The Incomplete Amorist

"So you're—But this isn't proper! Here am I dining with a lady and I don't even know her name!"

"I know—I wouldn't put it to the note. Didn't that single initial arouse your suspicions? Her name? Her title if you please! I married Harry St. Craye. You remember how we used to laugh at him together."

"That little—I beg your pardon, Lady St. Craye."

"Yes," she said, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum: of the dead nothing but the bones. If he had lived he would certainly have beaten me. Here's to our new friendship!"

"Our new friendship!" he repeated, raising his glass and looking in her eyes. Lady St. Craye looked very beautiful, and Betty was not there. In fact, just now there was no Betty.

He went back to his room humming a song of Yvette Guilbert's. There might have been no flowering May, no buttercup meadows in all the world, for any thought of memory that he had of them. And Betty was a thousand miles away.

That was at night. In the morning Betty was at the Hotel Bête, and the Hotel Bête was no longer a petty little hotel which he did not know and never should know. For the early post brought him a letter which said:

"I am in Paris for a few days and should like to see you if you can make it convenient to call at my hotel on Thursday."

This was Tuesday.

The letter was signed with the name of the uncle from whom Vernon had expectations, and at the head of the letter was the address:

"Hôtel Bête,Cité de Retraite,Rue Boissy d'Anglais."

"Now bear witness!" cried Vernon, appealing to the Universe, "bear witness that this is not my fault!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE OPPORTUNITY

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

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

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

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

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

The Hotel Bête is very near the Madeleine, and very near the heart of Paris—of gay Paris, that is,—yet it might have been a hundred miles from anywhere. You go along the Rue Boissy, and stopping at a gateway you turn into a dreary paved court, which is the Cité de la Retraite. Here the doors of the Hotel Bête open before you like the portals of a mausoleum. There is no greeting from the Patronne; your arrival gives rise to no pleasant welcoming bustle. The concierge receives you, and you see at once that her cheerful smile is assumed. No one could really be cheerful at the Hotel Bête.

Vernon felt as though he was entering a family vault of the highest respectability when he passed through its silent hall and enquired for Mr. James Vernon.

Monsieur Vernon was out. No, he had charged no one with a billet for monsieur. Monsieur Vernon would doubtless return for the déjeûner; it was certain that he would return for the diner. Would Monsieur wait?

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

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

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

He came to the glass door presently.

"Did Monsieur breakfast?"

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

Yes, decidedly, Monsieur breakfasted.

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

The sudden summoning sound of a bell roused him from a dreamy wonder as to whether Betty and her aunt had already left. If not, should he meet them at déjeûner? The idea of the possible meeting amused more than it interested him. He crossed the hall and entered the long bare salle á manger.

By Heaven—he was the only guest! A cover was laid for him only—no, at a distance of half the table for another. Then Betty and her aunt had gone. Well, so much the better.

He unfolded his table-napkin. In another moment, doubtless, Uncle James would appear to fill the vacant place.

But in another moment the vacant place was filled—and by Betty—Betty alone, unchaperoned, and bristling with hostility. She bowed very coldly, but she was crimson to the ears. He rose and came to her holding out his hand.

With the waiter looking on, Betty had to give hers, but she gave it in a way that said very plainly:

"I am very surprised and not at all pleased to see you here."

"This is a most unexpected pleasure," he said very distinctly, and added the truth about his uncle.

"Has Monsieur Vernon yet returned?" he asked the waiter who hovered anxiously near.

"No, Monsieur was not yet of return."

"So you see," his look answered the speech of her hand, "it is not my doing in the least."

"I hope your aunt is well," he went on, the waiter handing baked eggs the while.

"Quite well, thank you," said Betty. "And how is your wife? I ought to have asked yesterday, but I forgot."

"My wife?"

"Oh, perhaps you aren't married yet. Of course my father told me of your engagement."

She crumbled bread and smiled pleasantly.

"So that's it," thought Vernon. "Fool that I was to forget it!"

"I am not married," he said coldly, "nor have I ever been engaged to be married."

And he ate eggs stolidly wondering what her next move would be. It was one that surprised him. For she leaned towards him and said in a perfectly new voice:

"Couldn't you get Franz to move you a little more this way? One can't shout across these acres of tablecloth, and I've heaps of things to tell you."

He moved nearer, and once again he wronged Betty by a mental shrinking. Was she really going to own that she had resented the news of his engagement? She was really hopeless. He began to bristle defensively.