At the beginning of October Paul went abroad. She had thought that
life without him would be unendurable, and she could not analyse her
own feelings when she found that she could laugh with as much
enjoyment as ever, and that her fits of depression were less frequent
than before. In fact, she had often been far more unsettled if a
letter from him had failed to arrive when it was due; and a new
sensation of freedom went far to cure her of the restlessness that had
possessed her all the summer. She began to probe into her truth-loving
soul, to try and discover whether her feeling for him was not an
illusion after all; but she found no satisfactory explanation of the
problem that was puzzling her, and she put it voluntarily away from
her, and turned to her work as a healthy antidote. And she had a good
deal of work just then. Thanks to the influence of the Honourable Mrs.
Keeley, her private pupils were increasing in number, and these, with
her lectures at the school, were producing a salary that relieved her
of all financial worry for the present. She was making new friends
too, and it added to her contentment to find that people asked her to
go and see them because they liked her. For the first time since her
arrival in town, she felt sure of being on the way to success; and the
sensation was a very thrilling one. Phyllis asked her, one day, why
she was looking so happy. Katharine laughed, and pondered for a
moment; then answered frankly that she did not know why. "I only know
that I have never been so gloriously happy in my whole life," she
added; and she wondered, as she spoke, whether the mad, feverish
happiness of the summer months had really been happiness at all. But
Phyllis, who felt that she had no share in this strange new life of
hers, looked back regretfully on the earlier days when Katharine had
been lonely and in need of her sympathy. Even Ted told her she was
looking "very fit," and this was the highest term of praise in his
vocabulary. For, since the beginning of October, she had seen a good
deal of Ted. It was very restful to come back to him, after the state
of high pressure in which she had been living lately; and when she
grew accustomed to his being a West-end young man, instead of an
easy-going schoolboy, she found him the same delightful companion as
of old. He did not allude to her many weeks of silence, nor ask her
how she had spent them; he came at her bidding, and when he found that
she liked him to come he came again. He was as humble as ever, except
in matters of worldly knowledge, and there he showed a youthful
superiority over her which amused her immensely. His laziness, which
had always been more or less an assumption with him, had developed
into the fashionable pose of indifference; and she tried in vain to
spur him on to doing something definite with his life, instead of
letting it drift away in a city office.
"Girls don't understand these things," he would say with good-natured
obstinacy. "Of course I loathe the beastly hole; any decent chap
would. But I may as well stop there. It's not my fault that I was ever
born, is it? I get enough to live on, with what my cousin allows me;
and I'm not going to grind all I know, to get a rise of five bob a
week. It isn't good enough. I'm sure I'm very easily contented, and my
wants are few enough. Oh, rats! I must have a frock coat; every decent
chap has. And you couldn't possibly call that extravagant, because I
sha'n't think of squaring it for a year at least. Of course I don't
expect you to understand these things, Kitty; it's impossible for a
man to do the cheap, like a woman."
And Katharine, who always wanted to reconstitute society, with a very
limited knowledge of its first principles, would strike in with a
vigorous denunciation of his comfortable philosophy; and he would
listen and laugh at her, and make no effort to support his own opinion
which he continued to hold, nevertheless. He was the best companion
she could have had just then; he never varied, whatever her mood was,
and he kept her from thinking too much about herself, which was a
habit she had acquired since she last saw him. Besides, he was a link
with her childhood, that period of vague existence which had held no
problems to be solved, and had never inspired her with a wish to
reform human nature. So they spent many evenings and half-holidays
together, and they went frequently to the theatre and sat in the
gallery, which often entertained them as much as the play itself; and
he loved to pay for her, with a manly air, at the box office, and
always made the same kind of weak resistance afterwards, when
Katharine insisted on refunding her share, under the lamp at the
corner of Queen's Crescent, Marylebone. Sometimes, when they were
unusually well off, they would dine at an Italian restaurant first,
where they could have many wonderful dishes for two shillings, and a
bottle of tenpenny claret. On one occasion--it was Ted's birthday, and
his cousin had sent him a five-pound note--they had more than an
ordinary jubilation.
"Buck up, and get ready!" he had rushed into the little distempered
hall to say. "We'll go to a new place, where the waiters aren't dirty,
and the wine isn't like sulphuric acid. And, Kitty, put on that hat
with the pink roses, won't you?"
They did their best, on that memorable evening, to reduce the five
pound-note, and to behave as though they were millionaires. They drove
in a hansom to the restaurant in question, which was a very brilliant
little one close to the theatres, where they had a waiter to
themselves instead of the fifth part of a very distracted and
breathless one. The state of Ted's pockets could always be estimated
by the amount of attention he exacted from the waiter; and this
evening there was absolutely nothing he would do for himself, from the
disposal of his walking stick to the choice of the wine.
"It's a very good tip to start by taking the waiter into your
confidence," he assured Kitty, when it had just been settled for them
that they were to have _bisque_ soup.
"It's convenient, sometimes, when everything is written in French,"
observed Katharine. Ted changed the conversation. On his twenty-second
birthday he felt inclined, for once in a way, to assert himself.
"I'm rather gone on this place; pretty, isn't it?" he continued. "All
the candle-shades are red, white, and blue; mean to say you didn't
twig that? You're getting less alive every day, Kit! Awfully
up-to-date place, this! I don't suppose there is a single decent woman
in the room, bar yourself."
He said this with such pride in the knowledge, that she would not have
robbed him of his satisfaction for the world.
"They look much the same as other women to me," she observed, after a
quick survey of the little tables.
"That's because you don't know. How should you? Women never do, bless
them! Do you like fizz?"
"Oh, Ted, don't! Isn't it a pity to spend such a lot just for
nothing?" she remonstrated. She had visions of all the unpaid bills he
had disclosed to her in one of his recent pessimistic moods.
"My dear Kitty, you really must learn to enjoy life. Don't be so
beastly serious over everything. Bills? What bills? There aren't any
to-night. The art of living is knowing when to be extravagant."
And she had to acknowledge, for the rest of the evening, that he had
certainly mastered the art of living. They went to a music hall, and
sat in the stalls; and Katharine enjoyed it because Ted was there, and
because he was so funny all through,--first, in his fear of being
asked by the conjurer for his hat which was a new one, or his watch
which was only represented by his watch chain; and secondly, because
he tried so hard to distract her attention from the songs that were
inclined to be risky. And Ted enjoyed it because it was the thing to
do, and because there would be hardly any of that fiver left by the
time he got home.
"Then you'll look me up at the office at five to-morrow; you won't
forget?" he asked rather wistfully, when they parted on the doorstep.
"Of course I won't forget," she answered, hastily. "Dear old Ted, I
have enjoyed it so much!"
"Good-night, dear," he said, as he turned away. And his tone haunted
her rather, as she groped her way up to bed in the dark. She began to
feel half afraid, with some annoyance at the thought, that this
pleasant state of things could not go on for ever, and that Ted was
going to spoil it all again as he had done once before, by taking
their relationship seriously. So she prepared to meet him, the next
afternoon, with a reserve of manner that was meant to indicate her
displeasure; but he disconcerted her very much by asking her bluntly
why the dickens she was playing so poorly; and she felt unreasonably
annoyed to find that her fears were groundless. So for some time
longer they went on as before, in the same happy-go-lucky kind of way
that had always characterised them. She learned to know several of his
friends, most of them genuine boyish fellows, who appealed to her more
by their affection for Ted than by any qualities they possessed
themselves. They seemed very much alike, though she was bound to
acknowledge that this impression may have been conveyed by the cut of
their clothes and the shape of their hats, which did not differ by so
much as a hair's breadth. But Ted always shone by comparison with the
best of them. He was the only one of his set who did not take himself
seriously; he had a sense of humour, too, and this compensated for the
exhausted manner which he felt obliged to assume as a mark of
fellowship with them.
He asked her, one night, with some diffidence, if she would mind
coming to tea in his chambers on the following Sunday.
"I shouldn't think of asking you to come alone," he hastened to add;
"but Monty is going to bring his sister along, so that's all square as
long as you don't mind."
"Mind! Why, of course not," said Katharine, in frank astonishment.
"What is there to mind? I want to see your chambers very much. I have
often wondered why you never asked me before."
Ted stared at her for a moment, and then began tracing what remained
of the pattern in the linoleum with his walking stick. They were
standing, as usual, in the hall of number ten, Queen's Crescent.
"What a babe you are, Kitty!" he said, without looking up; and
Katharine reddened as she suddenly realised his meaning. Of course Ted
was no longer a boy, and she was no longer a child; and she was on
precisely the same footing with him in the eyes of the world as she
was with Paul Wilton. Unconsciously, she compared the attitude of the
two men under similar circumstances; Paul, who was unscrupulous in
letting her visit him as long as no one knew of it; and Ted, who had
no views on the matter at all but merely wished to spare her any
annoyance.
"I see," she said. "Who is Monty?" She always felt nervous when he
offered to introduce her to any of his friends; because she knew very
well that he warned them all beforehand that she had "ideas," and this
put her at a distinct disadvantage to begin with.
"Oh, Monty's awfully smart! He knows no end. You'll like Monty, I
expect. He wants to meet you, awfully; says he likes the look of your
photograph. I told him how bally clever you were, and all that.
Monty's clever, too; he reads Ibsen."
Katharine received this proof of Monty's intellectual ability with
some cynicism which, however, she was careful to conceal.
"I shall be delighted to meet him," she said. "What time shall I
come?"
"Oh, any time; four will do. And, I say, Kit, I suppose I must have
cream, mustn't I? You can't give Monty milk that's been sitting for
hours, and spoof him that it's cream. I've done that sometimes, but
you can't spoof Monty."
"Oh, I'll bring the cream. I know a shop where they'll let me have it
on Sunday," said Katharine confidently; and Ted left comforted.
After all, Monty's sister could not come; but Ted's sense of the
fitness of things was satisfied by his having asked her, and, as Monty
himself came and did not seem afraid of Katharine as all his other
friends were, he felt that his tea-party was a success. The only thing
that marred his enjoyment was the fact that Katharine, for some
unaccountable caprice, refused to be intellectual in spite of the
efforts of Monty, whose real name proved to be Montague, to draw her
out. Monty was a young man with a gentlemanly view of life, tempered
by a great desire to be thought advanced; and he began the
conversation with a will.
"Awfully clever new thing at the Royalty! Suppose you've seen it, Miss
Austen?" he began. "Awfully plucky of the Independent Theatre to put
it on, it is really."
"Is it?" smiled Katharine. "I haven't seen it yet. Ted and I hate
those advanced plays,--they're so slow as a rule. Comic operas, we
like best."
Monty seemed surprised; and Ted was a little disconcerted by this
frank avowal of his own ordinary tastes.
"You see, Kit only goes to those things to please me," he said,
apologetically. "She's just as keen on all those humpy plays as you
are, don't you know?"
Monty was not sure that he knew, but he turned to another branch of
art.
"Talking about posters," he said,--which was only his favourite method
of opening a conversation, for nobody was talking about posters at
all,--"have you seen that awfully clever one of the new paper, 'The
Future'? It's by quite a new man, in the French style, so bold and yet
so subtle. But of course you must have seen it."
"Oh, yes," laughed Katharine, "I should think I had! You mean the red
one, don't you, with a black sun and a cactus thing, and a lot of
spots all over it? Ted and I were laughing at it, only yesterday. Do
you really think it is good?"
Monty said he really did think so; and Ted, who was torn in two by his
admiration for both of them, came to his rescue.
"You had better be careful, Kitty," he said, anxiously. "Monty does
know."
"Of course," said Katharine politely, "it is only a matter of taste,
isn't it, Mr. Montague?"
"Quite so," replied Monty, concealing his feelings of superiority as
well as he could. "By the way, talking of taste, what do you think of
the new Danish poet? Rather strong, don't you think?"
Katharine sighed, and glanced nervously at Ted.
"Oh, I suppose he's all right," she said, with the exaggerated
solemnity that would have betrayed to any one who knew her well how
close she was to laughter; "but he isn't a bit new, is he? I mean, he
only says the same things over again that the old poets said ever so
much better. Don't you think so?"
"They all give you the hump, any way," put in Ted. But Monty ignored
his remark, and said that he never read any of the old poets; he
preferred the new ones because they went so much deeper.
"Hang it all, Kitty; what a rum girl you are!" said Ted, in a
disappointed tone. "A chap never knows where to have you. I did think
you were advanced, if you couldn't be anything else."
At this point, Katharine yielded to an irresistible desire to laugh;
and Ted looked anxiously at the friend to whom he had given such a
false impression of her "ideas." But, to his surprise, the great Monty
himself joined in her laughter, and seemed inexpressibly relieved to
find that she was not nearly so intellectual as she had been painted,
and it was therefore no longer incumbent on him to sustain the
conversation at such a high pitch.
"Now that we have settled I am not advanced," said Katharine, turning
up her veil, "supposing we have some tea." And for the rest of the
afternoon they behaved like rational beings, and discussed the low
comedians and the comic papers.
"All the same," Ted complained, when Monty had gone, "he's awfully
clever, really. You may rot as much as you like, but Monty does know
about things. You don't know what a fool he makes _me_ feel."
"He needn't do that," said Katharine. "It would be the kindest thing
in the world not to let him read another magazine or newspaper for six
months. I think he is very nice, though, when he lets himself go."
Ted looked at her a little sadly.
"You seemed to be getting on beastly well, I thought," he said.
"He is certainly very amusing, and it was nice of you to ask me to
meet him," continued Katharine, innocently. Ted walked to the
fire-place, and studied himself silently in the looking-glass.
"I wish I wasn't such a damned fool," he burst out savagely. Katharine
stood still with amazement.
"Ted!" she cried. "Ted! What do you mean?"
Ted planted his elbows on the mantel-shelf, and buried his face in his
hands.
"Ted!" she said again, with distress in her voice. "What do you mean,
Ted? As if I--oh, Ted! And a man like _that_! You know piles more than
he does, old boy, ever so much more. You don't put on any side, that's
all; and he does. You mustn't say that any more, Ted; oh, you mustn't!
It hurts."
"You know you are spoofing me," he said, in muffled tones. "You know
you only say that just to please me. You think I am a fool all the
time, only you are a good old brick and pretend not to see it. As if I
didn't twig! I ought never to have been born."
Katharine walked swiftly over to him, and laid her hand on his arm.
She did not reason with herself; she only knew that she wanted to
comfort him at any price.
"Ted," she said, earnestly, "_I_ am glad you were born."
He turned round suddenly, and looked at her; and she started nervously
at the eagerness of his expression. He had not looked like that when
he made love to her in the summer-house.
"Do you mean that, dear?"
"Oh, don't be so serious, Ted! Of course I mean it; of course I am
glad you were born. Think how forlorn I should have been without you;
it would have been awful if I had been alone." He looked only half
satisfied; and she went on desperately, caring for nothing but to
charm away the miserable look from his face. "Dear Ted, you know what
you are to me; you know I don't care a little bit for Monty, or
anybody else, either."
"Do you mean that, Kitty?" he asked again, in a voice that he could
not steady. "Not anybody else, dear?"
Something indefinable, something that made her long for another man's
voice to be trembling for love of her, as his was trembling now,
seemed to come between them and to strike her dumb. He looked at her
searchingly for a moment, then shook off her hand and pushed her away
from him. She shivered as the suspicion crossed her mind that he had
guessed her thoughts, though she knew quite well that the renewal of
her friendship with Paul was unknown to him. She went up to him again,
and let him seize her two hands and crush them until she could have
cried out with the pain.
"You are the best fellow in the world, Ted," she said. "But you
mustn't look like that; oh, don't! I am not worth it, Ted; I am not
nearly good enough for you, dear,--you know I am not. I am never going
to marry any one; I am not the sort to marry; I am hard, and cold, and
bitter. Sometimes, I think I shall just work and fight my way to the
end. I know I shall never be happy in the way most women are happy.
But I will be your chum, and stick to you always, Ted. May I?"
"Oh, shut up!" said Ted, almost in a whisper; and the tears sprang to
her eyes. She stood on tiptoe, and impetuously kissed the only place
on his cheek she could reach. At the moment, it seemed the only right
and proper thing to be done.
"I couldn't help it. I had to; and I don't care," she said, defiantly.
And Ted wrung her hands again, and let them go.
"I suppose none of it is your fault, Kit, but--"
There was a pause, and Katharine avoided his eyes, for the first time
in her life.
"It's time to go," she said. "Will you see me home?"
She fetched him his hat and coat, and Ted gave himself a shake.
"He didn't take cream, after all," he said, with a poor attempt at a
laugh.