Lady Beatrice remained until the Saturday, greatly to her husband's
satisfaction and relief. He had manoeuvred this arrangement with much
skill, and Läo's vanity felt satisfied, and indeed gratified, by the
belief that the presence of his wife was causing Gerard untold suffering
and disappointment! The preliminaries of the game were so very
agreeable! and when they could be prolonged by fate so that there was no
fear of losing the other participant in them, nothing could be more to
her taste.
Passion, like that which Katherine Bush knew, would have appeared as
something absolutely shocking and horrible to her--indeed, she would
have agreed with Mabel Cawber in considering it as most unladylike!
The circumstance of the Christmas night dance had left a feeling of
mystery with Gerard Strobridge, which did not detract from his interest
in Katherine Bush. That some strong upheaval had taken place in this
strange young woman's soul he did not doubt.
But what in Heaven's name had caused it? Did it concern him?--Or was he
only the medium connecting some memory?--He wished he could feel sure.
Then there was the incident of his flowers; why had she worn them, and
then thrown them from her as if they had burnt her?
His rather tormenting thoughts kept him too frequent company--especially
as the provoking girl seemed to have retired from sight, and except on
rare occasions, before everyone, he never had the chance of even a
word.
Lady Garribardine's rheumatism was better, so Miss Bush had not even
been required to pour out the tea.
It was with a sigh of intense relief that he returned into the hall
after tucking Läo and his wife into the motor en route for London town,
on Saturday morning an hour or two before lunch.
The hostess was not down to speed her parting guests; she was very much
occupied in her boudoir, and they had gone thither to bid her farewell.
As Mr. Strobridge mounted the stairs, he met Katherine coming out of the
room with her arms full of papers and small parcels, and a couple of big
books, which she had some ado to carry.
"Let me help you," he said, eagerly--and she gave him the heavy volumes
without a word.
A sense of exasperation arose in him. He would not be flouted like this!
He followed her to the old schoolroom, merely remarking on the way that
now all the guests, except Colonel Hawthorne, had departed, he felt
there was breathing space.
Katherine seemed quite unconcerned and indifferent as to whether he did
or did not; and she took his burden from him and thanked him absently,
with a look towards the door evidently expecting him to go back again
whence he came.
But he showed no signs of moving.
"Am I to be offered a chair on this my first call upon Miss Bush?"
"It isn't a call--you helped me to carry the books. I am very busy
to-day."
"I don't care. I am here now, and I am going to stay--I shall tell my
aunt how inhospitable and ungracious you are!"
"Sneak!" and she began sorting the little parcels into a row, her sullen
eyes smiling. "I always hated tell-tales at school."
"So did I--but I could commit any crime to be with you. I have been
tantalized all the week--Miss Bush not even seen at tea--and only
glimpses of her scurrying along passages and up stairs!"
"What then do you want with Miss Bush?--Have you some more charity
business to do?"
"No--The charity will be quite on the side of the fair Katherine, if she
will allow a weary wayfarer to bask in the sunshine of her presence for
a little while."
"Mr. Strobridge, you are talking nonsense, and I have not a moment's
time to waste on you."
"I love to talk nonsense. It annoys you, and I want to see your eyes
flash. I have seen them laughing--and full of pain--and snakily
cold. Now I want them to flash--and then I would like them to grow
tender.--They would be divine like that."
Katherine sat down and took up a pen, with a glance of withering
indifference; then she began to address the labels of the packets from a
list.
He came quite close to her; he was feeling a number of things.
"What a temptress you are--aren't you?--teasing me like this!"
Katherine now opened her eyes wide and stared at him, but she did not
move away an inch.
"The whole thing is only in your imagination," she said, calmly. "You
are a proof of my theory that personal emotion creates appearance, and
hides reality."
"You understand then that I do feel emotion?"
"Why, of course. A man of your brains and cultivation could not behave
in so foolish a way otherwise."
He drew back and leaned against the mantelpiece while he laughed
shortly.
Katherine continued to work.
"I am merely waiting until you have finished directing those confounded
parcels, which I presume are for this post--and then I am going to coax
you to talk to me--May I smoke?"
"Yes, if you like--" still with lowered head.
"Won't you have a cigarette?"
"Thanks."
He handed her one from his case. She pulled a box of matches near and
lit it casually, going on with her work as a boy might have done--There
was no knocking off of ash or graceful movement of the hand in the
fashion of Läo, who loved her white jewelled fingers to be seen to
advantage.
Neither of them spoke. He might not have been in the room as far as she
was concerned! He, on the contrary, was profoundly aware of her
presence. Emotion such as he had not felt for years was surging through
him.
She was the most damnably attractive creature, he thought, he had ever
met. She awoke primitive passions, and stirred his blood. There was that
intense note of reality and strength about her. She was like some
dangerous lazy lioness. She made him feel that civilisation was slipping
from him, and that he could willingly seize her for a jungle mate.
She, however, continued to smoke and to write for quite ten minutes,
until all the parcels were addressed, and several papers examined and
annotated and filed. Then she looked up. His eyes had never left her
face.
"I can't think how you can stare like that," she said, with abominable
matter-of-factness. "It would make me blink."
"I can enjoy looking at the sun--Now are those infernal things finished?
I have been waiting with the patience of Job."
"But I can't think what for?"
"To talk to you."
"Well, talk then! I must do some typing," and she got up and went to her
machine, which was on another table by the window. She knew perfectly
well that she was driving him mad; it gave her a savage pleasure, and
seemed a sort of balance to her own emotions on Christmas night about
Algy.
He came and leant against the mantelpiece and looked down at her and
quoted Dryden:
"She knows her man, and when you rant and swear
Can draw you to her with a single hair."
and stretching out his hand, he touched for an instant the faint broad
waves on her forehead.
And now he saw her eyes flash brilliantly enough!
"If you are going to be impertinent, Mr. Strobridge, the staircase into
the garden is quite close, and the sooner you find your way to it, the
better I shall be pleased."
"I would not be impertinent for the world--the temptation was
overwhelming; it is so lovely, your hair--"
His voice was quite sincere, and it was not in her plan to quarrel with
him.
"Very well."
"I want to hear so many things about you, child--tell me what made you
come to my aunt's?--I somehow cannot ever feel that you should be in
any dependent position."
"I came to educate myself--I do not mean to be dependent always--What do
you do in the Foreign Office?"
He gave her a brief sketch of his days.
"Well, then," she said, "you have to do what you are told to
also--nothing matters as long as the spirit is not dependent. You will
be a Chief some day, I suppose?"
"Perhaps--and are you learning here?"
"Yes--and you could teach me if you liked."
"I should quite adore it--what wages should I have?"
"None."
"Then that means, by the rules of all games, that I should be working
for--love----"
She shrugged her shoulders and put in another piece of paper in the
typing machine. She had no intention of talking about--love----
"You are the queerest creature--you make me feel--I do not know
what--Well, if you won't discuss wages--tell me what I am to teach you?"
"Literature--Do you remember a day when I came in and had coffee in the
dining-room?--It was before you knew I existed--You and Her Ladyship
talked of the things then which I would like you to talk to me about."
"Yes, was it not strange?--I must have been blind all those weeks."
The sphinxlike smile hovered round Katherine's mouth; it was enigmatic
and horribly tantalizing. Gerard Strobridge felt a rush of wild emotion
again; the temptation to seize her in his arms and passionately kiss
those mocking lips almost overcame him. It is quite doubtful what might
have eventuated, if at that moment he had not caught sight of old
Colonel Hawthorne in the rose garden. He had come out through the same
little door which Katherine used, the passage from which, on the ground
floor, led to the smoking-room. He waved his hand and beckoned to
Gerard.
It broke the spell, and drove some sense into the latter's head.
"Colonel Hawthorne is calling you; had not you better go and get some
air?" Miss Bush suggested graciously. "It would be most beneficial, I am
sure, to you, on this fine morning!"
"I daresay you are right--Well, I will go--only some day perhaps you
will pay me some wages after all!"
"Is that a threat?"
"Not in the least"; he went towards the door. "Don't be cross--and when
you have time will you come and see the pictures in the gallery?"
"Yes--I would love that," and her face brightened. "But you had better
ask Lady Garribardine if I may."
"All right--Leave it to me--_Au revoir!_" and he was gone.
As he went down the stairs, he thought that it was a good idea of his
aunt's to have had the smoking-room removed to this wing of the house.
It had only been done that autumn, so that the shooters could go
straight in if they pleased, by the side door.
Katherine did not continue her typing for a moment after she was left
alone. Her brows were contracted. She was thinking deeply.
Mr. Strobridge might not be quite so easy to rule as Charlie Prodgers.
She had heard that thoroughbred racers required the lightest hand, and
also that there were moments when nothing would control them, neither
bridle, nor whip, nor spur. She must think out her plan of action
coolly. It was necessary for what she required of him that his desire to
please her should surmount all other things. At the present stage it
would be difficult to get him to talk sense--but she would do her best
to make him do so. This point settled, she went on with her work again
undisturbed.
Gerard Strobridge found old Tom Hawthorne a tiresome companion, on their
prowl round the stables, and soon escaped to his aunt's sitting-room; he
must somehow arrange for Katherine to see the pictures with him after
lunch.
Lady Garribardine was reading the _Times_ when he came in, and looked up
delightedly. She enjoyed converse with her favourite at any hour.
They talked of many things; politics in chief. Her Ladyship's views were
Tory to the backbone, but she had a speculative cynical lightness which
leavened any retrogressive tendencies. Gerard often disagreed with her
just to draw out her views. She loathed the Radical government. It
aroused her fiercest sarcasms and contempt.
How could such a class of people, she argued, from their heredity, no
matter what clever brains they had, have the right qualities in them to
enable them to govern England? How could they with personal and
financial axes to grind possibly concentrate honestly upon the welfare
of the country above their own necessities? It was quite ridiculous in
logic, whether their views were Radical or Tory. The supreme voice in
the government of a country should only be in the hands of those
raised by their position above all temptation for merely personal
aggrandisement, so that the glory of the country could be their
legitimate and undivided aim. It could not be that the little Mr.
Browns and Greens with their parochial lawyer instincts and bitter class
hatreds, greedy for their salaries and own advancement, could rise to
the necessary heights of sublime prevision to enable them to see far
enough ahead to have the final decision on any great question. She was
all in favour of the most advanced views for the advantage and raising
of the lower classes in freedom and education, no matter from which side
they emanated. But she resented the pushing up of individuals totally
unfit in integrity of character for the positions of authority they
occupied, and who year after year were exposed as having in some way
lowered the standard of honour in their office.
She would receive none such in her house.
"I eat with no one who lowers the prestige of my country in the eyes of
other nations," she declared. "Making us a laughing-stock in Europe
where we were once great!"
And for her that settled matters!
Mr. Strobridge coasted warily among the shoals of her opinions, and
gradually got the conversation on the topic of the pictures in the
gallery, some of which she really thought ought to be sent to London to
be cleaned--had Gerard noticed lately?--particularly two early Italians?
This was a most fortunate suggestion! Mr. Strobridge had noticed--and
had meant to speak about them.
"We must have a critical examination to-day after luncheon while the
light is good. One ought not to delay over such matters."
He knew incidently that his aunt was going to drive Tom Hawthorne into
the town in her phaeton, to try a new pair of cobs which she had bought
just before Christmas, and would be starting the moment that meal was
finished--but he showed just the right amount of regret and surprise
when she informed him of this fact.
"Never mind. I will go round alone, or better still, if you could spare
Miss Bush for an hour, I will get her to make shorthand notes of what I
think should be done to each picture."
Lady Garribardine looked at her nephew shrewdly; his face was innocent
as a babe's.
"I believe Miss Bush would make quite an agreeable companion in a
picture gallery," she remarked.
"I am sure you are perfectly right."
Then they both laughed.
"G., you won't flirt with the girl, will you, and turn her head?"
"The sad part of the affair is that it is the girl who is more likely to
turn my head. Her own is far too well screwed on."
"Upon my word, I believe you! Well, then, innocent of thirty-five,
don't be beguiled into idiocy by this competent _séductrice_ of
twenty-two!--If you were forty-five there would be no hope for you, but
a glimmer of sanity may remain in the thirties!"
"She _is_ attractive, Seraphim--and will love to see the pictures. She
says she wants to learn about art and literature--and kindred things."
"And you have offered to teach her?"
Mr. Strobridge put on a modest air, while his humorous grey eyes met his
aunt's merrily.
"I have applied for the post of tutor--with no salary attached."
"She won't put up with inefficiency; you will have to keep your wits at
high-water mark, then."
"I feel that."
"Well, G., perhaps you deserve a treat. The Christmas entertainment I
had provided for you in the way of Läo fell rather flat, did it not!"
"One grows tired of soufflé."
"Yes, but do not forget that more substantial food can cause shocking
indigestion, unless partaken of with moderation."
"Heavens, Seraphim! I am no gourmand!"
"Gerard, my dear boy--you are at a stage of hunger, I fear, when
intelligence may not guide discretion. You see, Nature is apt to break
out after years of artificial repression."
"We are overcivilised, I admit."
At that moment, the luncheon-gong sounded and they both rose from their
chairs.
Lady Garribardine slipped her fat hand into her nephew's arm, as they
went down the stairs.
"G.--I leave the afternoon to you--only don't burn your fingers
irretrievably; this young woman is no fool like poor Läo. I look upon
her as a rather marvellous product of the twentieth century."