The Incomplete Amorist

"How long have you known him?"

"I knew him for a week last Spring: he gave me a few lessons. He is a great favourite of my aunt's, but we don't know him much. And I thought he was in Vienna."

"Does he know where you are?"

"No."

"Then mind he doesn't."

"Why?"

"Because when girls are living alone they can't be too careful. Remember you're the person that's responsible for Betty Desmond now. You haven't your aunt and your father to take care of you."

"I've got you," said Betty affectionately.

"Yes, you've got me," said her friend.

Life in the new rooms was going very easily and pleasantly. Betty had covered some cushions with the soft green silk of an old evening dress Aunt Julia had given her; she had bought chrysanthemums in pots; and now all her little belongings, the same that had "given the cachet" to her boudoir bedroom at home lay about, and here, in this foreign setting, did really stamp the room with a pretty, delicate, conventional individuality. The embroidered blotting-book, the silver pen-tray, the wicker work-basket lined with blue satin, the long worked pin-cushion stuck with Betty's sparkling hat-pins,—all these, commonplace at Long Barton were here not commonplace. There was nothing of Paula's lying about. She had brought nothing with her, and had fetched nothing from her room save clothes—dresses and hats of the plainest.

The experiments in cooking were amusing; so were the marketings in odd little shops that sold what one wanted, and a great many things that one had never heard of. The round of concerts and theatres and tram-rides had not begun yet. In the evenings Betty drew, while Paula read aloud—from the library of stray Tauchnitz books Betty had gleaned from foreign book-stalls. It was a very busy, pleasant home-life. And the studio life did not lack interest.

Betty suffered a martyrdom of nervousness when first—a little late—she entered the Atelier. It is a large light room; a semi-circular alcove at one end, hung with pleasant-coloured drapery, holds a grand piano. All along one side are big windows that give on an old garden—once a convent garden where nuns used to walk, telling their beads. The walls are covered with sketches, posters, studies. Betty looked nervously round—the scene was agitatingly unfamiliar. The strange faces, the girls in many-hued painting pinafores, the little forest of easels, and on the square wooden platform the model—smooth, brown, with limbs set, moveless as a figure of wax.

Betty got to work, as soon as she knew how one began to get to work. It was her first attempt at a drawing from the life, saving certain not unsuccessful caricatures of her fellow pupils, her professor and her chaperon. So far she had only been set to do landscape, and laborious drawings of casts from the antique. The work was much harder than she had expected. And the heat was overpowering. She wondered how these other girls could stand it. Their amused, half-patronising, half-disdainful glances made her furious.

She rubbed out most of the lines she had put in and gasped for breath.

The room, the students, the naked brown girl on the model's throne, all swam before her eyes. She got to the door somehow, opened and shut it, and found herself sitting on the top stair with closed eyelids and heart beating heavily.

Some one held water to her lips. She was being fanned with a handkerchief.

"I'm all right," she said.

"Yes, it's hotter than usual to-day," said the handkerchief-holder, fanning vigorously.

"Why do they have it so hot?" asked poor Betty.

"Because of the model, of course. Poor thing! she hasn't got a nice blue gown and a pinky-greeny pinafore to keep her warm. We have to try to match the garden of Eden climate—when we're drawing from a girl who's only allowed to use Eve's fashion plates."

Betty laughed and opened her eyes.

"How jolly of you to come out after me," she said.

"Oh, I was just the same at first. All right now? I ought to get back. You just sit here till you feel fit again. So long!"

So Betty sat there on the bare wide brown stair, staring at the window, till things had steadied themselves, and then she went back to her work.

Her easel was there, and her half-rubbed out drawing—No, that was not her drawing. It was a head, vaguely but very competently sketched, a likeness—no, a caricature—of Betty herself.

She looked round—one quick but quite sufficient look. The girl next her, and the one to that girl's right, were exchanging glances, and the exchange ceased just too late. Betty saw.

From then till the rest Betty did not look at the model. She looked, but furtively, at those two girls. When, at the rest-time, the model stretched and yawned and got off her throne and into a striped petticoat, most of the students took their "easy" on the stairs: among these the two.

Betty, who never lacked courage, took charcoal in hand and advanced quite boldly to the easel next to her own.

How she envied the quality of the drawing she saw there. But envy does not teach mercy. The little sketch that Betty left on the corner of the drawing was quite as faithful, and far more cruel, than the one on her own paper. Then she went on to the next easel. The few students who were chatting to the model looked curiously at her and giggled among themselves.

When the rest was over and the model had reassumed, quite easily and certainly, that pose of the uplifted arms which looked so difficult, the students trooped back and the two girls—Betty's enemies, as she bitterly felt—returned to their easels. They looked at their drawings, they looked at each other, and they looked at Betty. And when they looked at her they smiled.

"Well done!" the girl next her said softly. "For a tenderfoot you hit back fairly straight. I guess you'll do!"

"You're very kind," said Betty haughtily.

"Don't you get your quills up," said the girl. "I hit first, but you hit hardest. I don't know you,—but I want to."

She smiled so queer yet friendly a smile that Betty's haughtiness had to dissolve in an answering smile.

"My name's Betty Desmond," she said. "I wonder why you wanted to hit a man when he was down."

"My!" said the girl, "how was I to surmise about you being down? You looked dandy enough—fit to lick all creation."

"I've never been in a studio before," said Betty, fixing fresh paper.

"My!" said the girl again. "Turn the faucet off now. The model don't like us to whisper. Can't stand the draught."

So Betty was silent, working busily. But next day she was greeted with friendly nods and she had some one to speak to in the rest-intervals.

On the third day she was asked to a studio party by the girl who had fanned her on the stairs. "And bring your friend with you," she said.

But Betty's friend had a headache that day. Betty went alone and came home full of the party.

"She's got such a jolly studio," she said; "ever so high up,—and busts and casts and things. Everyone was so nice to me you can't think: it was just like what one hears of Girton Cocoa parties. We had tea—such weak tea, Paula, it could hardly crawl out of the teapot! We had it out of green basins. And the loveliest cakes! There were only two chairs, so some of us sat on the sommier and the rest on the floor."

"Were there any young men?" asked Paula.

"Two or three very, very young ones—they came late. But they might as well have been girls; there wasn't any flirting or nonsense of that sort, Paula. Don't you think we might give a party—not now, but presently, when we know some more people? Do you think they'd like it? Or would they think it a bore?"

"They'd love it, I should think." Paula looked round the room which already she loved. "And what did you all talk about?"

"Work," said Betty, "work and work and work and work and work: everyone talked about their work, and everyone else listened and watched for the chance to begin to talk about theirs. This is real life, my dear. I am so glad I'm beginning to know people. Miss Voscoe is very queer, but she's a dear. She's the one who caricatured me the first day. Oh, we shall do now, shan't we?"

"Yes," said the other, "you'll do now."

"I said 'we,'" Betty corrected softly.

"I meant we, of course," said Miss Conway.

CHAPTER XIII.