The Incomplete Amorist

Yes, the Master was up; he could be seen.

The heavy boots were being rubbed against the birch broom that, rooted at Kentish back doors, stands to receive on its purple twigs the scrapings of Kentish clay from rustic feet.

"You have the artistic lines very strongly marked," Vernon was saying. "One, two, three--yes, painting--music perhaps?"

"I am very fond of music," said Betty, thinking of the hour's daily struggle with the Mikado and the Moonlight Sonata. "But three arts. What could the third one be?" Her thoughts played for an instant with unheard-of triumphs achieved behind footlights--rapturous applause, showers of bouquets.

"Whatever it is, you've enormous talent for it," he said; "you'll find out what it is in good time. Perhaps it'll be something much more important than the other two put together, and perhaps you've got even more talent for it than you have for others."

"But there isn't any other talent that I can think of."

"I can think of a few. There's the stage,--but it's not that, I fancy, or not exactly that. There's literature--confess now, don't you write poetry sometimes when you're all alone at night? Then there's the art of being amusing, and the art of being--of being liked."

"Shall I be successful in any of the arts?"

"In one, certainly."

"Ah," said Betty, "if I could only go to Paris!"

"It's not always necessary to go to Paris for success in one's art," he said.

"But I want to go. I'm sure I could do better there."

"Aren't you satisfied with your present Master?"

"Oh!"--It was a cry of genuine distress, of heartfelt disclaim. "You know I didn't mean that! But you won't always be here, and when you've gone--why then--"

Again he had to control the involuntary movement of his left arm.

"But I'm not going for months yet. Don't let us cross a bridge till we come to it. Your head-line promises all sorts of wonderful things. And your heart-line--" he turned her hand more fully to the light.

In the Rector's study the labourer was speaking, standing shufflingly on the margin of the Turkey carpet. The Rector listened, his hand on an open folio where fat infants peered through the ornamental initials.

"And so I come straight up to you, Sir, me being a father and you the same, Sir, for all the difference betwixt our ways in life. Says I to myself, says I, and bitter hard I feels it too, I says: 'George,' says I, 'you've got a daughter as begun that way, not a doubt of it--holdin' of hands and sittin' close alongside, and you know what's come to her!'"