Evelyn Sharp

“ I don't remember much about Marion, she was so young when she stayed here; but if she has grown up at all like that terribly advanced mother of hers, poor Mr. Wilton will have his hands full. How did he meet her, I wonder? Did you ever see him in Curzon street, Katharine?"
"Sometimes; they were engaged early in the summer. But it isn't a bit important, is it?" said Katharine.
"You knew they were engaged, and you have kept it to yourself all this time?" exclaimed her aunt. "I really think you are the most exasperating girl, Katharine!" ”

“ It is very prosaic to have to acknowledge that a man's most characteristic pose is merely due to his laziness. On the whole, I am rather glad I am quite an ordinary person; I would much sooner be happy, even if it does make me vulgar."
"Happiness is like wine," said Paul, without heeding her. "It demoralises you at the time, and it leaves you flat afterwards. The most difficult thing in life is to know how to take our happiness when it comes."
"It is more difficult," murmured Katharine, "to know how to do without it when it doesn't come." ”

“ It was not difficult to find Paul Wilton's chambers among the quaint old buildings of Essex Court; and Katharine, as she toiled up the massive oak staircase, stopping on every landing to read the names over the doors, felt that she had reached a delightful oasis of learning in the middle of commercial London.
"How splendid to be a man, and to have brains enough to live in a place like this," she thought enthusiastically; and then, with the cynicism that always dogged the steps of her enthusiasm, she added, "It probably only wants money enough, though." ”

“ 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. 80 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. ”

“ Can you never remember that you are not a boy?"
"I am not likely to forget," muttered Katharine. "I should not be sticking in this stupid old place if I were. I should be working hard for daddy, so that he could live with his books and be happy, instead of grinding his life away for people who only want to get all they can out of him. What's the use of being a girl? Things are so stupidly arranged, it seems to me!"
"My dear," said Miss Esther, who had only caught the end of her speech, "it is difficult to believe that your father is one of God's chosen ministers." ”

“ And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. ”

“ I thought it was all over and that I should never see you again, and I was beginning to feel happy, just a little happy; and now you have come back, and you want it to begin all over again, and I can't let it,—I am not strong enough! Oh, won't you go, please?"
"If you send me, I will go," said Paul, and waited for her answer. But none came, and he laughed out triumphantly. She had never heard him laugh so thoroughly before.
"I knew you couldn't, you proud little person," he said, with a sudden tenderness in his smile. "The woman in you is so strong, is it not, Katharine? ”

“ And he had allowed himself to be captivated almost immediately, by the ordinary beauty of an ordinary girl, someone who knew how to play upon a certain set of his emotions which Katharine had never learnt to touch. An expression of distaste crossed his face as he threw away his cigarette only half smoked, and looked down at the fountain as he had so often stood and looked with her in the hot days of last July. Heaton's words returned to his mind with a new significance: "Their reputation is worth only half as much to them as their happiness." ”

“ Paul shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened her. "All right; I won't, then. Go and find some one else for a companion, and don't be a young silly. Can't Ted get off for to-day?"
"You have never said so many horrid things to me before," cried Katharine passionately.
"You have never been so difficult to please before," observed Paul coolly. "Besides, I was under the impression that I was making rather a good suggestion."
"You always drag up Ted when you are being particularly unkind! If I had wanted to go out with Ted, I shouldn't have come to you first." ”

“ Katharine stopped and looked after it, with an amused smile on her face.
"My aunt and cousin," she murmured aloud. "What would they say, if they knew? And once they came to stay with us, and they worried daddy no end, and said I wanted finishing, and ought to go to Paris! It seems to me that life is always a comedy, but sometimes it drops into a roaring farce!" ”

“ My conscience! you'd make some people sit up, you would!"
Katharine felt she had endured as much contempt as she could bear that evening; but she made a last attempt to recover some of her self-respect.
"I wish you would tell me why it is wrong to do things that are not really wrong in themselves, just because people say they are wrong?" she asked, rather sleepily.
"Because people can make it so jolly unpleasant for you if you don't agree with them," said Polly bluntly. "And if you fancy you're going to alter all that, you must make up your mind to be called a prig. ”

“ Paul looked at her critically.
"Are you sure?" he asked, smiling.
Katharine folded and unfolded her hands uneasily, and wished he would go away and remove his disquieting presence from her life for ever.
"Oh, yes," she said. "One is always sorry when people are unhappy, of course."
"Only that?" His voice had a touch of disappointment in it, and she began to tremble for her composure. He got up and walked to the window and looked across the lawn, where the wintry sun was struggling through the bare branches of the elm trees and making faint intricate patterns on the whitened grass below. ”

“ Katharine laughed, and pondered for a moment; then answered frankly that she did not know why. "I only know that I have never been so gloriously happy in my whole life," she added; and she wondered, as she spoke, whether the mad, feverish happiness of the summer months had really been happiness at all. But Phyllis, who felt that she had no share in this strange new life of hers, looked back regretfully on the earlier days when Katharine had been lonely and in need of her sympathy. Even Ted told her she was looking "very fit," and this was the highest term of praise in his vocabulary. ”

“ I don't see how it can be wrong, and yet it can't be right, if I have got to pretend to other people that I don't come. I hate hiding things; I don't like the feel of it. I wish I could understand what you mean."
"It is quite easy to understand," said Paul, beginning to realise that his case, as stated baldly by Katharine, was a very lame one. "It is not wrong, as far as you and I are concerned; but it is a hell of a world, and people will talk." ”

“ Why, you told me so yourself, Aunt Esther! It's all rubbish about being chosen, isn't it?"
"Don't chatter so much," said Miss Esther, who was counting her stitches; and Katharine sighed petulantly. 4
"I can't think," she went on to herself, "how he was ever weak enough to give in. He must have been absent-minded when they ordained him, and never discovered it until afterwards! Don't you think so, Dorcas?"
But Dorcas, who had only just brought in the soup, was hardly in a position to make the necessary reply; and Katharine had to content herself with laughing softly at her own joke. ”

“ What a future for Wilton, with the Honourable Mrs. Keeley for a mother-in-law, and her beautiful daughter for a wife; why, we shall see him in Parliament before long! The Attorney-General of the future,—there's no doubt about it. Ah, I see you are smiling at my enthusiasm, Miss Austen. That is because you do not know me well enough to realise how much my friends are to me. All the real happiness in my life comes from my friends, it does indeed. But I am boring you with this dull conversation about myself. ”

“ The view outside, with the sodden lawn and the dripping 321 trees, was as cheerless as the conversation within.
"The house ought not to be allowed to stand," said the Rector, with an indignation that he never bestowed on the human imperfections so bitterly deplored by his sister. "A wretched modern thing, belonging to the very worst period of domestic art!"
"They are doing it up," said Katharine from the window. "I wonder," she added softly to the sodden lawn and the dripping trees, "if he knows that they have mended the gap in the hedge?" ”

“ First, they draw you on, because you seem to hold off; and then, when you begin to warm up, they come down with a quencher, and you feel you've been a sight too bold. And all that kind of thing is distracting; and it affects your work after a time."
"But surely," said Katharine, "a girl can have a man for a friend without going through all that!"
"Don't believe in it; never did; it doesn't work."
"I think it does, sometimes," observed Katharine. "Of course it depends on the girl."
"Entirely," said Phyllis cheerfully. "The man would always spoil it, if he could—without being found out." ”

“ Man was created to look after woman, and woman to look after man; don't you think so?"
She understood him well enough, by now, to know when to take her tone from him.
"At all events, it saves Providence a lot of trouble," she said; and they laughed together.
Their lunch was a success; and Paul smiled at her woe-begone face when the black coffee had been brought, and she was beginning slowly to remember that there was still such a place as number ten, Queen's Crescent, and that it actually existed in the same metropolis as the one that contained this superb restaurant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For Miss Esther was one of those women who reserve the best side of their nature for the people who have no real claim upon them; and she took little interest in any one who was neither poor nor afflicted. The unpractical temperament of the Rector both astonished and chafed her, and she had nothing but a fretful endurance for her high-spirited niece, in whom a natural longing for action and an inordinate sense of humour were fast producing a spirit of revolt and cynicism. ”

“ 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! ”

“ She left school on the last day of the term with a light heart; everything had made her laugh that morning, from the children's jubilation at the coming holiday, to Mrs. Downing's characteristic farewell. "Don't overwork in the holidays, my dear Miss Austen," she had said, shaking Katharine warmly by both hands. "You look quite worn out; I am afraid you take things a little too seriously, do you not? When you have had my experience in school work, you will think nothing of a class like yours! Perhaps you do not eat enough? ”