The summer house was set far back in the shrubbery, and although
hidden from the house by laurels and box-trees, was open at the front
to a stretch of brightly coloured flower beds and trimly cut grass. It
was a glorious day in May, and spring in its fulness was come. The
white fruit blossoms had given place to crumpled green leaves, and the
early summer flowers were in bud. Paul Wilton lay on a low basket
chair, where he had flung himself down after making his escape from
his garrulous friend; and at his feet, with an open book on her lap,
sat Katharine. Obviously, a great many poor women had lost a great
many babies, since the day she had sat on the chair at the end of his
bed and talked about her favourite poets, for the book on her lap was
only a pretence to which neither of them paid the least attention, and
their conversation was of a purely personal nature, the kind of
conversation that has no subject and no epigrams, and is carried on in
half-finished sentences.
"I am beginning to understand why you don't paint or write or do
things, although you know such a lot about them," observed Katharine,
half closing her eyes and making a picture of the square of sunlit
garden as she saw it framed in the woodwork of the summer-house door.
Paul smiled. It was very pleasant to be told by this child of Nature
that he knew "such a lot about things."
"Tell me why," was all he said, however.
"I think it is because it puts you in a position to criticise every
one else. It makes you so superior, in a sort of way. Oh, bother! I
never can explain things. But don't you see, if you were a painter
yourself, you couldn't say that there was only one painter living, as
you do now. Could you?"
"Perhaps I could," said Paul, and laughed gently at her look of
surprise.
"Of course I know you are only laughing at me," she said in an injured
tone. "You never think I am serious about anything."
"My dear Miss Katharine," he assured her, "on the contrary, I think
you are most terribly serious about everything. I have never had so
much serious conversation since I was nineteen myself. You will have
to grow older, before you learn to be young and frivolous."
"But _you_ are not frivolous," she protested. "You know you are not.
You only say that to tease me."
"I only say it to convince you. It is not my fault if you do not
understand, is it?"
"I do understand, I am certain I do. At least"--she paused suddenly,
and looked at him with one of her long critical looks. "Perhaps you
are right, and I don't understand you a bit. How queer! I don't think
I like the feel of it." She ended with a little gesture of distaste.
"I shouldn't bother about it, if I were you," said Paul calmly. "You
will understand better when you are older--and younger. Meanwhile, it
is very pleasant, don't you think?"
She was leaning forward with her hands folded under her chin, and did
not answer him.
"What made you choose to be a barrister?" she asked suddenly.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Merely because it presented greater opportunities for idleness than
any other profession, I suppose."
Katharine swung herself round on her low stool, and looked at him
incredulously.
"But don't you ever want to _do_ anything,--you with all your brains
and your talents?" she cried impatiently. "Surely you must have some
ambition?"
"Oh, no," replied Paul, arranging the cushions at the back of his head
and sinking down on them again. "I hope I shall always be comfortable,
that's all; and I have enough money for that, thank the Lord!"
"Supposing you had been poor?"
"Don't suppose it," rejoined Paul; and her puzzled features relaxed
into a smile.
"I can't think why you have a face like that, then," she said
reflectively.
"What's the matter with my face? Does it suggest possibilities? To
think that I might have been a minor poet all these years, without
knowing it!"
Katharine returned to her examination of the flower beds; and Paul lay
back, and blew rings of smoke into the air, and watched her through
them with an amused look on his face. He recalled some casual words of
Heaton's which had annoyed him very much at the time,--"If I'm not in
love with a woman, I don't want to give her another thought;" and he
glanced at her slim waist as she sat there, and tried lazily to
analyse his own feelings towards her.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, turning round again.
"About you," he said, and brought his feet lightly to the ground and
sat up and stretched himself.
"What about me?" she asked curiously.
"I am wondering if you will miss me very much when I am gone," he
said, and slid slowly along the chair until he sat behind her, where
he could just see her rounded profile as she turned her face away from
him.
"Oh, yes, awfully! I wish, I do wish you were not going!" She was
looking very hard at the flower beds now.
"So do I, Miss Katharine. It has been quite delightful; I shall never
forget your sweet care of me. But you will soon forget all about me.
And besides, there is Ted."
"What has that got to do with it?" she asked swiftly.
"Oh, nothing, surely! It was merely an inconsequent reflection on my
part."
There was a pause for a few moments.
"Talk," he said suddenly, and put his hand gently against her cheek.
It warmed under his touch, and he heard the tremor in her voice as
she spoke.
"I--I can't talk. Oh, please don't!"
"Can't you? Try."
She put her hand up to his, and he caught hold of her fingers, and
dropped a light kiss on them as they lay crumpled up on his palm. Then
he pressed them slightly, and let them go, and walked away to the
house without looking at her again. His countenance was as unmoved as
if he had just been talking archæology to the Rector; but his
reflections seemed absorbing, and he hardly roused himself to move
aside when Ted came lounging out of the house and ran against him in
the porch.
"Hullo!" said Ted. "I'm awfully sorry; I didn't see you, really."
"Oh, no matter!" said Paul, who, never being guilty of a clumsy action
himself, could afford to remain undisturbed. "Miss Katharine's in the
summer house," he added, in answer to Ted's disconsolate look. "We've
been reading Browning. At least, Miss Katharine out of her goodness
has been trying to make a convert of me. I am afraid I was an
unappreciative listener."
Ted glanced inquiringly at him. Somehow, it was not so easy to
disapprove of Paul to his face as it was behind his back.
"How poor!" he said sympathetically. "Kitty does play so cheap,
sometimes, doesn't she? Browning is enough to give you the hump, I
should think. But she never does that to me."
"Probably," said Paul, disengaging a cigarette paper; "she would not
feel the same necessity in your case. You would have greater
facilities for conversation, I mean. Won't you have a cigarette?"
Ted looked towards the shrubbery, but lingered as though the
invitation commended itself to him.
"I think I'll have a pipe, if it's all the same to you. May I try that
'baccy of yours? Thanks, awfully!"
They sat down on opposite sides of the little porch, and puffed away
in silence.
"You haven't been over much, lately," observed Paul presently.
Ted glanced at him again, but was disarmed by his tone of
friendliness.
"No," he said. "At least, I was over once or twice last week, but I
never got a look in with Kitty. I mean," he added hastily, "she was
out, or something."
"Ah!" said Paul indifferently; "that was unfortunate."
"It was a howling nuisance," said Ted, his troubled look returning.
"The truth is," he went on, feeling a desire for a confidant to be
stronger than his distrust of Paul, "there's something I've been
trying to tell Kit for a whole week, and for the life of me I can't
get it out."
"Going to make a fool of himself at the very start," thought Paul.
"You see," continued Ted with an effort, "_she_ has been playing up
so, lately."
"Your mother?" questioned Paul.
Ted nodded.
"And now she's got me a confounded berth in some place in the
city,--candles, or grocery, or something beastly. It's the poorest
thing I ever heard. And I've got to start on Thursday, so I must leave
home to-morrow. And Kitty doesn't know; that's the devil, you see."
"I'm sorry," said Paul gravely.
"Got it through some cousin of my father's," Ted went on in his
aggrieved voice. "No one but a cousin of one's father ever hears of
such rotten jobs. Said it would be the making of me, or some rot. I've
heard that before; the men who never did a stroke of work themselves
always talk that sort of cheapness. Have to be there at half-past
eight in the morning, too, blow it!"
"I'm sorry," said Paul again. He began to feel a vague interest in the
boy as he sat opposite and stretched his long legs out to their full
length, and jerked out his complaints with the brier between his
teeth.
"_She_ thinks it such great shakes, too; just because she won't have
to keep me any longer. She ought never to have had a son like me; I
wasn't meant for such beastly work. Why was I born? Why was I?"
"The parents of the human animal are never selected," said Paul, for
the sake of saying something.
"I know I'm a fool,--_she's_ told me that often enough; so I don't
expect to get anything awfully decent. But why did they educate me as
a gentleman? They should have sent me to a board school, and then I
should have been a bounder myself, and nothing would have mattered.
What's the use of being a gentleman and a fool? That's what I am; and
Kit's the only person in the world who doesn't make me feel it, bless
her!"
Paul threw away his cigarette, and made a sudden resolve. He was
amused, in spite of himself, at the very youthful pessimism in Ted's
remarks; and for a moment he felt almost anxious that the boy should
not spoil his career by a false start. There was something novel, too,
in his playing the part of counsellor, and Paul Wilton was never
averse to a new sensation. So he leaned forward and tapped his
companion on the knee with his long, pointed forefinger.
"You may send me to the devil, if you like," he said with his placid
smile, "but I should like to give you a word of advice first. May I?"
Ted looked more depressed than before, but he did not seem surprised.
"Fire ahead!" he said sadly. "I can stand an awful lot. People have
always given me advice, ever since I was a kid; it's the only thing
they ever have given me."
"I don't suppose it is my business at all," said Paul, making another
cigarette with the elaborate precision he always spent on trifles;
"but I've seen so many nice chaps ruined through a mistake in early
life, and I know one or two things, and I'm older than you, too. Now,
how do you mean to tell that child over there that you are going
away?"
Ted started.
"What do you mean?" he asked. But his lower lip was twitching
nervously, and his colour had deepened.
"Well, this is what I mean. Given an emotional creature like that, who
has never seen any man but you, and a young, impetuous fellow like
yourself, going to say good-bye to her for an indefinite
period,--well, you are both extremely likely to arrive at one
conclusion; and my advice to you is,--Don't."
Ted said nothing, but continued to stare at the tesselated floor. The
elder man rose to his feet, and restored the match box to his pocket.
"I nearly did it myself once," he said; "but I didn't."
Ted looked him thoughtfully up and down.
"I shouldn't think you did," he said, with unconscious sarcasm. Then
he too rose slowly to his feet, and stood on the doorstep for a
moment, with his hands in his pockets. "I think you're a confounded
cynical brute," he said rather breathlessly, "but I believe you're
right, and I won't."
And he walked across the lawn to the shrubbery with the air of a man
on whose decision depends the fate of nations.
Paul frowned slightly, as he always did when he was thinking deeply,
and then threw off his preoccupation with a laugh. Even when he was
alone, he liked to preserve his attitude of nonchalance.
"How have I contrived to fall among such an appallingly serious set of
infants?" he muttered. "Hey-day! here's for London and life!" And he
turned indoors to look for a time-table.
Ted stalked straight into the summer house, with his head in the air
and his mind filled with high-souled resolutions. Any one less
occupied with his own reflections would have seen that Katharine was
sitting with an absent look in her eyes, while the book she held in
her hand was open at the index-page. But Ted only saw in her the woman
he had just sworn within him to respect; and he took the book
reverently out of her hand, and sat down, also just behind her, on the
end of the basket chair. It was the same basket chair.
"Kitty, I say," he began, clearing his throat, "I've come to tell you
something."
Katharine glanced at his solemn face, and looked away again. She
wished he had not sat just there.
"It must have something to do with a funeral, then," she said, with a
flippancy that would have aroused the suspicions of a more observant
person. But Ted was still absorbed in his high-souled resolutions, and
her abstraction failed to make any impression on him.
"No, it hasn't," he rejoined gloomily. "I wish it had! I shouldn't
mind being dead, not I! It would cure this hump, anyhow. Perhaps some
one would be sorry, then; don't know who would, though! _She_'d only
complain of the expense of burying me."
"Poor old man, who has been bullying you now?" asked Katharine, in a
dreamy voice that she strove to make interested. "Has _she_ been doing
anything fresh?"
"Has she, that's all! She's been doing something to some purpose, this
time. Got me a beastly job, in a beastly city place; a pound a week;
soap, or wholesale clothing, or something poor. Says I ought to be
thankful to get anything. Thankful indeed! _She_ never shows a spark
of gratitude for her bally seven hundred a year, I know."
"Oh, Ted! every one is going away. What shall I do?" The words escaped
her involuntarily. But he was still too full of his own troubles to
notice anything except that she seemed distressed; and this, of
course, was only natural.
"I knew you'd be cut up," he said, kicking savagely at the leg of the
chair. "You're the only chap who cares; and you'll forget when I've
been gone a week. Oh, yes, you will! I ought never to have been born.
They're sure to be rank outsiders, too; and I can stand anything
sooner than bounders. It's too beastly caddish for words, and I'd like
to kill him for his rotten advice. What does he know about anything, a
played-out chap like that?"
Ted's conversation was apt to become involved when he was agitated;
but on this occasion Katharine made no attempt to unravel it.
"Poor Ted," she murmured tonelessly, and continued to think about
something else.
"I don't know why you are so cut up about it. I'm such a rotten ass,
and you're so infernally smart! I haven't any right to expect you to
care a hang about me; I won't even ask you to write to me, when I'm
gone," cried Ted, making desperate efforts to keep his high-souled
resolutions. "It's a rotten, caddish world, and I'm the rottenest fool
in it."
He waited for the contradiction that always came from Katharine at
this point of his self-abasement; but when she said nothing, and only
went on staring in the opposite direction, he felt that there was
something unusually wrong, and came hastily round to the front of her
chair and repeated his last remark with emphasis.
"You may say what you like, but I am. All the same, I would sooner
chuck the whole show than make you unhappy. I'll be hanged if I don't
go away to-morrow without a single--" He stopped abruptly; for she was
looking up at him piteously, and his high-souled resolutions suddenly
melted into oblivion. "Kitty, old chum, don't cry! I'm not worth
it,--on my soul I'm not; blowed if I've ever seen you cry before! Good
old Kit, I say, don't. Oh, the devil! Do you really mind so much?"
"Please, Ted, go away; you don't understand; go away; it isn't that at
all! Don't, Ted, don't! Oh, dear, whatever made me cry?" gasped
Katharine. But Ted would take no denial: a woman's tears would have
disarmed him, even if he had not been in love with her; and Katharine,
the tomboyish companion of years, appeared to him in a strangely
lovable light as she sobbed into her hands and made the feeblest
efforts to keep him away. His arms were round her in a moment, and
her head was pulled down on his shoulder, and he poured a medley of
broken sentences into her ear.
"How was I to know you cared, old chum? Of course I have always cared;
but I never thought about it until that played-out London chap turned
up and put it into my head. Dear old Kitty! Why, do you know, I was
half afraid you were going to like him, one time; wasn't I a rotten
ass? But, you see, you're so bally clever, and all that; and I
supposed he was, too, and so I thought,--don't you see? And all the
while, it was me! Buck up, Kit! I won't split that you cried, on my
honour I won't. Oh, I say, I'm the most confoundedly lucky chap-- But,
oh, that infernal office in the city!"
Katharine disengaged herself at last. His kisses seemed to burn into
her cheeks. She pushed back the basket chair into the corner of the
summer-house, and put her fingers over her eyes to shut out the flower
beds and the sunlight.
"Stop, Ted! I don't know what you mean. You must not think those
things of me; they are simply not true. I can't let you kiss me like
that. Has the world gone suddenly mad, this afternoon? I don't
understand what has happened to every one. I don't understand
anything. Will you go, please, Ted? If you won't, I--I must."
She forced out the disjointed sentences in hard, passionless tones.
Ted stood absolutely still where she left him, and watched her stumble
through the doorway and disappear among the laurel bushes and the old
box-trees. Then he rumpled up his thick hair with both his hands, and
laughed aloud.
"I ought never to have been born," he said, and his voice broke.