"What are you muttering about?" asked Katharine.
"Oh, nothing," said Phyllis. "Have you had any tea?"
"I don't want any tea, thank you. I wish you wouldn't bother. Go down and have your own."
"Guess I shall bring it up here instead, and then we can talk," said Phyllis. In about ten minutes she returned, very much out of breath, with a large tray.
Katharine looked up and frowned. "I said I didn't want any," she said crossly. However, she added that she believed there was some shortbread on the book-case, which Phyllis at once annexed; and her temper began slowly to improve.
"Phyllis," she asked abruptly, after a long pause, "what do you think of men?"
"That they are luxuries," returned Phyllis, without hesitation. "If you've nothing to doall day but to play about, you can afford to have a man or two around you; but if you're busy, you can't do with them, anyhow."
"Why not?" demanded Katharine. "Don't you think they help one along, rather?"
"Not a bit of it! First, they draw you on, because you seem to hold off; and then, when you begin to warm up, they come down with a quencher, and you feel you've been a sight too bold. And all that kind of thing is distracting; and it affects your work after a time."
"But surely," said Katharine, "a girl can have a man for a friend without going through all that!"
"Don't believe in it; never did; it doesn't work."
"I think it does, sometimes," observed Katharine. "Of course it depends on the girl."
"Entirely," said Phyllis cheerfully. "The man would always spoil it, if he could—without being found out."
Katharine leaned back on the pillow, with her arms behind her head, and her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"That's just it," she said thoughtfully; "men are so much more conventional than women. I am glad I am not a man, after all.There is no need for a woman to be conventional, is there? She isn't afraid of being suspected, all the time. I'm certain conventionality was made for man, and not man for conventionality, and that woman never had a hand in it at all."
"I don't know about that, though it sounds very fine," said Phyllis. "But of course men have to be more conventional than we are. It helps them to make some show of respectability, I guess."
"It is very horrible, if one analyses it," murmured Katharine. "According to that, the man who is openly bad is preferable to the man who is conventionally good. Of course Paul is not bad at all; but, oh! I do wish I didn't see through people, when they try to pretend things,—it always annoys them."
"Eh?" said Phyllis, looking up. "Your tea is getting cold."
"Never mind about the tea! Tell me, Phyllis, do you think any woman can attract any man, if she likes?"
"Of course she can, if she is not in love with him."
Katharine winced, and brought her eyes down to look at her unconscious friend, who was still munching shortbread with anexpression of complete contentment on her face.
"I mean if sheisin love with him, very much in love with him."
"Can't say; never was, myself. But I don't believe you can do anything, if you've got it badly; you have to let yourself go, and hope for the best."
"I don't believe you know any more about it than I do, Phyllis. I'll tell you what it is that is attractive to a man in a woman: it is her imperfections. He likes her to be jealous, and vain, and full of small deceptions. He hates her to be tolerant, and large-minded, and truthful; above all, he hates her to be truthful. I don't know why it is so, but it is."
"It is because she isn't too mighty big to worship him, then; nor cute enough to see through him," said Phyllis.
"If you can see through a man, you should never fall in love with him," added Katharine.
"Oh, I don't know!" said Phyllis. "You can always pretend not to see; they never know."
"A nice man does," said Katharine, smiling for the first time. The tea had made her feel more charitable; and she took up her pen, and wrote to her mother's connections, the Keeleys,who did not know she was in town, to ask them when she could call and see them.
She felt the need of knowing some one, now that she had made up her mind not to know Paul any more. For he had taught her the desire for companionship, and she shrank from being left entirely friendless.
At first she was surprised to find that it was so easy to get on without him. She persuaded herself that her indifference arose from her annoyance at his having imposed the conventional view of things upon her; but, in reality, it was due to her conviction that he would be the first to give in, and would soon write and ask her to go and see him. And she longed for an opportunity to write and refuse him. But when a fortnight passed by and no letter came from him, her righteous scorn deserted her and she became merely angry. The flatness of being completely ignored was unendurable; and she longed more than ever for a chance of showing him that her dignity was equal to his, although she was beginning to fear that he was not going to give her the necessary occasion. Then came days when she felt reckless, and determined to cease thinking about him at any cost; and she threw herself into any distraction that offered itself, and triedto think that she was quite getting over her desire to see him. It was in one of these moods that she went to call on the Keeleys, who had written to tell her that they were always at home on Thursdays. The fact of putting on her best clothes was in itself some satisfaction; it was a step towards restoring her self-respect, at all events, and she felt happier than she had been for some time past as she walked down Park Lane and found her way to their house in Curzon Street.
The Honourable Mrs. Keeley was the widow of a peer's son who had been a cabinet minister and had signalised his political career by supporting every bill for the emancipation of women, and his domestic one by impressing upon his wife that her true sphere was the home. The natural reaction followed after his death, when Mrs. Keeley broke loose from the restraint his presence had put upon her, and practised the precepts he had loved to expound in public. She became the most active of political women; she spoke upon platforms; she harried the rate-payers until they elected her favourite county councillor; she canvassed in the slums for the candidate who would vote for woman's suffrage. She had a passion for everything that was modern, irrespective of its value;and she spent the time that was not occupied by her public duties in trying to force her principles upon her only daughter. But Marion Keeley refused to be modern, except in her amusements; she accepted the bicycle and the cigarette with equanimity, but she had no desires to reform anything or anybody; she merely wanted to enjoy herself as much as possible, and she looked forward to making a wealthy marriage in the future. Her greatest ambition was to avoid being bored, and her greatest trial was the energy of her mother. She never pretended to be advanced; and she felt that she had been wasted on the wrong mother when she saw most of the girls of her acquaintance burning to do things in defiance of their old-fashioned parents. She chose her own friends from the idle world of Mayfair; and so it was that two distinct sets of people met in the Keeleys' drawing-room on Thursday afternoons and disapproved of each other.
Katharine received a warm reception from her hostess. The fact that she belonged to the class of working gentlewomen, about whom Mrs. Keeley had many theories but little knowledge, was a sufficient evidence of her right to be encouraged; and she found herself seated on an uncomfortable stool, and introducedto an East-end clergyman and a lady inspector of factories within five minutes of her entry into the room. She glanced rather longingly towards the back drawing-room, where her cousin Marion was looking very pretty and was flirting very charmingly with three smart-looking boys; but it was evident that her aunt had labelled her as one of her own set, and she resigned herself to her fate, and agreed with the East-end clergyman that the want of rain was becoming serious.
"My niece lectures, you know; strikingly clever, andsoyoung," said Mrs. Keeley in a breathless aside to the lady inspector, as she came back from the opposite side of the room, where she had just coupled a socialist and a guardian of the poor.
"Indeed!" said the lady inspector; and Katharine began to lose her diffidence when she found that she smiled quite like an ordinary person. "Do you lecture on hygiene? Because Mr. Hodgson-Pemberton is getting up some popular lectures in his parish, and we are trying to find a lecturer for hygiene?"
Mr. Hodgson-Pemberton became animated for a moment; but when Katharine said, apologetically, that her subjects were merely literary, he took no further interest in her andresumed his conversation with the lady inspector of factories. Katharine was left alone again, and relapsed into one of her dreams, until Marion recognised her and came and fetched her into the back drawing-room.
"Isn't it refreshing?" she said to the boys, who had now increased in number: "Kitty doesn't know anything about politics, and she doesn't want to be with the fogies at all, do you, Kitty? And, for all that, she is dreadfully clever, and gives lectures on all sorts of things to all sorts of people. Oh, dear, I do wish I were clever!"
"Oh, please don't be clever, Miss Keeley! you won't know me any longer if you are," said her favourite boy, imploringly.
"You are far too charming to be clever," added another boy, who had been her favourite last week, and was trying to regain his position by elaborate compliments.
"That's rubbish," said Marion crushingly; "and not very polite to my cousin, either."
The dethroned favourite did his best to repair his blunder by assuring Katharine that he would never have supposed her to be clever, if he had not been told so. And when she laughed uncontrollably at his remark, he chose to be offended, and withdrew altogether.
"You shouldn't laugh at him. He can't help it," said Marion, and she introduced a third admirer to Katharine to get rid of him. He had very little to say, and when she had confessed that she did not bicycle, and never went in the park because she was too busy, he stared a little without speaking at all, and then contrived to join again in the conversation that was buzzing around Marion. Most of the other people had left now, and Katharine was trying to summon up courage to do the same, when her aunt came up to her again, and presented her to a weary-looking girl in a big hat.
"You ought to know each other," she said, effusively, "because you are both workers. Miss Martin does gesso work, and has a studio of her own; and my niece gives lectures, you know."
They looked at one another rather hopelessly, and Katharine resisted another impulse to laugh.
"The knowledge of our mutual occupations doesn't seem to help the conversation much, does it?" she said; and the weary-looking girl tried to smile.
"That's right," said Mrs. Keeley, resting for a moment in a chair near them. "I knewyou two would have plenty to say to each other. That's the best of you working-women; there is such a bond of sympathy between you."
"Is there?" said Katharine, remembering the sixty-three working-women at Queen's Crescent, and her feelings towards them. But Mrs. Keeley had ideas about women who worked, and meant to air them.
"It is so splendid to think that women can really do men's work, in spite of everything that is said to the contrary," she continued.
The weary-looking girl made no attempt to contradict her, but Katharine was less docile.
"I don't think they can," she objected. "They might, perhaps, if they had a fair chance; but they haven't."
"But they are getting it every day," cried Mrs. Keeley, waxing enthusiastic. "Think of the progress that has been made, even in my time; and in another ten years there will be nothing that women will not be able to do in common with men! Isn't it a glorious reflection?"
"I don't think it will be so," persisted Katharine. "It has nothing to do with education, or any of those things. A woman ishandicapped, just because she is a woman, and has to go on living like a woman. There is always home work to be done, or some one to be nursed, or clothes to be mended. A man has nothing to do but his work; but a woman is expected to do a woman's work as well as a man's. It is too much for any one to do well. I am a working-woman myself, and I don't find it so pleasant as it is painted."
"I'msoglad you think so," murmured Marion, who had come up unobserved, with her favourite in close attendance. "I was afraid you would be on mamma's side, and I believe you are on mine, after all."
At this point the weary-looking girl got up to leave, as though she could not bear it another minute, and Katharine tried to do the same; but she was not to be let off so easily.
"Tell me," said her aunt earnestly, "do you not think that women are happier if they have work to do for their living?"
"I suppose it is possible, but I haven't met any who are," answered Katharine. "I think it is because they feel they have sacrificed all the pleasures of life. Men don't like women who work, do they?"
The eyes of Marion met those of her favouriteadmirer; and Marion blushed. But Mrs. Keeley returned to the charge.
"Indeed, there are many in my own acquaintance who have the greatest admiration for working-women."
"Oh, yes," laughed Katharine, "they have lots of admiration for us; but they don't fall in love with us, that's all. I think it is because it is the elusive quality in woman that fascinates men; and directly they begin to understand her, they cease to be fascinated by her. And woman is growing less mysterious every day, now; she is chiefly occupied in explaining herself, and that is why men don't find her such good fun. At least, I think so."
"You know us remarkably well, Miss Austen, you do, really," drawled the favourite boy.
"Oh, no," said Katharine, really getting up this time, "I don't pretend to. But I do know the working gentlewoman very well indeed, and I don't think she is a bit like the popular idea of her."
She was much pleased with herself as she walked home; and even the bustle of Edgware Road and the squalor of Queen's Crescent failed to remove the pleasant impression that her excursion into the fashionable world had left with her. It comforted her woundedfeelings to discover that she could hold her own in a room full of people, although the only man whose opinion she valued held her of no more account than a child.
"Hullo! you seem pleased with yourself," said Polly Newland, as she entered the house. The cockney twang of her voice struck un-musically on Katharine's ear, and she murmured some sort of ungracious reply and turned to rummage in the box for letters. There was one for her, and the sight of the precise, upright handwriting drove every thought of Polly, and the Keeleys, and her pleasant afternoon out of her head. Even then something kept her from reading it at once, and she took it upstairs into her cubicle, and laid it on the table while she changed her clothes and elaborately folded up her best ones and put them away. Then she sat down on the bed and tore it open with trembling fingers, and tried to cheat herself into the belief that she was perfectly indifferent as to its contents.
"Dear child," it ran:—
What has become of you? Come round and have tea with me to-morrow afternoon. I have some new books to show you.Yours ever,Paul Wilton.
What has become of you? Come round and have tea with me to-morrow afternoon. I have some new books to show you.
Yours ever,Paul Wilton.
Here at last was the opportunity she had wanted. He should know now that she was not a child, to be laughed at because she was cross, to be ignored when she was hurt, and to be coaxed back into good humour again by a bribe. She would be able to show him now that she was not the sort of woman he seemed to consider her, and she told herself several times that she was overjoyed at being given the chance of telling him so. But when it came to the point, she found that the cold, dignified letter she had been composing for weeks was not so easy to write; and she spent the rest of the evening in thinking of new ones. First of all, it was to be very short, and very stiff; but that was not obvious enough to gratify her injured feelings, and she set to work on another one that was mainly sarcastic. But sarcasm seemed a sorry weapon to use when she had reached such a crisis in her life as this; and she thought of another one in bed, after the light was out, in which she determined that he should know she was unhappy as well. And this one was so pathetic that it even roused her own pity, and she felt that it would be positively inhuman to send such a letter as that to any one, however badly he had behaved.
In the end, she did not write to him at all. It was more effective, she thought, to remain silent. So she went to school the next morning as usual, and gave her lessons as usual; though she looked in the glass at intervals to see if she were pale and had a sad expression, which certainly ought to have been the case. But even her head did not ache, which it did sometimes; and Nature obstinately refused to come to her assistance. She reached home again about four o'clock, and the aspect of the doorsteps and the area completed her discomfiture. If they had only been a little less squalid, a little more free from the domination of cats, she might have retained her dignified attitude to the end. But there was something about them to-day that recalled the cosy little room in the Temple by vivid contrast; and she flung her pile of exercise books recklessly upon the hall table, and hastened out of the house again, without allowing herself time to think.
"I was afraid you were not coming," he said, and he greeted her with both hands. She never remembered seeing him so unreserved in his welcome before; and she marvelled at herself for having attempted to keep away from him any longer.
"It was because of the cats," she said, laughing to hide her emotion. But she could not hide anything from him; he knew something of what she was thinking, and he bent down and deliberately kissed her.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, trying to free her hands to cover her burning face.
"Because you didn't stop me, I suppose," he replied, lightly.
"But I didn't know you were going to."
"Because I knew you wouldn't mind, then."
She did not speak, and her eyes were lowered.
"Did you mind, Katharine?"
"No," she whispered.
"Now, tell me why I am indebted to the cats," he said, as he rang the bell for tea; and for the rest of the afternoon they talked, as Katharine laughingly said, "without any conversation."
There was no explanation on either side, no attempt at facing the situation; and she felt when she left him that she had thrown away her last chance of controlling their friendship. There had been a tacit struggle between their two wills, and his had triumphed. She could never put him out of her life now, unless hebroke with her of his own accord; and she realised bitterly, even while she was glad, that he did not care enough for her to do that.
She saw him constantly all through the hot months of July and August. She gave up her original intention of going home for the summer holidays, on the pretext of reading for her next term's lectures at the British Museum; but she did very little work in reality, and she spent whole days in the reading-room, regardless of the people around her, sometimes even of the book before her, and dreamed long hours away, making visions in which only two people played any prominent part,—and those two people were Paul and herself. Her whole life seemed to be a kind of dream just then, with a vivid incident here and there when she met him or went to see him, and the rest a vague nebula, in which something outside herself made her do what was expected of her. Sometimes she felt impelled to work furiously hard for a day or two, or to take long walks by herself, as though nothing else would tire her restless energy; and then she would relapse into her lethargic mood again, and do nothing but watch vigilantly for the post, or haunt the streets where she had sometimes met him. And all the while she thought she was happy,with a kind of weird, passionate happiness she had never known before; and it seemed to compensate for the hours of suspense and anxiety she went through when he took no notice of her. For his conduct was as inexplicable as ever; and for one day that he was demonstrative and even affectionate, she had to endure many of indifference that almost amounted to cruelty.
"We are horribly alike; it hurts me sometimes when I suddenly find myself in you," she said to him one day, when he was in an expansive mood.
"I am much honoured by the discovery, but I fail to see where the likeness lies," was his reply.
"It is not very definite," she said, thoughtfully. "I think it must be because I feel your changes of mood so quickly. We laugh together at something, and everything seems so fearfully nice; and then, suddenly, I feel that something has sprung up between us, and I look up and I see that you feel it too, and all at once there is nothing to talk about. Haven't you ever noticed it?"
"I think you are an absurdly sensitive little girl," he said, smiling.
"Of course," she continued, without heedinghis remark, "on the surface, no two people could be more unlike than we are. You are so awfully afraid of showing what you feel, for instance; but I always tell you everything, don't I?"
"My dear child, what nonsense! I am of the most artless and confiding nature; while you, on the contrary, never give yourself away at all. Why, you never tell me anything I really want to know! Whatever put such an idea into that curious head of yours?"
"Oh, don't!" she cried. "You make me feel quite hysterical! You have no right to upset all my views on my own character, as well as on yours. IknowI am stupidly demonstrative. I have often blushed all over because I have told you things I never meant to tell any one. How can you say I am reserved? I only wish I were!"
"The few confidences of a reserved person are always rash ones," observed Paul. "The same might be said of the reflections of an impulsive person, or the impulses of a reflective one. It all comes from want of habit. You can't alter your temperament, that's all."
"But I can't believe that I am reserved," she persisted; "it seems incredible. And it makes us more alike than ever."
"Really, Katharine, I beg you to rid your mind of that exceedingly fallacious notion," said Paul, laughing. "I assure you I am to be read like a book."
"A book in a strange language, then. I don't think I shall ever be able to read it," said Katharine, shaking her head. And she drew down a rebuke upon herself for being solemn.
They had a tacit unwillingness to become serious, about this time; their conversation was made up of trivialities, and he never kissed her except on the tips of her fingers. They avoided any demonstration of feeling that might have revealed to them the anomaly of their position, and they mutually shrank from defining their relations towards one another.
They were standing together at the window, one day, looking down into Fountain Court, which was as hot and as dusty as ever in spite of the water that was playing into the basin in the middle.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked her, so suddenly that she was surprised into an answer.
"I was thinking how queer it is that you and I should be friends like this," she replied, truthfully.
"What's the matter with our friendship,then?" he asked, in the prosaic manner he always assumed when she showed any sentiment. She laughed.
"There's nothing the matter with it, of course. You are the most unromantic person I ever knew. You seem to delight in divesting every little trivial incident of its sentiment. What makes you such a Vandal?"
"But, surely, you are not supposing that thereisany romance in our knowing each other, are you?"
"I never dreamed of such a thing," retorted Katharine. "I think there is more romance in your cigarette holder than in the whole of you!"
Sometimes she wondered if he were capable of deep feeling at all, or if his indifference were really assumed.
"I envy you your utter disregard of circumstance," she once exclaimed to him. "How did you learn it? Do you really never feel things, or is it only an easy way of getting through life?"
"I'm afraid I don't see what you are driving at. I dare say you are being very brilliant, but I fail to discern what I am expected to say."
"You are not expected to say anything," she said, playfully. "That is the best of being agigantic fraud like yourself; nobody ever does expect you to fulfil the ordinary requirements of every-day life. You might be a heathen god, who grins heartlessly while people try to propitiate him with the best they have to offer, and who eats up their gifts greedily when they are not looking."
"Has all this any reference to me, might I ask?"
"I don't believe you've got any ordinary human feeling," pursued Katharine. "I don't believe you care for anybody or anything, so long as you are left alone. Why don't you say something, instead of staring at me as though I were a curiosity?"
"If you reflect, you will see that there has not been a single pause since you began to speak. Besides, why shouldn't you be catechised as well as myself? Where do you keep all your deep feeling, please? I haven't seen much of it, but perhaps I have no right to expect such a thing. No doubt you keep it all for some luckier person than myself."
His tone was one of raillery, as hers had been when she began to talk. But she startled him, as she did sometimes, by a sudden change of mood; and she flashed round upon him indignantly.
"It is horrible of you to laugh at me. You know you don't mean what you say; you know I have any amount of deep feeling. I hide it on purpose, because you don't like me to show it, you know you don't! I—I think you are very unkind to me."
He reached out his hand and stroked her hair gently; she was sitting a little away from him, and he could see the sensitive curve of her lower lip.
"Don't, child! One never knows how to take you. Another time you would have seen that I was only joking."
"You have no right to joke about such a serious matter. You know it was a serious matter, now; wasn't it?"
"The most serious in the universe," he assured her; and he brought his hand gently down her cheek, and laid it against her throat.
"You are only laughing; you always laugh at me," she complained; but she bent her head, and kissed his hand softly. "I feel like a wolf, sometimes," she added, impetuously.
"Didn't you have enough tea?" he said. But she knew by his tone that he was not laughing at her now, and she went on recklessly.
"I am certain I could not love any one verymuch, without hating him too. It is a horrible dual feeling that tears one to pieces. Is it the badness in me, I wonder? Other people don't seem to feel like that when they are in love. Why is it?"
"Because it is the same emotion, or set of emotions, that inspires both love and hatred," said Paul. "Circumstance does the rest, or temperament."
"It is inexplicable," said Katharine solemnly. "I can understand killing a man, because he could not understand my love for him; or casting off my own child, because it was bored by my affection. I am quite sure," she added, quaintly, "that I should bore any one in a week, if I really loved him."
"Oh, no," said Paul politely; and they again laughed away a crisis.
At the beginning of October Paul went abroad. She had thought that life without him would be unendurable, and she could not analyse her own feelings when she found that she could laugh with as much enjoyment as ever, and that her fits of depression were less frequent than before. In fact, she had often been far more unsettled if a letter from him had failed to arrive when it was due; and a new sensation of freedom went far to cure her of the restlessness that had possessed her all the summer. She began to probe into her truth-loving soul, to try and discover whether her feeling for him was not an illusion after all; but she found no satisfactory explanation of the problem that was puzzling her, and she put it voluntarily away from her, and turned to her work as a healthy antidote. And she had a good deal of work just then. Thanks to the influence of the Honourable Mrs. Keeley, her private pupils were increasing in number, and these, with her lectures at the school, were producinga salary that relieved her of all financial worry for the present. She was making new friends too, and it added to her contentment to find that people asked her to go and see them because they liked her. For the first time since her arrival in town, she felt sure of being on the way to success; and the sensation was a very thrilling one. Phyllis asked her, one day, why she was looking so happy. Katharine laughed, and pondered for a moment; then answered frankly that she did not know why. "I only know that I have never been so gloriously happy in my whole life," she added; and she wondered, as she spoke, whether the mad, feverish happiness of the summer months had really been happiness at all. But Phyllis, who felt that she had no share in this strange new life of hers, looked back regretfully on the earlier days when Katharine had been lonely and in need of her sympathy. Even Ted told her she was looking "very fit," and this was the highest term of praise in his vocabulary. For, since the beginning of October, she had seen a good deal of Ted. It was very restful to come back to him, after the state of high pressure in which she had been living lately; and when she grew accustomed to his being a West-end young man, instead of an easy-goingschoolboy, she found him the same delightful companion as of old. He did not allude to her many weeks of silence, nor ask her how she had spent them; he came at her bidding, and when he found that she liked him to come he came again. He was as humble as ever, except in matters of worldly knowledge, and there he showed a youthful superiority over her which amused her immensely. His laziness, which had always been more or less an assumption with him, had developed into the fashionable pose of indifference; and she tried in vain to spur him on to doing something definite with his life, instead of letting it drift away in a city office.
"Girls don't understand these things," he would say with good-natured obstinacy. "Of course I loathe the beastly hole; any decent chap would. But I may as well stop there. It's not my fault that I was ever born, is it? I get enough to live on, with what my cousin allows me; and I'm not going to grind all I know, to get a rise of five bob a week. It isn't good enough. I'm sure I'm very easily contented, and my wants are few enough. Oh, rats! I must have a frock coat; every decent chap has. And you couldn't possibly call that extravagant, because I sha'n't think ofsquaring it for a year at least. Of course I don't expect you to understand these things, Kitty; it's impossible for a man to do the cheap, like a woman."
And Katharine, who always wanted to reconstitute society, with a very limited knowledge of its first principles, would strike in with a vigorous denunciation of his comfortable philosophy; and he would listen and laugh at her, and make no effort to support his own opinion which he continued to hold, nevertheless. He was the best companion she could have had just then; he never varied, whatever her mood was, and he kept her from thinking too much about herself, which was a habit she had acquired since she last saw him. Besides, he was a link with her childhood, that period of vague existence which had held no problems to be solved, and had never inspired her with a wish to reform human nature. So they spent many evenings and half-holidays together, and they went frequently to the theatre and sat in the gallery, which often entertained them as much as the play itself; and he loved to pay for her, with a manly air, at the box office, and always made the same kind of weak resistance afterwards, when Katharine insisted on refunding her share, under the lamp at the corner ofQueen's Crescent, Marylebone. Sometimes, when they were unusually well off, they would dine at an Italian restaurant first, where they could have many wonderful dishes for two shillings, and a bottle of tenpenny claret. On one occasion—it was Ted's birthday, and his cousin had sent him a five-pound note—they had more than an ordinary jubilation.
"Buck up, and get ready!" he had rushed into the little distempered hall to say. "We'll go to a new place, where the waiters aren't dirty, and the wine isn't like sulphuric acid. And, Kitty, put on that hat with the pink roses, won't you?"
They did their best, on that memorable evening, to reduce the five pound-note, and to behave as though they were millionaires. They drove in a hansom to the restaurant in question, which was a very brilliant little one close to the theatres, where they had a waiter to themselves instead of the fifth part of a very distracted and breathless one. The state of Ted's pockets could always be estimated by the amount of attention he exacted from the waiter; and this evening there was absolutely nothing he would do for himself, from the disposal of his walking stick to the choice of the wine.
"It's a very good tip to start by taking the waiter into your confidence," he assured Kitty, when it had just been settled for them that they were to havebisquesoup.
"It's convenient, sometimes, when everything is written in French," observed Katharine. Ted changed the conversation. On his twenty-second birthday he felt inclined, for once in a way, to assert himself.
"I'm rather gone on this place; pretty, isn't it?" he continued. "All the candle-shades are red, white, and blue; mean to say you didn't twig that? You're getting less alive every day, Kit! Awfully up-to-date place, this! I don't suppose there is a single decent woman in the room, bar yourself."
He said this with such pride in the knowledge, that she would not have robbed him of his satisfaction for the world.
"They look much the same as other women to me," she observed, after a quick survey of the little tables.
"That's because you don't know. How should you? Women never do, bless them! Do you like fizz?"
"Oh, Ted, don't! Isn't it a pity to spend such a lot just for nothing?" she remonstrated. She had visions of all the unpaid bills he haddisclosed to her in one of his recent pessimistic moods.
"My dear Kitty, you really must learn to enjoy life. Don't be so beastly serious over everything. Bills? What bills? There aren't any to-night. The art of living is knowing when to be extravagant."
And she had to acknowledge, for the rest of the evening, that he had certainly mastered the art of living. They went to a music hall, and sat in the stalls; and Katharine enjoyed it because Ted was there, and because he was so funny all through,—first, in his fear of being asked by the conjurer for his hat which was a new one, or his watch which was only represented by his watch chain; and secondly, because he tried so hard to distract her attention from the songs that were inclined to be risky. And Ted enjoyed it because it was the thing to do, and because there would be hardly any of that fiver left by the time he got home.
"Then you'll look me up at the office at five to-morrow; you won't forget?" he asked rather wistfully, when they parted on the doorstep.
"Of course I won't forget," she answered, hastily. "Dear old Ted, I have enjoyed it so much!"
"Good-night, dear," he said, as he turned away. And his tone haunted her rather, as she groped her way up to bed in the dark. She began to feel half afraid, with some annoyance at the thought, that this pleasant state of things could not go on for ever, and that Ted was going to spoil it all again as he had done once before, by taking their relationship seriously. So she prepared to meet him, the next afternoon, with a reserve of manner that was meant to indicate her displeasure; but he disconcerted her very much by asking her bluntly why the dickens she was playing so poorly; and she felt unreasonably annoyed to find that her fears were groundless. So for some time longer they went on as before, in the same happy-go-lucky kind of way that had always characterised them. She learned to know several of his friends, most of them genuine boyish fellows, who appealed to her more by their affection for Ted than by any qualities they possessed themselves. They seemed very much alike, though she was bound to acknowledge that this impression may have been conveyed by the cut of their clothes and the shape of their hats, which did not differ by so much as a hair's breadth. But Ted always shone bycomparison with the best of them. He was the only one of his set who did not take himself seriously; he had a sense of humour, too, and this compensated for the exhausted manner which he felt obliged to assume as a mark of fellowship with them.
He asked her, one night, with some diffidence, if she would mind coming to tea in his chambers on the following Sunday.
"I shouldn't think of asking you to come alone," he hastened to add; "but Monty is going to bring his sister along, so that's all square as long as you don't mind."
"Mind! Why, of course not," said Katharine, in frank astonishment. "What is there to mind? I want to see your chambers very much. I have often wondered why you never asked me before."
Ted stared at her for a moment, and then began tracing what remained of the pattern in the linoleum with his walking stick. They were standing, as usual, in the hall of number ten, Queen's Crescent.
"What a babe you are, Kitty!" he said, without looking up; and Katharine reddened as she suddenly realised his meaning. Of course Ted was no longer a boy, and she was no longer a child; and she was on precisely thesame footing with him in the eyes of the world as she was with Paul Wilton. Unconsciously, she compared the attitude of the two men under similar circumstances; Paul, who was unscrupulous in letting her visit him as long as no one knew of it; and Ted, who had no views on the matter at all but merely wished to spare her any annoyance.
"I see," she said. "Who is Monty?" She always felt nervous when he offered to introduce her to any of his friends; because she knew very well that he warned them all beforehand that she had "ideas," and this put her at a distinct disadvantage to begin with.
"Oh, Monty's awfully smart! He knows no end. You'll like Monty, I expect. He wants to meet you, awfully; says he likes the look of your photograph. I told him how bally clever you were, and all that. Monty's clever, too; he reads Ibsen."
Katharine received this proof of Monty's intellectual ability with some cynicism which, however, she was careful to conceal.
"I shall be delighted to meet him," she said. "What time shall I come?"
"Oh, any time; four will do. And, I say, Kit, I suppose I must have cream, mustn't I? You can't give Monty milk that's been sittingfor hours, and spoof him that it's cream. I've done that sometimes, but you can't spoof Monty."
"Oh, I'll bring the cream. I know a shop where they'll let me have it on Sunday," said Katharine confidently; and Ted left comforted.
After all, Monty's sister could not come; but Ted's sense of the fitness of things was satisfied by his having asked her, and, as Monty himself came and did not seem afraid of Katharine as all his other friends were, he felt that his tea-party was a success. The only thing that marred his enjoyment was the fact that Katharine, for some unaccountable caprice, refused to be intellectual in spite of the efforts of Monty, whose real name proved to be Montague, to draw her out. Monty was a young man with a gentlemanly view of life, tempered by a great desire to be thought advanced; and he began the conversation with a will.
"Awfully clever new thing at the Royalty! Suppose you've seen it, Miss Austen?" he began. "Awfully plucky of the Independent Theatre to put it on, it is really."
"Is it?" smiled Katharine. "I haven't seen it yet. Ted and I hate those advanced plays,—they're so slow as a rule. Comic operas, we like best."
Monty seemed surprised; and Ted was a little disconcerted by this frank avowal of his own ordinary tastes.
"You see, Kit only goes to those things to please me," he said, apologetically. "She's just as keen on all those humpy plays as you are, don't you know?"
Monty was not sure that he knew, but he turned to another branch of art.
"Talking about posters," he said,—which was only his favourite method of opening a conversation, for nobody was talking about posters at all,—"have you seen that awfully clever one of the new paper, 'The Future'? It's by quite a new man, in the French style, so bold and yet so subtle. But of course you must have seen it."
"Oh, yes," laughed Katharine, "I should think I had! You mean the red one, don't you, with a black sun and a cactus thing, and a lot of spots all over it? Ted and I were laughing at it, only yesterday. Do you really think it is good?"
Monty said he really did think so; and Ted, who was torn in two by his admiration for both of them, came to his rescue.
"You had better be careful, Kitty," he said, anxiously. "Monty does know."
"Of course," said Katharine politely, "it is only a matter of taste, isn't it, Mr. Montague?"
"Quite so," replied Monty, concealing his feelings of superiority as well as he could. "By the way, talking of taste, what do you think of the new Danish poet? Rather strong, don't you think?"
Katharine sighed, and glanced nervously at Ted.
"Oh, I suppose he's all right," she said, with the exaggerated solemnity that would have betrayed to any one who knew her well how close she was to laughter; "but he isn't a bit new, is he? I mean, he only says the same things over again that the old poets said ever so much better. Don't you think so?"
"They all give you the hump, any way," put in Ted. But Monty ignored his remark, and said that he never read any of the old poets; he preferred the new ones because they went so much deeper.
"Hang it all, Kitty; what a rum girl you are!" said Ted, in a disappointed tone. "A chap never knows where to have you. I did think you were advanced, if you couldn't be anything else."
At this point, Katharine yielded to an irresistible desire to laugh; and Ted lookedanxiously at the friend to whom he had given such a false impression of her "ideas." But, to his surprise, the great Monty himself joined in her laughter, and seemed inexpressibly relieved to find that she was not nearly so intellectual as she had been painted, and it was therefore no longer incumbent on him to sustain the conversation at such a high pitch.
"Now that we have settled I am not advanced," said Katharine, turning up her veil, "supposing we have some tea." And for the rest of the afternoon they behaved like rational beings, and discussed the low comedians and the comic papers.
"All the same," Ted complained, when Monty had gone, "he's awfully clever, really. You may rot as much as you like, but Monty does know about things. You don't know what a fool he makesmefeel."
"He needn't do that," said Katharine. "It would be the kindest thing in the world not to let him read another magazine or newspaper for six months. I think he is very nice, though, when he lets himself go."
Ted looked at her a little sadly.
"You seemed to be getting on beastly well, I thought," he said.
"He is certainly very amusing, and it wasnice of you to ask me to meet him," continued Katharine, innocently. Ted walked to the fire-place, and studied himself silently in the looking-glass.
"I wish I wasn't such a damned fool," he burst out savagely. Katharine stood still with amazement.
"Ted!" she cried. "Ted! What do you mean?"
Ted planted his elbows on the mantel-shelf, and buried his face in his hands.
"Ted!" she said again, with distress in her voice. "What do you mean, Ted? As if I—oh, Ted! And a man likethat! You know piles more than he does, old boy, ever so much more. You don't put on any side, that's all; and he does. You mustn't say that any more, Ted; oh, you mustn't! It hurts."
"You know you are spoofing me," he said, in muffled tones. "You know you only say that just to please me. You think I am a fool all the time, only you are a good old brick and pretend not to see it. As if I didn't twig! I ought never to have been born."
Katharine walked swiftly over to him, and laid her hand on his arm. She did not reason with herself; she only knew that she wanted to comfort him at any price.
"Ted," she said, earnestly, "Iam glad you were born."
He turned round suddenly, and looked at her; and she started nervously at the eagerness of his expression. He had not looked like that when he made love to her in the summer-house.
"Do you mean that, dear?"
"Oh, don't be so serious, Ted! Of course I mean it; of course I am glad you were born. Think how forlorn I should have been without you; it would have been awful if I had been alone." He looked only half satisfied; and she went on desperately, caring for nothing but to charm away the miserable look from his face. "Dear Ted, you know what you are to me; you know I don't care a little bit for Monty, or anybody else, either."
"Do you mean that, Kitty?" he asked again, in a voice that he could not steady. "Not anybody else, dear?"
Something indefinable, something that made her long for another man's voice to be trembling for love of her, as his was trembling now, seemed to come between them and to strike her dumb. He looked at her searchingly for a moment, then shook off her hand and pushed her away from him. She shivered as the suspicioncrossed her mind that he had guessed her thoughts, though she knew quite well that the renewal of her friendship with Paul was unknown to him. She went up to him again, and let him seize her two hands and crush them until she could have cried out with the pain.
"You are the best fellow in the world, Ted," she said. "But you mustn't look like that; oh, don't! I am not worth it, Ted; I am not nearly good enough for you, dear,—you know I am not. I am never going to marry any one; I am not the sort to marry; I am hard, and cold, and bitter. Sometimes, I think I shall just work and fight my way to the end. I know I shall never be happy in the way most women are happy. But I will be your chum, and stick to you always, Ted. May I?"
"Oh, shut up!" said Ted, almost in a whisper; and the tears sprang to her eyes. She stood on tiptoe, and impetuously kissed the only place on his cheek she could reach. At the moment, it seemed the only right and proper thing to be done.
"I couldn't help it. I had to; and I don't care," she said, defiantly. And Ted wrung her hands again, and let them go.
"I suppose none of it is your fault, Kit, but—"
There was a pause, and Katharine avoided his eyes, for the first time in her life.
"It's time to go," she said. "Will you see me home?"
She fetched him his hat and coat, and Ted gave himself a shake.
"He didn't take cream, after all," he said, with a poor attempt at a laugh.
A letter came from Paul, just before Christmas, to say that he was going to remain at Monte Carlo for another month. Knowing his passion for warmth and sunshine, she was not surprised; she was hardly even disappointed. She began to wonder what her feelings would have been if he had decided to remain another year instead of another month; and again she was obliged to own that the solution of her own state of mind was beyond her. The Keeleys went abroad about the same time, which took away her chief centre of amusement; and her former mood of satisfaction was succeeded by one of serene indifference, in which she continued until she went home for the holidays. At Ivingdon the dulness of four weeks, passed almost entirely in the company of her father and Miss Esther, caused the old unsatisfied feeling to return to her; and she longed for a vent for the restless energy that wore her out as long as there was no work to be done. She grew impatient once more for aglimpse of Paul Wilton, for the touch of his thin, nervous hand, and the sound of his quiet, unemotional voice; and she acted over and over again, in her mind, how they would meet once more in the little room overlooking Fountain Court, what he would be sure to say to her, and what she knew she would say to him. No letter came from Paul all through those weary days, and she only wrote to him once. The pathetic note was very prominent in that one letter, and she consoled herself with her own unhappiness while she awaited the answer to it; but when no answer came her pride revolted, and she wished passionately that she had never sent it.
"Can't you stay another week, child?" said Miss Esther, as the end of the holidays drew near. "You don't look much better than when you came, though it's not to be expected you should, working away as you do. I never heard such nonsense, and all to no purpose! When I was a girl— But there, what's the use?"
And Katharine, who had heard it all before, explained over again with increasing impatience that her work was a definite thing and required her presence on a certain day. Shehad never felt less pleased with herself than on the day of her departure, when she left the home that had once been the whole world to her, and took leave of the people who no longer believed in her. But as she neared London a sensation of coming events dispelled the atmosphere of disapproval which had been stifling her for a whole month, and she once more felt the mistress of her own situation and her own future. Here was life and activity, work and success, and some of it was going to be hers. And Paul Wilton would soon be coming home again. They told her at Queen's Crescent how well she was looking, when she appeared in the dining-room at tea-time; and she laughed back in reply as she contrasted their greeting with her aunt's farewell words.
"Just a year since I first came," she said to Phyllis. "What a lot has happened since then! I don't believe it was myself at all; it must have been somebody else. Oh, I am glad I am different now!"
"I remember," said Phyllis, who never rhapsodised. "Your face was smutty after your journey, and you looked as though you would kill any one who spoke to you."
"And you were eating bread and treacle,"retorted Katharine. "Let's have some now, shall we?"
"By the way," said Phyllis presently, "there's a letter for you upstairs. It came about a week ago, and I clean forgot to forward it. I'm awfully sorry, but I don't suppose it matters much because it's got a foreign post-mark."
The laughter died out of Katharine's face, as she put down her teacup and stared speechlessly at her friend.
"Shall I go and fetch it?" continued the unconscious Phyllis, as she deluged her last morsel of bread with more treacle than any force of cohesion would allow it to hold. "Perhaps you're ready to come up yourself, though? I've prepared a glorification for you—Hullo! what are you in such a desperate hurry about?"
When she arrived breathless at the top of the house, Katharine was already in her cubicle, turning everything over in a wild and fruitless search.
"Go away!" she said shortly, when Phyllis came in. "It was the only thing I asked you to do, and I thought I could trust you. I shall know better another time. What are all these things doing here?"
She knocked her head, as she spoke, against a string of Chinese lanterns. There were flowers on the mantel-shelf, and a look of festivity in the dingy little room; but it was all lost on Katharine, who continued to open and shut the drawers with trembling hands, and to search in every likely place for her letter, until Phyllis put an end to her aimless task by bringing it to her in eloquent silence. Then she stole away again; and Katharine sat down in the midst of the confusion she had created, and became absorbed in its contents. It was very short, and there was hardly any news in it that could not have been extracted from a guide-book; but she spent quite half an hour in reading it and pondering over it, until she knew every one of its stilted phrases by heart. He was very well and it was very hot, and he was sitting by the open window looking down on the orange groves, and the sea was a splendid colour, and there were some very decent people in the hotel, and amongst them her relations the Keeleys. It was hard to look up at last, with dazed eyes, and to discover that she was in Queen's Crescent, Marylebone, instead of being where her thoughts were, in the sunny South of France.
"Hullo," said Phyllis, who was standing at the end of the bed.
"Yes?" said Katharine, smiling. "Do you want anything?"
"Oh, no," said Phyllis, and crept away again. Katharine sat and pondered a little while longer. Presently, she shivered and made the discovery that she was cold, and she jumped up and stretched herself.
"I suppose I must unpack," she said, still smiling contentedly. "Where has Phyllis gone, I wonder?"
She went to the door and made the passage ring with her voice, until Phyllis hurried out of a neighbouring room and apologised for not being there when she was wanted.
"I believe you were there when I didn't want you," said Katharine candidly. "Wasn't I cross to you or something?" Her foot touched one of the discarded Chinese lanterns.
"Hullo! I thought there were some lanterns somewhere. Where are they gone?"
"Oh, no!" said Phyllis, going down on her knees before the box. "You must have been dreaming."
"I wasn't dreaming, and you're a foolish old dear, and I am a selfish pig," cried Katharine penitently.
"Oh, no!" said Phyllis again. "I was the pig, you see, because I forgot your letter.You'll rumple my hair, if you do that again."
Katharine did hug her again, nevertheless, and accused herself of all the offences she could remember, whether they related to the present occasion or not; and Phyllis silenced her in a gruff voice, and the unpacking proceeded by degrees.
"Don't you think," said Katharine irrelevantly, "that women are much more selfish than men, in some ways?"
"What ways?"
"I mean when they are absorbed in anything. Now, a man wouldn't behave like a cad to his best friend, just because he happened to be in love with a girl, would he? But a woman would. She would betray her nearest and dearest for the sake of a man. I am certain I should. Women are so wolfish, directly they feel things; and they seem to lose their sense of honour when they fall in love. Don't they?"
"Where do the stockings go?" was all Phyllis said.
"Perhaps," continued Katharine, "it is because a woman really has stronger feelings than a man."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Phyllis. "Whopacked the sponge bag next to your best hat?"
"I don't think it matters," said Katharine mildly. "I was saying— What are you laughing at?"
"Nothing. Only, it is so delightful to have you back again, moralising away while I do all the work," laughed Phyllis.
Katharine owned humbly that Phyllis always did all the work, and Phyllis bluntly repudiated the charge, and insisted that Katharine was the most unselfish person in the world, and Katharine ended in allowing herself to be persuaded that she was; and the rest of the evening passed in an amicable exchange of news. Even the "cat in the pie dish" seemed appetising that evening.
Her feeling of satisfaction was increased when she arrived at school the next morning and found that Mrs. Downing was anxious to speak to her. An interview with the lady principal at the beginning of term generally foreboded some good.
"I want you to give up the junior teaching this term, my dear Miss Austen," she began, after greeting her warmly. "You are really too good for it, far too good. Mr. Wilton was quite right when he told me how culturedyou were, quite right. At the time, I must confess to feeling very doubtful; you seemed so inexperienced,—so very young, in fact. But I have come to think that in your case it is no drawback to be young; indeed, the dear children seem to prefer it. Their attachment for you is extraordinary; pardon me, I should have said phenomenal. And the way you manage them is perfect, quite perfect,—just the touch of firmness to show that your kindness is not weakness. Admirable! I am most grateful to Mr. Wilton for introducing you to me, most grateful. Such a charming man, is he not? So distinguished!"
She paused for breath, and Katharine murmured an acknowledgment of Mr. Wilton's distinction.
"To come to the point, my dear Miss Austen, I should be charmed, quite charmed, if you would take the senior work this term,—English in all its branches, French translation, Latin, and drawing. I think you know the curriculum, do you not? Thank you very much; that is so good of you! Did you have a pleasant holiday? There is no need to ask how you are,—the very picture of health, I am sure! And the architecture lectures, too; I should be more than grateful if you wouldcontinue them as before. Thank you so much— Ah, I beg your pardon?"
Katharine here made a desperate inroad into the torrent of words, and mentioned that she knew no Latin and had never taught any drawing.
"Indeed? But you are too modest, my dear Miss Austen; it is your one failing, if I may say so. Of course, if you wish—then let it be so. But I am convinced you would do both as well as Miss Smithson, quite convinced. However, that can easily be arranged. The salary I think you know, and the lectures will be as before. Indeed, we are most fortunate to have so delightful a lecturer, most fortunate. Ah, there is one more thing," continued Mrs. Downing, leading her towards the door. The rest of her speech was said on the landing which happened, fortunately, to be empty. "This is between ourselves, my dear Miss Austen,—quite between ourselves. I should be more than grateful if you would act as chaperon to the music master this term. It may appear strange that I should ask you to do this,—indeed, I may say peculiar; but I do so in the conviction that I can trust you better than any one else. Of course you will not mention what I have said! I am sureyou understand what I mean. That is so charming of you! Thank you so much!"
And the lady principal returned to say very much the same thing over again to the next teacher whom she summoned. But Katharine, who had long since learnt to regard her insincerity as inevitable, merely congratulated herself on the practical results of her interview, and thoroughly enjoyed the contest that ensued when her new pupils found they were going to be taught by a junior mistress. She felt very elated when she came out of it victorious; and for the next week or two everything seemed to go well with her. She had made a position for herself, although every one had told her it would be impossible; there were people who believed in her thoroughly, and there were others, like Ted and Phyllis Hyam, who did not understand her but worshipped her blindly. It was all very gratifying to her, after the dull month she had spent at home; and for the first time she threw off the reserve she usually showed, though unconsciously, towards the working gentlewomen of Queen's Crescent, and talked about herself in a way that astonished them not a little. Work to them was a sordid necessity, and they were a little jealous of this brilliant girl, with the youthand the talent, who found no difficulty in winning success where they had barely earned a living, and who seemed to enjoy her life into the bargain.
"Who is that girl with the jolly laugh and the untidy hair?" she overheard a stranger asking Polly Newland one day.
"That one?" was the reply, given in a contemptuous tone. "Oh, she's a caution, I can tell you! Nice? Oh, I dare say! She's a prig, though. Phyllis Hyam—that's the other girl in our room—thinks all the world of her; but I can't stand prigs, myself."
It was a little shock to her self-esteem to hear herself described so baldly, though she consoled herself by the reflection that Polly had never liked her, and there was consequently very little value to be attached to her opinion. But she was careful to remain silent about her own affairs for the next day or two; and she startled Ted, one evening, by asking him suddenly, between the acts of a melodrama, what was meant by a "prig."
"A prig? Oh, I don't know! It's the same thing as a smug, isn't it?"
"But what is a smug?"
"Well, of course, a smug is—well, he's asmug, I suppose. He hasn't got to be anything else, has he? He's a played-out sort of bounder, who wants to have a good time and hasn't the pluck, don't you know?"
"Are all prigs bounders?" asked Katharine, in a voice of dismay.
"Oh, I expect so! It doesn't matter, does it? At least, there's a chap in our office who is a bit of a prig, and he isn't a bounder exactly. He's a very decent sort of chap, really; I don't half mind him, myself. But they always call him a prig because he goes in for being so mighty saintly; at least, that's what they say. I don't think he is so bad as all that, myself."
"Is it priggish to be good, then? I thought one ought to try."
"My dear Kit, of course you are a girl; don't worry yourself about it. It's altogether different for a girl, don't you see?"
"Then girls are never prigs?" said Katharine eagerly.
"Bless their hearts," said Ted vaguely; and she did not get any further definition from him that evening.
And so the days grew into weeks, and her life became filled with new interests, and she told herself she was learning to live at last.But she had her bad days, as well; and on these she felt that something was still wanting in her life. And the end of February came, and Paul Wilton had not yet returned to his chambers in Essex Court.