The Career of Katherine Bush

"Certainly not – Martha would be scandalised. It does seem so extraordinary that I should have to tell you such things – it shows either great disrespect to me, or else – "

"What?" eagerly. He had risen, too, and was following her as she walked down the long room.

" – That you cannot help yourself."

"Yes – that is it. You have bewitched me in some way – I cannot help myself."

"Do you want all I have taken down typewritten? I can do it after tea, if so?"

"And you will sit up there all by yourself from now until you go to bed?"

"Of course."

"You must feel awfully solitary."

"Not in the least. I have books which are the most agreeable companions. They have no independent moods – you can be sure of them, and pick up those which suit yourself. Good-night."

And she turned at the bend of the great staircase from which the gallery opened, and rapidly walked on to the entrance to her passage.

He looked after her with a rapt face, and then he went discontentedly down into the library, and waited for his aunt's return.

He was extremely disturbed; it was horribly tantalizing to feel that this girl whom he was so passionately drawn to, was there in the house with him, and that he might not talk with her further, or be in her presence.

He walked up and down the room – and those who knew the casual Gerard Strobridge, cultivated, polished and self-contained, would have been greatly surprised could they have seen his agitated pacings.

Lady Garribardine had a quizzical eye when she finally came in – how had the afternoon progressed? Her opinion of the mental balance of her secretary was exceedingly high. She felt convinced that she would know exactly how to tackle her nephew, and if Gerard desired to amuse himself he would certainly do so whether she smiled upon the affair or not!

It did strike her that he was rather a dangerous creature to be left a free hand with any young woman – and that after to-day she would see that Katherine ran no more risks from too much of his company.

The pupils of his eyes were rather dilated, she noticed; otherwise he seemed his usual self at tea – and when Colonel Hawthorne left them alone, she got him to read to her, and did not mention her secretary at all.

The afternoon had been most instructive, Katherine thought, as she ate her muffin, and looked at the papers before the old schoolroom fire. She had learned a quantity of things. Mr. Strobridge was undoubtedly a charming man, and she wondered what effect he would have had upon her if she had never met Algy? As it was he mattered no more than a chair or a table, he was just part of her game. And he was rapidly approaching the state when she could obtain complete dominion over him.

"He knows quite well that he is married and that I can never honestly be anything to him. He is only coming after me because he is attracted and is not master of his passions or his will. If he is a weakling he must pay the price – I shall not care! He is not thinking in the least as to whether or no it will hurt me – he is only thinking of himself, just like Bob Hartley, only he is a gentleman and therefore does not make any hypocritical promises to try to lure me."

And then she laughed softly. "Well, whatever comes is on his own head, I need have no mercy upon him!"

So she calmly finished her tea and wrote to Matilda whose excited letter with the family news of Gladys' secret marriage she had not yet replied to. Gladys had written her a little missive also – full of thanks for her part in the affair. Bob was being rather rude and unkind to her about it, she said, but it was not altogether his fault, because on Christmas night he had had rather too much to drink, and had been quarrelsome for two days since. She was going to keep the expected event from being known as long as possible, and then she supposed they would go and live somewhere together. It would be wretched poverty and struggle, and she was miserable, but at least she felt an "honest woman," and could not be grateful enough to her sister for bringing this state of things about. Katherine stared into the fire while she thought over it all. It seemed to her too astonishing that a woman should prefer a life tied to a man who was reluctant to keep her – his drudge and the object of his scorn – to one of her own arranging in America, perhaps – along with the child, but free. Gladys had sufficient talent in her trade to have earned good wages anywhere, and must have enough money saved, could she have got it from Matilda's fond guardian clutches, to have tided over the time. But weaklings must always suffer and be other people's slaves and tools. Poor Gladys! Then she fell to thinking of Algy – why was he haunting her? For the first month the complacent satisfaction from the conquest of self had upheld her splendidly, but now the pain felt as keen as on the first day of separation.

She would crush it.

Except on the path coming out of church she had no words with Mr. Strobridge on the morrow – and then it was only a few sentences of ordinary greeting. Lady Garribardine claimed his entire attention. She did see him from the window, smoking a cigar in the rose garden in the afternoon, whither he had come from the smoking-room. She deliberately let him catch sight of her, as she stood there, and she marked the look of eager joy on his face, and then she moved away and did not appear again.

So the Monday arrived – the last day of the old year.

Lady Garribardine was having no party for it as was her usual custom; her rheumatism was rather troublesome, and she stayed in the house all the day, up in her boudoir, where Katherine was in constant attendance.

Gerard and Colonel Hawthorne were out rabbiting with the keepers in the park, and only came in to tea.

Katherine found her mistress rather exacting and difficult to please, and she felt tired and cross – so it gave her some kind of satisfaction to be as provoking as possible when she was ordered to pour out the tea for the shooters in the sitting-room. She remained perfectly silent, but every now and then allowed her magnetic eyes to meet Mr. Strobridge's with the sphinxlike smile in them.

On his side Gerard had found the hours hell. – He knew he was now madly in love with this exasperating girl, and that she was exercising the most powerful attraction upon him.

He gazed at her as she sat there, white and sensuous-looking, her red lips pouting, and her grey-green eyes full of some unconscious challenge, and gradually wild excitement grew in his blood.

As soon as her actual duties were over, Katherine said respectfully:

"If Your Ladyship has no more need of me, I must get some letters finished before the post goes."

And when a nod of assent was given, she quietly left the room.

So Gerard Strobridge knew he would see her no more that night; and there would be a boring dinner with the parson, and his wife and daughter, to be got through, and on the morrow he was returning to town!

For the first time in their lives he felt resentful towards his aunt. That Seraphim should not have been more sympathetic, and have made some opportunity for him to talk again to Katherine, was quite too bad!

She, who usually understood all his moods and wants! Her silence upon the subject of her secretary, ever since her return from that drive, was ominous, now that he thought about it. Evidently he need hope for no further coöperation from her, and because he was feeling so deeply, he could not act in the casual and intelligent way to secure his ends which he would have used on other occasions. So the incredibly wearisome evening passed. The guests left early, and Lady Garribardine went gladly to bed, leaving her nephew and Colonel Hawthorne to drink in the New Year together – the New Year of 1912.

But the old gentleman was fatigued with his day's shooting and when half-past eleven came he was glad to slink off to his friendly couch.

Thus Gerard was alone.

He lit a cigar and stretched himself in a huge leather armchair, an untouched drink close at hand.

The house was quite silent. He had told Bronson that he would put out the lights in the smoking-room when they left. No one was about and not a breath of wind stirred a tree outside.

He sat there for some minutes – and then his heart began to beat violently.

Whose was that soft footfall directly overhead? With the departure of the grandchildren from the old nurseries there was no one left in the wing but Katherine Bush!

All sorts of visions came to him; she had not yet gone to bed – perhaps she, too, was waiting for the New Year?

He got up and listened, his pulses bounding so that he seemed to hear his heart thumping against his side.

There was the sound again!

It was not to be endured. Fierce emotion shook him, and at last all restraint fell from him, and passion became lord.

Then he extinguished the lights and softly crept up the stairs.

CHAPTER XVIII

Katherine had that instant removed her dressing-gown after the brushing of her hair, which now hung in two long plaits. She was in the act of slipping into bed. The carpet in the passage was thick, and she heard no sounds, so that the first thing which startled her was the actual opening of the door of her room, which it had not been her custom to lock.

For one second a blind terror shook her, and then all her nerve and resource returned. She stood there magnificent in her anger and resentment. She had no female instinct instantly to seize the dressing-gown to cover herself. She stood straight up in her cheap nainsook nightgown, all the beautiful lines of her tall, slender figure showing in the soft shaded light.

Gerard Strobridge was like a man drunk with wine. His eye flamed and he trembled with excitement. The bed, a small old wooden one, was between them with a writing-table at the foot. So that to reach her he must go round by the fire.

This he did, while he whispered hoarsely:

"Katherine – I love you – madly – I had to come to you, darling girl!" Then he stopped within a few feet of her, literally sobered by the expression of her face. It showed not an atom of fear – rather the proud contempt of an empress ordering the death of a presuming slave.

She did not speak for a moment; she seemed to draw up to her full height, and even to grow taller; she was only an inch or two less than himself. And if the scorn of eyes could kill, he would have lain there dead.

"Darling!" he cried, and went forward to take her in his arms.

She stepped back only one step and spoke at last, her deep tones low.

"If you dare to touch me, I will kill you – I am not afraid of you, you know – You are only a beast, after all – and I am the man with the club."

"Beautiful fiend!" – but he hesitated – He was no coward, and cared not a jot for her threats, only his fastidiousness was assailed by the thought of a struggling, fighting woman in his embrace, when he had come there for – Love! It would be wiser, perhaps, to cajole her. He was too intoxicated with passion to realise that it would also seem more dignified!

"Katherine, do not be so horribly unkind, darling girl! I love you wildly, I tell you, and I want you to be mine."

"What for?" She was perfectly calm still, and never moved from her place.

"That we may be happy, you sweet thing. I want to hold you in my arms and caress you, and make us both forget that there is anything else in the whole wide world but our own two selves!"

And exalted by this enchanting picture, he drew a little closer and held out his hands.

"I tell you plainly – if you come one step nearer to me, you do so at your own risk. I will tear the flesh from your face with my nails, and strangle you." Her voice was absolutely deadly in its icy intentness. "I am not weak, and I despise your mean action in coming here to-night too greatly to have any fear."

The breeding in him responded to this sting.

"My mean action – !" but his voice faltered a little, and she interrupted him before he could argue further.

"Yes – I am a dependent in your aunt's house here, earning my living, and you chance my being disgraced and sent away for your own shamefully selfish ends. Indeed, you are teaching me the lesson of the depth to which an aristocrat can sink."

He drew back, and some of the fire died out of him. Her words cut him like a knife, but he was too overwrought with emotion yet to give in and leave her.

"Katherine – my darlings – forgive me!" he cried, brokenly. "I admit I am mad with love, but you shall never suffer for it – give yourself to me, and I will take you away from all drudgery. You shall have a house where you like. I will protect you and teach you all you desire to know. You shall lead an intellectual life worthy of your brain. We can travel in Italy and France, and I shall worship and adore you – Katherine, my sweet!"

The tones of his cultivated voice vibrated with deep feeling, and he looked all that was attractive as he stood there in his faultless evening clothes, pleading to her as though he were but a humble suppliant for grace, and she a queen.

But Katherine was not in the least touched, although her awakened critical faculties realised fully the agreeable companion he would probably make as a lover, with his knowledge of the world, and his polished homage to women. There was something fierce and savagely primitive at this moment in her faithfulness to Algy. For all the strongly sensuous side of her nature, any other man's caresses appeared revolting to her. It was the man, not men, who could arouse her passionate sensibility.

"You ask me to be your mistress, then – is that it?" her voice was coldly level, like one discussing a business proposition.

His whole face lit up again – there was hope perhaps after all.

"Of course, darling – What else?"

"It is an insult – but I am not concerned with that point. My views are perhaps not orthodox. I am merely interested in my side of the affair, which is that I have not the slightest wish for the post. I will be no man's mistress – do you hear?"

"Katherine, can I not make you love me, sweet?"

She laughed softly. It was a dangerous sound, ominous as that which a lioness might make when she purrs.

"Not if you stayed on your knees for a thousand years! I have loved one man in my life with the kind of love which you desire – I know exactly what it means, and probably I shall never love another in that way – I sacrificed him for my idea. I had will enough to leave him, feeling for him what perhaps you feel for me. So do you think, then, that you could move me in the least! – You whom I do not love, but – despise!"

All this time, she stood there utterly desirable in her thin raiment, which she had never sought to cover. Indeed, now that she saw that she was going to win the game, she took joy that he should understand what he had lost, so that his punishment should be the more complete: there was nothing pitiful or tender about Katherine Bush. Her strange, strong character had no mercy for a man who had shown her that he was not master of himself – above all things, she admired self-control.

Gerard Strobridge suffered, as she spoke, as perhaps he had never done in his life before. If he had been one whit less of a gentleman, he would not now have conquered himself; he would have seized her in his arms, and made her pay for her scalding words. The effect of tradition for centuries, however, held him even beyond the mad longing which again thrilled through his blood as he looked at her.

He flung himself into the armchair and buried his head in his hands.

"My God!" he cried, hoarsely, "how you can torture – can you not? I knew when I watched you in church that you could be cruel as the grave – but I thought to-day when you looked at me there in my aunt's sitting-room, that to me perhaps you meant to be kind; your face is the essence of passion – it would deceive any man."

"Then it is well that you should be undeceived – and that we should understand one another. What did you think you would gain by coming here to-night? – My seduction? And some pleasure for yourself." She was horribly scornful again. "You never thought of me – It does not matter what my personal views are about such relations; you do not know them, and I do not believe that I have given you reason to think that you might treat me with want of respect; but your action shows that you do not respect me, I can only presume, because of my dependent position, and because you despise my class – since you would certainly not have behaved so to any of your aunt's guests."

He writhed a little at her taunt, and his face was haggard now as he looked up at her.

"There is no use in my asking you to forgive me – but it is not true that I do not respect you, or that I have acted as I have for the reason that I despise your class – That is a hateful thought. I came here to-night because I am a man – and was simply mad with longing for you after the tantalization of the last two days, and never being able to speak a word to you." His breath came rather fast, and he locked together his hands. "I love you – I would have come had you been the highest lady in the land. My action was not premeditated – it was yielding to a sudden strong temptation because I was sitting there in the smoking-room thinking of you, and I heard the noise of your soft footfall overhead, and suddenly all the furious passion in me would no longer be denied and cried out for you!"

He rose and came over to her, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, he held out his arms to her in supplication. "It swept away all the civilisation in me. Nature breaks asunder all barriers in the best of us at times – and you are so adorably dear – Katherine – darling – I have done this thing, and now it is too late for me to plead for your pardon – but I love you more wildly than I have ever loved a woman in my life. – You could make me your slave, Katherine, if you would only give yourself to me. I would chase away the memory of that other and teach you all the divine things of love there are to learn in life."

She moved and stood by the fireplace. She was shivering a little, half from cold.

"I forbid you to say another word on this subject," she said gravely, but with less of her former scorn. "Neither you nor any other man could rob me of the memory of my once dear lover – but I would rather not hate you – so I appeal to that part of you that I still think is a gentleman to go at once out of my room."

He followed her to the fire almost overcome again by the picture she presented in her straight thin garment, virgin white and plain. He wildly desired to unplait that thick soft hair and bury his face in it – he longed to hold her to his heart. But he restrained himself.

There was complete silence for a second or two, and then across the park in the church tower, midnight pealed, tolling the dying year.

They both lifted their heads to listen, unconsciously counting the strokes, and then when the last one struck, and the joyous bells rang out, something in their sound melted the anger and contempt in Katherine's soul. She looked at him, his refined, distinguished face very pale and utterly dejected now. And the broad-minded, level-headed judgment which she brought to bear on all matters told her that she had no right to great anger and made her realise for the first time that she was actually to blame perhaps for this situation having developed since she had not sufficiently considered what might be the possible result of arresting a man's attention through the eyes and ears.

"Listen," she said gently, holding out her beautiful hand. "Here is the New Year – I do not want to begin it with any hard thoughts – After all, I understand you – and I forgive you. I believe I have been in some measure to blame. I cannot ever be your love – but I am very lonely – won't you be my true knight and friend?"

She had touched the deepest chord of his being. The tears sprang to his fine grey eyes; he knelt down upon the rug and bent and kissed her knees.

"Indeed, I will – I swear it, darling – And whatever suffering it brings to me, I will never make you regret your sweet forgiveness of me, and your resumed trust in me to-night."

She leaned forward, and for an instant smoothed his thick brown hair in blessing.

He took her hands and kissed the palms, and then without another word, he rose and went towards the door. There he turned and looked at her, standing in the firelight, the dark oak-panelled room only lit by the one small electric-shaded lamp by the bed. He looked and looked, as though his famished eyes must surfeit themselves with the vision. It was fair enough to see!

And then he noiselessly quitted the room and went on down the stairs to the smoking-room as silently as he had come.

CHAPTER XIX

The months went by. It was Easter time before Katherine Bush again saw Gerard Strobridge. He went off to Egypt about the middle of January, and Lady Garribardine was up in London for a few days alone before he left seeing her grandchildren off. Katherine missed him, and unconsciously his influence directed her studies. She remembered isolated sentences that he had used in their talk that day in the picture gallery. He had certainly shown a delightfully cultivated mind, and she wished that things had not reached a climax so soon between them. She regretted deeply that she had caused him any pain and determined never to deviate from loyal friendship so that he should have no cause to suffer further. He had not forgotten about the books, and she was now the proud possessor of several volumes on the Renaissance, including, of course, Symonds and Pater. They opened yet another door in her imagination, and on days when she was not very busy, she would wander in the picture gallery and go over all the examples of the Italian masters again and again, and try to get the atmosphere of the books.

Lady Garribardine watched her silently for the first few weeks after her nephew went, without increasing their intimacy. Her shrewd mind was studying Katherine, to make sure that she had made no mistake about her. Such a very deep creature might have sides which would make her regret having dropped the reserve which, accompanied by a high-handed kindliness, she showed to all her dependents.

The great event of New Year's day had been the advent of the grey wig so beautifully arranged with her ladyship's own snow-white hair, that the whole thing seemed growing together! With her dark, sparkling eyes and jet brows, she now looked an extremely handsome old lady; and Katherine who did not see her until the afternoon when they were alone, was unable to keep a faint, almost inaudible "Ah!" of admiration from escaping, when she first saw her. She was furious with herself and bit her lip, but Lady Garribardine smiled.

"You would say something, Miss Bush? Pray speak."

Katherine coloured a little; she felt this was one of those slips which she very seldom made, but frankness being always her method, she answered quietly:

"I only thought how beautiful Your Ladyship looked – just like the Nattier in the gallery."

"You find my grey locks an improvement, then?"

"Oh, yes!"

"The Nattier was an ancestress of mine. – A French entanglement of a great great-grandfather, which ended, as these affairs are seldom fortunate enough to do, in a marriage all correct with the church's blessing – the husband being most conveniently killed in a duel with another man! – So the then d'Estaire brought her here to Blissington, where she was shockingly bored, poor thing! and died a year or two after producing an heir for him. When I was young, I always went to fancy balls as the charming creature – it is amusing that you see the likeness even now."

"It is very striking."

"I always felt a great pity for her – transplanted from Versailles and all the joys of the Court, to this quiet, English home – Have you ever read Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, girl?"

Katherine had not.

"Well, then, you had better read them; there is a good edition in the library. They are, you will find, the most instructive things in English literature. If I had had a son, I would have brought him up upon them. I was reminded of them now by thinking of my twice great-grandmother. Chesterfield always quotes the French nobles of that date as the ne plus ultra of good breeding, and rather suggests that the Englishmen were often boors or blockheads. So although d'Estaire may have satisfied her, the general company could not have done so, one feels."