The Incomplete Amorist

"My name's Paula."

"Paula dear, I wish I wasn't so stupid, but I know it's not your fault, and I know you aren't like that woman with the Germans."

"I should hope not indeed," Paula was roused to flash back; "dirty little French gutter-cat."

"I've never been a bit of good to anyone," said Betty, adding her other arm and making a necklace of the two round Paula's neck, "except to Parishioners perhaps. Do let me be a bit of good to you. Don't you think I could?"

"You dear little fool!" said Paula gruffly.

"Yes, but say yes—you must! I know you want to. I've got lots of money. Kiss me, Paula."

"I won't!—Don't kiss me!—I won't have it! Go away," said the woman, clinging to Betty and returning her kisses.

"Don't cry," said Betty gently. "We shall be ever so happy. You'll see. Good night, Paula. Do you know I've never had a friend—a girl-friend, I mean?"

"For God's sake hold your tongue, and go to bed! Good night."

Betty, alone, faced at last, and for the first time, The Thought. But it had changed its dress when Miss Conway changed hers. It was no longer a Thought: it was a Resolution.

Twin-born with her plan for saving her new friend was the plan for a life that should not be life at Long Barton.

All the evening she had refused to face The Thought. But it had been shaping itself to something more definite than thought. As a Resolution, a Plan, it now unrolled itself before her. She sat in the stiff arm-chair looking straight in front of her, and she saw what she meant to do. The Thought had been wise not to insist too much on recognition. Earlier in the evening it would have seemed merely a selfish temptation. Now it was an opportunity for a good and noble act. And Betty had always wanted so much to be noble and good.

Here she was in Paris, alone. Her aunt, train-borne, was every moment further and further away. As for her step-father:

"I hate him," said Betty, "and he hates me. He only let me come to get rid of me. And what good could I do at Long Barton compared with what I can do here? Any one can do Parish work. I've got the money Aunt left for Madame Gautier. Perhaps it's stealing. But is it? The money was meant to pay to keep me in Paris to study Art. And it's not as if I were staying altogether for selfish reasons—there's Paula. I'm sure she has really a noble nature. And it's not as if I were staying because He is in Paris. Of course, that would be really wrong. But he said he was going to Vienna. I suppose his uncle delayed him, but he'll certainly go. I'm sure it's right. I've learned a lot since I left home. I'm not a child now. I'm a woman, and I must do what I think is right. You know I must, mustn't I?"

She appealed to the Inward Monitor, but it refused to be propitiated.

"It only seems not quite right because it's so unusual," she went on; "that's because I've never been anywhere or done anything. After all, it's my own life, and I have a right to live it as I like. My step-father has never written to Madame Gautier all these months. He won't now. It's only to tell him she has changed her address—he only writes to me on Sunday nights. There's just time. And I'll keep the money, and when Aunt comes back I'll tell her everything. She'll understand."

"Do you think so?" said the Inward Monitor.

"Any way," said Betty, putting her foot down on the Inward Monitor, "I'm going to do it. If it's only for Paula's sake. We'll take rooms, and I'll go to a Studio, and work hard; and I won't make friends with gentlemen I don't know, or anything silly, so there," she added defiantly. "Auntie left the money for me to study in Paris. If I tell my step-father that Madame Gautier is dead, he'll just fetch me home, and what'll become of Paula then?"

Thus and thus, ringing the changes on resolve and explanation, her thoughts ran. A clock chimed midnight.

"Is it possible," she asked herself, "that it's not twelve hours since I was at the Hotel Bête—talking to Him? Well, I shall never see him again, I suppose. How odd that I don't feel as if I cared whether I did or not. I suppose what I felt about him wasn't real. It all seems so silly now. Paula is real, and all that I mean to do for her is real. He isn't."

She prayed that night as usual, but her mind was made up, and she prayed outside a closed door.

Next morning, when her chocolate came up, she carried it into the next room, and, sitting on the edge of her new friend's bed, breakfasted there.

Paula seemed dazed when she first woke, but soon she was smiling and listening to Betty's plans.

"How young you look," said Betty, "almost as young as me."

"I'm twenty-five."

"You don't look it—with your hair in those pretty plaits, and your nightie. You do have lovely nightgowns."

"I'll get up now," said Paula. "Look out—I nearly upset the tray."

Betty had carefully put away certain facts and labelled them: "Not to be told to anyone, even Paula." No one was to know anything about Vernon. "There is nothing to know really," she told herself. No one was to know that she was alone in Paris without the knowledge of her relations. Lots of girls came to Paris alone to study art. She was just one of these.

She found the lying wonderfully easy. It did not bring with it, either, any of the shame that lying should bring, but rather a sense of triumphant achievement, as from a difficult part played excellently.

She paid the hotel bill, and then the search for rooms began.

"We must be very economical, you know," she said, "but you won't mind that, will you? I think it will be rather fun."

"It would be awful fun," said the other. "You'll go and work at the studio, and when you come home after your work I shall have cooked the déjeûner, and we shall have it together on a little table with a nice white cloth and a bunch of flowers on it."

"Yes; and in the evening we'll go out, to concerts and things, and ride on the tops of trams. And on Sundays—what does one do on Sundays?"

"I suppose one goes to church," said Paula.

"Oh, I think not when we're working so hard all the week. We'll go into the country."

"We can take the river steamer and go to St. Cloud, or go out on the tram to Clamart—the woods there are just exactly like the woods at home. What part of England do you live in?"

"Kent," said Betty.

"My home's in Devonshire," said Paula.

It was a hard day: so many stairs to climb, so many apartments to see! And all of them either quite beyond Betty's means, or else little stuffy places, filled to choking point with the kind of furniture no one could bear to live with, and with no light, and no outlook except a blank wall a yard or two from the window.

They kept to the Montparnasse quarter, for there, Paula said, were the best ateliers for Betty. They found a little restaurant, where only art students ate, and where one could breakfast royally for about a shilling. Betty looked with interest at the faces of the students, and wondered whether she should ever know any of them. Some of them looked interesting. A few were English, and fully half American.

Then the weary hunt for rooms began again.

It was five o'clock before a concierge, unexpected amiable in face of their refusal of her rooms, asked whether they had tried Madame Bianchi's—Madame Bianchi where the atelier was, and the students' meetings on Sunday evenings,—Number 57 Boulevard Montparnasse.

They tried it. One passes through an archway into a yard where the machinery, of a great laundry pulses half the week, up some wide wooden stairs—shallow, easy stairs—and on the first floor are the two rooms. Betty drew a long breath when she saw them. They were lofty, they were airy, they were light. There was not much furniture, but what there was was good—old carved armoires, solid divans and—joy of joys—in each room a carved oak, Seventeenth Century mantelpiece eight feet high and four feet deep.

"I must have these rooms!" Betty whispered. "Oh, I could make them so pretty!"

The rent of the rooms was almost twice as much as the sum they fixed on, and Paula murmured caution.

"Its no use," said Betty. "We'll live on bread and water if you like, but we'll live on it here."

And she took the rooms.

"I'm sure we've done right," she said as they drove off to fetch her boxes: "the rooms will be like a home, you see if they aren't. And there's a piano too. And Madame Bianchi, isn't she a darling; Isn't she pretty and sweet and nice?"

"Yes," said Paula thoughtfully; "it certainly is something that you've got rooms in the house of a woman like that."

"And that ducky little kitchen! Oh, we shall have such fun, cooking our own meals! You shall get the déjeûner but I'll cook the dinner while you lie on the sofa and read novels 'like a real lady.'"