But, humiliated as she was, the predominant feeling in her mind was
astonishment. Could it be true that she was a prig? Was that the final
definition of the pride and the strength in which she had gloried
until now? Was that all that people meant when they told her she was
not like other girls? It was an odious revelation, and for the moment
her self-respect was stunned by it. She had boasted of her success;
and to be successful was merely to be priggish. She had been proud of
her virtue; and virtue, again, was only an equivalent for
priggishness. She wondered vaguely whether there was a single
aspiration left that did not lead to the paths of priggishness. A
prig! He had called her a prig! She had thought it such a fine thing
to be content with his friendship, and this was the end of it all. All
the wretchedness of her solitary drive home was centred in those last
cruel words of his; all the bitterness of that long, miserable Sunday
was concentrated in that covert insult. She could have borne his
indifference, or even his displeasure; but she could have killed him
for his contempt.
And Ted? She did not give a thought to Ted. Even the reason for his
curious behaviour had not fully dawned upon her yet. It had only
seemed in keeping with the rest of her misfortunes, just like the
rain, which she allowed to beat in upon her, with a kind of reckless
satisfaction. In the fulness of her more absorbing personal trouble,
Ted would have to wait. It had been her experience that Ted always
could wait. It was not until she stood once more within the familiar
hall of number ten, Queen's Crescent, that the recollection of Ted's
astonished look returned to her mind; and then she put it hastily away
from her, as something that would have to be faced presently.
As she walked into her room, too weary to think any more, and longing
for the temporary oblivion of a night's rest, the first thing that met
her eye was the unmade condition of her bed. The desolate look of the
tiny compartment was the crowning point of her day of woe; and the
tears, which she had kept back until now, rushed to her eyes. It
seemed a little hard that, on this day of all others, Phyllis should
have neglected to make her bed. She gave it an impatient push, and it
scraped loudly over the bare boards.
"Stop that row!" said Polly's sharp voice from the other end of the
room. "You might be quiet, now you _have_ come in."
"Is Phyllis asleep?" asked Katharine shortly.
"Can't you be quiet?" growled Polly. "Haven't you heard she is worse?
Don't see how you should, though,--coming in at this hour of the
night!"
"Worse?" With an effort, Katharine's thoughts travelled back over the
absorbing events of the day, to the early morning; and she remembered
that Phyllis had stayed in bed with a headache. "What is the matter
with her?" she asked, faintly. Everything seemed to be conspiring
against her happiness to-day.
"Influenza. A lot you care! Nothing but my cousin's funeral would have
taken me out to-day, I know. I had to show up for that. Of course, I
thought you would look after her; I asked you to."
Katharine had pushed aside the curtain, and was looking at the
flushed, unconscious face of her friend. She dimly remembered saying
she would stop with her; and then a letter had come from Paul, asking
her to meet him in the park, and she had thought no more of Phyllis.
She had not even succeeded in meeting him; and again her eyes filled
with tears at her own misfortunes.
"I couldn't help it," she said, miserably. "How was I to know she was
so bad? Have you taken her temperature?"
"Hundred and three, when I last took it. It's no use standing there
and pulling a long face. She doesn't know you; so it's rather late in
the day to be cut up. You'd better go to bed, I should say; you look
as though you'd been out all day, and half the night, too!"
She ended with a contemptuous sniff. Katharine rubbed the tears out of
her eyes. The weariness had temporarily left her.
"Let me sit up with her," she said.
"You? What could you do? Why, you'd fall asleep, or think of something
else in the middle, and she might die for all you cared," returned
Polly contemptuously. "Can you make a poultice?"
Katharine shook her head dumbly, and crept away. Her self-abasement
seemed complete. She lay down on her untidy bed, and drew the clothes
over her, and gave way to her grief. There did not seem a bright spot
in her existence, now that Phyllis was not able to comfort her. She
hoped, with a desperate fervour, that she would catch influenza too,
and die, so that remorse should consume the hearts of all those who
had so cruelly misunderstood her.
A hand shook her by the shoulder, not unkindly.
"Look here! you must stop that row, or else you will disturb her.
What's the good of it? Besides, she isn't as bad as all that either;
you can't have seen much illness, I'm thinking."
"It isn't that," gasped Katharine truthfully. "At least, not entirely.
I was dreadfully unhappy about something else, and I wanted to die;
and then, when I found Phyllis was ill, it all seemed so hopeless. I
didn't mean to disturb any one; it was dreadfully foolish of me; I
haven't cried for years."
Polly gave a kind of grunt, and sat down on the bed. It was more or
less interesting to have reduced the brilliant Miss Austen to this
state of submission.
"Got yourself into trouble?" she asked, and refrained from adding that
she had expected it all along.
Katharine began to cry again. There was so little sympathy, and so
much curiosity, in the curt question. But she had reached the point
when to confide in some one was an absolute necessity; and there was
no one else.
"I haven't done anything wrong," she sobbed. "Why should one suffer so
awfully, just because one didn't _know_! We were only friends, and it
was so pleasant, and I was so happy! It might have gone on for ever,
only there was another girl."
"Of course," said Polly. "There always is. How did she get hold of
him?"
Katharine shrank back into herself.
"You don't understand," she complained. "He isn't like that at all. He
is clever, and refined, and very reserved. He doesn't flirt a bit, or
anything of that sort."
"Oh, I see," said Polly, with her expressive sniff. "I suppose the
other girl thought herself a toff, eh?"
"She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen," said Katharine
simply. "But I never knew he cared about that. He had views against
marriage, he always said; and he wasn't always talking about women,
like some men. I did not think he would end in marrying, just like
every one else."
"More innocent you, then! I always said you ought to have stopped at
home; girls like you generally do come the worst cropper. You surely
didn't suppose he would go on for ever, and be content merely with
your friendship, did you?"
"Yes, I did," said Katharine wearily. "Why not? I was content with
his."
Polly gave vent to a stifled laugh.
"My dear, you're not a man," she said in a superior tone. It added
considerably to the piquancy of the conversation that the subject was
one on which she was a greater authority than her clever companion.
"But he really cared for me, I am certain he did," Katharine went on
plaintively; and her eyes filled with tears again.
"Then why is he marrying the other girl instead of you? If she is so
beautiful, you're surely very good-looking too, eh? That won't wash
anyhow, will it?"
Katharine was silent. She felt she could not reveal the full extent of
his infamy just then; there was something so particularly sordid in
having been weighed against the advantages of a worldly marriage and
found wanting; and she felt a sudden disinclination to expose the
whole of the truth to the sharp criticism of Polly Newland.
"I haven't done anything wrong," she said again. "I don't understand
why things are so unfairly arranged. Why should I suffer for it like
this?"
"Don't know about that," retorted the uncompromising Polly. "I expect
you've been foolish, and that's a worse game than being bad. Going
about town with a man after dark, when you're not engaged to him,
isn't considered respectable by most, even if it's always the same
man. I'm not so particular as some, but you must draw the line
somewhere."
"I didn't go about with him much," said Katharine, making a feeble
attempt to justify herself. "He didn't care about it; he was always so
particular not to give people anything to talk about. He didn't care
for himself, he said; it was only for me. So I used to go to his
chambers instead. I couldn't be more careful than that, could I? And I
should have gone in the daytime, if I had had more time; but there was
all my work to get through,--so what else could I do? There wasn't any
harm in it."
She could not see her companion's face, and was so full of her own
reflections that she failed to notice her silence. Polly did not even
sniff.
"Then there's Ted," Katharine continued presently. "Even Ted was
strange to-night; and Ted has never been like that to me before. I
can't think what has come over everybody. What have I done to deserve
it all?"
"Mercy me!" cried Polly suddenly. "Is there another of them? Who on
earth is Ted?"
"Ted? Why, you must have seen him in the hall sometimes; he often
comes to take me out. I have known him all my life; he is only a
little older than I am, and I am devoted to him. I would not quarrel
with Ted for anything in the whole world; it would be like quarrelling
with myself. And to-night I ran into him, just as I came out of--of
the other one's chambers; and I was so glad to see him, because Ted is
always so sweet to me when I am in trouble; and--and Ted was quite
funny, and he wouldn't speak to me at all, and he just put me into a
hansom and left me to come home alone. I can't think why he behaved so
oddly. I know he used not to get on with--with the other one, and that
is why I never told him I had met him again up here in London; and I
suppose he caught sight of him to-night in the doorway,--there was a
lamp just above,--but still, he need not have been hurt until he had
heard my explanation, need he? Why has every one turned against me at
once?"
Polly remained silent no longer. She turned and stared at the
prostrate figure on the bed, with all the power of her small, watery
blue eyes.
"I really think you beat everything I ever knew," she exclaimed.
"What?" said Katharine, who had turned her face to the wall, and was
occupied in meditating miserably on the problem of her existence.
"What do you mean?"
Polly lost all control over herself.
"Do you mean to tell me that you never saw any harm in all this?" she
cried emphatically. "Do you really mean to say that you have been
carrying on anyhow with two men at once, going to their chambers late
at night, and letting yourself be seen in public with them, without
knowing that it was unusual? Didn't you ever see the danger in it? You
are either the biggest fool in creation or the biggest humbug! One man
at a time would be bad enough; but two! My eye!"
"But--there wasn't any harm," pleaded Katharine. "Why does no one
understand? It seemed quite natural to me. They were so different,
and I liked them in such opposite ways, don't you see? I have known
Ted all my life; he is a dear boy, and that is all. But Paul is clever
and strong; he is a man, and he knows about things. And I never knew
it was wrong; I didn't _feel_ wicked, somehow. I wonder if that was
what Paul was thinking, when he said I was a prig? Oh, dear! oh, dear!
I have never been so wretched in my whole life!"
"Did he say that about you? Well, I don't wonder."
Katharine looked hopelessly at her unsympathetic profile, with the
snub nose and the small chin, and the hair twisted up into tight
plaits and the ends tied with white tape; and her eyes wandered down
the red flannel dressing-gown to the large slippered feet that emerged
from beneath it.
"You called me a prig, too," she said, humbly. "I overheard you."
"I thought so then," said Polly gruffly.
"Do you think so now? Is it true? Am I a prig?" She awaited the answer
anxiously. Polly gave her another pitiless stare.
"I'm bothered if I know," she said. "But if you're not, you ought to
be in the nursery. Only don't go telling people the things you've
been telling me to-night, or you might get yourself into worse
trouble. You'd better go to sleep now, and leave it till to-morrow. My
conscience! you'd make some people sit up, you would!"
Katharine felt she had endured as much contempt as she could bear that
evening; but she made a last attempt to recover some of her
self-respect.
"I wish you would tell me why it is wrong to do things that are not
really wrong in themselves, just because people say they are wrong?"
she asked, rather sleepily.
"Because people can make it so jolly unpleasant for you if you don't
agree with them," said Polly bluntly. "And if you fancy you're going
to alter all that, you must make up your mind to be called a prig. You
can't have a good time and defy convention as you've been doing, and
then expect to get off scot free without being called a prig; it isn't
likely. Most people are content to take things as they are; it's a
jolly sight more comfortable, and it's good enough for them.
Good-night."
"I sha'n't sleep," Katharine called after her. And Polly sniffed.
And the next thing that Katharine remembered was being awakened by her
in the early morning, and told in a gruff voice that she might sit
with Phyllis if she liked, until some one came to relieve her.
"All right," she replied, drowsily. "How tired you look; didn't you
sleep well?"
"Sleep? There wasn't much chance of that, when she was talking
gibberish all the time. She's quieter now, and you can fetch Jenny if
you want anything. I must be off; I shall be late as it is. Just like
my luck to get my early week when she is ill!"
And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the
house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of
the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they
were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered
miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about
her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to
be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. And yet,
when Miss Jennings came and took her post in the sick-room, and she
was free to go to school, she found that it was a relief to be
compelled to do something, and her work seemed easier to her than she
had ever found it before. She had never given a better lecture than
she gave that morning; and something that was outside herself seemed
to come to her assistance all day, and remained with her until her
work was done. But when she returned home in the evening, the full
significance of her unfortunate situation stared her again in the
face; and the news that Phyllis was worse and was not allowed to see
any one was so in keeping with her feelings, that she felt unable even
to make a comment upon it.
"I always said that Miss Austen hadn't a spark of feeling in her,"
observed the girl who had given her the information; and Katharine
overheard her, and began to wonder mechanically if it were true. Every
faculty she possessed seemed deadened at that moment; she had no
longer the inclination even to rebel against her fate. She sat on the
stairs, outside the bedroom she was not allowed to enter, and took a
strange delicious pleasure in dwelling upon the whole of her
intercourse with Paul. There was not a conversation or a chance
meeting with him, that she did not go through in her mind with a
scrupulous accuracy; the pain of it became almost unendurable at
moments, and yet it was an exquisite torture that brought her some
measure of relief. She even forced herself to recall her last meeting
with him, and was surprised in an apathetic sort of way when she
found that she did not want to cry any more.
And from thinking of Paul, she naturally fell to thinking of Ted too.
And it slowly dawned upon her, as she considered it in the light of
her present mood, that what Polly had said in her vulgar,
uncompromising manner, was the truth. For a whole year she had been
living in a false atmosphere of contentment; she had deluded herself
into the belief that she was superior to convention and human nature
combined, and she had ended in proving herself a complete failure.
Paul had seen through her self-righteousness, he had nothing but
contempt for her, and he had found it a relief to turn from her to the
human and faulty Marion Keeley. In the depths of her self-abasement,
she had even ceased to feel angry with Marion.
And Ted had found her out. That was the worst of all. On the impulse
of the moment, she fetched some paper and wrote to him at once,
sitting there on the uncarpeted stairs, while the people passed up and
down unheeded by her. It was a very humble letter, full of pleading
confession and self-accusation,--such a letter as she had never sent
him before, and written from a standpoint she had never yet been
obliged to assume towards him. It was a relief at the moment to be
doing something; but she regretted her action the whole of the
following day, and hardly knew how to open his reply when she found it
awaiting her, on her return home in the evening. It was very short.
"Dear Kitty," it ran:--
Don't mind about me. It's a rotten world, and I'm the
rottenest fool in it. I was only hit up the other night
because I was so surprised. Of course you're all right, and I
ought never to have been born. I knew all the time that you
were spoofing me when you pretended to care for me; but I
didn't know you cared for any one else, least of all Wilton.
He always seemed so played to me, but then I'm not clever.
Only, I advise you not to go hanging round his chambers at
night; people are so poor, and they might talk. Let me know if
you want me or anything. I won't bother you otherwise.
TED.
He still believed in her, then; only it was more from habit than
conviction. But she had destroyed his love for her. She realised these
two facts in the same breath, and she rebelled passionately at the
loss of the affection that had been hers for so long, though she had
valued it so lightly.
"I do want you, now," she scribbled to him in pencil. "Will you come
here to-morrow evening? Miss Jennings has promised me the use of her
sitting-room. I shall expect you about seven."
It seemed quite in harmony with the general wretchedness of those few
days that Phyllis should be seriously ill all the time. The
sixty-three working gentlewomen, who had never pretended to care for
the brusque shorthand clerk when she was in good health and trampled
without a scruple on their tenderest susceptibilities, now went about
on tiptoe, and conversed in whispers on all the landings, and got in
the way of the doctor when he came downstairs. And they one and all
condemned Katharine for her indifference, because she refused to
enlarge on the subject at every meal.
"The conversation is never very exhilarating, at the best of times;
but when all those women take to gloating over a tragedy, it simply
isn't bearable," she was heard to exclaim; and the unlucky remark cost
her the last shred of her popularity at Queen's Crescent.
She was waiting at her usual post on the stairs, when they came to
tell her that Ted was downstairs. He had come at her bidding; that
was consoling, at all events. But when she walked into Miss Jennings'
private room and saw his face as he stood on the hearthrug, her heart
sank again, and she knew that she was not to find consolation yet. He
held out his hand to her silently, and pulled forward a slender,
white-wood chair tied up with yellow ribbons, and imperilled a bamboo
screen crowded with cheap crockery, and finally sat down himself on
the edge of the chintz-covered sofa. Neither of them spoke for a
moment or two, and Ted cleared his throat uncomfortably, and stared at
the ferrule of his walking-stick.
"I got your letter," he said at last, "and I've come."
"Yes," said Katharine, "you've come."
Having delivered themselves of these two very obvious remarks, they
again relapsed into silence; and Katharine glanced at the cuckoo
clock, and marvelled that so much concentrated wretchedness could be
crowded into something under five minutes.
"Ted," she forced herself to say, in a voice that did not seem to be
hers, "Ted, will you never come and see me any more?"
He lifted his head and looked at her; then looked away again.
"Not unless you want me to do anything for you," he said. "I don't
want to bother, you see."
She longed to cry out and tell him that he never bothered her; that
she wanted to see him more than she wanted anything in the whole
world. But something new and strange in his face, that told her he was
no longer a boy and no longer her willing slave, seemed to paralyse
her. To be proved inferior to the man she had always considered
inferior to her, was the hardest blow she had yet had to endure.
"I don't know what you mean," she said, lamely.
Ted hastened to be apologetic.
"I'm beastly sorry," he said, and cleared his throat again.
"I--I wish you would explain," she went on.
"Oh, that's all right, isn't it?" said Ted vaguely.
"It isn't all right; you know it isn't," she cried. "What makes you so
strange to me? You've never looked like that before. Is it I who have
changed you so, Ted?"
"Oh, it's nothing," he said. "You've hit me up rather, that's all.
Don't bother about me. Did you want me for anything particular?"
She looked in vain for any signs of relenting in his manner; but he
sat on the edge of the sofa, and played with his walking-stick, and
cleared his throat at intervals. In spite of the changed conditions of
their attitude towards one another, she felt that she was expected, as
usual, to take the initiative.
"I wanted to tell you all about it, to explain," she faltered. "I
thought you would help me."
"If it's all the same to you, I would rather not hear," said Ted, with
unexpected promptitude. "I know as much about it as I care to know,
thanks. _He_ wrote to me this morning, too."
"He wrote to you? Paul?"
"Wilton, yes," he replied, shortly, and glanced at her again. His
under lip was twitching, as it always did when he was hurt or
embarrassed.
"What for?" she asked, wonderingly.
"Oh, to explain, and all that! Hang the explanation! I didn't want him
to tell me he hadn't been a blackguard; I knew you,--so that was all
square. But I don't understand it now, and I don't want to. I can't
see any great shakes, myself, in playing about with a girl when you're
engaged to some one else. But I suppose that's because I'm such a
rotten ass. It's none of my business, any way; only, I think you'd
better be careful. But you know best, so that's all right."
Again she longed to tell him that she was not so bad as he thought
her, and yet, much worse than he thought her; but the words would not
come, and she sat self-condemned.
"You don't understand," she stammered presently. "I didn't know he was
engaged till yesterday. I saw no harm in it all; I only liked him very
much, as a friend. I liked you in quite a different way, I--"
"You didn't know he was engaged?" said Ted, rousing himself suddenly.
"Do you mean to say he has been playing fast and loose with you, the
blackguard? If I had thought that--"
"No, no!" she cried, in alarm at the fierceness of his expression. "He
never treated me badly; he made everything quite clear from the
beginning. It was my fault if I misunderstood him. But I never did; I
always knew we were just friends, and it was pleasant, and I let it go
on. Haven't you and I been friends, too, Ted? There was no harm in
that, was there?"
"Oh, no," he said, bitterly. "There was no fear of any harm in it!"
She realised his meaning, and blushed painfully as she felt that he
had spoken the truth.
"Ted, do you hate me, I wonder?" she murmured.
"What? Oh, that's all right. Don't bother about me. I was a rotten ass
ever to expect anything else."
"But, I mean, because--because of the other?" she went on anxiously.
Ted bit his lip, but did not speak.
"Do you think it was wrong of me?" she pleaded. "Ted, tell me! I
didn't know; I didn't really. It seemed quite right to me; I couldn't
see that it mattered, just because of what people said. Would you
think it wrong of a girl to come and see you, if she liked coming, and
didn't care what people said?"
Ted rose from his seat hurriedly, and picked up his hat.
"I never said you were wrong, did I?" he said, gently. "You see,
you're clever, and I'm not, and it's altogether different. I was only
sorry, that was all; I didn't think you went in for that sort of
thing, and I was hit up, rather. But it was my fault entirely; and of
course you're right,--you always are. I sha'n't bother you any more,
now I know."
"Ted, don't go," she said, imploringly, as he touched her hand again
and turned towards the door. "Don't you understand, Ted, that--that
_he_ only appealed to half of me, and-- I do care, Ted, and I want you
to come and see me again; I do really, Ted, I--"
But he only smiled as incredulously as before, and spoke again in the
same gentle tone.
"Thanks, awfully. But don't bother to spoof yourself about me; I shall
be all right, really. It was always my fault; I won't bother you any
more. Good-bye."
And, haunted by his changed manner and his joyless smile, she went
back to her seat on the stairs, and sat with her hands clasped over
her knees and her eyes staring vacantly into space, as she tried in
vain to discover what her real feelings were. "Perhaps I haven't got
any," she thought to herself. "Perhaps I am incapable of loving any
one, or of feeling anything. And I have sent away the best fellow in
the whole world, and it doesn't seem to matter a bit. I wonder if
_anything_ could make me cry now?" And she took a gloomy pleasure in
conjuring up all the incidents of the last unhappy week, and laughed
cynically when she found that none of them had any effect upon her.
"Why don't they light the gas?" complained the working gentlewomen,
when they came downstairs to supper. And when Katharine explained that
she had promised to light it herself and had forgotten to do so, they
passed on their way, marvelling that any one with so little feeling
should have her moments of abstraction like every one else. After they
had all gone down, she had a restless fit, and paced up and down the
landing until Polly Newland came out of the sick room, and stopped
her.
"You might choose another landing, if you want to do that," she said,
crossly. "You've woke her up now; but you can come in if you like. She
has just asked for you."
Katharine followed her in, rather awkwardly, and sat down on the chair
that was pointed out to her, and tried to think of something
appropriate to say. It was difficult to know how to begin, when she
looked round the room, and noted all the objects that seemed to have
belonged to some distant period in her life, before the world had
become so hard and cheerless. But Phyllis was looking the same as
ever, except that she was rather white, and her hair was strangely
tidy. She was the first to speak.
"Hullo," she said. "I've been wanting to see you. What's the matter
with you, child?"
The incongruity of being asked by the invalid for the cause of her own
malady did not immediately occur to Katharine. But the familiar tone
of sympathy went straight to her heart, and she broke down completely.
She had a dim notion that Polly remonstrated angrily, and that Polly
was sent out of the room; and after that she was conscious of nothing
except of the comfort of being able to cry undisturbed, until Phyllis
said something about red eyes, and they joined in a spasmodic laugh.
"Poor old girl, what have they been doing to you?" she asked.
"Everything has been horrid," gasped Katharine. "And you were ill, and
nobody understood, and oh, Phyllis!--I am a _prig_!"