The Incomplete Amorist

Betty told herself that she hated it all. She took the narrow path—the grasses met above her feet—crossed the park, and reached the rabbit warren, where the chalk breaks through the thin dry turf, and the wild thyme grows thick.

A may bush, overhanging a little precipice of chalk, caught her eye. A wild rose was tangled round it. It was, without doubt, the most difficult composition within sight.

"I will sketch that," said Eighteen, confidently.

For half an hour she busily blotted and washed and niggled. Then she became aware that she no longer had the rabbit warren to herself.

"And he's an artist, too!" said Betty. "How awfully interesting! I wish I could see his face."

But this his slouched Panama forbade. He was in white, the sleeve and breast of his painting jacket smeared with many colours; he had a camp-stool and an easel and looked, she could not help feeling, much more like a real artist than she did, hunched up as she was on a little mound of turf, in her shabby pink gown and that hateful garden hat with last year's dusty flattened roses in it.

She went on sketching with feverish unskilled fingers, and a pulse that had actually quickened its beat.

She cast little glances at him as often as she dared. He was certainly a real artist. She could tell that by the very way he held his palette. Was he staying with people about there? Should she meet him? Would they ever be introduced to each other?

"Oh, what a pity," said Betty from the heart, "that we aren't introduced now!"

Her sketch grew worse and worse.

"It's no good," she said. "I can't do anything with it."

She glanced at him. He had pushed back the hat. She saw quite plainly that he was smiling—a very little, but he was smiling. Also he was looking at her, and across the fifteen yards of gray turf their eyes met. And she knew that he knew that this was not her first glance at him.

She paled with fury.

"He has been watching me all the time! He is making fun of me. He knows I can't sketch. Of course he can see it by the silly way I hold everything." She ran her knife around her sketch, detached it, and tore it across and across.

The stranger raised his hat and called eagerly.

"I say—please don't move for a minute. Do you mind? I've just got your pink gown. It's coming beautifully. Between brother artists—Do, please! Do sit still and go on sketching—Ah, do!"

Betty's attitude petrified instantly. She held a brush in her hand, and she looked down at her block. But she did not go on sketching. She sat rigid and three delicious words rang in her ears: "Between brother artists!" How very nice of him! He hadn't been making fun, after all. But wasn't it rather impertinent of him to put her in his picture without asking her? Well, it wasn't she but her pink gown he wanted. And "between brother artists!" Betty drew a long breath.

"It's no use," he called; "don't bother any more. The pose is gone."

She rose to her feet and he came towards her.

"Let me see the sketch," he said. "Why did you tear it up?" He fitted the pieces together. "Why, it's quite good. You ought to study in Paris," he added idly.

She took the torn papers from his hand with a bow, and turned to go.

"Don't go," he said. "You're not going? Don't you want to look at my picture?"

Now Betty knew as well as you do that you musn't speak to people unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother artists" had played ninepins with her little conventions.

"Thank you. I should like to very much," said Betty. "I don't care," she said to herself, "and besides, it's not as if he were a young man, or a tourist, or anything. He must be ever so old—thirty; I shouldn't wonder if he was thirty-five."

When she saw the picture she merely said, "Oh," and stood at gaze. For it was a picture—a picture that, seen in foreign lands, might well make one sick with longing for the dry turf and the pale dog violets that love the chalk, for the hum of the bees and the scent of the thyme. He had chosen the bold sweep of the brown upland against the sky, and low to the left, where the line broke, the dim violet of the Kentish hills. In the green foreground the pink figure, just roughly blocked in, was blocked in by a hand that knew its trade, and was artist to the tips of its fingers.

"Oh!" said Betty again.

"Yes," said he, "I think I've got it this time. I think it'll make a hole in the wall, eh? Yes; it is good!"

"Yes," said Betty; "oh, yes."

"Do you often go a-sketching?" he asked.

"How modest he is," thought Betty; "he changes the subject so as not to seem to want to be praised."

Aloud she answered with shy fluttered earnestness: "Yes—no. I don't know. Sometimes."

His lips were grave, but there was the light behind his eyes that goes with a smile.

"What unnecessary agitation!" he was thinking. "Poor little thing, I suppose she's never seen a man before. Oh, these country girls!" Aloud he was saying: "This is such a perfect country. You ought to sketch every day."

"I've no one to teach me," said Betty, innocently phrasing a long-felt want.

The man raised his eyebrows. "Well, after that, here goes!" he said to himself. "I wish you'd let me teach you," he said to her, beginning to put his traps together.

"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Betty in real distress. What would he think of her? How greedy and grasping she must seem! "I didn't mean that at all!"

"No; but I do," he said.

"But you're a great artist," said Betty, watching him with clasped hands. "I suppose it would be—I mean—don't you know, we're not rich, and I suppose your lessons are worth pounds and pounds."

"I don't give lessons for money," his lips tightened—"only for love."

"That means nothing, doesn't it?" she said, and flushed to find herself on the defensive feebly against—nothing.

"At tennis, yes," he said, and to himself he added: "Vieux jeu, my dear, but you did it very prettily."

"But I couldn't let you give me lessons for nothing."

"Why not?" he asked. And his calmness made Betty feel ashamed and sordid.

"I don't know," she answered tremulously, "but I don't think my step-father would want me to."

"You think it would annoy him?"

"I'm sure it would, if he knew about it."

Betty was thinking how little her step-father had ever cared to know of her and her interests. But the man caught the ball as he saw it.

"Then why let him know?" was the next move; and it seemed to him that Betty's move of rejoinder came with a readiness born of some practice at the game.

"Oh," she said innocently, "I never thought of that! But wouldn't it be wrong?"

"She's got the whole thing stereotyped. But it's dainty type anyhow," he thought. "Of course it wouldn't be wrong," he said. "It wouldn't hurt him. Don't you know that nothing's wrong unless it hurts somebody?"