The Incomplete Amorist

Her pretty conscious dignity charmed him. He stood still to look at it. He took no step forward. His role was that of the deeply respectful "brother artist." If his hand touched hers as he corrected her drawing, that was accident. If, as he leaned over her, criticising her work, the wind sent the end of her hair against his ear, that could hardly be avoided in a breezy English spring. It was not his fault that the little thrill it gave him was intensified a hundred-fold when, glancing at her, he perceived that her own ears had grown scarlet.

Betty went through her days in a dream. There were all the duties she hated—the Mothers' meetings, the Parish visits when she tried to adjust the quarrels and calm the jealousies of the stout aggressive Mothers, the carrying round the Parish Magazine. There were no long hours, now. In every spare moment she worked at her drawing to please him. It was the least she could do, after all his kindness.

Her step-father surprised her once hard at work with charcoal and board and plumb-line, a house-maid posing for her with a broom. He congratulated himself that his little sermon on the advantages of occupation as a cure for discontent had borne fruit so speedy and so sound.

"Dear child, she only wanted a word in season," he thought. And he said:

"I am glad to see that you have put away vain dreams, Lizzie. And your labours will not be thrown away, either. If you go on taking pains I daresay you will be able to paint some nice blotting-books and screens for the School Bazaar."

"I daresay," said Betty, adding between her teeth, "If you only knew!"

"But we mustn't keep Letitia from her work," he added, vaguely conscientious. Letitia flounced off, and Betty, his back turned, tore up the drawing.

And, as a beautiful background to the gross realism of Mothers' meetings and Parish tiresomenesses, was always the atmosphere of the golden mornings, the dew and the stillness, the gleam of his white coat among the pine-trees. For he was always first at the tryst now.

Betty was drunk; and she was too young to distinguish between vintages. When she had been sober she had feared intoxication. Now she was drunk, she thanked Heaven that she was sober.

CHAPTER IV.

INVOLUNTARY

Six days of sunlight and clear air, of mornings as enchanting as dreams, of dreams as full of magic as May mornings. Then an interminable Sunday hot and sultry, with rolling purple clouds and an evening of thunder and heavy showers. A magenta sunset, a night working, hidden in its own darkness, its own secret purposes, and a Monday morning gray beyond belief, with a soft steady rain.

Betty stood for full five minutes looking out at the straight fine fall, at the white mist spread on the lawn, the blue mist twined round the trees, listening to the plash of the drops that gathered and fell from the big wet ivy leaves, to the guggle of the water-spout, the hiss of smitten gravel.

"He'll never go," she thought, and her heart sank.

He, shaving, in the chill damp air by his open dimity-draped window, was saying:

"She'll be there, of course. Women are all perfectly insensible to weather."

Two mackintoshed figures met in the circle of pines.

"You have come," he said. "I never dreamed you would. How cold your hand is!"

He held it for a moment warmly clasped.

"I thought it might stop any minute," said Betty; "it seemed a pity to waste a morning."

"Yes," he said musingly, "it would be a pity to waste a morning. I would not waste one of these mornings for a kingdom."

Betty fumbled with her sketching things as a sort of guarantee of good faith.

"But it's too wet to work," said she. "I suppose I'd better go home again."

"That seems a dull idea—for me," he said; "it's very selfish, of course, but I'm rather sad this morning. Won't you stay a little and cheer me up?"

Betty asked nothing better. But even to her a tete-a-tete in a wood, with rain pattering and splashing on leaves and path and resonant mackintoshes, seemed to demand some excuse.

"I should think breakfast and being dry would cheer you up better than anything," said she. "And it's very wet here."

"Hang breakfast! But you're right about the wetness. There's a shed in the field yonder. A harrow and a plough live there; they're sure to be at home on a day like this. Let's go and ask for their hospitality."

"I hope they'll be nice to us," laughed Betty; "it's dreadful to go where you're not wanted."

"How do you know?" he asked, laughing too. "Come, give me your hand and let's run for it."

They ran, hand in hand, the wet mackintoshes flapping and slapping about their knees, and drew up laughing and breathless in the dry quiet of the shed. Vernon thought of Love and Mr. Lewisham, but it was not the moment to say so.

"See, they are quite pleased to see us," said he, "they don't say a word against our sheltering here. The plough looks a bit glum, but she'll grow to like us presently. As for harrow, look how he's smiling welcome at you with all his teeth."

"I'm glad he can't come forward to welcome us," said Betty. "His teeth look very fierce."

"He could, of course, only he's enchanted. He used to be able to move about, but now he's condemned to sit still and only smile till—till he sees two perfectly happy people. Are you perfectly happy?" he asked anxiously.

"I don't know," said Betty truly. "Are you?"

"No—not quite perfectly."

"I'm so glad," said Betty. "I shouldn't like the harrow to begin to move while we're here. I'm sure it would bite us."

He sighed and looked grave. "So you don't want me to be perfectly happy?"

She looked at him with her head on one side.

"Not here," she said. "I can't trust that harrow."

His eyelids narrowed over his eyes—then relaxed. No, she was merely playing at enchanted harrows.

"Are you cold still?" he asked, and reached for her hand. She gave it frankly.

"Not a bit," she said, and took it away again. "The run warmed me. In fact—"

She unbuttoned the mackintosh and spread it on the bar of the plough and sat down. Her white dress lighted up the shadows of the shed. Outside the rain fell steadily.

"May I sit down too? Can Mrs. Plough find room for two children on her lap?"

She drew aside the folds of her dress, but even then only a little space was left. The plough had been carelessly housed and nearly half of it was where the rain drove in on it. So that they were very close together.

So close that he had to throw his head back to see clearly how the rain had made the short hair curl round her forehead and ears, and how fresh were the tints of face and lips. Also he had to support himself by an arm stretched out behind her. His arm was not round her, but it might just as well have been, as far as the look of the thing went. He thought of the arm of Mr. Lewisham.

"Did you ever have your fortune told?" he asked.

"No, never. I've always wanted to, but Father hates gipsies. When I was a little girl I used to put on my best clothes, and go out into the lanes and sit about and hope the gipsies would steal me, but they never did."

"They're a degenerate race, blind to their own interests. But they haven't a monopoly of chances—fortunately." His eyes were on her face.

"I never had my fortune told," said Betty. "I'd love it, but I think I should be afraid, all the same. Something might come true."