The Incomplete Amorist by E. Nesbit (page 5)

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.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TRUTH.

There was a silence.

“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 the 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 of 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 Cafe 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 desechee_, 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 step-father.–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 alway 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 gray 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 forehead 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 outside 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 accept 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 to-morrow 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:

Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparnasse.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE TRUTH WITH A VENGEANCE.

In those three weeks whose meetings with Vernon had been so lacking in charm there had been other meetings for Betty, and in these charm had not been to seek. But it was the charm of restful, pleasant companionship illuminated by a growing certainty that Mr. Temple admired her very much, that he liked her very much, that he did not think her untidy and countrified and ill-dressed, and all the things she had felt herself to be that night when Lady St. Craye and her furs had rustled up the staircase at Thirion’s. And she had dined with Mr. Temple and lunched with Mr. Temple, and there had been an afternoon at St. Cloud, and a day at Versailles. Miss Voscoe and some of the other students had been in the party, but not of it as far as Betty was concerned. She had talked to Temple all the time.

“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.

So that 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 some one 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.”

Betty, in bed, was re-reading this when Vernon’s knock came at her door. She spoke to him through the door with the letter in her hand. And her real thought when she asked him if he had come to break bad news was that something had happened to 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 hear 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 Chevillon. I’ll write it down for you.–Old Madame Chevillon’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.”

CHAPTER XX.

WAKING-UP TIME.

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.

This was the letter that Vernon read standing in the shadow of the arch by the concierge’s window. The concierge had hailed him as he hurried through to climb the wide shallow stairs and to keep his appointment with Betty when she should leave the atelier.

“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–Voila! 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 Beauchesne an troisieme. 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 employes. 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:

“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 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!”

He was beginning to be a connoisseur in the fine 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 mean 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 fool I am.”

“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 ways 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 draught. 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 was haunted without cease by 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 should one learn From marshlights how the great fires burn? Ah, no–I never loved before!”

“Prophetic, I suppose,” he said, “though God knows I never meant it. Any fool of a prophet must hit the bull’s eye at least once in a life. But there was a curious unanimity of prophecy about this. The aunt warned me; that Conway woman warned me; the Jasmine Lady warned me. And now it’s happened,” he told himself. “And I who thought I knew all about everything!”

Miss Conway’s name, moving through his thoughts, left the trail of a new hope.

Next day he breakfasted at Montmartre.

The neatest little Cremerie; 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 Grez 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 grey-hound’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 clientele 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.

Book 4.–The Other Man

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FLIGHT.

The full sunlight streamed into the room when Betty, her packing done, drew back the curtain. She looked out on the glazed roof of the laundry, the lead roof of the office, the blank wall of the new grocery establishment in the Rue de Rennes. Only a little blue sky shewed at the end of the lane, between roofs, by which the sun came in. Not a tree, not an inch of grass, in sight; only, in her room, half a dozen roses that Temple had left for her, and the white marguerite plant–tall, sturdy, a little tree almost–that Vernon had sent in from the florist’s next door but two. Everything was packed. She would say good-bye to Madame Bianchi; and she would go, and leave no address, as she had promised last night.

“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–honor, 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 pay 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’occuperai 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 50 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 egayer 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 about 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. 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 have breathed plaintively of hopes defeated and a broken heart. Instead it shewed the candid face of a real homesickness, and it spoke with convincing 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.

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.

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 show 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 dejeuner on the little stone terrace with rickety rustic railings. Below lay the garden, thick with trees.

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 a blue 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, Pavilion du Jardin, Grez.

“I shall be very very unhappy to-morrow,” said Betty that night, 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.

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.”

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.”

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LUNATIC.

The night kept its promise. Betty, slipping from the sleeping house into the quiet darkness, seemed to slip into a poppy-fringed pool of oblivion. The night laid fresh, cold hands on her tired eyes, and shut out many things. She paused for a minute on the bridge to listen to the restful restless whisper of the water against the rough stone.

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.

“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.

She had never been frightened of the dark–of the outdoor 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–footsteps came on behind her. And in front the long straight ribbon of the road unwound, gray now in the shadow. There seemed to be no road turning to right or left. She could not go on forever. She would have to turn, sometime–if not now, yet sometime–in this black darkness, and then she would meet this thing that trod so softly, so stealthily behind her.

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 gray ribbon of road that had been behind her. She had heard. Now she would see.

She did see–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, misshapen, 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 step of the tennis shoes 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, 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.

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.

“It’s like the Medway,” said Betty, stooping to the fat cowslips at her feet, “only prettier; and I never saw any cowslips here–You dears!”

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.

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’etait 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,” said Betty 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?”

CHAPTER XXIII.

TEMPERATURES.

“It isn’t as though she were the sort of girl who can’t take care of herself,” said Lady St. Craye to the Inward Monitor who was buzzing its indiscreet common-places in her ear. “I’ve really done her a good turn by sending her to Grez. No–it’s not in the least compromising for a girl to stay at the same hotel. And besides, there are lots of amusing people there, I expect. She’ll have a delightful time, and get to know that Temple boy really well. I’m sure he’d repay investigation. If I weren’t a besotted fool I could have pursued those researches myself. But it’s not what’s worth having that one wants; it’s–it’s what one