Lord Algy could not have been more loverlike. He was really feeling full of emotion and awfully sorry to part. She had been so wonderful, he told himself. She had enjoyed the whole thing so simply, and was such a delightful companion. She had not asked any silly questions or plagued him with sentimental forever-and-ever kinds of suggestions, as lots of girls might have done with her limited experience of these transitory affairs. She had accepted the situation as frankly as a savage who had never heard that there could be any more binding unions. He really did not know how he was going to stand a whole month of separation, but perhaps it was just as well, as he was on the verge of being ridiculously in love, and to plunge in, he knew, would be a hopeless mistake. She was a thousand times nicer and more interesting than any girl he had ever met in his life. If she had only been a lady, and there would not be any row about it, he could imagine any fellow being glad to marry her.
She was not at all cold either--indeed, far from it--and seemed instinctively to understand the most enchanting pa.s.sion--He thought of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ again--and felt he had been as equally blessed as _D"Albert_. She would make the sweetest friend for months and months, and he would rush back from Wales the moment he could break from his family, and seek solace in her arms--he would have got himself in hand again by then, so as not to do anything stupid. He always meant to be very, very good to her, though. Thus he dreamed, and grew more demonstrative, clasping her once again in a fond farewell embrace, during the last available moment, and his charming blue eyes, with their brown curly lashes, looked half full of tears.
"Say you love me, darling," he commanded, wishing, like all lovers, to hear the spoken words.
Katherine Bush was very pale, and there was concentrated feeling in her face which startled him. Then she answered, her voice deeper than usual:
"Yes--I love you, Algy--perhaps you will never know how much. I do not suppose I will ever really love anyone else in the same way in my life."
Then the train drew up at the station.
The people all looked unreal in the foggy October air under the glaring lights--and the whole thing appeared as a dream indeed when, half an hour later, Katherine sped through the suburban roads to Bindon"s Green, alone in the taxi. Lord Algy had put her in and paid the man liberally, and with many last love words had bidden her good-night and--_au revoir_!
So this chapter was finished--she realised that. And it had been really worth while. An outlook had opened for her into a whole new world--where realities lived--where new beings moved, where new standpoints could be reached. She saw that her former life had been swept from her--and now, to look back upon, appeared an impossible tedium. She had mastered all the shades of what three days of most intimate companionship with _a gentleman_ could mean, and the memory contained no flaw. Algy"s chivalry and courtesy had never faltered; she might have been a princess or his bride, from the homage he had paid her. Dear, much-loved Algy! Her pa.s.sion for him was tinged with almost a mother love--there was something so tender and open-hearted about him. But now she must take stern hold of herself, and must have pluck enough to profit by what she had learned of life--Though to-night she was too tired to do more than retrospect.
Oh! the wonder of it all!--the wonder of love, and the wonder of emotion! She clenched her cold hands round the handle of her little valise. She was trembling. She had insisted upon his keeping the fur-lined coat for the present. How could she account for it to her family, she had argued? But she never meant to take it again.
No one was awake at Laburnum Villa when she opened the door with her latchkey, and she crept up to her little icy chamber under the roof, numb in mind and body and soul--and was soon shivering between the cotton sheets.
Oh! the contrast to the warm, flower-scented bedroom at the Palatial!
And once she had not known the difference between linen and cotton!
She said this over to herself while she felt the nap--and then the tears gathered in her eyes one by one, and she sobbed uncontrollably for a while--Alas! to have to renounce all joy--forever more!
She fell asleep towards morning, and woke with a start as her alarm clock thundered. But her face was set like marble, and there was not a trace of weakness upon it when she appeared at the family scramble, which did duty for breakfast.
There had been a row between Fred and Gladys, the sister a year older than herself, who was a saleswoman at a fashionable dressmaker"s establishment. Matilda, the eldest of the family, was trying to smooth matters while she sewed up a rent in the skirt which Ethel, the youngest, would presently wear to the school "for young ladies" which she daily attended. This, the most youthful Miss Bush, meanwhile sat in a very soiled j.a.panese quilted dressing gown, devouring sausages. There were bloaters on the table, too, and treacle--and the little general servant was just bringing in the unsavory coffee in the tin coffeepot.
Tea had been good enough for them always in the father"s time, and Matilda for her part could not see why Fred had insisted upon having coffee, on the strength of a trip to Boulogne on bank holiday.
But there it was! When Fred insisted, things had to be done--even if one hated coffee!
Katherine Bush loathed most of her family. She had not an expansive nature, and was quite ruthless. Why should she love them just because they were her brothers and sisters? She had not asked to be born among them! They were completely uncongenial to her, and always had been. It was obviously ridiculous and illogical then to expect her to feel affection for them, just because of this accident of birth, so she argued. Matilda, the eldest, who had always been a mother to the rest, did hold one small corner of her heart.
"Poor old Tild," as she called her, "the greatest old fool living," and Matilda adored her difficult sister.
How doubly impossible they all appeared now to the unveiled eyes of Katherine!
"This is simply disgusting stuff, this coffee!" she said, putting her cup down with a grimace. "It is no more like French coffee than Ett looks like a j.a.panese because she has got on that dirty dressing-gown."
"What do you know of French coffee, I"d like to ask--What ho!" Bert, the brother just younger than herself, demanded, with one of his bright flashes. "Have you been to "Boulong for a bit of a song," like the Gov"nor?"
"I wish you"d give over calling me the Gov"nor, Bert!" Mr. Frederick Bush interposed, stopping for a moment his bicker with Gladys. "Mabel strongly objects to it. She says it is elderly and she dislikes slang, anyway."
But Albert Bush waved half a sausage on his fork, and subsided into a chuckle of laughter. He was the recognised wit of the family, and Ethel giggled in chorus.
Katherine never replied to any of their remarks, unless she wished to; there was no use in throwing down the gauntlet to her, it remained lying there. She did not even answer Matilda"s tentative suggestion that she had always drunk the coffee before without abusing it!
If they only knew how significant the word "before" sounded to her that morning!
She finished her bit of burnt toast, and began putting on her hat at a side mirror preparatory to starting. She did not tell Gladys that she would be late if she did not leave also; that was her sister"s own affair, she never interfered with people.
As she left the dining-room, she said to Matilda:
"I want a fire in my room when I come back this evening, please. I"ll have one every day--Make out how much it will be, and Em"ly"s extra work, and I"ll pay for it."
"Whatever do you want that for, Kitten?" the astonished Matilda demanded. "Why, it is only October yet. No one ever has a fire until November, even in the drawing-room--let alone a bedroom. It is ridiculous, dearie!"
"That aspect does not matter at all to me," Katherine retorted. "I want it, and so I shall have it. I have some work to do, and I am not going to freeze."
Matilda knew better than to continue arguing. She had not lived with Katherine for twenty-two years for nothing.
"She takes after father in a way," she sighed to herself as she began helping the little servant to clear away the breakfast things, when they had all departed to the West End, where it was their boast to announce that they were all employed--they looked down upon the City!
"Yes, it"s father, not mother or her family; father would have his way, and Fred has got this idea, too, but nothing like Kitten"s! How I wish she"d look at Charlie Prodgers and get married and settled!"
Then she sighed again and sat down by the window to enjoy her one great pleasure of the day, the perusal of the _feuilleton_ in the _Morning Reflector_. In these brief moments she forgot all family worries, all sordid cares--and revelled in the adventures of aristocratic villains and persecuted innocent governesses and actresses, and felt she, too, had a link with the great world. She was a good sound Radical in what represented politics to her, so she knew all aristocrats must be bad, and ought to be exterminated, but she loved to read about them, and hear first-hand descriptions of the female members from Gladys, who saw many in the showrooms of Madame Ermantine. "Glad _knows_," she often said to herself with pride.
Meanwhile, Katherine Bush--having snubbed Mr. Prodgers into silence in the train--where he manoeuvred to meet her every morning--reached her employers" establishment, and began her usual typing.
There was work to be done by twelve o"clock in connection with the renewal of the loan to Lord Algernon Fitz-Rufus--the old Marquis would be obliged to pay before Christmas time, Mr. Percival Livingstone said.
Miss Bush, to his intense astonishment, gave a sudden short laugh--it was quite mirthless and stopped abruptly--but it was undoubtedly a laugh!
"What is amusing you?" he asked with a full lisp, too taken off his guard to be as refined and careful in tone as usual.
"The old Marquis having to pay, of course," Katherine responded.
Never once during the whole day did she allow her thoughts to wander from her work, which she accomplished with her usual precision. Even during her luncheon hour she deliberately read the papers. She had trained herself to do one thing at a time, and the moment for reflection would not come until she could be undisturbed. She would go back as soon as she was free, to her own attic, and there think everything out, and decide upon the next step to be taken in her game of life.
A few burnt sticks, and a lump of coal in the tiny grate, were all she discovered on her return that evening to her sanctuary. The maid-of-all-work was not a talented fire-lighter and objected to criticism. Katherine"s level brows met with annoyance, and she proceeded to correct matters herself, while she muttered:
"Inefficient creature! and they say that we are all equal! Why can"t she do her work, then, as well as I can mine!"
Her firm touch and common sense arrangement of paper and kindling soon produced a bright blaze, and when she had removed her outdoor things, she sat down to think determinedly.
She loved Lord Algy--that was the first and most dominant thing to face.
She loved him so much that it would never be safe to see him again, since she had not the slightest intention of ever drifting into the position of being a man"s mistress. She had tasted of the tree of knowledge with her eyes open, and the fruit that she had eaten was too dangerously sweet for continuous food. Love would obtain a mastery over her if things went on; she knew that she might grow not to care about anything else in the world but only Algy. Thus, obviously, all connection with him must be broken off at once, or her career would be at an end, and her years of study wasted. Even if he offered to marry her she could never take the position with a high hand. There would always be this delicious memory of illicit joys between them, which would unconsciously bias Algy"s valuation of her. She had learned things of consequence which she could not have acquired in any other way, and now she must have strength to profit by them. She utterly despised weaklings and had no pity for lovesick maidens. For a woman to throw over her future for a man was to her completely contemptible. She probed the possible consequences of her course of action unflinchingly; she believed so in her own luck that she felt sure that no awkward accident could happen to her. But even if this should occur, there were ways which could be discovered to help her--and since the moment had not yet come, she would defer contemplating it, but would map out her plans regardless of this contingency. So she argued to herself.
She could not endure living under the family roof of Laburnum Villa any longer, that was incontestable; she must go out and learn exactly how the ladies of Lord Algy"s world conducted themselves. Not that she wished to dawn once more upon his horizon as a polished Vere de Vere--but that for her own satisfaction she must make herself his equal in all respects. There had been so many trifles about which she had felt she had been ignorant, almost every moment of the three days had given her new visions, and had shown her her own shortcomings.
"There are no bars to anything in life but stupidity and vanity," she told herself, "and they at least shall not stand in my way."
The temptation to have one more farewell interview with him was great, but there was nothing the least dramatic about her, so that aspect did not appeal to her as it would have done to an ordinary woman who is ruled by emotional love for dramatic situations; she was merely drawn by the desire for her mate once more, and this she knew and crushed.
It would mean greater pain than pleasure to her afterwards, and would certainly spoil all chance of a career. She gloried in the fact that she had had the courage to taste of life"s joys for experience, but she would have burned with shame to feel that she was being drawn into an equivocal position through her own weakness.
Katherine Bush was as proud as Lucifer. She fully understood--apart from moral questions which did not trouble her--that what she had done would have been fatal to a fool like Gladys, or to any girl except one with her exceptional deliberation and iron will. She truly believed that such experiments were extremely dangerous, and on no account to be adopted as a principle of action in general. The straight and narrow path of orthodox virtue was the only one for most women to follow; and the only one she would have advocated for her sisters or friends. The proof being that as a rule when women erred they invariably suffered because they had not the pluck or the strength to know when to stop.