THE FLIGHT.
The full sunlight streamed into the room when Betty, her packing done,
drew back the curtain. She looked out on the glazed roof of the
laundry, the lead roof of the office, the blank wall of the new
grocery establishment in the Rue de Rennes. Only a little blue sky
shewed at the end of the lane, between roofs, by which the sun came
in. Not a tree, not an inch of grass, in sight; only, in her room,
half a dozen roses that Temple had left for her, and the white
marguerite plant--tall, sturdy, a little tree almost--that Vernon had
sent in from the florist's next door but two. Everything was packed.
She would say good-bye to Madame Bianchi; and she would go, and leave
no address, as she had promised last night.
"Why did you promise?" she asked herself. And herself replied:
"Don't you bother. We'll talk about all that when we've got away from
Paris. He was quite right. You can't think here."
"You'd better tell the cabman some other station. That cat of a
concierge is sure to be listening."
"Ah, right. I don't want to give him any chance of finding me, even if
he did say he wanted to marry me."
A fleet lovely picture of herself in bridal smart travelling clothes
arriving at the Rectory on Vernon's arm:
"Aren't you sorry you misjudged him so, Father?" Gentle accents
refraining from reproach. A very pretty picture. Yes. Dismissed.
Now the carriage swaying under the mound of Betty's luggage starts for
the Gare du Nord. In the Rue Notre Dame des Champs Betty opens her
mouth to say, "Gare de Lyons." No: this is _his_ street. Better cross
it as quickly as may be. At the Church of St. Germain--yes.
The coachman smiles at the new order: like the concierge he scents an
intrigue, whips up his horse, and swings round to the left along the
prettiest of all the boulevards, between the full-leafed trees. Past
Thirion's. Ah!
That thought, or pang, or nausea--Betty doesn't quite know what it
is--keeps her eyes from the streets till the carriage is crossing the
river. Why--there is Notre Dame! It ought to be miles away. Suppose
Vernon should have been leaning out of his window when she passed
across the street, seen her, divined her destination, followed her in
the fleetest carriage accessible? The vision of a meeting at the
station:
"Why are you going away? What have I done?" The secret of this, her
great renunciation--the whole life's sacrifice to that life's
idol--honor, wrung from her. A hand that would hold hers--under
pretence of taking her bundle of rugs to carry.--She wished the
outermost rug were less shabby! Vernon's voice.
"But I can't let you go. Why ruin two lives--nay, three? For it is you
only that I--"
Dismissed.
It is very hot. Paris is the hottest place in the world. Betty is glad
she brought lavender water in her bag. Wishes she had put on her other
hat. This brown one is hot; and besides, if Vernon _were_ to be at the
station. Interval. Dismissed.
Betty has never before made a railway journey alone. This gives one a
forlorn feeling. Suppose she has to pay excess on her luggage, or to
wrangle about contraband? She has heard all about the Octroi. Is
lavender water smuggling? And what can they do to you for it? Vernon
would know all these things. And if he were going into the country he
would be wearing that almost-white rough suit of his and the Panama
hat. A rose--Madame Abel de Chatenay--would go well with that coat.
Why didn't brides consult their bridegrooms before they bought their
trousseaux? You should get your gowns to rhyme with your husband's
suits. A dream of a dress that would be, with all the shades of Madame
Abel cunningly blended. A honeymoon lasts at least a month. The roses
would all be out at Long Barton by the time they walked up that
moss-grown drive, and stood at the Rectory door, and she murmured in
the ear of the Reverend Cecil: "Aren't you sorry you--"
Dismissed. And perforce, for the station was reached.
Betty, even in the brown hat, attracted the most attractive of the
porters--also, of course, the most attractable. He thought he spoke
English, and though this was not so, yet the friendly blink of his
Breton-blue eyes and his encouraging smile gave to his:
"Bourron? Mais oui--dix heures vingt. Par ici, Meess. Je m'occuperai
de vous. Et des bagages aussi--all right," quite the ring of one's
mother tongue.
He made everything easy for Betty, found her a carriage without
company ("I can cry here if I like," said the Betty that Betty liked
least), arranged her small packages neatly in the rack, took her 50
centime piece as though it had been a priceless personal souvenir, and
ran half the length of the platform to get a rose from another
porter's button-hole. He handed it to her through the carriage window.
"_Pour égayer le voyage de Meess_. All right!" he smiled, and was
gone.
She settled herself in the far corner, and took off her hat. The
carriage was hot as any kitchen. With her teeth she drew the cork of
the lavender water bottle, and with her handkerchief dabbed the
perfume on forehead and ears.
"Ah, Mademoiselle--_De grace_!"--the voice came through the open
window beside her. A train full of young soldiers was beside her
train, and in the window opposite hers three boys' faces crowded to
look at her. Three hands held out three handkerchiefs--not very white
certainly, but--
Betty smiling reached out the bottle and poured lavender water on each
outheld handkerchief.
"_Ah, le bon souvenir_!" said one.
"We shall think of the beauty of an angel of Mademoiselle every time
we smell the perfume so delicious," said the second.
"And longer than that--oh, longer than that by all a life!" cried the
third.
The train started. The honest, smiling boy faces disappeared.
Instinctively she put her head out of the window to look back at them.
All three threw kisses at her.
"I ought to be offended," said Betty, and instantly kissed her hand in
return.
"How _nice_ French people are!" she said as she sank back on the hot
cushions.
And now there was leisure to think--real thoughts, not those broken,
harassing dreamings that had buzzed about her between 57 Boulevard
Montparnasse and the station. Also, as some one had suggested, one
could cry.
She leaned back, eyes shut. Her next thought was:
"I have been to sleep."
She had. The train was moving out of a station labelled Fontainebleau.
"And oh, the trees!" said Betty, "the green thick trees! And the sky.
You can see the sky."
Through the carriage window she drank delight from the far grandeur of
green distances, the intimate beauty of green rides, green vistas, as
a thirsty carter drinks beer from the cool lip of his can--a thirsty
lover madness from the warm lips of his mistress.
"Oh, how good! How green and good!" she told herself over and over
again till the words made a song with the rhythm of the blundering
train and the humming metals.
"Bourron!"
Her station. Little, quiet, sunlit, like the station at Long Barton; a
flaming broom bush and the white of May and acacia blossom beyond prim
palings; no platform--a long leap to the dusty earth. The train went
on, and Betty and her boxes seemed dropped suddenly at the world's
end.
The air was fresh and still. A chestnut tree reared its white blossoms
like the candles on a Christmas tree for giant children. The white
dust of the platform sparkled like diamond dust. May trees and
laburnums shone like silver and gold. And the sun was warm and the
tree-shadows black on the grass. And Betty loved it all.
"_Oh_!" she said suddenly, "it's a year ago to-day since I met
_him_--in the warren."
A shadow caressed and stung her. She would have liked it to wear the
mask of love foregone--to have breathed plaintively of hopes defeated
and a broken heart. Instead it shewed the candid face of a real
homesickness, and it spoke with convincing and abominably aggravating
plainness--of Long Barton.
The little hooded diligence was waiting in the hot white dust outside
the station.
"But yes.--It is I who transport all the guests of Madame Chevillon,"
said the smiling brown-haired bonnetless woman who held the reins.
Betty climbed up beside her.
Along a straight road that tall ranks of trees guarded but did not
shade, through the patchwork neatness of the little culture that makes
the deep difference between peasant France and pastoral England, down
a steep hill into a little white town, where vines grew out of the
very street to cling against the faces of the houses and wistaria hung
its mauve pendants from every arch and lintel.
The Hotel Chevillon is a white-faced house, with little unintelligent
eyes of windows, burnt blind, it seems, in the sun--neat with the
neatness of Provincial France.
Out shuffled an old peasant woman in short skirt, heavy shoes and big
apron, her arms bared to the elbow, a saucepan in one hand, a ladle in
the other. She beamed at Betty.
"I wish to see Madame Chevillon."
"You see her, _ma belle et bonne_," chuckled the old woman. "It is me,
Madame Chevillon. You will rooms, is it not? You are artist? All who
come to the Hotel are artist. Rooms? Marie shall show you the rooms,
at the instant even. All the rooms--except one--that is the room of
the English Artist--all that there is of most amiable, but quite mad.
He wears no hat, and his brain boils in the sun. Mademoiselle can chat
with him: it will prevent that she bores herself here in the Forest."
Betty disliked the picture.
"I think perhaps," she said, translating mentally as she spoke, "that
I should do better to go to another hotel, if there is only one man
here and he is--"
She saw days made tiresome by the dodging of a lunatic--nights made
tremulous by a lunatic's yelling soliloquies.
"Ah," said Madame Chevillon comfortably, "I thought Mademoiselle was
artist; and for the artists and the Spaniards the _convenances_ exist
not. But Mademoiselle is also English. They eat the convenances every
day with the soup.--See then, my cherished. The English man, he is not
a dangerous fool, only a beast of the good God; he has the atelier and
the room at the end of the corridor. But there is, besides the Hotel,
the Garden Pavilion, un appartement of two rooms, exquisite, on the
first, and the garden room that opens big upon the terrace. It is
there that Mademoiselle will be well!"
Betty thought so too, when she had seen the "rooms exquisite on the
first"--neat, bare, well-scrubbed rooms with red-tiled floors, scanty
rugs and Frenchly varnished furniture--the garden room too, with big
open hearth and no furniture but wicker chairs and tables.
"Mademoiselle can eat all alone on the terrace. The English mad shall
not approach. I will charge myself with that. Mademoiselle may repose
herself here as on the bosom of the mother of Mademoiselle."
Betty had her déjeuner on the little stone terrace with rickety rustic
railings. Below lay the garden, thick with trees.
Away among the trees to the left an arbour. She saw through the leaves
the milk-white gleam of flannels, heard the chink of china and
cutlery. There, no doubt, the mad Englishman was even now
breakfasting. There was the width of the garden between them. She sat
still till the flannel gleam had gone away among the trees. Then she
went out and explored the little town. She bought a blue packet of
cigarettes. Miss Voscoe had often tried to persuade her to smoke. Most
of the girls did. Betty had not wanted to do it any more for that. She
had had a feeling that Vernon would not like her to smoke.
And in Paris one had to be careful. But now--
"I am absolutely my own master," she said. "I am staying by myself at
a hotel, exactly like a man. I shall feel more at home if I smoke. And
besides, no one can see me. It's just for me. And it shows I don't
care what _he_ likes."
Lying in a long chair reading one of her Tauchnitz books and smoking,
Betty felt very manly indeed.
The long afternoon wore on. The trees of the garden crowded round
Betty with soft whispers in a language not known of the trees on the
boulevards.
"I am very very unhappy," said Betty with a deep sigh of delight.
She went in, unpacked, arranged everything neatly. She always arranged
everything neatly, but nothing ever would stay arranged. She wrote to
her father, explaining that Madame Gautier had brought her and the
other girls to Grez for the summer, and she gave as her address:
Chez Madame Chevillon, Pavilion du Jardin, Grez.
"I shall be very very unhappy to-morrow," said Betty that night,
laying her face against the coarse cool linen of her pillow; "to-day I
have been stunned---I haven't been able to feel anything. But
to-morrow."
To-morrow, she knew, would be golden and green even as to-day. But she
should not care. She did not want to be happy. How could she be happy
now that she had of her own free will put away the love of her life?
She called and beckoned to all the thoughts that the green world shut
out, and they came at her call, fluttering black wings to hide the
sights and sounds of field and wood and green garden, and making their
nest in her heart.
"Yes," she said, turning the hot rough pillow, "now it begins to hurt
again. I knew it would."
It hurt more than she had meant it to hurt, when she beckoned those
black-winged thoughts. It hurt so much that she could not sleep. She
got up and leaned from the window.
She wondered where Vernon was. It was quite early. Not eleven. Lady
St. Craye had called that quite early.
"He's with _her_, of course," said Betty, "sitting at her feet, no
doubt, and looking up at her hateful eyes, and holding her horrid
hand, and forgetting that he ever knew a girl named Me."
Betty dressed and went out.
She crossed the garden. It was very dark among the trees. It would be
lighter in the road.
The big yard door was ajar. She pushed it softly. It creaked and let
her through into the silent street. There were no lights in the hotel,
no lights in any of the houses.
She stood a moment, hesitating. A door creaked inside the hotel. She
took the road to the river.
"I wonder if people ever _do_ drown themselves for love," said Betty:
"he'd be sorry then."