The Incomplete Amorist Part 31

"What a man really likes is to be saint with the reputation of being a bit of a devil."

"And a woman likes, you think, to be a bit of a devil, with the reputation of a saint?"

"Or a bit of a saint with a reputation that rhymes to the reality.

It's the reputation that's important, isn't it?"

"Isn't the inward truth the really important thing?" said Temple rather heavily.

Lady St. Craye looked at him in such a way as to make him understand that she understood. Vernon looked at them both, and turning to the window looked out on his admired roofs.

"Yes," she said very softly, "but one doesn't talk about that, any more than one does of one's prayers or one's love affairs."

The plural vexed Temple, and he told himself how unreasonable the vexation was.

Lady St. Craye turned her charming head to look at him, to look at Vernon. One had been in love with her. The other might be. There is in the world no better company than this.

Temple, always deeply uninterested in women's clothes, was noting the long, firm folds of her skirt. Vernon had turned from the window to approve the loving closeness of those violets against her hair. Lady St. Craye in her graceful att.i.tude of conscious unconsciousness was the focus of their eyes.

"Here comes a millionaire, to buy your pictures," she said suddenly,--"no--a millionairess, by the sound of her high-heeled shoes. How beautiful are the feet--"

The men had heard nothing, but following hard on her words came the sound of footsteps along the little corridor, an agitated knock on the door.

Vernon opened the door--to Betty.

"Oh--come in," he said cordially, and his pause of absolute astonishment was brief as an eye-flash. "This is delightful--"

And as she pa.s.sed into the room he caught her eyes and, looking a warning, said: "I am so glad to see you. I began to be afraid you wouldn't be able to come."

"I saw you in the Bois the other day," said Lady St. Craye, "and I have been wanting to know you ever since."

"You are very kind," said Betty. Her hat was on one side, her hair was very untidy, and it was not a becoming untidiness either. She had no gloves, and a bit of the velvet binding of her skirt was loose. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying. There was a black smudge on her cheek.

"Take this chair," said Vernon, and moved a comfortable one with its back to the light.

"Temple--let me present you to Miss Desmond."

Temple bowed, with no flicker of recognition visible in his face. But Betty, flus.h.i.+ng scarlet, said:

"Mr. Temple and I have met before."

There was the tiniest pause. Then Temple said: "I am so glad to meet you again. I thought you had perhaps left Paris."

"Let me give you some tea," said Vernon.

Tea was made for her,--and conversation. She drank the tea, but she seemed not to know what to do with the conversation.

It fluttered, aimlessly, like a bird with a broken wing. Lady St.

Craye did her best, but talk is not easy when each one of a party has its own secret pre-occupying interest, and an overlapping interest in the preoccupation of the others. The air was too electric.

Lady St. Craye had it on her lips that she must go--when Betty rose suddenly.

"Good-bye," she said generally, looking round with miserable eyes that tried to look merely polite.

"Must you go?" asked Vernon, furious with the complicated emotions that, warring in him, left him just as helpless as anyone else.

"I do hope we shall meet again," said Lady St. Craye.

"Mayn't I see you home?" asked Temple unexpectedly, even to himself.

Betty's "No, thank you," was most definite.

She went. Vernon had to let her go. He had guests. He could not leave them. He had lost wholly his ordinary control of circ.u.mstances. All through the petrifying awkwardness of the late talk he had been seeking an excuse to go with Betty--to find out what was the matter.

He closed the door and came back. There was no help for it.

But there was help. Lady St. Craye gave it. She rose as Vernon came back.

"Quick!" she said, "Shall we go? Hadn't you better bring her back here? Go after her at once."

"You're an angel," said Vernon. "No, don't go. Temple, look after Lady St. Craye. If you'll not think me rude?--Miss Desmond is in trouble, I'm afraid."

"Of course she is--poor little thing. Oh, Mr. Vernon, do run! She looks quite despairing. There's your hat. Go--go!"

The door banged behind her.

The other two, left alone, looked at each other.

"I wonder--" said she.

"Yes," said he, "it's certainly mysterious."

"We ought to have gone at once," said she. "I should have done, of course, only Mr. Vernon so elaborately explained that he expected her.

One had to play up. And so she's a friend of yours?"

"She's not a friend of mine," said Temple rather ruefully, "and I didn't know Vernon was a friend of hers. You saw that she wouldn't have my company at any price."

"Mr. Vernon's a friend of her people, I believe. We saw her the other day in the Bois, and he told me he knew them in England. Did you know them there too? Poor child, what a woe-begone little face it was!"

"No, not in England. I met her in Paris about a fortnight ago, but she didn't like me, from the first, and our acquaintance broke off short."

There was a silence. Lady St. Craye perceived a ring-fence of reticence round the subject that interested her, and knew that she had no art strong enough to break it down.

She spoke again suddenly:

"Do you know you're not a bit the kind of man I expected you to be, Mr. Temple? I've heard so much of you from Mr. Vernon. We're such old friends, you know."

"Apparently he can't paint so well with words as he does with oils.

May I ask exactly how flattering the portrait was?"