The Making of a Prig Part 29

Ted rose from his seat hurriedly, and picked up his hat.

"I never said you were wrong, did I?" he said, gently. "You see, you're clever, and I'm not, and it's altogether different. I was only sorry, that was all; I didn't think you went in for that sort of thing, and I was. .h.i.t up, rather. But it was my fault entirely; and of course you're right,--you always are. I sha'n't bother you any more, now I know."

"Ted, don't go," she said, imploringly, as he touched her hand again and turned towards the door. "Don't you understand, Ted, that--that _he_ only appealed to half of me, and-- I do care, Ted, and I want you to come and see me again; I do really, Ted, I--"

But he only smiled as incredulously as before, and spoke again in the same gentle tone.

"Thanks, awfully. But don't bother to spoof yourself about me; I shall be all right, really. It was always my fault; I won't bother you any more. Good-bye."

And, haunted by his changed manner and his joyless smile, she went back to her seat on the stairs, and sat with her hands clasped over her knees and her eyes staring vacantly into s.p.a.ce, as she tried in vain to discover what her real feelings were. "Perhaps I haven't got any," she thought to herself. "Perhaps I am incapable of loving any one, or of feeling anything. And I have sent away the best fellow in the whole world, and it doesn't seem to matter a bit. I wonder if _anything_ could make me cry now?" And she took a gloomy pleasure in conjuring up all the incidents of the last unhappy week, and laughed cynically when she found that none of them had any effect upon her.

"Why don't they light the gas?" complained the working gentlewomen, when they came downstairs to supper. And when Katharine explained that she had promised to light it herself and had forgotten to do so, they pa.s.sed on their way, marvelling that any one with so little feeling should have her moments of abstraction like every one else. After they had all gone down, she had a restless fit, and paced up and down the landing until Polly Newland came out of the sick room, and stopped her.

"You might choose another landing, if you want to do that," she said, crossly. "You've woke her up now; but you can come in if you like. She has just asked for you."

Katharine followed her in, rather awkwardly, and sat down on the chair that was pointed out to her, and tried to think of something appropriate to say. It was difficult to know how to begin, when she looked round the room, and noted all the objects that seemed to have belonged to some distant period in her life, before the world had become so hard and cheerless. But Phyllis was looking the same as ever, except that she was rather white, and her hair was strangely tidy. She was the first to speak.

"Hullo," she said. "I've been wanting to see you. What's the matter with you, child?"

The incongruity of being asked by the invalid for the cause of her own malady did not immediately occur to Katharine. But the familiar tone of sympathy went straight to her heart, and she broke down completely.

She had a dim notion that Polly remonstrated angrily, and that Polly was sent out of the room; and after that she was conscious of nothing except of the comfort of being able to cry undisturbed, until Phyllis said something about red eyes, and they joined in a spasmodic laugh.

"Poor old girl, what have they been doing to you?" she asked.

"Everything has been horrid," gasped Katharine. "And you were ill, and n.o.body understood, and oh, Phyllis!--I am a _prig_!"

CHAPTER XVI

Marion Keeley lay in an indolent att.i.tude on the sofa by the window.

Her mother was addressing circulars at the writing-table, with the anxious haste of the fashionable woman of business. Both of them looked as though the London season, which a royal wedding had prolonged this year, had been too much for them.

"He is coming again to-night," said Marion, throwing down a letter she had been reading. Her tone was one of dissatisfaction.

"I know," replied her mother. "I asked him to come."

Marion made a gesture of impatience.

"Don't you think," she said, "that you might occasionally, for the sake of variety, wait until his own inclination prompted him to come?"

"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Keeley, absently. "I asked him because I wanted to make final arrangements with him about Lady Suffolk's drawing-room meeting, at which he has promised to speak to-morrow."

"It seems to me," observed Marion sarcastically, "that it would save a lot of trouble if you were to marry him yourself."

"It is very surprising," complained her mother, "how you persist in dragging the frivolous element into everything. If you were only like your cousin, now,--so earnest and so sympathetic! How is it that you are really my daughter?"

"I'm sure I don't know; in fact, I think it is the only subject on which you have allowed me to remain ignorant," returned Marion, calmly. "But you needn't bother about me; I am going out to dinner in any case to-night, so you will be able to make your arrangements with Paul without the distraction of the frivolous element. Meanwhile, can't we have some tea?"

The Honourable Mrs. Keeley returned to her circulars with a sigh.

"One might almost think, to hear you talk, that you did not want to marry him at all," she exclaimed.

"One almost might," a.s.sented Marion; and she tore her letter into little pieces, and threw them deftly into the waste-paper basket. Her mother looked at her a little apprehensively.

"How you can, even in fun, pretend to ignore the merits of a character like Paul Wilton's is beyond my comprehension," she grumbled. "What more can you want in a man, I should like to know?"

"More? I don't want any more; I want a good deal less. I'm not ignoring his merits; I only wish I could. I would give anything to find a few honest human imperfections in him. It is his eternal excellence that is driving me to distraction. What a fool I was ever to let him take me seriously! Of course I never should have done, if he had not provoked me by being so difficult to fascinate. He is one of those awful people who are going to make heaven unbearable!"

"Judging by your aggravating behaviour in this world, you won't be there to help him," said her mother, who was losing her patience rapidly after having wrongly addressed two wrappers.

"I hope I sha'n't. If all the people go to heaven who are popularly supposed to be _en route_, I should think even the saints would be too bored to stop there. As for Paul, I grant you that he is eminently fitted for a son-in-law, but I don't see why I should be the victim of his heaven-sent vocation."

"You are not married to him yet; and if you continue in this strain much longer, I doubt if you ever will be."

"Oh," said Marion, with sudden animation, "do you really think there _is_ a chance of his breaking it off?"

The opportune arrival of Katharine at this moment restored some of Mrs. Keeley's good-humour. She approved very decidedly of Katharine, not only because she was a working-woman, but also on account of her patience as a listener. Katharine, she felt, would have made an ideal daughter; Katharine understood the serious aspect of the political situation, and she showed no signs of being bored when people gave her their opinion of things. So she received her with genuine cordiality.

"I am so glad you have come," said Marion, offering her a perfunctory embrace. "You have interrupted mamma, and made tea inevitable. It is quite providential."

"I am glad to be the unwitting cause of so many blessings," said Katharine drily. "I really came to say good-bye. I am going home to-morrow."

"Holidays already?" exclaimed Mrs. Keeley, as though she grudged even the working gentlewoman her moments of relaxation.

"They have not come too soon for me," observed Katharine, to whom the last six weeks had seemed an endless period of waiting. "But I am leaving town for good; so I suppose I shall not see you again for some time. I mean to say, I have given up my teaching, and--"

"How charming of you!" exclaimed Marion, who felt that the last barrier to a warm friendship with her cousin was now removed. "Are you really going to be like everybody else, now?"

But the Honourable Mrs. Keeley was bitterly disappointed.

"It is incredible," she said. "Do you mean to say that you are going to throw up your life's work, just as you are on the point of being a brilliant success?"

"I think, on the contrary, I have merely been a failure," said Katharine, with a patient smile. "You see, there are hundreds of people who can do just what I am doing. But I am wanted at home, and I am going back to my father; I ought never to have left him."

"Oh, these girls!" sighed Mrs. Keeley. "What is the use of trying to make them independent? And I thought you were so different; I held you up as an example to my own daughter--"

"I am so sorry," murmured Katharine, in parenthesis. Marion only laughed.

"I was proud to own you as my niece," pursued Mrs. Keeley, increasing in fervour as she went on. "You were doing what so few women succeed in doing, and I had the keenest admiration for your courage and your talent. And to give it all up like this! Surely, you have some excellent reason for such an extraordinary course of action?"

"It seems to me quite sufficient reason that I am more wanted at home than here," replied Katharine, with the same air of gentle endurance.

She had gone through a similar explanation more than once lately, and it was beginning to blunt the edge of her newly made resolutions. It also took away most of the picturesqueness of being good.

"But, indeed, you are very much mistaken," her aunt continued to urge.

"Who has been putting this effete notion of _duty_ into your head? I thought we working-women had buried it for ever! Consider what you are doing in throwing up the position you have carved out for yourself; consider the bad effect it will have upon others, the example,--everything!