“Yes, he’s a doctor. Is he in love with you?”
“I really don’t know!”
“I thought you knew by now when a young man was in love with you.”
“I wouldn’t marry him if he were,” said Kitty lightly. Mrs. Garstin did not answer. Her silence was heavy with displeasure. Kitty flushed: she knew that her mother did not care now whom she married so long as somehow she got her off her hands.
X
During the next week she met him at three dances and now he was a bit more communicative. He was a doctor, certainly, but he did not practise; he was a bacteriologist (Kitty had only a very vague idea what that meant) and he had a job at Hong Kong. He was going back in the autumn. He talked a lot about China. She knew how to look interested in whatever people talked to her of, but indeed the life in Hong Kong sounded quite exciting; there were clubs and tennis and racing and polo and golf.
“Do people dance much there?”
“Oh, yes, I think so.”
She wondered whether he told her these things with a motive. He seemed to like her society, but never by a pressure of the hand, by a glance or by a word, did he give the smallest indication that he looked upon her as anything but a girl whom you met and danced with. On the following Sunday he came again to their house. Her father was at home, and he and Walter Fane had a long chat. She asked her father afterwards what they had talked of.
“It appears he works at Hong Kong. The Chief Justice[14] is an old friend of mine. He seems an unusually intelligent young man.”
“It’s not often you like any of my young men, father,” she said.
His kind, tired eyes rested upon her.
“Are you going to marry him by any chance?”
“Certainly not.”
“Is he in love with you?”
“He shows no sign of it.
“Do you like him?”
“I don’t think I do very much. He irritates me a little.”
He was not her type at all. He was short, but thin; dark and clean-shaven, with very regular, clear-cut features. His eyes were almost black, but not large; they were curious, but not very pleasant eyes. With his straight, delicate nose, his fine brow and well-shaped mouth he ought to have been good-looking. But surprisingly enough he was not. His expression was slightly sarcastic and now that Kitty knew him better she realized that she was not quite comfortable with him. He had no cheerfulness.
By the end of the season they had seen a lot of one another, but he had remained as distant and impenetrable as ever. He was not exactly shy with her, but embarrassed. Kitty came to the conclusion that he was not in love with her. She thought he liked her and found her easy to talk to, but when he returned to China in November he would not think of her again.
Then came the announcement of Doris’s engagement to Geoffrey Dennison. Doris, at eighteen, was making quite a suitable marriage, and she was twenty-five and single. Supposing she did not marry at all? Kitty’s heart sank.
XI
But one afternoon when she was walking home from Harrod’s she met Walter Fane. He stopped and talked to her. Then, casually, he asked her if she would walk with him in the Park. She had no particular wish to go home. They strolled along, talking as they always talked, of casual things, and he asked her where she was going for the summer.
“Oh, we always bury ourselves in the country. You see, father is exhausted after the term’s work and we just go to the quietest place we can find.”
Kitty spoke with her tongue in her cheek[15], for she knew quite well that her father had not enough work to tire him and even if he had his convenience would never matter in the choice of a holiday. But a quiet place was a cheap place.
“Don’t you think those chairs look rather inviting?” said Walter suddenly.
She saw two green chairs under a tree on the grass.
“Let us sit in them,” she said.
But when they were seated he seemed to grow strangely distant. He was an odd creature. Suddenly he turned to her. His face was white.
“I want to say something to you.”
She looked at him quickly and she saw that his eyes were filled with a painful anxiety.
“I want to ask you if you’ll marry me.”
“I didn’t expect it at all,” she answered, extremely surprised.
“Didn’t you know I was awfully in love with you?”
“You never showed it.”
“I’m very awkward and clumsy. I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.”
Her heart began to beat a little more quickly. She had been proposed too often before, but no one had ever asked her to marry him in a manner which was so strangely tragic.
“It’s very kind of you,” she said, doubtfully.
“I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. I wanted to ask you before, but I could never make myself do it. I didn’t want to lose hope. But now you’re going away and in the autumn I have to go back to China.”
“I’ve never thought of you in that way,” she said helplessly.
He said nothing more. He looked down on the grass gloomily. She was a little frightened, but she was thrilled also.
“You must give me time to think.”
Still he did not say anything. She must talk it over with her mother. She had waited, thinking he would answer, and now, she did not know why, she found it difficult to make a movement. When you sat close to him you saw how good his features were, and how cold his face.
“I don’t know you, I don’t know you at all,” she said tremulously.
He gave her a look. His eyes had a tenderness which she had never seen in them before, but there was something pleading in them, like a dog’s that has been whipped, which slightly annoyed her.
It was certainly the oddest proposal she had ever had. She was not in the least in love with him. She did not know why she hesitated to refuse him at once.
“I’m awfully stupid,” he said. “I want to tell you that I love you more than anything in the world, but I find it so awfully difficult to say.”
Now that was odd too, for inexplicably enough it touched her; he wasn’t really cold, of course, it was his manner that was unfortunate: she liked him at that moment better than she had ever liked him before. Doris was to be married in November. He would be on his way to China then and if she married him she would be with him. It wouldn’t be very nice to be a bridesmaid at Doris’s wedding. She would be glad to escape that. And then Doris as a married woman and herself single! Everyone knew how young Doris was and it would make her seem older. It wouldn’t be a very good marriage for her, but it was a marriage, and the fact that she would live in China made it easier. She was afraid of her mother’s bitter tongue. Why all the girls who had come out with her were married long ago and most of them had children; she was tired of going to see them and smiling at their babies. Walter Fane offered her a new life. She turned to him.
“When would you want to marry me?”
He gave a sudden gasp of delight, and his white cheeks flushed.
“Now. At once. As soon as possible. We’d go to Italy for our honeymoon. August and September.”
That would save her from spending the summer in the country with her father and mother. She imagined the announcement in the Morning Post that the bridegroom has to return to the East, so the wedding would take place at once. For the moment at least