The Making of a Prig Part 22

"We were talking about you at the club, only the other afternoon; coincidence, wasn't it? Two or three of us,--Marston, and Hallett, and old Pryor. You remember old Pryor, don't you? Stock Exchange, and swears a lot--ah, you know; he wanted to know what had become of you and your d.a.m.ned career; it was a d.a.m.ned pity for the most brilliant man at the bar, and the only one with a conscience, to be wasted on a lot of d.a.m.ned foreigners, and so on. You know old Pryor. Of course I agreed with him, but it wasn't my business to say so."

He paused a little wistfully, as though he expected Paul to say something to explain his long absence; but the latter only smiled slightly, and walked across to his cupboard in the corner.

"I'm going to have some tea," he observed, "but I don't expect you to join me in that, Heaton. There's some vermuth here, Italian vermuth; or, of course, you can have whiskey if you prefer it."

"Thanks, my boy," laughed the other. "I'm glad to see that five months in the infernal regions haven't spoilt your memory. Claret for boys, brandy for heroes, eh?"

He helped himself to whiskey, and then leaned back in his chair to survey Paul, who was making a cigarette while the water boiled. There was one of the long silences that were inevitable with Paul, unless his companion took the initiative; and for the next five minutes the only sounds to be heard were the singing of the kettle, the rise and fall of footsteps in the court below, and the occasional rattle of the window sash as the wind wrestled with it. Paul made the tea, and brought his cup to the table, and flung himself at full length on the sofa beside it.

"Well," he said at last, "haven't you any news to tell me? Who is the last charming lady you have been trotting round to all the picture galleries,--the one who is more beautiful, and more intellectual, and more sympathetic than any woman you have ever met?"

Heaton laughed consciously.

"Now, it's odd you should happen to say that," he said in his simple manner. "Of course I know it's only your chaff, confound you, but there _is_ just a smattering of truth in it. By Jove, Wilton, you must come and meet her; you never saw such a figure, and she's the wittiest creature I ever ran across! I'm nowhere, when it comes to talk; but she's so kind to me, Wilton,--you can't think; I never met such a sympathetic woman. Really, she has the most extraordinary effect upon me; I haven't been so influenced by any woman since poor little May died, 'pon my word I haven't. I can't think how it's all going to end, I tell you I can't. It's giving me a lot of worry, I know."

"Ah," said Paul gravely. "Widow?"

"Her husband was a brute," said Heaton energetically. "Colonel in the army, drank, used her villainously I expect, though she doesn't say much; she's awfully staunch to the chap. Women are, you know; I can't think why, when we treat them so badly. That's where they get their hold over us, I suppose. But her influence over me is wonderful. I wouldn't do anything to lose her respect, for the world."

He blinked his eyes, and drank some more whiskey. Perhaps it occurred to him that his companion was even less responsive than usual, for there was more vigour and less sentiment in his tone when he resumed the conversation.

"You never tell me anything about yourself," he complained, rather pathetically. "You draw me out, and I'm a.s.s enough to be drawn; and then you sit and smile cynically, while I make a fool of myself. How about _your_ experiences, eh? 'Pon my word, I don't remember a single instance of your giving me your confidence! You're such a rum, reserved sort of chap. Well, I dare say you're right to keep it all to yourself. It does me good to tell things; but then, I'm different."

"My dear fellow, I've nothing to tell," replied Paul, smiling. "You forget that my life is not full of the charming experiences that seem to fall so continually to your lot. And your conversation is so much more interesting than mine would be, that I prefer to listen; that's all. I'm not secretive; I have merely nothing to secrete."

"That's all very well," said Heaton, shaking his head; "but I'm older than you, so that won't wash. You should have heard what those fellows at the club were saying about you."

"Yes? It doesn't interest me in the least," said Paul coldly. But tact was not the strong point of his friend's character, and he went on, notwithstanding.

"Of course I didn't say much,--it isn't my way; besides, you know I think you're always right in the main. But it's enough to make fellows talk, when a man like you, who always sets his career before his pleasure, goes away out of the vacation, and stays away all these months. You must own it's reasonable to speculate a little; it's only in man's nature."

"Some men's," said Paul, as coldly as before. "I should never dream of speculating about anybody's course of action, myself."

"No, no, of course not; I quite agree with you, quite," said Heaton.

"By the way," he added, with bland innocence in his expression, "what sort of people are these Kerrys you have been travelling with? An old married couple of sorts, I suppose!"

Paul raised himself on his elbow and drank his tea straight off, as though he had not heard the question. He was always divided, in his conversations with Heaton, between a desire to snub him and a fear of wounding his sensitiveness.

"You haven't told me the charming widow's name," he said, dropping back into his former position. The other man's face brightened, and the conversation again became a monologue until even Heaton's prosiness was exhausted, and silence fell upon them both. And then, very characteristically, as soon as he was quite sure he was not expected to say anything, Paul suddenly became communicative.

"The Keeleys are rather nice people," he observed, taking his cigarette out of his mouth and staring fixedly at the lighted end of it. "Mother and daughter, you know, just abroad for the winter. Nice little place in Herefords.h.i.+re, I believe, but they come to town for the season,--Curzon Street."

Heaton was wise enough to remain silent; and Paul went on, after a pause.

"Sat next to them at table d'hote, and that sort of thing. One is always glad of a compatriot abroad, don't you know! And the mother was really rather nice," he added, as an afterthought.

"And what was the daughter like?" asked Heaton.

"Oh, just an ordinary amusing sort of girl! She's pretty, too, in a sort of way, but I don't admire that kind of thing much, myself. And I think she found me very dull." He paused, and looked thoughtful. "I must take you there when they come up to town, Heaton. You'd get on with them, and the girl is just your style, I fancy. She is really very pretty," he added, becoming thoughtful again.

"Nothing I should like better! Delightful of you to think of it!"

exclaimed Heaton, with a warmth that was a little overdone. His want of a sense of proportion was always an annoyance to Paul. "You take me there, that's all," he said, chuckling; "and let me have my head--"

"Which is precisely what you wouldn't have," said Paul drily. "And I'm sure I don't know why you want to know them; they are quite ordinary people, and don't possess every grace and virtue and talent, like all your other lady friends. However, I shall be very pleased if you really care about it. But you'll be disappointed."

Heaton agreed to be disappointed, and as another pause seemed imminent, he began to think about taking his departure. But Paul did not notice his intention, and seized the occasion to start a new subject.

"Look here, Heaton," he began, so suddenly that the elder man sat down again with precision; "you say I never tell you anything about my experiences. Does that mean that you really think I have anything to tell?"

Heaton looked at him dubiously.

"I'm hanged if I know," he said.

Paul smiled, a little regretfully.

"After years of renunciation," he murmured, "to be merely accounted a riddle! Then you think," he continued, with an interested expression, "that I am not the sort of man women would care about, eh? Well, I dare say you're right. But then, why do they ever care for any of us?

I never expect them to, personally."

Heaton was looking at him in a perplexed manner.

"Perhaps I didn't express myself quite clearly," he hastened to say, with his usual wish to compromise. "I only meant that I sometimes think you never can have cared for any one seriously. But I've no doubt I'm wrong. And I never said that n.o.body had ever cared for _you_; I think that's extremely unlikely. In fact-- Do you really want me to say what I think?"

"It would be most interesting," said Paul, still smiling.

"Well," said Heaton decidedly, "I think you're the sort of man who would break a woman's heart and spare her reputation, and perhaps not discover that she liked you at all. I know what women are, and they just love to pine away for a man like you who would never dream of giving them any encouragement. And you have such a fascinating way with you that you just lead them on, without meaning to in the least.

You can curse, if you like, Wilton; it's great impertinence on my part, eh?"

"My dear fellow," was all Paul said. As a matter of fact, he had never liked him better than he did at that moment, and his words had set him thinking. But Heaton's next remark undid the good impression he had unwittingly made.

"The fact is," he said, "a woman's reputation is worth only half as much to her as her happiness."

And his worldly wisdom jarred on Paul's nerves, and sounded unnecessarily coa.r.s.e to him in his present mood; and he did not try to detain him again, when Heaton rose for the second time to take his leave. When he had gone, Paul strolled to the window-seat and smoked another cigarette, looking down into the wind-swept court. And his thoughts deliberately turned to Katharine Austen. He had not seen her for five months, he had not written to her for two, and her last letter to him was dated six weeks back. It had not occurred to him, until he drew it from his pocket now and looked at it, that it was really so long as that since she had written to him; and he became suddenly possessed of a wish to know what those six weeks had held for her. Out there in the orange groves of the South, walking by the side of the beautiful Marion Keeley, with the rustle of her skirts so close to him and the shallow levity of her conversation in his ears, it had been easy to forget the desperately earnest child who was toiling away to earn her living in the dullest quarter of a dull city. But here, where she had so often sat and talked to him, where they had loved to quarrel and to make it up again, where she had given him rare glimpses of her quaint self and then hastily hidden it from him again, where she had been whimsical and serious by turns, where he had sometimes kissed her and felt her cheek warm at his touch,--here, all sorts of memories rushed back into his mind, and made him wonder why he had yielded so easily to the persuasions of the Keeleys, and remained so long away from England. It was impossible to name Marion Keeley in the same breath with this curiously lovable child who had held him in her sway all last summer, who had never used an art to draw him to her, and yet had succeeded, by force of qualities that she did not know she possessed, in gaining his sincere affection. Yet he had hardly thought of her for two months, and she had not written to him for six weeks. What had she been doing in those six weeks? It had not seemed to matter, when he walked by the side of Marion Keeley, how Katharine was pa.s.sing her time in London; but now that Marion was no longer near him, now that he was free from her fascination and the necessity of replying to her ba.n.a.lities, it suddenly became of the first importance to him to know what had happened to Katharine in those six weeks. He had gone away, he told himself, because he had taken fright at the situation, because he could not a.n.a.lyse his own feelings for her, because everything, in the eyes of the world, was hurrying them on to marriage,--and of marriage he had the profoundest dread. And he had allowed himself to be captivated almost immediately, by the ordinary beauty of an ordinary girl, someone who knew how to play upon a certain set of his emotions which Katharine had never learnt to touch. An expression of distaste crossed his face as he threw away his cigarette only half smoked, and looked down at the fountain as he had so often stood and looked with her in the hot days of last July. Heaton's words returned to his mind with a new significance: "Their reputation is worth only half as much to them as their happiness." He remembered how he had parted from Katharine in this very room, before he went abroad; and how he had congratulated himself afterwards on having refrained from kissing her. But he had a sudden recollection now of the look on her face as she turned away from him; and, for the first time, he thought he understood its meaning.

He had never acted on an impulse in his life, before, nor yielded to a wish he could not a.n.a.lyse; but this afternoon he did both. It was about an hour later that Phyllis Hyam strolled into Katharine's cubicle with the announcement that a gentleman was in the hall, waiting to speak to her.

"Bother!" grumbled Katharine, who was correcting exercises on the bed.

"He never said he was coming to-night."

"It isn't Mr. Morton," volunteered Phyllis, from behind her own curtain. "I've never seen him before. He's tall, and thin, and serious looking, with a leathery sort of face, and a dear little fizzly beard."

She made a few more gratuitous remarks on the gentleman in the hall, until she began to wonder why she received no reply to them, and then made the discovery that the occupant of the neighbouring cubicle was no longer there.

Paul was already regretting his impulse. He had never been inside the little distempered hall before, and it struck a feeling of chill into him. A good many girls came in at the door while he was waiting, and they all stared at him inquiringly, and most of them were dull looking. He remembered the sumptuous house in Mayfair that would soon contain Marion Keeley, and he shuddered a little.

"I don't think I should like to live with working-women much," he said, when Katharine came running down the wooden stairs.

It was the only remark that came easily to him, when he felt the warm clasp of her hand and saw the glad look in her eyes.