The weeks crept on; and Paul Wilton, from being merely an object of interest and pity, gradually became the greatest mystery in the neighbourhood. Such a reputation was entirely unsought on his part, although, had he been aware of it, the probability is that it would not have been wholly unpleasing to him. For it had been his pose through life to mystify people,—not by deliberately assuming to be what he was not, but by strenuously avoiding any appearance of what he was; and his indifference, which was what people first noticed in him, was entirely feigned for the purpose of concealing that his real attitude towards life was a critical one. It was not unreasonable that a man of this calibre, suddenly placed in a quiet country parish, should end in making some sort of a sensation there. Miss Esther from the beginning had suffered much, and silently; but a man who had a father in Crockford and a mother in Debrett,was to be forgiven a good deal, and she felt compelled to overlook even the ash of his cigarettes, and his French novels, when she found them both on the chaste counterpane of the best spare-room bed. But there were others in Ivingdon who, not having much of a pedigree themselves, were inclined to undervalue the importance of one; and some of these, the doctor, for instance, and Peter Bunce the churchwarden, came to the Rector for enlightenment.
"Eh, but he doan't give hisself away much, do he, now?" said the churchwarden, jerking his thumb in the direction of the lame man, who had just swung himself past the window on his crutches. "He be proper close, I reckon, eh?"
"He is a very intelligent young man," said the Rector vaguely. "He has quite an appreciation of Oriental china."
It was Sunday afternoon, and the Rector was dispensing whiskey and cigars to his guests, with a prodigality that might have been attributed to Miss Esther's absence at the Sunday school. There was an ease, too, about their manners and their conversation, which was to be traced to the same cause.
"I suppose he's beastly clever, and all that,isn't he?" asked Ted morosely. He was sitting on the window ledge, a convenient position which allowed him to shout occasional answers to the questions that came from Katharine on the other side of the lawn. Just then, however, she was joined by Paul; and Ted knew instinctively that he would have no more questions to answer after that.
"It is difficult to say what he is," observed the doctor. "You can't get him to talk; at least, not much. Generally, when I've done all the professional business, he relapses into total silence, and I just have to go; but sometimes he is inclined to be chatty, and then he makes a delightful companion. But the odd thing is, that I know no more about the man himself at the end of a conversation than I did at the beginning. A barrister, did you say he was? That accounts for the judicial manner, then; but the question is, what is there behind it all?"
No one seemed to have an answer ready to the doctor's question; but Peter Bunce took a long pull at the whiskey, and brushed the cigar ash from his capacious waistcoat, and attacked the subject with fresh vigour.
"There ain't no finding out anything about no one, without you take a bit o' trouble," heremarked wisely. "Mayhap Mr. Austen, yonder, might know a something more than us folk. Hasn't he got never a father, now? There's a won'erful lot to be gathered from knowing of a man's father, there is. Like enough he's one o' they London folk, as daren't speak aloud for fear of its getting into the newspapers. London folk is mighty well watched, so I've heard; there's never a moment's peace or safety in London, some say. Mayhap Mr. Wilton's father is a London gen'leman, now!"
"His father?" said the Rector, with sudden enthusiasm. "His father was something short of a genius, sir! He is the best authority we have on the numismatics of his neighbourhood. Have you never heard of Wilton's 'Copper Tokens'?"
"Guess we have, sir, pretty often," laughed Ted.
The Rector looked pathetic, and handed him another cigar, with an apprehension that arose from the distant clang of the garden gate.
"They all laugh at me," he said in a cheery tone that evoked no one's pity. "I'm an old fool; oh, yes, we know all about that. But if you had read Wilton's 'Copper Tokens,' you wouldn't want to know who this man's fatherwas. Let me see,—what did I do with my Crockford?"
"I expect you thought it was a hymn-book and carted it up to church this morning," said Ted, in a tone of forced merriment. He still had one eye on the lawn, and what he saw there did not raise his spirits.
"Died at the age of fifty-eight, when his son was a lad of eighteen, he tells me," continued the Rector. "That was the same date that the fifth edition of the 'Copper Tokens' was issued, some ten or fifteen years ago now. Bless me, how time flies when we're not growing any younger!"
For the space of a moment or two, everybody present was occupied with a mental calculation. The churchwarden was the first to give up the attempt, and he returned doggedly to the original topic.
"Age ain't got nothing to do with it," he began, heaving a sigh of relief as he substituted his pipe for the unusual cigar. "'Cause why? Some folk's old when they're young, and other folk's young when they're old; that's where it lays, you see."
Nobody did see; but Ted threw in a vicious comment.
"The Lord only knows how old he is,but he's as played out as they make them," he said.
The churchwarden smiled, without understanding, and Cyril Austen was too deep in his Crockford to hear what was passing; but the doctor had been young himself, not so long ago, and he understood.
"Does he talk about leaving?" he asked in a casual manner, directing his remark to the boy on the window ledge. "There's nothing to keep him here now, as far as I can see."
"Don't know anything about him," said Ted, with a studied indifference. "I should have thought, from the way Kitty speaks of him, that London couldn't do without him for another moment. What they all see in him, I don't know. I suppose it's because I'm such a rotten ass, but he seems just like anybody else to me as far as brains are concerned. And he can't talk for nuts. But Miss Esther says his family is all square; and that's enough for the women, I suppose."
The doctor nodded sympathetically, and Ted laughed as if he were a little ashamed of taking himself so seriously.
"He's going to make himself scarce on Wednesday," he continued, rather more cordially."He's got a pal of his coming down on business to-morrow, and they're going off together. Good thing, too, eh? Don't know anything about the pal—he's not any great shakes, I expect; but Wilton swears he knows a lot about coins, and of course that will fetch the Rector. Fact is, this place is getting too clever for me. There's Kitty, who rots about poetry and things till it makes you sick. She never used to; and it's no good her trying to spoof you that she isn't altered, because she is,—and all for the sake of a chap like Wilton, who hardly ever opens his mouth! It's so poor, isn't it?"
But here the arrival of Miss Esther postponed any further discussion of the Rectory guest. The doctor suddenly remembered that he had a patient to visit, and took an abrupt departure; and the churchwarden refused a curt invitation to tea, and went hastily after him. Ted lingered a moment or two, without being noticed at all; and Miss Esther, having successfully routed her brother's guests, went into the garden to disturb the conversation on the other side of the lawn.
Some two days later, Paul Wilton and his friend from London were pacing up and down the narrow strip of gravel path that skirted thehouse on the south side. In the absence of Katharine, who had induced him to prolong the period of helplessness, as he would have wished to prolong any other pleasurable sensation, Paul had no reason to play the invalid; and, except for an occasional limp, there was nothing in his walk to indicate lameness. There was the usual inexplicable smile on his face, however, as he listened to the bantering conversation of the man at his side, and occasionally interrupted it with one of his dry, terse remarks. His companion was a little elderly man, with small features and a fresh complexion, whose geniality was the result of temperament rather than of principle, and whose conversation was toned with a personal refrain that made it naïvely amusing.
"That's a pretty child, by the way," he was saying, with the air of a connoisseur. Katharine had just left them, and they could hear her laughing with her father indoors. Paul murmured an assent, and went on smoking. His companion glanced at him sideways, and smiled gently.
"Very pretty," he repeated, "but ridiculously young. And who is the charming boy who is so gone on her? She doesn't see it a bit, and he hasn't the pluck to tell her. I'mquite sorry for that boy; I've been in his shoes many a time, and I know what it feels like. He's got a lot to teach her, that's certain, eh? Doesn't interest you, I suppose! If it had been me, now, chained here with a broken leg and nothing to do, with an idyllic love story going on under my eyes—ah, well! you are not made that way, and I am too old, I suppose. Besides, in spite of her charm, she isn't exactly my style."
"No," said Paul; "she is not your style."
"All the same, she's remarkably pretty, and I'm not too old to admire a pretty woman," chuckled his companion. "'Pon my word, I 'm quite inclined to envy that boy. Just imagine a veritable woman, still thinking herself a child, with a delightful boy for her only companion, and no one to stand between them! I'd have given worlds for such a chance when I was his age."
"But, you see, you are not his age; so it is no use trying to cut him out. Besides, you ought to know better, Heaton, at your time of life," said Paul, in a jesting manner that was a little strained. Heaton took his remark rather as a compliment than otherwise.
"You won't alter me, my boy; you'll find me the same to the end of the chapter,—somake up your mind to that. I'm not ashamed of it either, not I! Seriously, though, I'm quite interested in our little love story yonder. I should like to help that boy. Silly ass! why doesn't he make a plunge for it? He isn't likely to have a rival."
"Perhaps that is why he doesn't," observed Paul. "But I don't see why we should trouble ourselves about it."
"That's where you're so cynical," complained Heaton. "These little affairs always interest me intensely; they bring back my youth to me, and remind me of my lost happiness. Oh, life! what you once held for me! And now it is all gone, buried with my two sweet wives, and I am left alone with no one to care what becomes of me."
His eyes were moist as he finished speaking, and Paul walked along at his side without offering any consolation. He would have found it difficult to explain why he had chosen Laurence Heaton for a friend. It would be more correct to say, perhaps, that Heaton had chosen him, and that he had lacked the energy or the power to shake him off. It was generally true that his sentimental egotism bored Paul excessively, and yet he found something to like in a nature that was so unlike his own;and he was so secretive himself that the artless confidences of Heaton, if a little wearisome, at least relieved him of the necessity of adding to the conversation. Besides this, he was a man who never willingly sought the friendship of others, and the obvious preference that the good-natured idler, who was so many years his elder, had shown for him when they first met at a public dinner, had secretly flattered him not a little, and their acquaintance had grown after that as a matter of course.
"All the same," resumed Heaton in his ordinary manner, "an outsider never can do much in these cases. Perhaps it would be better to leave them alone; and yet, if the boy were to come to me for the benefit of my larger experience—"
"Don't you think," interrupted Paul, "that we have talked about a couple of children as much as we need? It's all very well for an old reprobate like yourself to spend your time in reviving your lost youth, but I haven't so much leisure as you have, and I want to hear about those shares you mentioned in your letter last week."
Heaton laughed good-humouredly.
"You don't realise, my dear fellow, how anything like that always interests me. Butyou wait until your time comes; at present you are too cynical to understand what I mean."
"Or too romantic," suggested Paul.
"Oh, no!" said Heaton. "Romance is only an equivalent for inexperience; I think you're a cold-hearted beggar who lets the best things in life go by, but I shouldn't call you inexperienced. You've got a finished way with women that always appeals to them; women love a little humbug, if it's well done. I'm too obvious for them, too simple-minded, and that always frightens them off."
"Does it?" smiled Paul.
"Now, you ought to marry," continued Heaton briskly. "I believe in marriage, hanged if I don't! and it's been the making of me. Everything that is good in me I owe to my married life."
"Did it really take two marriages?" murmured Paul. His companion smiled at the joke against himself, and they stood for a moment in silence, looking over the lawn that had just acquired its fresh bloom of green. Katharine's voice came out to them again through the open window, this time raised in indignant dispute with her aunt.
"She is a curious mixture of hardness and sentiment," said Paul involuntarily, "and hersurroundings have made her a prig; but she interests me rather."
"Ah," said Heaton, "I quite agree with you. Thereisa touch of the prig about her. But can you wonder? She is the only bit of life and prettiness about the place, and she never meets her equal. They think a good lot of her, too. And the parson's daughter generally thinks a good lot of herself."
"She does it rather charmingly," said Paul, in a dispassionate tone, "and she is fairly well read, and knows how to express herself. For a woman, she has quite a sense of criticism."
"That's bad," said Heaton decidedly, "very bad. A woman should have no sense of criticism. That is what makes her a prig. In fact, as I have often said to you before, a prig is made in three ways. First of all, she is made by her own people, if she happens to be clever; and secondly, by the world, if she happens to be successful; and thirdly, by her lover, if she isn't in love with him. But of course if sheisin love with him he may be the cause of her unmaking."
Some one in a light-coloured print frock jumped out of a side window and disappeared in the direction of the summer-house. Thetwo men stood and looked after her without being noticed.
"As you say," remarked Heaton blandly, "she does it rather charmingly."
Paul roused himself with an effort.
"Half-past three," he said, looking at his watch. "Didn't you promise to go and look at the Rector's coins some time this afternoon?"
And in another five minutes he had joined Katharine in the summer-house.
The summer house was set far back in the shrubbery, and although hidden from the house by laurels and box-trees, was open at the front to a stretch of brightly coloured flower beds and trimly cut grass. It was a glorious day in May, and spring in its fulness was come. The white fruit blossoms had given place to crumpled green leaves, and the early summer flowers were in bud. Paul Wilton lay on a low basket chair, where he had flung himself down after making his escape from his garrulous friend; and at his feet, with an open book on her lap, sat Katharine. Obviously, a great many poor women had lost a great many babies, since the day she had sat on the chair at the end of his bed and talked about her favourite poets, for the book on her lap was only a pretence to which neither of them paid the least attention, and their conversation was of a purely personal nature, the kind of conversation that has no subject and no epigrams, and is carried on in half-finished sentences.
"I am beginning to understand why you don't paint or write or do things, although you know such a lot about them," observed Katharine, half closing her eyes and making a picture of the square of sunlit garden as she saw it framed in the woodwork of the summer-house door.
Paul smiled. It was very pleasant to be told by this child of Nature that he knew "such a lot about things."
"Tell me why," was all he said, however.
"I think it is because it puts you in a position to criticise every one else. It makes you so superior, in a sort of way. Oh, bother! I never can explain things. But don't you see, if you were a painter yourself, you couldn't say that there was only one painter living, as you do now. Could you?"
"Perhaps I could," said Paul, and laughed gently at her look of surprise.
"Of course I know you are only laughing at me," she said in an injured tone. "You never think I am serious about anything."
"My dear Miss Katharine," he assured her, "on the contrary, I think you are most terribly serious about everything. I have never had so much serious conversation since I was nineteen myself. You will have togrow older, before you learn to be young and frivolous."
"Butyouare not frivolous," she protested. "You know you are not. You only say that to tease me."
"I only say it to convince you. It is not my fault if you do not understand, is it?"
"I do understand, I am certain I do. At least"—she paused suddenly, and looked at him with one of her long critical looks. "Perhaps you are right, and I don't understand you a bit. How queer! I don't think I like the feel of it." She ended with a little gesture of distaste.
"I shouldn't bother about it, if I were you," said Paul calmly. "You will understand better when you are older—and younger. Meanwhile, it is very pleasant, don't you think?"
She was leaning forward with her hands folded under her chin, and did not answer him.
"What made you choose to be a barrister?" she asked suddenly.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Merely because it presented greater opportunities for idleness than any other profession, I suppose."
Katharine swung herself round on her low stool, and looked at him incredulously.
"But don't you ever want todoanything,—you with all your brains and your talents?" she cried impatiently. "Surely you must have some ambition?"
"Oh, no," replied Paul, arranging the cushions at the back of his head and sinking down on them again. "I hope I shall always be comfortable, that's all; and I have enough money for that, thank the Lord!"
"Supposing you had been poor?"
"Don't suppose it," rejoined Paul; and her puzzled features relaxed into a smile.
"I can't think why you have a face like that, then," she said reflectively.
"What's the matter with my face? Does it suggest possibilities? To think that I might have been a minor poet all these years, without knowing it!"
Katharine returned to her examination of the flower beds; and Paul lay back, and blew rings of smoke into the air, and watched her through them with an amused look on his face. He recalled some casual words of Heaton's which had annoyed him very much at the time,—"If I'm not in love with a woman, I don't want to give her anotherthought;" and he glanced at her slim waist as she sat there, and tried lazily to analyse his own feelings towards her.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, turning round again.
"About you," he said, and brought his feet lightly to the ground and sat up and stretched himself.
"What about me?" she asked curiously.
"I am wondering if you will miss me very much when I am gone," he said, and slid slowly along the chair until he sat behind her, where he could just see her rounded profile as she turned her face away from him.
"Oh, yes, awfully! I wish, I do wish you were not going!" She was looking very hard at the flower beds now.
"So do I, Miss Katharine. It has been quite delightful; I shall never forget your sweet care of me. But you will soon forget all about me. And besides, there is Ted."
"What has that got to do with it?" she asked swiftly.
"Oh, nothing, surely! It was merely an inconsequent reflection on my part."
There was a pause for a few moments.
"Talk," he said suddenly, and put his hand gently against her cheek. It warmed underhis touch, and he heard the tremor in her voice as she spoke.
"I—I can't talk. Oh, please don't!"
"Can't you? Try."
She put her hand up to his, and he caught hold of her fingers, and dropped a light kiss on them as they lay crumpled up on his palm. Then he pressed them slightly, and let them go, and walked away to the house without looking at her again. His countenance was as unmoved as if he had just been talking archæology to the Rector; but his reflections seemed absorbing, and he hardly roused himself to move aside when Ted came lounging out of the house and ran against him in the porch.
"Hullo!" said Ted. "I'm awfully sorry; I didn't see you, really."
"Oh, no matter!" said Paul, who, never being guilty of a clumsy action himself, could afford to remain undisturbed. "Miss Katharine's in the summer house," he added, in answer to Ted's disconsolate look. "We've been reading Browning. At least, Miss Katharine out of her goodness has been trying to make a convert of me. I am afraid I was an unappreciative listener."
Ted glanced inquiringly at him. Somehow,it was not so easy to disapprove of Paul to his face as it was behind his back.
"How poor!" he said sympathetically. "Kitty does play so cheap, sometimes, doesn't she? Browning is enough to give you the hump, I should think. But she never does that to me."
"Probably," said Paul, disengaging a cigarette paper; "she would not feel the same necessity in your case. You would have greater facilities for conversation, I mean. Won't you have a cigarette?"
Ted looked towards the shrubbery, but lingered as though the invitation commended itself to him.
"I think I'll have a pipe, if it's all the same to you. May I try that 'baccy of yours? Thanks, awfully!"
They sat down on opposite sides of the little porch, and puffed away in silence.
"You haven't been over much, lately," observed Paul presently.
Ted glanced at him again, but was disarmed by his tone of friendliness.
"No," he said. "At least, I was over once or twice last week, but I never got a look in with Kitty. I mean," he added hastily, "she was out, or something."
"Ah!" said Paul indifferently; "that was unfortunate."
"It was a howling nuisance," said Ted, his troubled look returning. "The truth is," he went on, feeling a desire for a confidant to be stronger than his distrust of Paul, "there's something I've been trying to tell Kit for a whole week, and for the life of me I can't get it out."
"Going to make a fool of himself at the very start," thought Paul.
"You see," continued Ted with an effort, "shehas been playing up so, lately."
"Your mother?" questioned Paul.
Ted nodded.
"And now she's got me a confounded berth in some place in the city,—candles, or grocery, or something beastly. It's the poorest thing I ever heard. And I've got to start on Thursday, so I must leave home to-morrow. And Kitty doesn't know; that's the devil, you see."
"I'm sorry," said Paul gravely.
"Got it through some cousin of my father's," Ted went on in his aggrieved voice. "No one but a cousin of one's father ever hears of such rotten jobs. Said it would be the making of me, or some rot. I've heard that before; themen who never did a stroke of work themselves always talk that sort of cheapness. Have to be there at half-past eight in the morning, too, blow it!"
"I'm sorry," said Paul again. He began to feel a vague interest in the boy as he sat opposite and stretched his long legs out to their full length, and jerked out his complaints with the brier between his teeth.
"Shethinks it such great shakes, too; just because she won't have to keep me any longer. She ought never to have had a son like me; I wasn't meant for such beastly work. Why was I born? Why was I?"
"The parents of the human animal are never selected," said Paul, for the sake of saying something.
"I know I'm a fool,—she'stold me that often enough; so I don't expect to get anything awfully decent. But why did they educate me as a gentleman? They should have sent me to a board school, and then I should have been a bounder myself, and nothing would have mattered. What's the use of being a gentleman and a fool? That's what I am; and Kit's the only person in the world who doesn't make me feel it, bless her!"
Paul threw away his cigarette, and made asudden resolve. He was amused, in spite of himself, at the very youthful pessimism in Ted's remarks; and for a moment he felt almost anxious that the boy should not spoil his career by a false start. There was something novel, too, in his playing the part of counsellor, and Paul Wilton was never averse to a new sensation. So he leaned forward and tapped his companion on the knee with his long, pointed forefinger.
"You may send me to the devil, if you like," he said with his placid smile, "but I should like to give you a word of advice first. May I?"
Ted looked more depressed than before, but he did not seem surprised.
"Fire ahead!" he said sadly. "I can stand an awful lot. People have always given me advice, ever since I was a kid; it's the only thing they ever have given me."
"I don't suppose it is my business at all," said Paul, making another cigarette with the elaborate precision he always spent on trifles; "but I've seen so many nice chaps ruined through a mistake in early life, and I know one or two things, and I'm older than you, too. Now, how do you mean to tell that child over there that you are going away?"
Ted started.
"What do you mean?" he asked. But his lower lip was twitching nervously, and his colour had deepened.
"Well, this is what I mean. Given an emotional creature like that, who has never seen any man but you, and a young, impetuous fellow like yourself, going to say good-bye to her for an indefinite period,—well, you are both extremely likely to arrive at one conclusion; and my advice to you is,—Don't."
Ted said nothing, but continued to stare at the tesselated floor. The elder man rose to his feet, and restored the match box to his pocket.
"I nearly did it myself once," he said; "but I didn't."
Ted looked him thoughtfully up and down.
"I shouldn't think you did," he said, with unconscious sarcasm. Then he too rose slowly to his feet, and stood on the doorstep for a moment, with his hands in his pockets. "I think you're a confounded cynical brute," he said rather breathlessly, "but I believe you're right, and I won't."
And he walked across the lawn to the shrubbery with the air of a man on whose decision depends the fate of nations.
Paul frowned slightly, as he always did whenhe was thinking deeply, and then threw off his preoccupation with a laugh. Even when he was alone, he liked to preserve his attitude of nonchalance.
"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 thatwould 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. "Hasshebeen 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!Shenever shows a spark of gratitude 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 ass, 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-abasement;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 ass? 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, passionless 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.
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 buttered 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 upagain 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 butter 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 advertisement of some, a few doors from you. Do you know them? I thought it would be rather nice to be near you," etc., etc.
"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 butter 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 advertisement 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 itisn'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 ass 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. Itisa life, isn't it?"
"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 itisn'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 ass 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. Itisa 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 Icouldclimb 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 amgone. 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."
"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 Icouldclimb 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 amgone. 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."
"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 passengers 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; Iforgot! 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?"
"I thought there was something. Turn your head round. About time you did, wasn't it? But why don't you make it stick out more? Other girls do, don't they?"
Katharine had not seen any other girls, and said so; whereupon Ted supposed it was all right, if she thought it was, and added conciliatingly, that at all events her new coat was "all there." They chattered in the same trivial manner all the rest of the way; it was like the old days, when they had never thought of making up a quarrel formally, but had just resumed matters where they had been broken off.
"Do you feel bad?" he asked, in his sympathetic way, when they stood at last on the well-worn doorstep of number ten, Queen's Crescent, Marylebone.
"Oh, I don't know! I've got to go through with it now, haven't I? It's just like youand me not to have touched on anything really important all the way; isn't it? And I've got such a heap of things to tell you," said Katharine, in a nervous tone; and she gave a little shiver as an east wind came rushing up the street and blew dirty pieces of paper against the dingy iron railings, whence they fluttered down into the area.
"Never mind; I'll look you up some evening soon. Let me know if you want bucking up or anything. Good-bye, old chum."
And she found herself inside a dimly lighted, distempered hall, face to face with a kindly looking maid, who was greeting her with the air of conventional welcome she had been told to assume towards strangers. It was supposed to support the advertisement that this was a home.
"Miss Jennings? No, miss; she won't be in, not before supper. And the lady what's in your cubicle ain't cleared out yet, miss, so I can't take your box up, neither. Will you come and have your tea, miss? This way, if you please."
Katharine followed her mechanically. The heroic notions that had sustained her for weeks were vanishing before this pleasant-faced maid and the dreary, distempered hall. For thefirst time in her life a feeling of shyness suddenly overwhelmed her, as the servant held open a door, and a hum of voices and clatter of plates came out into the passage. For the moment, she hardly knew where to look or what to do. The room into which she had been ushered was a bare-looking one, though clean enough, and better lighted than the hall outside. Long tables were placed across it, and around these, on wooden chairs, sat some twenty or thirty girls of various ages, some of whom were talking and others reading, as they occupied themselves with their tea. They all looked up when Katharine came into the room, but the spectacle did not present enough novelty to interest them long, and they soon looked away again and went on with their several occupations. "Shewon't be here long,—not the sort," Katharine overheard one of them saying to another, and the casual remark brought the colour to her cheeks, and made her assume desperately some show of courage.
"May I take this chair?" she asked, moving towards a vacant place as she spoke.
"It isn't anybody's; none of them are unless the plate is turned upside down," volunteered the girl in the next chair. She wasreading "Pitman's Phonetic Journal," and eating bread and treacle.
"You have to get your own tea from the urn over there, and collect your food from all the other tables," she added in the same brusque manner, as Katharine sat down and looked helplessly about her. However, by following out the instructions thus thrown at her, she managed, with a little difficulty, to procure what she wanted from the food that was scattered incidentally about the room, and then returned to her seat by the girl who was eating bread and treacle.
"Isn't it rather late for tea?" she asked of her neighbour, who at least seemed friendly in a raw sort of way.
"It always goes on till seven; most of them don't get back from the office before this, you see."
"What office?" asked Katharine, who did not see.
"Any office," returned the girl, staring round at her. "Post office generally, or a place in the city, or something like that. Some of them are shorthand clerks, like me,—it's shorter hours and better paid as a rule; but it's getting overcrowded, like everything else."
"Do you like it?" asked Katharine. Thegirl stared again. The possibility of liking one's work had never occurred to her before.
"Of course not; but we have to grin and bear it, like the food here and everything else. I'm sorry for you if you mean to stop here long; you don't look as though you could stand it. I've seen your sort before, and they never stop long."
"Oh, I mean to stop," said Katharine decidedly. But her heroic mood had been completely dissipated by the leaden atmosphere of the place, and she could not repress a sigh.
"Butter bad?" asked her neighbour cheerfully. "Try the treacle; it's safer. You can't go far wrong with treacle. The jam's always suspicious; you find plum stones in the strawberries, and so on."
Katharine was obliged to laugh, and the shorthand clerk, who had not meant to make a joke, seemed hurt.
"I beg your pardon," said Katharine, "but your cynical view of the food is so awfully funny."
"Wait till you've been here three years, like I have," said the shorthand clerk, and she returned to her newspaper.
Katharine tried to stay the sinking at herheart, and made a critical review of the room. What impressed her most was the twang of the girls' voices. Not that they were noisy,—for they seemed a quiet set on the whole; either daily routine or respectability had succeeded in subduing their spirits; but for all that they did not look unhappy, and Katharine supposed, as her neighbour had remarked, that it was possible to get used to it after a time.
"And the room is certainly clean," she reflected, as she made an effort to see the brighter side of things; "and the girls don't stare, or ask questions, or do anything unpleasant. Icouldn'ttell them anything about myself if they did. And I do wish, though I know it's awfully snobbish, that some of them were ladies."
Her neighbour broke in upon her thoughts, and Katharine came to herself with a start.
"Whose cuby are you going to have?" she was asking.
"I—I don't know. The servant said it was not empty yet. I should rather like to unpack."
"I don't suppose you will get a permanent one yet awhile," said the shorthand clerk, in the cheerful way with which she imparted allher unpleasant revelations; "they always move you about for a week or two first. I expect you are coming into our room for the present; Miss King is going up to Scotland by the night mail. Jenny will tell you when she comes in. Supper is at nine," she added, pushing back her chair and folding up her paper, "and there are two reception rooms upstairs, if you want to sit somewhere till your cubicle is empty."
Katharine thanked her, and felt more forlorn than ever when the shorthand clerk had gone. But the servant came to her rescue a few minutes later, and offered to take her to her room which was now empty.
"Is it Miss King's?" asked Katharine, and felt a little happier when she learned that it was. She would have one acquaintance in the same room at all events. But her heart sank again, when she found herself alone with her two boxes in a curtained corner of a dingy room, the corner that was the farthest from the window and the smallest of the four compartments. There was hardly room to move; and when she tried to unpack her boxes, she found that most of the drawers in the tiny chest were already occupied, and that there were no pegs for her dresses.
"Could anything be more dreary?" she said aloud. "And the curtains are just horribly dirty, and I don't feel as though Icouldget into that bed. And what a tiny jug and basin!"
"Hullo, is that you?" said the voice of the shorthand clerk, who had come into her part of the room unobserved. "I guessed you'd feel pretty bad when you saw what it was like. They all do. But you might as well turn up the gas, and make it as cheerful as possible. That's better. Well, it's not much like the prospectus, is it?"
Katharine remembered the plausible statements of the prospectus, and broke into a laugh. There was a grim humour in her situation that appealed to her, though it seemed to be lost on her companion.
"Well, I'm glad you can laugh, though I never found it funny myself," she called out. "But don't stay moping here; come into the drawing-room until the bell rings for supper, won't you?"
Katharine followed her advice, and allowed herself to be taken into another bare looking room, over the dining-room. This was furnished with a horsehair sofa and three basket chairs, which were all occupied, several canechairs, and two square tables, at which some girls sat writing. One of them looked up as the door opened, and asked the shorthand clerk to come and help her with her arithmetic.
"You know I'm no good, Polly. Where's Miss Browne?" asked the shorthand clerk, pushing a chair towards Katharine, and taking one herself.
"She's out; I think you might try," said the girl who had spoken to her, in a peevish tone. "I have got to finish this paper to-night; and I'm fagged now."
"Can I help?" asked Katharine. The other two looked at her, and seemed surprised.
"This is some one new," explained her first friend. "Let me introduce you: Miss Polly Newland, Miss— Why, I don't even know your name, do I?"
"Austen," said Katharine. "Won't you tell me yours?"
The girl said her name was Hyam,—Phyllis Hyam; and they returned to the subject of the arithmetic.
"Let's look at it, Polly," said Phyllis Hyam, and Miss Newland passed the paper across the table. The two girls bent over it, and Phyllis shook her head.
"I never understood stocks,—too badlytaught!" she said, and tilted her chair and began to whistle.
"Shall I try?" said Katharine, taking out a pencil. She worked out the sum to the satisfaction of Polly Newland, who then unbent a little, and explained that she was going up for the Civil Service examination in March.
"I say, you're clever, aren't you? Do you teach?" asked Phyllis Hyam, bringing the front legs of her chair down again with a bang.
"That is what I want to do; but I never have," replied Katharine. The other two looked at her pityingly.
"Any friends in London?" they asked.
"Only relations; and they won't help me."
"Of course not. Relations never do. Hope you'll get some work," said the shorthand clerk dubiously. Katharine changed the conversation, to hide her own growing apprehension.
"Where are the newspapers?" she asked, looking round.
"In the prospectus; never saw them anywhere else!" said Phyllis, with a short laugh.
"Did you expect to find any?" asked Polly Newland. "They all do," she added gravely."It's like the baths, and the boots, and everything else."
"Surely, the bath-room is not a fallacy?" exclaimed Katharine in dismay.
"Oh, there is one down in the basement; but all the water has to be boiled for it, so only three people can have a bath every evening. You have to put your name down in a book; and your turn comes in about a fortnight."
"And the boots?" said Katharine, suppressing a sigh.
"You have to clean your own, that's all. They are supposed to provide the blacking and the brushes; but, my eye, what brushes! Of course you get used to it after a bit. When you get to your worst, you will probably wear them dirty."
"When does one get to one's worst?" asked Katharine.
"That depends," said Polly Newland, sucking the end of her pencil, and staring across in a curious manner at Katharine. "I should say you would get to it pretty soon, if you stop long enough."
"Of course I shall stop!" cried Katharine, a little impatiently. "Why do you both say that?"
The two girls glanced at one another.
"You're not the sort," said Phyllis shortly; and Polly returned to her arithmetic.
Katharine relapsed into a dream. All her aspirations, all her hopes of making her father a rich man, had only landed her in number ten, Queen's Crescent, Marylebone! She looked round at the silent occupants of the room,—some of them too tired to do anything but lounge about, some of them reading novelettes, some of them mending stockings. She wondered if her existence would simply become like theirs,—a daily routine, with just enough money to support life, and not enough to buy its pleasures; enough energy to get through its toil, and not enough to enjoy its leisure. Ivingdon, with its recent troubles, its more distant happiness, seemed separated from this rude moment of disillusionment by a long stretch of years. A passionate instinct of rebellion against the circumstances that were answerable for her present situation made her unhappiness seem still more pitiable to her; and a tragic picture of herself, martyred and forgotten, ten years hence, brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes.
A piano began a cheerful accompaniment in the next room, and some one sang a ballad ina fresh, untrained soprano. The piano was out of tune, and the song was of the cheapest and most popular nature; but it made an interruption in the sound of the traffic outside on the cobble-stones, and Katharine glanced round the room characteristically, in search of an answering smile. But the other girls were as unaffected by the music as they had been by the dreariness that preceded it; and nobody looked up from what she was doing. Only one of them made a comment; it was Phyllis Hyam. "How that girl does thump!" she said.
But on Katharine the effect had been instantaneous. She was not cultured in music: with her it was an emotion, not an art; and the little jingling tune had already turned her thoughts into a happier channel. Her spirits rose insensibly, and the spell that the dingy surroundings had cast over her was broken. Why should she believe what these two girls told her? Surely, her conviction that she would make something of her life was not going to wear itself out in a miserable struggle to keep alive! She was worth something more than that: she was intellectual beyond her years; every one had told her so, until she had come to believe it was true; and her future was inher own hands. She would be a teacher of a new school; she would make a name for herself by her lectures; and then, some day, when she had acquired a fortune, and all the world was talking of her talent, and her goodness, and her beauty,—she was going to be very beautiful, too, in her dream,—these girls would remember that they had doubted her powers of endurance. She was even rehearsing what she would say to them in the hour of her triumph, when a touch on her shoulder brought her back abruptly to her present surroundings, and she looked up to see a little white-haired lady at her side, in a lace cap and a black silk apron.
"Miss Austen? Come down with me, and let us have a little chat together. I was sorry not to be back in time to receive you, my dear."
It was a sudden awakening; but she was able to smile as she followed her guide downstairs.
"She has the captivating manner of an impostor," she reflected. "She is just like Widow Priest! But it accounts for the prospectus."