The Career of Katherine Bush. Glyn Elinor
Benjamin Devereux had made advances to her in her first year at Liv and Dev, but she had annihilated him, and withered his proposals for unlimited dinners and a generous settlement with scorn. There had never been a moment when she had contemplated her charms being wasted upon anything but an aristocrat, from whom she could acquire "tone."
No denizen of Bindon's Green – no friend of the family – no companion in the morning train had ever had so much as a kind word, much less the tip of one of her strong white fingers. She was as a bunch of grapes with perfect bloom retained.
She was taking in every line of Lord Algy as she sat there sipping her soup. She had refused oysters, and had watched him as he devoured his with the joy of an epicure. She had not been quite certain as to which was the right implement to employ. She supposed it was that little fork with the three prongs – but she determined to make no mistakes.
It was easy enough to gobble oysters soused in vinegar and red pepper, with huge slices of bread and butter, and a bottle of stout, as her brother Fred was wont to enjoy them at supper on Saturday nights. Or they could be pulled about in the mincing fashion in which his fiancée, that genteel Mabel Cawber, treated them, with little finger daintily curved, and the first and the thumb only in use! but before she, Katherine Bush, swallowed one, she would ascertain exactly how they were eaten in Lord Algy's world! No good out of this trip should be wasted.
As dinner advanced, he began to make more ardent love to her – and the champagne elevated both their spirits. He reproached her for her hardness in not having allowed him to play the part of maid, after all. She was a capricious little darling, but surely did not mean to go on being unkind?
No; she did not – but she had suddenly realised, while dressing, that some of her garments were not fine enough for the situation, and must be kept out of sight!
She did not tell him this, however, but continued to enact the rôle of condescending queen, while quietly she watched him as a cat watches a mouse.
She loved the way his hair was brushed – how different from Charlie Prodgers! – she loved the finely cut back of his head. She was perfectly aware that he showed outwardly every mark of breeding in his weak, handsome face, and lean well-drilled figure. These things pleased her – especially the breeding; it was so very far from what she ever saw at Bindon's Green!
Lord Algy had the easy, pleasant manner of his kind, with a strong personal attraction, amply balancing absence of brain for general purposes, and he was versed in every art for the cajoling of women.
The dinner grew more and more agreeable, until when coffee and liqueurs came, Katherine Bush felt exalted into a strange heaven. She had analysed almost all emotions in the abstract, but not their possible effects upon herself. She found the ones she was experiencing now peculiarly delightful! To be twenty-two and in love for the first time in life, with an extremely delectable specimen of manhood – to be free as air – answerable to no one – untroubled by backward or forward thoughts, unworried by tormenting speculations as to whether the affair was right or wrong – wise or unwise – This was a state of things which made the cup worth drinking, and Katherine Bush knew it.
No possibility of bitter dregs to follow the last sip entered her calculations.
The imp gods laughed, no doubt, and Lord Algy's blue eyes were full of passionate delight!
Thus with all things couleur de rose, Katherine Bush began her brief honeymoon.
CHAPTER II
"And I shall not see you for a whole month, my precious pet!" Lord Algy whispered, as the train was approaching Charing Cross, at about eleven o'clock on the Monday night of the return journey. "I don't know how I shall bear it, but you will write every day, won't you? – Promise me, darling – I wish now that I had not taken first leave and arranged to shoot with my brother-in-law next week."
His arm still encircled her, and her ashen-hued head leaned against his shoulder, so that he could not see the expression in her sombre eyes. It was that of an animal in pain.
"No, I shall not write, Algy, and you must not, either – we have had a divine time, and I shall never forget it. But it is stupid to write – what good would it be to either of us?"
He pleaded that he would not be able to live without a word – after the three days of perfect bliss they had enjoyed – and, of course, they would enjoy many more, when he returned from Wales – !
Katherine Bush did not argue with him – of what use since her own mind was entirely made up? She just let him kiss her as much as he desired without speaking a word, and then she arranged her hat and veil, and was demurely ready to get out when the train should draw up at the platform.
Lord Algy could not have been more loverlike. He was really feeling full of emotion and awfully sorry to part. She had been so wonderful, he told himself. She had enjoyed the whole thing so simply, and was such a delightful companion. She had not asked any silly questions or plagued him with sentimental forever-and-ever kinds of suggestions, as lots of girls might have done with her limited experience of these transitory affairs. She had accepted the situation as frankly as a savage who had never heard that there could be any more binding unions. He really did not know how he was going to stand a whole month of separation, but perhaps it was just as well, as he was on the verge of being ridiculously in love, and to plunge in, he knew, would be a hopeless mistake. She was a thousand times nicer and more interesting than any girl he had ever met in his life. If she had only been a lady, and there would not be any row about it, he could imagine any fellow being glad to marry her.
She was not at all cold either – indeed, far from it – and seemed instinctively to understand the most enchanting passion – He thought of Mademoiselle de Maupin again – and felt he had been as equally blessed as D'Albert. She would make the sweetest friend for months and months, and he would rush back from Wales the moment he could break from his family, and seek solace in her arms – he would have got himself in hand again by then, so as not to do anything stupid. He always meant to be very, very good to her, though. Thus he dreamed, and grew more demonstrative, clasping her once again in a fond farewell embrace, during the last available moment, and his charming blue eyes, with their brown curly lashes, looked half full of tears.
"Say you love me, darling," he commanded, wishing, like all lovers, to hear the spoken words.
Katherine Bush was very pale, and there was concentrated feeling in her face which startled him. Then she answered, her voice deeper than usual:
"Yes – I love you, Algy – perhaps you will never know how much. I do not suppose I will ever really love anyone else in the same way in my life."
Then the train drew up at the station.
The people all looked unreal in the foggy October air under the glaring lights – and the whole thing appeared as a dream indeed when, half an hour later, Katherine sped through the suburban roads to Bindon's Green, alone in the taxi. Lord Algy had put her in and paid the man liberally, and with many last love words had bidden her good-night and —au revoir!
So this chapter was finished – she realised that. And it had been really worth while. An outlook had opened for her into a whole new world – where realities lived – where new beings moved, where new standpoints could be reached. She saw that her former life had been swept from her – and now, to look back upon, appeared an impossible tedium. She had mastered all the shades of what three days of most intimate companionship with a gentleman could mean, and the memory contained no flaw. Algy's chivalry and courtesy had never faltered; she might have been a princess or his bride, from the homage he had paid her. Dear, much-loved Algy! Her passion for him was tinged with almost a mother love – there was something so tender and open-hearted about him. But now she must take stern hold of herself, and must have pluck enough to profit by what she had learned of life – Though to-night she was too tired to do more than retrospect.
Oh! the wonder of it all! – the wonder of love, and the wonder of emotion! She clenched her cold hands round the handle of her little valise. She was trembling. She had insisted upon his keeping the fur-lined coat for the present. How could she account for it to her family, she had argued? But she never meant to take it again.
No