The Career of Katherine Bush
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Lady Beatrice was not the least crushed. She laughed frankly.
"Dear, sweet Aunty! There never has been a scandal about me in my life – I am a model of circumspectness, demureness and present-day virtuous wifeliness. Why, I never interfere with Gerard – we hardly meet in the whole week – and I merely like my own simple friends, my own simple clothes, and my own simple pleasures!"
"Artless creature!" And the youthful curls shook. "Well, what did you come for, in so many words? To try to get me to influence Gerard not to play for once the ineffectual part of husband in authority, and so let you disgrace the name of Thorvil and Strobridge in peace?"
Lady Beatrice seized and stroked the fat hand lying upon the pink silk coverlet.
"You darling, ducky Aunt Seraphim! Just that! I want to wear my enchanting boy's dress – I must be Ganymede, the cupbearer!"
"Well, I'll be no party to it – be off with you. I have serious affairs to settle with Miss Bush and have no further time to waste."
Lady Beatrice saluted her obediently and got off the bed once more; she was laughing softly.
"Gerard is coming to lunch," Lady Garribardine called to her, "and Läo Delemar, and they are going to see a winter exhibition afterwards."
"I can't stand Läo," Lady Beatrice cooed from the doorway; "she pretends to be so full of sex and other dreadful natural things, she makes my innocent aesthetic flesh creep – Gerard always had fruity tastes – Bye-bye, dear Aunt Sarah!" And kissing her finger-tips she was at last gone, leaving Katherine wondering.
They had said very severe things to each other and neither was the least angry really – Gladys and Fred were not wont to bicker so.
"Call up Mr. Strobridge, Miss Bush – he will not have left home yet – you know his number – ask him to speak to me at once."
Katherine obeyed – she was an expert with the telephone and never raised her voice. Mr. Strobridge was soon at the other end of it, and she was about to hand the receiver to her employer when that lady frowned and told her to give the message herself.
"My right ear is troublesome to-day," she said, "you must do the business for me, Miss Bush."
"Hello! Her Ladyship wishes me to give you a message – will you wait a moment until I take it?"
"Hello! Yes."
"Say he is to come half an hour earlier to lunch to-day. I have things to talk over with him about to-night – He is to go to this ridiculous ball in my box – tell him so."
Katherine repeated the exact message.
"Tell her I am very much annoyed about the whole thing," Mr. Strobridge returned, "and have decided not to be present myself."
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Lady Garribardine, when she was told, and, seizing the receiver from Katherine's hand, she roared:
"Don't be a fool, G. – it is too late in the day to stand upon your dignity – I'll tell you the rest when you come to lunch." – Upon which she closed the communication and called for Stirling.
"Take all this rubbish of letters away, Miss Bush – I must get up and cope with the humiliating defects of old age – you may go."
Katherine had a very busy morning in front of her. She sat steadily typing and writing in the secretary's room, until her lunch was brought and even then she hardly stopped to eat it, but on her own way to the dining-room Lady Garribardine came in. She looked at the hardly tasted food and blinked her black eyes:
"Tut, tut! You must eat, child —pas trop de zèle– Finish your pudding – and then bring me those two letters upon the report of the Wineberger charity – into the dining-room – You can have your coffee with us – Mr. Strobridge and I are alone, Mrs. Delemar is not coming, after all – By the way, do you have everything you want? The coffee they give you is good, eh? Servants always skimp the beans when left to themselves."
"I have everything I want, thank you – but I have not been offered coffee," Katherine replied.
Lady Garribardine's face assumed an indignant expression, and she sharply rang the bell.
"These are the things that happen when one does not know of them – you ought to have complained to me before, Miss Bush!"
Thomas answered the bell and whitened perceptibly when he saw his mistress's face. He was asked why Miss Bush had not been served with coffee, in a voice which froze his tongue, and the only excuse he could give was a stammering statement that Miss Arnott had not taken any, which aroused further wrath.
"Pampered wretches!" Lady Garribardine exclaimed. "Anything to save themselves trouble! I will speak to Bronson about this – but see that it never happens again, Thomas!" And the trembling footman was allowed to leave the room.
"I am glad you did not try to defend them, as the foolish Arnott would have done," Her Ladyship flashed. "She was always standing between my just wrath and the servant's delinquencies, always shielding them – one would have thought she was of their class. The result was no one in the house respected her – good creature though she was. See that you are respected, young woman, and obeyed when obedience is your due."
"I will try to be" – and an inscrutable expression played round Katherine's full red mouth. "I would never shield anyone from what he deserved."
"It seems to me you understand a good deal, girl! – Well, come into the dining-room in half an hour," and, smiling her comprehending smile, Lady Garribardine left the room.
"G., that is a wonderful creature, that new secretary of mine – have you noticed her yet?" she said later on to her nephew when they had finished the serious part of their luncheon, and she had rung her enamelled bell for the automatic entrance of the servants from behind the screen – they were only allowed in the room to change the courses at this meal. Numbers of politicians and diplomats frequently dropped in and preferred to discuss affairs with their hostess alone.
"No – not much," Mr. Strobridge admitted when they were again by themselves and coffee had come. "I thought she did my letter to the Times remarkably well, though."
"She has not done anything badly yet – when she makes a mistake in social trifles she always realises it, and corrects herself. Her reading aloud was grotesque at first, but I have never had to tell her how to pronounce a word twice. I lay traps for her; she is as smart as paint and as deep as a well."
"A treasure indeed – " but Mr. Strobridge's voice was absent, he was uninterested and was still smarting under the annoyance of the situation created by his wife.
Of course he could not make her stay at home by force – and he hated the idea of Ganymede and the bare legs. He reverted to the topic once more.
"I would really rather not go to see the freakish crew to-night," he said. "Beatrice is doing it merely from obstinacy; she is not like Hebe Vermont, a ridiculous poseuse, crazy for notoriety; she is a refined creature generally, though wearying. This is just to defy me."
"As I have always told you, G., you should never have married, you are made for an ardent and devoted lover, with a suitable change of inamorata every six months. In the rôle of husband you are – frankly – a little ridiculous! You have no authority. As Miss Bush put it just now about something else, you usually act from good nature, not from a sense of justice; and Beatrice snaps her fingers at you and goes her own way."
"I don't mind as a rule – indeed, I am grateful to her for doing so. Can there be anything more tedious and bourgeois than the recognised relation of husband and wife? The only things which make intimacy with a woman agreeable are difficulty and intermittency. Bee fortunately expects nothing from me, and I expect nothing from her, beyond acting in a manner suitable to her race and station, and I don't think Ganymede in his original costume at an Artist Models' ball a harmonious part for my wife or a Thorvil to adopt."
"You don't know how to manage her, and you are too indifferent to try – so you had better swallow your outraged dignity and come with me in my box after all. Läo will be there and you can sit and whisper in the back of it." And Lady Garribardine lit her cigarette, but Mr. Strobridge protested in whimsical distress:
"Heaven forbid! Would you kill this dawning romance, Seraphim? If Läo and I are to be drafted off like a pair of fiancés, the whole charm is gone. I wish to ménager my emotions so that they may last over the Easter recess; after that I shall be too busy for them to matter. Don't be ruthless, sweet Aunt!"
Lady Garribardine laughed and at that moment Katherine Bush came in, the finished letters in her hand.
"Give Miss Bush some coffee, G., while I look over them," and Her Ladyship indicated the tray which had been placed by an attentive Bronson close to her hand.
Mr. Strobridge did as he was asked. His thoughts were far away, and beyond displaying the courtesy he used to all women, he never noticed Katherine at all. She was quite ordinary looking still – with the screwed up mop of ashen-hued hair, and her plain dark blouse, unless you chanced to meet her strange and beautiful eyes.
For some reason she felt a little piqued, the man's manner and phrasing attracted her, his voice was superlatively cultivated, and his words chosen with polished grace. Here was a person from whom something could be learned. She would have wished to have talked with him unrestrainedly and alone. She remained silent and listened when aunt and nephew again took up the ball of conversation together. How she would love to be able to converse like that! They were so sparkling – never in earnest seemingly, all was light as air, while Mr. Strobridge made allusions and quotations which showed his brilliant erudition, and Katherine hearkened with all her ears. Some of them she recognized and others she determined to look up, but his whole pronunciation of the sentences sounded different from what she had imagined they would be when she had read them to herself.
This was the first time she had heard a continued conversation between two people who she had already decided were worthy of note, and this half-hour stood out as the first milestone in her progress.
Presently they all rose – and she went back to her work with the sense of the magnitude of her task in climbing to the pinnacle of a great lady and cultivated woman of the world.
For a few moments she felt a little depressed – then a thought came to her.
"He could help me to knowledge of literature and art – he could teach me true culture – and since he is married there can be no stupid love-making. But for this he must first realise that I exist and for that when my chance comes I must arrest his attention through the ears and the eyes. He must for once look at me and see not only his aunt's secretary – and then I can learn from him all that I desire to know."
That this course of action could possibly cause the proposed teacher pain in the future never entered her head.
CHAPTER VIII
Matilda had been told to meet her sister, if it should be fine on this Sunday, in the Park by the Serpentine; they would walk about and then go and have an early tea at Victoria Station, whence Matilda could take a train back to Bindon's Green.
They met punctually at the time appointed on the bridge, and the elder Miss Bush was filled with joy. She had missed Katherine dreadfully, as browbeating husbands are often missed by meek wives, and she was full of curiosity to hear her news.
"You look changed somehow, Kitten!" she exclaimed, when they had greeted each other. "It isn't because you'd done your hair differently; you had it that way on the last day – it isn't a bit 'the look', but it suits you. No, it's not that – but you are changed somehow. Now tell me everything, dearie – I am dying to hear."
"I like it," began Katherine, "and I am learning lots of things."
This information did not thrill Matilda. Katherine's desire to be always learning was very fatiguing, she thought, and quite unnecessary. She wanted to hear facts of food and lodging and people and treatment, not unimportant moral developments.
"Oh – well," she said. "Are they kind to you?"
"Yes – I am waited on like a lady – and generally the work isn't half so heavy as at Liv and Dev's."
"Tell me right from the beginning. What you do when you get up in the morning until you go to bed."
Katherine complied.
"I am waked at half-past seven and given a cup of tea – real tea, Tild, not the stuff we called tea at home." (A slight toss of the head from Matilda.) "The second housemaid waits on me, and pulls up my blind, and then I have my bath in the bathroom across the passage – a nice, deep hot bath."
"Whatever for – every day?" interrupted Matilda. "What waste of soap and towels and things – do you like it, Kitten?"
"Of course, I do – we all seem to be very dirty people to me now, Tild – with our one tub a week; you soon grow to find things a necessity. I could not bear not to have a bath every day now."
Matilda snorted.
"Well – and then – ?"
"Then I go down and have my breakfast in the secretary's room – my sitting-room, in fact. It is a lovely breakfast, with beautiful china and silver and table-linen, and when I have finished that I take my block and pencil and go up to Lady Garribardine's bedroom to take down my instructions for the day in shorthand."
"Oh, Kitten, do tell me, what's her room like?" At last something interesting might be coming!
"It is all pink silk and lace and a gilt bed, and numbers of photographs, and a big sofa and comfortable chairs – and when she has rheumatism she stays there and has people up to tea."
"What! Folks to tea in her bedroom? Ladies, of course?"
"Oh! dear no! Men, too! She has heaps of men friends; they are devoted to her."
"Gentlemen in her bedroom! I do call that fast!" Matilda was frankly shocked.
"Why?" asked Katherine.
"Why? My dear! Just fancy – gentlemen where you sleep and dress! Mabel would not dream of doing such a thing – and I do hope she'll never hear you are in that kind of a house. She'd be sure to pass remarks."
"Lady Garribardine is over sixty years old, Tild! Don't you think you are being rather funny?" and Katherine wondered why she had never noticed before that Matilda was totally devoid of all sense of humour. And then she realised that the conception was new even to herself, and must have come from her book reading, though she was conscious that it was a gift that she had always enjoyed. No one had spoken of the "senses of humour" in their home circle, and Matilda would not have understood what it meant or whether she did or did not possess it!
Things were things to Matilda, and had not different aspects, and for a lady to receive gentlemen in her bedroom if she were even over sixty years old and suffering from rheumatism was not proper conduct, and would earn the disapproval of Mabel Cawber and, indeed, of refined and select Bindon's Green in general.
"I don't see that age makes a difference; it's the idea of tea in a bedroom, dearie – with gentlemen!"
"But what do you think they would do to her, Tild?" Katherine with difficulty hid her smile.
"Oh! my! what dreadful things you do say, Katherine!" Matilda blushed. "Why, it's the awkwardness of it for them – I'm wondering whatever Fred and Bert and Charlie Prodgers would feel if Mabel had them up to hers of a Sunday, supposing she had a cold – and what would anyone say!"
"Yes, I am sure Bindon's Green would talk its head off, and Fred and Bert and Charlie Prodgers would be awfully uncomfortable and get every sort of extraordinary idea into their heads, and if a person like Mabel did do such a thing, as to have them up there, she would be fidgety herself – or she would be really fast and intend them to go ahead. But Lady Garribardine is always quite sure of herself, and her friends are, too, and they don't have to consider convention – they are really gentlemen, you see, and not worried at all as to what others think or say, and it seems quite natural to them to come up and see an old rheumatic lady anywhere they want to see her. That is just the difference in the class, Tild – the upper are perfectly real, and don't pretend anything, and aren't uncomfortable in doing natural things."
Matilda was still disapproving, and at once became antagonistic when her sister made reflections upon class.
"I call it very queer, anyway," she sniffed. "And wherever do they find room to sit – in a bedroom, dearie?"
Katherine laughed – she wondered if she had never had a glimpse of life and space and comfort with Lord Algy, should she, too, have been as ignorant and surprised at everything in her new sphere as Matilda was at the description of it. She supposed she would have been equally surprised, but would certainly have viewed it with an open mind. After ten days of peeps at a world where everything new and old was looked at and discussed with the broadest toleration, the incredible narrowness of the Bindon's Green outlook appalled her – the forces of ignorance and prejudice and ridiculous hypocrisy which ruled such hundreds of worthy people's lives!
She came back from these speculations to the reality of her sister's voice, reiterating her question as to where the visitors found place, and she answered, still smiling:
"It is a great big room, Tild, twice as big as the drawing-room at home – no – bigger still, and twenty people could sit in it without crowding."
"Goodness gracious!" ejaculated Matilda; "it must be grand."
"You see, you are such an old goose, Matilda. You think the whole world must be like Bindon's Green, although I have told you over and over again that other places, and other grades of life, are different, but you and Mabel and Fred and Bert, and the whole crew of you, measure everything with your own tiny measure. You make me gasp at your outlook sometimes."
Matilda bridled – and Katherine went on.
"Lady Garribardine's house does not seem to be a bit grand to her, nor to any of the people who come there. They are not conscious of it; it is just everyday to them, although some of them live in quite small houses themselves and aren't at all rich. She has two cousins – elderly ladies, who live in a tiny flat – but oh! the difference in it to Mabel's villa! I had to take them a message last week and waited in their mite of a drawing-room – it was exquisitely clean and simple, and they are probably poorer than we are."
Matilda felt too ruffled to continue this conversation; she always hated the way Katherine argued with her; she wanted to get back to the far more interesting subject of carpets and curtains and arrangements in the rooms of Lady Garribardine's house. Numbers of the people in her serials, of course, were supposed to own such places, and she had often seen bits of them on the stage, but until she found Katherine really lived now in one, somehow she had never believed in them as living actualities, or rather their reality had not been brought home to her. So she questioned Katherine, and soon had an accurate description of her ladyship's bedroom, and the rest of the house, then she got back to the happenings of her sister's day.
"Well, when you have got up there, you take down orders, and then?"
"I sort everything that has come by the post and mark on the envelopes how I am to answer them, and I sometimes read her the papers aloud if her eyes are tired."
"Yes?"
"And then I go down and write the letters; she hardly ever answers any herself, and I have to write them as if I were she. Her friends must wonder how her hand and style have changed since Miss Arnott left!"
Here was something thrilling again for Matilda.
"Oh, my! What a lot you must get to know about the smart set, Kitten; isn't it interesting!"
"Yes, as I told you, I am learning lessons."
"Oh, bother that! Well, what do they write about, do tell me – ?"
"All sorts of things; their movements, their charities – invitations, little witticisms about each other – politics, the last good story – and, some of them, books."
"And you have to answer as if you were her? However do you do it, Kitten?"
"She gives me the general idea – she showed me the first time for the private letters, and now I know, but sometimes perhaps I write as if it were me!"
"And don't they know it is not her hand?"
"Of course, but they don't care. She is a great lady and a character, and she is very powerful in their circle of society, and it is worth everyone's while to be civil to her."
"It is all funny. Well, what else do you do?"
"Sometimes I have to do errands – shopping and so on – and then my luncheon comes – the food is lovely, and I am waited on by a footman called Thomas; he is the third; and on Wednesday Lady Garribardine took his and the butler's heads off because I had not been given coffee. She means me to be perfectly treated, I can tell you!"
"Coffee after your lunch, how genteel! And my! what a lot of servants. Whatever do they all do?"
"Their work, I suppose. You forget it is a big house and everything is splendidly done and beautifully clean, and regular and orderly."
Here Matilda insisted upon a full list of all the retainers, and an account of their separate duties; her domestic soul revelled in these details, and at the end of the recital her awe knew no bounds. Katherine was able to give her a very circumstantial set of statements, as all accounts passed through her hands.
"Well, your old lady must spend pints of money," Matilda said, with a sigh, "but we've not got to your afternoons yet, dearie. Do you work all them, too?"
"When I am very busy – it depends how much I have to do; if I am not very occupied and I have not been out in the morning, I go for a walk before tea. I have to take her ladyship's two fox-terriers, Jack and Joe; they are jolly little fellows, and I love them. We scamper in the square, or go as far as the Park."
"And your tea? They bring you up a cup, I suppose, every day – regular?"
"Not a cup – a whole tray to myself, and lovely muffins and cream, Tild. Lady Garribardine has a Jersey herd of cows at her place in Blankshire, and the cream comes up each day from there."
"My! how nice!" Matilda sighed again. Her imagination could hardly take in such luxury. It seemed to her that Katherine must be living in almost gilded vice!
"Then after tea, if I am not sent for to do any special thing, I read to myself. I look up anything that I don't know about that I have chanced to hear spoken of by the people who come – I am allowed to take books from the library."
"Then you do see people sometimes?" Matilda's interest revived again. "What are they like, Kitten?"
"Sometimes I do, but not often – only when I chance to be sent for, but next week Her Ladyship has got a big charity tableaux entertainment on hand, that she is arranger and patroness of, and I shall come across lots of people of society, some of the ones you know the names of so well in the Flare."
"The Duchess of Dashington and the Countess of Blanktown – really, Kitten!"
This was fashion, indeed!
"Probably – but I don't know about the Duchess of Dashington. I don't think Lady Garribardine approves of her."
"Not approve of the Duchess of Dashington!" Matilda exclaimed, indignantly. "Her that has gentlemen to tea in her bedroom to give herself airs like that! Well, I never!"
This particular Duchess' photographs were the joy of the halfpenny illustrated papers, and Matilda was accustomed to see her in skating costume waltzing with her instructor, and in golf costume and in private theatrical costumes, almost every other week.
"No – she speaks of her very cheaply – but I will tell you all about it on Sunday fortnight. I'll have heard everything by then, because the tableaux will be over."
Matilda returned to her muttons.
"Then you have supper, I suppose?"
"No – I go up and dress myself and put on my best blouse and have my dinner at eight o'clock; after that I generally read the paper or French books – and at ten I go to bed."
"Gracious! what's the good of dressing if you don't see anyone? How you'll use up your blouse!"
Matilda was aghast at such folly!
"I am supposed to be a lady, Tild, and a lady is expected to dress in the evening if she is alone on a desert island."
"What stuff! Whatever for?"
"Self-respect."