"It may be a matter of great surprise to you to hear from me in this unexpected manner. Nothing but the deep interest I feel in one who is, I have reason to believe, as great a friend of yours as of mine would give me the courage to take up my pen and write to you. I have for some time past been observing Ted's career with distress, if not with the deepest concern. You probably know that he gave up his work in the city on the death of Mrs. Morton, so I will not trouble you with more details than necessity compels you to hear. Of course you will understand the diffidence with which I approach you on so delicate a matter; but my great friendship, or what I might call ourmutualfriendship, for Ted Morton has given me the requisite courage. I do not know the reason for what I am about to break to you; in fact, to be explicit, I have not the slightest idea of what led him to take such a step, but I have my own conjectures about the matter, and these I will lay before you as briefly as the occasion demands. For some time past, indeed, I may say for months, he has been very depressed, and has tried to drown his trouble, whatever it might be, in distractions of various kinds. Do not for one moment suppose that I am making any insinuation detrimental to Ted's reputation; far from it! But there is no doubt that he has grown somewhat reckless in disposition, owing possibly to this same mysterious trouble of his, and this has hurried on the crisis which it is now my business to communicate to you. But to avoid unnecessary details, let me at once tell you in plain language what hashappened to him. Three days ago I met him in the Strand about seven o'clock, and asked him to come and dine with me. He refused, with none of the punctilious courtesy that usually characterises him, and I left him thinking, strange as it might seem, that he preferred to be alone. But on going to look him up at his chambers last night, I found him in the condition which it has become my obvious duty to describe to you. Fortunately, the ingenuous disposition, which has made him feel his trouble much longer than most men, has also saved him from this last and worst step of all; for, in his ignorance, he took too large a dose of laudanum, and the effect has mercifully been injurious instead of fatal. He is now—"
"It may be a matter of great surprise to you to hear from me in this unexpected manner. Nothing but the deep interest I feel in one who is, I have reason to believe, as great a friend of yours as of mine would give me the courage to take up my pen and write to you. I have for some time past been observing Ted's career with distress, if not with the deepest concern. You probably know that he gave up his work in the city on the death of Mrs. Morton, so I will not trouble you with more details than necessity compels you to hear. Of course you will understand the diffidence with which I approach you on so delicate a matter; but my great friendship, or what I might call ourmutualfriendship, for Ted Morton has given me the requisite courage. I do not know the reason for what I am about to break to you; in fact, to be explicit, I have not the slightest idea of what led him to take such a step, but I have my own conjectures about the matter, and these I will lay before you as briefly as the occasion demands. For some time past, indeed, I may say for months, he has been very depressed, and has tried to drown his trouble, whatever it might be, in distractions of various kinds. Do not for one moment suppose that I am making any insinuation detrimental to Ted's reputation; far from it! But there is no doubt that he has grown somewhat reckless in disposition, owing possibly to this same mysterious trouble of his, and this has hurried on the crisis which it is now my business to communicate to you. But to avoid unnecessary details, let me at once tell you in plain language what hashappened to him. Three days ago I met him in the Strand about seven o'clock, and asked him to come and dine with me. He refused, with none of the punctilious courtesy that usually characterises him, and I left him thinking, strange as it might seem, that he preferred to be alone. But on going to look him up at his chambers last night, I found him in the condition which it has become my obvious duty to describe to you. Fortunately, the ingenuous disposition, which has made him feel his trouble much longer than most men, has also saved him from this last and worst step of all; for, in his ignorance, he took too large a dose of laudanum, and the effect has mercifully been injurious instead of fatal. He is now—"
Katharine read no more. Nothing further could be of importance after she had learnt so much. Ted had tried to destroy himself, and it was on her account.
"Whatever is the matter, Katharine? I have asked you the same question three times," Miss Esther was saying crossly. Katharine stared at her in reply, with large, terrified eyes. Her aunt repeated her question, and tried to possess herself of the letter. Katharine came to herself with a start, and snatched it back again, and thrust it into her father's hand.
"Read it, daddy," she tried to say, but no sound came; she seemed possessed of a greathorror that robbed her of every faculty. The Rector smoothed out the letter silently, glanced at the florid signature, "Barrington Montague," and began to read it without waiting to put on his glasses. Miss Esther looked from one to the other, and was divided between her curiosity and her annoyance.
"Really, Katharine, you are quite devoid of manners. Am I not to have the right to ask a simple question in my own house? Who is the letter from, and what is it all about?"
Dorcas lingered by the door as long as she dared, under pretence of being wanted; but Miss Esther, who never relaxed her vigilance even in a crisis, detected the subterfuge and ordered her sharply out of the room. The accustomed tone of reproof helped Katharine to recover herself. She drew a deep breath, and made an effort to speak.
"Ted is dying," she said. "They are afraid to tell me, but I know it is so. And it is I who have killed him,I! I am going to him at once."
The Rector was blinking his eyes as he finished reading the letter. Miss Esther held out her hand again.
"I insist upon your giving me that letter, Cyril," she said in her discordant voice.Katharine struck down her hand fiercely. Her numbness was giving way to a kind of passionate frenzy.
"Leave it alone, Aunt Esther!" she cried vehemently. "It is no business of yours; you don't understand; nobody understands. I have made Ted take his life. I am going to himnow."
The last sentence was the only one that reached Miss Esther's comprehension; she at once took up her usual attitude of disapproval.
"Indeed, Katharine, you will do nothing of the kind," she exclaimed querulously. "What are we coming to next, I wonder? I sincerely trust, Cyril, that you will point out to your daughter that it is quite impossible for her to visit a young man in his chambers. I really wish that tiresome young Edward would emigrate, or marry, or do something that would put him out of the way. What has he been doing now, I wonder?"
Katharine paid no heed; her eyes were fixed feverishly on her father's face.
"Ted is ill, and he wants me. You will let me go, daddy, won't you?" she said imploringly.
"I beg you to assert your authority, Cyril, by forbidding such a mad piece of folly," criedthe shrill tones of Miss Esther. Katharine turned upon her furiously.
"You, what canyouknow about it? You have never known what it is to want to protect some one; you don't know the awful emptiness of having no one to care for. Daddy! you understand, don't you? I may go, mayn't I?"
The Rector glanced from one to the other. He had not put on his glasses, but he did not seem to want them just then. Slowly the tyranny of twenty years was losing its terrors for him; he even forgot to laugh nervously as the two women stood awaiting his answer; and although there was a smile on his face as he looked at them, it had only been called there by a reflection on his folly in the past. He marvelled at himself, as his eyes rested on the glowing features of his daughter, for ever having hesitated to support her.
"The child is in the right, Esther," he said, mildly. "I—I am fond of the dear boy myself, and he must not be left in the hour of his need. We will go together, eh, Kitty?"
Miss Esther stared at him dumbly. She had never heard him speak like that before. After all, nothing is so convincing as the sudden assumption of power by the oppressed;and few things are more complete than the humiliation of the oppressor.
"Let me see," continued the Rector: "we cannot catch anything before the 1.28. That will give us time for an early lunch, if you will kindly see to it, Esther. Kitty, my child, do not fret over the boy; we will soon put him to rights, eh?"
Katharine remained immovable, with Monty's letter crunched in her hand. "Ted has tried to kill himself—forme," were the words that ran remorselessly in her mind.
Cyril Austen walked out of the room with a firm step. Miss Esther rattled her keys, muttered something to herself, and followed him almost immediately.
She was dethroned at last.
The landlady had gone out of the room and closed the door. Katharine stepped softly to the side of the bed, and looked at the sleeping face. It was just the same as she had always known it, rounded and beardless, without a line or a wrinkle, and with the hair as loose and rumpled as it had been in the days before manhood had claimed its submission. "Dear old Ted," she murmured to herself with a half smile, "I don't believe hecouldlook ill, however much he tried." She stole about the room, putting flowers in the vases, and lightening some of its London dinginess, until the sound of her name brought her back again to the bedside.
"Dear old man, don't look so scared," she laughed. "We heard you were ill, and we came up to look after you, daddy and I. Daddy is still downstairs; he discovered an old print in the hall, and he hasn't got any further yet. There are a lot of old prints in the hall, so I suppose it will be ever so longbefore he does get any further. Isn't it like daddy?"
She smoothed his hair gently, and he laughed contentedly in reply. He did not seem at all surprised to see her; Kitty always had turned up, all his life, when he had got himself into a scrape; and it did not occur to him at the moment that she was more or less answerable for his present scrape.
"Just see how hit up I am!" he said. "So poor, isn't it?"
Her face clouded.
"Oh, Ted, how could you do it? Ought I to have stayed in London and looked after you?" she said reproachfully; and he saw that it was useless to try to conceal anything from her.
"It's all right, Kit," he hastened to explain in his humble manner. "Don't swear, old chum! I couldn't help it, on my honour I couldn't. I got so sick, and I just had to. And after all I played so poorly, you see, that it didn't come off."
Except for the subject of their conversation, they might have been back again in the lanes at Ivingdon. They had dropped naturally into their old boy and girl attitude, and hers was as before the stronger personality. Butthere was a subtle difference in their relations which she was the first to feel.
"I—I am glad it didn't come off, Ted," she said, trying to speak lightly. Ted gripped her hand for a moment, and then let it go again, as though he were half ashamed of his momentary show of sentiment.
"You see," he went on, in a very gruff voice, "that was the only part I left to Providence, and Providence muffed it. I'm such a rotten ass,— I always was, don't you know? If it had been you, now, you wouldn't have bungled it at all, would you?"
"Providence never has any sense of humour," said Katharine; and she got up hurriedly, so that he should not see her face. She poured out some medicine, and brought it to him.
"I say, it's awfully ripping to have you to look after me like this," he observed. "What did Miss Esther say?"
"She seemed upset," said Katharine, smiling slightly. "But you can always square Aunt Esther, when it's a question of illness; there are such a lot of texts in the Bible about illness, don't you know? By the way, when did you last have something to eat?"
Ted had no idea, beyond a vague notion that some one had brought him something ona tray in the morning, which he had not looked at. So she left him to interview the landlady, whom she found in the middle of a long history of the print in the hall and of the part it had played in the history of her own family as well, to which the Rector was listening patiently though with obvious inattention. Katharine managed to procure what she wanted, and returned with it to the sick room. The invalid was looking more flourishing than ever.
"You see," he explained, between the spoonfuls with which she fed him, "he's such an awfully snide doctor. He won't let me get up, and of course, I'm as right as rain, really. So cheap of him, isn't it?"
In spite of his assertion, however, he was very glad to play the invalid when she brought him some warm water, and proceeded to bathe his hands and face. It was pleasant, after the desolation of his life for the past six months, to lie back in a lazy attitude without feeling particularly ill, and allow the girl he liked best in the world to do things for him.
"It's so rum," he remarked, "that our hands never wear out with being washed so often. I can't think why they don't want soling and heeling after a time, like boots."
"I think you are right, and that your doctorisrather 'snide,'" was all Katharine said, as she carried away the basin, and looked for his hair brushes. Ted's toilet table was characterised by a luxurious confusion, and she lingered for a moment to arrange the silver-topped bottles in some kind of order. "You never used to care for this sort of thing," she remarked, holding up a bottle ofeau de toilette; "I remember how you teased me once, when I told you I put lavender water in my cold bath."
"Oh, well, of course it's beastly rot and all that," owned Ted; "but it's the thing to do, and one must, don't you know? Hullo, what are you playing at now?"
"I wish you would not be quite so languid," retorted Katharine. "How am I to brush your hair if you persist in behaving as though you were dying? I believe you are putting it on."
"It's not my fault if I'm not so beastly energetic as you," grumbled Ted. "Don't play about any more, Kit; come over here and talk. And you needn't fold up those towels; they're not used to it, really."
"I shouldn't think they were, from the look of them. Well, what have I got to talk about?"
She came and sat down on the chair by his side, and he shifted his position so that he could see her face. She could have laughed aloud at his expression of utter contentment.
"Oh, some rot; anything you like. You've always got lots to gas about, haven't you? How is Ivingdon, and the Grange; and does Peter Bunce still come in on Sunday afternoons; and has the doctor got any new dogs? Fire ahead, Kit! you've been down there doing nothing all this time, and you must know all there is to know, unless you're as half alive as you used to be. Hasn't anything happened to the old place?"
"Yes," said Katharine, smiling back at him frankly. "They have mended the gap in the hedge."
"The devil they have!" cried Ted. "We'll have it broken open again at once, won't we? Why didn't you stop them? You knew I wasn't there to tell them myself. Just like their confounded impertinence!"
"Hush," interrupted Katharine. "You mustn't get excited, old man; it isn't good for you."
She smoothed his pillows and arranged his coverlet with nervous rapidity, and Ted, submitting happily to her services, wondered innocentlywhat she was blushing about. But he did not trouble himself to find out.
"I am beastly glad I poisoned myself," he murmured, with lazy satisfaction.
She was glad of the diversion when the Rector arrived at last, and she was allowed to escape into the next room.
"Well, my boy, and how has the world gone with you?" she heard her father say in his genial tones.
"It's a beastly jolly world, and I'm the jolliest brute in it," was Ted's reply.
They took rooms in the next street, and came in every day to look after him; and when neither the conscience of the "snide" doctor, nor the desire of the invalid to be nursed proved sufficient to preserve the farce of his illness any longer, they still lingered on under pretence of being wanted, and sent carefully worded letters to Miss Esther from which she was forced to conclude that their presence in town was urgently required, much as they would have wished it otherwise. What really happened was, that Ted and Katharine regularly conducted the old Rector to the British Museum every morning, and passed the day alone together until it was time to fetch him away again in the afternoon. And inthe evenings they initiated him into the joys of a music hall, or introduced him to a new comedian; and the Rector was happier than he had ever been since the well-remembered days in Paris. As for Katharine, her feelings defied her own powers of description; she only knew that she had the sensation of waking up from a long, bad dream. Perhaps Ted felt the same. "You've cured the biggest hump I ever had in my life," was the way he expressed it.
Looking back on the even tenor of those few weeks, afterwards, Katharine was at a loss to remember what she had talked about to Ted in the many hours they had spent together. Perhaps they had not talked at all; at the time it never seemed to matter whether they did or not; at all events, their conversation usually lacked the personal element that alone makes conversation distinctive. There was nothing surprising to Katharine in this: as long as she could remember Ted had been the one person in the world to whom it was impossible to talk about one's self; and his sympathy for her was as completely superficial as her love for him was mainly protective.
Once or twice she was led inadvertently into making a confidant of him.
"I wonder why I never seem to feel things acutely now," she said to him one day as they were strolling along the Embankment. "I don't seem to care a bit what happens next, except that I have a sort of conviction it is going to be pleasant. I seem to want waking up again. Do you know what I mean, Ted?"
"Oh, it's nothing; you're feeling played, that's all," answered Ted, reassuringly. "My experience is that you're either played, or you're not played; and when you are, you'd better have a drink to buck you up. We'll have a cab, and lunch somewhere. Where shall we go to-day?"
And Katharine laughed at his practical view of things, and wondered why she had expected him to understand. Another time, it was Ted himself who gave the conversation a personal turn.
"Humps are deuced odd things," he observed, rather suddenly. It was a dull, warm afternoon in December, and they had been sitting idly for some minutes on one of the benches in the park, overlooking the Serpentine. "You feel that everything is awfully decent, and bills be hanged, and all that; and you curse your tailor and have a good time,and it doesn't matter if it snows. And then, when it's rather a bore to be under an obligation to a rotten little tradesman, or you want a new coat or something, and you pay up and feel awfully virtuous and don't owe a blessed halfpenny in the world, except for shirts and things that never expect to be paid for,—then, you go and get the very deuce of a hump."
"Whole books might be written on the psychological aspect of the hump," murmured Katharine.
"Look at those bounders, now," said Ted, who had not heard her. "It doesn't matter tothemthat rowing on the Serpentine on Saturday afternoon isn't the thing to do, especially in frock coats and bowlers. It makes one quite sorry for them, to see how little they know; they don't even know they are bounders, poor devils! Buttheynever get the hump, confound them!"
"All the same," said Katharine, "it is a big price to pay for an immunity from humps, isn't it?"
"Life must be awfully easy, if you're a bounder," continued Ted. "You haven't got to be in good form, and you can walk about with any sort of girl you please, and youneedn't worry about the shape of your hat, and it doesn't matter if you are seen on a green Brixton 'bus. It saves so much thinking, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Katharine. "But you have to be a bounder all the same, and you know you can't even contemplate such a possibility, or impossibility, without shuddering. By the way, is all this intended to convey that you have got the hump this afternoon?"
"Oh, no," said Ted, with restored cheerfulness. "I ought never to have been born, of course; but that's quite another matter."
Late that evening the Rector proposed returning to Ivingdon. They had just been to the theatre, and Ted had asked them in to supper afterwards. Every trace of his mood of that afternoon had disappeared, and he was wrangling with Katharine over the strength of the Rector's toddy with all the energy of which his languid nature was capable. Katharine put down the tumbler she was holding and looked swiftly round at her father.
"Oh, daddy, not yet!" she cried impetuously. "I am happy now; don't let us spoil it all by going home. I feel as though something horrible would happen if we went home now.Can't we wait a little longer? I have never been happy like this before."
The Rector murmured something about its being three weeks to Christmas, but his sense of duty was obviously a perfunctory one, and he soon found he was not being listened to. And Ted's hand closed over her fingers as he took the hot glass from her, and his face shone with pleasure and his voice trembled, as he whispered, "Thank you for that, dear."
She did not shrink from him as she had done once before when he had looked at her with that same eager expression in his eyes.
"I don't know a bit whether I love him in the real way," she told her mirror that night. "I don't know anything about myself at all. I believe the prig is inborn in me, after all, and that it would suit me far better to fight for a living in the world, than to stay at home and just make Ted happy. But all the same, if he asks me again I shall marry him. It has been so peaceful lately, and I have felt so happy, and marriage with Ted will mean peace if it doesn't mean anything more thrilling than that. Dear old Ted; why isn't he my brother, or my son, or some one I could just mother, and go on living my own life the while? Ah, well, he is going to be my husband;how strange it sounds! I wonder if women like me are ever allowed to be happy in their own way, gloriously and completely happy as I know I could be? But I suppose it is only the prig in me that thinks so. And Ted shall never know that I want more than he can possibly give me. Oh, Ted, old chum, I do love you so for loving me!"
A visit to Queen's Crescent slightly unsettled her. She took her father with her and introduced him to Phyllis Hyam, and tried to convince herself that she was glad she was not coming back any more; but in spite of the unfamiliarity of being there as a visitor, and the difficulty of finding topics of conversation for the Rector and Miss Jennings, who obviously misunderstood each other's attempts to be friendly, the sight of the dingy little hall and of Phyllis's round, good-humoured face, brought enough reminiscences to her mind to make her a little regretful as well.
"Do you still have bread and treacle, and is Polly Newland glad I have gone, and does any one ever talk about me?" she asked with interest. Even Phyllis looked strange, as though her best dress had been thrown on hurriedly and the distinction of being admitted to "Jenny's" room were rather too much forher; but there was a familiarity about her style of conversation that was consoling.
"Oh, yes," she replied in her off-hand way; "when we have a new one put into our room we always remember how blue you looked the first night you came. We haven't had a 'permanent' in our room since you left; and there have been some cheerful specimens, too! One was a nurse, who made the place smell eternally of disinfectants; and another kept bits of food in her drawer, and encouraged mice; and a third insisted on having the window shut. The curtains haven't been washed, either, since you made that row about them. I say, when are you coming back again?"
"You don't offer much inducement," laughed Katharine. "But I am not coming back, in any case."
"Going to get married?" asked Phyllis sharply. Katharine smiled, and did not contradict her. It was not an insinuation that one would be anxious to contradict in a place like Queen's Crescent, however diffident one might feel about it elsewhere. Phyllis shrugged her shoulders. "Well, don't go and make a hash of it," she said. "You're not the sort to be happy with any one, especially if it's made too easy for you. Well off? Of course; andworships the ground you tread on, I suppose! Oh, well, it's none of my business, and I only hope you haven't made a mistake. It's a risky thing at the best; and you were very happy here most of the time, and you've got to better that, you know. I wish you luck, I'm sure, but it takes a woman to understand any one like you, and I should like to see the man who thinks he does it as well."
"I hope you will some day," said Katharine, politely. But Phyllis did not respond with any warmth, and Katharine was glad to return to the masculine indifference of Ted. It was difficult to worry about the future in Ted's company; even the fact that he had not yet formally proposed to her did not seem to cause him any anxiety. It certainly made no difference in the freedom of their intercourse; and, as long as there was no immediate necessity for action, Ted was not the one to take the initiative. "I believe I shall have to propose to him myself," was the thought that sometimes crossed her mind as she studied his placid, good-looking face. But after her visit to Queen's Crescent, she began to wish he would not be quite so casual about it; for, without allowing even to herself that Phyllis's want of encouragement had in any way affectedher decision, she had a lingering feeling that the present state of things could not go on for ever, and that it would be better for her, at all events, to have the matter definitely settled. So she made a kind of attempt, a day or two later, to rouse his apprehensions.
"Phyllis was wondering if I was ever coming back again to my work," she said to him abruptly.
"Oh, was she? Rather a nice girl, Phyllis, if she didn't dress so badly," observed Ted unconsciously. They were at a Wagner concert in the Queen's Hall, and the Siegfried Idyll had just drawn to a close. It seemed to her an auspicious moment.
"I said I was never coming back," pursued Katharine, studying his profile critically.
"Of course not," said Ted, humming the refrain they had just heard.
For once, Katharine felt faintly annoyed with him for his want of proper sentiment.
"I don't believe you care whether I do or not," she said in a piqued tone.
"Eh, what?" said Ted, staring round at her in blank amazement. "Ought I to have said anything else? But you settled that long ago, Kit, didn't you? There is nothing more to be said about it, is there?"
"Oh, no, of course not," said Katharine, in what seemed to him a most unreasonable manner; "but all the same, I'm not at all sure that I sha'n't go back when the term begins again."
Ted stared more than ever.
"Oh, rats!" he exclaimed, heartily. "What's wrong, Kitty? Have you been hit up to-day, or anything? I'm such a rotten ass, I never know. Of course you're never going to grind any more; what an idea!"
"Why not?" asked Katharine, with uncomfortable persistence. Ted began to make fresh assertions, but paused in the middle and hesitated. He suddenly realised that there was only one answer to her question, and that he would have to make it now. He looked down and made havoc with his programme, and stammered hopelessly until Katharine took pity on him and came to his assistance with a laugh.
"It's all right, old man; I am never going back, of course," she said; and Ted brightened up again when he found that he need not propose to her yet, and was obviously relieved at the establishment of their old relations. She did nothing more to change them, and the only result of her abortive attempt was, that Tedwas more attentive to her than before, and constantly made little plans for taking her to some unfrequented museum or picture gallery, evidently with some design in his mind which he had not the courage to carry out.
"Poor old Ted," she thought to herself, after they had spent a dull and silent afternoon at the Royal Institute among the colonial produce; "I wonder if he will ever get it out!"
Curiously enough, through all the weeks she spent in town, the thought of Paul Wilton rarely crossed her mind; and when it did she felt that it referred to some former life of hers, with which this present calm existence had no connection. Sometimes she wondered idly whether he were married yet, and if so, whether he ever gave a thought to her; but she could think of Marion as his wife without a regret, and she was glad to find that she had no desire whatever to see him again. The impression he seemed to have left in her mind, after all these months, was that of a disturbing element which had brought the greatest unhappiness into her life she had ever been forced to endure. It was inconsequent, perhaps, that, thinking thus, she should have been emphatic in her refusal to go and see the Keeleys; but although she was incapable of explaining whyshe felt so strongly about such a small matter, she was at least genuine in her belief that he had no further place in her thoughts.
And then, two days before they left town, she met him at last.
It was in Bury Street, late on a foggy afternoon, as she was on her way to the Museum with Ted. She had stopped with an exclamation of delight in front of an old book shop, and the owner, who was talking to an intending purchaser inside, came out good-naturedly and offered to light the gas jet over the tray of dusty volumes. "I shall have to stop now," whispered Katharine; "supposing you go on for daddy and bring him back here?"
The light flared up, and made a bright semicircle in the gloom that was fast closing up round the shop. The customer who was inside concluded his purchase, and came out just as Ted was strolling off. Apparently they did not see each other, and the fog soon swallowed up the retreating form; but Katharine turned round at this moment from the book she was examining, and met the stranger face to face.
"Ah," he said, quietly; "at last!"
"Yes," she repeated; "at last!"
It did not strike her until afterwards that it was not at all the mode of address withwhich she would have greeted him had she been more prepared; but at the time it came quite naturally to her lips. He still held her hand as he went on speaking.
"And Ted? Where have you sent him? Will he be long?"
She resented the implication in his words.
"I have not sent him anywhere. He has gone to fetch my father from the Museum; they will be back directly. Do you mean to say you recognised Ted in that instant?"
"Why, surely! Did you not recognise me, although I was standing back there in the shadow?"
"Of course I didn't," cried Katharine hotly, as she pulled away her hand. "I never saw you until you came out into the light. I should have stopped Ted if I had."
"Oh, to be sure; pardon my mistake. Of course you would have detained Ted in that case." And he smiled as though he were faintly amused at something.
She had noticed his glad look of recognition, and she hated him for it. What right had he to be glad to see her? And now that he was laughing at her and making insinuations about Ted, true insinuations moreover, she hated him still more for his acuteness.
"So you are back in town?" he was saying, with what appeared to be meant for a kindly interest. "I am not surprised, though. I always knew you would have to come back."
"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling more annoyed than ever. It was so like him to know everything about her without being told, and then to put a complexion upon it that he gave her no opportunity of contradicting. "We came up, daddy and I, because Ted was ill; and we are going back again on Wednesday."
"Really? My mistake again. It is difficult to imagine Ted except in the complete enjoyment of his health. Not seriously ill, I hope?"
"Oh, no," she said, with an uncomfortable conviction that she was being made to expose herself in all her weakness; "but there was no one to nurse him, so I came. He is all right now."
"So I should judge from the brief glimpse I had of him just now. Lucky fellow, Ted! He looked very jolly, I thought; no doubt he has good cause for his happiness. You are looking well too, if I may say so. It is very delightful to be young, is it not?"
She felt a wild rage against him for detectingthe situation so absolutely, and for making it merely a subject for his raillery. She did not know how she would have wished him to take it, but she hated him all the same for so calmly accepting it.
"I don't understand you," she said, speaking rapidly. "It isn't a bit delightful; you know it isn't. You know I hate you; you know I am the most miserable person in the whole world. You know everything there is to know about me; and I hate you! Why did you come back to spoil it all, when I was trying so hard to be happy?"
Her own words amazed her. She knew they were true as she spoke them; but she had not known it ten minutes ago.
"I'm sorry," he said, gravely. "Shall I go?"
He had completely dropped his jesting tone, but she hated him for his pity even more than she had hated him for his ridicule; she tried to speak, but her anger choked her utterance.
"When will you be at Ivingdon again?" he asked. "Did you say Wednesday? And you are going to leave Ted in town?"
She asked herself why he did not go, instead of standing there and making conversation by inventing questions to which he could not possiblywant to know the answers. But she mechanically made a gesture in the affirmative to both of them; and he repeated his former inquiry with gentle insistence.
"Shall I go now?"
"Yes, go!" she cried fiercely, and ignored the hand he proffered her, and let him go without another word.
The fog swallowed him up, and she stood and gazed at the place where he had stood, and wondered vaguely if he had been there at all or if she had not dreamt the whole incident. For one moment the wild impulse seized her to rush after him into the fog and the darkness, and to implore him to take her with him anywhere, so long as she might be with him. And then a smile flickered across her face as the bookseller came out and spoke to her; and she paid for the first volume she picked up; and the Rector and Ted emerged from the fog into the semicircle of light, and life resumed its ordinary aspect again.
"Has he gone?" asked Ted.
"Who? Mr. Wilton? I did not know you saw him. Oh, yes; he went some time ago. Isn't this a jolly little thing I have picked up?" said Katharine lightly; and Ted apparently thought no more about it.
That evening she was almost feverishly gay. The Rector sat and smiled happily as she turned everything that occurred into ridicule, and made every passer-by a subject for her wit. They did not go to a theatre, on account of the bad weather; and when Monty dropped in to coffee later on, she kept him in a perpetual condition of adoring approval until the fact of Ted's gloomy silence was gradually forced upon her, and she blamed herself hotly for her stupidity. She was very cool to Monty after she had realised her blunder; and the poor fellow, who was quite ignorant of his offence, took the first opportunity to depart. Even then, in spite of her efforts to be kind to him, Ted did not wholly recover his spirits; and she sighed inwardly as she reflected that she could not even be sure of accomplishing the one task she had set herself to perform.
And the next day her old restlessness possessed her again. All the work of the past six weeks seemed to have been suddenly undone; nothing brought her any happiness, she reflected bitterly; she was incapable of happiness and it was absurd of her to have expected to find it. All the same, perhaps if Ted were to say something to her—but Ted still saidnothing, and went about making plans for her enjoyment on this her last day in town, as though their coming separation were of no matter at all; and he seemed as unconscious of her change of mood as he had been all along of her unusual contentment. The day was not a success; their little improvised amusements had been far more satisfactory than the carefully planned ones of to-day, and Ted's silence on the one subject of interest grew more marked as the time wore on, and ended in raising an uncomfortable barrier between them. Once she felt sure that he would have spoken if the Rector had not come in unexpectedly; and once, he startled her by suddenly taking both her hands in his and looking into her eyes for a full minute, while she waited passively for him to speak. But he turned very red instead, and called himself a fool and hurried out of the room, and left her half amused and half regretful. She felt very tender towards him after that; and the old desire to mother him was very strong within her when they stood together at last on the platform at Euston, and had only a few moments left in which to say what was in their minds.
"God bless you, dear! I shall see you againsoon?" was all she could bring herself to say in that last moment.
"No—yes—perhaps. I am going to write to you quite soon. I'm a rotten ass, as you know, but—you will try and understand, won't you, Kitty?"
The train went on, and she leaned out of the window and laughed.
"I am sure I shall understand," she said.
She waited in vain during the next two days for Ted's letter. His parting words to her, however, seemed to have again restored her peace of mind; and the virtuous mood in which she returned to Ivingdon was so unprecedented as to rouse surprise rather than the admiration it deserved. The climax was reached when Miss Esther insisted on giving her a tonic.
"It is very ridiculous," she remonstrated, "that one is never allowed to drop one's characteristic attitude for a moment. If I had come home and behaved as childishly as I usually do, you would have been quite satisfied; but just because I am inclined to be civilised for a change, you choose to resent it. One would think you had taken out a patent for all the virtues."
"My dear, that is doubtless very clever, but I wish you would drink up this and not keep me standing," returned her aunt, who was, as ever, occupied with actions and notwith theories about them; and Katharine had to seek consolation for her temporary discomfort in the absurdity of the situation.
She wondered slightly why Ted had not written to her at once, but after the vacillation he had already shown she was not unprepared for a further delay; it was more than likely that he found the complexities of writing what he could not speak to be greater than he supposed, and it amused her to conjecture that he would probably end in coming to her for the help he had learnt to expect from her in all the crises of his life. Meanwhile, there was a whole lifetime before them in which they could work out the effects of their action, and in her present mood she saw no satisfactory reason for hurrying it; she did not realise how persistently she was recalling every instance of Ted's kindness to her, as if to strengthen her resolution, and she was unconscious of the doggedness with which she avoided dwelling on a certain episode in the London visit which she had never even mentioned to her father. She had cheated herself, by degrees, into a complacency that she mistook for resignation.
At last, by the mid-day post on Saturday morning, she received her letter. It camewith another one, written in a hand that brought association without distinct recollection to her mind; and she opened the latter first, principally because it was the one that interested her least. The first page revealed its identity; it was from Mrs. Downing, and was characteristically full of underlined words and barely legible interpolations, and she was obliged to read it through twice before she was able to grasp its meaning. The drift of it was that the enterprising lady principal was about to open a branch of her school in Paris, where everything was to be French, "quiteFrench, you know, my dear Miss Austen,—staff, conversation, cooking, games,everything; a place to which I can send on the dear children from here when they want finishing. The French are suchdeliciouspeople, are they not?Sounique, andsoFrench!" The morals, however, were to be English; so, in spite of the unique French element in the French character, there was to be an English head to the establishment, and it was this position that she proceeded in a maze of extravagant compliments to offer to her former junior mistress. "Not a duenna, ofcourse, for that will be supplied in the person of the excellent Miss Smithson, who will act nominallyas housekeeper, and make anexquisitebackground to the whole. There are always some of those dear foolish mammas who will insist on placing propriety before education,—so benighted, is it not? But Miss Smithson was intended by Nature, I am sure, to propitiate that kind of mamma; whileyou, my dear Miss Austen, I intend to be something more than a background. I look to you to give atoneto the school, to manage the working of it all,—the amusements, the lectures, indeed, the wholerégime; to be responsible for the dear children's happiness, and to see that they write happy letters home every week,—to takemyplace, in fact. I could tell youallin two minutes, etc., etc."
Katharine laid down the letter with an involuntary sigh; the position it offered was full of attractions to her, and the salary would have been more than she had ever hoped to demand. "I wish she had asked me six weeks ago," she said aloud, and then accused herself fiercely of disloyalty and picked up Ted's letter, and studied the boyish handwriting on the envelope as though to give herself courage to open it. She had wanted to be alone with his letter, and had carefully watched her father out of the house before shutting herself intothe study; so the sound of a footstep on the gravel path outside brought a frown to her face, and she remained purposely with her back to the window so that the intruder, whoever he was, should see that she did not mean to be disturbed. But the voice in which she heard her name spoken through the open window arrested her attention.
She dropped the unopened letter on the table, and turned slowly round to face the speaker. The strangeness of his coming, when she had been obstinately putting him out of her thoughts since last Monday, had a paralysing effect upon her nerves; and Paul swung himself over the low window seat, and reached her side in time to save her from falling. She recovered herself immediately, however, and shrank back from his touch.
"I do not understand why you are here," she found herself saying with difficulty.
"That is what I have come to explain," he replied. "I could hardly expect you to understand."
His tone was curiously gentle. It struck her, as she looked at him again, that he was very much altered. She had not noticed his appearance much as he stood outside the book shop, with the dark fog at his back; butnow, as the light from the window behind fell full on his head she saw the fresh streaks of white in the black hair, and the sight affected her strangely. Perhaps, while she in her arrogance had believed him to be living in an ill-gotten contentment, he, too, had had something to suffer.
"Won't you sit down?" she said, and took a chair herself, and waited for him to begin. The one idea in her mind was that he should not suspect her of nervousness.
"You were kind enough, when we last met in the summer," began Paul, "to congratulate me on my engagement to your cousin. I am going to ask you to extend your kindness now, and to congratulate us both on being released from that engagement."
Katharine looked wonderingly at him. But there was nothing to be gathered from his face. She smiled rather sadly.
"Poor Marion!" she said, softly. "Isn't anybody to be allowed to remain happy?"
"You mistake me," he corrected her carefully. "Your cousin took the initiative in the matter; she is obviously the one to be congratulated."
"And you?"
"I? Oh, I suppose I have only my ownignorance to blame. If I had had more knowledge of women, I should have known better what was expected of me. As it is, my engagement has proved a complete failure."
There was a pause, till Katharine roused herself to speak in a lifeless kind of voice that did not seem to belong to her.
"I am sorry if it has made you unhappy," she said. Paul looked at her critically.
"Are you sure?" he asked, smiling.
Katharine folded and unfolded her hands uneasily, and wished he would go away and remove his disquieting presence from her life for ever.
"Oh, yes," she said. "One is always sorry when people are unhappy, of course."
"Only that?" His voice had a touch of disappointment in it, and she began to tremble for her composure. He got up and walked to the window and looked across the lawn, where the wintry sun was struggling through the bare branches of the elm trees and making faint intricate patterns on the whitened grass below. "This is where I first met you, three years ago," he went on as though he were talking to himself. "You were only a child then, and you interested me. I used to wonderwhat there was about you that interested me so much, a mere child like you! You were very sweet to me in those days, Katharine."
"I—I wish you wouldn't," said Katharine. But he did not seem to hear her.
"Most men would have behaved differently, I suppose," he went on, still looking away from her. "It is very fatal to admit the possibility, even to ourselves, of making a new system for an effete civilisation like ours; and I was a fool to suppose that women could be dealt with by any but the obvious methods. It is my own fault, of course, that in my anxiety to keep your respect I managed to destroy your affection."
She wanted to vindicate herself, to protest against what seemed to her his confident self-righteousness; but the old influence was creeping over her again, and it numbed her.
"I wish you would not say those things," she said, weakly. The unopened letter lying on the red table-cloth seemed like a protest against the futility of the scene that was passing, and she found herself controlling a desire to laugh at the mockery of it all.
He turned round again with a half-suppressed sigh, and took out his watch.
"Just twelve," he said, reflectively. "Imust be off if I mean to walk to the station. You will forgive me for having worried you with all this? I had a sort of feeling that I should like to tell you about it myself; our old friendship seemed to demand that little amount of frankness, though I suppose you will think I have no right to talk about friendship any longer. I acknowledge that I have given you every reason to be vexed with me; if I can ever do anything to remove the disagreeable impression from your mind, I hope you will let me know. Good-bye."
"You—you are not going?" She had risen too, and was standing between him and the door. She did not know why she wished to keep him, but she knew she could not let him go.
"Unless you can show me a satisfactory reason for remaining," was his reply. She was trembling violently from head to foot.
"I cannot bear that you should leave me like this," she said in a low voice.
"It rests with you to say whether I am to go or not," said Paul in the same tone. She was looking straight into his eyes; but what she saw, for all that, was the unopened letter on the red table-cloth. She put out her hands as if to push him away from her, but he mistookher movement and grasped them both in his own.
"Don't, oh, don't!" she cried, struggling feebly to release herself. "I want you to go away, please. I thought it was all over and that I should never see you again, and I was beginning to feel happy, just a little happy; and now you have come back, and you want it to begin all over again, and I can't let it,—I am not strong enough! Oh, won't you go, please?"
"If you send me, I will go," said Paul, and waited for her answer. But none came, and he laughed out triumphantly. She had never heard him laugh so thoroughly before.
"I knew you couldn't, you proud little person," he said, with a sudden tenderness in his smile. "The woman in you is so strong, is it not, Katharine? Ah, I know far more about you than you know yourself; but you don't believe that, do you? Shall I tell you why I came to you to-day? It was just to say to you that I could not live without you any longer. Isn't that strange? I have been brutally frank with you to-day, Katharine, there is not another woman in the world who would have taken it as you have done. I knew you would, before I came to you; andthe knowledge gives me courage to tell you one thing more. You know the failure of my attempt to marry for ambition; will you, in your sweetness, help me to marry for love?"
He dropped her hands and moved away from her. The delicacy of his action, slight though it was, appealed to her strongly. She turned her back to the table to avoid seeing the white letter on the red table-cloth.
"I cannot marry you," she said, hurriedly. "I would have been your slave a few months ago, but I cannot be your wife now."
Except for a tightening of his lips, he did not move a feature.
"That is not true; I cannot believe it," he said shortly.
"Why not?" she asked in a tired voice. She hoped he would not guess how near she was to submission.
"Because it is not possible. You are not the kind of woman who changes. You must love me now, because you loved me then. You cannot deny that you loved me then?"
"No," said Katharine, "I cannot deny it."
"Then why do you pretend that you do not love me still? I do not believe it is because of my engagement to your cousin. You are made of finer clay than others, and—"
"Oh, no; that is not the reason," she said, interrupting him impatiently.
"Will you not tell me why it is?" he asked, approaching her again. There was no mistaking the tenderness in his tone now, and she cast about in her mind for some excuse to dismiss him before she completely lost her power of resistance. "Have I made you so angry that you will never forgive me?"
"No, no; you never made me angry," she protested. "But you made me feel absurd, and that is ever so much worse. I cannot be sure, now, that you are not merely laughing at me. Have you forgotten that you once thought me a prig? I have not altered; I am still a prig. How can you want to marry me when you have that image of me in your mind? It is hopeless to think of our marrying,—you with a secret contempt for me, and I with a perpetual fear of you!"
The man in him alone spoke when he answered her.
"Surely, it is enough that we love each other?"
She shook her head.
"Ah, you know it is not," she replied, with the strange little smile that had so often baffled him. "I—I do so wish you would understand—andgo. Or shall I find my father and tell him that you are here?"
He laid his hand against her cheek, and watched her closely.
"Is it all over,—our friendship, your love for me, everything?" he whispered. "Do you remember how sweetly you nursed me three years ago? Have you forgotten the jolly talks we had together in the Temple? And all the fun we had together in London? Is it all to come to an end like this?"
"I can't marry you; I don't love you enough for that," she said, moving restively under his touch. He stroked her cheek gently.
"Then why do you thrill when I touch you?" he asked. "Why do you not send me away?" It was his last move, and he watched its effect anxiously. She looked at him helplessly.
"I—I do send you away," she said faintly, and he made her join feebly in the laugh against herself. There was something contemptible in her surrender, she felt, as he folded her in his arms and looked down at her with a manly air of possession.
"If this is not love what is it, you solemn little Puritan?" he murmured.
"I don't know," said Katharine dully. She submitted passively to his embrace, and allowed him to kiss her more than once.
"Of course you don't know," he smiled. "What a woman you are, and how I love you for it! Don't be so serious, sweetheart; tell me what you are thinking about so deeply?"
It was pity for him, her old genuine love for him reawakening, that made her at last rouse herself to tell him the truth.
"Will you please let me go, Paul?" she asked submissively. And as he loosened his arms and allowed her to go, she took one of his hands and led him with feverish haste round to the table, where Ted's letter still lay like a silent witness against herself. They stood side by side and looked at it, the white envelope on the red table-cloth, and it was quite a minute before the silence was broken. Then Katharine pulled him away again and covered up the letter with her hand and looked up in his face.
"Do you know what is in that letter?" she asked, and without waiting for a reply went on almost immediately. "It is from Ted, to ask me to be his wife."
"And you are going to say—"
"Yes."
Paul smiled incredulously.
"It is impossible," he said. "I decline to believe what you say now, after what you said to me on Monday afternoon."
"Ah," she cried, "I was mad then. You always make me mad when I am with you. You must not talk any more of Monday afternoon; you must forget what I said to you then, and what I have said to you to-day; you must forget that I have allowed you to kiss me—"
"Forget?" interrupted Paul. "Areyougoing to forget all this?"
She turned away with a little cry.
"You make it so hard for me, Paul; and it seemed so easy before you came!"
"Then it doesn't seem so easy now?"
She evaded his question. "I know I am right, because I thought it all out when you were not here," she went on piteously. "I cannot trust myself even to think properly when you are there; you make me quite unlike myself. That is why I am going to marry Ted. Ted is the sanest person I know; he leaves me my individuality; he doesn't paralyse me as you do; and I am simply myself when I am with him."
"Simply yourself!" echoed Paul. "Mydear little girl, whatever in heaven or earth has allowed such a misapprehension to creep into your head?"
"I know what you mean," she said. "I have thought that out, too. You know more about me than anybody in the whole world; Ted will never know as much as you know, although I am going to be his wife. You are the only person I could ever talk to about myself; you are the only person who understands. I know all that. But one does not want that in a husband; one wants some one who will be content with half of one's self, and allow the other half to develop as it pleases. You would never be content with less than the whole, would you, Paul? Ah, that is why I loved you so madly! It is so queer, isn't it, that the very things that make us fall in love are the very things that make marriage impossible?"
He did not speak, and she put her arms round his neck impulsively and drew his head down to hers.
"Don't you understand, dear?" she said. "It is impossible to find everything we want in one person, so we have to be content with satisfying one side of ourselves, or accept the alternative and not marry at all. Ted wantsme badly, or I would rather choose not to marry at all. But he must have some one to look after him,—he can't live alone like some men; and I have always looked after him all my life. He has come in my way again now, so I am going to look after him to the end. I am very fond of Ted, and we have learnt to be chums, so I don't think it will be a failure. Oh, do say you understand, Paul?"
"Do you love him?" asked Paul.
"Yes," she replied.
"As you loved me?"
"No," said Katharine, simply. "I could never love any one again like that. I wore myself out, I think, in my love for you. Oh, I know I am spoiled; I know I have only the second best of myself to give to Ted; but if he is content with that, ought I not to be glad to give it?"
"Butyou, your own happiness," he urged brokenly. "Have you no thought for your own happiness?"
"Happiness?" she said, smiling again. "Oh, I do not expect to find happiness. Women like me, who ask for more than life can possibly give them, have no right to expect the same happiness as the people who have found out that it is better to make a compromiseand to take what they can get! Oh, I shall never be greatly happy, I know that. But I do not mind much; it is enough for me that I did once taste the real, glorious happiness, if it was only in snatches."
"Won't you taste it again?" he said, drawing her suddenly to him. "Won't you give up this impossible scheme of yours, and come to me? We will be married over there by your father,—now,—this very day. We will go abroad, travel, do what you will. Only come with me, Katharine. You belong to me, and to me only; you dare not deny it. Come with me, Katharine."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I am not going to spoil your life, as you have spoilt mine. You will be a great man, Paul, if you do not marry me."
"Listen," he said, without heeding her. "This is the last time I shall ask you; this is the last time I shall hold you in my arms,—so. I shall go away after this, and you will never see me again, nor hear of me again. I shall never kiss you any more, nor ask you to come away with me, nor tell you I love you as I never loved another woman. If you come to me on your knees and beg me to love you again, I will not relent. Do you understandme? This is the last, the very last time.Nowwhat have you to say? Will you come with me?"
She threw back her head and met his gaze as he bent over her.
"No," she said again. He covered her face with kisses.
"And now?"
"No," she repeated desperately; and she crept away from him at last, and took her letter from the table and tried to walk to the door.
A slippered footstep shuffled along the hall and stopped outside the library door. The next moment the Rector was in the room.
"Kitty, my child, have you seen my hat anywhere? I feel convinced I put it down somewhere, and for the life of me—"
He paused as he saw Paul, and held out his hand with a smile of welcome.
"Delighted to see you again, my dear sir, delighted! That is to say," added the old man, looking to Katharine for assistance, "I suppose Ihaveseen you before, though for the moment I cannot quite recall your name. But my memory is getting a bad one for names, a very bad one, eh, Kitty? Anyhow, you will stop to lunch, of course; and meanwhile, if I can only find my hat—"
"Daddy, it is Mr. Wilton," explained Katharine, making an effort to speak in her usual voice. Strange to say, it did not seem difficult to become usual again now that her father was in the room. "He stayed with us once, a long time ago; you remember Mr. Wilton, don't you?"
"To be sure, to be sure; of course I remember Mr. Wilton perfectly!" said the Rector, shaking hands with him again. "I can remember distinctly many of our little talks on archæology and so forth. Let me see, any relation to the great numismatist? Ah, now I know who you are quite well. There was an accident, or a calamity of some sort, if I recollect rightly. Kitty, my child, have you found my hat?"
"Will you stay to lunch?" Katharine was asking him.
"Of course he will stay to lunch," cried the Rector, without giving him time to reply. "I've picked up some fine specimens of old Sheffield plate that I should like to show you, Mr. Wilton. Stay to lunch? Why, of course. Dear me, I know I saw it somewhere— Got to catch the two-thirty? Oh, that's all right; we'll drive you to the station after lunch. That child will like a chat with you, eh, Kitty?You used to be great friends, and she has something—no, no, I've looked there twice—something of interest to tell you, something of very great interest, eh, Kitty? A nice young fellow he is, too," continued the old man, stopping for a moment in his fruitless search. "By the way, you know him, don't you? It's young— Ah, now I remember! I left it in the vestry; so stupid of me!"
Paul stopped him as he was hurrying out of the room.
"I must be off, thank you, sir. I am not going to catch the two-thirty at all. I think I will walk on somewhere and catch something else, if there happens to be anything. I am sure I wish Miss Katharine every happiness. Good-morning."
He went out by the window as he had come, and they watched him as he walked across the lawn, the neat figure crowned by the conventional felt hat. He had not shaken hands with Katharine nor looked at her again.
The Rector glanced after him and smoothed his hair thoughtfully.
"Curious man that," he remarked with his simple smile. "He always looks to me as though there were a tragedy in his life."
"Oh, I don't think so," said Katharine,coldly. "It is only his manner. He takes a joke tragically. Besides, he has never married unhappily, or anything like that."
"That may be," said Cyril Austen, with one of his occasional flashes of intuition; "but it means a tragedy to some men if they haven't got married at all, and I fancy that's one of them. Ah, well, his father was one of our best—"
Miss Esther's voice came shrilly down the passage, and the Rector hastened out of the room without finishing his sentence.
"The annoyances of life," thought Katharine cynically, "are much more important than the tragedies."
She picked up her letter once more and tore it open. Even then she did not read it at once, but looked out of the window first and beyond the garden, where a man's felt hat was moving irregularly along the top of the hedge. She made an impatient gesture and turned her back to the light, and unfolded Ted's letter at last. And this is what it contained:—