She waited in vain during the next two days for Ted's letter. His
parting words to her, however, seemed to have again restored her peace
of mind; and the virtuous mood in which she returned to Ivingdon was
so unprecedented as to rouse surprise rather than the admiration it
deserved. The climax was reached when Miss Esther insisted on giving
her a tonic.
"It is very ridiculous," she remonstrated, "that one is never allowed
to drop one's characteristic attitude for a moment. If I had come home
and behaved as childishly as I usually do, you would have been quite
satisfied; but just because I am inclined to be civilised for a
change, you choose to resent it. One would think you had taken out a
patent for all the virtues."
"My dear, that is doubtless very clever, but I wish you would drink up
this and not keep me standing," returned her aunt, who was, as ever,
occupied with actions and not with theories about them; and Katharine
had to seek consolation for her temporary discomfort in the absurdity
of the situation.
She wondered slightly why Ted had not written to her at once, but
after the vacillation he had already shown she was not unprepared for
a further delay; it was more than likely that he found the
complexities of writing what he could not speak to be greater than he
supposed, and it amused her to conjecture that he would probably end
in coming to her for the help he had learnt to expect from her in all
the crises of his life. Meanwhile, there was a whole lifetime before
them in which they could work out the effects of their action, and in
her present mood she saw no satisfactory reason for hurrying it; she
did not realise how persistently she was recalling every instance of
Ted's kindness to her, as if to strengthen her resolution, and she was
unconscious of the doggedness with which she avoided dwelling on a
certain episode in the London visit which she had never even mentioned
to her father. She had cheated herself, by degrees, into a complacency
that she mistook for resignation.
At last, by the mid-day post on Saturday morning, she received her
letter. It came with another one, written in a hand that brought
association without distinct recollection to her mind; and she opened
the latter first, principally because it was the one that interested
her least. The first page revealed its identity; it was from Mrs.
Downing, and was characteristically full of underlined words and
barely legible interpolations, and she was obliged to read it through
twice before she was able to grasp its meaning. The drift of it was
that the enterprising lady principal was about to open a branch of her
school in Paris, where everything was to be French, "_quite_ French,
you know, my dear Miss Austen,--staff, conversation, cooking, games,
_everything_; a place to which I can send on the dear children from
here when they want finishing. The French are such _delicious_ people,
are they not? _So_ unique, and _so_ French!" The morals, however, were
to be English; so, in spite of the unique French element in the French
character, there was to be an English head to the establishment, and
it was this position that she proceeded in a maze of extravagant
compliments to offer to her former junior mistress. "Not a duenna, of
_course_, for that will be supplied in the person of the excellent
Miss Smithson, who will act nominally as housekeeper, and make an
_exquisite_ background to the whole. There are always some of those
dear foolish mammas who will insist on placing propriety before
education,--so benighted, is it not? But Miss Smithson was intended by
Nature, I am sure, to propitiate that kind of mamma; while _you_, my
dear Miss Austen, I intend to be something more than a background. I
look to you to give a _tone_ to the school, to manage the working of
it all,--the amusements, the lectures, indeed, the whole _régime_; to
be responsible for the dear children's happiness, and to see that they
write happy letters home every week,--to take _my_ place, in fact. I
could tell you _all_ in two minutes, etc., etc."
Katharine laid down the letter with an involuntary sigh; the position
it offered was full of attractions to her, and the salary would have
been more than she had ever hoped to demand. "I wish she had asked me
six weeks ago," she said aloud, and then accused herself fiercely of
disloyalty and picked up Ted's letter, and studied the boyish
handwriting on the envelope as though to give herself courage to open
it. She had wanted to be alone with his letter, and had carefully
watched her father out of the house before shutting herself into the
study; so the sound of a footstep on the gravel path outside brought a
frown to her face, and she remained purposely with her back to the
window so that the intruder, whoever he was, should see that she did
not mean to be disturbed. But the voice in which she heard her name
spoken through the open window arrested her attention.
She dropped the unopened letter on the table, and turned slowly round
to face the speaker. The strangeness of his coming, when she had been
obstinately putting him out of her thoughts since last Monday, had a
paralysing effect upon her nerves; and Paul swung himself over the low
window seat, and reached her side in time to save her from falling.
She recovered herself immediately, however, and shrank back from his
touch.
"I do not understand why you are here," she found herself saying with
difficulty.
"That is what I have come to explain," he replied. "I could hardly
expect you to understand."
His tone was curiously gentle. It struck her, as she looked at him
again, that he was very much altered. She had not noticed his
appearance much as he stood outside the book shop, with the dark fog
at his back; but now, as the light from the window behind fell full
on his head she saw the fresh streaks of white in the black hair, and
the sight affected her strangely. Perhaps, while she in her arrogance
had believed him to be living in an ill-gotten contentment, he, too,
had had something to suffer.
"Won't you sit down?" she said, and took a chair herself, and waited
for him to begin. The one idea in her mind was that he should not
suspect her of nervousness.
"You were kind enough, when we last met in the summer," began Paul,
"to congratulate me on my engagement to your cousin. I am going to ask
you to extend your kindness now, and to congratulate us both on being
released from that engagement."
Katharine looked wonderingly at him. But there was nothing to be
gathered from his face. She smiled rather sadly.
"Poor Marion!" she said, softly. "Isn't anybody to be allowed to
remain happy?"
"You mistake me," he corrected her carefully. "Your cousin took the
initiative in the matter; she is obviously the one to be
congratulated."
"And you?"
"I? Oh, I suppose I have only my own ignorance to blame. If I had had
more knowledge of women, I should have known better what was expected
of me. As it is, my engagement has proved a complete failure."
There was a pause, till Katharine roused herself to speak in a
lifeless kind of voice that did not seem to belong to her.
"I am sorry if it has made you unhappy," she said. Paul looked at her
critically.
"Are you sure?" he asked, smiling.
Katharine folded and unfolded her hands uneasily, and wished he would
go away and remove his disquieting presence from her life for ever.
"Oh, yes," she said. "One is always sorry when people are unhappy, of
course."
"Only that?" His voice had a touch of disappointment in it, and she
began to tremble for her composure. He got up and walked to the window
and looked across the lawn, where the wintry sun was struggling
through the bare branches of the elm trees and making faint intricate
patterns on the whitened grass below. "This is where I first met you,
three years ago," he went on as though he were talking to himself.
"You were only a child then, and you interested me. I used to wonder
what there was about you that interested me so much, a mere child like
you! You were very sweet to me in those days, Katharine."
"I--I wish you wouldn't," said Katharine. But he did not seem to hear
her.
"Most men would have behaved differently, I suppose," he went on,
still looking away from her. "It is very fatal to admit the
possibility, even to ourselves, of making a new system for an effete
civilisation like ours; and I was a fool to suppose that women could
be dealt with by any but the obvious methods. It is my own fault, of
course, that in my anxiety to keep your respect I managed to destroy
your affection."
She wanted to vindicate herself, to protest against what seemed to her
his confident self-righteousness; but the old influence was creeping
over her again, and it numbed her.
"I wish you would not say those things," she said, weakly. The
unopened letter lying on the red table-cloth seemed like a protest
against the futility of the scene that was passing, and she found
herself controlling a desire to laugh at the mockery of it all.
He turned round again with a half-suppressed sigh, and took out his
watch.
"Just twelve," he said, reflectively. "I must be off if I mean to
walk to the station. You will forgive me for having worried you with
all this? I had a sort of feeling that I should like to tell you about
it myself; our old friendship seemed to demand that little amount of
frankness, though I suppose you will think I have no right to talk
about friendship any longer. I acknowledge that I have given you every
reason to be vexed with me; if I can ever do anything to remove the
disagreeable impression from your mind, I hope you will let me know.
Good-bye."
"You--you are not going?" She had risen too, and was standing between
him and the door. She did not know why she wished to keep him, but she
knew she could not let him go.
"Unless you can show me a satisfactory reason for remaining," was his
reply. She was trembling violently from head to foot.
"I cannot bear that you should leave me like this," she said in a low
voice.
"It rests with you to say whether I am to go or not," said Paul in the
same tone. She was looking straight into his eyes; but what she saw,
for all that, was the unopened letter on the red table-cloth. She put
out her hands as if to push him away from her, but he mistook her
movement and grasped them both in his own.
"Don't, oh, don't!" she cried, struggling feebly to release herself.
"I want you to go away, please. I thought it was all over and that I
should never see you again, and I was beginning to feel happy, just a
little happy; and now you have come back, and you want it to begin all
over again, and I can't let it,--I am not strong enough! Oh, won't you
go, please?"
"If you send me, I will go," said Paul, and waited for her answer. But
none came, and he laughed out triumphantly. She had never heard him
laugh so thoroughly before.
"I knew you couldn't, you proud little person," he said, with a sudden
tenderness in his smile. "The woman in you is so strong, is it not,
Katharine? Ah, I know far more about you than you know yourself; but
you don't believe that, do you? Shall I tell you why I came to you
to-day? It was just to say to you that I could not live without you
any longer. Isn't that strange? I have been brutally frank with you
to-day, Katharine, there is not another woman in the world who would
have taken it as you have done. I knew you would, before I came to
you; and the knowledge gives me courage to tell you one thing more.
You know the failure of my attempt to marry for ambition; will you, in
your sweetness, help me to marry for love?"
He dropped her hands and moved away from her. The delicacy of his
action, slight though it was, appealed to her strongly. She turned her
back to the table to avoid seeing the white letter on the red
table-cloth.
"I cannot marry you," she said, hurriedly. "I would have been your
slave a few months ago, but I cannot be your wife now."
Except for a tightening of his lips, he did not move a feature.
"That is not true; I cannot believe it," he said shortly.
"Why not?" she asked in a tired voice. She hoped he would not guess
how near she was to submission.
"Because it is not possible. You are not the kind of woman who
changes. You must love me now, because you loved me then. You cannot
deny that you loved me then?"
"No," said Katharine, "I cannot deny it."
"Then why do you pretend that you do not love me still? I do not
believe it is because of my engagement to your cousin. You are made of
finer clay than others, and--"
"Oh, no; that is not the reason," she said, interrupting him
impatiently.
"Will you not tell me why it is?" he asked, approaching her again.
There was no mistaking the tenderness in his tone now, and she cast
about in her mind for some excuse to dismiss him before she completely
lost her power of resistance. "Have I made you so angry that you will
never forgive me?"
"No, no; you never made me angry," she protested. "But you made me
feel absurd, and that is ever so much worse. I cannot be sure, now,
that you are not merely laughing at me. Have you forgotten that you
once thought me a prig? I have not altered; I am still a prig. How can
you want to marry me when you have that image of me in your mind? It
is hopeless to think of our marrying,--you with a secret contempt for
me, and I with a perpetual fear of you!"
The man in him alone spoke when he answered her.
"Surely, it is enough that we love each other?"
She shook her head.
"Ah, you know it is not," she replied, with the strange little smile
that had so often baffled him. "I--I do so wish you would
understand--and go. Or shall I find my father and tell him that you
are here?"
He laid his hand against her cheek, and watched her closely.
"Is it all over,--our friendship, your love for me, everything?" he
whispered. "Do you remember how sweetly you nursed me three years ago?
Have you forgotten the jolly talks we had together in the Temple? And
all the fun we had together in London? Is it all to come to an end
like this?"
"I can't marry you; I don't love you enough for that," she said,
moving restively under his touch. He stroked her cheek gently.
"Then why do you thrill when I touch you?" he asked. "Why do you not
send me away?" It was his last move, and he watched its effect
anxiously. She looked at him helplessly.
"I--I do send you away," she said faintly, and he made her join feebly
in the laugh against herself. There was something contemptible in her
surrender, she felt, as he folded her in his arms and looked down at
her with a manly air of possession.
"If this is not love what is it, you solemn little Puritan?" he
murmured.
"I don't know," said Katharine dully. She submitted passively to his
embrace, and allowed him to kiss her more than once.
"Of course you don't know," he smiled. "What a woman you are, and how
I love you for it! Don't be so serious, sweetheart; tell me what you
are thinking about so deeply?"
It was pity for him, her old genuine love for him reawakening, that
made her at last rouse herself to tell him the truth.
"Will you please let me go, Paul?" she asked submissively. And as he
loosened his arms and allowed her to go, she took one of his hands and
led him with feverish haste round to the table, where Ted's letter
still lay like a silent witness against herself. They stood side by
side and looked at it, the white envelope on the red table-cloth, and
it was quite a minute before the silence was broken. Then Katharine
pulled him away again and covered up the letter with her hand and
looked up in his face.
"Do you know what is in that letter?" she asked, and without waiting
for a reply went on almost immediately. "It is from Ted, to ask me to
be his wife."
"And you are going to say--"
"Yes."
Paul smiled incredulously.
"It is impossible," he said. "I decline to believe what you say now,
after what you said to me on Monday afternoon."
"Ah," she cried, "I was mad then. You always make me mad when I am
with you. You must not talk any more of Monday afternoon; you must
forget what I said to you then, and what I have said to you to-day;
you must forget that I have allowed you to kiss me--"
"Forget?" interrupted Paul. "Are _you_ going to forget all this?"
She turned away with a little cry.
"You make it so hard for me, Paul; and it seemed so easy before you
came!"
"Then it doesn't seem so easy now?"
She evaded his question. "I know I am right, because I thought it all
out when you were not here," she went on piteously. "I cannot trust
myself even to think properly when you are there; you make me quite
unlike myself. That is why I am going to marry Ted. Ted is the sanest
person I know; he leaves me my individuality; he doesn't paralyse me
as you do; and I am simply myself when I am with him."
"Simply yourself!" echoed Paul. "My dear little girl, whatever in
heaven or earth has allowed such a misapprehension to creep into your
head?"
"I know what you mean," she said. "I have thought that out, too. You
know more about me than anybody in the whole world; Ted will never
know as much as you know, although I am going to be his wife. You are
the only person I could ever talk to about myself; you are the only
person who understands. I know all that. But one does not want that in
a husband; one wants some one who will be content with half of one's
self, and allow the other half to develop as it pleases. You would
never be content with less than the whole, would you, Paul? Ah, that
is why I loved you so madly! It is so queer, isn't it, that the very
things that make us fall in love are the very things that make
marriage impossible?"
He did not speak, and she put her arms round his neck impulsively and
drew his head down to hers.
"Don't you understand, dear?" she said. "It is impossible to find
everything we want in one person, so we have to be content with
satisfying one side of ourselves, or accept the alternative and not
marry at all. Ted wants me badly, or I would rather choose not to
marry at all. But he must have some one to look after him,--he can't
live alone like some men; and I have always looked after him all my
life. He has come in my way again now, so I am going to look after him
to the end. I am very fond of Ted, and we have learnt to be chums, so
I don't think it will be a failure. Oh, do say you understand, Paul?"
"Do you love him?" asked Paul.
"Yes," she replied.
"As you loved me?"
"No," said Katharine, simply. "I could never love any one again like
that. I wore myself out, I think, in my love for you. Oh, I know I am
spoiled; I know I have only the second best of myself to give to Ted;
but if he is content with that, ought I not to be glad to give it?"
"But _you_, your own happiness," he urged brokenly. "Have you no
thought for your own happiness?"
"Happiness?" she said, smiling again. "Oh, I do not expect to find
happiness. Women like me, who ask for more than life can possibly give
them, have no right to expect the same happiness as the people who
have found out that it is better to make a compromise and to take
what they can get! Oh, I shall never be greatly happy, I know that.
But I do not mind much; it is enough for me that I did once taste the
real, glorious happiness, if it was only in snatches."
"Won't you taste it again?" he said, drawing her suddenly to him.
"Won't you give up this impossible scheme of yours, and come to me? We
will be married over there by your father,--now,--this very day. We
will go abroad, travel, do what you will. Only come with me,
Katharine. You belong to me, and to me only; you dare not deny it.
Come with me, Katharine."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I am not going to spoil your life,
as you have spoilt mine. You will be a great man, Paul, if you do not
marry me."
"Listen," he said, without heeding her. "This is the last time I shall
ask you; this is the last time I shall hold you in my arms,--_so_. I
shall go away after this, and you will never see me again, nor hear of
me again. I shall never kiss you any more, nor ask you to come away
with me, nor tell you I love you as I never loved another woman. If
you come to me on your knees and beg me to love you again, I will not
relent. Do you understand me? This is the last, the very last time.
_Now_ what have you to say? Will you come with me?"
She threw back her head and met his gaze as he bent over her.
"No," she said again. He covered her face with kisses.
"And now?"
"No," she repeated desperately; and she crept away from him at last,
and took her letter from the table and tried to walk to the door.
A slippered footstep shuffled along the hall and stopped outside the
library door. The next moment the Rector was in the room.
"Kitty, my child, have you seen my hat anywhere? I feel convinced I
put it down somewhere, and for the life of me--"
He paused as he saw Paul, and held out his hand with a smile of
welcome.
"Delighted to see you again, my dear sir, delighted! That is to say,"
added the old man, looking to Katharine for assistance, "I suppose I
_have_ seen you before, though for the moment I cannot quite recall
your name. But my memory is getting a bad one for names, a very bad
one, eh, Kitty? Anyhow, you will stop to lunch, of course; and
meanwhile, if I can only find my hat--"
"Daddy, it is Mr. Wilton," explained Katharine, making an effort to
speak in her usual voice. Strange to say, it did not seem difficult to
become usual again now that her father was in the room. "He stayed
with us once, a long time ago; you remember Mr. Wilton, don't you?"
"To be sure, to be sure; of course I remember Mr. Wilton perfectly!"
said the Rector, shaking hands with him again. "I can remember
distinctly many of our little talks on archæology and so forth. Let me
see, any relation to the great numismatist? Ah, now I know who you are
quite well. There was an accident, or a calamity of some sort, if I
recollect rightly. Kitty, my child, have you found my hat?"
"Will you stay to lunch?" Katharine was asking him.
"Of course he will stay to lunch," cried the Rector, without giving
him time to reply. "I've picked up some fine specimens of old
Sheffield plate that I should like to show you, Mr. Wilton. Stay to
lunch? Why, of course. Dear me, I know I saw it somewhere-- Got to
catch the two-thirty? Oh, that's all right; we'll drive you to the
station after lunch. That child will like a chat with you, eh, Kitty?
You used to be great friends, and she has something--no, no, I've
looked there twice--something of interest to tell you, something of
very great interest, eh, Kitty? A nice young fellow he is, too,"
continued the old man, stopping for a moment in his fruitless search.
"By the way, you know him, don't you? It's young-- Ah, now I remember!
I left it in the vestry; so stupid of me!"
Paul stopped him as he was hurrying out of the room.
"I must be off, thank you, sir. I am not going to catch the two-thirty
at all. I think I will walk on somewhere and catch something else, if
there happens to be anything. I am sure I wish Miss Katharine every
happiness. Good-morning."
He went out by the window as he had come, and they watched him as he
walked across the lawn, the neat figure crowned by the conventional
felt hat. He had not shaken hands with Katharine nor looked at her
again.
The Rector glanced after him and smoothed his hair thoughtfully.
"Curious man that," he remarked with his simple smile. "He always
looks to me as though there were a tragedy in his life."
"Oh, I don't think so," said Katharine, coldly. "It is only his
manner. He takes a joke tragically. Besides, he has never married
unhappily, or anything like that."
"That may be," said Cyril Austen, with one of his occasional flashes
of intuition; "but it means a tragedy to some men if they haven't got
married at all, and I fancy that's one of them. Ah, well, his father
was one of our best--"
Miss Esther's voice came shrilly down the passage, and the Rector
hastened out of the room without finishing his sentence.
"The annoyances of life," thought Katharine cynically, "are much more
important than the tragedies."
She picked up her letter once more and tore it open. Even then she did
not read it at once, but looked out of the window first and beyond the
garden, where a man's felt hat was moving irregularly along the top of
the hedge. She made an impatient gesture and turned her back to the
light, and unfolded Ted's letter at last. And this is what it
contained:--
"By the time you get this, I shall have cleared out. I may be
an infernally rotten ass, but I won't let the best girl in the
world marry me out of kindness, and that is all you were going
to do. I tried to think you were a little keen on me a few
weeks ago, but of course I was wrong. Don't mind me. I shall
come up smiling again after a bit. It was just like my
poorness to think I could ever marry any one so clever and
spry as yourself. Of course you will buck up and marry some
played-out literary chap, who will gas about books and things
all day and make you happy. Good old Kit, it has been a
mistake all along, hasn't it? When I come back, we will be
chums again, won't we? I am off to Melbourne in the morning
and shall travel about for a year, I think. You might write to
me--the jolly sort of letters you used to write. Monty knows
all my movements.
Yours ever,
Ted."
The letter fell from her hand, and she turned and gazed blankly out of
the window. The felt hat was no longer to be seen at the top of the
hedge.