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, andso 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 feltglad 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 alwaysa 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 ofpaying 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 whatdoesmatter? 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 scandal 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 Garribardinecalled 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, whenshe 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 whichfroze 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. "Ithought she did my letter to theTimesremarkably 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 ridiculousposeuse, 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. Beefortunately 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 toménagermy 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 talkedwith 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.
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 Bertand Charlie Prodgers would feel if Mabel had them up to hers of a Sunday, supposing she had a cold—and whatwouldanyone 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 incrediblenarrowness 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 beenout 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 theFlare."
"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!" Matildaexclaimed, 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 enjoyingoysters, 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 toachieve—and Ishallachieve—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.
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 herroom 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 othertableaux 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."