The Career of Katherine Bush. Glyn Elinor
influence upon Katherine from the moment of their mother's death, years before, when she had taken her place as head of the orphaned household. Katherine had always been odd. She had a vile temper as a child, and was silent and morose, and at constant war with that bright boy Bert, loved of the other sisters: Matilda remembered very well many scenes when Katherine had puzzled her. She was so often scornful and disapproving, and used to sit there with a book scowling at them on Sundays when a rowdy friend or two came in to tea, and never once joined in the chorus of the comic songs they sang, while she simply loathed the gramophone records.
"You say awfully silly things sometimes, Tild," Katherine announced calmly. "There would not be any good in my considering myself a young lady, because at my present stage anyone who really knew would know that I am not – but I mean to become one some day. You can do anything with will."
Matilda bridled.
"I don't know what more of a lady you could be than we all are – Why, Mabel Cawber always says that we are the most refined family of the whole lot at Bindon's Green – and Mabel ought to know surely!"
"Because her father was a solicitor, and she has never done a stroke of work in her life?" Katherine smiled again – it made Matilda feel uncomfortable.
"Mabel is a perfect lady," she affirmed indignantly.
"I will be able to tell you about that in a year's time, I expect," Katherine said, reflectively. "At present, I am not experienced enough to say, but I strongly feel that she is not. You see, Tild, you get your ideas of things from the trash you read – and from the ridiculous nonsense Fred and Albert talk after they come home from those meetings at the National Brotherhood Club – fool's stuff about the equality of all men – "
"Of course we are all equal!" broke in Matilda, still ruffled.
Katherine Bush smiled again. "Well, I wish you could see the difference between Fred and Bert and those gentlemen I see through the glass screen! They have all got eyes and noses and legs and arms in common, but everything else is different, and if you knew anything about evolution, you'd understand why."
"Should I!" indignantly.
"Yes. It is the something inside the head, something in the ideas, produced by hundreds of years of different environment and a wider point of view – and it is immensely in the little customs and manners of speech and action. If you had ever seen and spoken to a real gentleman, Tild, you would grasp it."
Matilda was quite unmollified and on the defensive.
"You can't have two more honourable, straightforward young fellows than our brothers in no family in England, and I expect lots of your gents borrowing money are as crooked as can be!"
Katherine became contemplative.
"Probably – the thing I mean does not lie in moral qualities – I suppose it ought to – but it doesn't – We had a real sharp last week, and to look at and to hear him talk he was a perfect gentleman, with refined and easy manners; he would never have done anything in bad taste like Fred and Bert often do."
"Bad taste!" snorted Matilda.
"Yes – we all do. No gentleman ever tells people in words that he is one – Fred and Bert say it once a week, at least. They lay the greatest stress on it. No real gentlemen get huffy and touchy; they are too sure of themselves and do not pretend anything, they are quite natural and you take them as they are. They don't do one thing at home at ease, and another when they are dressed up, and they aren't a bit ashamed of knowing anyone. Fred does not speak to Ernie Gibbs when he is out with Mabel, although they were at school together!"
"Ernie Gibbs! Why, Kitten, he is only a foreman in the Bindon Gas Works! Of course not! Mabel would take on!"
Matilda thought her sister was being too stupid!
"Yes, I am sure she would – that is just it – "
"And quite right, too!"
Katherine shrugged her shoulders. There was not much use in arguing with Matilda, she felt, Matilda who had never thought out any problem for herself in her life – Matilda who had not the privilege of knowing any attractive Lord Algys! – and who therefore could not have grasped the immeasurable gulf that she, Katherine, had found lay between his class and hers!
"They say Fred is a capable auctioneer because father and grandfather were – you hear people saying 'it is in the blood' – Well, why is it, Tild? – Because heredity counts just as it does in animals, of course. So why, if a man's father and grandfather, and much further back still, have been gentlemen commanding their inferiors, and fulfilling the duties of their station, should not the traits which mean that show as plainly as the auctioneer traits show in Fred – ?"
Matilda had no answer ready, she felt resentful; but words did not come, so Katherine went on:
"You can't jump straight to things; they either have to come by instinct through a long line of forebears, or you have to have intelligence enough to make yourself acquire the outward signs of them, through watching and learning from those who you can see for yourself have what you want."
Matilda called for another cup of cocoa – she disliked these views of Katherine's.
"You see," that young woman went on, "no one who is a real thing ever has to tell people so in words. Liv and Dev don't have to say they are two of the sharpest business men in London – anyone can realise it who knows them. You, and all of us, don't have to tell people we belong to the lower middle class, because it is plain to be seen, but we would have to tell them we were ladies and gentlemen, because we are not. Lord Al – oh! any lord who comes to our office – does not have to say he is an aristocrat; you can see it for yourself in a minute by his ways. It is the shams that always keep shouting. Mabel Cawber insists upon it that she is a tip-top swell; Fred thinks he is deceiving everyone by telling them what a gentleman he is, and by not speaking to Ernie Gibbs, who is an awfully good fellow. Emily says she is a splendid general, and can't even light a fire, and won't learn how to. George Berker in our office says he is a first-class clerk, and muddles his accounts. Everything true speaks for itself. I always mean to be perfectly true, and win out by learning."
Matilda, though somewhat crushed, was still antagonistic.
"I'm sure I hope you'll succeed then, my dear!" she snapped.
"Yes, I shall." Katherine fired her bomb. "It may take me some time, but that does not matter, and the first step I have already taken is that I am leaving Liv and Dev's on Friday – and, I hope, going to be secretary to Sarah Lady Garribardine, at a hundred and ten Berkeley Square, and Blissington Court, Blankshire!"
"Well, there! You could have knocked me over with a feather!" as Matilda told Gladys later in the evening. "And wasn't it like Katherine never telling us a thing about it until everything was almost settled!" But at the moment, she merely breathed a strangled:
"Oh, my!"
"If I get it, I go to my new situation next week. I had a tremendous piece of luck coming across it."
"Well, however did you do it, Kitten?" Matilda demanded.
"I saw an advertisement in the Morning Post– it was quite a strange one, and seemed to be advertising for a kind of Admirable Crichton– someone who could take down shorthand at lightning speed, and typewrite and speak French – and read aloud, and who had a good knowledge of English literature, and thoroughly knew the duties of a secretary."
"Oh! My!" said Matilda again, "but you can't do half of those things, Kitten – we none of us know French, do we!"
Katherine smiled; how little her family understood her in any way!
"I wrote first and said they seemed to want a great deal, but as I had been with Livingstone and Devereux for three years, and accustomed to composing every sort of letter that a moneylender's business required, I thought I could soon become proficient in the other things."
"Well, I never! What cheek!"
"Then I got an answer saying Lady Garribardine liked my communication, and if I proved satisfactory in appearance, and had some credentials, she would engage me immediately, because her secretary, who had been with