The Incomplete Amorist

Those afternoons were seasons of salutary torture.

He tried very hard to work, but, though he still remembered how a paint brush should be handled, there seemed no good reason for using one. He had always found his planned and cultivated emotions strongly useful in forwarding his work. This undesired unrest mocked at work, and at all the things that had made up the solid fabric of one's days. The ways of love—he had called it love; it was a name like another—had merely been a sort of dram-drinking. Such love was the intoxicant necessary to transfigure life to the point where all things, even work, look beautiful. Now he tasted the real draught. It flooded his veins like fire and stung like poison. And it made work, and all things else, look mean and poor and unimportant.

"I want you—I want you—I want you," said Vernon to the vision with the pretty kitten face, and the large gray eyes. "I want you more than everything in the world," he said, "everything in the world put together. Oh, come back to me—dear, dear, dear."

He was haunted without cease by the little poem he had written when he was training himself to be in love with Betty:

"I love you to my heart's hid core:
Those other loves? How should one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no—I never loved before!"

"Prophetic, I suppose," he said, "though God knows I never meant it. Any fool of a prophet must hit the bull's eye at least once in a life. But there was a curious unanimity of prophecy about this. The aunt warned me; that Conway woman warned me; the Jasmine Lady warned me. And now it's happened," he told himself. "And I who thought I knew all about everything!"

Miss Conway's name, moving through his thoughts, left the trail of a new hope.

Next day he breakfasted at Montmartre.

The neatest little Crémerie; white paint, green walls stenciled with fat white geraniums. On each small table a vase of green Bruges ware or Breton pottery holding not a crushed crowded bouquet, but one single flower—a pink tulip, a pink carnation, a pink rose. On the desk from behind which the Proprietress ruled her staff, enormous pink peonies in a tall pot of Grez de Flandre.

Behind the desk Paula Conway, incredibly neat and business-like, her black hair severely braided, her plain black gown fitting a figure grown lean as any grey-hound's, her lace collar a marvel of fine laundry work.

Dapper-waisted waitresses in black, with white aprons, served the customers. Vernon was served by Madame herself. The clientele formed its own opinion of the cause of this, her only such condescension.

"Well, and how's trade?" he asked over his asparagus.

"Trade's beautiful," Paula answered, with the frank smile that Betty had seen, only once or twice, and had loved very much: "if trade will only go on behaving like this for another six weeks my cruel creditor will be paid every penny of the money that launched me."

Her eyes dwelt on him with candid affection.

"Your cruel creditor's not in any hurry," he said. "By the way, I suppose you've not heard anything of Miss Desmond?"

"How could I? You know you made me write that she wasn't to write."

"I didn't make you write anything."

"You approved. But anyway she hasn't my address. Why?"

"She's gone away: and she also has left no address."

"You don't think?—Oh, no—nothing could have happened to her!"

"No, no," he hastened to say. "I expect her father sent for her, or fetched her."

"The best thing too," said Paula. "I always wondered he let her come."

"Yes,"—Vernon remembered how little Paula knew.

"Oh, yes, she's probably gone home."

"Look here," said Miss Conway very earnestly; "there wasn't any love business between you and her, was there?"

"No," he answered strongly.

"I was always afraid of that. Do you know—if you don't mind, when I've really paid my cruel creditor everything, I should like to write and tell her what he's done for me. I should like her to know that she really did save me—and how. Because if it hadn't been for her you'd never have thought of helping me. Do you think I might?"

"It could do no harm," said Vernon after a silent moment. "You'd really like her to know you're all right. You are all right?"

"I'm right; as I never thought I could be ever again."

"Well, you needn't exaggerate the little services of your cruel creditor. Come to think of it, you needn't name him. Just say it was a man you knew."

But when Paula came to write the letter that was not just what she said.

Book 4.—The Other Man

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FLIGHT

The full sunlight streamed into the room when Betty, her packing done, drew back the curtain. She looked out on the glazed roof of the laundry, the lead roof of the office, the blank wall of the new grocery establishment in the Rue de Rennes. Only a little blue sky shewed at the end of the lane, between roofs, by which the sun came in. Not a tree, not an inch of grass, in sight; only, in her room, half a dozen roses that Temple had left for her, and the white marguerite plant—tall, sturdy, a little tree almost—that Vernon had sent in from the florist's next door but two. Everything was packed. She would say good-bye to Madame Bianchi; and she would go, and leave no address, as she had promised last night.

"Why did you promise?" she asked herself. And herself replied:

"Don't you bother. We'll talk about all that when we've got away from Paris. He was quite right. You can't think here."

"You'd better tell the cabman some other station. That cat of a concierge is sure to be listening."

"Ah, right. I don't want to give him any chance of finding me, even if he did say he wanted to marry me."

A fleet lovely picture of herself in bridal smart travelling clothes arriving at the Rectory on Vernon's arm:

"Aren't you sorry you misjudged him so, Father?" Gentle accents refraining from reproach. A very pretty picture. Yes. Dismissed.

Now the carriage swaying under the mound of Betty's luggage starts for the Gare du Nord. In the Rue Notre Dame des Champs Betty opens her mouth to say, "Gare de Lyons." No: this is his street. Better cross it as quickly as may be. At the Church of St. Germain—yes.

The coachman smiles at the new order: like the concierge he scents an intrigue, whips up his horse, and swings round to the left along the prettiest of all the boulevards, between the full-leafed trees. Past Thirion's. Ah!

That thought, or pang, or nausea—Betty doesn't quite know what it is—keeps her eyes from the streets till the carriage is crossing the river. Why—there is Notre Dame! It ought to be miles away. Suppose Vernon should have been leaning out of his window when she passed across the street, seen her, divined her destination, followed her in the fleetest carriage accessible? The vision of a meeting at the station:

"Why are you going away? What have I done?" The secret of this, her great renunciation—the whole life's sacrifice to that life's idol—honor, wrung from her. A hand that would hold hers—under pretence of taking her bundle of rugs to carry.—She wished the outermost rug were less shabby! Vernon's voice.

"But I can't let you go. Why ruin two lives—nay, three? For it is you only that I—"

Dismissed.

It is very hot. Paris is the hottest place in the world. Betty is glad she brought lavender water in her bag. Wishes she had put on her other hat. This brown one is hot; and besides, if Vernon were to be at the station. Interval. Dismissed.

Betty has never before made a railway journey alone. This gives one a forlorn feeling. Suppose she has to pay excess on her luggage, or to wrangle about contraband? She has heard all about the Octroi. Is lavender water smuggling? And what can they do to you for it? Vernon would know all these things. And if he were going into the country he would be wearing that almost-white rough suit of his and the Panama hat. A rose—Madame Abel de Chatenay—would go well with that coat. Why didn't brides consult their bridegrooms before they bought their trousseaux? You should get your gowns to rhyme with your husband's suits. A dream of a dress that would be, with all the shades of Madame Abel cunningly blended. A honeymoon lasts at least a month. The roses would all be out at Long Barton by the time they walked up that moss-grown drive, and stood at the Rectory door, and she murmured in the ear of the Reverend Cecil: "Aren't you sorry you—"