The Incomplete Amorist | Page 4

silver, a laburnum
like fine gold. There were horse-chestnuts whose spires of blossom
shewed like fat candles on a Christmas tree for giant children. And the
sun was warm and the tree shadows black on the grass.
Betty told herself that she hated it all. She took the narrow path--the
grasses met above her feet--crossed the park, and reached the rabbit
warren, where the chalk breaks through the thin dry turf, and the wild
thyme grows thick.
A may bush, overhanging a little precipice of chalk, caught her eye. A
wild rose was tangled round it. It was, without doubt, the most difficult
composition within sight.
"I will sketch that," said Eighteen, confidently.
For half an hour she busily blotted and washed and niggled. Then she
became aware that she no longer had the rabbit warren to herself.
"And he's an artist, too!" said Betty. "How awfully interesting! I wish I

could see his face."
But this his slouched Panama forbade. He was in white, the sleeve and
breast of his painting jacket smeared with many colours; he had a
camp-stool and an easel and looked, she could not help feeling, much
more like a real artist than she did, hunched up as she was on a little
mound of turf, in her shabby pink gown and that hateful garden hat
with last year's dusty flattened roses in it.
She went on sketching with feverish unskilled fingers, and a pulse that
had actually quickened its beat.
She cast little glances at him as often as she dared. He was certainly a
real artist. She could tell that by the very way he held his palette. Was
he staying with people about there? Should she meet him? Would they
ever be introduced to each other?
"Oh, what a pity," said Betty from the heart, "that we aren't introduced
now!"
Her sketch grew worse and worse.
"It's no good," she said. "I can't do anything with it."
She glanced at him. He had pushed back the hat. She saw quite plainly
that he was smiling--a very little, but he was smiling. Also he was
looking at her, and across the fifteen yards of gray turf their eyes met.
And she knew that he knew that this was not her first glance at him.
She paled with fury.
"He has been watching me all the time! He is making fun of me. He
knows I can't sketch. Of course he can see it by the silly way I hold
everything." She ran her knife around her sketch, detached it, and tore
it across and across.
The stranger raised his hat and called eagerly.
"I say--please don't move for a minute. Do you mind? I've just got your

pink gown. It's coming beautifully. Between brother artists--Do, please!
Do sit still and go on sketching--Ah, do!"
Betty's attitude petrified instantly. She held a brush in her hand, and she
looked down at her block. But she did not go on sketching. She sat
rigid and three delicious words rang in her ears: "Between brother
artists!" How very nice of him! He hadn't been making fun, after all.
But wasn't it rather impertinent of him to put her in his picture without
asking her? Well, it wasn't she but her pink gown he wanted. And
"between brother artists!" Betty drew a long breath.
"It's no use," he called; "don't bother any more. The pose is gone."
She rose to her feet and he came towards her.
"Let me see the sketch," he said. "Why did you tear it up?" He fitted the
pieces together. "Why, it's quite good. You ought to study in Paris," he
added idly.
She took the torn papers from his hand with a bow, and turned to go.
"Don't go," he said. "You're not going? Don't you want to look at my
picture?"
Now Betty knew as well as you do that you musn't speak to people
unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother artists"
had played ninepins with her little conventions.
"Thank you. I should like to very much," said Betty. "I don't care," she
said to herself, "and besides, it's not as if he were a young man, or a
tourist, or anything. He must be ever so old--thirty; I shouldn't wonder
if he was thirty-five."
When she saw the picture she merely said, "Oh," and stood at gaze. For
it was a picture--a picture that, seen in foreign lands, might well make
one sick with longing for the dry turf and the pale dog violets that love
the chalk, for the hum of the bees and the scent of the thyme. He had
chosen the bold sweep of the brown upland against the sky, and low to

the left, where the line broke, the dim violet of the Kentish