Part 8 (1/2)
”How have I contrived to fall among such an appallingly serious set of infants?” he muttered. ”Hey-day! here's for London and life!” And he turned indoors to look for a time-table.
Ted stalked straight into the summer house, with his head in the air and his mind filled with high-souled resolutions. Any one less occupied with his own reflections would have seen that Katharine was sitting with an absent look in her eyes, while the book she held in her hand was open at the index-page. But Ted only saw in her the woman he had just sworn within him to respect; and he took the book reverently out of her hand, and sat down, also just behind her, on the end of the basket chair. It was the same basket chair.
”Kitty, I say,” he began, clearing his throat, ”I've come to tell you something.”
Katharine glanced at his solemn face, and looked away again. She wished he had not sat just there.
”It must have something to do with a funeral, then,” she said, with a flippancy that would have aroused the suspicions of a more observant person. But Ted was still absorbed in his high-souled resolutions, and her abstraction failed to make any impression on him.
”No, it hasn't,” he rejoined gloomily. ”I wish it had! I shouldn't mind being dead, not I! It would cure this hump, anyhow. Perhaps some one would be sorry, then; don't know who would, though! _She_'d only complain of the expense of burying me.”
”Poor old man, who has been bullying you now?” asked Katharine, in a dreamy voice that she strove to make interested. ”Has _she_ been doing anything fresh?”
”Has she, that's all! She's been doing something to some purpose, this time. Got me a beastly job, in a beastly city place; a pound a week; soap, or wholesale clothing, or something poor. Says I ought to be thankful to get anything. Thankful indeed! _She_ never shows a spark of grat.i.tude for her bally seven hundred a year, I know.”
”Oh, Ted! every one is going away. What shall I do?” The words escaped her involuntarily. But he was still too full of his own troubles to notice anything except that she seemed distressed; and this, of course, was only natural.
”I knew you'd be cut up,” he said, kicking savagely at the leg of the chair. ”You're the only chap who cares; and you'll forget when I've been gone a week. Oh, yes, you will! I ought never to have been born.
They're sure to be rank outsiders, too; and I can stand anything sooner than bounders. It's too beastly caddish for words, and I'd like to kill him for his rotten advice. What does he know about anything, a played-out chap like that?”
Ted's conversation was apt to become involved when he was agitated; but on this occasion Katharine made no attempt to unravel it.
”Poor Ted,” she murmured tonelessly, and continued to think about something else.
”I don't know why you are so cut up about it. I'm such a rotten a.s.s, and you're so infernally smart! I haven't any right to expect you to care a hang about me; I won't even ask you to write to me, when I'm gone,” cried Ted, making desperate efforts to keep his high-souled resolutions. ”It's a rotten, caddish world, and I'm the rottenest fool in it.”
He waited for the contradiction that always came from Katharine at this point of his self-abas.e.m.e.nt; but when she said nothing, and only went on staring in the opposite direction, he felt that there was something unusually wrong, and came hastily round to the front of her chair and repeated his last remark with emphasis.
”You may say what you like, but I am. All the same, I would sooner chuck the whole show than make you unhappy. I'll be hanged if I don't go away to-morrow without a single--” He stopped abruptly; for she was looking up at him piteously, and his high-souled resolutions suddenly melted into oblivion. ”Kitty, old chum, don't cry! I'm not worth it,--on my soul I'm not; blowed if I've ever seen you cry before! Good old Kit, I say, don't. Oh, the devil! Do you really mind so much?”
”Please, Ted, go away; you don't understand; go away; it isn't that at all! Don't, Ted, don't! Oh, dear, whatever made me cry?” gasped Katharine. But Ted would take no denial: a woman's tears would have disarmed him, even if he had not been in love with her; and Katharine, the tomboyish companion of years, appeared to him in a strangely lovable light as she sobbed into her hands and made the feeblest efforts to keep him away. His arms were round her in a moment, and her head was pulled down on his shoulder, and he poured a medley of broken sentences into her ear.
”How was I to know you cared, old chum? Of course I have always cared; but I never thought about it until that played-out London chap turned up and put it into my head. Dear old Kitty! Why, do you know, I was half afraid you were going to like him, one time; wasn't I a rotten a.s.s? But, you see, you're so bally clever, and all that; and I supposed he was, too, and so I thought,--don't you see? And all the while, it was me! Buck up, Kit! I won't split that you cried, on my honour I won't. Oh, I say, I'm the most confoundedly lucky chap-- But, oh, that infernal office in the city!”
Katharine disengaged herself at last. His kisses seemed to burn into her cheeks. She pushed back the basket chair into the corner of the summer-house, and put her fingers over her eyes to shut out the flower beds and the sunlight.
”Stop, Ted! I don't know what you mean. You must not think those things of me; they are simply not true. I can't let you kiss me like that. Has the world gone suddenly mad, this afternoon? I don't understand what has happened to every one. I don't understand anything. Will you go, please, Ted? If you won't, I--I must.”
She forced out the disjointed sentences in hard, pa.s.sionless tones.
Ted stood absolutely still where she left him, and watched her stumble through the doorway and disappear among the laurel bushes and the old box-trees. Then he rumpled up his thick hair with both his hands, and laughed aloud.
”I ought never to have been born,” he said, and his voice broke.
CHAPTER VI
On a foggy morning in the beginning of the following January, Ted Morton strolled out of his bedroom shortly before eight o'clock, and rang the bell for breakfast. He yawned as though he were only half awake, and swore gently at the weather as he stirred up the fire to make a blaze.
”What an infernal day!” he muttered, and pulled down the blind and lighted the gas. The housekeeper brought in his breakfast and his letters, and wisely withdrew without saying anything. Ted took the lid off the teapot, and examined the three envelopes in turn. His face brightened a little as he came to the third, and he b.u.t.tered some toast and ate it standing.
”Well, I'm hanged! Not a single bill, and one from Kit, good old Kit!