Part 34 (1/2)

”I--I am glad it didn't come off, Ted,” she said, trying to speak lightly. Ted gripped her hand for a moment, and then let it go again, as though he were half ashamed of his momentary show of sentiment.

”You see,” he went on, in a very gruff voice, ”that was the only part I left to Providence, and Providence m.u.f.fed it. I'm such a rotten a.s.s,-- I always was, don't you know? If it had been you, now, you wouldn't have bungled it at all, would you?”

”Providence never has any sense of humour,” said Katharine; and she got up hurriedly, so that he should not see her face. She poured out some medicine, and brought it to him.

”I say, it's awfully ripping to have you to look after me like this,”

he observed. ”What did Miss Esther say?”

”She seemed upset,” said Katharine, smiling slightly. ”But you can always square Aunt Esther, when it's a question of illness; there are such a lot of texts in the Bible about illness, don't you know? By the way, when did you last have something to eat?”

Ted had no idea, beyond a vague notion that some one had brought him something on a tray in the morning, which he had not looked at. So she left him to interview the landlady, whom she found in the middle of a long history of the print in the hall and of the part it had played in the history of her own family as well, to which the Rector was listening patiently though with obvious inattention. Katharine managed to procure what she wanted, and returned with it to the sick room. The invalid was looking more flouris.h.i.+ng than ever.

”You see,” he explained, between the spoonfuls with which she fed him, ”he's such an awfully snide doctor. He won't let me get up, and of course, I'm as right as rain, really. So cheap of him, isn't it?”

In spite of his a.s.sertion, however, he was very glad to play the invalid when she brought him some warm water, and proceeded to bathe his hands and face. It was pleasant, after the desolation of his life for the past six months, to lie back in a lazy att.i.tude without feeling particularly ill, and allow the girl he liked best in the world to do things for him.

”It's so rum,” he remarked, ”that our hands never wear out with being washed so often. I can't think why they don't want soling and heeling after a time, like boots.”

”I think you are right, and that your doctor _is_ rather 'snide,'” was all Katharine said, as she carried away the basin, and looked for his hair brushes. Ted's toilet table was characterised by a luxurious confusion, and she lingered for a moment to arrange the silver-topped bottles in some kind of order. ”You never used to care for this sort of thing,” she remarked, holding up a bottle of _eau de toilette_; ”I remember how you teased me once, when I told you I put lavender water in my cold bath.”

”Oh, well, of course it's beastly rot and all that,” owned Ted; ”but it's the thing to do, and one must, don't you know? Hullo, what are you playing at now?”

”I wish you would not be quite so languid,” retorted Katharine. ”How am I to brush your hair if you persist in behaving as though you were dying? I believe you are putting it on.”

”It's not my fault if I'm not so beastly energetic as you,” grumbled Ted. ”Don't play about any more, Kit; come over here and talk. And you needn't fold up those towels; they're not used to it, really.”

”I shouldn't think they were, from the look of them. Well, what have I got to talk about?”

She came and sat down on the chair by his side, and he s.h.i.+fted his position so that he could see her face. She could have laughed aloud at his expression of utter contentment.

”Oh, some rot; anything you like. You've always got lots to gas about, haven't you? How is Ivingdon, and the Grange; and does Peter Bunce still come in on Sunday afternoons; and has the doctor got any new dogs? Fire ahead, Kit! you've been down there doing nothing all this time, and you must know all there is to know, unless you're as half alive as you used to be. Hasn't anything happened to the old place?”

”Yes,” said Katharine, smiling back at him frankly. ”They have mended the gap in the hedge.”

”The devil they have!” cried Ted. ”We'll have it broken open again at once, won't we? Why didn't you stop them? You knew I wasn't there to tell them myself. Just like their confounded impertinence!”

”Hush,” interrupted Katharine. ”You mustn't get excited, old man; it isn't good for you.”

She smoothed his pillows and arranged his coverlet with nervous rapidity, and Ted, submitting happily to her services, wondered innocently what she was blus.h.i.+ng about. But he did not trouble himself to find out.

”I am beastly glad I poisoned myself,” he murmured, with lazy satisfaction.

She was glad of the diversion when the Rector arrived at last, and she was allowed to escape into the next room.

”Well, my boy, and how has the world gone with you?” she heard her father say in his genial tones.

”It's a beastly jolly world, and I'm the jolliest brute in it,” was Ted's reply.

They took rooms in the next street, and came in every day to look after him; and when neither the conscience of the ”snide” doctor, nor the desire of the invalid to be nursed proved sufficient to preserve the farce of his illness any longer, they still lingered on under pretence of being wanted, and sent carefully worded letters to Miss Esther from which she was forced to conclude that their presence in town was urgently required, much as they would have wished it otherwise. What really happened was, that Ted and Katharine regularly conducted the old Rector to the British Museum every morning, and pa.s.sed the day alone together until it was time to fetch him away again in the afternoon. And in the evenings they initiated him into the joys of a music hall, or introduced him to a new comedian; and the Rector was happier than he had ever been since the well-remembered days in Paris. As for Katharine, her feelings defied her own powers of description; she only knew that she had the sensation of waking up from a long, bad dream. Perhaps Ted felt the same. ”You've cured the biggest hump I ever had in my life,” was the way he expressed it.

Looking back on the even tenor of those few weeks, afterwards, Katharine was at a loss to remember what she had talked about to Ted in the many hours they had spent together. Perhaps they had not talked at all; at the time it never seemed to matter whether they did or not; at all events, their conversation usually lacked the personal element that alone makes conversation distinctive. There was nothing surprising to Katharine in this: as long as she could remember Ted had been the one person in the world to whom it was impossible to talk about one's self; and his sympathy for her was as completely superficial as her love for him was mainly protective.