The Career of Katherine Bush.
by Elinor Glyn.
CHAPTER I
Dusk was coming on when Katherine Bush left the office of the Jew money lenders, Livingstone and Devereux, in Holles Street. Theirs was a modest establishment with no indication upon the wire blind of the only street window as to the trade practised by the two owners of the aristocratic names emblazoned upon the dingy transparency. But it was very well known all the same to numerous young bloods who often sought temporary relief within its doors.
Katherine Bush had been the shorthand typist there since she was nineteen. They paid her well, and she had the whole of Sat.u.r.day to herself.
She sat clicking at her machine most of the day, behind a half-high gla.s.s screen, and when she lifted her head, she could see those who came to the desk beyond--she could hear their voices, and if she listened very carefully, she could distinguish the words they said. In the three years in which she had earned thirty shillings a week sitting there, she had become quite a connoisseur in male voices, and had made numerous deductions therefrom. "Liv" and "Dev," as Mr. Percival Livingstone and Mr. Benjamin Devereux, were called with undue familiarity by their subordinates, often wondered how Katherine Bush seemed to know exactly the suitable sort of letter to write to each client, without being told. She was certainly a most valuable young woman, and worth the rise the firm meant to offer her shortly.
She hardly ever spoke, and when she did raise her sullen greyish-green eyes with a question in them, you were wiser to answer it without too much palaver. The eyes were darkly heavily lashed and were compelling and disconcertingly steady, and set like Greek eyes under broad brows.
Her cheeks were flat, and her nose straight, and her mouth was full and large and red.
For the rest she was a colourless creature, with a mop of ashen-hued hair which gleamed with silvery lights. She was tall and slight, and she could at any moment have been turned by a clever dressmaker and hairdresser into a great beauty. But as it was, she gave no thought to her appearance, and looked unremarkable and ordinary and lower middle-cla.s.s.
She had wonderful hands--Where they came from the good G.o.d alone knew!
with their whiteness and their shape. They were strong, too, and perhaps appeared boyish rather than feminine. She did not inherit them from that excellent mother, retired to a better world some ten years before; nor from that astute auctioneer father, who, dying suddenly, had left that comfortable red-brick semi-detached villa at Bindon"s Green, Brixton, as a permanent home for his large family.
But from whence come souls and bodies and hands and eyes?--and whither do they go?--Katherine Bush often asked herself questions like these, and plodded on until she could give herself some kind of answer.
Not one single moment of her conscious hours had ever been wasted. She was always learning something, and before she had reached sixteen, she had realised that power to rule will eventually be in the grasp of the man or woman who can reap the benefit of lessons.
She had enjoyed her work at the night schools, and the wet Sundays, curled up with a book in the armchair in the tiny attic, which she preferred to a larger bedroom, because she could have it alone unshared with a sister.
Her mind had become a storehouse of miscellaneous English literature, a good deal misp.r.o.nounced in the words, because she had never heard it read aloud by a cultivated voice. She knew French grammatically, but her accent would have made a delicate ear wince. Her own voice was singularly refined; it was not for nothing that she had diligently listened to the voices of impecunious aristocrats for over three years!
For the moment, Katherine Bush was in love. Lord Algy had happened to glance over the gla.s.s screen upon his first visit to Liv and Dev to be accommodated with a thousand pounds, and his attractive blue eyes had met the grey-green ones.
He had spoken to her when she came out to luncheon. But he had done it really intelligently, and Katherine was not insulted. Indeed, accustomed as she was to weigh everything in life, she accorded him a mead of praise for the manner in which he had carried out his intention to make her acquaintance. She had flouted him and turned him more or less inside out for over a month, but she had let him give her lunch--and now she had decided to spend the Sat.u.r.day to Monday with him.
For the scheme of existence which she had planned out for herself, she decided her experience must be more complete. One must see life, she argued, and it was better to make a first plunge with a person of refinement, who knew the whole game, than with one of her own cla.s.s who would be but a very sorry instructor.
Heavens! To spend a Sat.u.r.day to Monday with the counterpart of her brothers Fred and Bert! The idea made her shudder. She disliked them and their friends enough as it was--and the idea of marriage in that circle never entered her level head. Of what use would be all her studies, and the lessons she had mastered, if she buried herself forever at Brixton with Charlie Prodgers or at Clapham with Percy Watson?
At this stage no moral questions troubled her at all, nor had she begun really to apply the laws of cause and effect in their full measure--although she was quite aware that what she proposed to do was the last thing she would have considered wise or safe for another woman to attempt. Rules of conduct were wisely made for communities she felt, and must be kept or disaster must inevitably follow. But in her own case she was willing to take risks, thoroughly believing in her own cool discrimination.
The outlook for her should always be vast.
Lord Algy was pa.s.sionately devoted, and it was wiser early in life to know the nature of men. Thus she argued to herself, being totally unaware that her point of view was altogether affected because her heart and her senses pleaded hard, being touched for the first time in her twenty-two years.
She was quite untroubled by what the world calls morality--and she had no scruples. These were for a later date in her career.
The path looked clear and full of roses.
She had not been in the habit of consulting her family as to her movements, and had many times gone by herself for holidays to the seaside. No questions would be asked her when she returned on the Monday. If the matter could have created scandal, she would not have gone--to create scandal was not at all part of her game.
Lord Algy had arranged to take her to Paris by that Friday night"s train. They would have all Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, and then return on Monday night. Liv and Dev had granted her a holiday until the Tuesday.
She had put on her best blue serge suit that morning, and had taken a small valise with what she considered necessary things. And now her heart beat rather fast as she turned into Oxford Street in the gathering October dusk.
For a few moments she wondered what it would have been like if she had been going to marry Lord Algy--before all the world. Quite a great pleasure no doubt for a month or two--But then?--He was the fourth son of a stingy Welsh marquis, and nothing would ever induce his family to pardon such a mesalliance. Of this she was well aware. It was the business of "Liv" and "Dev" to make themselves acquainted with a good deal about the peerage, and whatever her employers knew, Katherine Bush knew.
Life for her held no illusions. Her studies had convinced her that to be strong and perfectly honest were the only two things of any avail, and to acquire a thorough knowledge of human beings, so as then to be able to manipulate these p.a.w.ns.
Lord Algy she believed was only a most agreeable part of her education, but of no vital importance. She would have been horrified if anyone had told her that she was mixing up sentiment in the affair!
To get everything down to its bedrock meaning had been her endeavour, ever since she had first read Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
"I shall have the experience of a widow," she said to herself, "and can then decide what is next to be done."
Lord Algy was a Guardsman--and knew, among other things, exactly how to spend an agreeable Sat.u.r.day to Monday! He was piqued by Katherine Bush, and almost in love. He looked forward to his brief honeymoon with delight.
He was waiting for her in a taxicab at the corner of Oxford Circus, and when she got in with her little valise, he caught and kissed her hand.
"We will go and dine at the Great Terminus," he told her in his charming voice, "and don"t you think it would be much nicer if we stayed there to-night, and went on by the morning train?--It is such a miserable hour to arrive in Paris otherwise--you would be knocked up for the day."
He was holding her hand, and the nearness of him thrilled her, in some new and delicious way. She hesitated, though, for a moment--she never acted on impulse. She crushed down a strange sensation of gasp which came in her throat. After all, of what matter if she stayed--or started to-night?--since she had already cast the die, and did not mean to shirk the payment of the stakes.
"Very well," she said, quite low.
"I hoped you would agree, pet," he whispered, encircling her with his arm, "I meant to persuade you, and I am going to make you so awfully happy--I sent my servant this afternoon to take the rooms for us, and everything will be ready."
This sounded agreeable enough, and Katherine Bush permitted herself to smile, which was a rare occurrence; she would spend hours and days without the flicker of one coming near her red lips.
In the uncertain light, Lord Algy felt it more than he actually saw it, and it warmed him. She was, as he had confessed to his best friend in the battalion, an enigma to him--hence her charm.
"She treats me as though I were the ground under her feet at times," he recounted to Jack Kilcourcy. "I don"t think she cares two d.a.m.ned straws for me really, but, by Jove! she is worth while! She has no nonsense about her, and she is so awfully game!"
He had taken good care never to let Jack see her, though--or tell him her name!
It was not long before they reached the hotel, and Katherine Bush was a little angry with herself because she felt a quiver of nervousness when they were in the big hall.
Lord Algy knew all the ropes, and his air of complete insouciance rea.s.sured her. A discreet valet stepped forward and spoke to his master, and they were soon in the lift, and so to a well-lighted and warmed suite.
"These colours and this imitation Chippendale are rather awful, aren"t they," Lord Algy said, looking round, "but we must not mind, as it is only for one night; the Palatial in Paris will be different--I am glad Hanson saw to the flowers."
Huge bunches of roses stood upon the table and mantelpiece. Katherine Bush thought it a splendid place, but if it appeared rather "awful" to him, she must not show her admiration.
"Tea will come in a moment--I mean chocolate, pet--and I think we shall be as jolly as can be. In there is your room; they will have brought up your valise by now, I expect."
Katherine Bush moved forward and went through the door. A cheery fire was burning, and the curtains were drawn, and on a chair there was a big cardboard box. She looked at it, it was addressed "Mrs. Rufus."
"Who--is that--?--and what is it for?" she asked, in a voice deep as a well.
"It is just a fur-lined coat, darling," Lord Algy answered, as he pulled undone the string, "and a little wrap--I thought you would be so awfully cold on the boat--and probably would not have been able to bring much luggage."