The Career of Katherine Bush. Glyn Elinor

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СКАЧАТЬ dear, attractive Algy! She could not sit still any longer. A convulsion of anguish and longing shook her, and she got up and stamped across the room. Then she put on her outdoor things again and stalked down into the gathering night, passionate emotion filling her soul.

      But when she came back an hour later, after tramping the wet roads round the common, the battle was won.

      And this night she fell asleep without any tears.

      CHAPTER III

      It was about a fortnight later that Katherine got Matilda to meet her at a Lyons' popular café for tea on a Wednesday afternoon. Livingstone and Devereux had given her a half holiday, being on country business bent; and having matured her plans, and having set fresh schemes in train, she thought she might as well communicate them to the one sister who mattered to her. Matilda loved an excuse to "get up to town," and had come in her best hat, with smiling face. Katherine was always very generous to her, though she was no more careless about money than she was about other things.

      "It is all very well, Tild," she said, in her deep voice, after they had spoken upon indifferent subjects for a while. "But I am tired of it. I am absolutely tired of it, so there! I am tired of Liv and Dev – tired of the hateful old click of the machine with no change of work – I am tired of seeing the people of another class through the glass screen – and I mean to get out of it."

      "Whatever are you talking of, Kitten!" the elder Miss Bush exclaimed, as she stirred her cocoa. "Why, Liv and Dev's as good a berth as you'd get – thirty bob a week, and a whole holiday on Saturday – to say nothing of off times like this – you must be mad, dearie!" Then something further in her sister's remark aroused comment.

      "And what do you mean by people of 'another class'? Why, aren't we as good as anyone – if we had their money?"

      Katherine Bush put down her empty cup before she replied:

      "No, we're not – and if you weren't as ignorant as you are, dear old Tild, you'd know it. There are lots and lots of classes above us – they mayn't be any cleverer – indeed, they are often fools, and many aren't any richer – but they're ladies and gentlemen."

      Matilda felt personally insulted.

      "Upon my word, Kitten! – If you are such a poor thing that you don't consider yourself a young lady – I am not. I always did say that you would pick up rubbishly ideas bothering after those evening lectures and French classes – instead of coming with Glad and Bert and me to the cinema, like a decent Christian – it was a low sort of thing to do, I think, and looked as if we'd none of us had a proper education – and all they have done for you is to unsettle your mind, my dear – so I tell you."

      Katherine Bush smiled complacently and looked at her sister straight in the eyes in her disconcerting way, which insured attention. Matilda knew that she would now have to listen probably to some home truths. She could manage Gladys very well in spite of her giggles and irresponsibility, but she had never been able to have the slightest 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 СКАЧАТЬ