Part 2 (2/2)
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.
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