The Making of a Prig Part 20

Katharine sighed, and glanced nervously at Ted.

"Oh, I suppose he's all right," she said, with the exaggerated solemnity that would have betrayed to any one who knew her well how close she was to laughter; "but he isn't a bit new, is he? I mean, he only says the same things over again that the old poets said ever so much better. Don't you think so?"

"They all give you the hump, any way," put in Ted. But Monty ignored his remark, and said that he never read any of the old poets; he preferred the new ones because they went so much deeper.

"Hang it all, Kitty; what a rum girl you are!" said Ted, in a disappointed tone. "A chap never knows where to have you. I did think you were advanced, if you couldn't be anything else."

At this point, Katharine yielded to an irresistible desire to laugh; and Ted looked anxiously at the friend to whom he had given such a false impression of her "ideas." But, to his surprise, the great Monty himself joined in her laughter, and seemed inexpressibly relieved to find that she was not nearly so intellectual as she had been painted, and it was therefore no longer inc.u.mbent on him to sustain the conversation at such a high pitch.

"Now that we have settled I am not advanced," said Katharine, turning up her veil, "supposing we have some tea." And for the rest of the afternoon they behaved like rational beings, and discussed the low comedians and the comic papers.

"All the same," Ted complained, when Monty had gone, "he's awfully clever, really. You may rot as much as you like, but Monty does know about things. You don't know what a fool he makes _me_ feel."

"He needn't do that," said Katharine. "It would be the kindest thing in the world not to let him read another magazine or newspaper for six months. I think he is very nice, though, when he lets himself go."

Ted looked at her a little sadly.

"You seemed to be getting on beastly well, I thought," he said.

"He is certainly very amusing, and it was nice of you to ask me to meet him," continued Katharine, innocently. Ted walked to the fire-place, and studied himself silently in the looking-gla.s.s.

"I wish I wasn't such a d.a.m.ned fool," he burst out savagely. Katharine stood still with amazement.

"Ted!" she cried. "Ted! What do you mean?"

Ted planted his elbows on the mantel-shelf, and buried his face in his hands.

"Ted!" she said again, with distress in her voice. "What do you mean, Ted? As if I--oh, Ted! And a man like _that_! You know piles more than he does, old boy, ever so much more. You don't put on any side, that's all; and he does. You mustn't say that any more, Ted; oh, you mustn't!

It hurts."

"You know you are spoofing me," he said, in m.u.f.fled tones. "You know you only say that just to please me. You think I am a fool all the time, only you are a good old brick and pretend not to see it. As if I didn't twig! I ought never to have been born."

Katharine walked swiftly over to him, and laid her hand on his arm.

She did not reason with herself; she only knew that she wanted to comfort him at any price.

"Ted," she said, earnestly, "_I_ am glad you were born."

He turned round suddenly, and looked at her; and she started nervously at the eagerness of his expression. He had not looked like that when he made love to her in the summer-house.

"Do you mean that, dear?"

"Oh, don't be so serious, Ted! Of course I mean it; of course I am glad you were born. Think how forlorn I should have been without you; it would have been awful if I had been alone." He looked only half satisfied; and she went on desperately, caring for nothing but to charm away the miserable look from his face. "Dear Ted, you know what you are to me; you know I don't care a little bit for Monty, or anybody else, either."

"Do you mean that, Kitty?" he asked again, in a voice that he could not steady. "Not anybody else, dear?"

Something indefinable, something that made her long for another man's voice to be trembling for love of her, as his was trembling now, seemed to come between them and to strike her dumb. He looked at her searchingly for a moment, then shook off her hand and pushed her away from him. She s.h.i.+vered as the suspicion crossed her mind that he had guessed her thoughts, though she knew quite well that the renewal of her friends.h.i.+p with Paul was unknown to him. She went up to him again, and let him seize her two hands and crush them until she could have cried out with the pain.

"You are the best fellow in the world, Ted," she said. "But you mustn't look like that; oh, don't! I am not worth it, Ted; I am not nearly good enough for you, dear,--you know I am not. I am never going to marry any one; I am not the sort to marry; I am hard, and cold, and bitter. Sometimes, I think I shall just work and fight my way to the end. I know I shall never be happy in the way most women are happy.

But I will be your chum, and stick to you always, Ted. May I?"

"Oh, shut up!" said Ted, almost in a whisper; and the tears sprang to her eyes. She stood on tiptoe, and impetuously kissed the only place on his cheek she could reach. At the moment, it seemed the only right and proper thing to be done.

"I couldn't help it. I had to; and I don't care," she said, defiantly.

And Ted wrung her hands again, and let them go.

"I suppose none of it is your fault, Kit, but--"

There was a pause, and Katharine avoided his eyes, for the first time in her life.

"It's time to go," she said. "Will you see me home?"

She fetched him his hat and coat, and Ted gave himself a shake.

"He didn't take cream, after all," he said, with a poor attempt at a laugh.

CHAPTER XI

A letter came from Paul, just before Christmas, to say that he was going to remain at Monte Carlo for another month. Knowing his pa.s.sion for warmth and suns.h.i.+ne, she was not surprised; she was hardly even disappointed. She began to wonder what her feelings would have been if he had decided to remain another year instead of another month; and again she was obliged to own that the solution of her own state of mind was beyond her. The Keeleys went abroad about the same time, which took away her chief centre of amus.e.m.e.nt; and her former mood of satisfaction was succeeded by one of serene indifference, in which she continued until she went home for the holidays. At Ivingdon the dulness of four weeks, pa.s.sed almost entirely in the company of her father and Miss Esther, caused the old unsatisfied feeling to return to her; and she longed for a vent for the restless energy that wore her out as long as there was no work to be done. She grew impatient once more for a glimpse of Paul Wilton, for the touch of his thin, nervous hand, and the sound of his quiet, unemotional voice; and she acted over and over again, in her mind, how they would meet once more in the little room overlooking Fountain Court, what he would be sure to say to her, and what she knew she would say to him. No letter came from Paul all through those weary days, and she only wrote to him once. The pathetic note was very prominent in that one letter, and she consoled herself with her own unhappiness while she awaited the answer to it; but when no answer came her pride revolted, and she wished pa.s.sionately that she had never sent it.

"Can't you stay another week, child?" said Miss Esther, as the end of the holidays drew near. "You don't look much better than when you came, though it's not to be expected you should, working away as you do. I never heard such nonsense, and all to no purpose! When I was a girl-- But there, what's the use?"

And Katharine, who had heard it all before, explained over again with increasing impatience that her work was a definite thing and required her presence on a certain day. She had never felt less pleased with herself than on the day of her departure, when she left the home that had once been the whole world to her, and took leave of the people who no longer believed in her. But as she neared London a sensation of coming events dispelled the atmosphere of disapproval which had been stifling her for a whole month, and she once more felt the mistress of her own situation and her own future. Here was life and activity, work and success, and some of it was going to be hers. And Paul Wilton would soon be coming home again. They told her at Queen's Crescent how well she was looking, when she appeared in the dining-room at tea-time; and she laughed back in reply as she contrasted their greeting with her aunt's farewell words.

"Just a year since I first came," she said to Phyllis. "What a lot has happened since then! I don't believe it was myself at all; it must have been somebody else. Oh, I am glad I am different now!"

"I remember," said Phyllis, who never rhapsodised. "Your face was s.m.u.tty after your journey, and you looked as though you would kill any one who spoke to you."

"And you were eating bread and treacle," retorted Katharine. "Let's have some now, shall we?"

"By the way," said Phyllis presently, "there's a letter for you upstairs. It came about a week ago, and I clean forgot to forward it.

I'm awfully sorry, but I don't suppose it matters much because it's got a foreign post-mark."

The laughter died out of Katharine's face, as she put down her teacup and stared speechlessly at her friend.

"Shall I go and fetch it?" continued the unconscious Phyllis, as she deluged her last morsel of bread with more treacle than any force of cohesion would allow it to hold. "Perhaps you're ready to come up yourself, though? I've prepared a glorification for you--Hullo! what are you in such a desperate hurry about?"

When she arrived breathless at the top of the house, Katharine was already in her cubicle, turning everything over in a wild and fruitless search.

"Go away!" she said shortly, when Phyllis came in. "It was the only thing I asked you to do, and I thought I could trust you. I shall know better another time. What are all these things doing here?"

She knocked her head, as she spoke, against a string of Chinese lanterns. There were flowers on the mantel-shelf, and a look of festivity in the dingy little room; but it was all lost on Katharine, who continued to open and shut the drawers with trembling hands, and to search in every likely place for her letter, until Phyllis put an end to her aimless task by bringing it to her in eloquent silence.

Then she stole away again; and Katharine sat down in the midst of the confusion she had created, and became absorbed in its contents. It was very short, and there was hardly any news in it that could not have been extracted from a guide-book; but she spent quite half an hour in reading it and pondering over it, until she knew every one of its stilted phrases by heart. He was very well and it was very hot, and he was sitting by the open window looking down on the orange groves, and the sea was a splendid colour, and there were some very decent people in the hotel, and amongst them her relations the Keeleys. It was hard to look up at last, with dazed eyes, and to discover that she was in Queen's Crescent, Marylebone, instead of being where her thoughts were, in the sunny South of France.

"Hullo," said Phyllis, who was standing at the end of the bed.