The next day, she began a vigorous search for work. She did everything
that is generally done by women who come up from the country and
expect to find employment waiting for them; she answered
advertisements, she visited agents, she walked over the length and
breadth of London, she neglected no opportunity that seemed to offer
possibilities. But she soon found that she had much to learn. She
discovered that she was not the only girl in London, who thought there
was a future before her because she was more intellectually minded
than the rest of her family; and she found that every agent's office
was full of women, with more experience than herself, who had also
passed the Higher Local Examination with honours, and did not think
very much of it. And she had to learn that an apologetic manner is not
the best one to assume towards strangers, and that omnibus conductors
do not mean to be patronising when they say "missy," and that a
policeman is always open to the flattery of being addressed as
"Constable." But what she did not learn was the extravagance of being
economical; and it was some time yet before she discovered that
walking until she was over-tired, and fasting until she could not eat,
were the two most expensive things she could have done.
But she found no work. Either there was none to be had, or she was too
young; or, as they sometimes implied, too attractive. When this last
objection was made to her by the elderly principal of a girl's school,
Katharine stared in complete bewilderment for a moment or two, and
then broke into an incredulous laugh.
"But, surely, my looking young and--and inexperienced would not affect
my powers of teaching," she remonstrated.
"It would prevent my taking you," replied the principal coldly. "I
must have some one about me whom I can trust, and leave safely with
the children. Besides, what do I know of your capabilities? You say
you have never even tried to teach?"
"But I know I can teach,--I am certain of it; I only want a chance.
Why must I wait until I am old and unsympathetic, and can no longer
feel in touch with the children, before any one will trust me with a
class? It is not reasonable."
The elderly principal remained unmoved.
"The teaching market is overcrowded by such as you," she said. "I
should advise your trying something else."
"I have not been trained to anything else," said Katharine. "That is
where it is so hard. I might have got a secretaryship, if I had known
shorthand. I never knew I should have to earn my own living, or I
should be better qualified to do it. But I know I can teach, if I get
the chance."
"Are you compelled to earn your living?" asked the principal, a little
less indifferently. "Pardon me, but I have heard your tale so often
before from girls who might, with a little forbearance, have remained
at home."
"I am compelled," answered Katharine. "At least--"
A feeling of loyalty to her father, her lovable, faulty old father,
who was so unconscious of her present difficulties, kept her silent
and brought a troubled look into her face. The elderly principal was
not unkindly, when circumstances did not force her to be academic; and
Katharine, when she looked troubled, was very attractive indeed.
"My dear," she said, with a severity that she assumed in order to
justify her weakness in her own mind, "what are your friends thinking
of? Go home; it is the right place for a child like you."
Katharine hurried away to conceal her desire to laugh. She did not go
home, however; she went to a cheap milliner's in the Edgware Road, and
ordered them to make her a severely simple bonnet. And when it came
home the next evening, and she put it on, she hardly knew whether to
laugh or to cry at the reflection of herself in the glass. "Whatever
would daddy say?" she thought, and put it hastily back into the box;
and if the other occupants of her room had happened to come in just
then, they would certainly have modified their opinion of her pride
and her coldness. But, after all, she was no better off than before;
for the contrast of youth and age that her new bonnet made in her
appearance was rather conspicuous than otherwise, and she found that
her old countrified hat suited her purpose far better.
She saw very little of Ted at this time. He asked her to come out with
him, once or twice, but she always refused. She was afraid that he
would ask questions, and she shrank from telling any one, even Ted,
of her failure to get on. On the few occasions that she went down to
speak to him in the hall, she told him that she was getting along
quite well, and would be sure to hear of some work very soon, and that
she would prefer not to come out with him because it unsettled her.
And Ted, in his humble-minded way, thought she had made new friends in
the house and did not care to be bothered with him; and Katharine, who
read him like a book, knew that he thought so, and made fresh efforts
to get on so that she could spend all her leisure time with him. She
wrote home in the same spirit, and said that she was sure of making
her way soon, and that, meanwhile, she had everything she wanted, and
nobody was to be anxious about her. And her father, with the quaint
unworldliness of his nature, wrote back that he was glad to hear she
was happy, and that he had no doubt the ten pounds he had given her
would last until she earned some more, and that he had just picked up
a perfect bargain in an old book shop for thirty shillings.
"Dear daddy," smiled Katharine, without a trace of bitterness. "Could
any one be more economical for other people, and more extravagant for
himself? I wonder if that is what makes me love him so? But, oh, what
would I give for that thirty shillings!"
She counted her little store for the twentieth time, and sat thinking.
Doubtless she had spent her money injudiciously at first; but the fact
remained that, if she went on at her present rate of expenditure, she
would have to return home in a fortnight. If she went without her
midday meal, and economised in every possible way, she might manage to
remain another month.
"That is what I must do," she said. "That will bring me to the middle
of March, and I shall have been in London just nine weeks. And, after
all, the food is so nasty that I sha'n't mind much. Besides, it is
really very romantic to starve a little."
It grew less romantic as another fortnight went by. The food had never
seemed less nasty than it did now; and she had to take long walks at
dinner time to escape the appetising smell of the hot dishes. She had
never realised before what a very healthy appetite she possessed; and
she remembered with some regret how she had been too dainty, at first,
to touch the food at all, and had lived for days almost entirely on
bread and butter. But now she would have eaten any of it with a
relish,--even a certain dish which was said to be stewed rabbit, but
which she had derisively termed "a cat in a pie dish."
One day, she read an alluring advertisement of a new agency. She had
lost her faith in agencies, and she had no more money for fees; but at
least it was an object for a walk, and anything was better than
waiting indoors for something to happen. To be idle in a place like
Queen's Crescent was not an enviable position. And by this time she
knew her London pretty well, and it fascinated her, and spoke to her
of life, and work, and the future; and a walk through any part of it
was always exhilarating. As she turned into the park at the Marble
Arch, a carriage and pair rumbled out with two well-dressed women in
it. Katharine stopped and looked after it, with an amused smile on her
face.
"My aunt and cousin," she murmured aloud. "What would they say, if
they knew? And once they came to stay with us, and they worried daddy
no end, and said I wanted finishing, and ought to go to Paris! It
seems to me that life is always a comedy, but sometimes it drops into
a roaring farce!"
And pleased with the appositeness of her own remark, she continued her
walk in better spirits than her worldly condition would seem to
justify. The agency turned out to be on the top floor of some flats
near Parliament Street; and the porter looked curiously at her as he
took her up in the lift.
"Agency, miss? So they says, I'm told. Don't believe in agencies much
myself, I don't; queerish kind of impostory places, I calls 'em. Don't
you let yourself be took in, missy!"
Katharine remembered the condition of her purse, and felt that it was
not likely. Her destination was marked by a large amount of
information on the wall, headed by the inscription, "Parker's
Universal Scholastic and Commercial Agency." She had not much time to
study it, however, for an office boy hastened to answer her knock, as
though he had been longing for the opportunity to do so for some time,
and said that Mr. Parker was at liberty, if she would kindly step in.
She fancied that he also stared critically at her, and she began to
fear that something was wrong with her personal appearance. This
naturally did not add to her self-possession; and when she found
herself in a small inner room that smelt of stale tobacco and whiskey,
she began to wish she had not come at all. A fair-haired man, with a
moustache and an eyeglass, was sitting with his feet on the
mantel-shelf when she entered the room; but he jumped up with a great
deal of fuss, and offered her a chair, and asked her what he could do
for her. Katharine faltered out her usual inquiry for teaching work;
and the fact that Mr. Parker was adjusting his eyeglass and taking her
in from head to foot all the time, completed her discomfiture.
"Teaching? To be sure," he said with a supercilious smile, and went at
once to the door and told the boy to bring the books.
"There ain't no books, and you knows it," retorted the boy, who seemed
disposed to be rebellious; and Mr. Parker vanished precipitately into
the other room. When he returned, his smile was unaltered; and he sat
down again, and twirled his drooping moustache.
"I have just looked through the books," he said, "and don't see
anything good enough for you. Would you care to take anything else?"
"I don't quite know what else I could do," said Katharine doubtfully.
She wanted to get away, and did not exactly know how to make a
dignified exit.
"Book-keeping, for instance, or literary work? Have you ever tried
being a secretary? Ah, I am sure you have! You are not the sort of
young lady to lead the life of a humdrum governess, eh?"
"I was my father's secretary," said Katharine. Mr. Parker was leaning
across the table and playing with the pens in the ink-stand, so that
his hand almost touched her elbow.
"Of course you were. So I was right about you, wasn't I? Don't you
think that was very clever of me, now?"
He leaned a little nearer to her, and Katharine drew back
instinctively and took her elbow off the table. He found the straight
look of her eyes a little disconcerting, and left off playing with the
penholders.
"Speaking seriously," he said, donning an official air with alacrity,
"would you care to take a post as secretary?"
He had dropped his eyeglass and his supercilious manner, and Katharine
took courage.
"I should, immensely. But they are so hard to get."
"Of course they are not easy to pick up, but in an agency like ours we
often hear of something good. Let me see, would you like to go out to
South Africa? Hardly, I should think."
Katharine said she would not like to go out to South Africa;
whereupon Mr. Parker offered New Zealand as an alternative.
"Your connection seems to lie principally in other quarters of the
globe," Katharine felt obliged to remark; and in an unguarded moment
she began to laugh at the absurdity of his suggestions. Mr. Parker at
once ceased to look official, and laughed with her, and began playing
with the pens in the inkstand again.
"Ah, now we understand each other better," he said, resuming his
familiar tone. "What you want is a snug little berth with some
literary boss, who won't give you too much to do, eh? A nice salary,
and some one charming to play with; isn't that it?"
The sheer vulgarity of the man exposed the real nature of the
situation to her. Her first impulse was to rush out of his sight, at
any cost; but she restrained herself with an effort, and drew a sharp
breath to gain time to collect her resources.
"I am afraid, Mr. Parker, that we don't understand each other at all,"
she said very slowly, trying to conceal the tremble in her voice; "and
as I don't feel inclined to emigrate, I think I had better--"
"Now, now, what a hurry you are in, to be sure!" interrupted Mr.
Parker, getting up and lounging round to her side of the table. "You
haven't even heard what I was going to say. I've been looking out for
a secretary myself, for some time, 'pon my oath I have; but never,
until this blessed moment, have I set eyes upon a young lady who
suited me so well as you. Now, what do you say to that, eh?"
Katharine had risen, too, and was turning imperceptibly towards the
door. She glanced contemptuously round the room, that was so entirely
devoid of the ordinary apparatus of business, and she walked swiftly
to the door and opened it, before he had time to prevent her.
"You are most kind," she said sarcastically, emboldened by the
presence of the office boy, "but I feel that the work would be very
much too hard for me. A large business like yours must need so much
looking after! Good morning."
Outside, while she was waiting for the lift, her composure completely
deserted her, and she found she was trembling all over, and had to
lean against the balusters for support.
"I knowed you wasn't the sort to go a-mixing of yourself up with that
kidney," observed the porter, who detected the tears in her eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me he was such a horrid man?" asked Katharine.
She was thoroughly unnerved, and even the porter's sympathy was better
than none at all.
"It wasn't my business to hinterfere," said the porter, who was merely
curious and not sympathetic at all; and Katharine dried her eyes
hastily, and tried to laugh.
"Of course it is nobody's business," she said drearily, and gave him
twopence for helping her to realise the fact. "And I shouldn't have
cried at all, if I had had any lunch," she added vehemently to
herself.
Some one was waiting to enter the lift as she stepped out of it. She
looked up by chance and caught his eye, and they uttered each other's
name in the same breath.
For a moment they stood silent, as they loosed hands again. Katharine
had blushed, hopelessly and irretrievably; but he was standing a
little away from her, with just the necessary amount of interest in
his look, and the necessary amount of pleasure in his smile. Paul was
a man who prided himself on never straining a situation; and directly
he saw her agitation at meeting him, he assumed the conventional
attitude, entirely for purposes of convenience.
"This is very delightful. Are you staying in town?"
"Yes. At least--"
"Your father well, I hope? And Miss Esther? I am charmed to hear it.
Supposing we move out of the draught; yes, cold, isn't it? Thanks, I
won't go up now--" this to the porter, who was still waiting by the
lift. "Which way are you going? Good! I have a call to pay in
Gloucester Place, and we might go in the same cab."
It was pleasant to be ordered about, after taking care of herself for
seven weeks, and Katharine yielded at once to the masterful tone,
which had always compelled her compliance from the moment she had
first heard it.
"Now, please, I want to hear all about it," he began briskly, as they
drove westwards. His manner was no longer conventional, and his
familiar voice carried her back over the weary months of last year to
the spring when she had still been a child. Somehow she did not feel,
as with Ted, that she could not tell him about her failures: it seemed
as though this man must know all there was to know about her, whether
it was pleasant for him to hear it or not; though, as she told him
about her coming to town and her subsequent career there, she made
her tale so entertaining that Paul was something more than idly
amused, when she finally brought it to an end.
"Do you think I ought not to have done it?" she asked him, anxiously,
as he did not speak. He looked at her before he answered.
"I cannot imagine how they let you do it!"
"Oh, don't! That is what that horrid old lady principal said. What
could possibly happen to me, I should like to know?"
He looked at her again, with his provoking serenity.
"Oh, nothing, of course! At least, not to you."
"Why not to me, particularly?" she asked half petulantly. She did not
know whether to be pleased or annoyed that he should credit her with
the same infallible quality as every one else.
"Because things of that nature do not, I believe, happen to girls of
your nature. But of course I may be wrong; I am quite ignorant in
these matters."
She smiled at his show of humility; it was so characteristic of him to
affect indifference about his own opinions. But she had learnt
something already that day, and she remembered Mr. Parker, and thought
that Paul very possibly was wrong on this occasion.
"Every one tells me that. I can't see how I am different," she said
thoughtfully.
"I shouldn't worry about it, if I were you. You could not be expected
to see. But it is just that little difference that has probably
carried you through."
Katharine remembered Mr. Parker again, and laughed outright.
"I don't think so," she said. "I think it is more likely to have been
my sense of humour."
"You used to laugh like that when I first knew you," he said
involuntarily. She knew that he had spoken without reflection, and she
laughed again with pleasure. It was always a triumph to surprise him
into spontaneity.
"How jolly it was in those days! Do you remember our tea in the
orchard, how we watched Aunt Esther out of the front door, and then
brought the things out through the back door?"
"Yes; and how you spilt the milk, and cook wouldn't let you have any
more, and our second cups were spoilt?"
"Rather! And how you shocked Dorcas--"
"Ah," sighed Paul; "we can never do those delightful things again. We
know one another too well, now."
They allowed themselves to become almost depressed, for the space of
a moment, because they knew one another so well. "All the same,"
observed Katharine, "there is still one joy left to us. We can
quarrel."
He became conventional again as he rang the bell for her at number
ten, Queen's Crescent, Marylebone. He raised his hat, and gently
pressed her hand, and supposed he should see her again soon. And
Katharine, who was occupied in hoping that he did not notice the
squalor of the area, and would not come inside the dull, distempered
hall, only said that she supposed so too; and then blamed herself
hotly, as he drove away, for not responding more warmly.
"He will think I don't want to see him again," she thought wearily, as
she dragged herself up the uncarpeted stairs, and went into her dark
and dingy cubicle. It had never seemed so dark or so dingy before; and
she added miserably to herself, "I had better not see him again,
perhaps. It makes it all so much worse afterwards."
She would have been surprised had she known what Paul really was
thinking about her.
"She is more of a study than ever," he said to the cab horse. "Still
so much of the innocent pose about her, with just that indication of
added knowledge that is so fascinating to a man. She'll do, now she
has got away from her depressing relations; and the touch of weirdness
in her expression is an improvement. Wonder if Heaton would call her a
schoolgirl now? It was quite finished, the careless way she said
good-bye, as though it were of no consequence to her at all. Yes; she
is a study."
About a week later, when Katharine came down to breakfast, Phyllis
Hyam threw her a letter, in her unceremonious fashion.
"Look here!" she said. "I've kept you a chair next to mine, and I've
managed to procure you a clean plate, too; so don't go away to the
other table, as you did yesterday. Polly's gone; and I won't talk
unless you want to. Come on!"
Katharine sat down absently on the hard wooden chair, and began to
read her letter. She never wanted to talk at breakfast time, a fact
which Phyllis good-naturedly recognised without respecting. To-day she
was more silent than usual.
"No, I can't eat any of that stuff," she said to the proffered bacon.
"Get me some tea, will you? I'll make myself some toast."
Phyllis trotted off to the fire instead, and made it herself; and
Katharine returned to her letter without noticing her further. Judging
from the tense look on her face, it was of more than ordinary
interest.
"Dear Miss Katharine," it ran,
A school in which I have a little influence is in want of a
junior mistress. I have no idea as to the kind of work you
want, but if it is of this nature, and you would like to
consider it further, come up and see me about it in my
chambers. I shall be in at tea-time, any afternoon this week.
The best way for you to get here is to come to the Temple
Station. Do not think any more about it, if you have already
heard of something else.
Yours sincerely,
PAUL WILTON.
"Of course," said Katharine aloud, "I shall go this very afternoon."
Then she paused, and looked smilingly into Phyllis Hyam's hot face.
"No; I mean to-morrow."
"What?" said Phyllis, looking perplexed. "I thought you wanted it now,
and I made it on purpose."
"You dear thing! of course I want it now. You are an angel of
goodness, and I am a cross old bear," exclaimed Katharine, with a
burst of unusual cordiality; and Phyllis was consumed with curiosity
as to the writer of that letter.
It was not difficult to find Paul Wilton's chambers among the quaint
old buildings of Essex Court; and Katharine, as she toiled up the
massive oak staircase, stopping on every landing to read the names
over the doors, felt that she had reached a delightful oasis of
learning in the middle of commercial London.
"How splendid to be a man, and to have brains enough to live in a
place like this," she thought enthusiastically; and then, with the
cynicism that always dogged the steps of her enthusiasm, she added,
"It probably only wants money enough, though."
Paul Wilton opened his own door to her. He looked really glad to see
her, and Katharine flushed with pleasure when he kept hold of her hand
and drew her into his room.
"This is most good of you," he said; and on the impulse of the moment
Katharine let herself be surprised into an indiscretion.
"I was so glad to have your letter; I wanted to see you again
dreadfully," she said, without reflection. She meant what she said,
but she saw from his manner that she ought not to have said it. Any
sentiment that was crudely expressed was always distasteful to him;
and he at once dropped her hand, and pulled forward an arm-chair with
a great show of courtesy.
"Is that comfortable, or do you prefer a high one? I thought you might
come, one day; but I hardly expected you so soon. It is rather wet,
too, isn't it?"
Something impelled her to meet his irritating self-assurance with
ridicule.
"Very wet," she replied demurely. "In fact, now I come to think of it,
there are a great many reasons why I should not have come. But the one
that brought me here, in spite of them all, was a matter of business,
if you remember."
If he minded being laughed at, he certainly did not show it, for his
tone was much more natural when he answered her.
"Oh, yes, about the school! It is not far from you,--near Paddington,
in fact. It is rather a swagger place, I believe; Mrs. Downing is the
widow of an old friend of mine, who was killed out in Africa, and she
started this concern after his death. She knows nothing about
education, but a great deal about etiquette, and as this is also the
position of the mothers of most of her pupils, she has no difficulty
in convincing them of her capabilities. She is quite flourishing now,
I believe. Can you teach arithmetic?"
They discussed the vacant appointment solemnly, with the result that
Katharine agreed to accept it if Mrs. Downing approved of her. The
salary was not large, but she had learnt by now not to be too
particular, and it offered her an opening, at all events.
"I am sure she will like you all right. I told her about your people,
and so on, and a clergyman is always a guarantee in such cases. And
now for tea."
They talked about the historic associations of the Temple while the
housekeeper was bringing in tea; and they talked very little about
anything after she had left. Paul was in one of his unaccountable
silent moods, and they were never conducive to conversation. He roused
himself a little to show her some of his treasures,--an old bit of
tapestry, some Japanese prints, a Bartolozzi; but the afternoon was
not a success, and his depression soon communicated itself to
Katharine.
"I must be going," she said at last, after an awkward pause that he
showed no signs of breaking. They stood for a moment in the middle of
the room.
"It was good of you to come like this," he said, with the slightly
worried look he always wore in his morose moods. "I was afraid,
perhaps, that I ought not to have asked you."
Her questioning look invited him to continue.
"Not being sure what day you would come, I was unable to provide a
chaperon, don't you see? But, of course, if you don't mind, that
doesn't matter."
"Of course I don't mind," she said, with a reassuring smile. "Why
should I? I know you so well, don't I?"
He continued his explanation, as though he had decided to make it
beforehand, and did not mean to be deterred by her unwillingness to
hear it.
"Under the circumstances," he said gravely, "you will see that it
would be wiser for you not to come here again."
Katharine did not see, and she showed it in her face.
"If I were married," he continued, in a lighter tone, "it would be
different; but there are many reasons which have made it impossible
for me to marry, and there are still more now, which will prevent my
ever doing so. And since I am a bachelor, it is obviously better for
you to keep away."
In spite of his assumed carelessness, Katharine felt instinctively
that it was to hear this that he had asked her to come and see him
to-day. And, like many another woman who has to face as embarrassing a
disclosure from a man, her great desire at the moment was to conceal
that she had ever entertained the idea of his marrying her at all.
"But does it matter, so long as I don't mind?" she asked, pulling on
her gloves for the sake of the occupation. He bent down to button them
for her, and their eyes met. "Let me come again," she said
impulsively. "You know I think propriety is all rubbish. Besides, I
want to come. We can go on being friends, can't we? _I_ don't care
what other people think!"
"I only care for your sake, not for my own. No, child, it is safer
not; you are not the sort. Don't think any more about it. I am old
enough to be your father, and have seen more of the world than you. I
would not allow you, if you did wish it."
"It is all rubbish," repeated Katharine. "Why am I not the sort? I
don't understand; I am tired of being told that. If that is all, I--I
wish I were!"
Paul half wished it too, as she stood there in the firelight, with
the glow all over her face and hair; but he laughed away the thought.
"You are an absurd child; you don't know what you are saying. It is
lucky there is no one else to hear you. There, go away, and make it up
with young Morton! Oh, no, I know nothing whatever about it, I swear I
don't; but he won't do you any harm, and he isn't old, and worn out,
and--"
"Don't, please don't!" said Katharine, imploringly. "Ted is only like
my brother; I love him, but it is altogether different. Mayn't I
really see you any more?"
She was threatening to become unpleasantly serious, and Paul switched
on the electric light and fetched his coat hastily.
"Why, surely, lots of times, I expect. What a desperately solemn
person you are! I believe you work too hard, don't you? Now, I am not
going to let you walk to the station alone, so come along."
And Katharine realised, with a hot blush, that she had made a second
blunder.