The Incomplete Amorist

"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 her's 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 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 regret!"

"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 cigarette.

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 step-father, 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."

CHAPTER VII.

THE ESCAPE

"It's all turned out exactly like what I said it was going to, exactly to a T," said Mrs. Symes, wrapping her wet arms in her apron and leaning them on the fence; "if it wasn't that it's Tuesday and me behindhand as it is, I'd tell you all about it."

"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 dinner."

"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.

"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 step-father 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 step-father. 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—"

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