Читать книгу The Making of a Prig - Evelyn Sharp - Страница 5

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Meanwhile, Paul Wilton lay wearily in the old-fashioned guest-room over the porch. The pain of his broken limb had kept him awake most of the night; and now that the suffering was less the discomfort remained, and he felt no more inclined to sleep than before. With a kind of mechanical interest he had watched the pale light on his striped blind grow deep and red, and then again pale and bright, as the sun came up over the hills. His restlessness increased as the time wore on; the sensation of being unable to move began to grate on his nerves, and he wished impatiently that something would break the stillness of the house, and awaken the people in it who were sleeping so unreasonably. He raised himself on his elbow as a light step came along the passage outside, and sank back again with a feeling of disappointment when it passed his door, and went downstairs into the garden. In reality it was much earlier than he thought; and it was still some time longer before the usual early morning sounds testified to the existence of a maid. He heard the stairs being swept, and suffered silently as the broom was struck clumsily against his wall in its downward course. Then the front door, was unbolted with a good deal of noise, and a few mats were banged together in the open air, and something was done with the door scraper. A conversation, held across the lawn with Jim, had the effect of an altercation, though it was in reality only an inquiry on the subject of milk, shouted shrilly in broad dialect. Later on, came the welcome crackle of a fire and the clatter of teacups; and a smell of hot bacon began to pervade the air.

"At all events, that means breakfast," muttered Paul. "It is not to be hoped that it will be worth eating, but at least it will bring a human being into the room. I wonder why ordinary people never have any ideas for breakfast beyond hot bacon! It is sure to be in thick chunks, too, and salt, oh, very salt! Don't I know it? It recalls my childhood. There will be eggs, too—there always were eggs when we had visitors; and bad coffee made by unaccustomed hands, also because there is a visitor. I know that coffee too. On the whole, it is wiser to keep to tea in strange places of this sort, although one knows beforehand that it will be thick, and black, and flavourless. I know the tea, best of all. In quite decent houses, one gets that tea."

Nobody came to him, although there were other voices about the house now; and he turned from his dissertation on food to a study of the pictures on the wall. They were of the class that had also been known to him in his childhood; and he smiled sardonically as he glanced at the two texts hidden in a maze of illumination, and the German print of John the Baptist standing in layers of solid water, and the faded photograph of a baby girl with tangled curls and a saucy mouth. Something in the shape of that mouth suggested the shadowy events of last night to his mind, and brought with them the vague recollection of a girl's face looking curiously down at him, and the pleasurable sensation of being supported by two firm, soft hands. He rather liked dwelling on that part of last night's adventures, until a real twinge of pain in his leg recalled also the less pleasant episodes, and he shuddered as he remembered the horrors of his transit from the chalk pit to the Rectory.

"I hate being in pain; it is so vulgar," he muttered distastefully; and a dread crossed his mind lest his suffering should become more than he could bear with dignity.

A timid knock came outside the door, and the maid entered to draw up the blind. She looked clumsy, and Paul sighed. She sidled along the wall to the door again as soon as she could, and asked shyly when he would have his breakfast.

"As soon as you like; and—er—Mary, would you kindly give me that coat? What's the time? And is it a fine day?" asked Paul hurriedly. He was almost childish in his anxiety to keep her in the room for another moment. But to be called by the cook's name so far confused her that she vanished precipitately; and Paul smiled, a little more cynically than before, and returned to his observations of the pictures. Just then he heard the end of the conversation between the boy and girl, under his window, and was amused at his own share in their quarrel.

"Anyhow, if that young woman is going to be about, it may not be so bad, after all," he reflected.

He was reduced to despondency again, however, by the arrival of the breakfast, which fully realised his expectations. For one who professed to have a wide grasp of life, Paul Wilton was singularly affected by trifles. His spirits were not raised when he found who his nurse was to be; and, competent as Miss Esther soon proved herself, he remained convinced that the child with the joyous laugh who made so much merriment about the house, would have suited him far better. And again, he was amused at his interest in some one whom he had hardly seen, and who would probably turn out to be an undeveloped schoolgirl, some one who would ride roughshod over his susceptibilities, and even fail to understand his feelings about things. It seemed impossible to him that he should be able to endure any one who did not understand his feelings about things. She might be plain, too; women with fascinating voices were often extremely plain. And if she were neither mature nor attractive, there could be no object in giving her another thought; for woman, to Paul Wilton, was merely an interesting necessity—like his food; something to fill up the gaps that were not occupied by work, or art, or any of the real things of life; and something, therefore, to be taken in as delicate a manner as possible. He liked to talk to beautiful women in picturesque surroundings—to play on their emotions, and to dally with their wit; but the women had to be beautiful, and their setting had to be appropriate.

"Please do not trouble to wait," he said to Miss Esther in the afternoon, when he found her preparing to sit with him. "I shall be quite happy if you will have the goodness to give me the paper and the cigarette case. Thanks."

When she had gone, having lacked the courage to tell him that tobacco smoke had never yet polluted the sacred mustiness of the best spare room, Paul lay back with a sense of relief, and began to review his situation gloomily.

"How I could have made such an ass of myself, I don't know," he murmured. "Foisting myself on complete strangers for six or seven weeks at least! And such strangers, too! Good Lord, how shocked the dear lady looked when I said I hadn't a relation left who cared a hang whether I was alive or dead. I must tell her, as an antidote, that my father was a parson; I have known that to take effect in the most ungodly circles. Perhaps, if I could swear I should feel better. But I am not a swearing man; besides, she might leave me to that painfully dull maid if I did. And that would be a pity," he added reflectively; "for, at least, she does know how to make a fellow as comfortable as a fractured leg will let him be."

A sudden shoot of pain made him turn his head wearily on one side. He had told the doctor, only that morning, that it was nothing, and that he did not suffer much; and then had been unreasonably disappointed at the professional verdict that it was a simple fracture, and presented no complications. He would have liked to be an interesting case, at least.

"I wonder if I am likely to get a glimpse of that jolly little girl," he went on, looking idly at the faded photograph opposite. "It is probably the one who steadied my head in the dark, last night; the one who laughs, too. A Philistine place like this could never produce two of them. However, I shall never find out as long as I am nursed by that dragon. And after all, why trouble about it? It shows what a baleful effect idleness can have upon a man, when an unsophisticated parson's daughter with a jolly laugh can—hullo!"

He heard voices on the landing, and listened eagerly. There was the sound of a scuffle and a stifled laugh, and some one shook the door by falling clumsily against it.

"Come in, do!" shouted Paul desperately, and the door opened with a jerk.

"I say, did we disturb you, or anything? I'm beastly sorry; but Kitty would rot so, and I couldn't help it, really. And, I say, I'm awfully sorry you're so hit up."

It was Ted, apologetic and self-conscious. Paul smiled encouragingly; it was at least some one to talk to, even if it was a boy under twenty, for whose kind he had as a rule little sympathy. He could see there was some one else too, on the landing outside; so he smiled a little more. It pleased him to have his curiosity satisfied, though perhaps he would not have liked it to be called curiosity.

"You see, Kitty will play so poorly," pursued Ted, plunging his hands in his pockets to give himself more confidence. "I shouldn't have dreamt of bothering you like this, if it hadn't been for Kitty."

"I am quite content to believe that it was the fault of Miss Kitty, whose acquaintance I have not the honour of possessing," said Paul gravely. "But won't you come in a little further, and explain matters?"

Ted came in a good deal further, just then, assisted by an unexpected push between his shoulders.

"It's so poor of Kitty; and it isn't my fault, I swear it isn't!" said Ted, in an injured tone. "You see, she wants me to say—Oh, hang, Kit, do let a fellow explain! Well, she says that—that—well, she wants to come in too, don't you see? She doesn't see why she should have to go and talk to horrid old men in the village, when they won't let her come in and talk to you; at least, that's what she says. And she says it's all rotten humbug—Well, you know you did! But Miss Esther will about kill me when she finds it out. Kitty never thinks of that, she's so poor."

Paul smiled again, partly at himself for being young enough to appreciate the childishness of the situation.

"Where is Miss Esther?" he asked, like a man, wisely.

"Oh, she's out right enough; but still—"

"Yes," said Paul reflectively, "I recognise that there are still difficulties in the way. But don't you think, as I am decidedly as much afflicted as the other horrid old men you mentioned, and as Miss Esther is out, that—we might all agree to vote it rotten humbug? Just for a few minutes, you know!"

And Katharine, who had been listening anxiously to every word, slipped into the room at this point of the negotiations, and closed the door; nodded cheerfully to Paul as though she had known him all her life, and dropped sideways on the chair at the end of his bed.

"I knew you wouldn't mind," she said. "Ted declared you would; but Ted's so awfully dense sometimes, isn't he?"

Paul was willing to admit that, on this occasion, Ted had been remarkably dense; but he only murmured some commonplace about the correctness of her judgment, and the honour he felt at her discrimination.

"Oh, I knew!" said Katharine confidently. "I am never wrong about people. Ted is. He makes fearful hashes about people; I always have to tell him who is to be trusted, and who isn't."

"I should like to know," observed Paul, "how you manage to know so much about people whom you have never seen before—myself, for instance!"

"But I have seen you before! Oh, I forgot; of course, you didn't know. I was with daddy last night when he came to fetch you. Don't you remember? I suppose you were too bad to notice much."

"That must have been it," assented Paul. "I just remember some one supporting my head, or it may have been my shoulders—"

"It was your head. That was me!" cried Katharine, with animation. "Wasn't Ted jealous when I told him—that's all!"

"I wasn't," said Ted. "But it was just like Kitty. Girls always do have all the luck."

"I am glad," said Paul drily, "that at least one of you was fortunate enough to view my discomfiture."

Ted laughed, but Katharine became suddenly thoughtful.

"I was very sorry for you, I was really," she said.

"Oh, no, excuse me—merely interested," said Paul.

Katharine reflected again.

"Perhaps I was; how caddish of me!" she said, and looked at him doubtfully. Paul raised his eyebrows; to be taken seriously by a woman, at such an early stage of her acquaintance, was a new experience to him.

"Oh, please," he exclaimed, laughing, "don't be truthful whatever you are! It's much more charming to think that you were sorry for me."

Katharine still seemed puzzled. She turned to Ted instinctively, and he came to her rescue.

"She thought you were awfully plucky and all that; she told me so. I was rather sick about it, of course; but, after all, it wasn't really worth minding because you were hit up so completely, you see."

"You are a singularly brutal pair of young people," observed Paul, glancing from one to the other. "I should like you to have the feel of my leg for half an hour. I fancy you would find yourselves 'hit up,' as you are pleased to call it."

"Oh, but we're not a bit brutal," objected Katharine. "Ted never can help saying what he thinks at the moment—that's how it is. It's because he shows all his feelings, don't you see?"

"You mustn't think Kitty is unfeeling because she doesn't say things," continued Ted. "She hates spoofing people, and she never says things she doesn't mean. She doesn't always say them when she does mean them; it's rather rough on a fellow sometimes, I think," he added feelingly.

The garden gate swung to, and they sprang to their feet simultaneously.

"Shall we scoot?" asked Ted, who seemed the more apprehensive of the two.

"I suppose so. Bother!" said Katharine regretfully. Ted was already gone, but she still lingered. The flying visit to Paul, instead of satisfying her curiosity about him, had only roused it still more; and she sauntered half absently towards him, without the least pretence of being in a hurry to go.

"Good-bye," she said, and put her hand into his. It was the first time she had shown any signs of shyness, and Paul began to like her better.

"Not good-bye," he said lightly. "You will come in again, won't you? We shall have a good lot to tell each other."

"Shall we?"

"Well, don't you think so?" He dropped her hand and laughed. It seemed absurd that this child, who behaved generally like a charming tomboy, should persist in taking him seriously when he merely wanted to frivol.

"I'll come if it won't bore you," said Katharine shortly. She was wondering what there was to laugh at.

"Can you write a tolerable hand?" he asked.

"I write all daddy's things for him."

"Then we'll see if something can't be arranged," he began. He congratulated himself on his tact in helping to gratify her evident wish to see him again; but she baffled him once more by suddenly brightening up, and seizing upon his suggestion before he had half formed it.

"Could I be your secretary, do you mean? Why, of course I could. What fun! Aunt Esther? Oh, that's nothing. I will manage Aunt Esther. Good-bye."

She managed Aunt Esther very effectually at supper time, by calmly announcing her intention of becoming Mr. Wilton's secretary. And the Rector's sister, who was a curious compound of conventional dogma and worldly ignorance, and knew into the bargain that it was of no use to withstand her headstrong niece, gave in to her newest whim with a bad grace.

"Do as you like; I am no longer the head of the house, I suppose," she observed fretfully.

"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Esther!" retorted Katharine with provoking cheerfulness. "I only want to be Mr. Wilton's secretary."

Paul was not so elated as she had expected to find him, when she walked into his room in Miss Esther's wake on the following day, and told him that she had gained her point and was ready to become his secretary. Being such a responsive creature herself, she always expected every one else to share her emotions.

"Aren't you glad?" she asked him anxiously.

Not being able to explain that what he wanted was not so much a secretary as a pretty girl to amuse him, he said with his usual smile that he was delighted, and proceeded to dictate various uninteresting letters of a business-like character.

"So you live in the Temple," she observed, as she folded up a letter to his housekeeper. "Isn't it a gloriously romantic place to live in?"

"It is convenient," said Paul briefly. And that was all the conversation they had that day.

He wanted no letters written the next day, and she read the paper to him instead. But Miss Esther stayed in the room all the time, with her knitting, and there was no conversation that day either. On the third day, however, her aunt was wanted in the parish; and she deputed the Rector to take her place in the sick room. She might have known that he would forget all about it, directly she was gone; but Miss Esther always acted on the assumption that her brother possessed all the excellent qualities she wished him to have, and it never occurred to her that he would spend the afternoon in finishing his paper on the antiquities of the county.

"Aunt Esther has gone to see a poor woman who has lost her baby. I never can imagine why a woman who has lost her baby should be visited just because she is poor. Can you?" said Katharine, as she settled herself on the spare-room window-seat with her writing materials.

"No," said Paul, concealing his satisfaction that Miss Esther was of a different opinion. "You needn't bother about writing any letters to-day, thanks," he continued carelessly; "and I don't think I want to hear the paper, either."

"Don't you? oh!" said Katharine, looking disappointed. "Then there's nothing I can do for you?"

"Oh, yes. You can talk, if you will," said Paul, smiling. "Come and sit on the chair at the end of the bed, where you sat the first day you came in. I can see you, then."

"It is ever so much nicer to see the person you are talking to, isn't it?" observed Katharine, as she obeyed his suggestion.

"Much nicer," assented Paul, though it had never occurred to him to suggest that Miss Esther should occupy that particular chair. "Now then, talk, please!"

Katharine made a sign of dismay.

"I can't," she said. "You begin."

"Who is your favourite poet?" asked Paul solemnly. She disconcerted him by taking his question seriously, and he had to listen to her enthusiastic eulogies of several favourite poets, before he had an opportunity of explaining himself.

She detected him in the act of suppressing a yawn, and she stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence.

"I believe I am boring you dreadfully. Shall I go?" she asked. The colour had come into her cheeks, and her voice had a note of distress in it.

"I want you to tell me something, first," was his unexpected reply. "Do you talk about poetry to young Morton?"

"Ted? Why, no, of course not. What an awful reflection! Ted isn't a bit poetic, not a little bit; and he would scoff like anything. I have never talked about the things I really like to anybody before; not even to daddy, much."

This was a little dangerous, and the tomboy daughter of the parson was not the kind of personality that was likely to make the danger fascinating. And Paul's first impulse was to wince at the unstudied frankness of her remark; but four days of seclusion had been exceedingly chastening, and the flattery that underlay her words was not unpleasing to him.

"Then what made you suppose I cared about poetry, eh?" he asked deliberately.

"Why," said Katharine, staring at him, "you began it, don't you remember? I thought you wanted me to tell you what I thought."

"Yes, yes; I am aware of that. But don't you think we have talked enough about poetry for one day?" said Paul, half closing his eyes. He was already regretting his stupidity in expecting her to understand him.

"How awfully funny you are! First you say—"

"Yes," said Paul, as patiently as he could, "I know. Don't let us say any more about it. Supposing you were to talk to me now as you would talk to young Morton, for instance!"

Katharine shook her head doubtfully.

"I don't think I could. You're not like Ted; you don't like the same sort of things. You're not like me, either."

Paul smiled grimly.

"We're both the same in reality, Miss Kitty. Only, you are focussing it from one end, and I from another. I mean, you are too abominably young and I am too abominably old, for conversation. We shall have to keep to the favourite poets, after all."

Katharine had come round to the side of the bed, and was regarding him critically, with a very serious look on her face.

"What is the matter?" she asked abruptly. "I hate people to say they are old—when they are nice people. It makes me feel horrid; I don't like it. I never let daddy talk about growing old; it gives me a sort of cold feel, don't you know? I wish you wouldn't. Besides, I am not young, either; I am nearly nineteen. I know I look much younger, because I won't put my hair up; but my skirts are nearly to the ground. What makes you say I am too young to be talked to?"

"I said you were too young for conversation. It is not quite the same thing, is it?"

"Isn't it?" said Katharine, and she looked away out of the window for a full minute. What she saw there she could not have told, but it was something that had never been there before. When she brought her eyes round again to his face, the serious look had gone out of them, and they were twinkling with fun. "I know!" she laughed. "Let's talk without any conversation."

"She's the same woman, after all," was Paul's reflection.

They did not mention the favourite poets again; but they had no difficulty for the rest of the afternoon in finding something to talk about. It was getting late when the garden gate gave its usual warning, and Katharine got up with a sigh.

"When shall I see you again?" he asked. They had not gone through the formality of shaking hands, this time.

"When Aunt Esther has not gone to see a poor woman who has lost her baby," said Katharine, laughing.

"Nonsense! we will keep the letters and the newspaper for that kind of visit. Won't some one else die, don't you think, so that we can have another talk?"

"I'll see," said Katharine, which could not strictly be called an answer to his question. But it fully satisfied Paul.