"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.