The Career of Katherine Bush

"Fiddlesticks."

Presently Katherine grew reflective, her catechism over. "I wish you could see it all, Tild; it would enlarge your brain – it is all so different from Bindon's Green. If you could only hear their point of view, I assure you, dear, it might be two different nations – those barefoot urchins climbing on the rails are much nearer their level than we are."

But Matilda could not stand this; her wrath rose.

"Those dirty boys nearer your new people than a real lady like Mabel Cawber, and your own brothers and sisters! Katherine, how dare you! Horrid little guttersnipes with no pride of themselves; why, they aren't even ashamed to be here of a Sunday among decent people – they'd do anything!"

"That is just it, Tild – so would the aristocrats if they wanted to, and wouldn't be a bit ashamed or even think of it, and they have 'no pride of themselves,' either – but you'll never understand, Tild, not if you live to be a hundred years old."

"And I don't want to, there!"

"Then it is perfectly useless my talking, I see that. We had better go and have some tea."

And so they turned out of Albert Gate and walked to Victoria.

Matilda, when she had smoothed her ruffled feelings, began now to relate the home news. Gladys and her fiancé were not happy together; they had not been so since that visit which Katherine would remember they had taken to Brighton to stay with his aunt – it was nearly six weeks ago now and both grew more and more gloomy.

"And so uppy as Glad is with Fred, too, and never a bit back on Bob Hartley!"

Matilda felt things would be better for her sister if a little more spirit were shown. Mabel and her betrothed had been up for church parade as usual in the Park that morning, and this lady had also supped with them at Laburnum Villa the night before, and they had had oysters and a jolly time.

Katherine felt a strange emotion when she heard of this. She seemed to see a picture of Lord Algy enjoying oysters, and all the reflections this action had called up – oh! how long ago it all appeared!

"And have you met that gentlemen you spoke of?" Matilda asked, before they parted at the station.

"Mr. Strobridge, you mean – Lady Garribardine's nephew. Yes – he is husband of the lady Glad dresses, the one who had the model she wanted me to have. He is a clever man – we have not really spoken yet, but I mean to know him very well some day."

"Oh! Kitten, do be careful! And him a married man, too!"

"For what I want of him, it does not matter whether he is married or single," Katherine reassured her, and soon the train moved off.

How good Matilda was! Katherine thought, as she walked briskly back to Berkeley Square – an unselfish, worthy, honest, hopelessly stupid creature, whom somehow she was fond of. But what could it be that made her herself so utterly different from them all? Nothing could be chance – everything had its reason, only we were generally too blind to perceive it. So was there some truth in that vague story of the great-grandmother having been someone of high family fallen low in the world and married to the auctioneer great-grandfather, whom her own father remembered very well? Could it be that some drop of gentle blood flowed in her veins, transmitted from this source and concentrated in her, having escaped the others – or was it simply from the years of her reading that her mind had developed? But it could not be altogether that, because she remembered instincts and tastes in uneducated early childhood completely aloof from the family's.

"Father gave me this business capacity," she mused, "but something beyond must have given me this will to achieve – and I shall achieve – all I desire – in time! Only I must be ruthless and have no emotions. I must follow what Bacon asserts about great spirits," and she quoted softly: "'There is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion.'"

Yes, she would keep out this weak passion! She had tasted its joys, and that memory must last her a lifetime.

On the doorstep she encountered Gerard Strobridge just coming out – he raised his hat and said politely that it was an abominably cold day – then he passed on down the steps and so towards Hill Street.

And Katherine Bush went up to her room.

CHAPTER IX

The week of the tableaux had come and gone, and had opened yet another window for Katherine Bush to peep at the world from. She already knew many of the people who came to the luncheons and rehearsals, from their letters, and now she judged of them face to face. She had been in great request to take down innumerable orders, and arrange business details, and had listened and inwardly digested what she heard.

Her contempt for some of the company was as great as for Miss Mabel Cawber – she discovered a few with titles and positions who were what she disdainfully dubbed, "Middle class underneath!"

"Only that they have been more used to things, they are as paltry as Mabel," she said to herself, and set about, as was her custom, to find out why – and from what families they had sprung – and obtained some satisfaction in the confirmation of her theory of heredity, in discovering that most of these could lay small claim to blueness of blood. The insolence of others she approved of.

Many of the American peeresses who were posing as queens, and nuns, and Greek goddesses, she truly admired – they must have been at one time like herself – out to learn – and now were conscious that they had made good.

"But I mean to have more repose of manner when I am there," she told herself.

Of Sarah Lady Garribardine's sayings and views, she kept a great store in her mind. This was a real aristocrat she felt. A human, faulty, strong woman, incapable of meanness or anything which could lower the flag of her order. She was supremely insolent, too, but then she never did anything which could impair people's respect.

She was hard and generous – and acted up to the doctrine that "noblesse oblige" and entirely believed in the divine right of kings and of Sarah Lady Garribardine! She had not been a thirteenth century Baron's daughter for nothing! Katherine Bush shared every one of Her Ladyship's views and moulded all her ideals upon them.

Each day she was enlarging her vocabulary of words to use – adapting sentences which she had read of fine English to modern requirements, pruning colloquialisms, cultivating pronunciation, polishing her critical faculties. She was perfectly conscious that she had often employed homely phrases in the past, and had not always paid enough attention to grammar in speaking, though for some time she had not used "whatever for," or "of a Sunday," as poor Matilda always did.

She learned as much comparatively of the general world of society in that one week, as she had learned of the nature of man in her three days with Lord Algy. He was her first step – these women were her second. Lady Garribardine was her head master, and Gerard Strobridge should be her tutor – when the moment she was ready for him came.

Her suspicions as to her employer's disapproval of the Duchess of Dashington were realised fully one day, in the beginning of the week. The poor young-old lady's rheumatism was very painful, and she remained in her room having her favourite nephew and Mrs. Delemar up with her there to lunch, on a little table close to her gilt bed.

Katherine was writing at an escritoire near, having finished her own meal downstairs.

"You need not go, Miss Bush, if you can continue those invitations with our chatter."

So Katherine stayed.

The three talked of many things at first and Katherine hardly noticed them, but presently her attention was caught by a name. Mr. Strobridge was saying:

"Seraphim, it will be very difficult to refuse Dulcie Dashington, she has written to Beatrice this morning – she is quite determined to play the part of Nell Gwyn as the orange-girl."

"Then she can play it in some other tableaux vivants– but not in these that I am arranging." Her Ladyship's voice was acid.

"But why, dearest Sarah, are you so down on poor Dulcie?" Mrs. Delemar protested. "She is really a very good sort, and looks so splendid in these short-skirted, rather common clothes."

"I am not hard on her, Läo; I am sure, had she been the wife of a jolly young stockbroker addicted to low practical jokes and rowdy sport, she would have been a most admirable creature. It is not the woman I am down on; there is just such another at Blissington, she helps me with the bazaars and the school treats, her husband is a local brewer, and we are capital friends. It is the Duchess of Dashington I ostracise, as I consider she has done more to degrade her order in these socialistic days than any other member of our sadly humbled peerage."

The other two laughed amusedly, but Lady Garribardine went on, raising her voice a little. It was a subject upon which she felt so deeply, that it overcame for the moment her usual dryly humorous handling of any matter.

"Let her have her lovers – we have all had lovers – No one in the least objects to them, arranged suitably, and of one's own class. I am not concerned with her or any other woman's physical morality. – Such morality is a question of temperament and geography and custom – but I am profoundly concerned to endeavour to keep up some semblance of dignity in the aristocracy, and Dulcie Dashington has lowered the whole prestige of Duchesses because she is of gentle birth – though Heaven knows what her father was with poor dear Susan's irresponsible ways!"

Gerard Strobridge smiled as he lit a cigarette.

"There is a great deal in what you say, Seraphim; she has certainly dragged the title down a good deal, with her fancies for professional gamesters of all sorts for friends, and her total disregard of tradition at Dashington – but you forget that she has had a good deal to put up with from Toni, who is an impossible husband."

"No man is an impossible husband if he is a Duke; at least no Duchess ought to find him so – and if he were, that is not the slightest excuse. When a woman undertakes a great position she should realise that personal feelings have ceased to count. She has, so to speak, accepted the responsibility of guarding the safety of an order, just as a sentry is responsible when he is on duty. He would be shot in war time if he fell asleep on duty – however pitiful his case might be from hardship and want of rest. He would be shot as an example to the others not to allow even nature to overcome them and endanger the post."

"It seems very cruel," piped Mrs. Delemar.

"Not at all!" Lady Garribardine flashed while her voice vibrated with scorn. "We are at war now with the Radical masses and cannot afford to jeopardise positions – either keep up prestige, or throw up the game and let the whole thing go by the board, but while we pretend there is still an aristocracy in England we, the members of it, should defend it. Dulcie Dashington and her ways and her photographs in the papers, and her vulgarity, and the flaunting of her unsavoury domestic affairs, are a byword and as long as I have a voice in society, and can lay some claim to power, I shall let it be known what my opinion is, and why I will not receive her. To me there is no sin like betraying an order."

"I suppose you are quite right," Mrs. Delemar now agreed meekly, "but there are such lots of odd people in society who do unheard-of things; it is these boys marrying these wretched actresses or Americans which has changed everything."

"Not at all!" contradicted her ladyship. "Boys have always married actresses from time to time, and some of them have proved very decent creatures, and if they do err, what does it matter? No one expects better from them, they are making no real breach in the wall. – And as for Americans, they are often very pretty and so clever that they seldom disgrace their new station; they are like converts to Rome, more zealous than the born papists. The only evil which can lie at their door is that they have too much money, and have given false values to entertaining, and perhaps have encouraged eccentric amusements. – No, my dear child, it is the English-women themselves who have lost self-respect, and have lowered the flag, and when one of really high birth does it, like Dulcie Dashington, she should be made to pay the price."

This was unanswerable, Katherine Bush thought as she listened, and she wondered why the other two should chaff lightly, as though it were just one of Lady Garribardine's notions. That is what generally astonished her a good deal; no one appeared to have any convictions or enthusiasm, they seemed to her to be a company of drifters, so little energy appeared to be shown by any of them. They were unpunctual and unpractical, but they were amusing and deliciously happy-go-lucky. If they had any real feelings none appeared upon the surface; even Lady Beatrice and her coterie of highly evolved poetesses and other artistic worldings, flew from theme to theme, turning intent faces upon new fads each week.

Most people's manners were casual, and their attitudes, too, would often have shocked Mabel Cawber, so far were they from being genteel. The few who truly fulfilled Katherine Bush's ideas of the meaning of the word "lady" stood out like stars. But with all these flaws, as a collection of people, there was that ease of manner, that total absence of self-consciousness, about them which never could be known at Bindon's Green.

"I suppose times are changed," Katherine told herself, "and the laxity is producing a new type – I do wonder how they would all behave if some cataclysm happened again, like the French Revolution. But when my day comes I mean to uphold the order which I shall join, as Her Ladyship does."

At the last moment, Lady Beatrice did not go as Ganymede to the Artist Models' ball. The history of her alteration of character was a rather bitterly humorous story for Gerard Strobridge's ears. She had been trying on the dress when a note had arrived with a parcel for her from her husband's aunt, which contained a very beautiful Greek mantle with these few words:

Dear Child,

I send you this mantle which I hope you will wear; it will not really spoil the character of your Ganymede dress, and from the back it will hide the fact that your legs are very slightly bowed. Your charming face will help to distract eyes from the front view, and this very small flaw in your anatomy will pass unnoticed.

Affectionately yours,Sarah Garribardine.

She had written it with her own hand. Lady Beatrice stamped with rage, and then flew to her looking-glass. She stood this way and that, and finally came to the conclusion that there might be the faintest substratum of truth in the accusation. The rest of the limbs were not so perfect as her tiny ankles. It would not be safe to risk criticism. So the costume was altered and became a Flora with garlands of roses and long diaphanous draperies – and Gerard and Lady Garribardine watched her entry with the Vermont party with relieved eyes, and the wily aunt said:

"You can achieve the impossible with women, G., if you only appeal to, or wound, their vanity. You must never give orders to one unless she is in love with you – then she glories in obedience – but a modern wife can only be controlled either on the principle of the Irish-man's pig being driven towards Dublin when it was intended for Cork, or by a Machiavellian manipulation of her self-love."

"And then the game is not worth the candle," Mr. Strobridge sighed with a little discouragement. "I wonder, Seraphim, what is worth while? Striving for the infinite, I suppose – certainly the finite things are but Dead Sea fruit."

"Gerard, my poor boy, you make me fear, when you talk like that, that one day you will be profoundly in love!"

"Heaven forbid! – It would upset my digestion. I was thirty-five last month and have to be careful!"

And in her comfortable bed in Berkeley Square, Katherine Bush read "The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" far into the night.

Society had not altered in many respects since these hundred and sixty odd years ago, she thought!

The tableaux were the greatest success and a large sum of money was secured for one of Lady Garribardine's pet charities.

Time went on, Christmas was approaching. It was to be spent at Blissington Court, the place Lady Garribardine had inherited with the barony of d'Estaire from her father. Garribardine was a Scotch title while her ladyship was rabidly English. They would go down to Blissington and have a family party. Her three grandchildren (her daughter, Lady Mereton, was far away, the bored wife of a Colonial Governor), Gerard Strobridge and perhaps Lady Beatrice and the two old cousins with a young niece of theirs, and a stray man or two, and Mrs. Delemar – but no one could be sure who would turn up at the end. Katherine was not to have any holiday; she had come too recently, her employer explained to her, and the Christmas accumulations were quite beyond her power to tackle alone.

Katherine was grateful – she looked forward to seeing this country home with pleasure. She had been kept unusually busy and so had very rarely seen any one except Her Ladyship. But one morning about ten days before they were to go down into Blankshire, Lady Garribardine informed her secretary she was to be given for the whole afternoon to Mr. Strobridge to type a quantity of letters about a new charity he was arranging for her.

"My nephew dictates abominably, but he said that you had understood him so well that first evening when you arrived a month ago, that he has asked me to lend you to him to-day for this business, and I have consented. He will lunch here, so have plenty of paper ready for the afternoon." Then as Katherine was leaving the room, she handed her a ten-pound note.

"Here is a little present for you, Miss Bush, for Christmas; I want you to buy yourself an evening frock – you must dine with us on Christmas Day and perhaps you had not provided for this possibility. I am very pleased with you, girl – you work splendidly."

Katherine coloured to the roots of her ashen-hued, glistening hair. She could not analyse her emotions. She hated presents, and yet she was gratified at the kindliness and appreciation which lay in the manner of the gift.

"Your Ladyship is too good," she said very low. "I have simply done my duty – but I will endeavour to buy something suitable with the money which is far more than enough."

The old lady looked at her critically with her head a little on one side – she understood what the blush had arisen from and she appreciated the pride in the girl.

"The creature must have some breeding in her somewhere in spite of the auctioneer parentage. I must talk to her when we get to Blissington. She may prove a great interest for my old age."

But she said aloud:

"Well, get what you like with it. I leave it to you, your taste is excellent – and while you are out, pay these two bills for me, and take a little walk – you have been looking rather pale; I fear you have not taken enough outdoor exercise lately."

Katherine thanked her and went rapidly to her room, a sense of excitement and anticipation in her heart. This might prove an interesting afternoon. There she reviewed her wardrobe. Her "dressy" blouse from Oxford Street was too ornate for the daytime, and she thought now in rather bad taste, and her morning ones were too dowdy. This was a great occasion and one which she had been waiting for. She was to go home late on this Friday to stay the night at Bindon's Green. Matilda had insisted upon it, because it was her birthday; she would be thirty years old. She had been quite tearful about it on the second occasion on which she had met her sister in the Park.

"You need not cast us all off like this, Kitten," she pleaded, "and we shall have Mabel and a few other friends on Friday night, and Fred has given us a lot of lovely new nigger song records for the gramophone, and it will all be so awfully jolly."

So Katherine had promised to go, and this fell in admirably with her plans. There would be a real excuse for her to have her hair waved. She had been given the evening off and it was known that she was going home. She would consult Gladys again for the frock for Christmas night and buy what was necessary on her way back to Berkeley Square on the morrow.

It was the first time in her life that a hairdresser had ever touched her thick mop of hair, and she had no idea of the difference to her appearance that it would make. But so critical and observant of all things had become her eye that she realised with her first peep in the mirror, when the ondulation was complete, that it had turned her into almost a beauty. The broad waves fell back from the parting and showed the admirable planting of her brow and the Greek setting of her magnetic eyes. She allowed no elaboration of fashion, but had her ample tresses bound tightly to her head – the effect was distinguished and gave her satisfaction. Then from the hairdresser's she went and bought another blouse – something pale grey and becoming, and with the parcel she got back to Berkeley Square in good time for luncheon and began to dress herself.

She was glad her hands were so white, she had lately taken to giving great care to the polish of her nails – she wished her feet were smaller, but they were well shaped and no one's feet were really small nowadays, Lady Garribardine had said!

She was quite content with the picture she saw in her looking-glass before she went downstairs. It was of a tall, slim girl with a very white, smooth face – extraordinary eyes under level, dark brows, and a big red mouth, and hair of silvery fairness that glistened grey, not gold, in its lights. She knew very well that she was attractive, and gave one of her rare soft laughs.

A month and more of mental discipline and acute observation of those in that status of refinement to which she wished to attain had given her numerous subtle distinctions of manner which she had not possessed before. She looked like a lady, and felt that she was approaching the time when she herself – most severe of all critics – might consider herself to be one. She was nearly as excited as on that afternoon when she had left Livingstone and Devereux's to go on a three days' honeymoon with Lord Algy. She made herself eat her luncheon as calmly as usual, and then when the tray had been taken away she opened the window wide and poured a packet of cedarwood dust on the fire – and she was sitting demurely at the table when from the library Lady Garribardine and Mr. Strobridge came in.

Gerard Strobridge carried a bag full of papers and looked cross and harassed.

"Now G. you may have the services of Miss Bush until five o'clock; that will give you two hours and a half – you must not keep her, as she is going home to-night – then come up to my sitting-room to tea," and Lady Garribardine went out of the other door which her nephew held open for her.

Katherine had risen and gone immediately to a cupboard, ostensibly to get something out for her work, so she hoped Her Ladyship had not remarked her hair – which indeed had happily been the case.

Mr. Strobridge had not even glanced in her direction, but her moment came when she sat down at the typing machine, and looked straight up into his eyes as she asked in her deep alluring voice:

"What do you wish me to begin upon, please?"

Then he took in the whole effect and a wave of intense astonishment swept over him. What had happened? Was he dreaming? Was this beautiful creature the ordinary, silent, admirable typist, Katherine Bush?

CHAPTER X

He pulled himself together and took some papers from his bag without speaking, and when he had selected two or three, he drew a chair up to the other side of the table and began to dictate, stopping every now and then to explain the purport of his arguments.

They worked so for perhaps an hour.

"One has to do these things," he said at last, as Katherine had not uttered a word. "One wonders sometimes if there is any good in them."

"I suppose all effort has some merit," she responded, without looking up. He began to long to make her raise her eyes again.

"You think so? – On what grounds?"

"It exercises a useful faculty."

"What faculty?"

"Will, of course; to use effort is an exercise of will, because if there was no effort needed, no will would be required either."