"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."