Part 30 (1/2)
Your place is the world, Kitty, the great world! There cannot be any work for you to do in a home like yours.”
”There is always plenty to do in the village, and n.o.body to do it,”
said Katharine. ”I have considered the matter thoroughly, Aunt Alicia, and my mind is quite made up. Anybody can do my work up here in London; you know that is so.”
”Indeed, you are mistaken,” said her aunt, vehemently. It seemed particularly hard that her favourite protegee should have deserted her principles, just as she had been driven to the last limit of endurance by her own daughter. ”Every woman must do her own work, and no one else can do it for her.”
”Then why do you always say the labour market is so overcrowded?”
asked Marion, making a mischievous application of the knowledge she had so unwillingly absorbed. But she was not heeded.
”It is the ma.s.s we have to consider, not the individual,” continued the Honourable Mrs. Keeley, as though she were addressing the room from a platform. ”It is for lesser women than ourselves to look after the home and the parish; there is a far wider sphere reserved for such as you and I. It would be a perfect scandal if you were to throw yourself away on the narrowness of the domestic circle.”
Katharine felt a hysterical desire to laugh, which she controlled with difficulty. She spoke very humbly, instead.
”It must be my own fault, if I have allowed you to think all these things about me,” she said. ”There is nothing great reserved for me; I am just a complete failure, and that is the end of all my ambition and all my conceit. I wish some one had told me I was conceited, before I got so bad.”
The Honourable Mrs. Keeley was silenced at last. None of her experience of working gentlewomen helped her to meet the present situation. A woman with a great future before her had obviously no right to be humble. But Marion realised gleefully that she had gained a new and unexpected ally.
”I always said you were much too jolly to belong to mamma's set,” she observed; at which the angered feelings of her mother compelled her to seek comfort in solitude, and she made some excuse for retiring to her boudoir, and left the two rebels together. They looked at one another and broke into mutual merriment. But Marion laughed the loudest,--a fact that she herself was the first to appreciate.
”Kitty,” she said suddenly, growing grave, ”I am so sorry, dear!
What's up, and who has been treating you badly?”
She strolled away immediately to pour out tea, and Katharine had time to recover from surprise at her unusual penetration.
”How did you know?” she asked, slowly.
”I guessed, because--oh, you looked like it, or something! Don't ask me to give a reason for anything I say, _please_. It isn't my business, of course, and I don't want to know a thing about it if you would rather not tell; only, I'm sorry if you're cut up, that's all.
Did you chuck him, or did it never get so far as that? There, I really don't want you to tell me about it. Of course, he was much older than you, and much wickeder, and he flirted atrociously with you and you were taken in by him, you poor little innocent dear! I know all about it, and the way they get hold of girls like you who are not up to their wiles. He was married, too, of course? They always are, the worst ones.”
It was too much trouble to correct her a.s.sumptions, and Katharine allowed her to go on. After all, her sympathy was genuine, if it was a little crudely expressed.
”I shouldn't think any more about him, if I were you,” continued Marion. ”They're not worth it, any of them; go and get another, and snap your fingers at the first. You're not tied to one, as I am.”
”No,” said Katharine, scalding herself with mouthfuls of boiling tea.
”I'm not.”
”I know I would give anything to get rid of mine,” said Marion sorrowfully. ”May you never know the awful monotony of being engaged!”
”I don't fancy I ever shall,” observed Katharine.
”Always the same writing on the breakfast table,” sighed Marion; ”always the same face on the back seat of the carriage; always the same photograph all over the house,--oh, it's maddening! You wouldn't be able to stand it for a day, Kitty!”
”Perhaps not,” said Katharine. ”Then your engagement is publicly announced now?”
”I should rather think so! I am tired of being congratulated by a lot of idiots, who don't even take the trouble to find out whether I want to be married or not. And then, the boys! Bobby is going to shoot himself, he says; but of course Bobby always says that. And Jack has gone to South Africa; I don't exactly know why, except that every one goes to South Africa when there isn't any particular reason for staying in town. And Tommy--you remember Tommy, don't you? He was my best boy for ever so long; I rather liked Tommy. Well, he has gone and married that stupid Ethel Humphreys, and he always said she _pinched_.
I know why he did it, too. He was being objectionably serious, one day, and said he would do anything on earth for me; so I asked him to go and marry mamma, because then I should get eight hundred a year.
And he didn't like it a bit; Tommy always was ridiculously hot-tempered. Oh, dear, I'm sick of it all! I believe you're the only person I know, who hasn't congratulated me.”