The Career of Katherine Bush. Glyn Elinor

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СКАЧАТЬ she sat down in her armchair by the fire and reviewed the entire chain of events.

      She was embarked upon a new current which would help to carry her to some definite goal – she was out of the backwater. It was not a voyage to Cythera, but youth was at the prow, and ambition, not pleasure, at the helm; and there live philosophers who say these two things bring more lasting good than all the bliss that is to be snatched from the other combination. – Who knows! – They may be right!

      Matilda was nervous with excitement when after supper she was told of the definite settlement of her sister's affairs.

      "So you are really engaged, Kitten!" she exclaimed. "Now, do tell me all about it. There's a dear – and what was she like, and is it a grand house and are you going to be properly treated as a real lady?"

      "Yes, I am engaged. I am to go in on Wednesday, 'bag and baggage,' as Lady Garribardine said."

      "My! what a vulgar expression for a lady to use, Kitten – are you sure she's all right?"

      Matilda hated what was not genteel.

      "Oh! yes, Tild – she's all right – and the house is beautiful – and, yes, what you'd call grand – and you may be sure they will treat me exactly in the way I deserve to be treated. If you aren't respected it's your own fault – people don't make a mistake as to whom they are with a second time, even if they do the first. If anyone gets put upon continually, or gets snubbed, it's her own fault."

      Matilda totally disagreed.

      "There you are quite wrong. Why, look at Gladys! Bob treats her anyhow sometimes of a Sunday, and her as good as gold."

      "Well, she has made him think that he can by not stopping it in the beginning. It is never a question of goodness as I often tell you about things, it is a question of force. Goodness does not count unless it is so perfect that it is a force, too – like Christ's."

      "Oh, my! What awful things you do say, Katherine!"

      Matilda felt so uncomfortable when her sister spoke of what she thought ought only to be mentioned in church!

      "No, I merely tell the truth, it is the weaklings who do all the harm in the world, never the bad or good."

      "Well, what was Lady Garribardine like?" Matilda was tired of abstract speculations.

      "She was tall and rather stout, and had a golden wig – and black eyes – and she understood things. She knows how to order her house, because the servants had the same awe for her as the office-boy has for Liv. Her writing-table was awfully untidy, though. I expect she has not much method, and it is just personality and temper which causes her to be obeyed."

      "You won't stand being ordered about ever, Kitten?"

      "It will depend on how much good I feel I am getting out of it. If the place and people in it are being lessons for me, I shan't mind what she says – I shall stick it out and try never really to deserve a scolding."

      "Was there anyone else there?" Matilda was still curious.

      "Yes – a man left when I was going in. He had a clever face. I shall like him, I believe, if he comes there often."

      "You won't go falling in love with any of them gentlemen, Kitten," Matilda pleaded affectionately.

      She felt that things might develop as they did in the cases of the innocent actresses and governesses and the villains in her serials.

      "Have I ever been given to falling in love?" Katherine asked with a humorous flash in her eyes. – "You have not seen me tumble into the arms of Charlie Prodgers or Percy Watson – have you?"

      "No, dearie, but these gentlemen in your new biz might be different and might not mean so honest by you. I do wish I could hope to see you settled with Charlie some day. He is such a dear fellow, and very rising. He'll be head clerk at the estate agent's he is in very soon, and could give you a comfortable home like this is for your own; and no need to be hanging on for years like Glad and Bob."

      "Can you picture me settled in a comfortable home with Charlie Prodgers, Tild!" Katherine laughed out at the idea, it seemed so comic to her. "He is as great a snob as Fred, and even more ignorant. I would not let him button my boots, much less call himself my husband! I'd as soon be dead as tied to that! At Brixton, too! With the prospect of being the mother of numbers of sandy-haired little Prodgers. What an outlook!"

      Matilda was hurt. They had never spoken in words upon this secret hope of hers, but she had often hinted at it, and Katherine had been silent and seemingly preoccupied, but not actually scornful, and to have the scheme denounced with derision and the happy picture scoffed at was a blow to her which she could not bear in silence. She felt indignant.

      "Charlie Prodgers is good enough for any young lady. Mabel herself thinks highly of him. He is one of the few of Fred's gentlemen friends that she thinks worthy to be asked into her mother's house – and I would have liked to have seen you married into her set safely before she becomes our sister-in-law, and can patronise you."

      "Then I am afraid I must disappoint you, dear," Katherine now tried to hide her smile. "I have quite another game to play in life. But why don't you keep him for Ethel – she is nearly sixteen and will soon be looking out for a young man – or take him yourself?"

      This was a new idea for Matilda. She had always been too loyal to dream of turning her eye in the direction of one whom she regarded as exclusively her sister's property.

      She bridled a little – the picture was so glorious – if it only could be hers! Charlie Prodgers who scorned to be seen in anything but a frock coat, unless, of course, he went golfing – Charlie Prodgers who each Sunday attended the church parade in Hyde Park as a matter of course! But would he ever look at her? Proud, haughty fellow! and she not so pretty as Katherine – and not half so nobby as Gladys. But stranger things than that happened in her serials, and she need not feel that it was quite hopeless. But how could Kitten willingly relinquish such triumph? There must be something of a suffragette in her after all, since no girl in her senses could ask more of fortune!

      The Sunday was spent by Katherine in packing up all her belongings and in selecting the books she meant to take with her, a volume or two of Voltaire, Bacon's Essays, Kant and Bergson, and a new acquisition, Otto Weininger's "Sex and Character." This latter had interested her deeply. There was a great deal of biting truth in his analysis of women, and it was probably also true that they did not possess souls; but she totally disagreed with his ending of the matter that the solution of the problem lay in a voluntary annihilation of the human species through abstinence from procreation. She, for her part, thought that it was taking things out of the Hand of God, or the Divine Essence, or whatever the great Principle should be called – and her eminently practical mind failed to see the use of such far-reaching speculations. "The poor man was mad, of course," she said, as she closed the book again before packing it. "But I will try to watch the feminine traits in myself and crush them. He has taught me that amount, in any case. And if I have no soul, I have a brain and a will, and so I am going to obtain as much as a woman can get with those two things. As for the infinite, men are welcome to that, as far as I am concerned!"

      She looked forward with deep interest to perusing the story with Mademoiselle de Maupin in it. What could it be about? She had hardly thought that Lord Algy had read at all, he never spoke of books – but it was perhaps not surprising; they had been always too occupied in more agreeable converse. How good it was to remember all that, even though never in her life she should have such foolish sweetness again!

      She СКАЧАТЬ