Time passed. A year went by after this with a gradual but unmistakable
upward advance on the part of Katherine Bush. Moments of depression and
discouragement came, of course, but her iron will carried her beyond
them. All would go well for a while, and then would come a barrier, as
it were, which was difficult to climb, and which would baffle her
intentions for a week or two, and then she would surmount it, and race
onward.
Her manipulation of Gerard Strobridge was masterly. She never permitted
him to go beyond the bounds of friendship, and he gradually grew to
entertain the deepest worship and respect for her, which influenced his
whole life. She spurred him on in his career, while obtaining from him
all the polish his cultivated mind could bestow. Lady Garribardine
watched the passage of events with her wise old eyes, assisting them,
moreover, when she deemed it necessary.
If Katherine's dominion over her beloved nephew was for his good, she
must not let class prejudice stand in the way of her sympathy. The world
for Sarah Garribardine was full of incredible fools, who, however strong
their desire might be for a given end, were yet too stupid to see that
their actions and methods--nearly always inspired by personal
vanity--militated against the attainment of that end, and so they went
on their blundering way, continually surprised at their own want of
success!
It was the quality of reasoning and of analysis in her secretary which
grew to interest her most deeply. Katherine was her perpetual study,
inasmuch as she stood so far apart from the world of fools.
Their visit to Paris had been a great experience for Katherine. She took
the place historically, not as she had taken it before, as the setting
for a love dream. She had had a recurrence of the violent longing for
Lord Algy when they arrived at the Gare du Nord, that strangely sudden
seizure of passion to which she seemed periodically subject; when she
knew that if at the moment Fate were to offer him to her again she would
find the temptation of acceptance too strong to resist. She was
afterwards always extremely thankful that this did not occur, and that
she was given time to resume her self-command.
When first she drove down the Champs Elysées, a strange sense of fear
came over her--what if after all that Palatial Hotel episode in her life
should have power one day to raise up its ghost and destroy the fabric
of her ambitions? The more she saw of the great world, the more she
realised that such a breach of convention, such a frank laying aside of
all recognised standards of morality, would never be forgiven if
discovered. Incidents of the kind occurred every day, but must always be
rigorously kept out of sight. She grew to understand that it is a much
more punishable offence to hold unorthodox views and act honestly by
them, than to profess orthodox, stringent virtue, and continually blink
at the acting against conscience, by secret indulgences!
One day it chanced that she could discuss the point with her mistress.
"You must remember the good of the community always first, girl," Lady
Garribardine had said. "If you want to benefit humanity you must not be
too much occupied with the individual. For the good of the community
certain standards must be kept up, and sensible people should put on
blinkers when examining the frailties of human nature. Nature says one
thing and civilisation and orthodox morality another; there must
logically be an eternal conflict going on between the two and the only
chance for souls to achieve orthodox morality is for hypocrisy to assist
them by hiding bad examples given when nature has had an outburst and
won the game. If you won't conform to these practical rules it is wiser
and less harmful to your neighbours for you to go and live in the
wilds--I am all for _tenue_, I am all for the uplifting of the soul
where it is possible, and decency and good taste where it is not."
"I see," responded Katherine. "One must in this, as in all other things,
look to the end."
"You have indeed said it!" Her Ladyship cried. "That faculty is the
quintessence of statesmanship, as it is of wisdom, and one we never see
displayed by a radical government!"
As the season went on in London, various peeps at society were afforded
Katherine, and as her eyes opened, and the keenness of her understanding
developed, she learned many useful lessons.
On rare Saturday afternoons, she visited the museums again with Gerard
Strobridge, to her intense delight, and with much pain as well as
pleasure to him, and when the big Saturday to Monday parties came down
to Blissington, Lady Garribardine often found her secretary invaluable
for the entertainment of unavoidable bores.
Thus by the autumn, when Gerard's aching soul and denied passions
thought to take solace in flight on that mission to Teheran, Katherine
Bush was an established institution at tea time, and had acquired the
art of conversation in a degree which would have pleased Chesterfield
himself!
To make herself liked by women was the immediate objective she had laid
down for herself. Of what use to gain the little pleasure by the way, of
the gratification of her vanity from the incense of men? She must wait
until some one man appeared upon the scene, the securing of whom would
be her definite goal--then she could pursue her aims without the
stumbling-block of female antagonism.
She learned many things from her employer: tolerance--kindness of
heart--supreme contempt for all shams, apart from that of necessary
moral hypocrisy, which seeming paradox she grew to realise was a
sensible assistance to the attainment of a general moral ideal. Her wits
sharpened, her brain expanded, her cultivation increased and her manners
assumed an exquisite refinement and graciousness; and when the second
Christmas came and the New Year of 1913, no one could possibly have
discovered the faintest trace of Bindon's Green, or of the lower middle
class from which she had sprung.
Lady Garribardine had materially augmented her salary, and substantial
cheques found their way to poor Gladys, whose baby was born dead, much
to Matilda's disappointment.
"But it is often like that," she told Katherine as they walked in the
park one Sunday, "with a seven months' child, and Glad don't take on
about it as I should."
Mrs. Robert Hartley was firmly determined to go to America.
"We've had enough hell in these few months, Bob," she informed her
husband as she was getting better, "and I am going to be like Katherine
and make a career for myself. I'm tired of your grumbling and your
rudeness to me, and every bit of love I had for you is gone--We've no
baby--There's nothing to keep us chained up together like a pair of
animals, and I'm off to make my fortune--so I tell you flat."
Mr. Robert Hartley asserted the rights of an English husband, but to no
avail. Gladys had the money from her sister in her hand to start herself
with, and a warm recommendation from Madame Ermantine, and so in the
early autumn sailed for New York and almost immediately obtained
lucrative employment.
Thus the family at Bindon's Green was reduced to Matilda, Ethel, and the
two young men, and still further diminished in the New Year by the
marriage (and retirement to a villa of his own!) of Mr. Frederick Bush
with the genteel Mabel Cawber!
The wedding of the pair was a day of unalloyed pleasure to Matilda.
Katherine had manoeuvred so that she could not possibly be spared to
attend it; thus the festivities were unclouded by the restraint which
her presence--quite undesired by herself--always imposed upon her
relations. They were all admittedly uncomfortable with her, not she with
them. They felt in some vague way that they were of less account in
their own eyes when in her company, and that an impassable gulf now
separated them. They had nothing to complain of, Katherine gave herself
no airs, she neither patronised them nor talked over their heads, but a
subtle something divided them, and all were glad of her seemingly
enforced absence. All except the bride, who was sorry the poor secretary
sister-in-law should not be chastened by witnessing her triumph!
For was she not having four bridesmaids dressed in pink pongee silk with
blue sashes, and two pages to carry her court train! Pages in
"Renaissance" costume. The Lady Agatha Tollington's were so described in
the _Flare_, and why should not hers be also? "Renaissance!" She did not
know what the word meant, but it had such a nice sound and seemed so
well to fit the picturesque suits advertised as copied from Millais'
immortal Bubbles which had been secured at the local emporium to adorn
the two smug-faced infants who would carry--very shamefacedly it must be
admitted--the confection of cheap satin and imitation lace which would
depend from Miss Cawber's angular shoulders.
If Katherine could have seen all that! Miss Cawber felt that a humbler
mien in this obstreperous creature might have resulted!
But Katherine never saw it, and when Matilda recounted all the glories
to her, she had the awkwardness to ask why Mabel had indulged in a court
train?
"Bridesmaids were natural enough," she said, "if you all wanted to have
some gaiety and a jolly party, but Fred's wife will never go to Court,
so why pages and a train?"
"Oh--well," Matilda returned in annoyance, "who's to know that at
Bindon's Green? And it has given her ever such a tip-top position to
begin her home upon. The Perkins girls and Bob Hartley's mother and
cousins were just mad with envy, and Fred as pleased as Punch to have
such a stunning turn-out at his side to down the aisle with."
"I am so glad you are all happy then," Katherine said kindly.
How merciful, she reflected when she had left her sister at Stanhope
Gate, that their ambitions were so easily satisfied! How merciful also
that only Matilda's affection for her need count in her future
connection with the family--and Matilda might at no distant date be a
bride too! The bride of Katherine's old devoted admirer, Charlie
Prodgers! While Ethel announced her intention of following Gladys'
example and migrating to America the moment she was seventeen, in the
spring.
Thus, visits to Bindon's Green were no longer desired by the inhabitants
of Laburnum Villa, nor of Talbot Lodge, where Mr. and Mrs. Frederick
Bush were installed, and Katherine felt she could drift from them all
without hurting their feelings, indeed, with mutual satisfaction.
So the winter of 1912 drew to a close, and the spring of 1913 came, and
with it Gerard Strobridge.
He was well and sunburnt and seemed more resigned on his first visit
after he returned to Blissington accompanied by Lady Beatrice.
Katherine was pouring out the tea--now her daily task--when he came in,
and a glad thrill ran through her. Would he see any change in her? Would
he be pleased with her advancement? He was her friend, and her helpmate
in literature, and never by word or look did she recognise that he could
feel any other emotion but a platonic one for her.
Her attractions always struck Gerard afresh after his absences, and made
him remark upon them each time he returned.
"How beautiful you have grown, Katherine," he said when presently they
had a chance of talking a little apart. "You are the most wonderful
thing in the world--I came back hoping to find you less attractive, and
you are just as fascinating as ever--more so--Oh! shall I never make you
care the least for me?"
"Never."
"It is a wonder that I should love you so madly, when you are as cold as
ice to me, and never melt--I believe you could see me on the rack
without turning a hair--if it suited your purpose!"
"Probably."
But she smiled softly, so he asked eagerly:
"Is it so, Katherine?"
"Will you never understand even after the hundreds and hundreds of talks
we have had? I have marked out a settled, determined path in life which
I intend to follow--so that even if I loved you I would crush all
emotion out of myself, since indulging in it would ruin my aims, and
drag us both to social perdition meanwhile. It is extremely fatiguing to
have to recommence explaining our positions every time you come back
from abroad. As a friend I delight in you--I love our talks, our
discussions and controversies. I have tried in every way to improve
under your tuition, but if you will be weak and give way to other
feelings--it is you who put yourself on the rack--And if you do it I
cannot help it, it cannot change my determination, even if I see you
suffering."
"How can a man worship anything so logical?"
"I don't know; what I do know is that I never mean to admit that you
have any feelings for me but those I have for you, of warm friendship. I
shall always act as if you were only my friend, and only consider any of
my actions as affecting you from that point of view. If you are hurt it
is your own fault, I cannot be responsible for the pain."
He clenched his hands with sudden violence.
"And if I refused to bear it--if I broke all friendship and never spoke
to you again--what then?"
"You would be quite right to do so if it gave you any satisfaction. I
should miss you--but I should understand."
He gave a faint groan.
"Well, I have not the strength to throw off your influence. I always
think I have done it when I go to foreign climes, and I dwell upon the
pleasure that your intellect gives me. I come back quite resigned, but
the first sight of you, the sight of those red, wicked lips and that
white skin drives me mad once more, and I feel I do not care whether you
have any brain or no, in the overwhelming desire to hold you in my
arms."
Katherine gave an exclamation of weariness.
"Oh, it is tiresome that you must always have these scenes when you
return, they spoil everything. You force me to seem cruel. Why can't you
accept the situation?"
"Because I am a man and you are a woman," and his eyes sought hers with
passion, "and all the rest of emotion is but make-believe; the only real
part is the tangible. To have and to hold, to clasp and to kiss, to
strain the loved one next the heart--Katherine, you make me suffer the
tortures of the damned."
"No--you permit yourself to suffer them, that makes all the difference.
If I made you, then I should feel as wicked as you say my lips look."
Here Lady Beatrice interrupted them in her plaintive, drawling voice.
"Gerard, can you imagine it! Aunt Sarah has just had a letter from Tom
Hawthorne by the evening's post, announcing that Läo has quietly married
that boy in Paris, and they are going to Monte Carlo for their
honeymoon! Isn't it quite too tragic for them, poor things!"
Lady Garribardine joined the group, with the epistle in her hand.
"Läo was always a fool, but I believed even the sense of a rabbit would
have kept her from this!"
"They are madly in love, dear Sarah!" old Gwendoline d'Estaire said
sentimentally.
Her ladyship snorted.
"Tut, tut! Läo is forty-two years old and the boy not more than six and
twenty, sixteen years between them! Quite an immaterial discrepancy
while he remained a lover--but a menace which even the strongest brain
cannot combat when the creature turns into a husband. The situation is
ridiculous at once. It means that the woman has to spend her time not
only fighting old age as we all have to do, but watching for every sign
of weariness in the youth, trembling at every fresh wrinkle in herself,
and always on the tiptoe of anxiety, so that she loses whatever charm
lured the poor child into her net."
"But really Läo had made it so evident--the affair--perhaps she
thought----"
"That a second wedding ring was essential! Ridiculous nonsense,
Gwendoline! We are not of the _bourgeoisie_--there is an epidemic of
these rich widows rushing these penniless young men into matrimony. No
one objects to their amusing themselves, but these respectable unions
offend the sensibilities at once from their obvious unsuitableness. The
woman loses prestige--almost caste, I was going to say. The man grows
either sheepish or intolerably insolent, and if you notice, the pair
eventually drop out of all agreeable society."
"How awful to contemplate!" and Lady Beatrice sighed sadly. "To think
that after one had _pretended_ for years that one was full of emotions
and sex and horrible things, one should succumb to them really--It is a
cruel retribution--Gerard, aren't you interested?"
For Mr. Strobridge had raised a whimsical eyebrow.
"Perfectly thrilled. I am amply revenged for her indifference to me!"
"Is it not possible for them to be happy, then?" Katherine whispered to
him in the din of a chorus of remarks the news had provoked.
"They have about a hundred to one chance for a few months; then either
will suffer, probably both. Oh! the intolerable bond of
matrimony!--Unless, of course----"
Katherine shrugged her shoulders.
"Yes, I suppose so, if one was not quite sure what the reason was that
one was marrying for, and had not weighed it and found out if it would
be worth while or no."
"What will you marry for?"
"Contentment, I expect."
"And what is contentment--only the obtaining of one's heart's desire."
"I shall not marry unless it is to obtain my heart's desire," and that
sphinxlike smile grew round her mouth, which always roused Gerard
Strobridge's curiosity. After all this time, he could never quite fathom
what was going on inside that clever brain.
"I refuse to think about it--Let us talk about something else--books
you have been reading--something I can do for you."
"There is one thing I would like you to do very much--only I do not know
if it could be managed. Last week, Her Ladyship allowed me to go with
Miss Arabella d'Estaire to see the House of Commons. I would so much
like to see the House of Lords and hear a debate there before the Easter
recess. I am trying to study politics."
"That will not be very difficult. I can get an order from Blackrod;
there will be something to listen to next week, when I believe my aunt
will be in town. I shall love to gratify your wish, Katherine."
"We must ask Lady Garribardine first if I may."
"Model of circumspection! Of course."
Then the company drifted from the tea table and Miss Bush returned to
her sanctum, while Gerard Strobridge went up to his aunt's sitting-room.
They talked of numbers of things, and at last that lady said:
"G.,--more than ever I understand your passion for my secretary. I do
not even find your fidelity ridiculous; she is one of the most
fascinating creatures I have ever met. A masterpiece of balance and
common sense, she will rise to the highest position one day--mark my
words, boy!"
"I daresay--I cannot feel interested in that. I am still horribly in
love. I thought Teheran had dulled the ache for her, but it has not."
Lady Garribardine sighed as she arranged a cushion.
"I live in terror that one day she will come and tell me quite honestly
that she has learned all that my situation can teach her, and that she
is going on to something new."
"She could not be so ungrateful."
"It would not be ingratitude--she works for money, not for love. It
would be part of her plan of life. Sentimental emotion does not enter
into it--that is what makes her so interesting, and so invaluable."
"But I know, Seraphim, that she has a deep affection for you--she has
expressed it to me many times. You are her model for all fine conduct
and point of view."
"Yes--the girl is devoted to me, I think. Well, we must hope that she is
content here, for I do not know how I could quite get on without her. I
have had her down for a little at each party during the winter, G. She
literally devours bores for me, and gets all the cranks into good
tempers. And all the women like her; that shows triumphant astuteness on
her part."
"Triumphant! You did not after all marry her to Sir John while I was
away. I almost hoped that you would do so when I left in October."
"Sir John was willing; he wanted but a hint from me to have shown all
the ardour of a young lover. One even pictured verses--it is in this way
that it takes aged politicians. One imagined a discreet wedding and
almost by now the inevitable preparatory layette!--But Miss Bush would
have none of it! When I approached her upon the subject she looked me
straight in the face and said quite respectfully, but with a hauteur
befitting a D'Estaire, that she had other views, and while sensible of
my kindness she must decline the honour! I was immensely diverted."
"Danger is still ahead, then--She has told me just now that she means
only to marry when she can gain her heart's desire--but what that is
God--or the devil--alone knows."
Lady Garribardine looked at him shrewdly for a second; she did not
speak, so Mr. Strobridge went on:
"By the way, she wants me to take her and Arabella to hear a debate in
the House of Lords--may I?"
"Of course."
If he had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have
remarked his aunt's tone, but he was absently staring out of the window
and did not even see her face with its sagacious, querying expression.
"She is greatly interested in politics, I believe; she is well up in
them already--she is well up in everything. I daresay she could open a
bazaar, or give an address better than I could myself. I can spare her
next Wednesday afternoon when the debate on the Land Bill will be in
full swing. You can arrange it."
"I will.--Seraphim, isn't it pitiful about poor Läo!--Younger or older
it would not have mattered quite so much--but at forty-two--Heavens! The
only thing the poor darling had--her beauty--won't be worth looking at
in a year or so. The mentality of women is beyond me, so utterly
unaccountable their actions are."
"Not at all, my precious G. They are as plain as a pikestaff--only any
man can be bamboozled by the silliest of them. They all answer to type
and sex. Läo has the brains of her type, the female guinea pig, raised
under artificial conditions which have altered, but not stifled, the
guinea pig's strongest instinct--prolific reproduction. It came out in
Läo, not in the desire to have a numerous family, but in an intense
desire to attract the male--_pas pour le bon motif, bien entendu!_--but
for variety--Then she falls in love at a foolish age, and the emotion,
being one of nature, the instinct rights itself for the moment, and
swamps the effect of artificial conditions. Hence the passion for the
wedding ring--vows--the male in the cage, all unconscious preparation
for a family--the last thing she would desire, in fact--and all sense of
proportion lost sight of."
Mr. Strobridge laughed delightedly.
"You should write a 'Guide to the Knowledge of Women,' Seraphim, for the
enlightenment of your men friends."
His aunt smiled, showing all her strong, well-preserved white teeth.
"I would like to, but not one of them would speak to me again, they
would tear my new grey _toupée_ from my snowy locks, and denounce me as
a liar, because I would tell the one thing they strongly dislike--the
truth!"
"Yes, a thoroughly lovable feminine woman loathes the truth, doesn't
she! I have always found my greatest success with her lay in a
distortion of every fact to suit her personal view. Katherine Bush and
yourself, sweet Aunt, are the only two of your sex that I have ever met
whom a man need not humour, and can speak his real mind out to."
And with this he kissed her fat hand and took his way from her presence
down the gallery to his room to dress for dinner.
But all the while Stirling was coaxing the real silver and auxiliary
iron grey waves into a superbly simple triumph of hairdressing, her
ladyship wore a slight frown of concentrated thought.
What did it mean, this desire on the part of her secretary to see the
House of Lords?
"Vermondsay--Hankhurst--Upper Harringway." She counted over a long list
of the names of peers who frequented Blissington and Berkeley
Square--but at the end she shook her head. "No--none of these--Who
then--and what for?"
Katherine Bush was no guinea pig answering to type. What type was she,
by the way? A complicated, conglomerated mixture, not easy to dissect at
any time, was this new move a manifestation of sex--or type?
Time alone would show--Until then the solution must remain in the lap of
the gods. And in all cases, dinner should not wait, and it behooved a
hostess to be punctual.