The Making of a Prig Part 28

"All right," she replied, drowsily. "How tired you look; didn't you sleep well?"

"Sleep? There wasn't much chance of that, when she was talking gibberish all the time. She's quieter now, and you can fetch Jenny if you want anything. I must be off; I shall be late as it is. Just like my luck to get my early week when she is ill!"

And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. And yet, when Miss Jennings came and took her post in the sick-room, and she was free to go to school, she found that it was a relief to be compelled to do something, and her work seemed easier to her than she had ever found it before. She had never given a better lecture than she gave that morning; and something that was outside herself seemed to come to her a.s.sistance all day, and remained with her until her work was done. But when she returned home in the evening, the full significance of her unfortunate situation stared her again in the face; and the news that Phyllis was worse and was not allowed to see any one was so in keeping with her feelings, that she felt unable even to make a comment upon it.

"I always said that Miss Austen hadn't a spark of feeling in her,"

observed the girl who had given her the information; and Katharine overheard her, and began to wonder mechanically if it were true. Every faculty she possessed seemed deadened at that moment; she had no longer the inclination even to rebel against her fate. She sat on the stairs, outside the bedroom she was not allowed to enter, and took a strange delicious pleasure in dwelling upon the whole of her intercourse with Paul. There was not a conversation or a chance meeting with him, that she did not go through in her mind with a scrupulous accuracy; the pain of it became almost unendurable at moments, and yet it was an exquisite torture that brought her some measure of relief. She even forced herself to recall her last meeting with him, and was surprised in an apathetic sort of way when she found that she did not want to cry any more.

And from thinking of Paul, she naturally fell to thinking of Ted too.

And it slowly dawned upon her, as she considered it in the light of her present mood, that what Polly had said in her vulgar, uncompromising manner, was the truth. For a whole year she had been living in a false atmosphere of contentment; she had deluded herself into the belief that she was superior to convention and human nature combined, and she had ended in proving herself a complete failure.

Paul had seen through her self-righteousness, he had nothing but contempt for her, and he had found it a relief to turn from her to the human and faulty Marion Keeley. In the depths of her self-abas.e.m.e.nt, she had even ceased to feel angry with Marion.

And Ted had found her out. That was the worst of all. On the impulse of the moment, she fetched some paper and wrote to him at once, sitting there on the uncarpeted stairs, while the people pa.s.sed up and down unheeded by her. It was a very humble letter, full of pleading confession and self-accusation,--such a letter as she had never sent him before, and written from a standpoint she had never yet been obliged to a.s.sume towards him. It was a relief at the moment to be doing something; but she regretted her action the whole of the following day, and hardly knew how to open his reply when she found it awaiting her, on her return home in the evening. It was very short.

"Dear Kitty," it ran:--

Don't mind about me. It's a rotten world, and I'm the rottenest fool in it. I was only hit up the other night because I was so surprised. Of course you're all right, and I ought never to have been born. I knew all the time that you were spoofing me when you pretended to care for me; but I didn't know you cared for any one else, least of all Wilton.

He always seemed so played to me, but then I'm not clever.

Only, I advise you not to go hanging round his chambers at night; people are so poor, and they might talk. Let me know if you want me or anything. I won't bother you otherwise.

TED.

He still believed in her, then; only it was more from habit than conviction. But she had destroyed his love for her. She realised these two facts in the same breath, and she rebelled pa.s.sionately at the loss of the affection that had been hers for so long, though she had valued it so lightly.

"I do want you, now," she scribbled to him in pencil. "Will you come here to-morrow evening? Miss Jennings has promised me the use of her sitting-room. I shall expect you about seven."

It seemed quite in harmony with the general wretchedness of those few days that Phyllis should be seriously ill all the time. The sixty-three working gentlewomen, who had never pretended to care for the brusque shorthand clerk when she was in good health and trampled without a scruple on their tenderest susceptibilities, now went about on tiptoe, and conversed in whispers on all the landings, and got in the way of the doctor when he came downstairs. And they one and all condemned Katharine for her indifference, because she refused to enlarge on the subject at every meal.

"The conversation is never very exhilarating, at the best of times; but when all those women take to gloating over a tragedy, it simply isn't bearable," she was heard to exclaim; and the unlucky remark cost her the last shred of her popularity at Queen's Crescent.

She was waiting at her usual post on the stairs, when they came to tell her that Ted was downstairs. He had come at her bidding; that was consoling, at all events. But when she walked into Miss Jennings'

private room and saw his face as he stood on the hearthrug, her heart sank again, and she knew that she was not to find consolation yet. He held out his hand to her silently, and pulled forward a slender, white-wood chair tied up with yellow ribbons, and imperilled a bamboo screen crowded with cheap crockery, and finally sat down himself on the edge of the chintz-covered sofa. Neither of them spoke for a moment or two, and Ted cleared his throat uncomfortably, and stared at the ferrule of his walking-stick.

"I got your letter," he said at last, "and I've come."

"Yes," said Katharine, "you've come."

Having delivered themselves of these two very obvious remarks, they again relapsed into silence; and Katharine glanced at the cuckoo clock, and marvelled that so much concentrated wretchedness could be crowded into something under five minutes.

"Ted," she forced herself to say, in a voice that did not seem to be hers, "Ted, will you never come and see me any more?"

He lifted his head and looked at her; then looked away again.

"Not unless you want me to do anything for you," he said. "I don't want to bother, you see."

She longed to cry out and tell him that he never bothered her; that she wanted to see him more than she wanted anything in the whole world. But something new and strange in his face, that told her he was no longer a boy and no longer her willing slave, seemed to paralyse her. To be proved inferior to the man she had always considered inferior to her, was the hardest blow she had yet had to endure.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, lamely.

Ted hastened to be apologetic.

"I'm beastly sorry," he said, and cleared his throat again.

"I--I wish you would explain," she went on.

"Oh, that's all right, isn't it?" said Ted vaguely.

"It isn't all right; you know it isn't," she cried. "What makes you so strange to me? You've never looked like that before. Is it I who have changed you so, Ted?"

"Oh, it's nothing," he said. "You've hit me up rather, that's all.

Don't bother about me. Did you want me for anything particular?"

She looked in vain for any signs of relenting in his manner; but he sat on the edge of the sofa, and played with his walking-stick, and cleared his throat at intervals. In spite of the changed conditions of their att.i.tude towards one another, she felt that she was expected, as usual, to take the initiative.

"I wanted to tell you all about it, to explain," she faltered. "I thought you would help me."

"If it's all the same to you, I would rather not hear," said Ted, with unexpected prompt.i.tude. "I know as much about it as I care to know, thanks. _He_ wrote to me this morning, too."

"He wrote to you? Paul?"

"Wilton, yes," he replied, shortly, and glanced at her again. His under lip was twitching, as it always did when he was hurt or embarra.s.sed.

"What for?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Oh, to explain, and all that! Hang the explanation! I didn't want him to tell me he hadn't been a blackguard; I knew you,--so that was all square. But I don't understand it now, and I don't want to. I can't see any great shakes, myself, in playing about with a girl when you're engaged to some one else. But I suppose that's because I'm such a rotten a.s.s. It's none of my business, any way; only, I think you'd better be careful. But you know best, so that's all right."

Again she longed to tell him that she was not so bad as he thought her, and yet, much worse than he thought her; but the words would not come, and she sat self-condemned.

"You don't understand," she stammered presently. "I didn't know he was engaged till yesterday. I saw no harm in it all; I only liked him very much, as a friend. I liked you in quite a different way, I--"

"You didn't know he was engaged?" said Ted, rousing himself suddenly.

"Do you mean to say he has been playing fast and loose with you, the blackguard? If I had thought that--"

"No, no!" she cried, in alarm at the fierceness of his expression. "He never treated me badly; he made everything quite clear from the beginning. It was my fault if I misunderstood him. But I never did; I always knew we were just friends, and it was pleasant, and I let it go on. Haven't you and I been friends, too, Ted? There was no harm in that, was there?"

"Oh, no," he said, bitterly. "There was no fear of any harm in it!"

She realised his meaning, and blushed painfully as she felt that he had spoken the truth.

"Ted, do you hate me, I wonder?" she murmured.

"What? Oh, that's all right. Don't bother about me. I was a rotten a.s.s ever to expect anything else."

"But, I mean, because--because of the other?" she went on anxiously.

Ted bit his lip, but did not speak.

"Do you think it was wrong of me?" she pleaded. "Ted, tell me! I didn't know; I didn't really. It seemed quite right to me; I couldn't see that it mattered, just because of what people said. Would you think it wrong of a girl to come and see you, if she liked coming, and didn't care what people said?"