CHAPTER X.
SEEING LIFE.
The thoughts of the two who loved her were with Betty that night. The aunt, shaken, jolted, enduring much in the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean express thought fondly of her.
"She's a nice little thing. I must take her about a bit," she mused, and even encouraged her fancy to play with the idea of a London season—a thing it had not done for years.
The Reverend Cecil, curtains drawn and lamp alight, paused to think of her even in the midst of his first thorough examination of his newest treasure in Seventeenth Century Tracts, "The Man Mouse baited and trapped for nibbling the margins of Eugenius Philalethes, being an assault on Henry Moore." It was bound up with, "The Second Wash, or the Moore scoured again," and a dozen others. A dumpy octavo, in brown leather, he had found it propping a beer barrel in the next village.
"Dear Lizzie!—I wonder if she will ever care for really important things. There must be treasures upon treasures in those boxes on the French quays that one reads about. But she never would learn to know one type from another."
He studied the fire thoughtfully.
"I wonder if she does understand how much she is to me," he thought. "Those are the things that are better unsaid. At least I always think so when she's here. But all these months—I wonder whether girls like you tosay things, or to leave them to be understood. It is more delicate not to say them, perhaps."
Then his thoughts went back to the other Lizzie, about whom he had never felt these doubts. He had loved her, and had told her so. And she had told him her half of the story in very simple words—and most simply, and without at all "leaving things to be understood" they had planned the future that never was to be. He remembered the day when sitting over the drawing-room fire, and holding her dear hand he had said:
"This is how we shall sit when we are old and gray, dearest." It had seemed so impossibly far-off then.
And she had said:
"I hope we shall die the same day, Cec."
But this had not happened.
And he had said:
"And we shall have such a beautiful life—doing good, and working for God, and bringing up our children in the right way. Oh, Lizzie, it's very wonderful to think of that happiness, isn't it?"
And she had laid her head on his shoulder and whispered:
"I hope we shall have a little girl, dear."
And he had said:
"I shall call her Elizabeth, after my dear wife."
"She must have eyes like yours though."
"She will be exactly like both of us," he had said, and they sat hand in hand, and talked innocently, like two children, of the little child that was never to be.
He had wanted them to put on her tombstone, Lizzie daughter of —— and affianced wife of Cecil Underwood, but her mother had said thattherethere was no marrying or giving in marriage. In his heart the Reverend Cecil had sometimes dared to hope that that text had been misunderstood. To him his Lizzie had always been "as the angels of God in Heaven."
Then came the long broken years, and then the little girl—Elizabeth, his step-child.
The pent-up love of all his life spent itself on her: a love so fond, so tender, so sacred that it seemed only self-respecting to hide it a little from the world by a mask of coldness. And Betty had never seen anything but the mask.
"I think, when I see her, I will tell her all about my Lizzie," he said. "I wonder if she knows what the house is like without her. But of course she doesn't, or she would have asked to come home, long ago. I wonder whether she misses me very much. Madame Gautier is kind, she says; but no stranger can make a home, as love can make it."
Meanwhile Betty dining alone at a restaurant in the Boulevard St. Michel, within a mile of the Serpent, ordered what she called a nice dinner—it was mostly vegetables and sweet things—and ate it with appetite, looking about her. The long mirrors, the waiters were like the ones in London restaurants, but the people who ate there they were different. Everything was much shabbier, yet much gayer. Shopkeeping-looking men were dining with their wives; some of them had a child, napkin under chin, solemnly struggling with a big soup spoon or upturning on its little nose a tumbler of weak red wine and water. There were students—she knew them by their slouched hats and beards a day old—dining by twos and threes and fours. No one took any more notice of Betty than was shewn by a careless glance or two. She was very quietly dressed. Her hat even was rather an unbecoming brown thing. When she had eaten, she ordered coffee, and began to try to think, but thinking was difficult with the loud voices and the laughter, and the clink of glasses and the waiters' hurrying transits. And at the back of her mind was a thought waiting for her to think it. And she was afraid.
So presently she paid her bill, and went out, and found a tram, and rode on the top of it through the lighted streets, on the level of the first floor windows and the brown leaves of the trees in the Boulevards, and went away and away through the heart of Paris; and still all her mind could do nothing but thrust off, with both hands, the thought that was pushing forward towards her thinking. When the tram stopped at its journey's end she did not alight, but paid for, and made, the return journey, and found her feet again in the Boulevard St. Michel.
Of course, she had read her Trilby, and other works dealing with the Latin Quarter. She knew that in that quarter everyone is not respectable, but everyone is kind. It seemed good to her to go to a café, to sit at a marble topped table, and drink—not the strange liqueurs which men drink in books, but homely hot milk, such as some of the other girls there had before them. It would be perfectly simple, as well as interesting, to watch the faces of the students, boys and girls, and when she found a nice girl-face, to speak to it, asking for the address of a respectable hotel.
So she walked up the wide, tree-planted street feeling very Parisian indeed, as she called it the "Boule Miche" to herself. And she stopped at the first Café she came to, which happened to be the Café d'Harcourt.
She did not see its name, and if she had it would naturally not have conveyed any idea to her. The hour was not yet ten, and the Café d'Harcourt was very quiet. There were not a dozen people at the little tables. Most of them were women. It would be easy to ask her little questions, with so few people to stare and wonder if she addressed a stranger.
She sat down, and ordered her hot milk and, with a flutter, awaited it. This was life. And to-morrow she must telegraph to her step-father, and everything would end in the old round of parish duties; all her hopes and dreams would be submerged in the heavy morass of meeting mothers. The thought leapt up.—Betty hid her eyes and would not look at it. Instead, she looked at the other people seated at the tables—the women. They were laughing and talking among themselves. One or two looked at Betty and smiled with frank friendliness. Betty smiled back, but with embarrassment. She had heard that French ladies of rank and fashion would as soon go out without their stockings as without their paint, but she had not supposed that the practice extended to art students. And all these ladies were boldly painted—no mere soupçon of carmine and pearl powder, but good solid masterpieces in body colour, black, white and red. She smiled in answer to their obvious friendliness, but she did not ask them for addresses. A handsome black-browed scowling woman sitting alone frowned at her. She felt quite hurt. Why should anyone want to be unkind?
Men selling flowers, toy rabbits, rattling cardboard balls, offered their wares up and down the row of tables. Betty bought a bunch of fading late roses and thought, with a sudden sentimentality that shocked her, of the monthly rose below the window at home. It always bloomed well up to Christmas. Well, in two days she would see that rose-bush.
The trams rattled down the Boulevard, carriages rolled by. Every now and then one of these would stop, and a couple would alight. And people came on foot. The café was filling up. But still none of the women seemed to Betty exactly the right sort of person to know exactly the right sort of hotel.
Of course she knew from books that Hotels keep open all night,—but she did not happen to have read any book which told of the reluctance of respectable hotels to receive young women without luggage, late in the evening. So it seemed to her that there was plenty of time.
A blonde girl with jet black brows and eyes like big black beads was leaning her elbows on her table and talking to her companions, two tourist-looking Germans in loud checks. They kept glancing at Betty, and it made her nervous to know that they were talking about her. At last her eyes met the eyes of the girl, who smiled at her and made a little gesture of invitation to her, to come and sit at their table. Betty out of sheer embarrassment might have gone, but just at that moment the handsome scowling woman rose, rustled quickly to Betty, knocking over a chair in her passage, held out a hand, and said in excellent English:
"How do you do?"
Betty gave her hand, but "I don't remember you," said she.
"May I join you?" said the woman sitting down. She wore black and white and red, and she was frightfully smart, Betty thought. She glanced at the others—the tourists and the blonde; they were no longer looking at her.
"Look here," said the woman, speaking low, "I don't know you from Adam, of course, but I know you're a decent girl. For God's sake go home to your friends! I don't know what they're about to let you out alone like this."
"I'm alone in Paris just now," said Betty.
"Good God in Heaven, you little fool! Get back to your lodging. You've no business here."
"I've as much business as anyone else," said Betty. "I'm an artist, too, and I want to see life."
"You've not seen much yet," said the woman with a laugh that Betty hated to hear. "Have you been brought up in a convent? You an artist! Look at all of us! Do you need to be told whatourtrade is?"
"Don't," said Betty; "oh, don't."
"Go home," said the woman, "and say your prayers—I suppose youdosay your prayers?—and thank God that it isn't your trade too."
"I don't know what you mean," said Betty.
"Well then, go home and read your Bible. That'll tell you the sort of woman it is that stands about the corners of streets, or sits at the Café d'Harcourt. What are your people about?"
"My father's in England," said Betty; "he's a clergyman."
"I generally say mine was," said the other, "but I won't to you, because you'd believe me. My father was church organist, though. And the Vicarage people were rather fond of me. I used to do a lot of Parish work." She laughed again.
Betty laid a hand on the other woman's.
"Couldn't you go home to your father—or—something?" she asked feebly.
"He's cursed me forever—Put it all down in black and white—a regular commination service. It's you that have got to go home, and do itnow, too." She shook off Betty's hand and waved her own to a man who was passing.
"Here, Mr. Temple—"
The man halted, hesitated and came up to them.
"Look here," said the black-browed woman, "look what a pretty flower I've found,—and here of all places!"
She indicated Betty by a look. The man looked too, and took the third chair at their table. Betty wished that the ground might open and cover her, but the Boule Miche asphalt is solid. The new-comer was tall and broad-shouldered, with a handsome, serious, boyish face, and fair hair.
"She won't listen to me—"
"Oh, I did!" Betty put in reproachfully.
"You talk to her like a father. Tell her where naughty little girls go who stay out late at the Café d'Harcourt—fire and brimstone, you know. She'll understand, she's a clergyman's daughter."
"I really do think you'd better go home," said the new-comer to Betty with gentle politeness.
"I would, directly," said Betty, almost in tears, "but—the fact is I haven't settled on a hotel, and I came to this café. I thought I could ask one of these art students to tell me a good hotel, but—so that's how it is."
"I should think not," Temple answered the hiatus. Then he looked at the black-browed, scowling woman, and his look was very kind.
"Nini and her German swine were beginning to be amiable," said the woman in an aside which Betty did not hear. "For Christ's sake take the child away, and put her safely for the night somewhere, if you have to ring up a Mother Superior or a Governesses' Aid Society."
"Right. I will." He turned to Betty.
"Will you allow me," he said, "to find a carriage for you, and see you to a hotel?"
"Thank you," said Betty.
He went out to the curbstone and scanned the road for a passing carriage.
"Look here," said the black-browed woman, turning suddenly on Betty; "I daresay you'll think it's not my place to speak—oh, if you don't think so you will some day, when you're grown up,—but look here. I'm not chaffing. It's deadly earnest. You be good. See? There's nothing else that's any good really."
"Yes," said Betty, "I know. If you're not good you won't be happy."
"There you go," the other answered almost fiercely; "it's always the way. Everyone says it—copybooks and Bible and everything—and no one believes it till they've tried the other way, and then it's no use believing anything."
"Oh, yes, it is," said Betty comfortingly, "and you're so kind. I don't know how to thank you. Being kindisbeing good too, isn't it?"
"Well, you aren't always a devil, even if you are in hell. I wish I could make you understand all the things I didn't understand when I was like you. But nobody can. That's part of the hell. And you don't even understand half I'm saying."
"I think I do," said Betty.
"Keep straight," the other said earnestly; "never mind how dull it is. I used to think it must be dull in Heaven. God knows it's dull in the other place! Look, he's got a carriage. You can trust him just for once, but as a rule I'd say 'Don't you trust any of them—they're all of a piece.' Good-bye; you're a nice little thing."
"Good-bye," said Betty; "oh, good-bye! Youarekind, and good! People can't all be good the same way," she added, vaguely and seeking to comfort.
"Women can," said the other, "don't you make any mistake. Good-bye."
She watched the carriage drive away, and turned to meet the spiteful chaff of Nini and her German friends.
"Now," said Mr. Temple, as soon as the wheels began to revolve, "perhaps you will tell me how you come to be out in Paris alone at this hour."
Betty stared at him coldly.
"I shall be greatly obliged if you can recommend me a good hotel," she said.
"I don't even know your name," said he.
"No," she answered briefly.
"I cannot advise you unless you will trust me a little," he said gently.
"You are very kind,—but I have not yet asked for anyone's advice."
"I am sorry if I have offended you," he said, "but I only wish to be of service to you."
2w_coldly.jpg (78K)
2w_coldly.jpg (78K)
"Thank you very much," said Betty: "the only service I want is the name of a good hotel."
"You are unwise to refuse my help," he said. "The place where I found you shews that you are not to be trusted about alone."
"Look here," said Betty, speaking very fast, "I dare say you mean well, but it isn't your business. The lady I was speaking to—"
"That just shews," he said.
"She was very kind, and I like her. But I don't intend to be interfered with by any strangers, however well they mean."
He laughed for the first time, and she liked him better when she had heard the note of his laughter.
"Please forgive me," he said. "You are quite right. Miss Conway is very kind. And I really do want to help you, and I don't want to be impertinent. May I speak plainly?"
"Of course."
"Well the Café d'Harcourt is not a place for a respectable girl to go to."
"I gathered that," she answered quietly. "I won't go there again."
"Have you quarreled with your friends?" he persisted; "have you run away?"
"No," said Betty, and on a sudden inspiration, added: "I'm very, very tired. You can ask me any questions you like in the morning. Now: will you please tell the man where to go?"
The dismissal was unanswerable.
He took out his card-case and scribbled on a card.
"Where is your luggage?" he asked.
"Not here," she said briefly.
"I thought not," he smiled again. "I am discerning, am I not? Well, perhaps you didn't know that respectable hotels prefer travellers who have luggage. But they know me at this place. I have said you are my cousin," he added apologetically.
He stopped the carriage. "Hôtel de l'Unicorne," he told the driver and stood bareheaded till she was out of sight.
The Thought came out and said: "There will be an end of Me if you see that well-meaning person again." Betty would not face the Thought, but she was roused to protect it.
She stood up and touched the coachman on the arm.
"Go back to the Cafe d'Harcourt," she said. "I have forgotten something."
That was why, when Temple called, very early, at the Hôtel de l'Unicorne he heard that his cousin had not arrived there the night before—Had not, indeed, arrived at all.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"It's a pity," he said. "Certainly she had run away from home. I suppose I frightened her. I was always a clumsy brute with women."
CHAPTER XI.
THE THOUGHT.
The dark-haired woman was still ably answering the chaff of Nini and the Germans. And her face was not the face she had shewn to Betty. Betty came quietly behind her and touched her shoulder. She leapt in her chair and turned white under the rouge.
"What the devil!—You shouldn't do that!" she said roughly; "You frightened me out of my wits."
"I'm so sorry," said Betty, who was pale too. "Come away, won't you? I want to talk to you."
"Your little friend is charming," said one of the men in thick German-French. "May I order for her a bock or a cerises?"
"Do come," she urged.
"Let's walk," she said. "What's the matter? Where's young Temple? Don't tell me he's like all the others."
"He meant to be kind," said Betty, "but he asked a lot of questions, and I don't want to know him. I like you better. Isn't there anywhere we can be quiet, and talk? I'm all alone here in Paris, and I do want help. And I'd rather you'd help me than anyone else. Can't I come home with you?"
"No you can't."
"Well then, will you come with me?—not to the hotel he told me of, but to some other—you must know of one."
"What will you do if I don't?"
"I don't know," said Betty very forlornly, "but youwill, won't you. You don't know how tired I am. Come with me, and then in the morning we can talk. Do—do."
The other woman took some thirty or forty steps in silence. Then she asked abruptly:
"Have you plenty of money?"
"Yes, lots."
"And you're an artist?"
"Yes—at least I'm a student."
Again the woman reflected. At last she shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "Set a thief to catch a thief," she said. "I shall make a dragon of a chaperon, I warn you. Yes, I'll come, just for this one night, but you'll have to pay the hotel bill."
"Of course," said Betty.
"Thisisan adventure! Where's your luggage?"
"It's at the station, but I want you to promise not to tell that Temple man a word about me. I don't want to see him again. Promise."
"Queer child. But I'll promise. Now look here: if I go into a thing at all I go into it heart and soul; so let's do the thing properly. We must have some luggage. I've got an old portmanteau knocking about. Will you wait for me somewhere while I get it?"
"I'd rather not," said Betty, remembering the Germans and Nini.
"Well then,—there'd be no harm for a few minutes. You can come with me. This is really rather a lark!"
Five minutes' walking brought the two to a dark house. The woman rang a bell; a latch clicked and a big door swung open. She grasped Betty's hand.
"Don't say a word," she said, and pulled her through.
It was very dark.
The other woman called out a name as they passed the door of the concierge, a name that was not Conway, and her hand pulled Betty up flight after flight of steep stairs. On the fifth floor she opened a door with a key, and left Betty standing at the threshold till she had lighted a lamp.
Then "Come in," she said, and shut the door and bolted it.
The room was small and smelt of white rose scent; the looking-glass had a lace drapery fastened up with crushed red roses; and there were voluminous lace and stuff curtains to bed and window.
"Sit down," said the hostess. She took off her hat and pulled the scarlet flowers from it. She washed her face till it shewed no rouge and no powder, and the brown of lashes and brows was free from the black water-paint. She raked under the bed with a faded sunshade till she found an old brown portmanteau. Her smart black and white dress was changed for a black one, of a mode passée these three years. A gray chequered golf cape and the dulled hat completed the transformation.
"How nice you look," said Betty.
The other bundled some linen and brushes into the portmanteau.
"The poor old Gladstone's very thin still," she said, and folded skirts; "we must plump it out somehow."
When the portmanteau was filled and strapped, they carried it down between them, in the dark, and got it out on to the pavement.
"I am Miss Conway now," said the woman, "and we will drive to the Hotel de Lille. I went there one Easter with my father."
With the change in her dress a change had come over Miss Conway's voice.
At the Hotel de Lille it was she who ordered the two rooms, communicating, for herself and her cousin, explained where the rest of the luggage was, and gave orders for the morning chocolate.
"This is very jolly," said Betty, when they were alone. "It's like an elopement."
"Exactly," said Miss Conway. "Good night."
"It's rather like a dream, though. I shan't wake up and find you gone, shall I?" Betty asked anxiously.
"No, no. We've all your affairs to settle in the morning."
"And yours?"
"Mine were settled long ago. Oh, I forgot—I'm Miss Conway, at the Hotel de Lille. Yes, we'll settle my affairs in the morning, too. Good night, little girl."
"Good night, Miss Conway."
"They call me Lotty."
"My name's Betty and—look here, I can't wait till the morning." Betty clasped her hands, and seemed to be holding her courage between them. "I've come to Paris to study art, and I want you to come and live with me. I know you'd like it, and I've got heaps of money—will you?"
She spoke quickly and softly, and her face was flushed and her eyes bright.
There was a pause.
"You silly little duffer—you silly dear little duffer."
The other woman had turned away and was fingering the chains of an ormolu candlestick on the mantelpiece.
Betty put an arm over her shoulders.
"Look here," she said, "I'm not such a duffer as you think. I know people do dreadful things—but they needn't go on doing them, need they?"
"Yes, they need," said the other; "that's just it."
Her fingers were still twisting the bronze chains.
"And the women you talked about—in the Bible—they weren't kind and good, like you; they were just only horrid and not anything else. You toldmeto be good. Won't you let me help you? Oh, it does seem such cheek of me, but I never knew anyone before who—I don't know how to say it. But I am so sorry, and I want you to be good, just as much as you want me to. Dear, dear Lotty!"
"My name's Paula."
"Paula dear, I wish I wasn't so stupid, but I know it's not your fault, and I know you aren't like that woman with the Germans."
"I should hope not indeed," Paula was roused to flash back; "dirty little French gutter-cat."
"I've never been a bit of good to anyone," said Betty, adding her other arm and making a necklace of the two round Paula's neck, "except to Parishioners perhaps. Do let me be a bit of good to you. Don't you think I could?"
"You dear little fool!" said Paula gruffly.
"Yes, but say yes—you must! I know you want to. I've got lots of money. Kiss me, Paula."
"I won't!—Don't kiss me!—I won't have it! Go away," said the woman, clinging to Betty and returning her kisses.
"Don't cry," said Betty gently. "We shall be ever so happy. You'll see. Good night, Paula. Do you know I've never had a friend—a girl-friend, I mean?"
"For God's sake hold your tongue, and go to bed! Good night."
Betty, alone, faced at last, and for the first time, The Thought. But it had changed its dress when Miss Conway changed hers. It was no longer a Thought: it was a Resolution.
Twin-born with her plan for saving her new friend was the plan for a life that should not be life at Long Barton.
All the evening she had refused to face The Thought. But it had been shaping itself to something more definite than thought. As a Resolution, a Plan, it now unrolled itself before her. She sat in the stiff arm-chair looking straight in front of her, and she saw what she meant to do. The Thought had been wise not to insist too much on recognition. Earlier in the evening it would have seemed merely a selfish temptation. Now it was an opportunity for a good and noble act. And Betty had always wanted so much to be noble and good.
Here she was in Paris, alone. Her aunt, train-borne, was every moment further and further away. As for her step-father:
"I hate him," said Betty, "and he hates me. He only let me come to get rid of me. And what good could I do at Long Barton compared with what I can do here? Any one can do Parish work. I've got the money Aunt left for Madame Gautier. Perhaps it's stealing. But is it? The money was meant to pay to keep me in Paris to study Art. And it's not as if I were staying altogether for selfish reasons—there's Paula. I'm sure she has really a noble nature. And it's not as if I were staying because He is in Paris. Of course, that would bereally wrong. But he said he was going to Vienna. I suppose his uncle delayed him, but he'll certainly go. I'm sure it's right. I've learned a lot since I left home. I'm not a child now. I'm a woman, and I must do what I think is right. You know I must, mustn't I?"
She appealed to the Inward Monitor, but it refused to be propitiated.
"It only seems not quite right because it's so unusual," she went on; "that's because I've never been anywhere or done anything. After all, it's my own life, and I have a right to live it as I like. My step-father has never written to Madame Gautier all these months. He won't now. It's only to tell him she has changed her address—he only writes to me on Sunday nights. There's just time. And I'll keep the money, and when Aunt comes back I'll tell her everything. She'll understand."
"Do you think so?" said the Inward Monitor.
"Any way," said Betty, putting her foot down on the Inward Monitor, "I'm going to do it. If it's only for Paula's sake. We'll take rooms, and I'll go to a Studio, and work hard; and I won't make friends with gentlemen I don't know, or anything silly, so there," she added defiantly. "Auntie left the money for me to study in Paris. If I tell my step-father that Madame Gautier is dead, he'll just fetch me home, and what'll become of Paula then?"
Thus and thus, ringing the changes on resolve and explanation, her thoughts ran. A clock chimed midnight.
"Is it possible," she asked herself, "that it's not twelve hours since I was at the Hotel Bête—talking to Him? Well, I shall never see him again, I suppose. How odd that I don't feel as if I cared whether I did or not. I suppose what I felt about him wasn't real. It all seems so silly now. Paula is real, and all that I mean to do for her is real. He isn't."
She prayed that night as usual, but her mind was made up, and she prayed outside a closed door.
Next morning, when her chocolate came up, she carried it into the next room, and, sitting on the edge of her new friend's bed, breakfasted there.
Paula seemed dazed when she first woke, but soon she was smiling and listening to Betty's plans.
"How young you look," said Betty, "almost as young as me."
"I'm twenty-five."
"You don't look it—with your hair in those pretty plaits, and your nightie. You do have lovely nightgowns."
"I'll get up now," said Paula. "Look out—I nearly upset the tray."
Betty had carefully put away certain facts and labelled them: "Not to be told to anyone, even Paula." No one was to know anything about Vernon. "There is nothing to know really," she told herself. No one was to know that she was alone in Paris without the knowledge of her relations. Lots of girls came to Paris alone to study art. She was just one of these.
She found the lying wonderfully easy. It did not bring with it, either, any of the shame that lying should bring, but rather a sense of triumphant achievement, as from a difficult part played excellently.
She paid the hotel bill, and then the search for rooms began.
"We must be very economical, you know," she said, "but you won't mind that, will you? I think it will be rather fun."
"It would be awful fun," said the other. "You'll go and work at the studio, and when you come home after your work I shall have cooked the déjeûner, and we shall have it together on a little table with a nice white cloth and a bunch of flowers on it."
"Yes; and in the evening we'll go out, to concerts and things, and ride on the tops of trams. And on Sundays—what does one do on Sundays?"
"I suppose one goes to church," said Paula.
"Oh, I think not when we're working so hard all the week. We'll go into the country."
"We can take the river steamer and go to St. Cloud, or go out on the tram to Clamart—the woods there are just exactly like the woods at home. What part of England do you live in?"
"Kent," said Betty.
"My home's in Devonshire," said Paula.
It was a hard day: so many stairs to climb, so many apartments to see! And all of them either quite beyond Betty's means, or else little stuffy places, filled to choking point with the kind of furniture no one could bear to live with, and with no light, and no outlook except a blank wall a yard or two from the window.
They kept to the Montparnasse quarter, for there, Paula said, were the best ateliers for Betty. They found a little restaurant, where only art students ate, and where one could breakfast royally for about a shilling. Betty looked with interest at the faces of the students, and wondered whether she should ever know any of them. Some of them looked interesting. A few were English, and fully half American.
Then the weary hunt for rooms began again.
It was five o'clock before aconcierge, unexpected amiablein face of their refusal of her rooms, asked whether they had tried Madame Bianchi's—Madame Bianchi where the atelier was, and the students' meetings on Sunday evenings,—Number 57 Boulevard Montparnasse.
They tried it. One passes through an archway into a yard where the machinery, of a great laundry pulses half the week, up some wide wooden stairs—shallow, easy stairs—and on the first floor are the two rooms. Betty drew a long breath when she saw them. They were lofty, they were airy, they were light. There was not much furniture, but what there was was good—old carved armoires, solid divans and—joy of joys—in each room a carved oak, Seventeenth Century mantelpiece eight feet high and four feet deep.
"Imusthave these rooms!" Betty whispered. "Oh, I could make them so pretty!"
The rent of the rooms was almost twice as much as the sum they fixed on, and Paula murmured caution.
"Its no use," said Betty. "We'll live on bread and water if you like, but we'll live on ithere."
And she took the rooms.
"I'm sure we've done right," she said as they drove off to fetch her boxes: "the rooms will be like a home, you see if they aren't. And there's a piano too. And Madame Bianchi, isn't she a darling; Isn't she pretty and sweet and nice?"
"Yes," said Paula thoughtfully; "it certainly is something that you've got rooms in the house of a woman like that."
"And that ducky little kitchen! Oh, we shall have such fun, cooking our own meals! You shall get the déjeûner but I'll cook the dinner while you lie on the sofa and read novels 'like a real lady.'"
"Don't use that expression—I hate it," said Paula sharply. "But the rooms are lovely, aren't they?"
"Yes, it's a good place for you to be in—I'm sure of that," said the other, musing again.
When the boxes were unpacked, and Betty had pinned up a few prints and photographs and sketches and arranged some bright coloured Liberty scarves to cover the walls' more obvious defects—left by the removal of the last tenant's decorations—when flowers were on table and piano, the curtains drawn and the lamps lighted, the room did, indeed, look "like a home."
"We'll have dinner out to-night," said Paula, "and to-morrow we'll go marketing, and find you a studio to work at."
"Why not here?"
"That's an idea. Have you a lace collar you can lend me? This is not fit to be seen."
Betty pinned the collar on her friend.
"I believe you get prettier every minute," she said. "I must just write home and give them my address."
She fetched her embroidered blotting-book.
"It reminds one of bazaars," said Miss Conway.
57 Boulevard Montparnasse.
My dear Father:
This is our new address. Madame Gautier's tenant wanted to keep on her flat in the Rue de Vaugirard, so she has taken this one which is larger and very convenient, as it is close to many of the best studios. I think I shall like it very much. It is not decided yet where I am to study, but there is an Atelier in the House for ladies only, and I think it will be there, so that I shall not have to go out to my lessons. I will write again as soon as we are more settled. We only moved in late this afternoon, so there is a lot to do. I hope you are quite well, and that everything is going on well in the Parish. I will certainly send some sketches for the Christmas sale. Madame Gautier does not wish me to go home for Christmas; she thinks it would interrupt my work too much. There is a new girl, a Miss Conway. I like her very much. With love,
Yours affectionately,
E. Desmond.
She was glad when that letter was written. It is harder to lie in writing than in speech, and the use of the dead woman's name made her shiver.
"But I won't do things by halves," she said.
"What's this?" Paula asked sharply. She had stopped in front of one of Betty's water colours.
"That? Oh, I did it ages ago—before I learned anything. Don't look at it."
"Butwhatis it?"
"Oh, only our house at home."
"I wonder," said Paula, "why all English Vicarages are exactly alike."
"It's a Rectory," said Betty absently.
"That ought to make a difference, but it doesn't. I haven't seen an English garden for four years."
"Four years is a long time," said Betty.
"You don't know how long," said the other. "And the garden's been going on just the same all the time. It seems odd, doesn't it? Those hollyhocks—the ones at the Vicarage at home are just like them. Come, let's go to dinner!"
CHAPTER XII.
THE RESCUE.
When Vernon had read Betty's letter—and holding it up to the light he was able to read the scratched-out words almost as easily as the others—he decided that he might as well know where she worked, and one day, after he had called on Lady St. Craye, he found himself walking along the Rue de Vaugirard. Lady St. Craye was charming. And she had been quite right when she had said that he would find a special charm in the companionship of one in whose heart his past love-making seemed to have planted no thorns. Yet her charm, by its very nature—its finished elegance, its conscious authority—made him think with the more interest of the unformed, immature grace of the other woman—Betty, in whose heart he had not had the chance to plant either thorns or roses.
How could he find out? Concierges are venal, but Vernon disliked base instruments. He would act boldly. It was always the best way. He would ask to see this Madame Gautier—if Betty were present he must take his chance. It would be interesting to see whether she would commit herself to his plot by not recognizing him. If she did that—Yet he hoped she wouldn't. If she did recognize him he would say that it was through Miss Desmond's relatives that he had heard of Madame Gautier. Betty could not contradict him. He would invent a niece whose parents wished to place her with Madame. Then he could ask as many questions as he liked, about hours and studios, and all the details of the life Betty led.
It was a simple straight-forward design, and one that carried success in its pocket. No one could suspect anything.
Yet at the very first step suspicion, or what looked like it, stared at him from the eyes of the concierge when he asked for Madame Gautier.
"Monsieur is not of the friends of Madame?" she asked curiously.
He knew better than to resent the curiosity. He explained that he desired to see Madame on business.
"You will see her never," the woman said dramatically; "she sees no one any more."
"Is it that she is ill?"
"It is that she is dead,—and the dead do not receive, Monsieur." She laughed, and told the tale of death circumstantially, with grim relish of detail.
"And the young ladies—they have returned to their parents?"
"Ah, it is in the young ladies that Monsieur interests himself? But yes. Madame's brother, who is in the Commerce of Nantes, he restored instantly the young ladies to their friends. One was already with her aunt."
Vernon had money ready in his hand.
"What was her name, Madame—the young lady with the aunt?"
"But I know not, Monsieur. She was a new young lady, who had been with Madame at her Villa—I have not seen her. At the time of the regrettable accident she was with her aunt, and doubtless remains there. Thank you, Monsieur. That is all I know."
"Thank you, Madame. I am desolated to have disturbed you. Good day."
And Vernon was in the street again.
So Betty had never come to the Rue Vaugirard! The aunt must somehow have heard the news—perhaps she had called on the way to the train—she had returned to the Bête and Betty now was Heaven alone knew where. Perhaps at Long Barton. Perhaps in Paris, with some other dragon.
Vernon for a day or two made a point of being near when the studios—Julien's, Carlorossi's, Delacluse's, disgorged their students. He did not see Betty, because she was not studying at any of these places, but at the Atelier Bianchi, of which he never thought. So he shrugged his shoulders, and dined again with Lady St. Craye, and began to have leisure to analyse the emotions with which she inspired him. He had not believed that he could be so attracted by a woman with whom he had played the entire comedy, from first glance to last tear—from meeting hands to severed hearts. Yet attracted he was, and strongly. He experienced a sort of resentment, a feeling that she had kept something from him, that she had reserves of which he knew nothing, that he, who in his blind complacency had imagined himself to have sucked the orange and thrown away the skin, had really, in point of fact, had a strange lovely fruit snatched from him before his blunt teeth had done more than nibble at its seemingly commonplace rind.
In the old days she had reared barriers of reserve, walls of reticence over which he could see so easily; now she posed as having no reserves, and he seemed to himself to be following her through a darkling wood, where the branches flew back and hit him in the face so that he could not see the path.
"You know," she said, "what makes it so delightful to talk to you is that I can say exactly what I like. You won't expect me to be clever, or shy, or any of those tiresome things. We can be perfectly frank with each other. And that's such a relief, isn't it?"
"I wonder whether it would be—supposing it could be?" said he.
They were driving in the Bois, among the autumn tinted trees where the pale mist wreaths wandered like ghosts in the late afternoon.
"Of course it could be; it is," she said, opening her eyes at him under the brim of her marvel of a hat: "at least it is for simple folk like me. Why don't you wear a window in your breast as I do?"
She laid her perfectly gloved hand on her sables.
"Is there really a window? Can one see into your heart?"
"Onecan—not the rest. Just the one from whom one feareth nothing, expecteth nothing, hopeth nothing. That's out of the Bible, isn't it?"
"It's near enough," said he. "Of course, to you it's a new sensation to have the window in your breast. Whereas I, from innocent childhood to earnest manhood, have ever been open as the day."
"Yes," she said, "you were always transparent enough. But one is so blind when one is in love."
Her calm references to the past always piqued him.
"I don't think Love is so blind as he's painted," he said: "always as soon as I begin to be in love with people I begin to see their faults."
"You may be transparent, but you haven't a good mirror," she laughed; "you don't see yourself as you are. It isn't when you begin to love people that you see their faults, is it? It's really when they begin to love you."
"But I never begin to love people till they begin to love me. I'm too modest."
"And I never love people after they've done loving me. I'm too—"
"Too what?"
"Too something—forgetful, is it? I mean it takes two to make a quarrel, and it certainly takes two to make a love affair."
"And what about all the broken hearts?"
"What broken hearts?"
"The ones you find in the poets and the story books."
"That's just where you do find them. Nowhere else.—Now, honestly, has your heart ever been broken?"
"Not yet: so be careful how you play with it. You don't often find such a perfect specimen—absolutely not a crack or a chip."
"The pitcher shouldn't crow too loud—can pitchers crow? They have ears, of course, but only the little pitchers. The ones that go to the well should go in modest silence."
"Dear Lady," he said almost impatiently, "what is there about me that drives my friends to stick up danger boards all along my path? 'This way to Destruction!' You all label them. I am always being solemnly warned that I shall get my heart broken one of these days, if I don't look out."
"I wish you wouldn't call me dear Lady," she said; "it's not the mode any more now."
"What may I call you?" he had to ask, turning to look in her eyes.
"You needn't call me anything. I hate being called names. That's a pretty girl—not the dark one, the one with the fur hat."
He turned to look.
Two girls were walking briskly under the falling leaves. And the one with the fur hat was Betty. But it was at the other that he gazed even as he returned Betty's prim little bow. He even turned a little as the carriage passed, to look more intently at the tall figure in shabby black whose arm Betty held.
"Well?" said Lady St. Craye, breaking the silence that followed.
"Well?" said he, rousing himself, but too late. "You were saying I might call you—"
"It's not what I was saying—it's what you were looking. Who is the girl, and why don't you approve of her companion?"
"Who says I don't wear a window in my breast?" he laughed. "The girl's a little country girl I knew in England—I didn't know she was in Paris. And I thought I knew the woman, too, but that's impossible: it's only a likeness."
"One nice thing about me is that I never ask impertinent questions—or hardly ever. That one slipped out and I withdraw it. I don't want to know anything about anything and I'm sorry I spoke. I see, of course, that she is a little country girl you knew in England, and that you are not at all interested in her. How fast the leaves fall now, don't they?"
"No question of your's could be im—could be anything but flattering. But since youareinterested—"
"Not at all," she said politely.
"Oh, but do be interested," he urged, intent on checking her inconvenient interest, "because, really, it is rather interesting when you come to think of it. I was painting my big picture—I wish you'd come and see it, by the way. Will you some day, and have tea in my studio?"
"I should love it. When shall I come?"
"Whenever you will."
He wished she would ask another question about Betty, but she wouldn't. He had to go on, a little awkwardly.
"Well, I only knew them for a week—her and her aunt and her father—and she's a nice, quiet little thing. The father's a parson—all of them are all that there is of most respectable."
She listened but she did not speak.
"And I was rather surprised to see her here. And for the moment I thought the woman with her was—well, the last kind of woman who could have been with her, don't you know."
"I see," said Lady St. Craye. "Well, it's fortunate that the dark woman isn't that kind of woman. No doubt you'll be seeing your little friend. You might ask her to tea when I come to see your picture."
"I wish I could." Vernon's manner was never so frank as when he was most on his guard. "She'd love to know you. I wish I could ask them to tea, but I don't know them well enough. And their address I don't know at all. It's a pity; she's a nice little thing."
It was beautifully done. Lady St. Craye inwardly applauded Vernon's acting, and none the less that her own part had grown strangely difficult. She was suddenly conscious of a longing to be alone—to let her face go. She gave herself a moment's pause, caught at her fine courage and said:
"Yes, it is a pity. However, I daresay it's safer for her that you can't ask her to tea. Sheisa nice little thing, and she might fall in love with you, and then, your modesty appeased, you might follow suit! Isn't it annoying when one can't pick up the thread of a conversation? All the time you've been talking I've been wondering what we were talking about before I pointed out the fur hat to you. And I nearly remember, and I can't quite. That is always so worrying, isn't it?"
Her acting was as good as his. And his perception at the moment less clear than hers.
He gave a breath of relief. It would never have done to have Lady St. Craye spying on him and Betty; and now he knew that she was in Paris he knew too that it would be "him and Betty."
"We were talking," he said carefully, "about calling names."
"Oh, thank you!—When one can't remember those silly little things it's like wanting to sneeze and not being able to, isn't it? But we must turn back, or I shall be late for dinner, and I daren't think of the names my hostess will call me then. She has a vocabulary, you know." She named a name and Vernon thought it was he who kept the talk busy among acquaintances till the moment for parting. Lady St. Craye knew that it was she.
The moment Betty had bowed to Mr. Vernon she turned her head in answer to the pressure on her arm.
"Who's that?" her friend asked.
Betty named him, and in a voice genuinely unconcerned.
"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 thecachet" 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.