The Incomplete Amorist | Page 3

that's my life," she said as she blew out the candle.
Said Mrs. James to Mrs. Symes over the last and strongest cup of tea:
"Miss Betty's ailing a bit, I fancy. Looked a bit peaky, it seemed to me.
I shouldn't wonder if she was to go off in a decline like her father did."
"It wasn't no decline," said Mrs. Symes, dropping her thick voice, "'e
was cut off in the midst of his wicked courses. A judgment if ever there
was one."
Betty's blameless father had been killed in the hunting field.
"I daresay she takes after him, only being a female it all turns to her
being pernickety in her food and allus wanting the windows open. And
mark my words, it may turn into a decline yet, Mrs. Symes, my dear."
Mrs. Symes laughed fatly. "That ain't no decline," she said, "you take it
from me. What Miss Betty wants is a young man. It is but nature after
all, and what we must all come to, gentle or simple. Give her a young
man to walk out with and you'll see the difference. Decline indeed! A
young man's what she wants. And if I know anything of gells and their
ways she'll get one, no matter how close the old chap keeps her."
Mrs. Symes was not so wrong as the delicate minded may suppose.
Betty did indeed desire to fall in love. In all the story books the main
interest of the heroine's career began with that event. Not that she
voiced the desire to herself. Only once she voiced it in her prayers.
"Oh, God," she said, "do please let something happen!"
That was all. A girl had her little reticences, even with herself, even
with her Creator.
Next morning she planned to go sketching; but no, there were three
more detestable books to be put into nasty little black cotton coats, the

drawing-room to be dusted--all the hateful china--the peas to be shelled
for dinner.
She shelled the peas in the garden. It was a beautiful green garden, and
lovers could have walked very happily down the lilac-bordered paths.
"Oh, how sick I am of it all!" said Betty. She would not say, even to
herself, that what she hated was the frame without the picture.
As she carried in the peas she passed the open window of the study
where, among shelves of dull books and dusty pamphlets, her
step-father had as usual forgotten his sermon in a chain of references to
the Fathers. Betty saw his thin white hairs, his hard narrow face and
tight mouth, the hands yellow and claw-like that gripped the thin
vellum folio.
"I suppose even he was young once," she said, "but I'm sure he doesn't
remember it."
He saw her go by, young and alert in the sunshine, and the May air
stirred the curtains. He looked vaguely about him, unlocked a drawer in
his writing-table, and took out a leather case. He gazed long at the face
within, a young bright face with long ringlets above the formal bodice
and sloping shoulders of the sixties.
"Well, well," he said, "well, well," locked it away, and went back to De
Poenis Parvulorum.
"I will go out," said Betty, as she parted with the peas. "I don't care!"
It was not worth while to change one's frock. Even when one was
properly dressed, at rare local garden-party or flower-show, one never
met anyone that mattered.
She fetched her sketching things. At eighteen one does so pathetically
try to feed the burgeoning life with the husks of polite accomplishment.
She insisted on withholding from the clutches of the Parish the time to
practise Beethoven and Sullivan for an hour daily. Daily, for half an

hour, she read an improving book. Just now it was The French
Revolution, and Betty thought it would last till she was sixty. She tried
to read French and German--Télémaque and Maria Stuart. She fully
intended to become all that a cultured young woman should be. But
self-improvement is a dull game when there is no one to applaud your
score.
What the gardener called the gravel path was black earth, moss-grown.
Very pretty, but Betty thought it shabby.
It was soft and cool, though, to the feet, and the dust of the white road
sparkled like diamond dust in the sunlight.
She crossed the road and passed through the swing gate into the park,
where the grass was up for hay, with red sorrel and buttercups and tall
daisies and feathery flowered grasses, their colours all tangled and
blended together like ravelled ends of silk on the wrong side of some
great square of tapestry. Here and there in the wide sweep of tall
growing things stood a tree--a may-tree shining like