The Incomplete Amorist Part 37

"Four francs seventy," said Temple through the shout of laughter.

"Have I said something comme il ne faut pas?" said Miss Voscoe.

"You couldn't," said Vernon: "every word leaves your lips without a stain upon its character."

"Won't you let us join?" asked an Irish student. "You'll be lost entirely without a Lord of Creation to sharpen your pencils."

"We mean to _work_," said Miss Voscoe; "if you want to work take a box of matches and a couple of sticks of brimstone and make a little sketch cla.s.s of your own."

"I don't see what you want with models," said a very young and shy boy student. "Couldn't you pose for each other, and--"

A murmur of dissent from the others drove him back into shy silence.

"No amateur models in this Academy," said Miss Voscoe. "Oh, we'll make the time-honoured inst.i.tutions sit up with the work we'll do. Let's all pledge ourselves to send in to the Salon--or anyway to the Independants! What we're suffering from in this quarter's git-up-and-git. Why should we be contented to be n.o.body?"

"On the contrary," said Vernon, "Miss Voscoe is everybody--almost!"

"I'm the n.o.body who can't get a word in edgeways anyhow," she said.

"What I've been trying to say ever since I was born--pretty near--is that what this cla.s.s wants is a competent Professor, some bully top-of-the-tree artist, to come and pull our work all to pieces and wipe his boots on the bits. Mr. Vernon, don't you know any one who's pining to give us free crits?"

"Temple is," said Vernon. "There's no mistaking that longing glance of his."

"As a competent professor I make you my bow of grat.i.tude," said Temple, "but I should never have the courage to criticise the work of nine fair ladies."

"You needn't criticise them all at once," said a large girl from Minneapolis, "nor yet all in the gaudy eye of heaven. We'll screen off a corner for our Professor--sort of confessional business. You sit there and we'll go to you one by one with our sins in our hand."

"_That_ would scare him some I surmise," said Miss Voscoe.

"Not at all," said Temple, a little nettled, he hardly knew why.

"I didn't know you were so brave," said the Minneapolis girl.

"Perhaps he didn't want you to know," said Miss Voscoe; "perhaps that's his life's dark secret."

"People often pretend to a courage that they haven't," said Vernon. "A consistent pose of cowardice, that would be novel and--I see the idea developing--more than useful."

"Is that _your_ pose?" asked Temple, still rather tartly, "because if it is, I beg to offer you, in the name of these ladies, the chair of Professor-behind-the-screen."

"I'm not afraid of the nine Muses," Vernon laughed back, "as long as they are nine. It's the light that lies in woman's eyes that I've always had such a nervous dread of."

"It does make you blink, bless it," said the Irish student, "but not from nine pairs at once, as you say. It's the light from one pair that turns your head."

"Mr. Vernon isn't weak in the head," said the shy boy suddenly.

"No," said Vernon, "it's the heart that's weak with me. I have to be very careful of it."

"Well, but will you?" said a downright girl.

"Will I what? I'm sorry, but I've lost my cue, I think. Where were we--at losing hearts, wasn't it?"

"No," said the downright girl, "I didn't mean that. I mean will you come and criticise our drawings?"

"Fiddle," said Miss Voscoe luminously. "Mr. Vernon's too big for that."

"Oh, well," said Vernon, "if you don't think I should be competent!"

"You don't mean to say you would?"

"Who wouldn't jump at the chance of playing Apollo to the fairest set of muses in the Quartier?" said Temple; "but after all, I had the refusal of the situation--I won't renounce--"

"Bobby, you unman me," interrupted Vernon, putting down his cup, "you shall _not_ renounce the altruistic pleasure which you promise to yourself in yielding this professorship to me. I accept it."

"I'm hanged if you do!" said Temple. "You proposed me yourself, and I'm elected--aren't I, Miss Voscoe?"

"That's so," said she; "but Mr. Vernon's president too."

"I've long been struggling with the conviction that Temple and I were as brothers. Now I yield--Temple, to my arms!"

They embraced, elegantly, enthusiastically, almost as Frenchmen use; and the room applauded the faithful burlesque.

"What's come to me that I should play the goat like this?" Vernon asked himself, as he raised his head from Temple's broad shoulder.

Then he met Betty's laughing eyes, and no longer regretted his a.s.sumption of that difficult role.

"It's settled then. Tuesdays and Fridays, four to six," he said. "At last I am to be--"

"The light of the harem," said Miss Voscoe.

"Can there be two lights?" asked Temple anxiously. "If not, consider the fraternal embrace withdrawn."

"No, you're _the_ light, of course," said Betty. "Mr. Vernon's the Ancient Light. He's older than you are, isn't he?"

The roar of appreciation of her little joke surprised Betty, and, a little, pleased her--till Miss Voscoe whispered under cover of it:

"_Ancient_ light? Then he _was_ the three-polite-word man?"

Betty explained her little jest.

"All the same," said the other, "it wasn't any old blank walls you were thinking about. I believe he is the one."

"It's a great thing to be able to believe anything," said Betty; and the talk broke up into duets. She found that Temple was speaking to her.

"I came here to-day because I wanted to meet you, Miss Desmond," he was saying. "I hope you don't think it's cheek of me to say it, but there's something about you that reminds me of the country at home."

"That's a very pretty speech," said Betty. He reminded her of the Cafe d'Harcourt, but she did not say so.

"You remind me of a garden," he went on, "but I don't like to see a garden without a hedge round it."

"You think I ought to have a chaperon," said Betty bravely, "but chaperons aren't needed in this quarter."