Mordryn spent a most unrestful day; he found it very difficult to settle
to anything. He felt it wiser whenever his thoughts turned to Katherine
Bush, immediately to picture Bindon's Green and the auctioneer father
and butcher grandfather!--they acted as a kind of antidote to the very
powerful intoxicant which was flooding his veins.
And Katherine sat typing mechanically her morning's work, but some third
sense beyond eye and hand was busy with agitating thoughts. No, she
could play no further game with the Duke, fate had beaten her. It would
be no acting. She knew that she was just a woman, after all, and he was
a man, and the Dukedom had gone into shadowland.
He possessed everything that Algy had lacked, there would be no blank
half-hours when passion was lulled, with him. His perfectly cultivated
intellect could enchant her always. She adored his point of view, as
unconsciously arrogant as Lady Garribardine's, and yet as free and
expanded. How she could soar with him to guide her! What happiness to
take refuge from everything in his arms.
He did not seem old to her; indeed, except for his thick, iron-grey hair
and the expression of having greatly suffered, which now and then showed
in his proud eyes, there were no unlovely signs of age about him. He
could still call forth for many years the passionate love of women. And
what was age? A ridiculous phantasy--the soul was the thing.
Katherine was beginning to believe that she herself had a soul, and that
Otto Weininger was altogether wrong about individuals, even if his
deductions were correct concerning the majority of women.
* * * * *
Several guardsmen from Windsor came over to luncheon, which was so
crowded that there was no necessity for Katherine to go down, and tea
came before she again saw the Duke. He deliberately allowed himself to
be entrapped by one of the trio of Graces, and did not come near her;
and when Katherine got into the drawing-room after dinner, he was
nowhere in sight. A Cabinet Minister, one of the few Her Ladyship
considered sufficiently worthy to be allowed to visit Blissington, had
arrived in the afternoon, and the Duke and the hostess, and another man
and woman, made a group in the small, red drawing-room in earnest
converse; while most of the rest of the company danced in the hall. And
Katherine went among these, and presently she slipped up to her old
schoolroom.
His Grace was carrying out her request, it appeared, but therein she
found no joy.
And later, Mordryn drank his final hock and seltzer in his old friend's
boudoir, where they had a little talk together alone.
"It has been dear of you to stay so long, Mordryn," she told him.
"Especially as the diversions which I hoped I had provided for you
turned out of no more use than a plague of gnats. I hope you have not
been too bored?"
"I am never bored with you, dear friend."
"No, I know that; but in a big party, I cannot give you as much time as
I should like. You will come again when we are quiet, though, just as
you always used to, and I will really find you a suitable bride."
The Duke was in a cynical mood, it seemed, for he treated this proposal
not at all in the light fashion he had done at the beginning of the
visit.
He replied gloomily that he had decided to select something steady and
plain, if he must marry--he knew he could never care for a woman again,
and a healthy, quiet, well-bred creature with tact, who would leave him
alone, was all he asked. Life was a hideous disappointment and very
difficult to understand, and to try to do one's duty to one's state, and
get through with it, was all that anyone could hope to accomplish.
But to this Her Ladyship said a vigorous, "Tut--tut! You speak like a
boy crossed in love, Mordryn! If you were five-and-twenty, you could not
have a more delightful vista opening out in front of you, '_Si jeunesse
savait. Si vieillesse pouvait_'--that was cried from a wise and envious
heart! Well, you both _know_ and _can_, so what more could a man ask of
fate! I have no patience with you! I don't want you now only to do your
duty, to fulfil the obligations of your station. You have always done
so. Your life has been one long carrying out of _noblesse oblige_. I
want you to kick over the traces and be happy, Mordryn! Ridiculously,
boyishly happy!--do you hear, conscientious martyr!"
Mordryn heard, but his smile was still bitter, as he answered:
"We are not so made, Seraphim, neither you nor I--we could not do as you
say, even when we were young, and tradition and obligation to our order
will still dominate us to the end of time, dear friend."
Then he said good-night and good-bye--for he was leaving at cock-crow
for a place of his in the North.
When Lady Garribardine was alone, she did not look at all disturbed at
the passage of events, as she reviewed her Easter party. She smiled
happily, in fact, and decided that she would take her secretary to
Valfreyne for Whitsuntide, after all!
Man "proposed," but, she reflected sagely, God often "disposed" in
favour of intelligent women!
* * * * *
In the following week, the establishment from Blissington moved up to
Berkeley Square for the season, and Katherine's duties became heavy
again.
Her first meeting with Gerard Strobridge happened quite soon; he came
into the secretary's room from the library after luncheon.
"Now tell me all about everything," he said. "I have gathered from
Gwendoline that you came down every night and had your usual success at
the Easter party, and that Mordryn evidently liked you, for he told Gwen
that you were the most intelligent girl that he had ever met."
Katherine half smiled, a little sadly.
"Yes, he may have thought so, but eventually the secretary swallowed up
the guest. I do not know if he will ever speak to me again."
"He felt as badly as that, did he! Poor Mordryn! No doubt you tormented
him; but Mordryn is no weak creature like me. If he feels very much
about you, he will either defy convention, or break away from all
temptation"--then his voice changed, and he asked a little anxiously:
"Katherine, do you begin to care for him?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"I do not know--I could care a great deal--he pleases me in every way--I
love his looks and his mind--and he--he makes me feel something which I
have never felt before--is it the capability for devotion?--I do not
know."
For the first time in their acquaintance, Mr. Strobridge saw her
undecided, gentle, a little helpless even--it touched him deeply. He
loved her so very dearly. He would rather see her happy if he could aid
her to become so. He came over to her and leaned upon the table.
"Dearest girl--everything is a sickening jumble in this world, it seems.
I have a kind of premonition, though, that you will emerge triumphant,
however it goes; but after to-day, Katherine, I shall not see you until
late in the autumn. I am going away--to Russia this time--and I am going
to try once more not to care."
So even her one friend would be far from her. Well, she must not lose
her nerve. She gave him her blessing for his journey, and they said
good-bye. And the days went on apace.
Matilda was engaged to be married to Charlie Prodgers, and was full of
importance and glee, and had drifted further and further away from her
sister ever since the engagement was announced. Some instinctive
feminine jealousy made her feel that she would prefer Katherine to be as
far as possible from her fiancé.
"After all, Kitten," she said, when they met in the park to discuss the
news, "you aren't one of us and we aren't one of you. I shall be moving
up now into Mabel's set, and there is no use in hiding it, Mabel don't
seem to dote on you."
"Yes, I feel that," agreed Katherine, meekly lowering her eyes, so that
her sister might not see their twinkle. "I expect we shall not meet
often in the future, Tild."
"Well, of course, Kitten, I'd always be very pleased to have tea with
you up here now and then," and Matilda gave an uncomfortable laugh; "but
it is always best to avoid awkwardness, isn't it, dearie, and you are
only a paid servant, aren't you--living in--not like you were at Liv and
Dev's, out on your own, and everyone starts better in considering her
husband's position, don't they--and Charlie is manager in his department
now, and very particular as to who I know."
"You are perfectly right, Tild," Katherine's voice was ominously soft,
"and so is Charlie. You go ahead, and very soon you will have got above
Mabel, and, of course, I would not be a drag on you for the world. I
think, after to-day, we will just write to one another now and then, and
you must not bother to come up to see me. We do not think alike on any
point--but I shall always remember how good you were to me when I was a
tiresome little girl."
"Oh, Kitten!" and Matilda felt almost tearful; for apart from her fear
of reawakening her fiancé's interest in her sister, she still had a
secret affection for her.
"Yes, you were very good to me, then, Tild, but now we have come to a
final parting of the ways, and we are all satisfied--I shall fulfil my
ideas, and you will fulfil yours."
And afterwards, when she walked back to Berkeley Square, she pondered
deeply. There was no such thing as family affection really in the
abstract--it only held when the individuals were in sympathy and had a
community of interests. They--her family--were as glad at the thought
that they had risen above her, and need not communicate in the future,
as she was that she would not have to bring her mind down to their point
of view. Matilda was the last link--and Matilda had shown that
she desired also to break away. Katherine felt that but for Lady
Garribardine's real affection for her, she was virtually alone in the
world.
If only there were no backward thoughts in her mind, she would have
looked upon her fair future as a certainty; sooner or later, with the
visit to Valfreyne in front of her, and the frequent occasions upon
which she must see the Duke at her mistress' house, she knew she could
continue to attract him if she so desired, and make him love her with a
great love. There was that subtle, indescribable sympathy of ideas
between them. And as Algy had called forth physical passion, and Gerard
the awakening of the spirit, this man seemed to arouse the essence of
all three things, the body, the spirit and the soul.
But there lay this ugly shadow between them, and she began to realise
the meaning of the old saw from Horace, "Black care sits behind the
horseman," and she had not yet made up her mind to dislodge him and defy
fate.
The three days in Paris began to haunt her until she severely took
herself to task, and analysed everything. She must not look back upon
them in that fashion. She must remember them gratefully, she told
herself, since they had opened her eyes for the first time in a way that
nothing else could have done, and she indeed felt that it was very
doubtful if she could ever have obtained Lady Garribardine's situation,
and so her education from Gerard Strobridge, without the experience that
that episode in her life had given her to start upon.
It was contrary to all her principles to allow any past action to
influence with its shadow present events. She would banish the
whole subject from her mind, and leave the future in the hand of
destiny--neither assisting fate by personal initiative, nor resisting
its march by deliberate renunciation.
But she seemed very quiet, Her Ladyship thought, and wondered to herself
at the cause. The Duke was in the North paying other visits for some
weeks, and when he did come to Berkeley Square in between times he did
not see Katherine.
So April passed and May came, and with it the prospect of Whitsuntide,
early that year. Whitsunday fell upon the eleventh of May.
"You must have some decent clothes," Lady Garribardine had said, a week
or two beforehand, "another evening dress and an afternoon frock. I
think I should like the first to be white and the other black, and in
your own excellent taste. You will dine down every night as a guest, and
we shall stay from Saturday until Tuesday."
"It is extremely exciting for me," Katherine admitted. "I wonder so much
what the house will be like."
"It is a huge Palladian Monument, very splendid and ducal, everything is
on an immense scale, and the Duke keeps it up with great state. It is
more like some royal residence than a house, but there are some cosy
rooms to be found in odd corners. It will interest and educate you,
child. You had better read up all about it in one of the old volumes of
_Country Life_--some three years ago, I think, it was described."
Katherine lost no time in doing this, and read of its building in 1680,
and of its wonderful gardens "in the French style"--and of its superb
collections of pictures and art treasures, and of its avenues and lake
and waterways and fountains. Yes, it must be a very noble place.
They were to arrive early in time for luncheon, since Her Ladyship was
to act hostess to the party who would come in the afternoon. And when
they approached the gates, Katherine felt that one of the supreme
moments in her life had come.
The park was vast, larger even than Blissington, and with more open
spaces, and the house could be viewed from a distance--a symmetrical,
magnificent pile. And it seemed that they walked through an endless
succession of halls and great salons, until they were ushered into the
Duke's presence in his own particular panelled room.
It was very lofty and partly filled with bookcases arranged in rather an
unusual way, sunk into the wall itself, with very beautiful decorations
by Grinling Gibbons surrounding them and also the intervening panels
wherein fine pictures hung. The curtains and chair coverings were of the
most superb old blue silk, faded now to a wonderful greenish tone, and
harmonizing with the beautiful Savonnerie carpet with its soft tints of
citron and puce and green.
Katherine was frankly awed. Blissington was a very fine gentleman's
house--but this was a palace. And suddenly, the Duke seemed a million
miles away from her, and she wondered how she had ever dared to be
familiar with him, and rebuke him for coming to her schoolroom to talk!
She was meek as a mouse, and never opened her lips after the first words
of greeting.
The host had come forward with cordial graciousness and bidden them
welcome, and he had looked a very magnificent person somehow in his
morning country riding clothes. And all the glamour of high rank and
power and fastidiousness enhanced his natural charms, so that Katherine
felt a little cold and sick with the emotion which she was experiencing.
He was courtly and aloof in his manner with all his kindness, and in a
moment or two he accompanied them along to the Venetian suite himself.
"I must come, dear friend," he had said to Lady Garribardine, "to be
sure that you have everything you can possibly want."
The Venetian suite was on a par in splendour with the rest of the house.
It was on the same floor as His Grace's own sitting-room which they had
left, and it was reached by a passage place which led to the same
terrace, which the windows looked upon; this was marble paved, with a
splendid balustrade. The ante-chamber had been arranged with a writing
table near the great window, and every convenience for Miss Bush to do
any writing her mistress might require. For the rest, the Venetian
suite was always reserved for the most honoured guest. Here were a
sitting-room, a great bedroom and dressing-room for Her Ladyship--all
with the same lofty ceilings and fine windows as the room they had left,
and behind it came that charming green damask-hung chamber designed for
Miss Bush.
"Here in this apartment you will find yourselves completely quiet and
shut off from the world," the Duke said. "Once you have passed the great
door, as you know, Seraphim, your suite makes the end of this wing, and
only I can approach you from my sitting-room!"
Lady Garribardine, who knew every nook in the house, smiled as she
expressed herself as content, and he left them alone.
Katherine examined her room; it would have struck her as very large if
it had been in any other house. It looked on to an inner courtyard with
a fountain playing, and statuary and hundred-year-old lilac bushes in
huge tubs. The room was hung with pale green silk, and had beautiful
painted Italian, eighteenth century furniture, and on the dressing-table
were bowls of lilies of the valley.
She thrilled a little; was this accidental or deliberate?
She was very well acquainted with the workings of a great house, and the
duties of the housekeeper and groom of the chambers. She saw from a
technical point of view that these retainers of Valfreyne must be of a
very high order of merit because of the result of their work; but even
their intelligence could hardly have selected the volumes of her
favourite authors, which she had discussed with the Duke, and which were
placed in bookstands, with the "Letters of Abelard and Héloise" and a
beautiful edition of "Eothen" out on the top!
These silent testimonies of someone's personal thought gave her
unbounded pleasure; they restored her submerged self-confidence, and
made her eyes glow. It was divine to feel that he cared enough to have
troubled to do this. The subtle flattery was exquisite.
A burning wave of colour overspread Katherine's face, and her nostrils
quivered. If the Duke could have seen her--he would have known that that
quality he appreciated--the quality of real, natural passion--was
abundantly present in her nature. Strong passion controlled by an iron
will--a mixture which he thought quite ideal in the woman whom a man
would choose to be the companion of his life.
It was this particular suggestion about Katherine which had alike
intoxicated the imaginations of these three far different men, Lord
Algy, Gerard Strobridge and the Duke. The human, adorable warmth of
emotion of which her white, smooth-skinned face and red, full mouth
looked capable.
Lady Garribardine had told her secretary to take off her hat, as she
might be required to do a little work after lunch.
"I shall settle with His Grace how I think the party had better sit, and
then you can type anything we want."
So Katherine was particularly careful to arrange her silvery hair
becomingly, and looked the perfection of refined neatness as she
followed her mistress back into the Duke's sitting-room, and then on in
to luncheon in a smaller dining-room in another wing.
They were only three at the meal, and the host talked of politics, and
the party who were coming, and was gracious. He did not treat Katherine
with the slightest condescension, nor with any special solicitude. If
she had been an unknown niece of Lady Garribardine, his manner would
have been the same.
Katherine felt chilled again for the moment, and had never appeared more
subdued.
She slipped off back to her room when they went to have coffee in a
small drawing-room, known as "The Gamester's Parlour," for in it was
hung a world-known picture of the famous thoroughbred of that name, the
riding of whom in a match against His Grace of Chandos' colt, Starlight,
had been the cause of the third Duke's breaking his neck.
There was no immediate work to be done, so Katherine stood and looked
from the window of her green chamber and took in the view. Surely, she
thought, if people even with the intelligence of Matilda could see such
men as the Duke and such splendid homes as this, with every evidence in
it of fine tastes and fine living and fine achievement, stamped upon it
by hundreds of years of noble owners, they could not go on being so
blind to the force of heredity and environment as factors in determining
the actions of the human race.
She stood for a long time quite still, with trouble in her heart, which
every fresh realisation of the beauties around her augmented.
No--the Duke could never overlook the three days even if he could forget
that she had come from Bindon's Green--and she could not banish their
memory either, and so would never be able to rely upon her own power to
carry on the great undertaking untrammelled by inward apprehension and
self-contempt at the deception of so great a man--her serenity would be
gone and with it her power.
Lady Garribardine opened the door presently, and saw her still standing
there.
"Run out for a little walk, child," she said, kindly. "You can reach the
terrace from the passage ante-chamber which has been arranged for you to
write in, and there are steps at the side into the garden. I shall not
want you until just before tea. The Duke has the menus and cards and
door names printed by his own private press. Then come back with your
eyes bright, and put on your new black frock."
Katherine thanked her; there never could be anyone kinder or more
thoughtful for others than was this arrogant great lady.
The girl walked in the fresh May sunshine, but nothing lifted the weight
which had fallen upon her heart, and her cheeks were paler than usual,
and her air had an added delicacy and refinement when she followed her
mistress into the great tapestry salon, wherein tea was laid, and which
was adjacent to the hall where guests were already beginning to arrive.
She was not introduced to anyone else, but several she already knew;
they were selected from the _crême de la crême_ of Her Ladyship's set of
the rather less modern sort.
Mordryn looked at her constantly unobserved. What was the meaning of
this new expression in her face? Why would she never meet his eyes? And
hers, when he did see them, turned upon ordinary things, had a haunting
melancholy in them very different from the sphinxlike smile of old.
He found himself more disturbed than he cared to own. He wished Seraphim
had not brought her, after all--He wished--but he did not even in his
thoughts form words. Had her changed air anything to do with that last
abrupt request on the March morning's walk, that he should remember who
she was and who he was, and leave her alone? Was it possible that she
felt something for him? How wrong he had been in that case to put the
"Eothen" and the "Abelard and Héloise" and the lilies of the valley in
her room--cruel and wrong. He knew now that he saw her again that he had
thought of her very constantly ever since Easter time, and had chafed at
getting no sight of her when he had twice been in London and had gone to
Berkeley Square, though his determination had held at that time, and he
had made no attempt to see her, or even to mention her name. But he knew
that he had looked forward more eagerly each day to Whitsuntide, and
that he had taken peculiar delight in the surreptitious supervision of
the details of her lodgment, and the choice of volumes wherewith to
refresh her mind.
But was this chivalrous on his part? Was he not playing upon the
feelings of one defenceless and in a dependent position--one who could
not even flee?
He grew uncomfortable. He was painfully conscious of her presence, and a
sudden mad longing came to him to take her in his arms, and kiss away
the trouble from her eyes! And then the cynical and humorous side of his
character made him smile at the idea of such feelings in a room full of
guests! Guests of his own world, and for the humble secretary of his old
love! He fretted under the restraint of his unease. And she was here in
his house and he must suffer the temptation of her presence for three
more days. He must not look at her--must not talk to her! He must not
have any subtle understanding with her about the books--must not, in
short, do anything he desired.
Lady Garribardine watched the passage of events with an understanding
eye. Something further must be done, she felt.
So just before dressing time, when the company had dispersed, she went
with her host into his own sitting-room. The evening post had come in.
"Mordryn, I wanted to ask you, can I send a wire over to Hornwell. I
have just heard Sir John Townly is staying there, and I want to suggest
that he motor over to-morrow to tea. It will be a splendid chance for
him to have a quiet hour with my Katherine Bush. I would like him to see
her here as a guest; he is very much in love with her in his heavy way,
and I believe I could get the matter settled all right if you would
only help me, like a dear."
The Duke experienced a most unpleasant twinge. This was rather more than
he had bargained for! Why should Sir John Townly be given this
opportunity in his house!
"The match is quite unsuitable, Seraphim. I can't think how you can
countenance it."
Her Ladyship appeared deliberately to misunderstand him.
"But I assure you, Mordryn, Sir John is not in the least upset by her
origin or her suburban relations; he realises the magnificent qualities
of the creature herself, and he knows very well that she will make the
finest hostess, and the most dignified figurehead for Dullinglea that he
could find; besides, with her health and youth, he can look forward to a
strong little son by this time next year."
Mordryn found himself absolutely revolted--Katherine--(so her name was
Katherine?) Katherine--this delicious creature to be the mother of that
shocking bore John Townly's son!
The red flush mounted to his broad forehead.
"It is not their relative worldly positions I alluded to, Seraphim--but
their ages and appearances--and, oh! tastes! I think it is perfectly
inhuman of you, and I cannot countenance such a thing."
"Mordryn! I am really surprised!--how can it possibly matter to you? You
must have seen for yourself that night at Gerard's what a charming
companion she can make, and how utterly she is wasted in the position of
secretary--and yet you won't help me to do the poor child this good
turn!"
"If you put it in that way--ask whom you like, but I cannot think how
any woman, to escape any position, could sell herself to such a man as
John Townly!"
His tone was heated and his blue eyes flashed.
"That is just the tiresome part of it," and Her Ladyship looked
concerned. "I believe she has your same foolish and romantic ideas, and
so I thought if she could see him here among this fine company, perhaps
the desire to remain in it, and the glamour of the thing might bring her
up to the scratch. Mordryn, do help me like a kind friend. Just think,
if she were to leave me, whom else would she ever see? She has quite
separated from her own family; she has nothing but a life of drudgery in
front of her, and she is fitted in every way to be a queen. She is so
extremely self-controlled, she would never make any slips afterwards,
and her ambitions could be gratified and make up for lack of love."
"I think the idea is disgusting," His Grace snapped impatiently; "but
send your wire, by all means."
Then he abruptly turned the conversation, and presently Her Ladyship
left him alone, very well pleased with her work! And the groom of the
chambers was handed a warmly worded invitation to telegraph to Hornwell,
as she passed to her room.