Katherine Bush was absolutely determined that she should never be hampered, in her game, by her own emotions or weakness.
Before Lord Algy would return from Wales, she would have left Liv and Dev"s. She had never given him her home address, and there would be no trace of her. She would look in the _Morning Post_ for information, and then endeavour to secure some post as companion or secretary to some great lady. There she would pick up the rest of the necessary equipment to make herself into a person in whom no flaws could be found. And when she had accomplished this, then fate would have opened up some path worth following.
"Some day I shall be one of the greatest women in England," she told herself, as she looked unblinking into the glowing coals.
Then, having settled her plans, she allowed herself to go over the whole of her little holiday, incident by incident.
How utterly adorable Algy had been! She found herself thrilling again at each remembrance--How refined and how considerate! How easy were his manners; he was too sure of himself, and his welcome in life, ever to show the deplorable self-consciousness which marked the friends who came on Sundays, or the b.u.mptious self-a.s.sertion of her brothers, Fred and Bert.
If only she had been born in his world, and had by right of birth those prerogatives which she meant to obtain by might of intelligence, how good it would have been to marry him--for a few years! But even now in her moment of fierce, pa.s.sionate first love, which in her case was so largely made up of the physical, her brain was too level and speculative not to balance the pros and cons of such a situation. And while she felt she loved him with all her being, she knew that he was no match for her intellectually, and that when the glamour faded he would weary her.
But the wrench of present renunciation was none the less bitter--Never any more to feel his fond arms clasping her--never again to hear his caressing words of love!
If a coronet for her brow shone at the end of the climb, her heart at all events must turn to ice by the way, or so she felt at the moment.
He had talked so tenderly about their future meetings. How they would go again to Paris when he returned from Wales. How she must let him give her pretty clothes and a diamond ring, and how she was his darling pet, and his own girl. She knew that he was growing really to love her; Katherine Bush never deceived herself or attempted to throw dust in her own eyes. She had eaten her cake and could not have it. If she had held out and drawn him on, no doubt she could have been his wife, but it was only for one second that this thought agitated her. Yes, she could have been his wife--but to what end? Only one of humiliation. She was not yet ready to carry off such a position with a certainty of success; she knew she was ignorant, and that the knowledge of such ignorance would destroy her self-confidence and leave her at the mercy of circ.u.mstance. So all was for the best. She had not guessed that it would be so very painful to part from him--dear, attractive Algy! She could not sit still any longer. A convulsion of anguish and longing shook her, and she got up and stamped across the room. Then she put on her outdoor things again and stalked down into the gathering night, pa.s.sionate emotion filling her soul.
But when she came back an hour later, after tramping the wet roads round the common, the battle was won.
And this night she fell asleep without any tears.
CHAPTER III
It was about a fortnight later that Katherine got Matilda to meet her at a Lyons" popular cafe for tea on a Wednesday afternoon. Livingstone and Devereux had given her a half holiday, being on country business bent; and having matured her plans, and having set fresh schemes in train, she thought she might as well communicate them to the one sister who mattered to her. Matilda loved an excuse to "get up to town," and had come in her best hat, with smiling face. Katherine was always very generous to her, though she was no more careless about money than she was about other things.
"It is all very well, Tild," she said, in her deep voice, after they had spoken upon indifferent subjects for a while. "But I am tired of it. I am absolutely tired of it, so there! I am tired of Liv and Dev--tired of the hateful old click of the machine with no change of work--I am tired of seeing the people of another cla.s.s through the gla.s.s screen--and I mean to get out of it."
"Whatever are you talking of, Kitten!" the elder Miss Bush exclaimed, as she stirred her cocoa. "Why, Liv and Dev"s as good a berth as you"d get--thirty bob a week, and a whole holiday on Sat.u.r.day--to say nothing of off times like this--you must be mad, dearie!" Then something further in her sister"s remark aroused comment.
"And what do you mean by people of "another cla.s.s"? Why, aren"t we as good as anyone--if we had their money?"
Katherine Bush put down her empty cup before she replied:
"No, we"re not--and if you weren"t as ignorant as you are, dear old Tild, you"d know it. There are lots and lots of cla.s.ses above us--they mayn"t be any cleverer--indeed, they are often fools, and many aren"t any richer--but they"re ladies and gentlemen."
Matilda felt personally insulted.
"Upon my word, Kitten!--If you are such a poor thing that you don"t consider yourself a young lady--I am not. I always did say that you would pick up rubbishly ideas bothering after those evening lectures and French cla.s.ses--instead of coming with Glad and Bert and me to the cinema, like a decent Christian--it was a low sort of thing to do, I think, and looked as if we"d none of us had a proper education--and all they have done for you is to unsettle your mind, my dear--so I tell you."
Katherine Bush smiled complacently and looked at her sister straight in the eyes in her disconcerting way, which insured attention. Matilda knew that she would now have to listen probably to some home truths.
She could manage Gladys very well in spite of her giggles and irresponsibility, but she had never been able to have the slightest influence upon Katherine from the moment of their mother"s death, years before, when she had taken her place as head of the orphaned household.
Katherine had always been odd. She had a vile temper as a child, and was silent and morose, and at constant war with that bright boy Bert, loved of the other sisters: Matilda remembered very well many scenes when Katherine had puzzled her. She was so often scornful and disapproving, and used to sit there with a book scowling at them on Sundays when a rowdy friend or two came in to tea, and never once joined in the chorus of the comic songs they sang, while she simply loathed the gramophone records.
"You say awfully silly things sometimes, Tild," Katherine announced calmly. "There would not be any good in my considering myself a young lady, because at my present stage anyone who really knew would know that I am not--but I mean to become one some day. You can do anything with will."
Matilda bridled.
"I don"t know what more of a lady you could be than we all are--Why, Mabel Cawber always says that we are the most refined family of the whole lot at Bindon"s Green--and Mabel ought to know surely!"
"Because her father was a solicitor, and she has never done a stroke of work in her life?" Katherine smiled again--it made Matilda feel uncomfortable.
"Mabel is a perfect lady," she affirmed indignantly.
"I will be able to tell you about that in a year"s time, I expect,"
Katherine said, reflectively. "At present, I am not experienced enough to say, but I strongly feel that she is not. You see, Tild, you get your ideas of things from the trash you read--and from the ridiculous nonsense Fred and Albert talk after they come home from those meetings at the National Brotherhood Club--fool"s stuff about the equality of all men----"
"Of course we are all equal!" broke in Matilda, still ruffled.
Katherine Bush smiled again. "Well, I wish you could see the difference between Fred and Bert and those gentlemen I see through the gla.s.s screen! They have all got eyes and noses and legs and arms in common, but everything else is different, and if you knew anything about evolution, you"d understand why."
"Should I!" indignantly.
"Yes. It is the something inside the head, something in the ideas, produced by hundreds of years of different environment and a wider point of view--and it is immensely in the little customs and manners of speech and action. If you had ever seen and spoken to a real gentleman, Tild, you would grasp it."
Matilda was quite unmollified and on the defensive.
"You can"t have two more honourable, straightforward young fellows than our brothers in no family in England, and I expect lots of your gents borrowing money are as crooked as can be!"
Katherine became contemplative.
"Probably--the thing I mean does not lie in moral qualities--I suppose it ought to--but it doesn"t--We had a real sharp last week, and to look at and to hear him talk he was a perfect gentleman, with refined and easy manners; he would never have done anything in bad taste like Fred and Bert often do."
"Bad taste!" snorted Matilda.
"Yes--we all do. No gentleman ever tells people in words that he is one--Fred and Bert say it once a week, at least. They lay the greatest stress on it. No real gentlemen get huffy and touchy; they are too sure of themselves and do not pretend anything, they are quite natural and you take them as they are. They don"t do one thing at home at ease, and another when they are dressed up, and they aren"t a bit ashamed of knowing anyone. Fred does not speak to Ernie Gibbs when he is out with Mabel, although they were at school together!"
"Ernie Gibbs! Why, Kitten, he is only a foreman in the Bindon Gas Works!
Of course not! Mabel _would_ take on!"
Matilda thought her sister was being too stupid!
"Yes, I am sure she would--that is just it----"
"And quite right, too!"
Katherine shrugged her shoulders. There was not much use in arguing with Matilda, she felt, Matilda who had never thought out any problem for herself in her life--Matilda who had not the privilege of knowing any attractive Lord Algys!--and who therefore could not have grasped the immeasurable gulf that she, Katherine, had found lay between his cla.s.s and hers!
"They say Fred is a capable auctioneer because father and grandfather were--you hear people saying "it is in the blood"--Well, why is it, Tild?--Because heredity counts just as it does in animals, of course. So why, if a man"s father and grandfather, and much further back still, have been gentlemen commanding their inferiors, and fulfilling the duties of their station, should not the traits which mean that show as plainly as the auctioneer traits show in Fred----?"
Matilda had no answer ready, she felt resentful; but words did not come, so Katherine went on:
"You can"t jump straight to things; they either have to come by instinct through a long line of forebears, or you have to have intelligence enough to make yourself acquire the outward signs of them, through watching and learning from those who you can see for yourself have what you want."
Matilda called for another cup of cocoa--she disliked these views of Katherine"s.