The Making of a Prig Part 23

CHAPTER XIII

She was looking rather tired, he thought, when he examined her more critically; her eyes seemed larger, and her expression had grown restless, and she had lost some of the roundness of her face. But she had gained a good deal in repose of manner; and her voice, when she answered him, was more under control at the moment than his own.

"I shouldn't think you would," she laughed. "I shocked them all at breakfast, this morning, by saying I should like to try idle men for a change!"

It struck him that she would not have made such a remark when he left her last autumn; and again he would have liked to possess a chronicle of the last six weeks. But her laugh was the same as ever, and her hand was still grasping his with a rea.s.suring fervour.

"Come back with me," he said, spontaneously. "We can't talk here, can we? I dare say I can knock up some sort of a supper for you, if you don't mind a very primitive arrangement."

"It will be beautiful," she said; and the throb of pleasure in her voice allayed his last feeling of suspicion.

They found that, after all, they had very little to say to one another; and they were both glad of the occupation of preparing supper, when they arrived at the Temple and found that the housekeeper had gone out for the evening. They made as much fun as they could over the difficulties of procuring a meal, and avoided personal topics with a scrupulous care, and did not once run the risk of looking each other in the face. And afterwards, when they had made themselves comfortable in two chairs near the lamp and conversation became inevitable, an awkward embarra.s.sment seized them both.

"It's very odd," said Katharine, frowning a little; "but I have been bottling up things to tell you for weeks, and now they seem to have got congested in my brain and I can't get one of them out. Why is it, I wonder? I can't have grown suddenly shy of you; but we seem to have lost touch, somehow. Oh, it's queer; I don't like it!"

She gave herself a little shake. Paul laughed slightly.

"What an absurd child you are! It is only because we have not been together lately, and so we've lost the trick of it. You are always turning yourself inside out, and then sitting down a little way off to look at it."

"I believe I do," owned Katharine. "I always want to know why certain things affect me in certain ways."

"Did you want to know why you were glad to see me, this evening?"

She looked up quickly at him for the first time.

"No," she said, frankly. "At least, I don't think I thought about it."

"Good child!" he said. "Don't think about it." And she wondered why he looked so pleased.

"Why not?" she asked him. "Please tell me."

"Oh, because it isn't good for you to be always turning yourself inside out; certainly not on my account. Besides, it spoils things.

Don't you think so?"

"What things?"

"Oh, please! I'm not here to answer such a lot of puzzling questions.

Who has been getting you into such bad habits, while I have been away?"

"n.o.body who could answer any of my puzzling questions," she replied, softly; and Paul asked hastily if she would make the coffee. He had fetched her here as an experiment, a kind of test of his own feelings and of hers; and he had a sudden fear lest it should succeed too effectually. She went obediently and did as she was told, and brought him his coffee when it was ready; and he submitted to having sugar in it, since it compelled her to brush his hair with her sleeve as she bent over him with the sugar basin.

"Well?" he asked, in the next pause. She was balancing her spoon on the edge of her cup, with a curious smile on her face.

"Oh, nothing!"

"Nothing must be very interesting, then. But I don't suppose I have any right to know. Have I?"

The spoon dropped on the floor with a clatter.

"Of course you have! I wish you wouldn't say those things! They hurt so. I was only thinking,--it wasn't anything important, but--I'm so awfully happy to-night."

"But that is surely of the very first importance. Might one know why?

Or is that some one else's secret, too?"

She disturbed his composure by suddenly pushing her coffee away from her; and there was an angry light in her eyes, as she sprang to her feet and stood looking down at him.

"Sometimes I think I hate you," she said; and the words struck him as being strangely inadequate to the occasion. They might have been spoken by a petulant child, and the moment before he had felt that she was a woman. He put his cup down too, and went towards her.

"Does sometimes mean now?" he asked jestingly. He was trying, impotently, to prevent her from going any farther. But she took a step backward, and did not heed his intention.

"Yes, it does," she said, angrily. "I am tired of being treated like a child; I am tired of letting you do what you like with me. One day you spoil me; and another, you hurt me cruelly. And you don't care a little bit. I am a kind of amus.e.m.e.nt to you, an interesting puzzle, a toy that doesn't seem to break easily; that's all. And I just let you do it,--it is my own fault; when you hurt me I hide what I feel, and when you are nice to me I forget everything else. Oh, yes, of course I am a fool; do you think I don't know it? You have only to touch my face, or to look at me, or to smile, and you know I am in your hands.

I despise myself for it; I would give all I know to be strong enough to put you out of my life. But I can't do it, I can't! And you know I can't; you know I am bound up in you. Everything I feel seems to be yours; all my thoughts seem to belong to you, directly they come into my head; I can't take the smallest step without wondering what you will think of it. Oh, I hate myself for it; you don't know how I hate myself! But I can't help it."

"Stop," said Paul, putting out his hand. But she waved him away, and went on talking rapidly.

"I must say it all now; it has been driving me mad lately. At first, it seemed so easy to get on without you; but it grew much harder as it went on, and when you stopped writing to me, I--I thought I should go mad. It was so awful, too, when I had got used to telling you things; there was no one else I could tell things to, and the loneliness of it was so terrible! I wanted to kill myself, those days; but I was too big a coward. So I got along somehow; and some days it was easier than others, but it was always hard. Only, n.o.body ever guessed. Oh, if you knew how I have learnt to deceive people! And there was always my work to get through, as well; it has been horrible. And I could no more help it than I could help breathing. I wanted to kill myself!"

"Don't," half whispered Paul, and he came a little nearer to her. But she turned and leaned against the mantel-shelf for support, and clasped the cold marble with her fingers.

"I must say it, Paul. If you like, I will go away afterwards and never see you again. But I cannot let it spoil my life any longer; I feel as though you had got to hear it _now_. When I wrote you that last letter, I said that if you did not answer it I would not write to you again, or think about you, or come and see you any more. And you didn't answer it. I got to loathe the postman's knock, because it made my face hot, and I was afraid people would find out. But they never did! I came down to breakfast every day, in the hope of finding a letter from you; and when there wasn't one, and everything seemed a blank,--oh, don't I know the awful look of that dining-room when there isn't a letter from you!--I just had to pretend that I hadn't expected to find one at all." She paused expectantly, but this time Paul made no attempt to speak. "I was never any good at pretending, before," she went on in a gentler tone, "but I believe I could deceive any one now. Only, I never succeeded in cheating myself! I used to find out new ways to school, because the old ones reminded me of you; and I had to do all my crying in omnibuses, at the far end up by the horses, because I dare not do it at Queen's Crescent, where I might have been seen. For I did cry sometimes." Her voice trembled, and she ended with a little sob. She buried her face in her hands.

"So that is what you have been doing for these six weeks?" said Paul, involuntarily.

"Do you find it so amusing, then?" asked Katharine in a stifled tone.

He stepped up behind her, and twisted her round gently by the shoulders, so that she was obliged to look at him. The hardness went from her face, and she held out her hands to him instinctively.

"Paul," she said, piteously, "I couldn't help it. Aren't you a little bit sorry for me? What have I done that I should like the wrong person? Other girls don't do these things. Am I awfully wicked, or awfully unlucky? Paul, say something to me! Are you very angry with me? But I couldn't help it, I couldn't indeed! I have tried so hard to make myself different, and I can't!"

He bit his lip and tried to say something, but failed.

"And after all," she added in a low tone, "when I had been schooling myself to hate you for six weeks, I nearly went mad with joy when Phyllis came and told me you were in the hall. Oh, Paul, I know I am dreadfully foolish! Will you ever respect me again, I wonder?"

There was a quaint mixture of humour and pathos in her tone; and he gathered her into his arms and kissed her tenderly, without finding any words with which to answer her. She clung to him, and kissed him for the first time in return, and forgot that she had once thought it wrong to be caressed by him; just now, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be comforting her for the suffering of which he himself was the cause. And her pa.s.sionate wish to rouse him from his apathy had ended in a weak desire to regain his tolerance at any cost.

"You are not angry with me? I haven't made you angry?" she asked him in an anxious whisper.

"No, no, you foolish child!" was all he said as he drew her closer.

"But it was dreadful of me to say all those things to you, wasn't it?"

"I like you to say dreadful things to me, dear."

She swayed back from him at that, with her two hands on his shoulders.

"Do you mean that, really? But--you _must_ think it dreadfully wicked of me to let you kiss me, and to come and see you like this? It is dreadfully wicked, isn't it? Oh, I know it is; everybody would say so."

"I can't imagine what you mean. You are a dear little Puritan to me.