The Making of a Prig Part 8

"How have I contrived to fall among such an appallingly serious set of infants?" he muttered. "Hey-day! here's for London and life!" And he turned indoors to look for a time-table.

Ted stalked straight into the summer house, with his head in the air and his mind filled with high-souled resolutions. Any one less occupied with his own reflections would have seen that Katharine was sitting with an absent look in her eyes, while the book she held in her hand was open at the index-page. But Ted only saw in her the woman he had just sworn within him to respect; and he took the book reverently out of her hand, and sat down, also just behind her, on the end of the basket chair. It was the same basket chair.

"Kitty, I say," he began, clearing his throat, "I've come to tell you something."

Katharine glanced at his solemn face, and looked away again. She wished he had not sat just there.

"It must have something to do with a funeral, then," she said, with a flippancy that would have aroused the suspicions of a more observant person. But Ted was still absorbed in his high-souled resolutions, and her abstraction failed to make any impression on him.

"No, it hasn't," he rejoined gloomily. "I wish it had! I shouldn't mind being dead, not I! It would cure this hump, anyhow. Perhaps some one would be sorry, then; don't know who would, though! _She_'d only complain of the expense of burying me."

"Poor old man, who has been bullying you now?" asked Katharine, in a dreamy voice that she strove to make interested. "Has _she_ been doing anything fresh?"

"Has she, that's all! She's been doing something to some purpose, this time. Got me a beastly job, in a beastly city place; a pound a week; soap, or wholesale clothing, or something poor. Says I ought to be thankful to get anything. Thankful indeed! _She_ never shows a spark of grat.i.tude for her bally seven hundred a year, I know."

"Oh, Ted! every one is going away. What shall I do?" The words escaped her involuntarily. But he was still too full of his own troubles to notice anything except that she seemed distressed; and this, of course, was only natural.

"I knew you'd be cut up," he said, kicking savagely at the leg of the chair. "You're the only chap who cares; and you'll forget when I've been gone a week. Oh, yes, you will! I ought never to have been born.

They're sure to be rank outsiders, too; and I can stand anything sooner than bounders. It's too beastly caddish for words, and I'd like to kill him for his rotten advice. What does he know about anything, a played-out chap like that?"

Ted's conversation was apt to become involved when he was agitated; but on this occasion Katharine made no attempt to unravel it.

"Poor Ted," she murmured tonelessly, and continued to think about something else.

"I don't know why you are so cut up about it. I'm such a rotten a.s.s, and you're so infernally smart! I haven't any right to expect you to care a hang about me; I won't even ask you to write to me, when I'm gone," cried Ted, making desperate efforts to keep his high-souled resolutions. "It's a rotten, caddish world, and I'm the rottenest fool in it."

He waited for the contradiction that always came from Katharine at this point of his self-abas.e.m.e.nt; but when she said nothing, and only went on staring in the opposite direction, he felt that there was something unusually wrong, and came hastily round to the front of her chair and repeated his last remark with emphasis.

"You may say what you like, but I am. All the same, I would sooner chuck the whole show than make you unhappy. I'll be hanged if I don't go away to-morrow without a single--" He stopped abruptly; for she was looking up at him piteously, and his high-souled resolutions suddenly melted into oblivion. "Kitty, old chum, don't cry! I'm not worth it,--on my soul I'm not; blowed if I've ever seen you cry before! Good old Kit, I say, don't. Oh, the devil! Do you really mind so much?"

"Please, Ted, go away; you don't understand; go away; it isn't that at all! Don't, Ted, don't! Oh, dear, whatever made me cry?" gasped Katharine. But Ted would take no denial: a woman's tears would have disarmed him, even if he had not been in love with her; and Katharine, the tomboyish companion of years, appeared to him in a strangely lovable light as she sobbed into her hands and made the feeblest efforts to keep him away. His arms were round her in a moment, and her head was pulled down on his shoulder, and he poured a medley of broken sentences into her ear.

"How was I to know you cared, old chum? Of course I have always cared; but I never thought about it until that played-out London chap turned up and put it into my head. Dear old Kitty! Why, do you know, I was half afraid you were going to like him, one time; wasn't I a rotten a.s.s? But, you see, you're so bally clever, and all that; and I supposed he was, too, and so I thought,--don't you see? And all the while, it was me! Buck up, Kit! I won't split that you cried, on my honour I won't. Oh, I say, I'm the most confoundedly lucky chap-- But, oh, that infernal office in the city!"

Katharine disengaged herself at last. His kisses seemed to burn into her cheeks. She pushed back the basket chair into the corner of the summer-house, and put her fingers over her eyes to shut out the flower beds and the sunlight.

"Stop, Ted! I don't know what you mean. You must not think those things of me; they are simply not true. I can't let you kiss me like that. Has the world gone suddenly mad, this afternoon? I don't understand what has happened to every one. I don't understand anything. Will you go, please, Ted? If you won't, I--I must."

She forced out the disjointed sentences in hard, pa.s.sionless tones.

Ted stood absolutely still where she left him, and watched her stumble through the doorway and disappear among the laurel bushes and the old box-trees. Then he rumpled up his thick hair with both his hands, and laughed aloud.

"I ought never to have been born," he said, and his voice broke.

CHAPTER VI

On a foggy morning in the beginning of the following January, Ted Morton strolled out of his bedroom shortly before eight o'clock, and rang the bell for breakfast. He yawned as though he were only half awake, and swore gently at the weather as he stirred up the fire to make a blaze.

"What an infernal day!" he muttered, and pulled down the blind and lighted the gas. The housekeeper brought in his breakfast and his letters, and wisely withdrew without saying anything. Ted took the lid off the teapot, and examined the three envelopes in turn. His face brightened a little as he came to the third, and he b.u.t.tered some toast and ate it standing.

"Well, I'm hanged! Not a single bill, and one from Kit, good old Kit!

That'll wait, and that. Well, I can stand hers; it's sure to be funny, at all events."

He put on one boot, and then stood up again and read her letter, with a large cup of tea in his right hand. The smile on his face faded gradually as he read, and he looked almost thoughtful when he folded it up again and placed it in his breast-pocket. He was staunch in his belief that Katharine could do no wrong, but her latest idea went far to shake his conviction.

"You see, it is like this," her letter ran.

"There is plenty of money, really, but we have to behave as though there were none; so the effect is the same, it seems to me. I never thought about it before; I only found it out by accident, when I overheard Aunt Esther abusing daddy for buying some old architectural books. It seems as though he really does spend a good lot, without knowing it; but then, why shouldn't he? I won't have daddy bullied, so that I should have enough bread and b.u.t.ter to eat; it is sordid and horrible. They don't say a word about my earning my own living, but that is what they are driving me to do; it seems ridiculous that I should make other people uncomfortable by being here, when there is plenty of money in the world waiting to be earned by some one. Don't you think so? But when I said I would come up to London and give lessons, Aunt Esther had heroics, and said I should kill her. She didn't say how, and I'm sure I did not feel particularly murderous; I only wanted to laugh, while she lay on the sofa and said I was undutiful for trying to save her anxiety! I don't understand parents.

They hide everything from you, and behave as if they were wealthy; then they abuse you for costing so much to keep; and then, when you say you will keep yourself, they call you undutiful. There is no doubt that if we were to send away one of the servants, I should be able to stay at home; but Aunt Esther would have a fit at the idea. It seems to me that we spend half our income in trying to persuade people of the existence of the other half. Anyhow, I am coming up at once to look for work. I haven't told daddy yet, and don't know how I am going to; he will be so dreadfully cut up at losing me. But I am sure he will understand; he is the one person who always has understood. And won't it be glorious when I have earned enough money to give him everything he wants? About rooms: I saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt of some, a few doors from you. Do you know them? I thought it would be rather nice to be near you,"

etc., etc.

Ted answered her letter the same evening. Writing letters was always a labour to him, but he toiled over this one more than usual.

"Of course you know what you are playing at," he wrote, "but I believe it is awfully hard to get anything to do. London is packed with people trying to find work; and most of them don't find it. As to the rooms, it would be beastly jolly to have you so close, but I don't advise your coming here; this street pals on to Regent Street, you know, and it isn't supposed to be pleasant for a girl. I will explain more fully when I see you. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm a rotten a.s.s at expressing myself, as you know; but it will be awfully decent to have you to take about. Only I don't like the idea of your grinding away alone; it's rotten enough for a man, but it's miles worse for a woman. Write again soon. It _is_ a life, isn't it?"

It was nearly a fortnight before he heard from her again, and he felt guiltily conscious of not having encouraged her as much as she expected. Then came another letter, in her small, firm handwriting; and he tore it open anxiously.

"I am coming up by the 4.55 on Wednesday," she wrote. "Will you meet me? I thought perhaps you might, as it is a late train. Oh, Ted, I feel so old and different somehow; I don't believe I _could_ climb into that pantry window now! Daddy took it so strangely; he hardly said anything at all. Do you think it is possible that he really does not love me as much as I love him? And I mind leaving him so much that it quite hurts every time he asks me to do anything for him. Why was I made to like people more than they like me? Why, I believe daddy was rather relieved than otherwise. And I thought he would never be able to do without me! Am I very conceited, I wonder? But indeed, I do believe he will miss me dreadfully when I am gone. Aunt Esther won't speak to me at all; I feel in disgrace, without having done anything wrong. Parents are inexplicable; they seem to grow tired of us as we grow up, just like birds! And they persist in treating us like children, while they are forcing us to behave as if we were grown up; I can't understand them, or anything. Things seem to be going all wrong, everywhere. I have heard of a sort of home for working gentlewomen, near Edgware Road; it seems respectable, and it is certainly cheap. They have left me to arrange everything, just as though I were going to do something wicked. And I thought all the while I was doing something so splendid and heroic! You will meet me, won't you?

I feel so forlorn and miserable."

Ted wrote back immediately:--

"It is a beastly rotten world. Neither of us ought to have been born. I will cut the office and meet you. Buck up."

And the following Wednesday saw him on the platform at Euston, trying to find Katharine in the crowd of pa.s.sengers who were pouring out of the 4.55 train. It was not long before he discovered her, looking very unlike her surroundings, and pointing out her luggage, half apologetically, to a porter who seemed inclined to patronise her.

There was an exaggerated air of self-possession in her bearing, which did not conceal her provincial look and rather showed that she felt less composed than she wished to appear. Ted examined her for a moment doubtfully, and then made his way towards her. He had not seen her once since she left him in the summer-house, eight months ago; and he was amazed at himself for not feeling more disturbed at meeting her again now. Perhaps her prosaic winter clothing helped to rob the occasion of romance; for, in his mind, he had vaguely expected to find her wearing the garden hat and print frock in which he had last seen her. But when she turned round and saw him, the frank pleasure in her face was the same as it had always been, and the episode that had been enacted in the summer-house seemed all at once to be blotted out of their past.

"You dear old boy, I knew you'd come! I feel so awfully out of it, in this noise! Do make that porter understand I want to get across to Gower Street, will you? He seems confused. I don't speak a different language, do I? Just look at that glorious pair of bays; but, oh, what a shame to give them bearing-reins! Why, Ted, what a swell you are in that frock coat; you look just like the vet. at Stoke on Sundays! Oh, I'm so sorry; I forgot! I want to get to Edgware Road, you see, and I thought--"

"Oh, we'll cab it, then! Nonsense! it isn't a bit cheaper, only nastier. Girls never understand these things. Hadn't you better get in, instead of examining the points of the horse? It won't stand any quieter than that, if that's your idea."

The porter went off with a handsome gratuity, and Katharine settled herself in her corner of the cab, and began to examine her companion.

"You've altered a little bit, Ted," she observed. "You're not so afraid of unimportant people as you used to be. I believe you would go into the post office at Stoke for your own stamps, now, instead of sending me because the girl laughed at you. Do you remember? You are such a swell, too; how you must be getting on at that place!"

"Oh, I don't think so. I don't want to get on there; no decent chap would," said Ted, and Katharine changed the conversation.

"The streets seem very full," she said, as they came to a block in the traffic.

"Up to the brim," said Ted laconically. "I always wonder the horses don't tread on one another's toes, don't you?"

She laughed in her old joyous manner, and he leaned back contentedly and looked at her.

"At all events, you haven't altered much," he observed.

"I've grown an inch, and my dresses are quite long now. Besides, I have put up my hair. Didn't you notice?"