The Incomplete Amorist

CHAPTER IX.
THE OPPORTUNITY

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

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

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

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

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

The Hotel 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 diner. Would Monsieur wait?

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

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

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

He came to the glass door presently.

"Did Monsieur breakfast?"

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

Yes, decidedly, Monsieur breakfasted.

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

The sudden summoning sound of a bell roused him from a dreamy wonder as to whether Betty and her aunt had already left. If not, should he meet them at 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 step-father a secret of yours that you'd never told me, of course I felt hurt—anyone would have."

"I see," said he, beginning to.

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

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

The waiter handed pale meat.

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

The waiter withdrew, and Betty said:

"How do you mean—he didn't lie?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes—oh, yes!"

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

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

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

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

But the salon window was darkened by a passing shape.

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

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

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

Five minutes later Betty saw two figures go along the pavement on the other side of the decorous embroidered muslin blinds which, in the unlikely event of any happening in the Cite de la Retraite, ensure its not being distinctly seen by those who sojourn at the Hotel 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 step-father). After the last time I saw you (I was very unhappy because I wanted to go to Paris) I was very anxious to go to Paris because of what you had said. My aunt came down and was very kind. (She told me) She persuaded my step-father to let me go. I think (we) he was glad to get rid of me, for (somehow) he never did care about me, any more than I did about him. There are a great many (other) things that he does not understand. Of course I was wild with joy and thought of nothing but (what you) work, and my aunt brought me over. But I did not see anything of Paris then. We went straight on to Joinville where Madame Gautier has a villa, and (we) my aunt left me there, and went to Norway. It was all very strange at first, but I liked it. Madame Gautier is very strict; it was like being at school. Sometimes I almost (forgot) fancied that I was at school again. There were three other girls besides me, and we had great fun. The Professor was very nice and encouraging. He is very old. So is everybody who comes to the house—(but) it (was) is jolly, because when there are four of you everything is so interesting. We used to have picnics in the woods, and take it in turn to ride in the donkey-cart. And there were musical evenings with the Pastor and the Avocat and their wives. It was very amusing sometimes. Madame Gautier had let her Paris flat, so we stayed at Joinville till a week ago, and then my Aunt walked in one day and took me to Paris for a week. I did enjoy that. And now aunt has gone, and Madame Gautier is taking the inventory and getting the keys, and presently she will come for me, I shall go with her to the Rue Vaugirard, Number 62. It will be very nice seeing the other girls again and telling them all about (everything) my week in Paris. I am so sorry that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again, but I am glad we met—because I do not like to think my friends do not trust me.

Yours sincerely,

Betty Desmond.

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

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

She burned this letter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The concierge was less aloof.

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

But Betty was not minded to stay the night alone at the Hótel 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 tires. The street lamps were alight, and the shops not yet closed. Almost every house seemed to be a shop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betty felt sick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she would never have lived in Paris at all!

She walked down the street.

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

She hailed a passing carriage, drove to the Hotel 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.

CHAPTER X.
SEEING LIFE

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

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

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

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

He studied the fire thoughtfully.

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

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

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

And she had said:

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

But this had not happened.

And he had said:

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

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

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

And he had said:

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

"She must have eyes like yours though."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 step-father, 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 in the evening. So it seemed to her that there was plenty of time.

A blonde 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 blonde; 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?"