The landlady had gone out of the room and closed the door. Katharine
stepped softly to the side of the bed, and looked at the sleeping
face. It was just the same as she had always known it, rounded and
beardless, without a line or a wrinkle, and with the hair as loose and
rumpled as it had been in the days before manhood had claimed its
submission. "Dear old Ted," she murmured to herself with a half smile,
"I don't believe he _could_ look ill, however much he tried." She
stole about the room, putting flowers in the vases, and lightening
some of its London dinginess, until the sound of her name brought her
back again to the bedside.
"Dear old man, don't look so scared," she laughed. "We heard you were
ill, and we came up to look after you, daddy and I. Daddy is still
downstairs; he discovered an old print in the hall, and he hasn't got
any further yet. There are a lot of old prints in the hall, so I
suppose it will be ever so long before he does get any further. Isn't
it like daddy?"
She smoothed his hair gently, and he laughed contentedly in reply. He
did not seem at all surprised to see her; Kitty always had turned up,
all his life, when he had got himself into a scrape; and it did not
occur to him at the moment that she was more or less answerable for
his present scrape.
"Just see how hit up I am!" he said. "So poor, isn't it?"
Her face clouded.
"Oh, Ted, how could you do it? Ought I to have stayed in London and
looked after you?" she said reproachfully; and he saw that it was
useless to try to conceal anything from her.
"It's all right, Kit," he hastened to explain in his humble manner.
"Don't swear, old chum! I couldn't help it, on my honour I couldn't. I
got so sick, and I just had to. And after all I played so poorly, you
see, that it didn't come off."
Except for the subject of their conversation, they might have been
back again in the lanes at Ivingdon. They had dropped naturally into
their old boy and girl attitude, and hers was as before the stronger
personality. But there was a subtle difference in their relations
which she was the first to feel.
"I--I am glad it didn't come off, Ted," she said, trying to speak
lightly. Ted gripped her hand for a moment, and then let it go again,
as though he were half ashamed of his momentary show of sentiment.
"You see," he went on, in a very gruff voice, "that was the only part
I left to Providence, and Providence muffed it. I'm such a rotten
ass,-- I always was, don't you know? If it had been you, now, you
wouldn't have bungled it at all, would you?"
"Providence never has any sense of humour," said Katharine; and she
got up hurriedly, so that he should not see her face. She poured out
some medicine, and brought it to him.
"I say, it's awfully ripping to have you to look after me like this,"
he observed. "What did Miss Esther say?"
"She seemed upset," said Katharine, smiling slightly. "But you can
always square Aunt Esther, when it's a question of illness; there are
such a lot of texts in the Bible about illness, don't you know? By the
way, when did you last have something to eat?"
Ted had no idea, beyond a vague notion that some one had brought him
something on a tray in the morning, which he had not looked at. So
she left him to interview the landlady, whom she found in the middle
of a long history of the print in the hall and of the part it had
played in the history of her own family as well, to which the Rector
was listening patiently though with obvious inattention. Katharine
managed to procure what she wanted, and returned with it to the sick
room. The invalid was looking more flourishing than ever.
"You see," he explained, between the spoonfuls with which she fed him,
"he's such an awfully snide doctor. He won't let me get up, and of
course, I'm as right as rain, really. So cheap of him, isn't it?"
In spite of his assertion, however, he was very glad to play the
invalid when she brought him some warm water, and proceeded to bathe
his hands and face. It was pleasant, after the desolation of his life
for the past six months, to lie back in a lazy attitude without
feeling particularly ill, and allow the girl he liked best in the
world to do things for him.
"It's so rum," he remarked, "that our hands never wear out with being
washed so often. I can't think why they don't want soling and heeling
after a time, like boots."
"I think you are right, and that your doctor _is_ rather 'snide,'" was
all Katharine said, as she carried away the basin, and looked for his
hair brushes. Ted's toilet table was characterised by a luxurious
confusion, and she lingered for a moment to arrange the silver-topped
bottles in some kind of order. "You never used to care for this sort
of thing," she remarked, holding up a bottle of _eau de toilette_; "I
remember how you teased me once, when I told you I put lavender water
in my cold bath."
"Oh, well, of course it's beastly rot and all that," owned Ted; "but
it's the thing to do, and one must, don't you know? Hullo, what are
you playing at now?"
"I wish you would not be quite so languid," retorted Katharine. "How
am I to brush your hair if you persist in behaving as though you were
dying? I believe you are putting it on."
"It's not my fault if I'm not so beastly energetic as you," grumbled
Ted. "Don't play about any more, Kit; come over here and talk. And you
needn't fold up those towels; they're not used to it, really."
"I shouldn't think they were, from the look of them. Well, what have I
got to talk about?"
She came and sat down on the chair by his side, and he shifted his
position so that he could see her face. She could have laughed aloud
at his expression of utter contentment.
"Oh, some rot; anything you like. You've always got lots to gas about,
haven't you? How is Ivingdon, and the Grange; and does Peter Bunce
still come in on Sunday afternoons; and has the doctor got any new
dogs? Fire ahead, Kit! you've been down there doing nothing all this
time, and you must know all there is to know, unless you're as half
alive as you used to be. Hasn't anything happened to the old place?"
"Yes," said Katharine, smiling back at him frankly. "They have mended
the gap in the hedge."
"The devil they have!" cried Ted. "We'll have it broken open again at
once, won't we? Why didn't you stop them? You knew I wasn't there to
tell them myself. Just like their confounded impertinence!"
"Hush," interrupted Katharine. "You mustn't get excited, old man; it
isn't good for you."
She smoothed his pillows and arranged his coverlet with nervous
rapidity, and Ted, submitting happily to her services, wondered
innocently what she was blushing about. But he did not trouble
himself to find out.
"I am beastly glad I poisoned myself," he murmured, with lazy
satisfaction.
She was glad of the diversion when the Rector arrived at last, and she
was allowed to escape into the next room.
"Well, my boy, and how has the world gone with you?" she heard her
father say in his genial tones.
"It's a beastly jolly world, and I'm the jolliest brute in it," was
Ted's reply.
They took rooms in the next street, and came in every day to look
after him; and when neither the conscience of the "snide" doctor, nor
the desire of the invalid to be nursed proved sufficient to preserve
the farce of his illness any longer, they still lingered on under
pretence of being wanted, and sent carefully worded letters to Miss
Esther from which she was forced to conclude that their presence in
town was urgently required, much as they would have wished it
otherwise. What really happened was, that Ted and Katharine regularly
conducted the old Rector to the British Museum every morning, and
passed the day alone together until it was time to fetch him away
again in the afternoon. And in the evenings they initiated him into
the joys of a music hall, or introduced him to a new comedian; and the
Rector was happier than he had ever been since the well-remembered
days in Paris. As for Katharine, her feelings defied her own powers of
description; she only knew that she had the sensation of waking up
from a long, bad dream. Perhaps Ted felt the same. "You've cured the
biggest hump I ever had in my life," was the way he expressed it.
Looking back on the even tenor of those few weeks, afterwards,
Katharine was at a loss to remember what she had talked about to Ted
in the many hours they had spent together. Perhaps they had not talked
at all; at the time it never seemed to matter whether they did or not;
at all events, their conversation usually lacked the personal element
that alone makes conversation distinctive. There was nothing
surprising to Katharine in this: as long as she could remember Ted had
been the one person in the world to whom it was impossible to talk
about one's self; and his sympathy for her was as completely
superficial as her love for him was mainly protective.
Once or twice she was led inadvertently into making a confidant of
him.
"I wonder why I never seem to feel things acutely now," she said to
him one day as they were strolling along the Embankment. "I don't seem
to care a bit what happens next, except that I have a sort of
conviction it is going to be pleasant. I seem to want waking up again.
Do you know what I mean, Ted?"
"Oh, it's nothing; you're feeling played, that's all," answered Ted,
reassuringly. "My experience is that you're either played, or you're
not played; and when you are, you'd better have a drink to buck you
up. We'll have a cab, and lunch somewhere. Where shall we go to-day?"
And Katharine laughed at his practical view of things, and wondered
why she had expected him to understand. Another time, it was Ted
himself who gave the conversation a personal turn.
"Humps are deuced odd things," he observed, rather suddenly. It was a
dull, warm afternoon in December, and they had been sitting idly for
some minutes on one of the benches in the park, overlooking the
Serpentine. "You feel that everything is awfully decent, and bills be
hanged, and all that; and you curse your tailor and have a good time,
and it doesn't matter if it snows. And then, when it's rather a bore
to be under an obligation to a rotten little tradesman, or you want a
new coat or something, and you pay up and feel awfully virtuous and
don't owe a blessed halfpenny in the world, except for shirts and
things that never expect to be paid for,--_then_, you go and get the
very deuce of a hump."
"Whole books might be written on the psychological aspect of the
hump," murmured Katharine.
"Look at those bounders, now," said Ted, who had not heard her. "It
doesn't matter to _them_ that rowing on the Serpentine on Saturday
afternoon isn't the thing to do, especially in frock coats and
bowlers. It makes one quite sorry for them, to see how little they
know; they don't even know they are bounders, poor devils! But _they_
never get the hump, confound them!"
"All the same," said Katharine, "it is a big price to pay for an
immunity from humps, isn't it?"
"Life must be awfully easy, if you're a bounder," continued Ted. "You
haven't got to be in good form, and you can walk about with any sort
of girl you please, and you needn't worry about the shape of your
hat, and it doesn't matter if you are seen on a green Brixton 'bus. It
saves so much thinking, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Katharine. "But you have to be a bounder all the same, and
you know you can't even contemplate such a possibility, or
impossibility, without shuddering. By the way, is all this intended to
convey that you have got the hump this afternoon?"
"Oh, no," said Ted, with restored cheerfulness. "I ought never to have
been born, of course; but that's quite another matter."
Late that evening the Rector proposed returning to Ivingdon. They had
just been to the theatre, and Ted had asked them in to supper
afterwards. Every trace of his mood of that afternoon had disappeared,
and he was wrangling with Katharine over the strength of the Rector's
toddy with all the energy of which his languid nature was capable.
Katharine put down the tumbler she was holding and looked swiftly
round at her father.
"Oh, daddy, not yet!" she cried impetuously. "I am happy now; don't
let us spoil it all by going home. I feel as though something horrible
would happen if we went home now. Can't we wait a little longer? I
have never been happy like this before."
The Rector murmured something about its being three weeks to
Christmas, but his sense of duty was obviously a perfunctory one, and
he soon found he was not being listened to. And Ted's hand closed over
her fingers as he took the hot glass from her, and his face shone with
pleasure and his voice trembled, as he whispered, "Thank you for that,
dear."
She did not shrink from him as she had done once before when he had
looked at her with that same eager expression in his eyes.
"I don't know a bit whether I love him in the real way," she told her
mirror that night. "I don't know anything about myself at all. I
believe the prig is inborn in me, after all, and that it would suit me
far better to fight for a living in the world, than to stay at home
and just make Ted happy. But all the same, if he asks me again I shall
marry him. It has been so peaceful lately, and I have felt so happy,
and marriage with Ted will mean peace if it doesn't mean anything more
thrilling than that. Dear old Ted; why isn't he my brother, or my son,
or some one I could just mother, and go on living my own life the
while? Ah, well, he is going to be my husband; how strange it sounds!
I wonder if women like me are ever allowed to be happy in their own
way, gloriously and completely happy as I know I could be? But I
suppose it is only the prig in me that thinks so. And Ted shall never
know that I want more than he can possibly give me. Oh, Ted, old chum,
I do love you so for loving me!"
A visit to Queen's Crescent slightly unsettled her. She took her
father with her and introduced him to Phyllis Hyam, and tried to
convince herself that she was glad she was not coming back any more;
but in spite of the unfamiliarity of being there as a visitor, and the
difficulty of finding topics of conversation for the Rector and Miss
Jennings, who obviously misunderstood each other's attempts to be
friendly, the sight of the dingy little hall and of Phyllis's round,
good-humoured face, brought enough reminiscences to her mind to make
her a little regretful as well.
"Do you still have bread and treacle, and is Polly Newland glad I have
gone, and does any one ever talk about me?" she asked with interest.
Even Phyllis looked strange, as though her best dress had been thrown
on hurriedly and the distinction of being admitted to "Jenny's" room
were rather too much for her; but there was a familiarity about her
style of conversation that was consoling.
"Oh, yes," she replied in her off-hand way; "when we have a new one
put into our room we always remember how blue you looked the first
night you came. We haven't had a 'permanent' in our room since you
left; and there have been some cheerful specimens, too! One was a
nurse, who made the place smell eternally of disinfectants; and
another kept bits of food in her drawer, and encouraged mice; and a
third insisted on having the window shut. The curtains haven't been
washed, either, since you made that row about them. I say, when are
you coming back again?"
"You don't offer much inducement," laughed Katharine. "But I am not
coming back, in any case."
"Going to get married?" asked Phyllis sharply. Katharine smiled, and
did not contradict her. It was not an insinuation that one would be
anxious to contradict in a place like Queen's Crescent, however
diffident one might feel about it elsewhere. Phyllis shrugged her
shoulders. "Well, don't go and make a hash of it," she said. "You're
not the sort to be happy with any one, especially if it's made too
easy for you. Well off? Of course; and worships the ground you tread
on, I suppose! Oh, well, it's none of my business, and I only hope you
haven't made a mistake. It's a risky thing at the best; and you were
very happy here most of the time, and you've got to better that, you
know. I wish you luck, I'm sure, but it takes a woman to understand
any one like you, and I should like to see the man who thinks he does
it as well."
"I hope you will some day," said Katharine, politely. But Phyllis did
not respond with any warmth, and Katharine was glad to return to the
masculine indifference of Ted. It was difficult to worry about the
future in Ted's company; even the fact that he had not yet formally
proposed to her did not seem to cause him any anxiety. It certainly
made no difference in the freedom of their intercourse; and, as long
as there was no immediate necessity for action, Ted was not the one to
take the initiative. "I believe I shall have to propose to him
myself," was the thought that sometimes crossed her mind as she
studied his placid, good-looking face. But after her visit to Queen's
Crescent, she began to wish he would not be quite so casual about it;
for, without allowing even to herself that Phyllis's want of
encouragement had in any way affected her decision, she had a
lingering feeling that the present state of things could not go on for
ever, and that it would be better for her, at all events, to have the
matter definitely settled. So she made a kind of attempt, a day or two
later, to rouse his apprehensions.
"Phyllis was wondering if I was ever coming back again to my work,"
she said to him abruptly.
"Oh, was she? Rather a nice girl, Phyllis, if she didn't dress so
badly," observed Ted unconsciously. They were at a Wagner concert in
the Queen's Hall, and the Siegfried Idyll had just drawn to a close.
It seemed to her an auspicious moment.
"I said I was never coming back," pursued Katharine, studying his
profile critically.
"Of course not," said Ted, humming the refrain they had just heard.
For once, Katharine felt faintly annoyed with him for his want of
proper sentiment.
"I don't believe you care whether I do or not," she said in a piqued
tone.
"Eh, what?" said Ted, staring round at her in blank amazement. "Ought
I to have said anything else? But you settled that long ago, Kit,
didn't you? There is nothing more to be said about it, is there?"
"Oh, no, of course not," said Katharine, in what seemed to him a most
unreasonable manner; "but all the same, I'm not at all sure that I
sha'n't go back when the term begins again."
Ted stared more than ever.
"Oh, rats!" he exclaimed, heartily. "What's wrong, Kitty? Have you
been hit up to-day, or anything? I'm such a rotten ass, I never know.
Of course you're never going to grind any more; what an idea!"
"Why not?" asked Katharine, with uncomfortable persistence. Ted began
to make fresh assertions, but paused in the middle and hesitated. He
suddenly realised that there was only one answer to her question, and
that he would have to make it now. He looked down and made havoc with
his programme, and stammered hopelessly until Katharine took pity on
him and came to his assistance with a laugh.
"It's all right, old man; I am never going back, of course," she said;
and Ted brightened up again when he found that he need not propose to
her yet, and was obviously relieved at the establishment of their old
relations. She did nothing more to change them, and the only result of
her abortive attempt was, that Ted was more attentive to her than
before, and constantly made little plans for taking her to some
unfrequented museum or picture gallery, evidently with some design in
his mind which he had not the courage to carry out.
"Poor old Ted," she thought to herself, after they had spent a dull
and silent afternoon at the Royal Institute among the colonial
produce; "I wonder if he will ever get it out!"
Curiously enough, through all the weeks she spent in town, the thought
of Paul Wilton rarely crossed her mind; and when it did she felt that
it referred to some former life of hers, with which this present calm
existence had no connection. Sometimes she wondered idly whether he
were married yet, and if so, whether he ever gave a thought to her;
but she could think of Marion as his wife without a regret, and she
was glad to find that she had no desire whatever to see him again. The
impression he seemed to have left in her mind, after all these months,
was that of a disturbing element which had brought the greatest
unhappiness into her life she had ever been forced to endure. It was
inconsequent, perhaps, that, thinking thus, she should have been
emphatic in her refusal to go and see the Keeleys; but although she
was incapable of explaining why she felt so strongly about such a
small matter, she was at least genuine in her belief that he had no
further place in her thoughts.
And then, two days before they left town, she met him at last.
It was in Bury Street, late on a foggy afternoon, as she was on her
way to the Museum with Ted. She had stopped with an exclamation of
delight in front of an old book shop, and the owner, who was talking
to an intending purchaser inside, came out good-naturedly and offered
to light the gas jet over the tray of dusty volumes. "I shall have to
stop now," whispered Katharine; "supposing you go on for daddy and
bring him back here?"
The light flared up, and made a bright semicircle in the gloom that
was fast closing up round the shop. The customer who was inside
concluded his purchase, and came out just as Ted was strolling off.
Apparently they did not see each other, and the fog soon swallowed up
the retreating form; but Katharine turned round at this moment from
the book she was examining, and met the stranger face to face.
"Ah," he said, quietly; "at last!"
"Yes," she repeated; "at last!"
It did not strike her until afterwards that it was not at all the mode
of address with which she would have greeted him had she been more
prepared; but at the time it came quite naturally to her lips. He
still held her hand as he went on speaking.
"And Ted? Where have you sent him? Will he be long?"
She resented the implication in his words.
"I have not sent him anywhere. He has gone to fetch my father from the
Museum; they will be back directly. Do you mean to say you recognised
Ted in that instant?"
"Why, surely! Did you not recognise me, although I was standing back
there in the shadow?"
"Of course I didn't," cried Katharine hotly, as she pulled away her
hand. "I never saw you until you came out into the light. I should
have stopped Ted if I had."
"Oh, to be sure; pardon my mistake. Of course you would have detained
Ted in that case." And he smiled as though he were faintly amused at
something.
She had noticed his glad look of recognition, and she hated him for
it. What right had he to be glad to see her? And now that he was
laughing at her and making insinuations about Ted, true insinuations
moreover, she hated him still more for his acuteness.
"So you are back in town?" he was saying, with what appeared to be
meant for a kindly interest. "I am not surprised, though. I always
knew you would have to come back."
"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling more annoyed than ever. It was
so like him to know everything about her without being told, and then
to put a complexion upon it that he gave her no opportunity of
contradicting. "We came up, daddy and I, because Ted was ill; and we
are going back again on Wednesday."
"Really? My mistake again. It is difficult to imagine Ted except in
the complete enjoyment of his health. Not seriously ill, I hope?"
"Oh, no," she said, with an uncomfortable conviction that she was
being made to expose herself in all her weakness; "but there was no
one to nurse him, so I came. He is all right now."
"So I should judge from the brief glimpse I had of him just now. Lucky
fellow, Ted! He looked very jolly, I thought; no doubt he has good
cause for his happiness. You are looking well too, if I may say so. It
is very delightful to be young, is it not?"
She felt a wild rage against him for detecting the situation so
absolutely, and for making it merely a subject for his raillery. She
did not know how she would have wished him to take it, but she hated
him all the same for so calmly accepting it.
"I don't understand you," she said, speaking rapidly. "It isn't a bit
delightful; you know it isn't. You know I hate you; you know I am the
most miserable person in the whole world. You know everything there is
to know about me; and I hate you! Why did you come back to spoil it
all, when I was trying so hard to be happy?"
Her own words amazed her. She knew they were true as she spoke them;
but she had not known it ten minutes ago.
"I'm sorry," he said, gravely. "Shall I go?"
He had completely dropped his jesting tone, but she hated him for his
pity even more than she had hated him for his ridicule; she tried to
speak, but her anger choked her utterance.
"When will you be at Ivingdon again?" he asked. "Did you say
Wednesday? And you are going to leave Ted in town?"
She asked herself why he did not go, instead of standing there and
making conversation by inventing questions to which he could not
possibly want to know the answers. But she mechanically made a
gesture in the affirmative to both of them; and he repeated his former
inquiry with gentle insistence.
"Shall I go now?"
"Yes, go!" she cried fiercely, and ignored the hand he proffered her,
and let him go without another word.
The fog swallowed him up, and she stood and gazed at the place where
he had stood, and wondered vaguely if he had been there at all or if
she had not dreamt the whole incident. For one moment the wild impulse
seized her to rush after him into the fog and the darkness, and to
implore him to take her with him anywhere, so long as she might be
with him. And then a smile flickered across her face as the bookseller
came out and spoke to her; and she paid for the first volume she
picked up; and the Rector and Ted emerged from the fog into the
semicircle of light, and life resumed its ordinary aspect again.
"Has he gone?" asked Ted.
"Who? Mr. Wilton? I did not know you saw him. Oh, yes; he went some
time ago. Isn't this a jolly little thing I have picked up?" said
Katharine lightly; and Ted apparently thought no more about it.
That evening she was almost feverishly gay. The Rector sat and smiled
happily as she turned everything that occurred into ridicule, and made
every passer-by a subject for her wit. They did not go to a theatre,
on account of the bad weather; and when Monty dropped in to coffee
later on, she kept him in a perpetual condition of adoring approval
until the fact of Ted's gloomy silence was gradually forced upon her,
and she blamed herself hotly for her stupidity. She was very cool to
Monty after she had realised her blunder; and the poor fellow, who was
quite ignorant of his offence, took the first opportunity to depart.
Even then, in spite of her efforts to be kind to him, Ted did not
wholly recover his spirits; and she sighed inwardly as she reflected
that she could not even be sure of accomplishing the one task she had
set herself to perform.
And the next day her old restlessness possessed her again. All the
work of the past six weeks seemed to have been suddenly undone;
nothing brought her any happiness, she reflected bitterly; she was
incapable of happiness and it was absurd of her to have expected to
find it. All the same, perhaps if Ted were to say something to
her--but Ted still said nothing, and went about making plans for her
enjoyment on this her last day in town, as though their coming
separation were of no matter at all; and he seemed as unconscious of
her change of mood as he had been all along of her unusual
contentment. The day was not a success; their little improvised
amusements had been far more satisfactory than the carefully planned
ones of to-day, and Ted's silence on the one subject of interest grew
more marked as the time wore on, and ended in raising an uncomfortable
barrier between them. Once she felt sure that he would have spoken if
the Rector had not come in unexpectedly; and once, he startled her by
suddenly taking both her hands in his and looking into her eyes for a
full minute, while she waited passively for him to speak. But he
turned very red instead, and called himself a fool and hurried out of
the room, and left her half amused and half regretful. She felt very
tender towards him after that; and the old desire to mother him was
very strong within her when they stood together at last on the
platform at Euston, and had only a few moments left in which to say
what was in their minds.
"God bless you, dear! I shall see you again soon?" was all she could
bring herself to say in that last moment.
"No--yes--perhaps. I am going to write to you quite soon. I'm a rotten
ass, as you know, but--you will try and understand, won't you, Kitty?"
The train went on, and she leaned out of the window and laughed.
"I am sure I shall understand," she said.