The Incomplete Amorist | Page 7

taken away.
Betty, her whole being transfigured by the emotions of the morning,
stirred the stewed rhubarb on her plate. She felt rising in her a sort of
wild forlorn courage. Why shouldn't she speak out? Her step-father
couldn't hate her more than he did, whatever she said. He might even
be glad to be rid of her. She spoke suddenly and rather loudly before
she knew that she had meant to speak at all.
"Father," she said, "I wish you'd let me go to Paris and study art. Not
now," she hurriedly explained with a sudden vision of being taken at
her word and packed off to France before six o'clock on Monday
morning, "not now, but later. In the autumn perhaps. I would work very
hard. I wish you'd let me."
He put on his spectacles and looked at her with wistful kindness. She
read in his glance only a frozen contempt.
"No, my child," he said. Paris is a sink of iniquity. I passed a week
there once, many years ago. It was at the time of the Great Exhibition.
You are growing discontented, Lizzie. Work is the cure for that. Mrs.
Symes tells me that the chemises for the Mother's sewing meetings are
not cut out yet."
"I'll cut them out to-day. They haven't finished the shirts yet, anyway,"
said Betty; "but I do wish you'd just think about Paris, or even
London."
"You can have lessons at home if you like. I believe there are excellent
drawing-mistresses in Sevenoaks. Mrs. Symes was recommending one
of them to me only the other day. With certificates from the High
School I seem to remember her saying."

"But that's not what I want," said Betty with a courage that surprised
her as much as it surprised him. "Don't you see, Father? One gets older
every day, and presently I shall be quite old, and I shan't have been
anywhere or seen anything."
He thought he laughed indulgently at the folly of youth. She thought
his laugh the most contemptuous, the cruelest sound in the world. "He
doesn't deserve that I should tell him about Him," she thought, "and I
won't. I don't care!"
"No, no," he said, "no, no, no. The home is the place for girls. The safe
quiet shelter of the home. Perhaps some day your husband will take
you abroad for a fortnight now and then. If you manage to get a
husband, that is."
He had seen, through his spectacles, her flushed prettiness, and old as
he was he remembered well enough how a face like hers would seem to
a young man's eyes. Of course she would get a husband? So he spoke
in kindly irony. And she hated him for a wanton insult.
"Try to do your duty in that state of life to which you are called," he
went on: "occupy yourself with music and books and the details of
housekeeping. No, don't have my study turned out," he added in haste,
remembering how his advice about household details had been
followed when last he gave it. "Don't be a discontented child. Go and
cut out the nice little chemises." This seemed to him almost a touch of
kindly humour, and he went back to Augustine, pleased with himself.
Betty set her teeth and went, black rage in her heart, to cut out the
hateful little chemises.
She dragged the great roll of evil smelling grayish unbleached calico
from the schoolroom cupboard and heaved it on to the table. It was
very heavy. The scissors were blunt and left deep red-blue indentations
on finger and thumb. She was rather pleased that the scissors hurt so
much.
"Father doesn't care a single bit, he hates me," she said, "and I hate him.

Oh, I do."
She would not think of the morning. Not now, with this fire of impotent
resentment burning in her, would she take out those memories and look
at them. Those were not thoughts to be dragged through the litter of
unbleached cotton cuttings. She worked on doggedly, completed the
tale of hot heavy little garments, gathered up the pieces into the
waste-paper basket and put away the roll.
Not till the paint had been washed from her hands, and the crumbled
print dress exchanged for a quite respectable muslin did she
consciously allow the morning's memories to come out and meet her
eyes. Then she went down to the arbour where she had shelled peas
only that morning.
"It seems years and years ago," she said. And sitting there, she slowly
and carefully went over everything. What he had said, what she had
said. There were some things she could not quite remember. But she
remembered enough. "Brother artists" were the words she said oftenest
to herself, but the words