The Making of a Prig Part 18

Here at last was the opportunity she had wanted. He should know now that she was not a child, to be laughed at because she was cross, to be ignored when she was hurt, and to be coaxed back into good humour again by a bribe. She would be able to show him now that she was not the sort of woman he seemed to consider her, and she told herself several times that she was overjoyed at being given the chance of telling him so. But when it came to the point, she found that the cold, dignified letter she had been composing for weeks was not so easy to write; and she spent the rest of the evening in thinking of new ones. First of all, it was to be very short, and very stiff; but that was not obvious enough to gratify her injured feelings, and she set to work on another one that was mainly sarcastic. But sarcasm seemed a sorry weapon to use when she had reached such a crisis in her life as this; and she thought of another one in bed, after the light was out, in which she determined that he should know she was unhappy as well. And this one was so pathetic that it even roused her own pity, and she felt that it would be positively inhuman to send such a letter as that to any one, however badly he had behaved.

In the end, she did not write to him at all. It was more effective, she thought, to remain silent. So she went to school the next morning as usual, and gave her lessons as usual; though she looked in the gla.s.s at intervals to see if she were pale and had a sad expression, which certainly ought to have been the case. But even her head did not ache, which it did sometimes; and Nature obstinately refused to come to her a.s.sistance. She reached home again about four o'clock, and the aspect of the doorsteps and the area completed her discomfiture. If they had only been a little less squalid, a little more free from the domination of cats, she might have retained her dignified att.i.tude to the end. But there was something about them to-day that recalled the cosy little room in the Temple by vivid contrast; and she flung her pile of exercise books recklessly upon the hall table, and hastened out of the house again, without allowing herself time to think.

"I was afraid you were not coming," he said, and he greeted her with both hands. She never remembered seeing him so unreserved in his welcome before; and she marvelled at herself for having attempted to keep away from him any longer.

"It was because of the cats," she said, laughing to hide her emotion.

But she could not hide anything from him; he knew something of what she was thinking, and he bent down and deliberately kissed her.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, trying to free her hands to cover her burning face.

"Because you didn't stop me, I suppose," he replied, lightly.

"But I didn't know you were going to."

"Because I knew you wouldn't mind, then."

She did not speak, and her eyes were lowered.

"Did you mind, Katharine?"

"No," she whispered.

"Now, tell me why I am indebted to the cats," he said, as he rang the bell for tea; and for the rest of the afternoon they talked, as Katharine laughingly said, "without any conversation."

There was no explanation on either side, no attempt at facing the situation; and she felt when she left him that she had thrown away her last chance of controlling their friendship. There had been a tacit struggle between their two wills, and his had triumphed. She could never put him out of her life now, unless he broke with her of his own accord; and she realised bitterly, even while she was glad, that he did not care enough for her to do that.

She saw him constantly all through the hot months of July and August.

She gave up her original intention of going home for the summer holidays, on the pretext of reading for her next term's lectures at the British Museum; but she did very little work in reality, and she spent whole days in the reading-room, regardless of the people around her, sometimes even of the book before her, and dreamed long hours away, making visions in which only two people played any prominent part,--and those two people were Paul and herself. Her whole life seemed to be a kind of dream just then, with a vivid incident here and there when she met him or went to see him, and the rest a vague nebula, in which something outside herself made her do what was expected of her. Sometimes she felt impelled to work furiously hard for a day or two, or to take long walks by herself, as though nothing else would tire her restless energy; and then she would relapse into her lethargic mood again, and do nothing but watch vigilantly for the post, or haunt the streets where she had sometimes met him. And all the while she thought she was happy, with a kind of weird, pa.s.sionate happiness she had never known before; and it seemed to compensate for the hours of suspense and anxiety she went through when he took no notice of her. For his conduct was as inexplicable as ever; and for one day that he was demonstrative and even affectionate, she had to endure many of indifference that almost amounted to cruelty.

"We are horribly alike; it hurts me sometimes when I suddenly find myself in you," she said to him one day, when he was in an expansive mood.

"I am much honoured by the discovery, but I fail to see where the likeness lies," was his reply.

"It is not very definite," she said, thoughtfully. "I think it must be because I feel your changes of mood so quickly. We laugh together at something, and everything seems so fearfully nice; and then, suddenly, I feel that something has sprung up between us, and I look up and I see that you feel it too, and all at once there is nothing to talk about. Haven't you ever noticed it?"

"I think you are an absurdly sensitive little girl," he said, smiling.

"Of course," she continued, without heeding his remark, "on the surface, no two people could be more unlike than we are. You are so awfully afraid of showing what you feel, for instance; but I always tell you everything, don't I?"

"My dear child, what nonsense! I am of the most artless and confiding nature; while you, on the contrary, never give yourself away at all.

Why, you never tell me anything I really want to know! Whatever put such an idea into that curious head of yours?"

"Oh, don't!" she cried. "You make me feel quite hysterical! You have no right to upset all my views on my own character, as well as on yours. I _know_ I am stupidly demonstrative. I have often blushed all over because I have told you things I never meant to tell any one. How can you say I am reserved? I only wish I were!"

"The few confidences of a reserved person are always rash ones,"

observed Paul. "The same might be said of the reflections of an impulsive person, or the impulses of a reflective one. It all comes from want of habit. You can't alter your temperament, that's all."

"But I can't believe that I am reserved," she persisted; "it seems incredible. And it makes us more alike than ever."

"Really, Katharine, I beg you to rid your mind of that exceedingly fallacious notion," said Paul, laughing. "I a.s.sure you I am to be read like a book."

"A book in a strange language, then. I don't think I shall ever be able to read it," said Katharine, shaking her head. And she drew down a rebuke upon herself for being solemn.

They had a tacit unwillingness to become serious, about this time; their conversation was made up of trivialities, and he never kissed her except on the tips of her fingers. They avoided any demonstration of feeling that might have revealed to them the anomaly of their position, and they mutually shrank from defining their relations towards one another.

They were standing together at the window, one day, looking down into Fountain Court, which was as hot and as dusty as ever in spite of the water that was playing into the basin in the middle.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked her, so suddenly that she was surprised into an answer.

"I was thinking how queer it is that you and I should be friends like this," she replied, truthfully.

"What's the matter with our friendship, then?" he asked, in the prosaic manner he always a.s.sumed when she showed any sentiment. She laughed.

"There's nothing the matter with it, of course. You are the most unromantic person I ever knew. You seem to delight in divesting every little trivial incident of its sentiment. What makes you such a Vandal?"

"But, surely, you are not supposing that there _is_ any romance in our knowing each other, are you?"

"I never dreamed of such a thing," retorted Katharine. "I think there is more romance in your cigarette holder than in the whole of you!"

Sometimes she wondered if he were capable of deep feeling at all, or if his indifference were really a.s.sumed.

"I envy you your utter disregard of circ.u.mstance," she once exclaimed to him. "How did you learn it? Do you really never feel things, or is it only an easy way of getting through life?"

"I'm afraid I don't see what you are driving at. I dare say you are being very brilliant, but I fail to discern what I am expected to say."

"You are not expected to say anything," she said, playfully. "That is the best of being a gigantic fraud like yourself; n.o.body ever does expect you to fulfil the ordinary requirements of every-day life. You might be a heathen G.o.d, who grins heartlessly while people try to propitiate him with the best they have to offer, and who eats up their gifts greedily when they are not looking."

"Has all this any reference to me, might I ask?"

"I don't believe you've got any ordinary human feeling," pursued Katharine. "I don't believe you care for anybody or anything, so long as you are left alone. Why don't you say something, instead of staring at me as though I were a curiosity?"

"If you reflect, you will see that there has not been a single pause since you began to speak. Besides, why shouldn't you be catechised as well as myself? Where do you keep all your deep feeling, please? I haven't seen much of it, but perhaps I have no right to expect such a thing. No doubt you keep it all for some luckier person than myself."

His tone was one of raillery, as hers had been when she began to talk.

But she startled him, as she did sometimes, by a sudden change of mood; and she flashed round upon him indignantly.

"It is horrible of you to laugh at me. You know you don't mean what you say; you know I have any amount of deep feeling. I hide it on purpose, because you don't like me to show it, you know you don't!

I--I think you are very unkind to me."

He reached out his hand and stroked her hair gently; she was sitting a little away from him, and he could see the sensitive curve of her lower lip.

"Don't, child! One never knows how to take you. Another time you would have seen that I was only joking."

"You have no right to joke about such a serious matter. You know it was a serious matter, now; wasn't it?"

"The most serious in the universe," he a.s.sured her; and he brought his hand gently down her cheek, and laid it against her throat.

"You are only laughing; you always laugh at me," she complained; but she bent her head, and kissed his hand softly. "I feel like a wolf, sometimes," she added, impetuously.