The Career of Katherine Bush. Glyn Elinor
one was awake at Laburnum Villa when she opened the door with her latchkey, and she crept up to her little icy chamber under the roof, numb in mind and body and soul – and was soon shivering between the cotton sheets.
Oh! the contrast to the warm, flower-scented bedroom at the Palatial! And once she had not known the difference between linen and cotton!
She said this over to herself while she felt the nap – and then the tears gathered in her eyes one by one, and she sobbed uncontrollably for a while – Alas! to have to renounce all joy – forever more!
She fell asleep towards morning, and woke with a start as her alarm clock thundered. But her face was set like marble, and there was not a trace of weakness upon it when she appeared at the family scramble, which did duty for breakfast.
There had been a row between Fred and Gladys, the sister a year older than herself, who was a saleswoman at a fashionable dressmaker's establishment. Matilda, the eldest of the family, was trying to smooth matters while she sewed up a rent in the skirt which Ethel, the youngest, would presently wear to the school "for young ladies" which she daily attended. This, the most youthful Miss Bush, meanwhile sat in a very soiled Japanese quilted dressing gown, devouring sausages. There were bloaters on the table, too, and treacle – and the little general servant was just bringing in the unsavory coffee in the tin coffeepot.
Tea had been good enough for them always in the father's time, and Matilda for her part could not see why Fred had insisted upon having coffee, on the strength of a trip to Boulogne on bank holiday.
But there it was! When Fred insisted, things had to be done – even if one hated coffee!
Katherine Bush loathed most of her family. She had not an expansive nature, and was quite ruthless. Why should she love them just because they were her brothers and sisters? She had not asked to be born among them! They were completely uncongenial to her, and always had been. It was obviously ridiculous and illogical then to expect her to feel affection for them, just because of this accident of birth, so she argued. Matilda, the eldest, who had always been a mother to the rest, did hold one small corner of her heart.
"Poor old Tild," as she called her, "the greatest old fool living," and Matilda adored her difficult sister.
How doubly impossible they all appeared now to the unveiled eyes of Katherine!
"This is simply disgusting stuff, this coffee!" she said, putting her cup down with a grimace. "It is no more like French coffee than Ett looks like a Japanese because she has got on that dirty dressing-gown."
"What do you know of French coffee, I'd like to ask – What ho!" Bert, the brother just younger than herself, demanded, with one of his bright flashes. "Have you been to 'Boulong for a bit of a song,' like the Gov'nor?"
"I wish you'd give over calling me the Gov'nor, Bert!" Mr. Frederick Bush interposed, stopping for a moment his bicker with Gladys. "Mabel strongly objects to it. She says it is elderly and she dislikes slang, anyway."
But Albert Bush waved half a sausage on his fork, and subsided into a chuckle of laughter. He was the recognised wit of the family, and Ethel giggled in chorus.
Katherine never replied to any of their remarks, unless she wished to; there was no use in throwing down the gauntlet to her, it remained lying there. She did not even answer Matilda's tentative suggestion that she had always drunk the coffee before without abusing it!
If they only knew how significant the word "before" sounded to her that morning!
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 manœuvred 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.