The Making of a Prig Part 7

"I am wondering if you will miss me very much when I am gone," he said, and slid slowly along the chair until he sat behind her, where he could just see her rounded profile as she turned her face away from him.

"Oh, yes, awfully! I wish, I do wish you were not going!" She was looking very hard at the flower beds now.

"So do I, Miss Katharine. It has been quite delightful; I shall never forget your sweet care of me. But you will soon forget all about me.

And besides, there is Ted."

"What has that got to do with it?" she asked swiftly.

"Oh, nothing, surely! It was merely an inconsequent reflection on my part."

There was a pause for a few moments.

"Talk," he said suddenly, and put his hand gently against her cheek.

It warmed under his touch, and he heard the tremor in her voice as she spoke.

"I--I can't talk. Oh, please don't!"

"Can't you? Try."

She put her hand up to his, and he caught hold of her fingers, and dropped a light kiss on them as they lay crumpled up on his palm. Then he pressed them slightly, and let them go, and walked away to the house without looking at her again. His countenance was as unmoved as if he had just been talking archaeology to the Rector; but his reflections seemed absorbing, and he hardly roused himself to move aside when Ted came lounging out of the house and ran against him in the porch.

"Hullo!" said Ted. "I'm awfully sorry; I didn't see you, really."

"Oh, no matter!" said Paul, who, never being guilty of a clumsy action himself, could afford to remain undisturbed. "Miss Katharine's in the summer house," he added, in answer to Ted's disconsolate look. "We've been reading Browning. At least, Miss Katharine out of her goodness has been trying to make a convert of me. I am afraid I was an unappreciative listener."

Ted glanced inquiringly at him. Somehow, it was not so easy to disapprove of Paul to his face as it was behind his back.

"How poor!" he said sympathetically. "Kitty does play so cheap, sometimes, doesn't she? Browning is enough to give you the hump, I should think. But she never does that to me."

"Probably," said Paul, disengaging a cigarette paper; "she would not feel the same necessity in your case. You would have greater facilities for conversation, I mean. Won't you have a cigarette?"

Ted looked towards the shrubbery, but lingered as though the invitation commended itself to him.

"I think I'll have a pipe, if it's all the same to you. May I try that 'baccy of yours? Thanks, awfully!"

They sat down on opposite sides of the little porch, and puffed away in silence.

"You haven't been over much, lately," observed Paul presently.

Ted glanced at him again, but was disarmed by his tone of friendliness.

"No," he said. "At least, I was over once or twice last week, but I never got a look in with Kitty. I mean," he added hastily, "she was out, or something."

"Ah!" said Paul indifferently; "that was unfortunate."

"It was a howling nuisance," said Ted, his troubled look returning.

"The truth is," he went on, feeling a desire for a confidant to be stronger than his distrust of Paul, "there's something I've been trying to tell Kit for a whole week, and for the life of me I can't get it out."

"Going to make a fool of himself at the very start," thought Paul.

"You see," continued Ted with an effort, "_she_ has been playing up so, lately."

"Your mother?" questioned Paul.

Ted nodded.

"And now she's got me a confounded berth in some place in the city,--candles, or grocery, or something beastly. It's the poorest thing I ever heard. And I've got to start on Thursday, so I must leave home to-morrow. And Kitty doesn't know; that's the devil, you see."

"I'm sorry," said Paul gravely.

"Got it through some cousin of my father's," Ted went on in his aggrieved voice. "No one but a cousin of one's father ever hears of such rotten jobs. Said it would be the making of me, or some rot. I've heard that before; the men who never did a stroke of work themselves always talk that sort of cheapness. Have to be there at half-past eight in the morning, too, blow it!"

"I'm sorry," said Paul again. He began to feel a vague interest in the boy as he sat opposite and stretched his long legs out to their full length, and jerked out his complaints with the brier between his teeth.

"_She_ thinks it such great shakes, too; just because she won't have to keep me any longer. She ought never to have had a son like me; I wasn't meant for such beastly work. Why was I born? Why was I?"

"The parents of the human animal are never selected," said Paul, for the sake of saying something.

"I know I'm a fool,--_she's_ told me that often enough; so I don't expect to get anything awfully decent. But why did they educate me as a gentleman? They should have sent me to a board school, and then I should have been a bounder myself, and nothing would have mattered.

What's the use of being a gentleman and a fool? That's what I am; and Kit's the only person in the world who doesn't make me feel it, bless her!"

Paul threw away his cigarette, and made a sudden resolve. He was amused, in spite of himself, at the very youthful pessimism in Ted's remarks; and for a moment he felt almost anxious that the boy should not spoil his career by a false start. There was something novel, too, in his playing the part of counsellor, and Paul Wilton was never averse to a new sensation. So he leaned forward and tapped his companion on the knee with his long, pointed forefinger.

"You may send me to the devil, if you like," he said with his placid smile, "but I should like to give you a word of advice first. May I?"

Ted looked more depressed than before, but he did not seem surprised.

"Fire ahead!" he said sadly. "I can stand an awful lot. People have always given me advice, ever since I was a kid; it's the only thing they ever have given me."

"I don't suppose it is my business at all," said Paul, making another cigarette with the elaborate precision he always spent on trifles; "but I've seen so many nice chaps ruined through a mistake in early life, and I know one or two things, and I'm older than you, too. Now, how do you mean to tell that child over there that you are going away?"

Ted started.

"What do you mean?" he asked. But his lower lip was twitching nervously, and his colour had deepened.

"Well, this is what I mean. Given an emotional creature like that, who has never seen any man but you, and a young, impetuous fellow like yourself, going to say good-bye to her for an indefinite period,--well, you are both extremely likely to arrive at one conclusion; and my advice to you is,--Don't."

Ted said nothing, but continued to stare at the tesselated floor. The elder man rose to his feet, and restored the match box to his pocket.

"I nearly did it myself once," he said; "but I didn't."

Ted looked him thoughtfully up and down.

"I shouldn't think you did," he said, with unconscious sarcasm. Then he too rose slowly to his feet, and stood on the doorstep for a moment, with his hands in his pockets. "I think you're a confounded cynical brute," he said rather breathlessly, "but I believe you're right, and I won't."

And he walked across the lawn to the shrubbery with the air of a man on whose decision depends the fate of nations.

Paul frowned slightly, as he always did when he was thinking deeply, and then threw off his preoccupation with a laugh. Even when he was alone, he liked to preserve his att.i.tude of nonchalance.