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The Incomplete Amorist
"Yes," she said, turning the hot rough pillow, "now it begins to hurt again. I knew it would."
It hurt more than she had meant it to hurt, when she beckoned those black-winged thoughts. It hurt so much that she could not sleep. She got up and leaned from the window.
She wondered where Vernon was. It was quite early. Not eleven. Lady St. Craye had called that quite early.
"He's with her, of course," said Betty, "sitting at her feet, no doubt, and looking up at her hateful eyes, and holding her horrid hand, and forgetting that he ever knew a girl named Me."
Betty dressed and went out.
She crossed the garden. It was very dark among the trees. It would be lighter in the road.
The big yard door was ajar. She pushed it softly. It creaked and let her through into the silent street. There were no lights in the hotel, no lights in any of the houses.
She stood a moment, hesitating. A door creaked inside the hotel. She took the road to the river.
"I wonder if people ever do drown themselves for love," said Betty: "he'd be sorry then."
CHAPTER XXII.
THE LUNATIC
The night kept its promise. Betty, slipping from the sleeping house into the quiet darkness, seemed to slip into a poppy-fringed pool of oblivion. The night laid fresh, cold hands on her tired eyes, and shut out many things. She paused for a minute on the bridge to listen to the restful restless whisper of the water against the rough stone.
Her eyes growing used to the darkness discerned the white ribbon of road unrolling before her. The trees were growing thicker. This must be the forest. Certainly it was the forest.
"How dark it is," she said, "how dear and dark! And how still! I suppose the trams are running just the same along the Boulevard Montparnasse,—and all the lights and people, and the noise. And I've been there all these months—and all the time this was here—this!"
Paris was going on—all that muddle and maze of worried people. And she was out of it all; here, alone.
Alone? A quick terror struck at the heart of her content. An abrupt horrible certainty froze her—the certainty that she was not alone. There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near her—something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre long before she heard that faint light sound that was not one of the forest noises. She stood still and listened.
She had never been frightened of the dark—of the outdoor dark. At Long Barton she had never been afraid even to go past the church-yard in the dark night—the free night that had never held any terrors, only dreams.
But now: she quickened her pace, and—yes—footsteps came on behind her. And in front the long straight ribbon of the road unwound, gray now in the shadow. There seemed to be no road turning to right or left. She could not go on forever. She would have to turn, sometime—if not now, yet sometime—in this black darkness, and then she would meet this thing that trod so softly, so stealthily behind her.
Before she knew that she had ceased to walk, she was crouched in the black between two bushes. She had leapt as the deer leaps, and crouched, still as any deer.
Her dark blue linen gown was one with the forest shadows. She breathed noiselessly—her eyes were turned to the gray ribbon of road that had been behind her. She had heard. Now she would see.
She did see—something white and tall and straight. Oh, the relief of the tallness and straightness and whiteness! She had thought of something dwarfed and clumsy—dark, misshapen, slouching beast-like on two shapeless feet. Why were people afraid of tall white ghosts?
It passed. It was a man—in a white suit. Just an ordinary man. No, not ordinary. The ordinary man in France does not wear white. Nor in England, except for boating and tennis and—
Flannels. Yes. The lunatic who boiled his brains in the sun!
Betty's terror changed colour as the wave changes from green to white, but it lost not even so much of its force as the wave loses by the change. It held her moveless till the soft step of the tennis shoes died away. Then softly and hardly moving at all, moving so little that not a leaf of those friendly bushes rustled, she slipped off her shoes: took them in her hand, made one leap through the crackling, protesting undergrowth and fled back along the road, fleet as a greyhound.
She ran and she walked, very fast, and then she ran again and never once did she pause to look or listen. If the lunatic caught her—well, he would catch her, but it should not be her fault if he did.
The trees were thinner. Ahead she saw glimpses of a world that looked quite light, the bridge ahead. With one last spurt she ran across it, tore up the little bit of street, slipped through the door, and between the garden trees to her pavilion.
She looked very carefully in every corner—all was still and empty. She locked the door, and fell face downward on her bed.
Vernon in his studio was "thinking things over" after the advice of Miss Voscoe in much the same attitude.
"Oh," said Betty, "I will never go out at night again! And I will leave this horrible, horrible place the very first thing to-morrow morning!"
But to-morrow morning touched the night's events with new colours from its shining palette.
"After all, even a lunatic has a right to walk out in the forest if it wants to," she told herself, "and it didn't know I was there, I expect, really. But I think I'll go and stay at some other hotel."
She asked, when her "complete coffee" came to her, what the mad gentleman did all day.
"He is not so stupid as Mademoiselle supposes," said Marie. "All the artists are insane, and he, he is only a little more insane than the others. He is not a real mad, all the same, see you. To-day he makes drawings at Montigny."
"Which way is Montigny?" asked Betty. And, learning, strolled, when her coffee was finished, by what looked like the other way.
It took her to the river.
"It's like the Medway," said Betty, stooping to the fat cowslips at her feet, "only prettier; and I never saw any cowslips here—You dears!"
Betty would not look at her sorrow in this gay, glad world. But she knew at last what her sorrow's name was. She saw now that it was love that had stood all the winter between her and Vernon, holding a hand of each. In her blindness she had called it friendship,—but now she knew its real, royal name.
She felt that her heart was broken. Even the fact that her grief was a thing to be indulged or denied at will brought her no doubts. She had always wanted to be brave and noble. Well, now she was being both.
A turn of the river brought to sight a wide reach dotted with green islands, each a tiny forest of willow saplings and young alders.
There was a boat moored under an aspen, a great clumsy boat, but it had sculls in it. It would be pleasant to go out to the islands.
She got into the boat, loosened the heavy rattling chain and flung it in board, took up the sculls and began to pull. It was easy work.
"I didn't know I was such a good oar," said Betty as the boat crept swiftly down the river.
As she stepped into the boat, she noticed the long river reeds straining down stream like the green hair of hidden water-nixies.
She would land at the big island—the boat steered easily and lightly enough for all its size—but before she could ship her oars and grasp at a willow root she shot past the island.
Then she remembered the streaming green weeds.
"Why, there must be a frightful current!" she said. What could make the river run at this pace—a weir—or a waterfall?
She turned the boat's nose up stream and pulled. Ah, this was work! Then her eyes, fixed in the exertion of pulling, found that they saw no moving banks, but just one picture: a willow, a clump of irises, three poplars in the distance—and the foreground of the picture did not move. All her pulling only sufficed to keep the boat from going with the stream. And now, as the effort relaxed a little it did not even do this. The foreground did move—the wrong way. The boat was slipping slowly down stream. She turned and made for the bank, but the stream caught her broadside on, whirled the boat round and swept it calmly and gently down—towards the weir—or the waterfall.
Betty pulled two strong strokes, driving the boat's nose straight for the nearest island, shipped the sculls with a jerk, stumbled forward and caught at an alder stump. She flung the chain round it and made fast. The boat's stern swung round—it was thrust in under the bank and held there close; the chain clicked loudly as it stretched taut.
"Well!" said Betty. The island was between her and the riverside path. No one would be able to see her. She must listen and call out when she heard anyone pass. Then they would get another boat and come and fetch her away. She would not tempt fate again alone in that boat. She was not going to be drowned in any silly French river.
She landed, pushed through the saplings, found a mossy willow stump and sat down to get her breath.
It was very hot on the island. It smelt damply of wet lily leaves and iris roots and mud. Flies buzzed and worried. The time was very long. And no one came by.
"I may have to spend the day here," she told herself. "It's not so safe in the boat, but it's not so fly-y either."
And still no one passed.
Suddenly the soft whistling of a tune came through the hot air. A tune she had learned in Paris.
"C'etait deux amants."
"Hi!" cried Betty in a voice that was not at all like her voice. "Help!—Au secours!" she added on second thoughts.
"Where are you?" came a voice. How alike all Englishmen's voices seemed—in a foreign land!
"Here—on the island! Send someone out with a boat, will you? I can't work my boat a bit."
Through the twittering leaves she saw something white waving. Next moment a big splash. She could see, through a little gap, a white blazer thrown down on the bank—a pair of sprawling brown boots; in the water a sleek wet round head, an arm in a blue shirt sleeve swimming a strong side stroke. It was the lunatic; of course it was. And she had called to him, and he was coming. She pushed back to the boat, leaped in, and was fumbling with the chain when she heard the splash and the crack of broken twigs that marked the lunatic's landing.
She would rather chance the weir or the waterfall than be alone on that island with a maniac. But the chain was stretched straight and stiff as a lance,—she could not untwist it. She was still struggling, with pink fingers bruised and rust-stained, when something heavy crashed through the saplings and a voice cried close to her:
"Drop it! What are you doing?"—and a hand fell on the chain.
Betty, at bay, raised her head. Lunatics, she knew, could be quelled by the calm gaze of the sane human eye.
She gave one look, and held out both hands with a joyous cry.
"Oh,—it's you! I am so glad! Where did you come from? Oh, how wet you are!"
Then she sat down on the thwart and said no more, because of the choking feeling in her throat that told her very exactly just how frightened she had been.
"You!" Temple was saying very slowly. "How on earth? Where are you staying? Where's your party?"
He was squeezing the water out of sleeves and trouser legs.
"I haven't got a party. I'm staying alone at a hotel—just like a man. I know you're frightfully shocked. You always are."
"Where are you staying?" he asked, drawing the chain in hand over hand, till a loose loop of it dipped in the water.
"Hotel Chevillon. How dripping you are!"
"Hotel Chevillon," he repeated. "Never! Then it was you!"
"What was me?"
"That I was sheep-dog to last night in the forest."
"Then it was you? And I thought it was the lunatic! Oh, if I'd only known! But why did you come after me—if you didn't know it was me?"
Temple blushed through the runnels of water that trickled from his hair.
"I—well, Madame told me there was an English girl staying at the hotel—and I heard some one go out—and I looked out of the window and I thought it was the girl, and I just—well, if anything had gone wrong—a drunken man, or anything—it was just as well there should be someone there, don't you know."
"That's very, very nice of you," said Betty. "But oh!"—She told him about the lunatic.
"Oh, that's me!" said Temple. "I recognise the portrait, especially about the hat."
He had loosened the chain and was pulling with strong even strokes across the river towards the bank where his coat lay.
"We'll land here if you don't mind."
"Can't you pull up to the place where I stole the boat?"
He laughed:
"The man's not living who could pull against this stream when the mill's going and the lower sluice gates are open. How glad I am that I—And how plucky and splendid of you not to lose your head, but just to hang on. It takes a lot of courage to wait, doesn't it?"
Betty thought it did.
"Let me carry your coat," said Betty as they landed. "You'll make it so wet."
He stood still a moment and looked at her.
"Now we're on terra cotta," he said, "let me remind you that we've not shaken hands. Oh, but it's good to see you again!"
"Look well, my child," said Madame Chevillon, "and when you see approach the Meess, warn me, that I may make the little omelette at the instant."
"Oh, la, la, madame!" cried Marie five minutes later. "Here it is that she comes, and the mad with her. He talks with her, in laughing. She carries his coat, and neither the one nor the other has any hat."
"I will make a double omelette," said Madame. "Give me still more of the eggs. The English are all mad—the one like the other; but even mads must eat, my child. Is it not?"
CHAPTER XXIII.
TEMPERATURES
"It isn't as though she were the sort of girl who can't take care of herself," said Lady St. Craye to the Inward Monitor who was buzzing its indiscreet common-places in her ear. "I've really done her a good turn by sending her to Grez. No—it's not in the least compromising for a girl to stay at the same hotel. And besides, there are lots of amusing people there, I expect. She'll have a delightful time, and get to know that Temple boy really well. I'm sure he'd repay investigation. If I weren't a besotted fool I could have pursued those researches myself. But it's not what's worth having that one wants; it's—it's what one does want. Yes. That's all."
Paris was growing intolerable. But for—well, a thousand reasons—Lady St. Craye would already have left it. The pavements were red-hot. When one drove it was through an air like the breath from the open mouth of a furnace.
She kept much within doors, filled her rooms with roses, and lived with every window open. Her balcony, too, was full of flowers, and the striped sun-blinds beyond each open window kept the rooms in pleasant shadow.
"But suppose something happens to her—all alone there," said the Inward Monitor.
"Nothing will. She's not that sort of girl." Her headache had been growing worse these three days. The Inward Monitor might have had pity, remembering that—but no.
"You told Him that all girls were the same sort of girls," said the pitiless voice.
"I didn't mean in that way. I suppose you'd have liked me to write that anonymous letter and restore her to the bosom of her furious family? I've done the girl a good turn—for what she did for me. She's a good little thing—too good for him, even if I didn't happen to—And Temple's her ideal mate. I wonder if he's found it out yet? He must have by now: three weeks in the same hotel."
Temple, however, was not in the same hotel. The very day of the river rescue and the double omelette he had moved his traps a couple of miles down the river to Montigny.
A couple of miles is a good distance. Also a very little way, as you choose to take it.
"You know it was a mean trick," said the Inward Monitor. "Why not have let the girl go away where she could be alone—and get over it?"
"Oh, be quiet!" said Lady St. Craye. "I never knew myself so tiresome before. I think I must be going to be ill. My head feels like an ice in an omelette."
Vernon, strolling in much later, found her with eyes closed, leaning back among her flowers as she had lain all that long afternoon.
"How pale you look," he said. "You ought to get away from here."
"Yes," she said, "I suppose I ought. It would be easier for you if you hadn't the awful responsibility of bringing me roses every other day. What beauty-darlings these are!" She dipped her face in the fresh pure whiteness of the ones he had laid on her knee. Their faces felt cold, like the faces of dead people. She shivered.
"Heaven knows what I should do without you to—to bring my—my roses to," he said.
"Do you bring me anything else to-day?" she roused herself to ask. "Any news, for instance?"
"No," he said. "There isn't any news—there never will be. She's gone home—I'm certain of it. Next week I shall go over to England and propose for her formally to her step-father."
"A very proper course!"
It was odd that talking to some one else should make one's head throb like this. And it was so difficult to know what to say. Very odd. It had been much easier to talk to the Inward Monitor.
She made herself say: "And suppose she isn't there?" She thought she said it rather well.
"Well, then there's no harm done."
"He doesn't like you." She was glad she had remembered that.
"He didn't—but the one little word 'marriage,' simply spoken, is a magic spell for taming savage relatives. They'll eat out of your hand after that—at least so I'm told."
It was awful that he should decide to do this—heart-breaking. But it did not seem to be hurting her heart. That felt as though it wasn't there. Could one feel emotion in one's hands and feet? Hers were ice cold—but inside they tingled and glowed, like a worm of fire in a chrysalis of ice. What a silly simile.
"Must you go?" was what she found herself saying. "Suppose she isn't there at all? You'll simply be giving her away—all her secret—and he'll fetch her home."
That at least was quite clearly put.
"I'm certain she is at home," he said. "And I don't see why I am waiting till next week. I'll go to-morrow."
If you are pulling a rose to pieces it is very important to lay the petals in even rows on your lap, especially if the rose be white.
"Eustace," she said, suddenly feeling quite coherent, "I wish you wouldn't go away from Paris just now. I don't believe you'd find her. I have a feeling that she's not far away. I think that is quite sensible. I am not saying it because I—And—I feel very ill, Eustace. I think I am—Oh, I am going, to be ill, very ill, I think! Won't you wait a little? You'll have such years and years to be happy in. I don't want to be ill here in Paris with no one to care."
She was leaning forward, her hands on the arms of her chair, and for the first time that day, he saw her face plainly. He said: "I shall go out now, and wire for your sister."
"Not for worlds! I forbid it. She'd drive me mad. No—but my head's running round like a beetle on a pin. I think you'd better go now. But don't go to-morrow. I mean I think I'll go to sleep. I feel as if I'd tumbled off the Eiffel tower and been caught on a cloud—one side of it's cold and the other's blazing."
He took her hand, felt her pulse. Then he kissed the hand.
"My dear, tired Jasmine Lady," he said, "I'll send in a doctor. And don't worry. I won't go to-morrow. I'll write."
"Oh, very well," she said, "write then,—and it will all come out—about her being here alone. And she'll always hate you. I don't care what you do!"
"I suppose I can write a letter as though—as though I'd not seen her since Long Barton." He inwardly thanked her for that hint.
"A letter written from Paris? That's so likely, isn't it? But do what you like. I don't care what you do."
She was faintly, agreeably surprised to notice that she was speaking the truth. "It's rather pleasant, do you know," she went on dreamily, "when everything that matters suddenly goes flat, and you wonder what on earth you ever worried about. Why do people always talk about cold shivers? I think hot shivers are much more amusing. It's like a skylark singing up close to the sun, and doing the tremolo with its wings. I'm sorry you're going away, though."
"I'm not going away," he said. "I wouldn't leave you when you're ill for all the life's happinesses that ever were. Oh, why can't you cure me? I don't want to want her; I want to want you."
"I'm certain," said Lady St. Craye brightly, "that what you've just been saying's most awfully interesting, but I like to hear things said ever so many times. Then the seventh time you understand everything, and the coldness and the hotness turn into silver and gold and everything is quite beautiful, and I think I am not saying exactly what you expected.—Don't think I don't know that what I say sounds like nonsense. I know that quite well, only I can't stop talking. You know one is like that sometimes. It was like that the night you hit me."
"I? Hit you?"
He was kneeling by her low chair holding her hand, as she lay back talking quickly in low, even tones, her golden eyes shining wonderfully.
"No—you didn't call it hitting. But things aren't always what we call them, are they? You mustn't kiss me now, Eustace. I think I've got some horrid fever—I'm sure I have. Because of course nobody could be bewitched nowadays, and put into a body that feels thick and thin in the wrong places. And my head isn't too big to get through the door.—Of course I know it isn't. It would be funny if it were. I do love funny things.—So do you. I like to hear you laugh. I wish I could say something funny, so as to hear you laugh now."
She was holding his hand very tightly with one of hers. The other held the white roses. All her mind braced itself to a great exertion as the muscles do for a needed effort. She spoke very slowly.
"Listen, Eustace. I am going to be ill. Get a nurse and a doctor and go away. Perhaps it is catching. And if I fall through the floor," she added laughing, "it is so hard to stop!"
"Put your arms round my neck," he said, for she had risen and was swaying like a flame in the wind—the white rose leaves fell in showers.
"I don't think I want to, now," she said, astonished that it should be so.
"Oh, yes, you do!"—He spoke as one speaks to a child. "Put your arms round Eustace's neck,—your own Eustace that's so fond of you."
"Are you?" she said, and her arms fell across his shoulders.
"Of course I am," he said. "Hold tight."
He lifted her and carried her, not quite steadily, for carrying a full-grown woman is not the bagatelle novelists would have us believe it.
He opened her bedroom door, laid her on the white, lacy coverlet of her bed.
"Now," he said, "you are to lie quite still. You've been so good and dear and unselfish. You've always done everything I've asked, even difficult things. This is quite easy. Just lie and think about me till I come back."
He bent over the bed and kissed her gently.
"Ah!" she sighed. There was a flacon on the table by the bed. He expected it to be jasmine. It was lavender water; he drenched her hair and brow and hands.
"That's nice," said she. "I'm not really ill. I think it's nice to be ill. Quite still do you mean, like that?"
She folded her hands, the white roses still clasped. The white bed, the white dress, the white flowers. Horrible!
"Yes," he said firmly, "just like that. I shall be back in five minutes."
He was not gone three. He came back and—till the doctor came, summoned by the concierge—he sat by her, holding her hands, covering her with furs from the wardrobe when she shivered, bathing her wrists with perfumed water when she threw off the furs and spoke of the fire that burned in her secret heart of cold clouds.
When the doctor came he went out by that excellent Irishman's direction and telegraphed for a nurse.
Then he waited in the cool shaded sitting-room, among the flowers. This was where he had hit her—as she said. There on the divan she had cried, leaning her head against his sleeve. Here, half-way to the door, they had kissed each other. No, he would certainly not go to England while she was ill. He felt sufficiently like a murderer already. But he would write. He glanced at her writing-table.
A little pang pricked him, and drove him to the balcony.
"No," he said, "if we are to hit people, at least let us hit them fairly." But all the same he found himself playing with the word-puzzle whose solution was the absolutely right letter to Betty's father, asking her hand in marriage.
"Well," he asked the doctor who closed softly the door of the bedroom and came forward, "is it brain-fever?"
"Holy Ann, no! Brain fever's a fell disease invented by novelists—I never met it in all my experience. The doctors in novels have special advantages. No, it's influenza—pretty severe touch too. She ought to have been in bed days ago. She'll want careful looking after."
"I see," said Vernon. "Any danger?"
"There's always danger, Lord—Saint-Croix isn't it?"
"I have not the honour to be Lady St. Craye's husband," said Vernon equably. "I was merely calling, and she seemed so ill that I took upon myself to—"
"I see—I see. Well, if you don't mind taking on yourself to let her husband know? It's a nasty case. Temperature 104. Perhaps her husband 'ud be as well here as anywhere."
"He's dead," said Vernon.
"Oh!" said the doctor with careful absence of expression. "Get some woman to put her to bed and to stay with her till the nurse comes. She's in a very excitable state. Good afternoon. I'll look in after dinner."
When Vernon had won the concierge to the desired service, had seen the nurse installed, had dined, called for news of Lady St. Craye, learned that she was "toujours très souffrante," he went home, pulled a table into the middle of his large, bare, hot studio, and sat down to write to the Reverend Cecil Underwood.
"I mean to do it," he told himself, "and it can't hurt her my doing it now instead of a month ahead, when she's well again. In fact, it's better for all of us to get it settled one way or another while she's not caring about anything."
So he wrote. And he wrote a great deal, though the letter that at last he signed was quite short:
My Dear Sir:
I have the honour to ask the hand of your daughter in marriage. When you asked me, most properly, my intentions, I told you that I was betrothed to another lady. This is not now the case. And I have found myself wholly unable to forget the impression made upon me last year by Miss Desmond. My income is about £1,700 a year, and increases yearly. I beg to apologise for anything which may have annoyed you in my conduct last year, and to assure you that my esteem and affection for Miss Desmond are lasting and profound, and that, should she do me the honour to accept my proposal, I shall devote my life's efforts to secure her happiness.
I am, my dear Sir, Your obedient servant,
Eustace Vernon.
"That ought to do the trick," he told himself. "Talk of old world courtesy and ceremonial! Anyhow, I shall know whether she's at Long Barton by the time it takes to get an answer. If it's two days, she's there. If it's longer she isn't. He'll send my letter on to her—unless he suppresses it. Your really pious people are so shockingly unscrupulous."
There is nothing so irretrievable as a posted letter. This came home to Vernon as the envelope dropped on the others in the box at the Café du Dóme—came home to him rather forlornly.
Next morning he called with more roses for Lady St. Craye, pinky ones this time.
"Milady was toujours très souffrante. It would be ten days, at the least, before Milady could receive, even a very old friend, like Monsieur."
The letter reached Long Barton between the Guardian and a catalogue of Some Rare Books. The Reverend Cecil read it four times. He was trying to be just. At first he thought he would write "No" and tell Betty years later. But the young man had seen the error of his ways. And £1,700 a year!—
The surprise visit with which the Reverend Cecil had always intended to charm his step-daughter suddenly found its date quite definitely fixed. This could not be written. He must go to the child and break it to her very gently, very tenderly—find out quite delicately and cleverly exactly what her real feelings were. Girls were so shy about those things.
Miss Julia Desmond had wired him from Suez that she would be in Paris next week—had astonishingly asked him to meet her there.
"Paris next Tuesday Gare St. Lazare 6:45. Come and see Betty via Dieppe," had been her odd message.
He had not meant to go—not next Tuesday. He was afraid of Miss Julia Desmond. He would rather have his Lizzie all to himself. But now—
He wrote a cablegram to Miss Julia Desmond: "Care Captain S.S. Urania, Brindisi: Will meet you in Paris." Then he thought that this might seem to the telegraph people not quite nice, so he changed it to: "Going to see Lizzie Tuesday."
The fates that had slept so long were indeed waking up and beginning to take notice of Betty. Destiny, like the most attractive of the porters at the Gare de Lyon, "s'occupait d'elle."
