The Incomplete Amorist

"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?"