The Making of a Prig Part 25

He motioned her in as he spoke, and shut the door. Katharine walked past him in a half-dazed kind of way. There had been only two feelings expressed in his face, and one was surprise, and the other annoyance.

"What is it, Katharine? Has anything gone wrong?" he demanded in his low, masterful tone. Katharine turned cold; she had never realised before how pitilessly masterful his tone was.

"I couldn't help coming,--I was so miserable! They were all saying things about you, things that were not true. And I wanted to hear you say they were not true. I couldn't rest; so I came. Are you angry with me for coming, Paul?"

She faltered out the words, without looking at him. Paul shrugged his shoulders, but she did not see the movement.

"It was hardly worth while, was it, to risk your reputation merely to confirm what you had already settled in your own mind?"

She opened her eyes, and stared at him hopelessly. Paul walked away to look for some cigarette papers in the pocket of a coat.

"Was it?" he repeated, with his back turned to her. Katharine struggled to answer him.

"You have never spoken to me like that, before," she stammered at last.

"You have never given me any cause, have you?" said Paul, rather awkwardly.

"But what have I done?" she asked, taking a step towards him. "I didn't know you would mind. I always come to you when I am unhappy; you told me I might. And I was unhappy this evening; so I came. Why should it be different this evening? I don't understand what you mean.

Why are you angry with me? You have never been angry before. What have I done?"

"My dear child, there is no occasion for heroics," said Paul, speaking very gently. "I am not angry with you at all. But you must own that it is at least unusual to call upon a man, uninvited, at this unearthly hour. And hadn't you better sit down, now you have come?"

Katharine did not move.

"What does it matter if it is unusual?" she asked. "You know I have been here sometimes, as late as this, before. There is no harm in it, is there? Paul! tell me what I have done to annoy you?"

Paul gave up rummaging in his coat pocket, and came and sat on the edge of the table, and made a cigarette.

"I seem to remember having this same argument with you before," he observed. "Don't you think it is rather futile to go all through it again? You know quite well that it is entirely for your sake that I wish to be careful. Hadn't we better change the subject? If you are going to stop, you might be more comfortable in a chair."

Katharine clenched her hands in the effort to keep back her tears.

"I am not going to stay," she cried, miserably. "I can't understand why you are so cruel to me; I think it must amuse you to hurt me. Why do you ask me to come and see you sometimes, quite as late as this, and then object to my coming to-night? I don't know what you mean."

Paul lighted his cigarette before he answered her.

"You have quite a talent, Katharine, for asking uncomfortable questions. If you cannot see the difference between coming when you are asked, and coming uninvited, I am afraid I cannot help you. Would you like any coffee or anything?"

All at once her brain began to clear. For two hours she had been wandering aimlessly through the streets, in a strange bewilderment of mind, not knowing why she was there nor where she was going. Then she had found herself in Fleet Street; and habit, rather than intention, had brought her to the Temple. And now his maddening indifference had touched her pride, and her deadened faculties began slowly to revive under the shock. She put her fingers over her eyes, and tried to think. The blood rushed to her face, and she thrilled all over with a pa.s.sionate instinct of resistance. He did not know what to make of her, when she stepped suddenly in front of him and faced him unflinchingly.

"You must not expect me to see the difference," she said, proudly. "I shall never understand why I have to make a secret of what is not wrong, nor why you allow me to do it at all if it is wrong. I think you have been playing with my friendship all the time; I can see now that you have not valued it, because I gave it you so freely. But I didn't know that; I wasn't clever enough; and I had never liked anybody but you. I didn't know that I ought to hide it, and pretend that I didn't like you. Perhaps, if I had done that you would have gone on liking me."

He was going to interrupt her, but she did not give him time.

"Would you ask Marion Keeley to come and see you, as you have asked me?"

Paul's face grew dark, and she trembled suddenly at her own boldness.

"I fail to see how such a question can interest either of us," he said, coldly.

"But would you ask her?" she repeated.

"I am perfectly a.s.sured," he replied, quietly, "that if I were to forget myself so far as to do so, Miss Keeley would certainly not come."

"Then you mean to say that it has always been dreadfully wrong of _me_ to come?"

"Really, Katharine, you are very quarrelsome this evening," said Paul, with a forced laugh. "I have repeatedly pointed out to you that a man chooses some of his friends for pleasure, and others for business. I really fail to see why I should be subjected to this minute catechism at your hands."

"Then you chose Marion--for business? It is true, then, what they said! I wish--oh, I wish you had never chosen me--for pleasure!"

The anger had died out of her voice; he could hardly hear what she said; but he made a last attempt to treat the matter lightly.

"I really think, my child, that any comparison between you and your cousin is unnecessary," he began in a conciliating manner.

"I thought so too, until to-day," she replied, piteously.

"But what has happened to-day to put you in this uncomfortable frame of mind?"

"It is what every one is saying about you and Marion,--all those horrid people, and Mr. Heaton, and everybody. I want to know if it is true. Everything is going wrong, everywhere. I wish I were dead! I came to ask you if it is true; I thought I might do that; I thought I knew you well enough. I didn't know you would mind. If you like, I will go away now, and never come and see you any more, or bother you, or let you know that I care for you so awfully. Only, tell me first, Paul, whether it is true or not?"

Her voice had risen, as she went on, and it ended full of pa.s.sionate entreaty. The stern look on his face deepened, but he did not speak.

"I wish I knew the meaning of it all," she continued, relentlessly as it seemed to him. "I wish it were easier to like the right people, and to hate all the others. Why was I made the wrong way? If I had never wanted to like you, it would have been so simple. It would not have mattered, then, that you did not really care for me. But I wish I understood you better. Why did you tell me that you wanted me for your friend, always; and that you didn't believe in marriage, and those things? I believed you so, Paul; and I was content to be your friend; you know I was, don't you? And now you have met Marion, and she is beautiful, and she can help you to get on, to become one of the first men in the country, they said. And you have forgotten all about your views against marriage; and you allow people to talk as though you were making a kind of bargain. Oh, it is horrible! But it isn't true, Paul, is it?"

"Who has been telling you all these things?" he asked.

"Then it is true? You are going to marry her, because of the position, and all that? I wish it wasn't so difficult to understand. Is it a crime, I wonder, to like any one so desperately as I like you? But I can't help it, can I? Oh, Paul, do tell me what to do?"

He winced as she turned to him so naturally for protection, even though it was against himself that she asked it.

"Don't talk like that, child," he said, harshly. And the hand she had held out to him appealingly fell down limply at her side.

"I can't expect you to think anything of me, after what I have just said to you," she went on in the same hopeless voice. "Girls are never supposed to tell those things, are they? It doesn't seem to me to matter much, now that it has all got to stop, for always. I only wish--I wish it had stopped before. I--I am going now, Paul."

Although she turned away from him, she still half expected him to come and comfort her. For a couple of seconds she stood quite still, possessed with a terrible longing to be comforted by him. But he sat motionless and silent on the table; even his foot had ceased swinging.

She walked unsteadily to the door.

"Stop," said Paul. "You cannot go out in this storm."

A peal of thunder broke over the house as he spoke. She had not noticed the rain until then.

"I must go," she said dully, and fumbled at the fastening of the door.

Paul came and took her by the arm, and led her back gently.

"I want to explain, first," he said.

"There is nothing to explain," said Katharine. "I understand."

"Not quite, I think," said Paul. They were standing together by the table, and he was nervously caressing the hand he held between his own. "You have only been talking from your own point of view; you have forgotten mine altogether. You do not seem to think that I, too, may have had something to suffer."