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The Career of Katherine Bush

by Elinor Glyn · English · Gutenberg #40893 · 624,482 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Career of Katherine Bush

Author: Elinor Glyn

Illustrator: Edmund Frederick


        
Release date: September 29, 2012 [eBook #40893]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAREER OF KATHERINE BUSH ***

    _The_ CAREER _of_
    KATHERINE BUSH

    [Illustration: "'After all, I understand you--and I forgive you.'"
            [PAGE 204]]




    THE CAREER OF
    KATHERINE BUSH

    BY
    ELINOR GLYN

    AUTHOR OF
    THE MAN AND THE MOMENT, ETC.

    ILLUSTRATED BY
    EDMUND FREDERICK

    [Illustration]

    NEW YORK
    GROSSET & DUNLAP
    PUBLISHERS




    COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
    D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
    COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY

    Printed in the United States of America




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    "'After all, I understand you--and I forgive
        you'"                                  _Frontispiece_
                                                  FACING PAGE
    "'You must ... go on and make something of your
        life, as I mean to do.'"                           50

    "'No man is an impossible husband if he is a
        Duke.'"                                           102

    "'You are ready for the great adventure?'"            274




THE CAREER OF KATHERINE BUSH




CHAPTER I


Dusk was coming on when Katherine Bush left the office of the Jew money
lenders, Livingstone and Devereux, in Holles Street. Theirs was a modest
establishment with no indication upon the wire blind of the only street
window as to the trade practised by the two owners of the aristocratic
names emblazoned upon the dingy transparency. But it was very well known
all the same to numerous young bloods who often sought temporary relief
within its doors.

Katherine Bush had been the shorthand typist there since she was
nineteen. They paid her well, and she had the whole of Saturday to
herself.

She sat clicking at her machine most of the day, behind a half-high
glass screen, and when she lifted her head, she could see those who came
to the desk beyond--she could hear their voices, and if she listened
very carefully, she could distinguish the words they said. In the three
years in which she had earned thirty shillings a week sitting there, she
had become quite a connoisseur in male voices, and had made numerous
deductions therefrom. "Liv" and "Dev," as Mr. Percival Livingstone and
Mr. Benjamin Devereux, were called with undue familiarity by their
subordinates, often wondered how Katherine Bush seemed to know exactly
the suitable sort of letter to write to each client, without being
told. She was certainly a most valuable young woman, and worth the rise
the firm meant to offer her shortly.

She hardly ever spoke, and when she did raise her sullen greyish-green
eyes with a question in them, you were wiser to answer it without too
much palaver. The eyes were darkly heavily lashed and were compelling
and disconcertingly steady, and set like Greek eyes under broad brows.
Her cheeks were flat, and her nose straight, and her mouth was full and
large and red.

For the rest she was a colourless creature, with a mop of ashen-hued
hair which gleamed with silvery lights. She was tall and slight, and she
could at any moment have been turned by a clever dressmaker and
hairdresser into a great beauty. But as it was, she gave no thought to
her appearance, and looked unremarkable and ordinary and lower
middle-class.

She had wonderful hands--Where they came from the good God alone knew!
with their whiteness and their shape. They were strong, too, and perhaps
appeared boyish rather than feminine. She did not inherit them from that
excellent mother, retired to a better world some ten years before; nor
from that astute auctioneer father, who, dying suddenly, had left that
comfortable red-brick semi-detached villa at Bindon's Green, Brixton, as
a permanent home for his large family.

But from whence come souls and bodies and hands and eyes?--and whither
do they go?--Katherine Bush often asked herself questions like these,
and plodded on until she could give herself some kind of answer.

Not one single moment of her conscious hours had ever been wasted. She
was always learning something, and before she had reached sixteen, she
had realised that power to rule will eventually be in the grasp of the
man or woman who can reap the benefit of lessons.

She had enjoyed her work at the night schools, and the wet Sundays,
curled up with a book in the armchair in the tiny attic, which she
preferred to a larger bedroom, because she could have it alone unshared
with a sister.

Her mind had become a storehouse of miscellaneous English literature, a
good deal mispronounced in the words, because she had never heard it
read aloud by a cultivated voice. She knew French grammatically, but her
accent would have made a delicate ear wince. Her own voice was
singularly refined; it was not for nothing that she had diligently
listened to the voices of impecunious aristocrats for over three years!

For the moment, Katherine Bush was in love. Lord Algy had happened to
glance over the glass screen upon his first visit to Liv and Dev to be
accommodated with a thousand pounds, and his attractive blue eyes had
met the grey-green ones.

He had spoken to her when she came out to luncheon. But he had done it
really intelligently, and Katherine was not insulted. Indeed, accustomed
as she was to weigh everything in life, she accorded him a mead of
praise for the manner in which he had carried out his intention to make
her acquaintance. She had flouted him and turned him more or less inside
out for over a month, but she had let him give her lunch--and now she
had decided to spend the Saturday to Monday with him.

For the scheme of existence which she had planned out for herself, she
decided her experience must be more complete. One must see life, she
argued, and it was better to make a first plunge with a person of
refinement, who knew the whole game, than with one of her own class who
would be but a very sorry instructor.

Heavens! To spend a Saturday to Monday with the counterpart of her
brothers Fred and Bert! The idea made her shudder. She disliked them and
their friends enough as it was--and the idea of marriage in that circle
never entered her level head. Of what use would be all her studies, and
the lessons she had mastered, if she buried herself forever at Brixton
with Charlie Prodgers or at Clapham with Percy Watson?

At this stage no moral questions troubled her at all, nor had she
begun really to apply the laws of cause and effect in their full
measure--although she was quite aware that what she proposed to do was
the last thing she would have considered wise or safe for another woman
to attempt. Rules of conduct were wisely made for communities she felt,
and must be kept or disaster must inevitably follow. But in her own
case she was willing to take risks, thoroughly believing in her own
cool discrimination.

The outlook for her should always be vast.

Lord Algy was passionately devoted, and it was wiser early in life to
know the nature of men. Thus she argued to herself, being totally
unaware that her point of view was altogether affected because her heart
and her senses pleaded hard, being touched for the first time in her
twenty-two years.

She was quite untroubled by what the world calls morality--and she had
no scruples. These were for a later date in her career.

The path looked clear and full of roses.

She had not been in the habit of consulting her family as to her
movements, and had many times gone by herself for holidays to the
seaside. No questions would be asked her when she returned on the
Monday. If the matter could have created scandal, she would not have
gone--to create scandal was not at all part of her game.

Lord Algy had arranged to take her to Paris by that Friday night's
train. They would have all Saturday and Sunday, and then return on
Monday night. Liv and Dev had granted her a holiday until the Tuesday.
She had put on her best blue serge suit that morning, and had taken a
small valise with what she considered necessary things. And now her
heart beat rather fast as she turned into Oxford Street in the gathering
October dusk.

For a few moments she wondered what it would have been like if she had
been going to marry Lord Algy--before all the world. Quite a great
pleasure no doubt for a month or two--But then?--He was the fourth son
of a stingy Welsh marquis, and nothing would ever induce his family to
pardon such a mésalliance. Of this she was well aware. It was the
business of "Liv" and "Dev" to make themselves acquainted with a good
deal about the peerage, and whatever her employers knew, Katherine Bush
knew.

Life for her held no illusions. Her studies had convinced her that to be
strong and perfectly honest were the only two things of any avail, and
to acquire a thorough knowledge of human beings, so as then to be able
to manipulate these pawns.

Lord Algy she believed was only a most agreeable part of her education,
but of no vital importance. She would have been horrified if anyone had
told her that she was mixing up sentiment in the affair!

To get everything down to its bedrock meaning had been her endeavour,
ever since she had first read Darwin and Herbert Spencer.

"I shall have the experience of a widow," she said to herself, "and can
then decide what is next to be done."

Lord Algy was a Guardsman--and knew, among other things, exactly how to
spend an agreeable Saturday to Monday! He was piqued by Katherine Bush,
and almost in love. He looked forward to his brief honeymoon with
delight.

He was waiting for her in a taxicab at the corner of Oxford Circus, and
when she got in with her little valise, he caught and kissed her hand.

"We will go and dine at the Great Terminus," he told her in his charming
voice, "and don't you think it would be much nicer if we stayed there
to-night, and went on by the morning train?--It is such a miserable hour
to arrive in Paris otherwise--you would be knocked up for the day."

He was holding her hand, and the nearness of him thrilled her, in some
new and delicious way. She hesitated, though, for a moment--she never
acted on impulse. She crushed down a strange sensation of gasp which
came in her throat. After all, of what matter if she stayed--or started
to-night?--since she had already cast the die, and did not mean to shirk
the payment of the stakes.

"Very well," she said, quite low.

"I hoped you would agree, pet," he whispered, encircling her with his
arm, "I meant to persuade you, and I am going to make you so awfully
happy--I sent my servant this afternoon to take the rooms for us, and
everything will be ready."

This sounded agreeable enough, and Katherine Bush permitted herself to
smile, which was a rare occurrence; she would spend hours and days
without the flicker of one coming near her red lips.

In the uncertain light, Lord Algy felt it more than he actually saw it,
and it warmed him. She was, as he had confessed to his best friend in
the battalion, an enigma to him--hence her charm.

"She treats me as though I were the ground under her feet at times," he
recounted to Jack Kilcourcy. "I don't think she cares two damned straws
for me really, but, by Jove! she is worth while! She has no nonsense
about her, and she is so awfully game!"

He had taken good care never to let Jack see her, though--or tell him
her name!

It was not long before they reached the hotel, and Katherine Bush was a
little angry with herself because she felt a quiver of nervousness when
they were in the big hall.

Lord Algy knew all the ropes, and his air of complete insouciance
reassured her. A discreet valet stepped forward and spoke to his master,
and they were soon in the lift, and so to a well-lighted and warmed
suite.

"These colours and this imitation Chippendale are rather awful, aren't
they," Lord Algy said, looking round, "but we must not mind, as it is
only for one night; the Palatial in Paris will be different--I am glad
Hanson saw to the flowers."

Huge bunches of roses stood upon the table and mantelpiece. Katherine
Bush thought it a splendid place, but if it appeared rather "awful" to
him, she must not show her admiration.

"Tea will come in a moment--I mean chocolate, pet--and I think we shall
be as jolly as can be. In there is your room; they will have brought up
your valise by now, I expect."

Katherine Bush moved forward and went through the door. A cheery fire
was burning, and the curtains were drawn, and on a chair there was a big
cardboard box. She looked at it, it was addressed "Mrs. Rufus."

"Who--is that--?--and what is it for?" she asked, in a voice deep as a
well.

"It is just a fur-lined coat, darling," Lord Algy answered, as he pulled
undone the string, "and a little wrap--I thought you would be so awfully
cold on the boat--and probably would not have been able to bring much
luggage."

A slight flush came into the young woman's white cheeks, something in
her loathed taking presents.

"Thanks awfully--I'll be glad to have you lend them to me for this
trip--but why is it addressed 'Mrs. Rufus'?--Mr. Devereux has got a
sister of that name."

Lord Algy laughed.

"Well, you see, I could not have it 'Fitz-Rufus,' because every one
knows that is the Merioneth name, given us poor devils by the Normans,
because we were such a red-headed lot, and I bet they found our own too
difficult to pronounce!" He began pulling out the coat and a soft pink
silk dressing-gown from the box. "I always am just 'Rufus' when I come
out like this." He laughed again a little constrainedly; it had just
struck him that the latter part of his sentence was perhaps not very
felicitously expressed--since he knew Katherine Bush was no chorus lady,
accustomed to temporary wedded appellations!

She looked him straight in the eyes with her strange, disconcertingly
steady grey-green ones--and then she smiled again--as the Sphinx might
have done before being set in eternal immobility of stone.

Lord Algy felt stupidly uncomfortable, so he folded her in his arms with
a fond caress, a far better plan he had always found than any argument
or explanation with women.

Katherine Bush realised the joy of it. She was ready for every grade of
pleasure as well as experience. This was how things were done in Lord
Algy's world, then--So be it.

Together they looked at the coat and wrap, and he helped her to take off
her hat and jacket, and try them on. They were very friendly, and Lord
Algy suggested that as the dressing-gown was almost a teagown and was
fairly pretty, she might wear it for dinner, which they would have in
the sitting-room.

"You'll look sweet in pink, darling," he lisped, as he kissed her ear,
"and it will be so soft and cosy."

Then the waiter knocked at the door and said the chocolate was ready, so
they went back to the sitting room.

He was quite adorable as he assisted her to pour in the cream--but
Katherine Bush now decided she would keep him at arm's length for a
while; the game was really so entertaining, and its moves must be made
to last as long as possible.

Lord Algy enjoyed fencing, too, so they talked in a more matter-of-fact
way for an hour or more, and then she told him she would go and change
for dinner, as it would be ready in twenty minutes.

"I'll have to be your maid, darling--I make an awfully good maid--I
never bungle with the beastly hooks--and I should love to brush your
hair!"

His eyes shone with light-hearted passion, and his good-looking face was
close to her own.

"You shall perhaps--to-morrow," Katherine Bush retorted--and slipping
into the room beyond she shut the door.

Lord Algy flung himself into an armchair, lit a cigarette and laughed
softly. He had never had such an experience as this.

"She is a wonder!" he said to himself. "Astonishing for her class--for
any class--She reminds me of some French heroine--what's her
name--fellow wrote jolly nice stuff--oh--er--_Mademoiselle de Maupin_,
of course! By Jove! I believe I am going to have a time like that chap
had--only she won't go off into limbo on Monday night!--Confound it, I
believe I'm in love!"

Then he threw away his cigarette end, and went round through the outer
passage to his room beyond hers, where he found his servant turning on
his bath in the bathroom which divided their apartments.

"Madame did not seem to require it--yet," Hanson said respectfully, "so
I have turned on Your Lordship's first."

And in a few minutes Lord Algy was splashing in the Lubin scented water,
while he gaily whistled a tune.

And Katherine Bush heard him as she was sponging her white face--and
stopped and listened surprisedly.

"Whatever can he be having a bath for at this time of day," she said to
herself, "and it is not Saturday!"

Then the thought came, it might be the custom of his class to bathe
before dinner! A scarlet spot grew in each cheek--she must never forget
to learn and profit by her lessons, so she deliberately went and knocked
on the communicating door and called out:

"Algy! you are mean to take the first!--When you have finished, turn on
mine."

And then she stood and trembled for a minute, while she piled up her
great mass of ashen hair.

"All right, darling!" he called back. "Only I must have my reward!"

"When _I_ please!" the young woman said to herself. "And not until."

At dinner, she looked quite pretty, the pink suited her pale skin, and
the unusual feminine fluffiness of the garment altered her rather stern
appearance. She had not yet begun to employ any art whatever, or to
alter the rough bundling up of her hair, but now, out to enjoy herself
under the most propitious and rose-coloured circumstances, her strange,
sullen eyes shone with a subtle fascination, and her deep voice had
tones in it which seduced the ear.

She had never dined with him before, only lunched, and now it behooved
her to observe the ways of things, as she was quite ignorant of the art
of dining out. Mr. Benjamin Devereux had made advances to her in her
first year at Liv and Dev, but she had annihilated him, and withered his
proposals for unlimited dinners and a generous settlement with scorn.
There had never been a moment when she had contemplated her charms being
wasted upon anything but an aristocrat, from whom she could acquire
"tone."

No denizen of Bindon's Green--no friend of the family--no companion in
the morning train had ever had so much as a kind word, much less the tip
of one of her strong white fingers. She was as a bunch of grapes with
perfect bloom retained.

She was taking in every line of Lord Algy as she sat there sipping her
soup. She had refused oysters, and had watched him as he devoured his
with the joy of an epicure. She had not been quite certain as to which
was the right implement to employ. She supposed it was that little fork
with the three prongs--but she determined to make no mistakes.

It was easy enough to gobble oysters soused in vinegar and red pepper,
with huge slices of bread and butter, and a bottle of stout, as her
brother Fred was wont to enjoy them at supper on Saturday nights. Or
they could be pulled about in the mincing fashion in which his fiancée,
that genteel Mabel Cawber, treated them, with little finger daintily
curved, and the first and the thumb only in use! but before she,
Katherine Bush, swallowed one, she would ascertain exactly how they were
eaten in Lord Algy's world! No good out of this trip should be wasted.

As dinner advanced, he began to make more ardent love to her--and the
champagne elevated both their spirits. He reproached her for her
hardness in not having allowed him to play the part of maid, after all.
She was a capricious little darling, but surely did not mean to go on
being unkind?

No; she did not--but she had suddenly realised, while dressing, that
some of her garments were not fine enough for the situation, and must be
kept out of sight!

She did not tell him this, however, but continued to enact the rôle of
condescending queen, while quietly she watched him as a cat watches a
mouse.

She loved the way his hair was brushed--how different from Charlie
Prodgers!--she loved the finely cut back of his head. She was perfectly
aware that he showed outwardly every mark of breeding in his weak,
handsome face, and lean well-drilled figure. These things pleased
her--especially the breeding; it was so very far from what she ever saw
at Bindon's Green!

Lord Algy had the easy, pleasant manner of his kind, with a strong
personal attraction, amply balancing absence of brain for general
purposes, and he was versed in every art for the cajoling of women.

The dinner grew more and more agreeable, until when coffee and liqueurs
came, Katherine Bush felt exalted into a strange heaven. She had
analysed almost all emotions in the abstract, but not their possible
effects upon herself. She found the ones she was experiencing now
peculiarly delightful! To be twenty-two and in love for the first time
in life, with an extremely delectable specimen of manhood--to be free as
air--answerable to no one--untroubled by backward or forward thoughts,
unworried by tormenting speculations as to whether the affair was right
or wrong--wise or unwise--This was a state of things which made the cup
worth drinking, and Katherine Bush knew it.

No possibility of bitter dregs to follow the last sip entered her
calculations.

The imp gods laughed, no doubt, and Lord Algy's blue eyes were full of
passionate delight!

Thus with all things _couleur de rose_, Katherine Bush began her brief
honeymoon.




CHAPTER II


"And I shall not see you for a whole month, my precious pet!" Lord Algy
whispered, as the train was approaching Charing Cross, at about eleven
o'clock on the Monday night of the return journey. "I don't know how I
shall bear it, but you will write every day, won't you?--Promise me,
darling----I wish now that I had not taken first leave and arranged to
shoot with my brother-in-law next week."

His arm still encircled her, and her ashen-hued head leaned against his
shoulder, so that he could not see the expression in her sombre eyes. It
was that of an animal in pain.

"No, I shall not write, Algy, and you must not, either--we have had a
divine time, and I shall never forget it. But it is stupid to
write--what good would it be to either of us?"

He pleaded that he would not be able to live without a word--after the
three days of perfect bliss they had enjoyed--and, of course, they would
enjoy many more, when he returned from Wales--!

Katherine Bush did not argue with him--of what use since her own mind
was entirely made up? She just let him kiss her as much as he desired
without speaking a word, and then she arranged her hat and veil, and was
demurely ready to get out when the train should draw up at the platform.

Lord Algy could not have been more loverlike. He was really feeling full
of emotion and awfully sorry to part. She had been so wonderful, he
told himself. She had enjoyed the whole thing so simply, and was such a
delightful companion. She had not asked any silly questions or plagued
him with sentimental forever-and-ever kinds of suggestions, as lots of
girls might have done with her limited experience of these transitory
affairs. She had accepted the situation as frankly as a savage who had
never heard that there could be any more binding unions. He really did
not know how he was going to stand a whole month of separation,
but perhaps it was just as well, as he was on the verge of being
ridiculously in love, and to plunge in, he knew, would be a hopeless
mistake. She was a thousand times nicer and more interesting than any
girl he had ever met in his life. If she had only been a lady, and there
would not be any row about it, he could imagine any fellow being glad to
marry her.

She was not at all cold either--indeed, far from it--and seemed
instinctively to understand the most enchanting passion--He thought of
_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ again--and felt he had been as equally blessed
as _D'Albert_. She would make the sweetest friend for months and months,
and he would rush back from Wales the moment he could break from his
family, and seek solace in her arms--he would have got himself in hand
again by then, so as not to do anything stupid. He always meant to be
very, very good to her, though. Thus he dreamed, and grew more
demonstrative, clasping her once again in a fond farewell embrace,
during the last available moment, and his charming blue eyes, with their
brown curly lashes, looked half full of tears.

"Say you love me, darling," he commanded, wishing, like all lovers, to
hear the spoken words.

Katherine Bush was very pale, and there was concentrated feeling in her
face which startled him. Then she answered, her voice deeper than usual:

"Yes--I love you, Algy--perhaps you will never know how much. I do not
suppose I will ever really love anyone else in the same way in my life."

Then the train drew up at the station.

The people all looked unreal in the foggy October air under the glaring
lights--and the whole thing appeared as a dream indeed when, half an
hour later, Katherine sped through the suburban roads to Bindon's Green,
alone in the taxi. Lord Algy had put her in and paid the man liberally,
and with many last love words had bidden her good-night and--_au
revoir_!

So this chapter was finished--she realised that. And it had been really
worth while. An outlook had opened for her into a whole new world--where
realities lived--where new beings moved, where new standpoints could be
reached. She saw that her former life had been swept from her--and now,
to look back upon, appeared an impossible tedium. She had mastered all
the shades of what three days of most intimate companionship with _a
gentleman_ could mean, and the memory contained no flaw. Algy's chivalry
and courtesy had never faltered; she might have been a princess or his
bride, from the homage he had paid her. Dear, much-loved Algy! Her
passion for him was tinged with almost a mother love--there was
something so tender and open-hearted about him. But now she must take
stern hold of herself, and must have pluck enough to profit by what she
had learned of life--Though to-night she was too tired to do more than
retrospect.

Oh! the wonder of it all!--the wonder of love, and the wonder of
emotion! She clenched her cold hands round the handle of her little
valise. She was trembling. She had insisted upon his keeping the
fur-lined coat for the present. How could she account for it to her
family, she had argued? But she never meant to take it again.

No one was awake at Laburnum Villa when she opened the door with her
latchkey, and she crept up to her little icy chamber under the roof,
numb in mind and body and soul--and was soon shivering between the
cotton sheets.

Oh! the contrast to the warm, flower-scented bedroom at the Palatial!
And once she had not known the difference between linen and cotton!

She said this over to herself while she felt the nap--and then the tears
gathered in her eyes one by one, and she sobbed uncontrollably for a
while--Alas! to have to renounce all joy--forever more!

She fell asleep towards morning, and woke with a start as her alarm
clock thundered. But her face was set like marble, and there was not a
trace of weakness upon it when she appeared at the family scramble,
which did duty for breakfast.

There had been a row between Fred and Gladys, the sister a year older
than herself, who was a saleswoman at a fashionable dressmaker's
establishment. Matilda, the eldest of the family, was trying to smooth
matters while she sewed up a rent in the skirt which Ethel, the
youngest, would presently wear to the school "for young ladies" which
she daily attended. This, the most youthful Miss Bush, meanwhile sat in
a very soiled Japanese quilted dressing gown, devouring sausages. There
were bloaters on the table, too, and treacle--and the little general
servant was just bringing in the unsavory coffee in the tin coffeepot.

Tea had been good enough for them always in the father's time, and
Matilda for her part could not see why Fred had insisted upon having
coffee, on the strength of a trip to Boulogne on bank holiday.

But there it was! When Fred insisted, things had to be done--even if one
hated coffee!

Katherine Bush loathed most of her family. She had not an expansive
nature, and was quite ruthless. Why should she love them just because
they were her brothers and sisters? She had not asked to be born among
them! They were completely uncongenial to her, and always had been. It
was obviously ridiculous and illogical then to expect her to feel
affection for them, just because of this accident of birth, so she
argued. Matilda, the eldest, who had always been a mother to the rest,
did hold one small corner of her heart.

"Poor old Tild," as she called her, "the greatest old fool living," and
Matilda adored her difficult sister.

How doubly impossible they all appeared now to the unveiled eyes of
Katherine!

"This is simply disgusting stuff, this coffee!" she said, putting her
cup down with a grimace. "It is no more like French coffee than Ett
looks like a Japanese because she has got on that dirty dressing-gown."

"What do you know of French coffee, I'd like to ask--What ho!" Bert, the
brother just younger than herself, demanded, with one of his bright
flashes. "Have you been to 'Boulong for a bit of a song,' like the
Gov'nor?"

"I wish you'd give over calling me the Gov'nor, Bert!" Mr. Frederick
Bush interposed, stopping for a moment his bicker with Gladys. "Mabel
strongly objects to it. She says it is elderly and she dislikes slang,
anyway."

But Albert Bush waved half a sausage on his fork, and subsided into a
chuckle of laughter. He was the recognised wit of the family, and Ethel
giggled in chorus.

Katherine never replied to any of their remarks, unless she wished to;
there was no use in throwing down the gauntlet to her, it remained lying
there. She did not even answer Matilda's tentative suggestion that she
had always drunk the coffee before without abusing it!

If they only knew how significant the word "before" sounded to her that
morning!

She finished her bit of burnt toast, and began putting on her hat at a
side mirror preparatory to starting. She did not tell Gladys that she
would be late if she did not leave also; that was her sister's own
affair, she never interfered with people.

As she left the dining-room, she said to Matilda:

"I want a fire in my room when I come back this evening, please. I'll
have one every day--Make out how much it will be, and Em'ly's extra
work, and I'll pay for it."

"Whatever do you want that for, Kitten?" the astonished Matilda
demanded. "Why, it is only October yet. No one ever has a fire until
November, even in the drawing-room--let alone a bedroom. It is
ridiculous, dearie!"

"That aspect does not matter at all to me," Katherine retorted. "I want
it, and so I shall have it. I have some work to do, and I am not going
to freeze."

Matilda knew better than to continue arguing. She had not lived with
Katherine for twenty-two years for nothing.

"She takes after father in a way," she sighed to herself as she began
helping the little servant to clear away the breakfast things, when they
had all departed to the West End, where it was their boast to announce
that they were all employed--they looked down upon the City!

"Yes, it's father, not mother or her family; father would have his way,
and Fred has got this idea, too, but nothing like Kitten's! How I wish
she'd look at Charlie Prodgers and get married and settled!"

Then she sighed again and sat down by the window to enjoy her one great
pleasure of the day, the perusal of the _feuilleton_ in the _Morning
Reflector_. In these brief moments she forgot all family worries, all
sordid cares--and revelled in the adventures of aristocratic villains
and persecuted innocent governesses and actresses, and felt she, too,
had a link with the great world. She was a good sound Radical in what
represented politics to her, so she knew all aristocrats must be bad,
and ought to be exterminated, but she loved to read about them, and hear
first-hand descriptions of the female members from Gladys, who saw many
in the showrooms of Madame Ermantine. "Glad _knows_," she often said to
herself with pride.

Meanwhile, Katherine Bush--having snubbed Mr. Prodgers into silence in
the train--where he manoeuvred to meet her every morning--reached her
employers' establishment, and began her usual typing.

There was work to be done by twelve o'clock in connection with the
renewal of the loan to Lord Algernon Fitz-Rufus--the old Marquis would
be obliged to pay before Christmas time, Mr. Percival Livingstone said.

Miss Bush, to his intense astonishment, gave a sudden short laugh--it
was quite mirthless and stopped abruptly--but it was undoubtedly a
laugh!

"What is amusing you?" he asked with a full lisp, too taken off his
guard to be as refined and careful in tone as usual.

"The old Marquis having to pay, of course," Katherine responded.

Never once during the whole day did she allow her thoughts to wander
from her work, which she accomplished with her usual precision. Even
during her luncheon hour she deliberately read the papers. She had
trained herself to do one thing at a time, and the moment for reflection
would not come until she could be undisturbed. She would go back as soon
as she was free, to her own attic, and there think everything out, and
decide upon the next step to be taken in her game of life.

A few burnt sticks, and a lump of coal in the tiny grate, were all
she discovered on her return that evening to her sanctuary. The
maid-of-all-work was not a talented fire-lighter and objected to
criticism. Katherine's level brows met with annoyance, and she proceeded
to correct matters herself, while she muttered:

"Inefficient creature! and they say that we are all equal! Why can't she
do her work, then, as well as I can mine!"

Her firm touch and common sense arrangement of paper and kindling soon
produced a bright blaze, and when she had removed her outdoor things,
she sat down to think determinedly.

She loved Lord Algy--that was the first and most dominant thing to face.
She loved him so much that it would never be safe to see him again,
since she had not the slightest intention of ever drifting into the
position of being a man's mistress. She had tasted of the tree of
knowledge with her eyes open, and the fruit that she had eaten was too
dangerously sweet for continuous food. Love would obtain a mastery over
her if things went on; she knew that she might grow not to care about
anything else in the world but only Algy. Thus, obviously, all
connection with him must be broken off at once, or her career would be
at an end, and her years of study wasted. Even if he offered to marry
her she could never take the position with a high hand. There would
always be this delicious memory of illicit joys between them, which
would unconsciously bias Algy's valuation of her. She had learned things
of consequence which she could not have acquired in any other way, and
now she must have strength to profit by them. She utterly despised
weaklings and had no pity for lovesick maidens. For a woman to throw
over her future for a man was to her completely contemptible. She probed
the possible consequences of her course of action unflinchingly; she
believed so in her own luck that she felt sure that no awkward accident
could happen to her. But even if this should occur, there were ways
which could be discovered to help her--and since the moment had not yet
come, she would defer contemplating it, but would map out her plans
regardless of this contingency. So she argued to herself.

She could not endure living under the family roof of Laburnum Villa any
longer, that was incontestable; she must go out and learn exactly how
the ladies of Lord Algy's world conducted themselves. Not that she
wished to dawn once more upon his horizon as a polished Vere de
Vere--but that for her own satisfaction she must make herself his equal
in all respects. There had been so many trifles about which she had felt
she had been ignorant, almost every moment of the three days had given
her new visions, and had shown her her own shortcomings.

"There are no bars to anything in life but stupidity and vanity," she
told herself, "and they at least shall not stand in my way."

The temptation to have one more farewell interview with him was great,
but there was nothing the least dramatic about her, so that aspect did
not appeal to her as it would have done to an ordinary woman who is
ruled by emotional love for dramatic situations; she was merely drawn by
the desire for her mate once more, and this she knew and crushed.

It would mean greater pain than pleasure to her afterwards, and would
certainly spoil all chance of a career. She gloried in the fact that she
had had the courage to taste of life's joys for experience, but she
would have burned with shame to feel that she was being drawn into an
equivocal position through her own weakness.

Katherine Bush was as proud as Lucifer. She fully understood--apart from
moral questions which did not trouble her--that what she had done would
have been fatal to a fool like Gladys, or to any girl except one with
her exceptional deliberation and iron will. She truly believed that such
experiments were extremely dangerous, and on no account to be adopted as
a principle of action in general. The straight and narrow path of
orthodox virtue was the only one for most women to follow; and the only
one she would have advocated for her sisters or friends. The proof being
that as a rule when women erred they invariably suffered because they
had not the pluck or the strength to know when to stop.

Katherine Bush was absolutely determined that she should never be
hampered, in her game, by her own emotions or weakness.

Before Lord Algy would return from Wales, she would have left Liv and
Dev's. She had never given him her home address, and there would be no
trace of her. She would look in the _Morning Post_ for information, and
then endeavour to secure some post as companion or secretary to some
great lady. There she would pick up the rest of the necessary equipment
to make herself into a person in whom no flaws could be found. And when
she had accomplished this, then fate would have opened up some path
worth following.

"Some day I shall be one of the greatest women in England," she told
herself, as she looked unblinking into the glowing coals.

Then, having settled her plans, she allowed herself to go over the whole
of her little holiday, incident by incident.

How utterly adorable Algy had been! She found herself thrilling again at
each remembrance--How refined and how considerate! How easy were his
manners; he was too sure of himself, and his welcome in life, ever to
show the deplorable self-consciousness which marked the friends who came
on Sundays, or the bumptious self-assertion of her brothers, Fred and
Bert.

If only she had been born in his world, and had by right of birth those
prerogatives which she meant to obtain by might of intelligence, how
good it would have been to marry him--for a few years! But even now in
her moment of fierce, passionate first love, which in her case was so
largely made up of the physical, her brain was too level and speculative
not to balance the pros and cons of such a situation. And while she felt
she loved him with all her being, she knew that he was no match for her
intellectually, and that when the glamour faded he would weary her.

But the wrench of present renunciation was none the less bitter--Never
any more to feel his fond arms clasping her--never again to hear his
caressing words of love!

If a coronet for her brow shone at the end of the climb, her heart at
all events must turn to ice by the way, or so she felt at the moment.

He had talked so tenderly about their future meetings. How they would go
again to Paris when he returned from Wales. How she must let him give
her pretty clothes and a diamond ring, and how she was his darling pet,
and his own girl. She knew that he was growing really to love her;
Katherine Bush never deceived herself or attempted to throw dust in her
own eyes. She had eaten her cake and could not have it. If she had held
out and drawn him on, no doubt she could have been his wife, but it was
only for one second that this thought agitated her. Yes, she could have
been his wife--but to what end? Only one of humiliation. She was not yet
ready to carry off such a position with a certainty of success; she knew
she was ignorant, and that the knowledge of such ignorance would destroy
her self-confidence and leave her at the mercy of circumstance. So all
was for the best. She had not guessed that it would be so very painful
to part from him--dear, attractive Algy! She could not sit still any
longer. A convulsion of anguish and longing shook her, and she got up
and stamped across the room. Then she put on her outdoor things again
and stalked down into the gathering night, passionate emotion filling
her soul.

But when she came back an hour later, after tramping the wet roads round
the common, the battle was won.

And this night she fell asleep without any tears.




CHAPTER III


It was about a fortnight later that Katherine got Matilda to meet her at
a Lyons' popular café for tea on a Wednesday afternoon. Livingstone and
Devereux had given her a half holiday, being on country business bent;
and having matured her plans, and having set fresh schemes in train, she
thought she might as well communicate them to the one sister who
mattered to her. Matilda loved an excuse to "get up to town," and had
come in her best hat, with smiling face. Katherine was always very
generous to her, though she was no more careless about money than she
was about other things.

"It is all very well, Tild," she said, in her deep voice, after they had
spoken upon indifferent subjects for a while. "But I am tired of it. I
am absolutely tired of it, so there! I am tired of Liv and Dev--tired of
the hateful old click of the machine with no change of work--I am tired
of seeing the people of another class through the glass screen--and I
mean to get out of it."

"Whatever are you talking of, Kitten!" the elder Miss Bush exclaimed, as
she stirred her cocoa. "Why, Liv and Dev's as good a berth as you'd
get--thirty bob a week, and a whole holiday on Saturday--to say nothing
of off times like this--you must be mad, dearie!" Then something further
in her sister's remark aroused comment.

"And what do you mean by people of 'another class'? Why, aren't we as
good as anyone--if we had their money?"

Katherine Bush put down her empty cup before she replied:

"No, we're not--and if you weren't as ignorant as you are, dear old
Tild, you'd know it. There are lots and lots of classes above us--they
mayn't be any cleverer--indeed, they are often fools, and many aren't
any richer--but they're ladies and gentlemen."

Matilda felt personally insulted.

"Upon my word, Kitten!--If you are such a poor thing that you don't
consider yourself a young lady--I am not. I always did say that you
would pick up rubbishly ideas bothering after those evening lectures and
French classes--instead of coming with Glad and Bert and me to the
cinema, like a decent Christian--it was a low sort of thing to do, I
think, and looked as if we'd none of us had a proper education--and all
they have done for you is to unsettle your mind, my dear--so I tell
you."

Katherine Bush smiled complacently and looked at her sister straight in
the eyes in her disconcerting way, which insured attention. Matilda
knew that she would now have to listen probably to some home truths.
She could manage Gladys very well in spite of her giggles and
irresponsibility, but she had never been able to have the slightest
influence upon Katherine from the moment of their mother's death, years
before, when she had taken her place as head of the orphaned household.
Katherine had always been odd. She had a vile temper as a child, and
was silent and morose, and at constant war with that bright boy Bert,
loved of the other sisters: Matilda remembered very well many scenes
when Katherine had puzzled her. She was so often scornful and
disapproving, and used to sit there with a book scowling at them on
Sundays when a rowdy friend or two came in to tea, and never once
joined in the chorus of the comic songs they sang, while she simply
loathed the gramophone records.

"You say awfully silly things sometimes, Tild," Katherine announced
calmly. "There would not be any good in my considering myself a young
lady, because at my present stage anyone who really knew would know that
I am not--but I mean to become one some day. You can do anything with
will."

Matilda bridled.

"I don't know what more of a lady you could be than we all are--Why,
Mabel Cawber always says that we are the most refined family of the
whole lot at Bindon's Green--and Mabel ought to know surely!"

"Because her father was a solicitor, and she has never done a stroke of
work in her life?" Katherine smiled again--it made Matilda feel
uncomfortable.

"Mabel is a perfect lady," she affirmed indignantly.

"I will be able to tell you about that in a year's time, I expect,"
Katherine said, reflectively. "At present, I am not experienced enough
to say, but I strongly feel that she is not. You see, Tild, you get your
ideas of things from the trash you read--and from the ridiculous
nonsense Fred and Albert talk after they come home from those meetings
at the National Brotherhood Club--fool's stuff about the equality of all
men----"

"Of course we are all equal!" broke in Matilda, still ruffled.

Katherine Bush smiled again. "Well, I wish you could see the difference
between Fred and Bert and those gentlemen I see through the glass
screen! They have all got eyes and noses and legs and arms in common,
but everything else is different, and if you knew anything about
evolution, you'd understand why."

"Should I!" indignantly.

"Yes. It is the something inside the head, something in the ideas,
produced by hundreds of years of different environment and a wider point
of view--and it is immensely in the little customs and manners of speech
and action. If you had ever seen and spoken to a real gentleman, Tild,
you would grasp it."

Matilda was quite unmollified and on the defensive.

"You can't have two more honourable, straightforward young fellows than
our brothers in no family in England, and I expect lots of your gents
borrowing money are as crooked as can be!"

Katherine became contemplative.

"Probably--the thing I mean does not lie in moral qualities--I suppose
it ought to--but it doesn't--We had a real sharp last week, and to look
at and to hear him talk he was a perfect gentleman, with refined and
easy manners; he would never have done anything in bad taste like Fred
and Bert often do."

"Bad taste!" snorted Matilda.

"Yes--we all do. No gentleman ever tells people in words that he is
one--Fred and Bert say it once a week, at least. They lay the greatest
stress on it. No real gentlemen get huffy and touchy; they are too sure
of themselves and do not pretend anything, they are quite natural and
you take them as they are. They don't do one thing at home at ease, and
another when they are dressed up, and they aren't a bit ashamed of
knowing anyone. Fred does not speak to Ernie Gibbs when he is out with
Mabel, although they were at school together!"

"Ernie Gibbs! Why, Kitten, he is only a foreman in the Bindon Gas Works!
Of course not! Mabel _would_ take on!"

Matilda thought her sister was being too stupid!

"Yes, I am sure she would--that is just it----"

"And quite right, too!"

Katherine shrugged her shoulders. There was not much use in arguing with
Matilda, she felt, Matilda who had never thought out any problem for
herself in her life--Matilda who had not the privilege of knowing any
attractive Lord Algys!--and who therefore could not have grasped the
immeasurable gulf that she, Katherine, had found lay between his class
and hers!

"They say Fred is a capable auctioneer because father and grandfather
were--you hear people saying 'it is in the blood'--Well, why is it,
Tild?--Because heredity counts just as it does in animals, of course. So
why, if a man's father and grandfather, and much further back still,
have been gentlemen commanding their inferiors, and fulfilling the
duties of their station, should not the traits which mean that show as
plainly as the auctioneer traits show in Fred----?"

Matilda had no answer ready, she felt resentful; but words did not come,
so Katherine went on:

"You can't jump straight to things; they either have to come by instinct
through a long line of forebears, or you have to have intelligence
enough to make yourself acquire the outward signs of them, through
watching and learning from those who you can see for yourself have what
you want."

Matilda called for another cup of cocoa--she disliked these views of
Katherine's.

"You see," that young woman went on, "no one who is a real thing ever
has to tell people so in words. Liv and Dev don't have to say they are
two of the sharpest business men in London--anyone can realise it who
knows them. You, and all of us, don't have to tell people we belong to
the lower middle class, because it is plain to be seen, but we would
have to tell them we were ladies and gentlemen, because we are not. Lord
Al--oh! any lord who comes to our office--does not have to say he is an
aristocrat; you can see it for yourself in a minute by his ways. It is
the shams that always keep shouting. Mabel Cawber insists upon it that
she is a tip-top swell; Fred thinks he is deceiving everyone by telling
them what a gentleman he is, and by not speaking to Ernie Gibbs, who is
an awfully good fellow. Emily says she is a splendid general, and can't
even light a fire, and won't learn how to. George Berker in our office
says he is a first-class clerk, and muddles his accounts. Everything
true speaks for itself. I always mean to be perfectly true, and win out
by learning."

Matilda, though somewhat crushed, was still antagonistic.

"I'm sure I hope you'll succeed then, my dear!" she snapped.

"Yes, I shall." Katherine fired her bomb. "It may take me some time, but
that does not matter, and the first step I have already taken is that I
am leaving Liv and Dev's on Friday--and, I hope, going to be secretary
to Sarah Lady Garribardine, at a hundred and ten Berkeley Square, and
Blissington Court, Blankshire!"

"Well, there! You could have knocked me over with a feather!" as Matilda
told Gladys later in the evening. "And wasn't it like Katherine never
telling us a thing about it until everything was almost settled!" But at
the moment, she merely breathed a strangled:

"Oh, my!"

"If I get it, I go to my new situation next week. I had a tremendous
piece of luck coming across it."

"Well, however did you do it, Kitten?" Matilda demanded.

"I saw an advertisement in the _Morning Post_--it was quite a
strange one, and seemed to be advertising for a kind of _Admirable
Crichton_--someone who could take down shorthand at lightning speed, and
typewrite and speak French--and read aloud, and who had a good knowledge
of English literature, and thoroughly knew the duties of a secretary."

"Oh! My!" said Matilda again, "but you can't do half of those things,
Kitten--we none of us know French, do we!"

Katherine smiled; how little her family understood her in any way!

"I wrote first and said they seemed to want a great deal, but as I had
been with Livingstone and Devereux for three years, and accustomed to
composing every sort of letter that a moneylender's business required, I
thought I could soon become proficient in the other things."

"Well, I never! What cheek!"

"Then I got an answer saying Lady Garribardine liked my communication,
and if I proved satisfactory in appearance, and had some credentials,
she would engage me immediately, because her secretary, who had been
with her for years, had gone to be married--the salary would be ninety
pounds a year with a rise, so it's a slight move up, anyway, as I am to
be kept, and live in the house."

"You are cocksure of getting it, Katherine?"

"Yes--I mean to--I am going to see her on Saturday."

"And what are your references besides Liv and Dev? Some folks don't like
moneylenders."

"I wrote and said I had no others--but they would testify to my
capacity. Liv nearly had a fit when I gave my notice--he almost cried to
get me to stay on. I like the old boy--he is a good sort, and will tell
the truth about me."

"And did they answer?"

"Yes--just to say I was to come for the interview on Saturday."

"They want to see you, anyway--what is the family, I wonder?"

Here Katherine recited the details from Debrett, in which volume she was
very proficient.

"An old lady, then," Matilda commented, "and with no children except a
married daughter! That will be easier for you--but why is she called
'Sarah'? I often have wondered about that, when I read names in the
_Flare_. Why 'Sarah Lady Something'--and not plain Lady Something?"

"It's when the man in possession is married and you are not his mother,"
Katherine told her, "and if you are, and still have your Christian name
tacked on, it is to make you sound younger. Dev says dowagers are quite
out of fashion. Every widow is 'Sarah' or 'Cordelia' now in the high
society, and when he first went to business, there were only two or
three. Queen Victoria never stood any nonsense."

Matilda was very interested.

"Whatever will you do about your clothes, Kitten? You have nothing nobby
and smart like Gladys. She could lend you her purple taffeta if you
weren't so tall."

"Oh, I manage all right. I'll have a talk with Gladys to-night; she sees
the right sort of people at Ermantine's, and can tell me what to
get--and I'll buy it to-morrow in my lunch hour."

"Well, I am just rattled," Matilda admitted. "Then you'll be leaving
home quite, dearie?"

"Yes, Tild--and I shan't be sorry except to be parted from you--but I
daresay I shall be able to come and see you now and then."

Matilda looked tearful.

"You never were one of us, Katherine."

"No, I know I never was. I often have wondered what accident pitchforked
me in among you, always the discordant note and the wet blanket. I hark
back to someone, I suppose--I've always determined to get out, when I
was ready."

"You never did care for us--never, Kitten."

Katherine Bush remained quite unmoved.

"No, never for the others--but always for you, Tild--and I'll never
forget you, dear. There, don't be a donkey and cry--the people at the
next table are looking at you."

This argument she knew would calm her sister--who was intensely
sensitive to everyone's opinion.

"And supposing they don't take you?" Matilda suggested, in a still
quavering voice, "and you've given notice to Liv and Dev--I call it
awfully risky."

"Then I will look out for something else--I am determined to make a
change, and see a new world, whatever happens."

After supper that evening, Gladys was invited up to the warmed attic
with Matilda, an honour she duly appreciated. They all stood in
irritated awe of Katherine.

"I want to talk about clothes, Glad," she said, when they neared the
tiny fireplace. "I have told Tild I am going about a new berth on
Saturday."

This caused the same astonishment and exclamations as Matilda had
already indulged in--and when calm was restored, Gladys was only too
pleased to show her superior knowledge.

"I don't want to hear about any of those actresses you dress, or those
ladies who look like them, I want to know what a real, quiet, well-bred
countess, say, would have, Glad."

Miss Gladys Bush smiled contemptuously.

"Oh, a regular frump, you mean--like the ones we can't persuade to have
tight skirts when they are first the fashion, or loose ones when it
changes--that is easy enough--it is to get 'the look' that is
difficult."

"They probably would not engage me if I had 'the look,'" Katherine
remarked cynically.

"You'd better have something like we made for Lady Beatrice Strobridge
last week, then," Gladys suggested. "One of our hands can copy it at
home, but there won't be time by Saturday. You'd better wear your best
blue serge and get a new hat for the first meeting."

"Lady Beatrice Strobridge must be the Hon. Gerard Strobridge's wife, my
new employer's late husband's nephew. Strobridge is the Garribardine
name." Katherine had looked up diligently the whole family, and knew the
details of each unit by heart.

"She only got married two years ago," Gladys continued. "She was
Thorvil, before--Lady Beatrice Thorvil."

"Wife of the present man's younger brother," quoted Katherine,
remembering Debrett. "He is about thirty-five; the present man is
forty."

"She is a regular dowdy, anyway," Gladys remarked. "One of those--we
have a bunch of them--that wants the things, and yet with their own
touch on them, spoiling the style. They come together generally, and do
make a lot of fuss over each other--calling 'darlings' and 'precious'
all the time--fit to make me and the girls die laughing with their
nonsense."

"What is she like--good-looking?" Katherine asked. She only questioned
when she wanted specific information, never idly, and it was as well to
know everything about her possible new employer's family.

"She would not be bad if she did not stoop so. She hasn't got 'the walk'
neither, no more than the 'look'; sometimes she's all right--at least,
the things are all right when they go home, but she adds bits herself
afterwards, and spoils them."

Here Matilda interrupted.

"Anyway, she is one of the ladies you'll see in your new place, Kitten.
I'd certainly have that same dress, it will just show them you are as
good as they, if you have an Ermantine model."

But Katherine thought differently. She agreed she would have something
in the same subdued style as Lady Beatrice would have chosen, but not
the actual copy, and after settling details the other two sisters left
her for bed.

When they had gone, she sat by the fire and looked deeply into it, while
she thought for a few moments. Then she drew a letter from her blouse
and reread it. It was from Lord Algy. A sweet little love epistle. Just
to tell her he could not possibly wait for the whole month before seeing
her--and was coming up to town the following week--and would not she
lunch with him at the old place--and perhaps stay with him again at the
Great Terminus? It ended with protestations of passionate devotion.

No--never again--she had tasted of the cup of bliss, and Fate was asking
her to pay no price. She must have courage now to renounce all further
pleasure. Once was an experience, twice would be weakness--which could
grow into a habit--and thence lead to an abyss which she shuddered to
think of.

Katherine Bush had never read Théophile Gautier's masterpiece--but there
was something in her character, as Lord Algy had remarked, which
resembled _Mademoiselle de Maupin's_.

She went to her little writing-case and got out a sheet of paper, and
then, in her firm round hand which looked like a man's, she wrote him
these few lines:

    _Dear Algy_,

    I want you to forget all about me--I loved our little trip, but I
    am never going on another. I shall have left Liv and Dev's before
    you get back, and you won't see me again. With best love always.

                                                              K. B.

She folded it, put it in the envelope--addressed it and stamped it--then
she put it ready to post in the morning.

Her face was white and set. It takes a strong will to renounce tangible
present happiness, however profound the beliefs in the future may be.




CHAPTER IV


Sarah Lady Garribardine said to her nephew, Gerard Strobridge, who had
been lunching with her on that Saturday:

"You must go now, G. I am expecting a new secretary."

"How will you get on without Miss Arnott, Seraphim? I thought she was
irreplaceable."

"So she is--I am interviewing quite a new type--she has been a
moneylender's shorthand typist."

Mr. Strobridge raised his eyebrows--and smiled his whimsical smile. His
Aunt Sarah always was original.

"Then I'll leave you--Beatrice has at last made up her mind not to chuck
the Arberrys, so we motor down at three o'clock."

"Has Beatrice been unusually tiresome?"

"N-no--she has been writing odes all the morning."

"You ought never to have married, G.--You would not have if Alice
Southerwood had not become a widow--a man can't always face his obvious
obligations."

Gerard Strobridge laughed.

"Then I shall kiss your hand and say farewell until next week--wisest of
aunts!"

He suited the action to the word, and left the room just as the butler
was about to open the door and announce:

"Miss Bush, Your Ladyship."

He glanced quickly at Katherine--this was the young person who would
take the estimable Miss Arnott's place, he supposed. She was quite
ordinary looking.--He went on down the stairs.

"Come and sit here in the light, please," Lady Garribardine said, as
Katherine Bush came towards her.

It was a very well-arranged Katherine, in the best blue serge--and a new
hat--not of Gladys' choosing. The mop of hair was twisted tight
without the least pretension to express "the look,"--some grey suede
gloves--bought in Paris by Lord Algy--were on the wonderful hands which
remained perfectly still in their owner's lap.

"How old are you?" asked Lady Garribardine by way of a beginning.

"I was twenty-two last September." There was not a trace of nervousness
in Katherine Bush's deep voice--indeed she felt none.

"And what does your family consist of--what is your status in life?"
Lady Garribardine felt perhaps she ought to ascertain this before going
further.

"We are just middle class. My father was an auctioneer at Bindon's Green
where we live. He and my mother are both dead. I have a sister who is a
saleswoman at Madame Ermantine's, the others are at home. My eldest
brother has taken father's place, the younger one is in a bank."

"And how long have you been at this business?"

"Since I was nineteen--before that I kept the accounts at a pork
butcher's."

"Indeed!----And what makes you think you would be capable of filling my
situation?"

"It is not very easy to be a competent moneylender's secretary and a
shorthand writer."

"No--perhaps not."

"Mr. Livingston and Mr. Devereux will tell you that I did not make a
failure of it."

"Really?"

Katherine was silent.

"_Really_," Lady Garribardine repeated again. "You mean that you think
you can pick up things quickly."

"Yes."

"It is certainly an advantage. I hoped to find something exceptional
when I advertised."

"Yes, I noticed that--and it was because your advertisement was unusual
that I applied for the post."

She rather wondered if she ought to have put in any "Ladyships"; she
remembered Hanson, Lord Algy's valet, was very prodigal of such marks of
respect--that is what had deterred her. Liv and Dev often used them,
too--to new and prosperously connected clients--but she did not wish to
be subservient more than was necessary. She would watch and listen--as
she had watched about the oysters.

"Can you read aloud?"

Lady Garribardine was fixing her with her flashing brown eyes, which
contrasted so unfavourably with the bronze-gold wig she wore so bravely.

"I have never tried. If I did it wrong the first time and you corrected
me, I expect I wouldn't do it twice."

"That is something--and your voice is refined--you did not acquire that
at the--er--pork butcher's?"

"No, I acquired it by listening to members of the upper classes who came
to borrow money--I had a cockney twang like my sisters, I daresay, in
the beginning."

"That shows you can learn things."

"Yes, it is only stupid people who can't."

"You are not stupid, then?"

"No, but Mr. Livingston or Mr. Devereux can tell you; either will speak
for me."

Lady Garribardine was amused; she digressed a little from her
cross-examination.

"You found Jews agreeable to work with?"

"Very. You know where you are with them. They do not pretend, and they
are very generous."

"In-deed!"

"Yes--people have a preconceived notion of Jews, I find--quite faulty as
a rule--they know what to pay for--they are far less fools than other
races. I respect them."

"That is most interesting."

Katherine was silent again.

"Why did you leave them?"--after a pause in which Lady Garribardine was
pitilessly scrutinising her possible secretary.

"Because I had learned all that I could there, and I wanted a new
vista----"

"And you think you would find it with me?"

"With any lady in your world--you can learn things wherever you go, if
you wish to."

"Very true. And how about French--you speak that?"

Katherine Bush reddened a little. A memory came to her of the profound
shock that the French of Paris had been to her ear.

"I can write it quite correctly--but I have discovered that my
pronunciation is ridiculous." She confessed it quite frankly.

"How did that happen?"

"I taught it to myself--mostly--and then I heard it spoken--and I knew
mine would sound wrong."

"Do you think you could overcome that?"

"Yes, if I were in France long enough."

"Have you travelled?"

"No--not really. I have been to Paris for a holiday once--I have only
learnt about places."

"And English literature?"

"It is the thing I care most for--I have read a great many books. I read
usually until about one in the morning."

"Have you a good temper? You are not uppish, eh?"

"I suppose it depends--I know that when you take money to do a thing you
have got to do it, and put up with orders and manners that you would not
stand for one second if you were the person paying."

"That is quite a good definition of respectful service."

"It is common sense."

"You appear to have some of that."

Again silence.

"I have not a good temper!" Lady Garribardine laughed--she was greatly
diverted.

"I guessed not."

"How?"

"I had to read characters quickly at Livingston and Devereux's----"

"You are observant?"

"I think so----"

"Can you play the piano?"

"I could once, and I had a queer gift for reading the notes--but I have
never practised since we had a gramophone--I grew to loathe music."

"That is hopeful----"

Then Her Ladyship got up and went to her writing-table, terribly
littered with all sorts of papers. She dived among a conglomerate
mass--and picked up two letters.

"Would you oblige me by answering these, Miss--er--Bush? I could then
better judge of your capabilities."

Katherine took them; on one envelope was written in a spidery hand in
pencil, "Refuse gracefully;" upon the other, "Get out as best can."

She looked for a portion of the blotting pad which was clear enough to
use, then she sat down and selected a pen, while she glanced up with her
steady wise eyes.

"Has Your Ladyship any particular paper for this sort of thing?" Here
was a suitable moment for the use of the honorific she felt.

"Yes, that white paper with the coronet in plain black and the address."

Lady Garribardine sat down by the fire and stared into it. She had not
been so interested in a specimen of humanity for years.

Katherine Bush read the letters through carefully and the first one a
second time, then she began to write:

    To the Secretary of the League for Discouraging Polygamy among the
      Mohammedans of India:

    _Dear Sir_,

    I am asked by Sarah Lady Garribardine, to tell you that while
    sympathising deeply with the admirable object of your League, she
    thinks the field over which it must obviously be spread is too vast
    for a small contribution to be of much avail, and therefore, while
    thanking you for your interesting papers upon the subject, she is
    sorry that she is unable to forward you any more substantial help.

            I am, dear sir,
                  Yours faithfully,
                        KATHERINE BUSH (Secretary).

The other letter ran:

    To the Matron of the Nonconformist Detention and Penitential Hostel
      for Lost Women:

    _Madam_,

    I beg to inform you that Sarah Lady Garribardine is leaving town
    shortly and therefore cannot avail herself of the pleasure and
    honour of visiting your useful institution. She desires me to
    express to you her thanks for your invitation.

            I remain, madame,
                  Yours faithfully,
                        K. BUSH (Sec.).

She looked carefully to see what style of address was necessary and
wrote out the envelope--and when all was ready she rose and took them to
the young-old lady by the fire.

She stood quite still while they were perused, and then smiled inwardly
when Lady Garribardine gave a cynical chuckle.

"I think you will do very well, Miss Bush! Please find some stamps, and
put them in that basket to be posted--and--er--you can ring the bell--I
shall expect you--bag and baggage--on Wednesday next."

This was abrupt, but Katherine Bush felt it was what it should be.

"You do not require the testimony of Mr. Livingston or Mr. Devereux?"

"No--I can judge for myself--er--Good morning."

The bell had been answered almost instantly and so, bowing, Katherine
Bush followed the servant down the stairs, and soon found herself in the
street, a strange sense of content in her heart.

She knew the West End very well--and walked briskly along Hill Street
and so on past Dorchester House--into the Park. All the leaves were off
the trees. The November day was beautifully fine and bright and movement
was a pleasure.

So the first part of her new game was won at all events.

She reviewed the whole set of impressions she had taken. Firstly, that
the house was a fine one--it had "the look," if houses could be said to
show this quality. That is, it was beautifully kept and filled with what
she guessed from study at the Wallace Collection must be rare and costly
furniture. There were some things she thought ugly--but "the look" was
often ugly, she knew by experience--from Gladys' verbose descriptions to
Ethel and Matilda.

Apart from "the look" it had an air of distinction. It was the abode of
denizens of Lord Algy's world--that was evident. The man she had met on
the threshold of the morning room door was certainly of his class--and
rather nice-looking.

As for her future employer, she was a new specimen to her. Katherine
meant what the French call a _type_, but she did not know this
expression.

"She is certainly over sixty," she said to herself. "She is a dark woman
naturally, and her hair ought to be grey. The whole thing is spoilt by
that silly golden wig--curled tight like Royalty's. She would have quite
a nice figure for her age if she were not all pushed up by those
old-fashioned corsets. Why had she such big ears and such red hands for
so great a lady? Her rings were buried in fat. The circulation was
evidently wrong somewhere. As for her voice--it was one of _the_ voices!
The female counterpart of the echoes from over the glass screen--and the
manner was quite as casual.

"Just as insolent as I shall be when I hold the same sort of place. She
was born to it--I shall have acquired it--we both when we are dead will
be said to have well filled our situations."

Thus mused Katherine Bush on a November day in Hyde Park--and turning
out of Albert Gate suddenly she almost walked into the arms of Lord
Algy.




CHAPTER V


"Darling pet! What a delightful surprise!"

"Algy! Where did you spring from?"

Then they both drew quick breaths.

"Come back towards the Serpentine, I must talk to you. Your horrid
little note made me feel quite wretched, and I have been to Liv and
Dev's to-day, and they refused to give me your address--why were you
such a little cat, darling?"

"I was not a cat, Algy."

They had turned and were walking towards the Row.

"I meant what I wrote--I want you to forget all about me. Joys can't go
on--I have other things to do, dear."

"But it is perfectly brutal of you, Katherine, when I love you so--and
you love me--at least you told me that you did!"

Katherine Bush's heart was beating very fast--would she have courage to
keep to her determination now that she saw him face to face?

He looked so extremely delectable, here in the lowering sunshine. He was
everything that a woman could desire in the way of a lover.

"I am in the hell of a mess, too," he sighed. "My father has cut up
awfully rough about my transactions with Liv and Dev--and I had a bad
week at Doncaster. I am in for a regular facer and am obliged to agree
to be transferred to the Egyptian army for three years. Everything, even
you, are against me."

"No, I am not, Algy." There was quick sympathy and distress in her deep
voice. "I hate to think that you are unhappy, and you know that I would
help you in any way I could."

"Then be kind to me, darling--and don't say you never want to see me
again."

Katherine Bush felt this was a supreme occasion--and that she must not
waver. She so longed to comfort him, to let him kiss her and forget all
his cares. The cynical side of her character, even at this moving
moment, whispered that it was fortunate that they were out of doors!

"When do you start for Egypt?"

"As soon as I can get ready--my mother and sisters are going to winter
out there, but probably I shall be sent to the Soudan!"

Katherine had heard that they killed lions or something in that part of
the world, she knew that sport meant a great deal in Lord Algy's life.

"You will get some kind of shooting, won't you?" she suggested by way of
consolation.

But Lord Algy looked full of misery. They had walked on, taking a side
path and were now in sight of two chairs.

"Let us go and sit down," he pleaded. "I want to look at you. I can't, I
won't believe, that you don't mean ever to be my own girl any more."

"Algy, I do mean it--just as much for you as for myself."

They had reached the chairs and sat down, Lord Algy pushed his hat to
the back of his head; his immaculately brushed hair glistened bronze in
the setting sun, and his forehead was puckered with distress. His
attractive eyes sought hers with a fond persistence. Katherine Bush was
obliged to clench her hands tight in the pockets of her coat.

"Why, what in Heaven's name for? Why must we part?" he demanded
fiercely. "Katherine, I have missed you awfully--I have not known what
to do with myself--and before this bother fell upon me, I had determined
to come up to ask you to marry me--we'd be awfully happy married,
darling--like we were in Paris. I have never loved anything half so much
as our time together."

"It is dear of you to say that, but I would not marry you for anything
in the world, it would spoil everything, destroy a memory that has not
got any flaw in it.--Listen to me, Algy--I went with you because I
wanted to--I wanted to understand life, and find out what is worth
while, and what men are like. I am only at the beginning of existence
and I intend to learn most of its meaning before I die. I thought that
whatever cold, tiresome path I might have to follow afterwards, to carry
out my scheme of things, I would at least have some good hours to
remember with you, so I went deliberately--but I never meant to do it
again. Let's both be grateful for what we have had and part friends."

"I simply can't," protested Lord Algy, growing more and more full of
emotion, as he felt the attainment of his desires receding from him. "I
call it awfully cold-blooded of you, Katherine, and I can't and won't
consent to it. I want you--I want you now--to-night," and he stretched
out his arms. "I am sick with longing for you--I mean it, darling. I
have been away with other girls often before, Jack Kilcourcy and I
stayed down the river with Laure de Laine and Mary Green this June.
Laure was my friend, and she simply wasn't a patch on you, pet, in any
way, and I didn't care a straw when it was over, although they are such
celebrities, and it did make Berty Aberhams so mad, and was such a score
off the bounder. I have never felt anything like I feel for you,
darling--I want you to be my wife."

As he spoke, something withered a little in Katherine Bush; his
unconscious placing of the affair galled her, although she knew that it
was perfectly just; she had gone with him under no other pretence than
had gone those ladies of the Frivolity Theatre. She analysed his simple
directness, and appreciated the triumph conveyed to her in the final
expression of his feelings, but it made her task rather easier. She saw
so plainly what a renewal of their relations would mean. She looked and
looked at him, seated dejectedly there beside her, and then she spoke,
and her voice was full of quiet determination and very deep.

"You must be a man, Algy, dear, and go on and make something of your
life, as I mean to do. You must be a great soldier. You come of such a
grand old family, you ought to remember what all your ancestors have
done, and try to be as fine as they were--It's so paltry to drift--You
can remember me if you want to--as someone who wasn't weak, even though
I am only a common girl, and much beneath you in class. If I was of your
class I should now be tempted to marry you, and then I expect with my
sort of nature I'd just shove you on into doing something great. But I
couldn't as it is, all my time would be taken up with trying to educate
myself to keep my own head above water, and trying to suppress my
humiliation at the contempt of your friends. You are only a younger son,
and they would never forgive you, and we would just lead a hole and
corner sort of existence in wretched poverty, and grow to have quarrels
and not love at all."

[Illustration: "'You must ... go on and make something of your life, as
I mean to do.'"]

He was going to interrupt her but she put her grey gloved hand across
his lips. "No, dear, don't say anything--I want to go away from you with
the memory that you have asked me to be your wife--I cannot be that for
both our sakes, and it would cut me to the heart to hear you say words,
now that you know this, which would mean that you want me, failing that,
to go on with the other relation."--She paused, for a second, and
leaning forward, looked straight into his face--"Algy, I want to
remember you as a really perfect gentleman."

She had gained her point with this last appeal. She saw that in an
instant; he straightened himself and raised his handsome head, while the
pride of race looked forth from his eyes for a moment, and then was
quenched by the mist of tears.

"You are a splendid girl, Katherine," he said in a choking voice, "a far
greater lady than the rotters I have to dance with at balls and see as
my sisters' friends. You--by Jove! you have taught me to respect women.
I should be honoured if you would marry me, and my family ought to be
jolly glad to get such a good sort among them!"

"Thank you, Algy!" her voice now trembled, too. "Then you understand,
dear, and I want you to do just as well as you can in Egypt--and,
and--Algy, do try not to spend so much money, and when they have paid up
for you, don't go and get back into any moneylender's hands. They are
not all so honest as Liv and Dev. And now I want to say good-bye! I
don't want to be silly and--cry----"

"Oh! it's too cruel!" he exclaimed, clasping his hands. "Katherine, you
are like--only I think you mean to be kinder than she was--_Mademoiselle
de Maupin_!"

She stiffened, and her eyes, which were growing very misty, became hard
and bright. She thought he was referring to another lady of the
half-world--of Paris, perhaps, this time. He saw that she had
misunderstood him, and he added quickly:

"Darling, she is in a book--by a fellow called Théophile Gautier--she
was a wonder and so are you--I've always thought you were like her,
but--Oh! why do we talk such bosh about books in our few moments, I want
to tell you that I love you. Oh! Katherine, if you knew how much!"

The hardness all melted from the young woman's grey-green eyes and was
replaced by a divine sweetness.

"Algy," she whispered, "it is good to hear that, and you know that I
love you, too, and now good-bye, my dear--I can't bear any more."

She rose quickly and drew her hand away. She passionately longed for him
to take her in his arms.

He got up also, he was extremely pale, and more than a suspicion of mist
hung upon his eyelashes. As a young, splendid lover, he could not have
looked more desirable, but Katherine Bush never lost her head.

"Good-bye, Algy, and God bless you, dear."

Two people were approaching or he certainly would have kissed her--as it
was they only wrung each other's hands and Katherine Bush turned and
walked into the gathering twilight.

He watched her until she had disappeared and then sat down again. He
felt quite wretched. She seemed to him to be a wonderful character.

"What an impotent wretch I am beside her," he said to himself. "But I
should never be able to make the family see it. My mother would rather
I married Elaine Percival with her five thousand a year--" then he
laughed contemptuously--"Elaine Percival!"

For the first time in his life he began to reason about things.
Katherine Bush was of course perfectly right. Marriage would have been
madness, as he had always known before he became too much in love to
think; and he knew he had been lately only entirely influenced by
selfish desire, and had never so much as faced what the consequences
would be either to himself or to her. He had been quite ready to make a
hash of both their lives just because he wanted her so badly for the
moment. What an incredible fool--and she, this fine girl, had pulled
them both on to firm land. He was not of the type who could contemplate
asking a woman to wait for him while he worked to obtain a home for her;
such an idea, of course, never entered his head. He had no romantic
illusions of this sort, and once having realised the hopelessness of the
case he had stoicism enough to accept it. But the things she had said
affected him deeply. He would try not to drift.--He would pull himself
together and do his best to become a fine soldier. They should not say
he had grumbled over going to Egypt. Oh! if there could only be a war,
that he might go out and fight! But wars would never happen again at
this time of the world's day!

The present pleasant, easy stage of his life had come to an end, and
unpleasant realities must be dealt with, but he would keep ever the
memory of this splendid girl in his heart, the memory that she had not
been weak or permitted him to make a fool of himself or of her.

And as he walked on out of the Park he felt a new self-reliance and
determination.

Meanwhile, Katherine Bush had got into an omnibus and was on the way to
Victoria, and once arrived at Laburnum Villa and her attic, she
carefully wrote down on the little book which she kept for jottings,
"_Mademoiselle de Maupin_, in a book by Théophile Gautier," while her
thoughts ran:

"He did not say what was the name of the story, but I can read the whole
lot this man wrote. I'll go to a French library on Monday."

Then she sat down in her armchair by the fire and reviewed the entire
chain of events.

She was embarked upon a new current which would help to carry her to
some definite goal--she was out of the backwater. It was not a voyage to
Cythera, but youth was at the prow, and ambition, not pleasure, at the
helm; and there live philosophers who say these two things bring more
lasting good than all the bliss that is to be snatched from the other
combination.--Who knows!--They may be right!

Matilda was nervous with excitement when after supper she was told of
the definite settlement of her sister's affairs.

"So you are really engaged, Kitten!" she exclaimed. "Now, do tell me all
about it. There's a dear--and what was she like, and is it a grand house
and are you going to be properly treated as a real lady?"

"Yes, I am engaged. I am to go in on Wednesday, 'bag and baggage,' as
Lady Garribardine said."

"My! what a vulgar expression for a lady to use, Kitten--are you sure
she's all right?"

Matilda hated what was not genteel.

"Oh! yes, Tild--she's all right--and the house is beautiful--and, yes,
what you'd call grand--and you may be sure they will treat me exactly in
the way I deserve to be treated. If you aren't respected it's your own
fault--people don't make a mistake as to whom they are with a second
time, even if they do the first. If anyone gets put upon continually, or
gets snubbed, it's her own fault."

Matilda totally disagreed.

"There you are quite wrong. Why, look at Gladys! Bob treats her anyhow
sometimes of a Sunday, and her as good as gold."

"Well, she has made him think that he can by not stopping it in the
beginning. It is never a question of goodness as I often tell you about
things, it is a question of force. Goodness does not count unless it is
so perfect that it is a force, too--like Christ's."

"Oh, my! What awful things you do say, Katherine!"

Matilda felt so uncomfortable when her sister spoke of what she thought
ought only to be mentioned in church!

"No, I merely tell the truth, it is the weaklings who do all the harm in
the world, never the bad or good."

"Well, what was Lady Garribardine like?" Matilda was tired of abstract
speculations.

"She was tall and rather stout, and had a golden wig--and black
eyes--and she understood things. She knows how to order her house,
because the servants had the same awe for her as the office-boy has for
Liv. Her writing-table was awfully untidy, though. I expect she has not
much method, and it is just personality and temper which causes her to
be obeyed."

"You won't stand being ordered about ever, Kitten?"

"It will depend on how much good I feel I am getting out of it. If the
place and people in it are being lessons for me, I shan't mind what she
says--I shall stick it out and try never really to deserve a scolding."

"Was there anyone else there?" Matilda was still curious.

"Yes--a man left when I was going in. He had a clever face. I shall like
him, I believe, if he comes there often."

"You won't go falling in love with any of them gentlemen, Kitten,"
Matilda pleaded affectionately.

She felt that things might develop as they did in the cases of the
innocent actresses and governesses and the villains in her serials.

"Have I ever been given to falling in love?" Katherine asked with a
humorous flash in her eyes.--"You have not seen me tumble into the arms
of Charlie Prodgers or Percy Watson--have you?"

"No, dearie, but these gentlemen in your new biz might be different and
might not mean so honest by you. I do wish I could hope to see you
settled with Charlie some day. He is such a dear fellow, and very
rising. He'll be head clerk at the estate agent's he is in very soon,
and could give you a comfortable home like this is for your own; and no
need to be hanging on for years like Glad and Bob."

"Can you picture me settled in a comfortable home with Charlie Prodgers,
Tild!" Katherine laughed out at the idea, it seemed so comic to her. "He
is as great a snob as Fred, and even more ignorant. I would not let him
button my boots, much less call himself my husband! I'd as soon be dead
as tied to that! At Brixton, too! With the prospect of being the mother
of numbers of sandy-haired little Prodgers. What an outlook!"

Matilda was hurt. They had never spoken in words upon this secret hope
of hers, but she had often hinted at it, and Katherine had been silent
and seemingly preoccupied, but not actually scornful, and to have the
scheme denounced with derision and the happy picture scoffed at was a
blow to her which she could not bear in silence. She felt indignant.

"Charlie Prodgers is good enough for any young lady. Mabel herself
thinks highly of him. He is one of the few of Fred's gentlemen friends
that she thinks worthy to be asked into her mother's house--and I would
have liked to have seen you married into her set safely before she
becomes our sister-in-law, and can patronise you."

"Then I am afraid I must disappoint you, dear," Katherine now tried to
hide her smile. "I have quite another game to play in life. But why
don't you keep him for Ethel--she is nearly sixteen and will soon be
looking out for a young man--or take him yourself?"

This was a new idea for Matilda. She had always been too loyal to dream
of turning her eye in the direction of one whom she regarded as
exclusively her sister's property.

She bridled a little--the picture was so glorious--if it only could be
hers! Charlie Prodgers who scorned to be seen in anything but a frock
coat, unless, of course, he went golfing--Charlie Prodgers who each
Sunday attended the church parade in Hyde Park as a matter of course!
But would he ever look at her? Proud, haughty fellow! and she not so
pretty as Katherine--and not half so nobby as Gladys. But stranger
things than that happened in her serials, and she need not feel that it
was quite hopeless. But how could Kitten willingly relinquish such
triumph? There must be something of a suffragette in her after all,
since no girl in her senses could ask more of fortune!

The Sunday was spent by Katherine in packing up all her belongings and
in selecting the books she meant to take with her, a volume or two of
Voltaire, Bacon's Essays, Kant and Bergson, and a new acquisition, Otto
Weininger's "Sex and Character." This latter had interested her deeply.
There was a great deal of biting truth in his analysis of women, and it
was probably also true that they did not possess souls; but she totally
disagreed with his ending of the matter that the solution of the problem
lay in a voluntary annihilation of the human species through abstinence
from procreation. She, for her part, thought that it was taking things
out of the Hand of God, or the Divine Essence, or whatever the great
Principle should be called--and her eminently practical mind failed to
see the use of such far-reaching speculations. "The poor man was mad, of
course," she said, as she closed the book again before packing it. "But
I will try to watch the feminine traits in myself and crush them. He has
taught me that amount, in any case. And if I have no soul, I have a
brain and a will, and so I am going to obtain as much as a woman can get
with those two things. As for the infinite, men are welcome to that, as
far as I am concerned!"

She looked forward with deep interest to perusing the story with
_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ in it. What could it be about? She had hardly
thought that Lord Algy had read at all, he never spoke of books--but it
was perhaps not surprising; they had been always too occupied in more
agreeable converse. How good it was to remember all that, even though
never in her life she should have such foolish sweetness again!

She had not the slightest sentiment about "leaving home"; she would have
found such a thing quite ridiculous. On the contrary, a sense of
exaltation filled her. She was going forever from this cramped, small
attic and the uncongenial environment of the house. And she must hold
herself in stern command and never waste an opportunity to improve
herself in manner and mind. Of course, she might be liable to make a few
mistakes at first, and the work might be hard, but if will was strong
and emotions were checked, the road to success and development of
her personality could not be a long one. And when she had gained
freedom--how splendidly would she use it! There should be no false
values for her!

Her new dress, the one in the style of Lady Beatrice Strobridge, would
be home by the Tuesday night, and she had got a "dressy" blouse from
Oxford Street, in case she should ever have to appear in the evenings.
She would do very well, she felt.

The family, with the exception of Matilda, were not sorry that she was
departing. The father had left Laburnum Villa and a certain sum to keep
it up for the benefit of the whole bunch of them; and when Mr. Frederick
Bush would move into a house of his own with the refined Mabel Cawber,
Gladys and Bert and Ethel looked forward to an uninterrupted time of
jollity, unclouded by Katherine's aloofness and contempt.

Matilda alone grieved in secret. She thought Katherine was superior to
them all in spite of her reserve, and the last evening, while she sat
with her by the attic fire, she told her so.

"No, I am not, Tild--I am not superior. I am just different--all our
aims are as wide apart as the poles. Glad and Ethel and the boys never
want to learn anything--they resent the thought that there could be
anything that they do not know. Their whole attitude is resentful
towards any knowledge. They like to browse on deceiving themselves over
every question and aspect of life. So they will all just stay where they
are. Fred, an auctioneer, henpecked by Mabel; Bert, a clerk. Poor Glad,
the downtrodden drudge of Bob Hartley, and Ethel probably something of
the same. You, dear old Tild, will be a sentimental old maid looking
after the others' children--because you are entirely a 'mother
woman'--unless you take Charlie Prodgers, as I said the other day, and
have heaps of little Prodgers! Oh! it is all just respectable,
comfortable squalor--and words won't express how glad I am to get out of
it!"

Matilda was quite incensed.

"I'd rather be a lady, however poor, in my own circle, and treated as
such there, than a servant in a grand house as you're going to be,
Kitten. I'd let them see I'd be above taking their orders!"

She hoped this taunt would tell, but Katherine only smiled.

"Poor, dear old Tild," she said. "You do not know, perhaps, that it is a
wise man who understands how to obey those placed over him, and to exact
the same obedience from those beneath. When I have learned my lessons
and have obtained a place of command, then I shall not only enforce
obedience, but I shall remove from my path anyone who crosses my will."

"Oh, my!" gasped Matilda.

"Do you suppose I argued with Liv and Dev and showed them that I would
not take their orders? No, of course not; they valued me and raised my
salary because I did what I was told to do. They were paying me money
and were in a position to command. No one forced me to take their money;
I went there of my own free will, and was to do specified things for a
specified remuneration. I did them to the best of my ability, and so I
am going on to something better. Lady Garribardine is paying me ninety
pounds a year with a rise; and I am to be hers to command for certain
things. When I have learned all that that situation can teach me, I
shall get a larger and higher position, and so on until I reach my goal,
when I shall rule--do not fear, Tild. _I shall rule._"

"I daresay you will," Matilda admitted, awed.

Katherine's face had a strange, compelling force when she spoke thus.

"But we aren't all the same, Kitten. Glad, for instance, has more pride;
look how she left Brown and Melbury's, where she was getting more than
at Ermantine's, because she would not take orders from the new manager
they put over her department."

"That sort of pride was entirely worthy of Gladys' intelligence, and it
had landed her with a less salary, no one's added respect, and not much
to look forward to in the future." And then, with a burst of feeling,
"Oh! Tild, if I only could make laws, I would enforce education to such
an extent that there could not be left any fools like Gladys!"

Then she said good-night to Matilda and gently pushed her from the room,
where she looked as though she meant to stay for another half-hour, and
returning to her armchair, she began to read that book of Théophile
Gautier's which she had bought on the Monday morning, and discovered
that its title was simply "Mademoiselle de Maupin."




CHAPTER VI


Lady Garribardine was having a tea-party with some good music, when
Katherine Bush arrived. She realised immediately that it was stupid of
her to have chosen the afternoon for her entrance into her new post, and
Bronson, the dignified butler, left her in no doubt as to his view of
the matter, as he directed the hurried transport of her luggage through
the hall.

"Her Ladyship expected you this morning, miss," he said, severely.

"Then she should have told me at what hour I was to come," Katherine
answered, quietly; "she mentioned none."

Bronson stared. Miss Arnott, clergyman's daughter though she was, would
never have said a thing like that; she would have been nervous and
apologetic in a minute, poor thing! But this young woman, whom Bronson
had very good reason to believe, from what he had been able to gather,
belonged merely to the lower middle class, had yet the audacity to give
herself all the airs and calm assurance appertaining to a lady of the
world!

Here the entrance of two guests took up his attention, a man and a
woman.

Katherine stood back and waited for directions, while she watched
closely. The man was the same that she had seen on the former occasion.
The woman interested her; she was tall and droopy, with wide vague
eyes, and a wisp of buffish chiffon about her neck inside her furs,
which Bronson assisted her to remove. Then Katherine saw that she wore
the dress which Gladys had described, and which in its general features
had been taken more or less as the model for her own.

This must be Lady Beatrice Strobridge.

"Gerard," the lady said, rather querulously, "I don't mean to stay for
more than ten minutes--so don't get away into some difficult corner with
Läo, if you mean to leave with me."

The man answered with polite indifference.

"Bronson will see you safely to the motor; I promised my aunt to stay to
hear Venzoni; he is sure to be late."

Then they went on up the marble stairs and a young footman was sent with
Katherine Bush in the lift at the back of the hall.

"'Gerard'--it is a nice name--and he looks a nice man," she mused, while
they were carried aloft, "and he is bored with his wife. Gladys was
quite right; why did she have that rag of chiffon? It spoilt the whole
dress."

The housekeeper met her when they arrived in the top passage, and took
her under her wing.

"Some tea will be sent to your room, miss," she informed her, "and Her
Ladyship said she would not have time to see you this evening, but you
would doubtless have things to unpack and arrangements to make for
yourself. Your trunks will be up in a minute."

And then she opened the door into a back room which faced west, so the
afterglow of the setting sun made it not quite dark. There was a fire
burning, and it all appeared gay when the housekeeper turned on the
lights, with its old-fashioned rose-flowered chintz on a bright
parrot-green ground. There was a scent of lavender, too, and Katherine
Bush was pleasantly impressed; nothing looked cheap and gimcrack like
the bedrooms in Laburnum Villa, she thought, or still more those at the
house of Mabel Cawber, which were the envy of Matilda's soul. The
furniture here was solid mahogany of early Victorian make, and the
armchair gave the impression that it would be a pleasant place to rest
in.

When she was alone, Katherine Bush made herself take in every detail.
Lady Garribardine had suggested that she was observant; she must
remember that and always cultivate this faculty, for she realised that
every trifling thing would be different from anything she had ever
known.

She liked the space of the place, she would not feel that she was
tumbling over things. There was an empty bookcase awaiting her books, no
doubt, and a big sensible writing-table there in the window where there
would be plenty of light. The wardrobe was a monster, ample room in it
for any amount of clothes! How pleasant not to have to put most things
away in cardboard boxes under one's bed--often to find them discoloured
by dust when taking them out again! And how pretty and quaint was the
china on the washstand, matching the chintz. And the towels! Of finer
quality--and nearly as many as there had been at the Palatial in Paris,
which she had supposed was a case of French hotel extravagance and not
what would be the custom in private life.

She fingered them softly. They were arranged peculiarly, too, with the
top fold turned back so that one could pick them up in a second.
Katherine Bush smiled cynically when she remembered her two coarse
huckabacks, changed only every Saturday at Laburnum Villa!

Everything gave the impression of spotless cleanliness and order. The
brass hot-water can and the fender and the fire-irons all shone with
superlative polishing.

Presently her tea was brought up by a housemaid in neatest black, with a
cap and apron which would have made Em'ly snort with indignation had she
been asked to wear them, so unmodish was their style! It was a joy to
have a perfectly arranged tea-tray with shining silver and pretty
porcelain, a tray all to herself, too, instead of a breakfast cup
already poured out and mixed with milk and sugar, and probably a little
of the contents upset into the saucer, which also contained a thick
slice of bread and butter and a piece of cake! This is what she had
always been accustomed to at the office, or on Saturday afternoons at
home, while she read her books and a sister brought her tea up to her
attic. And with the exceptions of a Lyons or an A. B. C. restaurant, and
the brief time of glory in Paris, when chocolate was the order of the
day, this one unappetizing cup had represented to her what many women
look forward to as the most delightful meal of all.

The housemaid's manner had been quiet and respectful, as she drew the
curtains and shut out the dying light, the muffin was done to a turn,
and, above all, the tea tasted as tea had never tasted before. She was
too ignorant as yet to know that it was China, not the rankest Ceylon
which she was accustomed to, but she found it particularly nice, though
rather weak. The whole room and the service and the atmosphere spoke of
inhabitants who, somehow she knew, belonged to the same class as those
whose voices she had always admired from beyond the half-high glass
screen.

She sat and dreamed for a while before beginning her unpacking. Her
heart ached underneath for Lord Algy--but aches are possible to bear
when there is an element of triumph and self-glorification about them.
She was quite aware that she had behaved remarkably well, and in a
manner which Lord Algy could never look back upon but with respect. And
to renounce happiness and union when the other person is clamouring for
a continuance of relations, brings a great measure of consolation,
because there is no wound to the self-love, no disastrous feeling that
but for personal stupidity the ache need not be. There is even a
melancholy pleasure in it, giving a pensive sadness not all pain.

After a while, she began to arrange her clothes and books, and it had
struck seven o'clock before all was complete and she had sat down again
to finish "Mademoiselle de Maupin," which had so thrilled her far into
the night.

She read French quite easily, but she was not accustomed to judge of its
style, and as yet hardly appreciated _nuances_, but the story, the
cynical, enchanting, wonderful story, seized hold of her imagination. As
she read the last words, the book dropped into her lap and she stared in
front of her. She saw what Lord Algy had meant--and it flattered her
greatly. She understood entirely _Thédore's_ feelings. How wise she had
been to go! How she had grasped the salient points of life! And she,
Katherine Bush, no great lady, but a daughter of the lower middle class,
had evolved some such instincts herself--had played her game with equal
coolness, and had lived through some such joys.

She thrilled and thrilled. The subtle, whimsical, polished wit of the
book seemed to open some new vista of comprehension to her. She did not
perceive its immorality. She would read it over again and again--and
everything else this man had written. It seemed that she was newly
awakened to a sense of power that she had not known she possessed. If
only she could have read this before she had gone to Paris, what a help
it would have been!

"So Algy was not so ignorant, after all," she mused. "Of course, he must
have thought I was, and so did not let me see that he himself was more
than a fool--darling Algy." But, at all events, he had thought she was
like _Théodore_, only kinder--that was good enough! Well, she would make
that true some day, and meanwhile she was away from stultifying
squalor--away from minds only interested in petty local affairs--away
from sham gentility, away from gramophones and cinemas--away from
pretence, away among the real things where she could learn to understand
every shade of the meaning of life step by step! And at this stage of
her musings, after a gentle knock the same housemaid opened the door
with a can of hot water.

"Your dinner will be served in the secretary's room at eight o'clock,
miss; it is half-past seven now. When would you like me to return to
fasten you up?"

The two red spots appeared in Katherine Bush's cheeks. So she had been
expected to change her dress--and she had not thought of doing so! She
had not even imagined that she would go again downstairs or have any
dinner after that wonderful tea! A little supper probably on a tray
later on, or something like that.

But here was dinner! perhaps the same kind of meal as she had had with
Lord Algy. Of course, she ought to have known that she must change her
dress. She felt very angry with herself, and after the exaltation over
her own instincts this was a fall! But she would never err again, and
fortunately the housemaid would not know that she had been ignorant.

"My things fasten in the front, thank you, so that I need not trouble
you," she answered, graciously; "but will you tell me, please, where I
shall find the secretary's room?"

The housemaid gave directions--but one of the footmen would be certain
to be in the hall and would show her. Thomas, the one who had brought
her up, would wait on her.

"When you are ready, miss, will you please ring, and I will whistle down
to say you are coming. We always did for Miss Arnott, and then they
serve the dinner at once. This bell rings up and this one down; it is
the upstairs one for me. I am Martha, the second housemaid, miss, and
will be pleased to do anything I can for you."

Katherine Bush thanked the girl again and quickly began to dress, and at
a minute or two to eight was on her way. This upper staircase she found
descended to the ground floor independently of the stately, shallow
marble one she had walked up on to the sitting-room on her former visit
and which went no farther than the first floor.

Thomas was waiting for her and conducted her to a room down the
corridor, whose windows she discovered later looked out on a dull, blank
wall. It had comfortable, solid, leather-covered furniture, the relic
possibly of some country smoking-room, and faded crimson silk brocade
curtains, the discarded splendour of a salon, perhaps. These were cosily
drawn, and there was plenty of electric light, and she saw that there
would be space to do her typing on the solid, large table, and to keep
all records in those capacious cupboards which lined the walls. The
feeling that she was in space again gave her satisfaction; she had so
often longed to break down the partition of her attic, or stretch out
and push away the glass screen at Liv and Dev's. The room was very high,
too--another advantage.

"I shall always have large, high rooms when I have won my game," she
said to herself.

A small table by the fire was laid for one. She made herself notice the
silver and the glass and the cloth, and almost immediately Thomas
brought in a large tray with her dinner. There was soup in a quaint
covered cup with two handles, and some hot silver dishes.

He placed them all with regularity within her reach, and then asked
respectfully if she would please to ring when she was ready for her
sweet. Miss Arnott was wont to take claret, he informed her, but what
would she, Miss Bush, desire to drink?

"A cup of tea," almost escaped from the tip of Katherine's tongue--but
she stopped herself. Probably one did not take tea with one's dinner
even alone like this, and if she had it, Thomas would know that she was
not accustomed to the regulation things. Water would be safest. So she
indicated her wishes and Thomas left the room.

A sense of strangeness, almost of awe, stole over her, a sensation she
had not felt even when with Lord Algy in the gilded luxury of the Paris
hotel. She had known then that those surroundings were just part of any
_demi-mondaine's_ life, and could be had by the lowest for money--but
these were quite different. These were rather shabby, but were the
expression of people who had had them for countless years, and were, of
course, ordinary and everyday in their existences--the whole atmosphere
affected her.

She was glad that Thomas had gone out of the room. She knew that at the
present stage she should hate to be watched, while she ate, by a silent
servant.

"But I must accustom myself to that," she told herself, for Algy, she
remembered, had never seemed to remark servants at all, and would go on
talking to her, while his coat was being handed or his boots put on, as
though Hanson did not exist.

She was hungry and began to break her bread. She wished she felt quite
sure whether or no she was expected to turn the soup out into the soup
plate or drink it as it was? She decided to try the former course, since
of what use was the soup plate if it had not been brought for that
purpose?

The food proved to be excellent; and the sweet and fruit just to her
taste, and when all was finished, Thomas removed everything and folded
up the small table and put it back into its, evidently, accustomed
corner, and bringing her the evening papers, he made up the fire and
left her alone.

This, she supposed, would be the time she would have to herself. She
hardly noticed the headlines as she glanced at the news; her mind was
too full of herself and her new life to take interest in outside things.

Where did that door lead to? she wondered--a heavy mahogany door; but
she was soon to know, for it opened suddenly, and the man she had
already twice seen came in, leaving it open after him, so that she could
perceive that the room he had left was a dim, vast library; it was lined
with books.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I have come for some large-sized paper.
My aunt used to have it kept in this drawer, I think."

Katherine Bush rose while he went to get it out for himself--he was not
her employer, and she did not yet know where things were kept, so she
did not offer to help him. He was in evening dress, and his hair was as
well groomed as Lord Algy's, but not cut quite so short, and it was
brushed straight back from his forehead and was brown and thick. His
face was tired and humorous and very distinguished, but for the moment
he looked cross and impatient. The paper was evidently not where he had
thought that it would be.

"Confound it!" he muttered, almost inaudibly, and then aloud, "I am in a
great hurry. Will you please look in those cupboards while I look in
these?"

Katherine Bush did as she was asked, and chanced upon the paper
immediately. She handed it to him without a word. She noticed that he
hardly looked at her, and did not take in her personality at all. She
was just his aunt's new secretary and typist; and more important matters
pressed.

"Thanks, awfully;" then he glanced at the table, where the typing
machine used by Miss Arnott stood. "Oh!--er--I was wondering if you
would be so awfully kind as to type this when I have written it; it is a
letter I must send to the _Times_, and I shall have to go in to dinner
in a minute.'

"I have not seen how this machine works yet," Katherine Bush answered,
"but if you care to dictate, I can take it down in shorthand and then
write it out very quickly afterwards."

"That is most kind of you--will you come into the library then?--my
notes are there."

She followed him silently, and when he had found some scribbled words
written on the back of an envelope, he went to the hearth-rug, and,
leaning against the mantelpiece, began to speak. Katherine had taken up
a block and pencil and was waiting ready.

He was not coherent at first; he had neither Mr. Livingstone's precise,
oily slowness, nor Mr. Devereux's crisp fluency. She took down exactly
what he had said. Then he asked her to read it aloud.

"That is frightful English!" he exclaimed, impatiently. "I never can
dictate properly, I must always write myself or my ideas do not flow."

"If the substance is all right and it is just the English you want
regulated, I can do that when I copy it out."

He looked at her in doubt, and Katherine smiled to herself--this
flattered her.

"It would be awfully kind of you if you would, though," he went on,
hesitatingly. "I have kept them waiting a quarter of an hour as it is.
Could you do it immediately and send it in to the dining-room by one of
the footmen? I have my fountain-pen with me, I will sign it there. It is
to be addressed to the Editor of the _Times_."

"Yes, I will."

Mr. Strobridge thanked his aunt's new secretary courteously as he went
towards the door, and then he left the room. At the moment of his exit,
Katherine Bush heard the sound of voices, male and female; they were
evidently going in to dinner without waiting for him. She looked up at
the clock, it was ten minutes to nine; then she smiled again and, going
to the writing-table, she began her task, a very simple one to her who
was accustomed to frame euphonious sentences. And when she had
completed it, she went back into the secretary's room and rang the bell.

"This is to be taken to Mr.--is his name Strobridge?--Lady
Garribardine's nephew," she told the astonished Thomas.

"Yes, miss. _Her Ladyship's_ nephew is _the Honourable_ Mr. Gerard
Strobridge--if you mean him."

"Yes, I do--he is dining here and wants it at once."

She made no further explanation, but took up the paper and reseated
herself in her chair by the fire; and Thomas could but obey orders.

"A cool card," he whistled to himself, as he disappeared.

Meanwhile, Gerard Strobridge was saying to the lady at his side:

"I had to repudiate Warrington's insolence in the _Central Gazette_
to-night. I have written to the _Times_--that is what made me keep even
you waiting, dearest lady. My aunt's new shorthand typist took it down,
and I shall send it off in a few minutes. I hope it will not be too
late."

"You look quite serious, G.," the lady laughed. "It is too attractive to
see you in earnest over something!"

"I am always in earnest--especially when I tell you that I love you--why
did you not come this afternoon, Läo, I stayed late on purpose and you
never turned up."

"I knew I should meet you to-night, G.--and I do not want soon to grow
bored!"

Mr. Strobridge looked at her reproachfully. She was extremely pleasant
to the eye, with her marvellous skin and dark hair, and her curly
affected mouth. He was a cynic and an epicurean. He was not in the least
disenchanted by his knowledge that the whole woman was a mass of
affectation, from the conscious pouting of her red lips to the way she
held her soup spoon. He rather admired the skill she showed in it all.
She pleased his senses, had just enough wit to chirp like a parrot good
things others had said, and was full of small talk--while she knew the
game to her finger-tips. He did not want the repetition of a serious
affair since he had so happily escaped by the skin of his teeth from
Alice Southerwood. Läo Delemar, widowed and rich and circumspect,
promised an agreeable winter to him, with few complications.

Women were more or less necessities to Gerard Strobridge's life; they
were his choruses, his solaces, his inspirations.

In a few minutes a footman brought the large envelope, and amidst
general chaff he read aloud the letter, his astonishment momentarily
growing at the apt rearrangement of his words.

"She is no fool, your new secretary, Seraphim," he called down the table
to his aunt. "I do thank you for her services to-night."

Sarah Lady Garribardine laughed complacently.

"I told you, G., I had found a treasure in Miss Katherine Bush!"




CHAPTER VII


Over a week had gone by and Katherine Bush had completely fallen into
her duties; they were not difficult, and she continued to keep her eyes
and her intelligence on the alert, and by the second Sunday when she was
to have the afternoon to meet Matilda, she had begun to feel that a
whole ocean had rolled between the present Katherine and the creature of
the days before the outing in Paris with Lord Algy!

She had made one or two annoying mistakes and had had one or two
surprises, some pleasant ones. It was agreeable to have a cup of tea
when one woke, and one's curtains drawn back by an attentive housemaid
every morning, and a deep hot bath, instead of a scramble in a small tin
tub on Saturday nights. There was a bathroom in Laburnum Villa, but
during the week Matilda used it for keeping all sorts of things in, and
there were such a number of them to have the bath in turns on Saturday
and Sunday, that Katherine had preferred the indifferent comfort of a
makeshift in her own attic. It seemed on looking back, after ten days of
modest luxury, that it never could have been possible that she had gone
on month after month, and year after year, in the family circle.

Her heart swelled with gratitude to Lord Algy; but for him she might
never have known that there was anything different. At these moments she
knew that she could easily slip into sentiment about him again, and so
she invariably crushed her emotion and began some active work.

At nine o'clock in the morning it was her duty to go to Lady
Garribardine in her bedroom, where she would find her propped up upon
lacy pink silk pillows, a saucy cap and ribbons covering the greater
part of a more coquettish and rather lighter golden wig than the one she
wore in the day. Her face had not yet been arranged, and presented a sad
contrast to these youthful allurements. Her temper was often very
precarious.

Katherine stood by the bed, block in hand, and took down all
instructions. Lady Garribardine's voluminous correspondence was only
attended to in the morning; the accumulations of the later part of the
day before were heaped up in one basket tray, and the early posts in
another. While a third empty one awaited those communications which were
to be answered either in type or in handwriting.

Now, after ten days of service, Katherine had mastered most of Lady
Garribardine's affairs. She knew the wages of her servants, the
expenditure of the house, the phrasing of her friends' letters, their
points of views, little hatreds and little loves, their want or
possession of good English and powers of expressing themselves--she
fancied she could almost picture the faces, so vivid were these pen
portraits of the writers that the notes showed. Lady Garribardine seldom
answered even the most private with her own hand and Katherine had
grown quite accustomed to signing "Sarah Garribardine" as "yours
affectionately" or "yours sincerely." She even derived a cynical
amusement from the fictions she was instructed to invent to one and
another.

The life of a great lady, she saw, would be a very complicated affair to
a novice, and each day she felt glad she was having the opportunity of
learning its intricacies. She meant to make no mistakes when her own
turn should come.

Lady Garribardine had not continued to exploit her for her personal
diversion as she had done on the occasion of their initial meeting, she
had been too occupied, perhaps; on the contrary, she kept strictly to
her rôle of employer and hardly spoke except on business. Katherine
realised that she looked upon her much as Lord Algy had looked upon
Hanson, and far from its arousing the rageful resentment which it would
have done in Matilda's feminine breast, she saw the justice of it, and
considered it a proper arrangement.

"Some people have the luck to be born to high station," she reasoned to
herself, "and those who would attain it for themselves must make
themselves fitted for it first--besides there would be no good in it to
me, if after I had obtained it I should have to hobnob with my own
secretary. It is the distinctions and barriers that make the thing worth
having."

As yet she had only rarely come across other members of the world beyond
her employer on such occasions as, for instance, if she were sent for
suddenly to the drawing-room to take down some instruction, or bring
some charity list; but whenever she had the chance she observed them
carefully. Some of them were far from what had been her ideal of what
high birth and breeding would certainly show, but they all had that ease
of manner which polished their casualnesses, and once she was still
receiving instructions by the bedside when Stirling, the maid, came to
know if Lady Beatrice Strobridge might come up.

"Confound the woman!" Her Ladyship exclaimed in her angelic voice, its
refinement of pronunciation always a joy to Katherine's ear--whatever
the bluntness of the words might be--"No, certainly not--my face is not
done--but stay, Stirling, it may be something to do with to-night--give
me the rouge and powder and a looking-glass. Don't go, Miss Bush--it is
nothing private and she won't stay for more than a minute."

Katherine discreetly turned her eyes from the bed to the window, and
when she looked round again, two blooming rose-coloured cheeks balanced
the girlish curls, and Lady Garribardine was reposing languidly upon her
pillows.

"Dearest Aunt Sarah, I had to come," cried Lady Beatrice in her
plaintive discontented voice, "Gerard has been perfectly impossible,
actually has refused to let me go to the Artist Model's ball as
Ganymede, and I have got the most ducky dress, a pendant to Hebe
Vermont's Iris."

"A few rags of chiffon, a cup and bare legs, I suppose," Lady
Garribardine retorted not unkindly, as her niece sat upon the bed.

"You may describe it like that if you want to, Aunt Sarah! I assure you,
though, it is most becoming, and it is too ridiculous when everyone we
know is going, and all the Thorvils have such tiny ankles, too."

"The more reason for you not to expose them to the common herd. Go
naked if you so desire to a ball in a private house among your own
class--you'll lay yourself open only to criticisms of your charms
there--but to let hoi polloi gaze at you undressed is to lower your
order; I am with Gerard about that."

Lady Beatrice pouted.

"I really thought you were so up to date, Aunt Seraphim, darling, that
you would be sure to side with me--of course I shall go, all the same; I
should not think of paying any attention to Gerard--only it would be so
much nicer if you had consented to scold him for me."

"I am up to date, I hope, in so far as I try to move with the
times"--Lady Garribardine's face was good-naturedly contemptuous--"only,
I consider that all of you who throw your bonnets over the windmills are
cutting your own throats--You are destroying values, cheapening
pleasures, breaking down hedges, and letting in the swine to feed upon
your grapes--you are often very vulgar, you modern people."

Lady Beatrice got off the bed.

"Then there is no use talking, Aunt Sarah--I dare say we are--but what
matter? I wish I knew what _does_ matter? I am bored all the time; I get
some momentary pleasure out of my poetry, and some out of my dear
precious friends--but the rest of the day is one long yawn. You ought
not to grudge my being Ganymede; every sort of quaint creature is at
this ball, and I get quite amused each year when I go."

"Why don't you take a box, then, and watch them? I could quite
understand that, and intend to do so myself--Miss Bush, by the way, did
you write to say I would have number five?"

Katherine replied in the affirmative and Lady Beatrice suddenly became
aware of her presence as she resumed her place on the bed.

"Oh, this is your new secretary, Aunt Sarah! I am sure you have a
frightfully difficult time--er--Miss Bush!" And she laughed, "Her
Ladyship expects perfection."

"Her Ladyship has quite a right to as good as can be got--since she pays
for it."

Katherine's voice was deep and level, and contained no impertinence,
only a grave statement of fact.

Lady Garribardine chuckled among her pillows.

"Miss Bush is much nearer the truth of things than any of you so-called
psychological philosophers, Bee--analysing matters with little
dilettante methods all day to the laughter of the gods. Miss Bush
realises her obligations as a secretary, but you very often don't
perceive yours as a duke's daughter, and a rising Foreign Office
official's wife."

Lady Beatrice was not the least crushed. She laughed frankly.

"Dear, sweet Aunty! There never has been a scandel about me in my
life--I am a model of circumspectness, demureness and present-day
virtuous wifeliness. Why, I never interfere with Gerard--we hardly meet
in the whole week--and I merely like my own simple friends, my own
simple clothes, and my own simple pleasures!"

"Artless creature!" And the youthful curls shook. "Well, what did you
come for, in so many words? To try to get me to influence Gerard not to
play for once the ineffectual part of husband in authority, and so let
you disgrace the name of Thorvil and Strobridge in peace?"

Lady Beatrice seized and stroked the fat hand lying upon the pink silk
coverlet.

"You darling, ducky Aunt Seraphim! Just that! I want to wear my
enchanting boy's dress--I must be Ganymede, the cupbearer!"

"Well, I'll be no party to it--be off with you. I have serious affairs
to settle with Miss Bush and have no further time to waste."

Lady Beatrice saluted her obediently and got off the bed once more; she
was laughing softly.

"Gerard is coming to lunch," Lady Garribardine called to her, "and Läo
Delemar, and they are going to see a winter exhibition afterwards."

"I can't stand Läo," Lady Beatrice cooed from the doorway; "she
pretends to be so full of sex and other dreadful natural things, she
makes my innocent aesthetic flesh creep--Gerard always had fruity
tastes--Bye-bye, dear Aunt Sarah!" And kissing her finger-tips she was
at last gone, leaving Katherine wondering.

They had said very severe things to each other and neither was the least
angry really--Gladys and Fred were not wont to bicker so.

"Call up Mr. Strobridge, Miss Bush--he will not have left home yet--you
know his number--ask him to speak to me at once."

Katherine obeyed--she was an expert with the telephone and never raised
her voice. Mr. Strobridge was soon at the other end of it, and she was
about to hand the receiver to her employer when that lady frowned and
told her to give the message herself.

"My right ear is troublesome to-day," she said, "you must do the
business for me, Miss Bush."

"Hello! Her Ladyship wishes me to give you a message--will you wait a
moment until I take it?"

"Hello! Yes."

"Say he is to come half an hour earlier to lunch to-day. I have things
to talk over with him about to-night--He is to go to this ridiculous
ball in my box--tell him so."

Katherine repeated the exact message.

"Tell her I am very much annoyed about the whole thing," Mr. Strobridge
returned, "and have decided not to be present myself."

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Lady Garribardine, when she was told, and,
seizing the receiver from Katherine's hand, she roared:

"Don't be a fool, G.--it is too late in the day to stand upon your
dignity--I'll tell you the rest when you come to lunch."--Upon which she
closed the communication and called for Stirling.

"Take all this rubbish of letters away, Miss Bush--I must get up and
cope with the humiliating defects of old age--you may go."

Katherine had a very busy morning in front of her. She sat steadily
typing and writing in the secretary's room, until her lunch was brought
and even then she hardly stopped to eat it, but on her own way to the
dining-room Lady Garribardine came in. She looked at the hardly tasted
food and blinked her black eyes:

"Tut, tut! You must eat, child--_pas trop de zèle_--Finish your
pudding--and then bring me those two letters upon the report of the
Wineberger charity--into the dining-room--You can have your coffee with
us--Mr. Strobridge and I are alone, Mrs. Delemar is not coming, after
all--By the way, do you have everything you want? The coffee they give
you is good, eh? Servants always skimp the beans when left to
themselves."

"I have everything I want, thank you--but I have not been offered
coffee," Katherine replied.

Lady Garribardine's face assumed an indignant expression, and she
sharply rang the bell.

"These are the things that happen when one does not know of them--you
ought to have complained to me before, Miss Bush!"

Thomas answered the bell and whitened perceptibly when he saw his
mistress's face. He was asked why Miss Bush had not been served with
coffee, in a voice which froze his tongue, and the only excuse he could
give was a stammering statement that Miss Arnott had not taken any,
which aroused further wrath.

"Pampered wretches!" Lady Garribardine exclaimed. "Anything to save
themselves trouble! I will speak to Bronson about this--but see that it
never happens again, Thomas!" And the trembling footman was allowed to
leave the room.

"I am glad you did not try to defend them, as the foolish Arnott would
have done," Her Ladyship flashed. "She was always standing between my
just wrath and the servant's delinquencies, always shielding them--one
would have thought she was of their class. The result was no one in the
house respected her--good creature though she was. See that you are
respected, young woman, and obeyed when obedience is your due."

"I will try to be"--and an inscrutable expression played round
Katherine's full red mouth. "I would never shield anyone from what he
deserved."

"It seems to me you understand a good deal, girl!--Well, come into the
dining-room in half an hour," and, smiling her comprehending smile, Lady
Garribardine left the room.

"G., that is a wonderful creature, that new secretary of mine--have you
noticed her yet?" she said later on to her nephew when they had finished
the serious part of their luncheon, and she had rung her enamelled bell
for the automatic entrance of the servants from behind the screen--they
were only allowed in the room to change the courses at this meal.
Numbers of politicians and diplomats frequently dropped in and preferred
to discuss affairs with their hostess alone.

"No--not much," Mr. Strobridge admitted when they were again by
themselves and coffee had come. "I thought she did my letter to the
_Times_ remarkably well, though."

"She has not done anything badly yet--when she makes a mistake in social
trifles she always realises it, and corrects herself. Her reading aloud
was grotesque at first, but I have never had to tell her how to
pronounce a word twice. I lay traps for her; she is as smart as paint
and as deep as a well."

"A treasure indeed--" but Mr. Strobridge's voice was absent, he was
uninterested and was still smarting under the annoyance of the situation
created by his wife.

Of course he could not make her stay at home by force--and he hated the
idea of Ganymede and the bare legs. He reverted to the topic once more.

"I would really rather not go to see the freakish crew to-night," he
said. "Beatrice is doing it merely from obstinacy; she is not like Hebe
Vermont, a ridiculous _poseuse_, crazy for notoriety; she is a refined
creature generally, though wearying. This is just to defy me."

"As I have always told you, G., you should never have married, you are
made for an ardent and devoted lover, with a suitable change of
inamorata every six months. In the rôle of husband you are--frankly--a
little ridiculous! You have no authority. As Miss Bush put it just now
about something else, you usually act from good nature, not from a sense
of justice; and Beatrice snaps her fingers at you and goes her own way."

"I don't mind as a rule--indeed, I am grateful to her for doing so. Can
there be anything more tedious and bourgeois than the recognised
relation of husband and wife? The only things which make intimacy with a
woman agreeable are difficulty and intermittency. Bee fortunately
expects nothing from me, and I expect nothing from her, beyond acting in
a manner suitable to her race and station, and I don't think Ganymede in
his original costume at an Artist Models' ball a harmonious part for my
wife or a Thorvil to adopt."

"You don't know how to manage her, and you are too indifferent to
try--so you had better swallow your outraged dignity and come with me in
my box after all. Läo will be there and you can sit and whisper in the
back of it." And Lady Garribardine lit her cigarette, but Mr. Strobridge
protested in whimsical distress:

"Heaven forbid! Would you kill this dawning romance, Seraphim? If Läo
and I are to be drafted off like a pair of fiancés, the whole charm is
gone. I wish to _ménager_ my emotions so that they may last over the
Easter recess; after that I shall be too busy for them to matter. Don't
be ruthless, sweet Aunt!"

Lady Garribardine laughed and at that moment Katherine Bush came in, the
finished letters in her hand.

"Give Miss Bush some coffee, G., while I look over them," and Her
Ladyship indicated the tray which had been placed by an attentive
Bronson close to her hand.

Mr. Strobridge did as he was asked. His thoughts were far away, and
beyond displaying the courtesy he used to all women, he never noticed
Katherine at all. She was quite ordinary looking still--with the screwed
up mop of ashen-hued hair, and her plain dark blouse, unless you chanced
to meet her strange and beautiful eyes.

For some reason she felt a little piqued, the man's manner and
phrasing attracted her, his voice was superlatively cultivated, and
his words chosen with polished grace. Here was a person from whom
something could be learned. She would have wished to have talked with
him unrestrainedly and alone. She remained silent and listened when
aunt and nephew again took up the ball of conversation together. How
she would love to be able to converse like that! They were so
sparkling--never in earnest seemingly, all was light as air, while Mr.
Strobridge made allusions and quotations which showed his brilliant
erudition, and Katherine hearkened with all her ears. Some of them she
recognized and others she determined to look up, but his whole
pronunciation of the sentences sounded different from what she had
imagined they would be when she had read them to herself.

This was the first time she had heard a continued conversation between
two people who she had already decided were worthy of note, and this
half-hour stood out as the first milestone in her progress.

Presently they all rose--and she went back to her work with the sense of
the magnitude of her task in climbing to the pinnacle of a great lady
and cultivated woman of the world.

For a few moments she felt a little depressed--then a thought came to
her.

"He could help me to knowledge of literature and art--he could teach
me true culture--and since he is married there can be no stupid
love-making. But for this he must first realise that I exist and for
that when my chance comes I must arrest his attention through the ears
and the eyes. He must for once look at me and see not only his aunt's
secretary--and then I can learn from him all that I desire to know."

That this course of action could possibly cause the proposed teacher
pain in the future never entered her head.




CHAPTER VIII


Matilda had been told to meet her sister, if it should be fine on this
Sunday, in the Park by the Serpentine; they would walk about and then go
and have an early tea at Victoria Station, whence Matilda could take a
train back to Bindon's Green.

They met punctually at the time appointed on the bridge, and the elder
Miss Bush was filled with joy. She had missed Katherine dreadfully, as
browbeating husbands are often missed by meek wives, and she was full of
curiosity to hear her news.

"You look changed somehow, Kitten!" she exclaimed, when they had greeted
each other. "It isn't because you'd done your hair differently; you had
it that way on the last day--it isn't a bit 'the look', but it suits
you. No, it's not that--but you are changed somehow. Now tell me
everything, dearie--I am dying to hear."

"I like it," began Katherine, "and I am learning lots of things."

This information did not thrill Matilda. Katherine's desire to be always
learning was very fatiguing, she thought, and quite unnecessary. She
wanted to hear facts of food and lodging and people and treatment, not
unimportant moral developments.

"Oh--well," she said. "Are they kind to you?"

"Yes--I am waited on like a lady--and generally the work isn't half so
heavy as at Liv and Dev's."

"Tell me right from the beginning. What you do when you get up in the
morning until you go to bed."

Katherine complied.

"I am waked at half-past seven and given a cup of tea--real tea, Tild,
not the stuff we called tea at home." (A slight toss of the head from
Matilda.) "The second housemaid waits on me, and pulls up my blind, and
then I have my bath in the bathroom across the passage--a nice, deep hot
bath."

"Whatever for--every day?" interrupted Matilda. "What waste of soap and
towels and things--do you like it, Kitten?"

"Of course, I do--we all seem to be very dirty people to me now,
Tild--with our one tub a week; you soon grow to find things a necessity.
I could not bear not to have a bath every day now."

Matilda snorted.

"Well--and then--?"

"Then I go down and have my breakfast in the secretary's room--my
sitting-room, in fact. It is a lovely breakfast, with beautiful china
and silver and table-linen, and when I have finished that I take my
block and pencil and go up to Lady Garribardine's bedroom to take down
my instructions for the day in shorthand."

"Oh, Kitten, do tell me, what's her room like?" At last something
interesting might be coming!

"It is all pink silk and lace and a gilt bed, and numbers of
photographs, and a big sofa and comfortable chairs--and when she has
rheumatism she stays there and has people up to tea."

"What! Folks to tea in her bedroom? Ladies, of course?"

"Oh! dear no! Men, too! She has heaps of men friends; they are devoted
to her."

"Gentlemen in her bedroom! I do call that fast!" Matilda was frankly
shocked.

"Why?" asked Katherine.

"Why? My dear! Just fancy--gentlemen where you sleep and dress! Mabel
would not dream of doing such a thing--and I do hope she'll never hear
you are in that kind of a house. She'd be sure to pass remarks."

"Lady Garribardine is over sixty years old, Tild! Don't you think you
are being rather funny?" and Katherine wondered why she had never
noticed before that Matilda was totally devoid of all sense of humour.
And then she realised that the conception was new even to herself, and
must have come from her book reading, though she was conscious that it
was a gift that she had always enjoyed. No one had spoken of the "senses
of humour" in their home circle, and Matilda would not have understood
what it meant or whether she did or did not possess it!

Things were things to Matilda, and had not different aspects, and for a
lady to receive gentlemen in her bedroom if she were even over sixty
years old and suffering from rheumatism was not proper conduct, and
would earn the disapproval of Mabel Cawber and, indeed, of refined and
select Bindon's Green in general.

"I don't see that age makes a difference; it's the idea of tea in a
bedroom, dearie--with gentlemen!"

"But what do you think they would do to her, Tild?" Katherine with
difficulty hid her smile.

"Oh! my! what dreadful things you do say, Katherine!" Matilda blushed.
"Why, it's the awkwardness of it for them--I'm wondering whatever Fred
and Bert and Charlie Prodgers would feel if Mabel had them up to hers
of a Sunday, supposing she had a cold--and what _would_ anyone say!"

"Yes, I am sure Bindon's Green would talk its head off, and Fred and
Bert and Charlie Prodgers would be awfully uncomfortable and get every
sort of extraordinary idea into their heads, and if a person like Mabel
did do such a thing, as to have them up there, she would be fidgety
herself--or she would be really fast and intend them to go ahead. But
Lady Garribardine is always quite sure of herself, and her friends are,
too, and they don't have to consider convention--they are really
gentlemen, you see, and not worried at all as to what others think or
say, and it seems quite natural to them to come up and see an old
rheumatic lady anywhere they want to see her. That is just the
difference in the class, Tild--the upper are perfectly real, and don't
pretend anything, and aren't uncomfortable in doing natural things."

Matilda was still disapproving, and at once became antagonistic when her
sister made reflections upon class.

"I call it very queer, anyway," she sniffed. "And wherever do they find
room to sit--in a bedroom, dearie?"

Katherine laughed--she wondered if she had never had a glimpse of life
and space and comfort with Lord Algy, should she, too, have been as
ignorant and surprised at everything in her new sphere as Matilda was at
the description of it. She supposed she would have been equally
surprised, but would certainly have viewed it with an open mind. After
ten days of peeps at a world where everything new and old was looked at
and discussed with the broadest toleration, the incredible narrowness
of the Bindon's Green outlook appalled her--the forces of ignorance and
prejudice and ridiculous hypocrisy which ruled such hundreds of worthy
people's lives!

She came back from these speculations to the reality of her sister's
voice, reiterating her question as to where the visitors found place,
and she answered, still smiling:

"It is a great big room, Tild, twice as big as the drawing-room at
home--no--bigger still, and twenty people could sit in it without
crowding."

"Goodness gracious!" ejaculated Matilda; "it must be grand."

"You see, you are such an old goose, Matilda. You think the whole world
must be like Bindon's Green, although I have told you over and over
again that other places, and other grades of life, are different, but
you and Mabel and Fred and Bert, and the whole crew of you, measure
everything with your own tiny measure. You make me gasp at your outlook
sometimes."

Matilda bridled--and Katherine went on.

"Lady Garribardine's house does not seem to be a bit grand to her, nor
to any of the people who come there. They are not conscious of it; it is
just everyday to them, although some of them live in quite small houses
themselves and aren't at all rich. She has two cousins--elderly ladies,
who live in a tiny flat--but oh! the difference in it to Mabel's villa!
I had to take them a message last week and waited in their mite of a
drawing-room--it was exquisitely clean and simple, and they are probably
poorer than we are."

Matilda felt too ruffled to continue this conversation; she always hated
the way Katherine argued with her; she wanted to get back to the far
more interesting subject of carpets and curtains and arrangements in the
rooms of Lady Garribardine's house. Numbers of the people in her
serials, of course, were supposed to own such places, and she had often
seen bits of them on the stage, but until she found Katherine really
lived now in one, somehow she had never believed in them as living
actualities, or rather their reality had not been brought home to her.
So she questioned Katherine, and soon had an accurate description of her
ladyship's bedroom, and the rest of the house, then she got back to the
happenings of her sister's day.

"Well, when you have got up there, you take down orders, and then?"

"I sort everything that has come by the post and mark on the envelopes
how I am to answer them, and I sometimes read her the papers aloud if
her eyes are tired."

"Yes?"

"And then I go down and write the letters; she hardly ever answers any
herself, and I have to write them as if I were she. Her friends must
wonder how her hand and style have changed since Miss Arnott left!"

Here was something thrilling again for Matilda.

"Oh, my! What a lot you must get to know about the smart set, Kitten;
isn't it interesting!"

"Yes, as I told you, I am learning lessons."

"Oh, bother that! Well, what do they write about, do tell me--?"

"All sorts of things; their movements, their charities--invitations,
little witticisms about each other--politics, the last good story--and,
some of them, books."

"And you have to answer as if you were her? However do you do it,
Kitten?"

"She gives me the general idea--she showed me the first time for the
private letters, and now I know, but sometimes perhaps I write as if it
were me!"

"And don't they know it is not her hand?"

"Of course, but they don't care. She is a great lady and a character,
and she is very powerful in their circle of society, and it is worth
everyone's while to be civil to her."

"It is all funny. Well, what else do you do?"

"Sometimes I have to do errands--shopping and so on--and then my
luncheon comes--the food is lovely, and I am waited on by a footman
called Thomas; he is the third; and on Wednesday Lady Garribardine took
his and the butler's heads off because I had not been given coffee. She
means me to be perfectly treated, I can tell you!"

"Coffee after your lunch, how genteel! And my! what a lot of servants.
Whatever do they all do?"

"Their work, I suppose. You forget it is a big house and everything is
splendidly done and beautifully clean, and regular and orderly."

Here Matilda insisted upon a full list of all the retainers, and an
account of their separate duties; her domestic soul revelled in these
details, and at the end of the recital her awe knew no bounds. Katherine
was able to give her a very circumstantial set of statements, as all
accounts passed through her hands.

"Well, your old lady must spend pints of money," Matilda said, with a
sigh, "but we've not got to your afternoons yet, dearie. Do you work all
them, too?"

"When I am very busy--it depends how much I have to do; if I am not very
occupied and I have not been out in the morning, I go for a walk before
tea. I have to take her ladyship's two fox-terriers, Jack and Joe; they
are jolly little fellows, and I love them. We scamper in the square, or
go as far as the Park."

"And your tea? They bring you up a cup, I suppose, every day--regular?"

"Not a cup--a whole tray to myself, and lovely muffins and cream, Tild.
Lady Garribardine has a Jersey herd of cows at her place in Blankshire,
and the cream comes up each day from there."

"My! how nice!" Matilda sighed again. Her imagination could hardly take
in such luxury. It seemed to her that Katherine must be living in almost
gilded vice!

"Then after tea, if I am not sent for to do any special thing, I read to
myself. I look up anything that I don't know about that I have chanced
to hear spoken of by the people who come--I am allowed to take books
from the library."

"Then you do see people sometimes?" Matilda's interest revived again.
"What are they like, Kitten?"

"Sometimes I do, but not often--only when I chance to be sent for, but
next week Her Ladyship has got a big charity tableaux entertainment on
hand, that she is arranger and patroness of, and I shall come across
lots of people of society, some of the ones you know the names of so
well in the _Flare_."

"The Duchess of Dashington and the Countess of Blanktown--really,
Kitten!"

This was fashion, indeed!

"Probably--but I don't know about the Duchess of Dashington. I don't
think Lady Garribardine approves of her."

"Not approve of the Duchess of Dashington!" Matilda exclaimed,
indignantly. "Her that has gentlemen to tea in her bedroom to give
herself airs like that! Well, I never!"

This particular Duchess' photographs were the joy of the halfpenny
illustrated papers, and Matilda was accustomed to see her in skating
costume waltzing with her instructor, and in golf costume and in private
theatrical costumes, almost every other week.

"No--she speaks of her very cheaply--but I will tell you all about it on
Sunday fortnight. I'll have heard everything by then, because the
tableaux will be over."

Matilda returned to her muttons.

"Then you have supper, I suppose?"

"No--I go up and dress myself and put on my best blouse and have my
dinner at eight o'clock; after that I generally read the paper or French
books--and at ten I go to bed."

"Gracious! what's the good of dressing if you don't see anyone? How
you'll use up your blouse!"

Matilda was aghast at such folly!

"I am supposed to be a lady, Tild, and a lady is expected to dress in
the evening if she is alone on a desert island."

"What stuff! Whatever for?"

"Self-respect."

"Fiddlesticks."

Presently Katherine grew reflective, her catechism over. "I wish you
could see it all, Tild; it would enlarge your brain--it is all so
different from Bindon's Green. If you could only hear their point of
view, I assure you, dear, it might be two different nations--those
barefoot urchins climbing on the rails are much nearer their level than
we are."

But Matilda could not stand this; her wrath rose.

"Those dirty boys nearer your new people than a real lady like Mabel
Cawber, and your own brothers and sisters! Katherine, how dare you!
Horrid little guttersnipes with no pride of themselves; why, they aren't
even ashamed to be here of a Sunday among decent people--they'd do
anything!"

"That is just it, Tild--so would the aristocrats if they wanted to, and
wouldn't be a bit ashamed or even think of it, and they have 'no pride
of themselves,' either--but you'll never understand, Tild, not if you
live to be a hundred years old."

"And I don't want to, there!"

"Then it is perfectly useless my talking, I see that. We had better go
and have some tea."

And so they turned out of Albert Gate and walked to Victoria.

Matilda, when she had smoothed her ruffled feelings, began now to relate
the home news. Gladys and her fiancé were not happy together; they had
not been so since that visit which Katherine would remember they had
taken to Brighton to stay with his aunt--it was nearly six weeks ago now
and both grew more and more gloomy.

"And so uppy as Glad is with Fred, too, and never a bit back on Bob
Hartley!"

Matilda felt things would be better for her sister if a little more
spirit were shown. Mabel and her betrothed had been up for church parade
as usual in the Park that morning, and this lady had also supped with
them at Laburnum Villa the night before, and they had had oysters and a
jolly time.

Katherine felt a strange emotion when she heard of this. She seemed to
see a picture of Lord Algy enjoying oysters, and all the reflections
this action had called up--oh! how long ago it all appeared!

"And have you met that gentlemen you spoke of?" Matilda asked, before
they parted at the station.

"Mr. Strobridge, you mean--Lady Garribardine's nephew. Yes--he is
husband of the lady Glad dresses, the one who had the model she wanted
me to have. He is a clever man--we have not really spoken yet, but I
mean to know him very well some day."

"Oh! Kitten, do be careful! And him a married man, too!"

"For what I want of him, it does not matter whether he is married or
single," Katherine reassured her, and soon the train moved off.

How good Matilda was! Katherine thought, as she walked briskly back to
Berkeley Square--an unselfish, worthy, honest, hopelessly stupid
creature, whom somehow she was fond of. But what could it be that made
her herself so utterly different from them all? Nothing could be
chance--everything had its reason, only we were generally too blind to
perceive it. So was there some truth in that vague story of the
great-grandmother having been someone of high family fallen low in the
world and married to the auctioneer great-grandfather, whom her own
father remembered very well? Could it be that some drop of gentle blood
flowed in her veins, transmitted from this source and concentrated in
her, having escaped the others--or was it simply from the years of her
reading that her mind had developed? But it could not be altogether
that, because she remembered instincts and tastes in uneducated early
childhood completely aloof from the family's.

"Father gave me this business capacity," she mused, "but something
beyond must have given me this will to achieve--and I _shall_
achieve--all I desire--in time! Only I must be ruthless and have no
emotions. I must follow what Bacon asserts about great spirits," and she
quoted softly: "'There is not one that hath been transported to the mad
degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do
keep out this weak passion.'"

Yes, she would keep out this weak passion! She had tasted its joys, and
that memory must last her a lifetime.

On the doorstep she encountered Gerard Strobridge just coming out--he
raised his hat and said politely that it was an abominably cold
day--then he passed on down the steps and so towards Hill Street.

And Katherine Bush went up to her room.




CHAPTER IX


The week of the tableaux had come and gone, and had opened yet another
window for Katherine Bush to peep at the world from. She already knew
many of the people who came to the luncheons and rehearsals, from their
letters, and now she judged of them face to face. She had been in great
request to take down innumerable orders, and arrange business details,
and had listened and inwardly digested what she heard.

Her contempt for some of the company was as great as for Miss Mabel
Cawber--she discovered a few with titles and positions who were what she
disdainfully dubbed, "Middle class underneath!"

"Only that they have been more used to things, they are as paltry as
Mabel," she said to herself, and set about, as was her custom, to find
out why--and from what families they had sprung--and obtained some
satisfaction in the confirmation of her theory of heredity, in
discovering that most of these could lay small claim to blueness of
blood. The insolence of others she approved of.

Many of the American peeresses who were posing as queens, and nuns, and
Greek goddesses, she truly admired--they must have been at one time like
herself--out to learn--and now were conscious that they had made good.

"But I mean to have more repose of manner when I am there," she told
herself.

Of Sarah Lady Garribardine's sayings and views, she kept a great store
in her mind. This was a real aristocrat she felt. A human, faulty,
strong woman, incapable of meanness or anything which could lower the
flag of her order. She was supremely insolent, too, but then she never
did anything which could impair people's respect.

She was hard and generous--and acted up to the doctrine that "_noblesse
oblige_" and entirely believed in the divine right of kings and of Sarah
Lady Garribardine! She had not been a thirteenth century Baron's
daughter for nothing! Katherine Bush shared every one of Her Ladyship's
views and moulded all her ideals upon them.

Each day she was enlarging her vocabulary of words to use--adapting
sentences which she had read of fine English to modern requirements,
pruning colloquialisms, cultivating pronunciation, polishing her
critical faculties. She was perfectly conscious that she had often
employed homely phrases in the past, and had not always paid enough
attention to grammar in speaking, though for some time she had not used
"whatever for," or "of a Sunday," as poor Matilda always did.

She learned as much comparatively of the general world of society in
that one week, as she had learned of the nature of man in her three days
with Lord Algy. He was her first step--these women were her second. Lady
Garribardine was her head master, and Gerard Strobridge should be her
tutor--when the moment she was ready for him came.

Her suspicions as to her employer's disapproval of the Duchess of
Dashington were realised fully one day, in the beginning of the week.
The poor young-old lady's rheumatism was very painful, and she remained
in her room having her favourite nephew and Mrs. Delemar up with her
there to lunch, on a little table close to her gilt bed.

Katherine was writing at an escritoire near, having finished her own
meal downstairs.

"You need not go, Miss Bush, if you can continue those invitations with
our chatter."

So Katherine stayed.

The three talked of many things at first and Katherine hardly noticed
them, but presently her attention was caught by a name. Mr. Strobridge
was saying:

"Seraphim, it will be very difficult to refuse Dulcie Dashington, she
has written to Beatrice this morning--she is quite determined to play
the part of Nell Gwyn as the orange-girl."

"Then she can play it in some other _tableaux vivants_--but not in these
that I am arranging." Her Ladyship's voice was acid.

"But why, dearest Sarah, are you so down on poor Dulcie?" Mrs. Delemar
protested. "She is really a very good sort, and looks so splendid in
these short-skirted, rather common clothes."

"I am not hard on her, Läo; I am sure, had she been the wife of a jolly
young stockbroker addicted to low practical jokes and rowdy sport, she
would have been a most admirable creature. It is not the woman I am down
on; there is just such another at Blissington, she helps me with the
bazaars and the school treats, her husband is a local brewer, and we are
capital friends. It is the Duchess of Dashington I ostracise, as I
consider she has done more to degrade her order in these socialistic
days than any other member of our sadly humbled peerage."

The other two laughed amusedly, but Lady Garribardine went on, raising
her voice a little. It was a subject upon which she felt so deeply, that
it overcame for the moment her usual dryly humorous handling of any
matter.

"Let her have her lovers--we have all had lovers--No one in the least
objects to them, arranged suitably, and of one's own class. I am not
concerned with her or any other woman's physical morality.--Such
morality is a question of temperament and geography and custom--but I am
profoundly concerned to endeavour to keep up some semblance of dignity
in the aristocracy, and Dulcie Dashington has lowered the whole prestige
of Duchesses because she is of gentle birth--though Heaven knows what
her father was with poor dear Susan's irresponsible ways!"

Gerard Strobridge smiled as he lit a cigarette.

"There is a great deal in what you say, Seraphim; she has certainly
dragged the title down a good deal, with her fancies for professional
gamesters of all sorts for friends, and her total disregard of tradition
at Dashington--but you forget that she has had a good deal to put up
with from Toni, who is an impossible husband."

"No man is an impossible husband if he is a Duke; at least no Duchess
ought to find him so--and if he were, that is not the slightest excuse.
When a woman undertakes a great position she should realise that
personal feelings have ceased to count. She has, so to speak, accepted
the responsibility of guarding the safety of an order, just as a sentry
is responsible when he is on duty. He would be shot in war time if he
fell asleep on duty--however pitiful his case might be from hardship and
want of rest. He would be shot as an example to the others not to allow
even nature to overcome them and endanger the post."

[Illustration: "'No man is an impossible husband if he is a Duke.'"]

"It seems very cruel," piped Mrs. Delemar.

"Not at all!" Lady Garribardine flashed while her voice vibrated with
scorn. "We are at war now with the Radical masses and cannot afford to
jeopardise positions--either keep up prestige, or throw up the game and
let the whole thing go by the board, but while we pretend there is still
an aristocracy in England we, the members of it, should defend it.
Dulcie Dashington and her ways and her photographs in the papers, and
her vulgarity, and the flaunting of her unsavoury domestic affairs, are
a byword and as long as I have a voice in society, and can lay some
claim to power, I shall let it be known what my opinion is, and why I
will not receive her. To me there is no sin like betraying an order."

"I suppose you are quite right," Mrs. Delemar now agreed meekly, "but
there are such lots of odd people in society who do unheard-of things;
it is these boys marrying these wretched actresses or Americans which
has changed everything."

"Not at all!" contradicted her ladyship. "Boys have always married
actresses from time to time, and some of them have proved very decent
creatures, and if they do err, what does it matter? No one expects
better from them, they are making no real breach in the wall.--And as
for Americans, they are often very pretty and so clever that they seldom
disgrace their new station; they are like converts to Rome, more zealous
than the born papists. The only evil which can lie at their door is that
they have too much money, and have given false values to entertaining,
and perhaps have encouraged eccentric amusements.--No, my dear child, it
is the English-women themselves who have lost self-respect, and have
lowered the flag, and when one of really high birth does it, like Dulcie
Dashington, she should be made to pay the price."

This was unanswerable, Katherine Bush thought as she listened, and she
wondered why the other two should chaff lightly, as though it were just
one of Lady Garribardine's notions. That is what generally astonished
her a good deal; no one appeared to have any convictions or enthusiasm,
they seemed to her to be a company of drifters, so little energy
appeared to be shown by any of them. They were unpunctual and
unpractical, but they were amusing and deliciously happy-go-lucky. If
they had any real feelings none appeared upon the surface; even Lady
Beatrice and her coterie of highly evolved poetesses and other artistic
worldings, flew from theme to theme, turning intent faces upon new fads
each week.

Most people's manners were casual, and their attitudes, too, would often
have shocked Mabel Cawber, so far were they from being genteel. The few
who truly fulfilled Katherine Bush's ideas of the meaning of the word
"lady" stood out like stars. But with all these flaws, as a collection
of people, there was that ease of manner, that total absence of
self-consciousness, about them which never could be known at Bindon's
Green.

"I suppose times are changed," Katherine told herself, "and the laxity
is producing a new type--I do wonder how they would all behave if some
cataclysm happened again, like the French Revolution. But when my day
comes I mean to uphold the order which I shall join, as Her Ladyship
does."

At the last moment, Lady Beatrice did not go as Ganymede to the Artist
Models' ball. The history of her alteration of character was a rather
bitterly humorous story for Gerard Strobridge's ears. She had been
trying on the dress when a note had arrived with a parcel for her from
her husband's aunt, which contained a very beautiful Greek mantle with
these few words:

    _Dear Child_,

    I send you this mantle which I hope you will wear; it will not
    really spoil the character of your Ganymede dress, and from the
    back it will hide the fact that your legs are very slightly bowed.
    Your charming face will help to distract eyes from the front view,
    and this very small flaw in your anatomy will pass unnoticed.

        Affectionately yours,
        SARAH GARRIBARDINE.

She had written it with her own hand. Lady Beatrice stamped with rage,
and then flew to her looking-glass. She stood this way and that, and
finally came to the conclusion that there might be the faintest
substratum of truth in the accusation. The rest of the limbs were not so
perfect as her tiny ankles. It would not be safe to risk criticism. So
the costume was altered and became a Flora with garlands of roses and
long diaphanous draperies--and Gerard and Lady Garribardine watched her
entry with the Vermont party with relieved eyes, and the wily aunt said:

"You can achieve the impossible with women, G., if you only appeal to,
or wound, their vanity. You must never give orders to one unless she is
in love with you--then she glories in obedience--but a modern wife can
only be controlled either on the principle of the Irish-man's pig
being driven towards Dublin when it was intended for Cork, or by a
Machiavellian manipulation of her self-love."

"And then the game is not worth the candle," Mr. Strobridge sighed with
a little discouragement. "I wonder, Seraphim, what is worth while?
Striving for the infinite, I suppose--certainly the finite things are
but Dead Sea fruit."

"Gerard, my poor boy, you make me fear, when you talk like that, that
one day you will be profoundly in love!"

"Heaven forbid!--It would upset my digestion. I was thirty-five last
month and have to be careful!"

And in her comfortable bed in Berkeley Square, Katherine Bush read "The
Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" far into the night.

Society had not altered in many respects since these hundred and sixty
odd years ago, she thought!

The tableaux were the greatest success and a large sum of money was
secured for one of Lady Garribardine's pet charities.

Time went on, Christmas was approaching. It was to be spent at
Blissington Court, the place Lady Garribardine had inherited with the
barony of d'Estaire from her father. Garribardine was a Scotch title
while her ladyship was rabidly English. They would go down to
Blissington and have a family party. Her three grandchildren (her
daughter, Lady Mereton, was far away, the bored wife of a Colonial
Governor), Gerard Strobridge and perhaps Lady Beatrice and the two old
cousins with a young niece of theirs, and a stray man or two, and Mrs.
Delemar--but no one could be sure who would turn up at the end.
Katherine was not to have any holiday; she had come too recently, her
employer explained to her, and the Christmas accumulations were quite
beyond her power to tackle alone.

Katherine was grateful--she looked forward to seeing this country home
with pleasure. She had been kept unusually busy and so had very rarely
seen any one except Her Ladyship. But one morning about ten days before
they were to go down into Blankshire, Lady Garribardine informed her
secretary she was to be given for the whole afternoon to Mr. Strobridge
to type a quantity of letters about a new charity he was arranging for
her.

"My nephew dictates abominably, but he said that you had understood him
so well that first evening when you arrived a month ago, that he has
asked me to lend you to him to-day for this business, and I have
consented. He will lunch here, so have plenty of paper ready for the
afternoon." Then as Katherine was leaving the room, she handed her a
ten-pound note.

"Here is a little present for you, Miss Bush, for Christmas; I want you
to buy yourself an evening frock--you must dine with us on Christmas Day
and perhaps you had not provided for this possibility. I am very pleased
with you, girl--you work splendidly."

Katherine coloured to the roots of her ashen-hued, glistening hair. She
could not analyse her emotions. She hated presents, and yet she was
gratified at the kindliness and appreciation which lay in the manner of
the gift.

"Your Ladyship is too good," she said very low. "I have simply done my
duty--but I will endeavour to buy something suitable with the money
which is far more than enough."

The old lady looked at her critically with her head a little on one
side--she understood what the blush had arisen from and she appreciated
the pride in the girl.

"The creature must have some breeding in her somewhere in spite of the
auctioneer parentage. I must talk to her when we get to Blissington. She
may prove a great interest for my old age."

But she said aloud:

"Well, get what you like with it. I leave it to you, your taste is
excellent--and while you are out, pay these two bills for me, and take a
little walk--you have been looking rather pale; I fear you have not
taken enough outdoor exercise lately."

Katherine thanked her and went rapidly to her room, a sense of
excitement and anticipation in her heart. This might prove an
interesting afternoon. There she reviewed her wardrobe. Her "dressy"
blouse from Oxford Street was too ornate for the daytime, and she
thought now in rather bad taste, and her morning ones were too dowdy.
This was a great occasion and one which she had been waiting for. She
was to go home late on this Friday to stay the night at Bindon's Green.
Matilda had insisted upon it, because it was her birthday; she would be
thirty years old. She had been quite tearful about it on the second
occasion on which she had met her sister in the Park.

"You need not cast us all off like this, Kitten," she pleaded, "and we
shall have Mabel and a few other friends on Friday night, and Fred has
given us a lot of lovely new nigger song records for the gramophone, and
it will all be so awfully jolly."

So Katherine had promised to go, and this fell in admirably with her
plans. There would be a real excuse for her to have her hair waved. She
had been given the evening off and it was known that she was going home.
She would consult Gladys again for the frock for Christmas night and buy
what was necessary on her way back to Berkeley Square on the morrow.

It was the first time in her life that a hairdresser had ever touched
her thick mop of hair, and she had no idea of the difference to her
appearance that it would make. But so critical and observant of all
things had become her eye that she realised with her first peep in the
mirror, when the ondulation was complete, that it had turned her into
almost a beauty. The broad waves fell back from the parting and showed
the admirable planting of her brow and the Greek setting of her magnetic
eyes. She allowed no elaboration of fashion, but had her ample tresses
bound tightly to her head--the effect was distinguished and gave her
satisfaction. Then from the hairdresser's she went and bought another
blouse--something pale grey and becoming, and with the parcel she got
back to Berkeley Square in good time for luncheon and began to dress
herself.

She was glad her hands were so white, she had lately taken to giving
great care to the polish of her nails--she wished her feet were smaller,
but they were well shaped and no one's feet were really small nowadays,
Lady Garribardine had said!

She was quite content with the picture she saw in her looking-glass
before she went downstairs. It was of a tall, slim girl with a very
white, smooth face--extraordinary eyes under level, dark brows, and a
big red mouth, and hair of silvery fairness that glistened grey, not
gold, in its lights. She knew very well that she was attractive, and
gave one of her rare soft laughs.

A month and more of mental discipline and acute observation of those in
that status of refinement to which she wished to attain had given her
numerous subtle distinctions of manner which she had not possessed
before. She looked like a lady, and felt that she was approaching the
time when she herself--most severe of all critics--might consider
herself to be one. She was nearly as excited as on that afternoon when
she had left Livingstone and Devereux's to go on a three days' honeymoon
with Lord Algy. She made herself eat her luncheon as calmly as usual,
and then when the tray had been taken away she opened the window wide
and poured a packet of cedarwood dust on the fire--and she was sitting
demurely at the table when from the library Lady Garribardine and Mr.
Strobridge came in.

Gerard Strobridge carried a bag full of papers and looked cross and
harassed.

"Now G. you may have the services of Miss Bush until five o'clock; that
will give you two hours and a half--you must not keep her, as she is
going home to-night--then come up to my sitting-room to tea," and Lady
Garribardine went out of the other door which her nephew held open for
her.

Katherine had risen and gone immediately to a cupboard, ostensibly to
get something out for her work, so she hoped Her Ladyship had not
remarked her hair--which indeed had happily been the case.

Mr. Strobridge had not even glanced in her direction, but her moment
came when she sat down at the typing machine, and looked straight up
into his eyes as she asked in her deep alluring voice:

"What do you wish me to begin upon, please?"

Then he took in the whole effect and a wave of intense astonishment
swept over him. What had happened? Was he dreaming? Was this beautiful
creature the ordinary, silent, admirable typist, Katherine Bush?




CHAPTER X


He pulled himself together and took some papers from his bag without
speaking, and when he had selected two or three, he drew a chair up to
the other side of the table and began to dictate, stopping every now and
then to explain the purport of his arguments.

They worked so for perhaps an hour.

"One has to do these things," he said at last, as Katherine had not
uttered a word. "One wonders sometimes if there is any good in them."

"I suppose all effort has some merit," she responded, without looking
up. He began to long to make her raise her eyes again.

"You think so?--On what grounds?"

"It exercises a useful faculty."

"What faculty?"

"Will, of course; to use effort is an exercise of will, because if there
was no effort needed, no will would be required either."

He smiled whimsically; this was obvious.

"Then I must look upon the organisation of this very intricate charity,
of doubtful use to mankind, as profitable to me because of the effort
entailed."

"It is as good a way as any other of looking at it.--Did you say
quarterly or monthly returns upon the capital?"

"Oh--er--" glancing at his papers--"the confounded thing! Where is
it--Yes--quarterly."

The machine clicked uninterruptedly. Katherine never looked up.

He began to allow himself to take in details. Why had he not remarked
before that she had an extraordinarily well-shaped head?--And what
wonderful hands--in these days of athletic, weather-beaten paws! She
would be very stately, too, when she filled out a little. The whole
thing was agreeably symmetrical, throat and shoulders, and bust and
hips.

"Why, in the name of all the gods, have I never noticed this young woman
before! She thinks, too! That was a curious reflection about will--I'd
like to talk to her--The devil takes this d--d--charity!"

So his thoughts ran and his eyes eagerly devoured Katherine's face.

She was perfectly conscious of the fact; she knew with unerring instinct
that the spark which she had dispatched by that first steady gaze of her
eyes had struck tinder, the flame of interest was ignited, and the more
difficult she made things now, the more complete would be her triumph
presently. She resolutely kept her attention upon her work, never
raising her head.

"To be so meritoriously industrious, are you using effort?" he asked, in
a moment or two. "You look as though you had a most formidable will!"

"Very little effort; it is second nature to me now."

"Even if the subject is as uninteresting as this?"

"That is all the better; one can let one's mechanical brain tackle it,
and one's real thoughts can wander."

"Where to?"

She put in a fresh sheet of paper--and now glanced at him again for one
second.

"Into dreamland."

"Yes, that is a ridiculously pleasant place devoid of draughts and of
chilling surprises. It would be very impertinent, I suppose, if I asked
you where is your dreamland?"

"Perhaps not impertinent--out of place. You are dictating a letter to
the Lord Mayor of London at the moment."

"To be sure I am--you made me forget it--he is an infernal bore, the
Lord Mayor of London, compelling me to branch off from this very
interesting conversation to his confounded letter!--I beg your pardon!"

Katherine read aloud the last coherent sentence he had given her, and
she permitted one of her faint sphinxlike smiles to play about her
mouth, while her eyes sought the typing.

Gerard Strobridge moved a little nearer--he felt a sudden strong thrill.

"I shall not give you another word to type until you tell me about your
dreamland--Is it in sea or sky or air?"

"It is half-past three o'clock and you are only to stay until five--had
you not better attend to your work first, sir?"

She was waiting in an attitude of respectful attention, infinitely
provoking.

"Certainly not! I shall ask my aunt to lend you to me for another day if
we do not finish this afternoon--Indeed, on second thoughts, I do not
think I shall try to finish to-day--we can complete the matter at
Blissington--" And then he stopped abruptly--Läo Delemar would be there!
He had melted her into a mood from which everything could be hoped
during this week of uneventful family party--Beatrice would only stay
for Christmas Day, and was indeed no great obstacle in any case. But he
feared he would probably not be able to have interesting business
interviews during the holidays with his aunt's typist.

He laughed shortly to himself, and dictated a long sentence, concluding
the letter to the Lord Mayor. He had better control the interest he was
feeling, that was evident!

Katherine made no remark, while she wondered what had stopped his
questioning so suddenly. She smiled again a little. It had the desired
effect--Mr. Strobridge jumped up from his chair and went to the
fireplace.

"Well--what are you thinking about?" he demanded, from there.

"My work, of course! What else should I be thinking about?" Her eyes at
last met his in innocent surprise.

"I don't believe you are quite truthful--one does not smile in that
enigmatic fashion over work--dull, tedious work like this, statistics of
bodies who are to benefit by this absurd charity--Oh! no, fair scribe! I
feel there lies a world of malice in that smile."

"Even a scribe is permitted sometimes to make reflections."

"Not without confessing what they are."

"We are not in the days of the Spanish Inquisition--" taking up a paper.
"On the first list there is a letter for the Mayor of Manchester."

"Confound the Mayor of Manchester!"

"Poor gentleman!"

"I must know all about dreamland and cryptic reflections first."

He drew the armchair now over towards her and flung himself into it. He
was a graceful creature, not so tall or so ideally perfect of form as
Lord Algy, but a very presentable Englishman, with a wonderful
distinction of manner and voice.

Katherine Bush was experiencing intense pleasure--there was something
feline, if not altogether feminine, in her well-balanced brain. It was
peculiarly gratifying to find that her plans were being justified. How
glad she was that he had not remarked her in her raw days! How wise she
had been to have made ready--and then waited! The whole thing was the
more effective because of the complete absence of all dramatic emotion
in her. She was like a quiet, capable foreign minister playing his game
of statecraft with the representative of another country, his face
permitted to express--or conceal--only what he desired.

At this moment, she shrugged her shoulders very slightly, as though to
say, "I am only an employe. I cannot force you to work if you will not";
but she did not speak, so he was obliged to demand again.

"Won't you tell me what made you smile?--We can drift to dreamland
afterwards."

"No--I will not tell you what made me smile, because I do not know
exactly; the aspect of life generally, perhaps."

"And you sit and work in this gloomy back room all day--What do you know
about life?"

"I am observing--I know that one must pretend interest in what one is
bored by--and one must show attention to those one despises--and--keep
from laughing at things."

"What a dangerous young woman, watching and coming to cynical
conclusions--but you say truly; one must keep from laughing at things--a
very difficult matter generally." He lay back against the brown leather
cushion, and proved the truth of this by laughing softly, while he
looked at her quaintly.

Katherine Bush suddenly felt that a human being understood _with her_;
it was a delightful sensation.

"Practically the whole of life is a ridiculous sham and must arouse the
sardonic mirth of the gods--Here are you and I spending an afternoon
arranging a charity in which neither of us takes the least interest--I
am dictating fulsome letters to Lord Mayors to induce them to influence
others to open their purses--I don't care a jot whether they do or they
do not--You are mechanically transcribing my asinine words, and we could
be so much better employed exchanging views--on each other's taste,
say--or each other's dreamlands."

Katherine Bush looked down and allowed her hands to fall idly in her
lap--he should do most of the speaking.

"The only good that I have been getting out of it as far as I can see,"
he went on, "is the contemplation of your really beautiful hands at
work--Where did you get such perfect things in these days?"

She lifted one and regarded it critically.

"Yes, I have often wondered myself. My father was an auctioneer, you
know, and my mother's father was a butcher."

Gerard Strobridge was extremely entertained. She was certainly a very
wonderful product of such parentage.

"May I look at them closely?" he asked.

She showed not the least embarrassment; if he had been asking to see a
piece of enamel, or a china vase she could not have been more detached
about it. She held them out quite naturally, and he rose and took them
in his own. Their touch was cool and firm, and every inch of his being
tingled with pleasure. He examined them minutely finger by finger,
stroking the rosy filbert nails in admiration, while an insane desire to
clasp and kiss their owner grew in him.

Katherine Bush was perfectly aware of this, and when she thought he had
felt emotion enough for the occasion, she drew them back as naturally as
she had given them.

"I am always asking myself questions about such things," she remarked,
in a tone of speculative matter-of-factness. "I am so often seeing
contradictions since I have been here--My former conclusions are a
little upset."

"What were they?" He had returned to his chair. He was no novice to be
carried away by his sensations, and he knew very well that to indulge
them further at present would be very unwise, and perhaps check a most
promising amusement.

"I believed that birth and breeding gave fine ears and fine ankles and
fine hands--as well as moral qualities."

"And you have been disappointed?"

"Yes, very--have not you?"

"No, because I have had no illusions--one never can tell where a side
cross comes in, or what will be the effect of overbreeding--that runs to
enormities sometimes."

"I suppose so--"

"And have the moral qualities surprised you also?"

"Oh, yes--more than the physical; I have seen and heard what I would
have thought were common things even at Bindon's Green."

He laughed again--If the crew who had attended the tableaux rehearsals
could have heard her!

"You are perfectly right--looked at in the abstract, I suppose we are
rather a shoddy company nowadays."

"There are individuals who come up to the measure, of course, but not
all of them, as I had imagined. You must have opened the doors to quite
ordinary people to have made such a mixture."

"We have grown indifferent; we no longer care about a standard, I fear."

"That is why you let all these Radicals be in power, perhaps--You have
become effete like the nobles before the revolution in France, who could
only die like gentlemen, but not live like men."

Gerard Strobridge was startled. This from the granddaughter of a butcher
of Bindon's Green!

"She picks it all up from Seraphim, of course," he reflected presently.
"And yet--look at her strange face!--it is a woman of parts from
wherever it has come!"

"That is an apt phrase--where did you find it--'die like gentleman, but
not live like men'?"

"I don't know, it just came from thinking and reading about them--so
much was fine, and so much--foolish."

"Yes--and you think we are growing also to that stage in England?
Perhaps you are right; we want some great national danger to pull us
together."

"You will rust out otherwise, and it will be such a pity."

"You think we are good enough to keep?"

"In your highest development--like Her Ladyship--you are, I should
think, the best things for a country in the world."

She knew he was drawing her out and was very pleased to be so drawn.

"Tell me about us--what have we that is good?"

"You have a sense of values--you know what is worth having--You have had
hundreds of years to acquire the quality of looking ahead. No person of
the classes from which the Radical statesmen are drawn has naturally the
quality of looking ahead; he has to be told about it, and then get it if
he can--it is not in his blood because his forebears only had to snatch
what they could for themselves and their families day by day, and were
not required to observe any broad horizon."

"How very true--you are a student of heredity then, Miss Bush?"

"Yes--it explains everything. I examine it in myself; I am always
combating ordinary and cramping instincts which I find I have got."

"How interesting!"

"No common Radical could be a successful foreign minister, for
instance--unless perhaps he were a Jew like Disraeli--but they have
sense enough to know that themselves, and always choose a gentleman,
don't they?"

"You wonderful girl--do you ever air these views to my aunt? They would
please her."

"Of course not--Her Ladyship is my employer and she knows my place. I
speak to her when I am spoken to."

"You think we on our side are too casual, then?--That we are letting our
birthright slip from us--I believe you are right."

"Yes--you are too sure of yourselves. You think it does not matter
really--and so you let the others creep in with lies and promises--you
let them alter all the standards of public honour without a protest,
and so you will gradually sink to the new level, too--I feel very sorry
for England sometimes."

"So do I--" his face altered. He looked sad, and in earnest and older.
For the moment he forgot that he was wasting valuable time in the most
agreeable task of exploiting the ideas of a new species of female; her
words had touched a matter very near his weary heart.

"What can we do?" he cried, in a tone of deep interest. "That is the
question--what can we do?"

"You should all wake up to begin with, like people do when they find
that their houses have caught fire--at least, those whom the smoke has
not suffocated first. You ought to make a concentrated, determined
effort to save what you can to build a new shelter with."

"Admitted--but how?"

"Have common sense taught from the beginning in the schools, the reasons
of things explained to the children. If you knew the frightful ignorance
upon all the subjects that matter which prevails among my class, for
instance! They have false perspectives about everything--not because
they are bad; in the mass they are much better than you--but because
they are so frightfully ignorant of the meaning of even the little they
have learnt. Everything has a false value for them. There is hardly a
subject that they can see straightly about; they are muffled and
blighted with shams and hypocrisies."

"You should address meetings among them."

"They would not listen to me for a moment; the truths I would tell them
would wound their vanity; it would only be in the schools among the
children that anything effectual could be done."

"You think so?"

"Oh, yes, I know--My own sisters and brothers are examples. I could
never teach them anything, and there are millions in England just like
them. Good as gold--and stupid as owls."

"It does not sound hopeful, then."

"No, the rust has gone too far; there should have been no education at
all, or a better one--but the present system looks as if it would swamp
England if the children are not taught things soon."

"You are a Tory, it would seem."

"No, I don't think I am. I think everyone has an equal right, but only
according to his capacity; and I certainly don't think the scum of the
earth of idiots and wastrels have equal rights with hardworking,
sensible artisans."

"Indeed, no?--Go on!"

"I think aristocrats are things apart from the opportunities they have
had, and should know it, and keep up the prestige and make their order a
great goal to strive for. You see, if they were stamped out, it would be
like cutting down all the old trees in Kensington Gardens; they could
not be produced again for hundreds of years, and all the beauty and
dignity of the gardens would be gone. But aristocrats ought to act as
such, and never slip into the gutter."

"There you are certainly right. I am more than with you--But what can
one do?"

"You should have the courage of your opinions, as Her Ladyship has--you
only laugh when she is saying splendid things sometimes. So few of you
seem to have any backbone that I have seen."

"You shame me!"

Her face became filled with a humorous expression--they had been serious
long enough, she thought. His caught the light of her eyes; he was
intensely fascinated.

"You did not, of course, come from--Bindon's Green--is it?--You came
down from Parnassus to teach us poor devils of aristocrats to stick to
our guns--I will be your first disciple, priestess of wisdom!"

"It is five minutes to four, sir--it will be quite impossible to finish
that pile of papers to-day--And I _did_ come from Bindon's Green--and I
am going back there by the six o'clock train from Victoria, to a supper
party at my home--That is why my hair is crimped and I have on this new
blouse."

He got up and stood quite near her.

"And what will you do at the party? I can't see you there."

"I shall look disagreeable, as I generally do. We shall have supper of
cold pressed beef and cold meat-pie, and cheese-cakes and figs and
custard, and some light dinner ale or stout, and cups of tea--and then
when we have finished that, there are a whole lot of new nigger song
records for the gramophone, and my brother Bert will recite imitations
of Harry Lauder, and my future sister-in-law, Miss Mabel Cawber, will
sing 'The Chocolate Soldier' out of tune--We shall make a great deal of
noise, and then we shall push the furniture back and dance the turkey
trot and the bunny hug, and some of the elder ones, like my sister
Matilda, will make up a whist-drive, and at about one o'clock I can get
to bed."

"It sounds perfectly ideal; but you return from this to-morrow?"

"Yes--by an early train. I am not a favourite at home. Now will you
please begin again to dictate."

He walked up and down the room for a minute; he was not a boy
accustomed only to acting from inclination; he knew very well that it
would be much wiser now to resume attention to business. So he took up
his memoranda and started once more, and for over half an hour nothing
but dictation passed between them; the pile of papers grew considerably
less.

"If you care to give me directions for the rest quickly, I will take
them down in shorthand, and then I could finish all this to-morrow, some
time. Her Ladyship, I am sure, would be better pleased if her whole
scheme is complete."

He agreed--he truly admired her perfect composure and common sense; she
was so capable and practical, a person to be relied upon. He would do as
she suggested, though he had not heard about dreamland yet.

He set his mind to the affair on hand, and before the clock struck five
all was done and ready for this admirable young woman to type when she
had leisure. And now he took her hand again.

"A thousand thanks, Egeria," he said. "You ought to discover a likely
lad and turn him into the Prime Minister. You would make an ideal Prime
Minister's wife--but--er--don't look for him at Bindon's Green!"

"No, I won't--good-night, Mr. Strobridge. Thank you for your wishes--but
I have other views. I shall not turn my 'lad' into anything; he shall
turn me--"

"Into what?"

"That is still in the lap of the gods," and she made him the slightest
curtsey, and went with a bundle of receipts to the cupboard in the wall,
while her grey-green eyes laughed at him over her shoulder.

As Gerard Strobridge walked up the shallow marble steps to his aunt's
sitting-room, he felt like a man in a dream.




CHAPTER XI


"What are you thinking of, G.?" Lady Garribardine said, noticing after a
little while his preoccupation. "That wretched charity has tired you
out, dear boy--I hope Miss Bush was efficient?"

"Quite--" and he lay back in his very comfortable chair and devoured a
bit of brown bread and butter. "The whole thing is practically finished.
Your secretary very kindly said she would complete alone the last
directions, which she took down in shorthand."

"Then it will be done, G.; she is a young person of her word."

Mr. Strobridge did not become expansive; it was fortunate, he thought,
that he had never yet shown any interest in Katherine Bush, because very
little escaped his aunt's perceptions.

She was already wondering what caused his absence of mind. He surely was
not being so foolish as to have allowed himself to become seriously
enamoured of Läo Delemar! Her precious Gerard! This must be ascertained
at once.

"Läo telephoned just now that she would not come to the play
to-night--Really, the caprices of these pretty women are quite
intolerable, throwing one over at a moment's notice--masses of
selfishness and conceit."

"Yes,--aren't they?" languidly.

This did not sound a lover's disappointment, but perhaps he was
prepared for her news, and Läo's proposed absence was what caused his
depression.

"What excuse has she given you?"

He looked surprised.

"None. I did not know that she had chucked; did she give any reason?"

"Some nonsense about a friend of her mother's having turned up. I was so
annoyed that I put the receiver down."

"You must console me, _carina_," and he leaned forward and took his
aunt's fat hand. "Läo would never be missed if a man might count upon
you for his partner."

"Flatterer!" but she smiled complacently. "The Colvins can both talk to
Tom Hawthorne then. I had intended Henry Colvin to be my portion; he is
a bright creature, and distracted me at dinner last week--but I am
tired, and I always prefer you, G. Ah! if you had only been my son!"

"It would have destroyed the happiest of relationships in the
world--and you know it. A son you could overscold--a mother I could
overrespect--Let us thank Heaven for the charming courtesy tie that we
enjoy."

"I wish you would have a son, though, G.; you know I am perfectly
indifferent to Emmeline's boy."

"I shall never have any Strobridge children, Seraphim. Beatrice would
faint at the idea. We only touched upon domestic pretences and got them
all over with the very lightest effort in the first week. Besides, one
would not want a Thorvil child--there is a mad streak in the whole
family, I have often thought. I am much interested in heredity."

He did not add how greatly the afternoon had augmented this interest!

"Yes--did you chance to notice my secretary's hands?--The mother must
have had a lover, of course."

"I don't think so--they seldom do in that class. They become so
intolerably unattractive at once; nothing human could come up to the
scratch. It is just a freak, or a harking back--many of the exquisitely
aristocratic features one finds in old villagers, for instance, date
from the _droit de seigneur_."

"The whole question of heredity is a frightfully serious one, of course,
and we are in a stupendous muddle at the present time, with the inroads
of the Lord knows who to muddy the stream."

"Do you suppose that is the cause of the dry rot which has got into
us?--Or is it that we are really rusting out?"

"It is luxury and humanitarianism, and absence of national foes, which
have sent us to sleep--and forgetfulness of dignity and duty. We eat the
food of those whose fathers fed in our fathers' kitchens, and not
because they are worthy and nice--that would be quite justifiable if
so--but just because they are rich and have a superb chef, or because
they are giving our younger sons a lift in the city--I loathe all
money-making and trade--I am thankful that I, at least, can stand on my
own feet, though I see the sad decadence in all around me--But I must
not talk like this; it depresses and ages me!--By the way, Sterling had
the impertinence to tell me that she thought my new toupées from Paris
are too light!--What do you say, G.?"

He looked at her critically, at the clever, shrewd, painted old face and
the ridiculous girlish wig--and then he kissed her hand again, and told
her the truth. Something about her words touched him infinitely.

"I adore very dark hair when it is going grey, Seraphim. I have often
thought how beautiful you would be if you burnt all those things. Your
sense of humour is so supreme, they always seem incongruous."

"I will, then, this very New Year, while we are at Blissington. It will
be the sensation when we return to town. Sarah Lady Garribardine with
snow-white hair!"

"No, iron grey. It will make your eyes brighter."

"It shall be done!" Then she laughed softly. "G., how goes it with
Läo--you are not in love?"

Mr. Strobridge shook his head regretfully.

"Alas! not an atom. I fear it won't last until the Easter recess."

"She is artificial."

"Extremely."

"And hopelessly vague."

"Yes--but quite charming."

"Beatrice says she pretends to be full of sex and other dreadful natural
things--you always had fruity tastes, Beatrice avers!"

"My tastes _are_ fruity, but are never gratified in these modern days,
alas! She is quite wrong about Läo, though; she is as cold as ice. She
smiles with equal sweetness upon the waiters when we are lunching at
restaurants. She is merely a lovely woman demanding incense from all
things male.

"Beatrice said 'pretends,' remember--Beatrice is not at all dense!"

"No, quite a subtle companion when not composing odes, or discussing the
intensity of blue with Hebe Vermont."

"--Are you glad Läo is coming for Christmas?"

"Y--es. I shall want some of your very best champagne."

"You shall have it, G., and I will try to make things difficult for you
as a sort of appetiser. I have some kind of feeling that you are
depressed, dear boy?--I am putting Läo in the parrot suite."

"It will suit her admirably."

Then they both laughed.

"But you are depressed, G.?"

"A shadow of coming events, perhaps! not exactly disaster, or I should
be what the Scotch call 'fey,'" and he sighed. He felt very fatigued and
disturbed, and he hardly knew what.

Lady Garribardine did not press the matter. She had enormous tact.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Delemar at that moment was lying upon her sofa in a ravishing
saffron gauze teagown smoking scented cigarettes, while she discussed
her heart

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