The Incomplete Amorist

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 step-father 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—and 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 girl-friend—"

"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 it 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."

"Will that do?" she laughed as she held out the letter.

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!"

Book 3.—The Other Woman

CHAPTER XV.

ON MOUNT PARNASSUS

At Long Barton the Reverend Cecil had strayed into Betty's room, now no longer boudoir and bedchamber, but just a room, swept, dusted, tidy, with the horrible tidiness of a room that is not used. There were squares of bright yellow on the dull drab of the wall-paper, marking the old hanging places of the photographs and pictures that Betty had taken to Paris. He opened the cupboard door: one or two faded skirts, a flattened garden hat and a pair of Betty's old shoes. He shut the door again quickly, as though he had seen Betty's ghost.

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. The 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 step-father 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 step-father, 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 gray 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 step-father'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 step-father 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 school-boys from each other. Most girls had a special friend among the boys. Betty thought at first that these must be betrothed lovers. Miss Voscoe, the American, 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 married 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 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?"