The Making of a Prig Part 27

She ended with a contemptuous sniff. Katharine rubbed the tears out of her eyes. The weariness had temporarily left her.

"Let me sit up with her," she said.

"You? What could you do? Why, you'd fall asleep, or think of something else in the middle, and she might die for all you cared," returned Polly contemptuously. "Can you make a poultice?"

Katharine shook her head dumbly, and crept away. Her self-abas.e.m.e.nt seemed complete. She lay down on her untidy bed, and drew the clothes over her, and gave way to her grief. There did not seem a bright spot in her existence, now that Phyllis was not able to comfort her. She hoped, with a desperate fervour, that she would catch influenza too, and die, so that remorse should consume the hearts of all those who had so cruelly misunderstood her.

A hand shook her by the shoulder, not unkindly.

"Look here! you must stop that row, or else you will disturb her.

What's the good of it? Besides, she isn't as bad as all that either; you can't have seen much illness, I'm thinking."

"It isn't that," gasped Katharine truthfully. "At least, not entirely.

I was dreadfully unhappy about something else, and I wanted to die; and then, when I found Phyllis was ill, it all seemed so hopeless. I didn't mean to disturb any one; it was dreadfully foolish of me; I haven't cried for years."

Polly gave a kind of grunt, and sat down on the bed. It was more or less interesting to have reduced the brilliant Miss Austen to this state of submission.

"Got yourself into trouble?" she asked, and refrained from adding that she had expected it all along.

Katharine began to cry again. There was so little sympathy, and so much curiosity, in the curt question. But she had reached the point when to confide in some one was an absolute necessity; and there was no one else.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she sobbed. "Why should one suffer so awfully, just because one didn't _know_! We were only friends, and it was so pleasant, and I was so happy! It might have gone on for ever, only there was another girl."

"Of course," said Polly. "There always is. How did she get hold of him?"

Katharine shrank back into herself.

"You don't understand," she complained. "He isn't like that at all. He is clever, and refined, and very reserved. He doesn't flirt a bit, or anything of that sort."

"Oh, I see," said Polly, with her expressive sniff. "I suppose the other girl thought herself a toff, eh?"

"She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen," said Katharine simply. "But I never knew he cared about that. He had views against marriage, he always said; and he wasn't always talking about women, like some men. I did not think he would end in marrying, just like every one else."

"More innocent you, then! I always said you ought to have stopped at home; girls like you generally do come the worst cropper. You surely didn't suppose he would go on for ever, and be content merely with your friends.h.i.+p, did you?"

"Yes, I did," said Katharine wearily. "Why not? I was content with his."

Polly gave vent to a stifled laugh.

"My dear, you're not a man," she said in a superior tone. It added considerably to the piquancy of the conversation that the subject was one on which she was a greater authority than her clever companion.

"But he really cared for me, I am certain he did," Katharine went on plaintively; and her eyes filled with tears again.

"Then why is he marrying the other girl instead of you? If she is so beautiful, you're surely very good-looking too, eh? That won't wash anyhow, will it?"

Katharine was silent. She felt she could not reveal the full extent of his infamy just then; there was something so particularly sordid in having been weighed against the advantages of a worldly marriage and found wanting; and she felt a sudden disinclination to expose the whole of the truth to the sharp criticism of Polly Newland.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she said again. "I don't understand why things are so unfairly arranged. Why should I suffer for it like this?"

"Don't know about that," retorted the uncompromising Polly. "I expect you've been foolish, and that's a worse game than being bad. Going about town with a man after dark, when you're not engaged to him, isn't considered respectable by most, even if it's always the same man. I'm not so particular as some, but you must draw the line somewhere."

"I didn't go about with him much," said Katharine, making a feeble attempt to justify herself. "He didn't care about it; he was always so particular not to give people anything to talk about. He didn't care for himself, he said; it was only for me. So I used to go to his chambers instead. I couldn't be more careful than that, could I? And I should have gone in the daytime, if I had had more time; but there was all my work to get through,--so what else could I do? There wasn't any harm in it."

She could not see her companion's face, and was so full of her own reflections that she failed to notice her silence. Polly did not even sniff.

"Then there's Ted," Katharine continued presently. "Even Ted was strange to-night; and Ted has never been like that to me before. I can't think what has come over everybody. What have I done to deserve it all?"

"Mercy me!" cried Polly suddenly. "Is there another of them? Who on earth is Ted?"

"Ted? Why, you must have seen him in the hall sometimes; he often comes to take me out. I have known him all my life; he is only a little older than I am, and I am devoted to him. I would not quarrel with Ted for anything in the whole world; it would be like quarrelling with myself. And to-night I ran into him, just as I came out of--of the other one's chambers; and I was so glad to see him, because Ted is always so sweet to me when I am in trouble; and--and Ted was quite funny, and he wouldn't speak to me at all, and he just put me into a hansom and left me to come home alone. I can't think why he behaved so oddly. I know he used not to get on with--with the other one, and that is why I never told him I had met him again up here in London; and I suppose he caught sight of him to-night in the doorway,--there was a lamp just above,--but still, he need not have been hurt until he had heard my explanation, need he? Why has every one turned against me at once?"

Polly remained silent no longer. She turned and stared at the prostrate figure on the bed, with all the power of her small, watery blue eyes.

"I really think you beat everything I ever knew," she exclaimed.

"What?" said Katharine, who had turned her face to the wall, and was occupied in meditating miserably on the problem of her existence.

"What do you mean?"

Polly lost all control over herself.

"Do you mean to tell me that you never saw any harm in all this?" she cried emphatically. "Do you really mean to say that you have been carrying on anyhow with two men at once, going to their chambers late at night, and letting yourself be seen in public with them, without knowing that it was unusual? Didn't you ever see the danger in it? You are either the biggest fool in creation or the biggest humbug! One man at a time would be bad enough; but two! My eye!"

"But--there wasn't any harm," pleaded Katharine. "Why does no one understand? It seemed quite natural to me. They were so different, and I liked them in such opposite ways, don't you see? I have known Ted all my life; he is a dear boy, and that is all. But Paul is clever and strong; he is a man, and he knows about things. And I never knew it was wrong; I didn't _feel_ wicked, somehow. I wonder if that was what Paul was thinking, when he said I was a prig? Oh, dear! oh, dear!

I have never been so wretched in my whole life!"

"Did he say that about you? Well, I don't wonder."

Katharine looked hopelessly at her unsympathetic profile, with the snub nose and the small chin, and the hair twisted up into tight plaits and the ends tied with white tape; and her eyes wandered down the red flannel dressing-gown to the large slippered feet that emerged from beneath it.

"You called me a prig, too," she said, humbly. "I overheard you."

"I thought so then," said Polly gruffly.

"Do you think so now? Is it true? Am I a prig?" She awaited the answer anxiously. Polly gave her another pitiless stare.

"I'm bothered if I know," she said. "But if you're not, you ought to be in the nursery. Only don't go telling people the things you've been telling me to-night, or you might get yourself into worse trouble. You'd better go to sleep now, and leave it till to-morrow. My conscience! you'd make some people sit up, you would!"

Katharine felt she had endured as much contempt as she could bear that evening; but she made a last attempt to recover some of her self-respect.

"I wish you would tell me why it is wrong to do things that are not really wrong in themselves, just because people say they are wrong?"

she asked, rather sleepily.

"Because people can make it so jolly unpleasant for you if you don't agree with them," said Polly bluntly. "And if you fancy you're going to alter all that, you must make up your mind to be called a prig. You can't have a good time and defy convention as you've been doing, and then expect to get off scot free without being called a prig; it isn't likely. Most people are content to take things as they are; it's a jolly sight more comfortable, and it's good enough for them.

Good-night."

"I sha'n't sleep," Katharine called after her. And Polly sniffed.

And the next thing that Katharine remembered was being awakened by her in the early morning, and told in a gruff voice that she might sit with Phyllis if she liked, until some one came to relieve her.