've never known
but two women who would."
"Two?" he said. "Which?"
"Myself for one, saving your presence." She laughed and
finished her coffee. "If I'd happened to meet you when I was
young--and not bad-looking. It's only my age that keeps you from
falling in love with me. The other one's the Queen of your suit, poor
lady,--that you sent the haystack of sunflowers to.
Well--Good-bye. Come and see me when you're in town--97
Curzon Street; don't forget."
"I shan't forget," he said; "and if I thought you
would condescend to look at me, it isn't what you call your age that
would keep me from falling in love with you."
"Heaven defend me!" she cried. "Au
revoir."
When Vernon had finished his Vermouth he strolled along to the street
where last year Lady St. Craye had had a flat.
Yes,--Madame retained still the appartement.
Justement it was to-day that Madame received. But the last of the
friends of Madame had departed. Monsieur would find Madame alone.
Monsieur found Madame alone, and reading. She laid the book face
downwards on the table and held out the hand he had always
loved--slender, and loosely made, that one felt one could so easily
crush in one's own.
"How time flies," she said. "It seems only yesterday
that you were here. How sweet you were to me when I had influenza. How are
you? You look very tired."
"I am tired," he said. "I have been in Spain. And in
Italy. And in Algiers."
"Very fatiguing countries, I understand. And what is your best
news?"
He stood on the hearth-rug, looking down at her.
"Betty Desmond's married," he said.
"Yes," she answered, "to that nice boy Temple, too. I
saw it in the paper. Dreadful isn't it? Here to-day and gone
to-morrow!"
"I'll tell you why she married him," said Vernon,
letting himself down into a chair, "if you'd like me to. At
least I'll tell you why she didn't marry me. But perhaps the
subject has ceased to interest you?"
"Not at all," she answered with extreme politeness.
So he told her.
"Yes, I suppose it would be like that. It must have annoyed you
very much. It's left marks on your face, Eustace. You look tired to
death."
"That sort of thing does leave marks."
"That girl taught you something, Eustace; something that's
stuck."
"It is not impossible, I suppose," he said and then very
carelessly, as one leading the talk to lighter things, he added, "I
suppose you wouldn't care to marry me?"
"Candidly," she answered, calling all her powers of
deception to her aid, "candidly, I don't think I
should."
"I knew it," said Vernon, smiling; "my heart told me
so."
"She," said Lady St. Craye, "was frightened away from
her life's happiness, as they call it, by seeing you rather near to a
pink silk model. I suppose you think I shouldn't mind
such things?"
"You forget," said Vernon, "such things never happen
after one is married."
"No," she said, "of course they don't. I forgot
that."
"You might as well marry me," he said, and the look of youth
had come back suddenly, as its way was, to his face.
"I might very much better not."
They looked at each other steadily. She saw in his eyes a little of what
it was that Betty had taught him.
She never knew what he saw in hers, for all in a moment he was kneeling
beside her; his arm was across the back of her chair, his head was on her
shoulder, and his face was laid against her neck, as the face of a child,
tired with a long play-day, is laid against the neck of its mother.
"Ah, be nice to me," he said. "I am very
tired."
Her arm went round his shoulders as the mother's arm goes round the
shoulders of the child.