CHAPTER VIII
Matilda had been told to meet her sister, if it should be fine on this Sunday, in the Park by the Serpentine; they would walk about and then go and have an early tea at Victoria Station, whence Matilda could take a train back to Bindon's Green.
They met punctually at the time appointed on the bridge, and the elder Miss Bush was filled with joy. She had missed Katherine dreadfully, as browbeating husbands are often missed by meek wives, and she was full of curiosity to hear her news.
"You look changed somehow, Kitten!" she exclaimed, when they had greeted each other. "It isn't because you'd done your hair differently; you had it that way on the last day – it isn't a bit 'the look', but it suits you. No, it's not that – but you are changed somehow. Now tell me everything, dearie – I am dying to hear."
"I like it," began Katherine, "and I am learning lots of things."
This information did not thrill Matilda. Katherine's desire to be always learning was very fatiguing, she thought, and quite unnecessary. She wanted to hear facts of food and lodging and people and treatment, not unimportant moral developments.
"Oh – well," she said. "Are they kind to you?"
"Yes – I am waited on like a lady – and generally the work isn't half so heavy as at Liv and Dev's."
"Tell me right from the beginning. What you do when you get up in the morning until you go to bed."
Katherine complied.
"I am waked at half-past seven and given a cup of tea – real tea, Tild, not the stuff we called tea at home." (A slight toss of the head from Matilda.) "The second housemaid waits on me, and pulls up my blind, and then I have my bath in the bathroom across the passage – a nice, deep hot bath."
"Whatever for – every day?" interrupted Matilda. "What waste of soap and towels and things – do you like it, Kitten?"
"Of course, I do – we all seem to be very dirty people to me now, Tild – with our one tub a week; you soon grow to find things a necessity. I could not bear not to have a bath every day now."
Matilda snorted.
"Well – and then – ?"
"Then I go down and have my breakfast in the secretary's room – my sitting-room, in fact. It is a lovely breakfast, with beautiful china and silver and table-linen, and when I have finished that I take my block and pencil and go up to Lady Garribardine's bedroom to take down my instructions for the day in shorthand."
"Oh, Kitten, do tell me, what's her room like?" At last something interesting might be coming!
"It is all pink silk and lace and a gilt bed, and numbers of photographs, and a big sofa and comfortable chairs – and when she has rheumatism she stays there and has people up to tea."
"What! Folks to tea in her bedroom? Ladies, of course?"
"Oh! dear no! Men, too! She has heaps of men friends; they are devoted to her."
"Gentlemen in her bedroom! I do call that fast!" Matilda was frankly shocked.
"Why?" asked Katherine.
"Why? My dear! Just fancy – gentlemen where you sleep and dress! Mabel would not dream of doing such a thing – and I do hope she'll never hear you are in that kind of a house. She'd be sure to pass remarks."
"Lady Garribardine is over sixty years old, Tild! Don't you think you are being rather funny?" and Katherine wondered why she had never noticed before that Matilda was totally devoid of all sense of humour. And then she realised that the conception was new even to herself, and must have come from her book reading, though she was conscious that it was a gift that she had always enjoyed. No one had spoken of the "senses of humour" in their home circle, and Matilda would not have understood what it meant or whether she did or did not possess it!
Things were things to Matilda, and had not different aspects, and for a lady to receive gentlemen in her bedroom if she were even over sixty years old and suffering from rheumatism was not proper conduct, and would earn the disapproval of Mabel Cawber and, indeed, of refined and select Bindon's Green in general.
"I don't see that age makes a difference; it's the idea of tea in a bedroom, dearie – with gentlemen!"
"But what do you think they would do to her, Tild?" Katherine with difficulty hid her smile.
"Oh! my! what dreadful things you do say, Katherine!" Matilda blushed. "Why, it's the awkwardness of it for them – I'm wondering whatever Fred and Bert and Charlie Prodgers would feel if Mabel had them up to hers of a Sunday, supposing she had a cold – and what would anyone say!"
"Yes, I am sure Bindon's Green would talk its head off, and Fred and Bert and Charlie Prodgers would be awfully uncomfortable and get every sort of extraordinary idea into their heads, and if a person like Mabel did do such a thing, as to have them up there, she would be fidgety herself – or she would be really fast and intend them to go ahead. But Lady Garribardine is always quite sure of herself, and her friends are, too, and they don't have to consider convention – they are really gentlemen, you see, and not worried at all as to what others think or say, and it seems quite natural to them to come up and see an old rheumatic lady anywhere they want to see her. That is just the difference in the class, Tild – the upper are perfectly real, and don't pretend anything, and aren't uncomfortable in doing natural things."
Matilda was still disapproving, and at once became antagonistic when her sister made reflections upon class.
"I call it very queer, anyway," she sniffed. "And wherever do they find room to sit – in a bedroom, dearie?"
Katherine laughed – she wondered if she had never had a glimpse of life and space and comfort with Lord Algy, should she, too, have been as ignorant and surprised at everything in her new sphere as Matilda was at the description of it. She supposed she would have been equally surprised, but would certainly have viewed it with an open mind. After ten days of peeps at a world where everything new and old was looked at and discussed with the broadest toleration, the incredible narrowness of the Bindon's Green outlook appalled her – the forces of ignorance and prejudice and ridiculous hypocrisy which ruled such hundreds of worthy people's lives!
She came back from these speculations to the reality of her sister's voice, reiterating her question as to where the visitors found place, and she answered, still smiling:
"It is a great big room, Tild, twice as big as the drawing-room at home – no – bigger still, and twenty people could sit in it without crowding."
"Goodness gracious!" ejaculated Matilda; "it must be grand."
"You see, you are such an old goose, Matilda. You think the whole world must be like Bindon's Green, although I have told you over and over again that other places, and other grades of life, are different, but you and Mabel and Fred and Bert, and the whole crew of you, measure everything with your own tiny measure. You make me gasp at your outlook sometimes."
Matilda bridled – and Katherine went on.
"Lady Garribardine's house does not seem to be a bit grand to her, nor to any of the people who come there. They are not conscious of it; it is just everyday to them, although some of them live in quite small houses themselves and aren't at all rich. She has two cousins – elderly ladies, who live in a tiny flat – but oh! the difference in it to Mabel's villa! I had to take them a message last week and waited in their mite of a drawing-room – it was exquisitely clean and simple, and they are probably poorer than we are."
Matilda felt too ruffled to continue this conversation; she always hated the way Katherine argued with her; she wanted to get back to the far more interesting subject of carpets and curtains and arrangements in the rooms of Lady Garribardine's house. Numbers of the people in her serials, of course, were supposed to own such places, and she had often seen bits of them on the stage, but until she found Katherine really lived now in one, somehow she had never believed in them as living actualities, or rather their reality had not been brought home to her. So she questioned Katherine, and soon had an accurate description of her ladyship's bedroom, and the rest of the house, then she got back to the happenings of her sister's day.
"Well, when you have got up there, you take down orders, and then?"
"I sort everything that has come by the post and mark on the envelopes how I am to answer them, and I sometimes read her the papers aloud if her eyes are tired."
"Yes?"
"And then I go down and write the letters; she hardly ever answers any herself, and I have to write them as if I were she. Her friends must wonder how her hand and style have changed since Miss Arnott left!"
Here was something thrilling again for Matilda.
"Oh, my! What a lot you must get to know about the smart set, Kitten; isn't it interesting!"
"Yes, as I told you, I am learning lessons."
"Oh, bother that! Well, what do they write about, do tell me – ?"
"All sorts of things; their movements, their charities – invitations, little witticisms about each other – politics, the last good story – and, some of them, books."
"And you have to answer as if you were her? However do you do it, Kitten?"
"She gives me the general idea – she showed me the first time for the private letters, and now I know, but sometimes perhaps I write as if it were me!"
"And don't they know it is not her hand?"
"Of course, but they don't care. She is a great lady and a character, and she is very powerful in their circle of society, and it is worth everyone's while to be civil to her."
"It is all funny. Well, what else do you do?"
"Sometimes I have to do errands – shopping and so on – and then my luncheon comes – the food is lovely, and I am waited on by a footman called Thomas; he is the third; and on Wednesday Lady Garribardine took his and the butler's heads off because I had not been given coffee. She means me to be perfectly treated, I can tell you!"
"Coffee after your lunch, how genteel! And my! what a lot of servants. Whatever do they all do?"
"Their work, I suppose. You forget it is a big house and everything is splendidly done and beautifully clean, and regular and orderly."
Here Matilda insisted upon a full list of all the retainers, and an account of their separate duties; her domestic soul revelled in these details, and at the end of the recital her awe knew no bounds. Katherine was able to give her a very circumstantial set of statements, as all accounts passed through her hands.
"Well, your old lady must spend pints of money," Matilda said, with a sigh, "but we've not got to your afternoons yet, dearie. Do you work all them, too?"
"When I am very busy – it depends how much I have to do; if I am not very occupied and I have not been out in the morning, I go for a walk before tea. I have to take her ladyship's two fox-terriers, Jack and Joe; they are jolly little fellows, and I love them. We scamper in the square, or go as far as the Park."
"And your tea? They bring you up a cup, I suppose, every day – regular?"
"Not a cup – a whole tray to myself, and lovely muffins and cream, Tild. Lady Garribardine has a Jersey herd of cows at her place in Blankshire, and the cream comes up each day from there."
"My! how nice!" Matilda sighed again. Her imagination could hardly take in such luxury. It seemed to her that Katherine must be living in almost gilded vice!
"Then after tea, if I am not sent for to do any special thing, I read to myself. I look up anything that I don't know about that I have chanced to hear spoken of by the people who come – I am allowed to take books from the library."
"Then you do see people sometimes?" Matilda's interest revived again. "What are they like, Kitten?"
"Sometimes I do, but not often – only when I chance to be sent for, but next week Her Ladyship has got a big charity tableaux entertainment on hand, that she is arranger and patroness of, and I shall come across lots of people of society, some of the ones you know the names of so well in the Flare."
"The Duchess of Dashington and the Countess of Blanktown – really, Kitten!"
This was fashion, indeed!
"Probably – but I don't know about the Duchess of Dashington. I don't think Lady Garribardine approves of her."
"Not approve of the Duchess of Dashington!" Matilda exclaimed, indignantly. "Her that has gentlemen to tea in her bedroom to give herself airs like that! Well, I never!"
This particular Duchess' photographs were the joy of the halfpenny illustrated papers, and Matilda was accustomed to see her in skating costume waltzing with her instructor, and in golf costume and in private theatrical costumes, almost every other week.
"No – she speaks of her very cheaply – but I will tell you all about it on Sunday fortnight. I'll have heard everything by then, because the tableaux will be over."
Matilda returned to her muttons.
"Then you have supper, I suppose?"
"No – I go up and dress myself and put on my best blouse and have my dinner at eight o'clock; after that I generally read the paper or French books – and at ten I go to bed."
"Gracious! what's the good of dressing if you don't see anyone? How you'll use up your blouse!"
Matilda was aghast at such folly!
"I am supposed to be a lady, Tild, and a lady is expected to dress in the evening if she is alone on a desert island."
"What stuff! Whatever for?"
"Self-respect."
"Fiddlesticks."
Presently Katherine grew reflective, her catechism over. "I wish you could see it all, Tild; it would enlarge your brain – it is all so different from Bindon's Green. If you could only hear their point of view, I assure you, dear, it might be two different nations – those barefoot urchins climbing on the rails are much nearer their level than we are."
But Matilda could not stand this; her wrath rose.
"Those dirty boys nearer your new people than a real lady like Mabel Cawber, and your own brothers and sisters! Katherine, how dare you! Horrid little guttersnipes with no pride of themselves; why, they aren't even ashamed to be here of a Sunday among decent people – they'd do anything!"
"That is just it, Tild – so would the aristocrats if they wanted to, and wouldn't be a bit ashamed or even think of it, and they have 'no pride of themselves,' either – but you'll never understand, Tild, not if you live to be a hundred years old."
"And I don't want to, there!"
"Then it is perfectly useless my talking, I see that. We had better go and have some tea."
And so they turned out of Albert Gate and walked to Victoria.
Matilda, when she had smoothed her ruffled feelings, began now to relate the home news. Gladys and her fiancé were not happy together; they had not been so since that visit which Katherine would remember they had taken to Brighton to stay with his aunt – it was nearly six weeks ago now and both grew more and more gloomy.
"And so uppy as Glad is with Fred, too, and never a bit back on Bob Hartley!"
Matilda felt things would be better for her sister if a little more spirit were shown. Mabel and her betrothed had been up for church parade as usual in the Park that morning, and this lady had also supped with them at Laburnum Villa the night before, and they had had oysters and a jolly time.
Katherine felt a strange emotion when she heard of this. She seemed to see a picture of Lord Algy enjoying oysters, and all the reflections this action had called up – oh! how long ago it all appeared!
"And have you met that gentlemen you spoke of?" Matilda asked, before they parted at the station.
"Mr. Strobridge, you mean – Lady Garribardine's nephew. Yes – he is husband of the lady Glad dresses, the one who had the model she wanted me to have. He is a clever man – we have not really spoken yet, but I mean to know him very well some day."
"Oh! Kitten, do be careful! And him a married man, too!"
"For what I want of him, it does not matter whether he is married or single," Katherine reassured her, and soon the train moved off.
How good Matilda was! Katherine thought, as she walked briskly back to Berkeley Square – an unselfish, worthy, honest, hopelessly stupid creature, whom somehow she was fond of. But what could it be that made her herself so utterly different from them all? Nothing could be chance – everything had its reason, only we were generally too blind to perceive it. So was there some truth in that vague story of the great-grandmother having been someone of high family fallen low in the world and married to the auctioneer great-grandfather, whom her own father remembered very well? Could it be that some drop of gentle blood flowed in her veins, transmitted from this source and concentrated in her, having escaped the others – or was it simply from the years of her reading that her mind had developed? But it could not be altogether that, because she remembered instincts and tastes in uneducated early childhood completely aloof from the family's.
"Father gave me this business capacity," she mused, "but something beyond must have given me this will to achieve – and I shall achieve – all I desire – in time! Only I must be ruthless and have no emotions. I must follow what Bacon asserts about great spirits," and she quoted softly: "'There is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion.'"
Yes, she would keep out this weak passion! She had tasted its joys, and that memory must last her a lifetime.
On the doorstep she encountered Gerard Strobridge just coming out – he raised his hat and said politely that it was an abominably cold day – then he passed on down the steps and so towards Hill Street.
And Katherine Bush went up to her room.
CHAPTER IX
The week of the tableaux had come and gone, and had opened yet another window for Katherine Bush to peep at the world from. She already knew many of the people who came to the luncheons and rehearsals, from their letters, and now she judged of them face to face. She had been in great request to take down innumerable orders, and arrange business details, and had listened and inwardly digested what she heard.
Her contempt for some of the company was as great as for Miss Mabel Cawber – she discovered a few with titles and positions who were what she disdainfully dubbed, "Middle class underneath!"
"Only that they have been more used to things, they are as paltry as Mabel," she said to herself, and set about, as was her custom, to find out why – and from what families they had sprung – and obtained some satisfaction in the confirmation of her theory of heredity, in discovering that most of these could lay small claim to blueness of blood. The insolence of others she approved of.
Many of the American peeresses who were posing as queens, and nuns, and Greek goddesses, she truly admired – they must have been at one time like herself – out to learn – and now were conscious that they had made good.
"But I mean to have more repose of manner when I am there," she told herself.
Of Sarah Lady Garribardine's sayings and views, she kept a great store in her mind. This was a real aristocrat she felt. A human, faulty, strong woman, incapable of meanness or anything which could lower the flag of her order. She was supremely insolent, too, but then she never did anything which could impair people's respect.
She was hard and generous – and acted up to the doctrine that "noblesse oblige" and entirely believed in the divine right of kings and of Sarah Lady Garribardine! She had not been a thirteenth century Baron's daughter for nothing! Katherine Bush shared every one of Her Ladyship's views and moulded all her ideals upon them.
Each day she was enlarging her vocabulary of words to use – adapting sentences which she had read of fine English to modern requirements, pruning colloquialisms, cultivating pronunciation, polishing her critical faculties. She was perfectly conscious that she had often employed homely phrases in the past, and had not always paid enough attention to grammar in speaking, though for some time she had not used "whatever for," or "of a Sunday," as poor Matilda always did.
She learned as much comparatively of the general world of society in that one week, as she had learned of the nature of man in her three days with Lord Algy. He was her first step – these women were her second. Lady Garribardine was her head master, and Gerard Strobridge should be her tutor – when the moment she was ready for him came.
Her suspicions as to her employer's disapproval of the Duchess of Dashington were realised fully one day, in the beginning of the week. The poor young-old lady's rheumatism was very painful, and she remained in her room having her favourite nephew and Mrs. Delemar up with her there to lunch, on a little table close to her gilt bed.
Katherine was writing at an escritoire near, having finished her own meal downstairs.
"You need not go, Miss Bush, if you can continue those invitations with our chatter."
So Katherine stayed.
The three talked of many things at first and Katherine hardly noticed them, but presently her attention was caught by a name. Mr. Strobridge was saying:
"Seraphim, it will be very difficult to refuse Dulcie Dashington, she has written to Beatrice this morning – she is quite determined to play the part of Nell Gwyn as the orange-girl."
"Then she can play it in some other tableaux vivants– but not in these that I am arranging." Her Ladyship's voice was acid.
"But why, dearest Sarah, are you so down on poor Dulcie?" Mrs. Delemar protested. "She is really a very good sort, and looks so splendid in these short-skirted, rather common clothes."
"I am not hard on her, Läo; I am sure, had she been the wife of a jolly young stockbroker addicted to low practical jokes and rowdy sport, she would have been a most admirable creature. It is not the woman I am down on; there is just such another at Blissington, she helps me with the bazaars and the school treats, her husband is a local brewer, and we are capital friends. It is the Duchess of Dashington I ostracise, as I consider she has done more to degrade her order in these socialistic days than any other member of our sadly humbled peerage."
The other two laughed amusedly, but Lady Garribardine went on, raising her voice a little. It was a subject upon which she felt so deeply, that it overcame for the moment her usual dryly humorous handling of any matter.
"Let her have her lovers – we have all had lovers – No one in the least objects to them, arranged suitably, and of one's own class. I am not concerned with her or any other woman's physical morality. – Such morality is a question of temperament and geography and custom – but I am profoundly concerned to endeavour to keep up some semblance of dignity in the aristocracy, and Dulcie Dashington has lowered the whole prestige of Duchesses because she is of gentle birth – though Heaven knows what her father was with poor dear Susan's irresponsible ways!"
Gerard Strobridge smiled as he lit a cigarette.
"There is a great deal in what you say, Seraphim; she has certainly dragged the title down a good deal, with her fancies for professional gamesters of all sorts for friends, and her total disregard of tradition at Dashington – but you forget that she has had a good deal to put up with from Toni, who is an impossible husband."
"No man is an impossible husband if he is a Duke; at least no Duchess ought to find him so – and if he were, that is not the slightest excuse. When a woman undertakes a great position she should realise that personal feelings have ceased to count. She has, so to speak, accepted the responsibility of guarding the safety of an order, just as a sentry is responsible when he is on duty. He would be shot in war time if he fell asleep on duty – however pitiful his case might be from hardship and want of rest. He would be shot as an example to the others not to allow even nature to overcome them and endanger the post."
"It seems very cruel," piped Mrs. Delemar.
"Not at all!" Lady Garribardine flashed while her voice vibrated with scorn. "We are at war now with the Radical masses and cannot afford to jeopardise positions – either keep up prestige, or throw up the game and let the whole thing go by the board, but while we pretend there is still an aristocracy in England we, the members of it, should defend it. Dulcie Dashington and her ways and her photographs in the papers, and her vulgarity, and the flaunting of her unsavoury domestic affairs, are a byword and as long as I have a voice in society, and can lay some claim to power, I shall let it be known what my opinion is, and why I will not receive her. To me there is no sin like betraying an order."
"I suppose you are quite right," Mrs. Delemar now agreed meekly, "but there are such lots of odd people in society who do unheard-of things; it is these boys marrying these wretched actresses or Americans which has changed everything."
"Not at all!" contradicted her ladyship. "Boys have always married actresses from time to time, and some of them have proved very decent creatures, and if they do err, what does it matter? No one expects better from them, they are making no real breach in the wall. – And as for Americans, they are often very pretty and so clever that they seldom disgrace their new station; they are like converts to Rome, more zealous than the born papists. The only evil which can lie at their door is that they have too much money, and have given false values to entertaining, and perhaps have encouraged eccentric amusements. – No, my dear child, it is the English-women themselves who have lost self-respect, and have lowered the flag, and when one of really high birth does it, like Dulcie Dashington, she should be made to pay the price."
This was unanswerable, Katherine Bush thought as she listened, and she wondered why the other two should chaff lightly, as though it were just one of Lady Garribardine's notions. That is what generally astonished her a good deal; no one appeared to have any convictions or enthusiasm, they seemed to her to be a company of drifters, so little energy appeared to be shown by any of them. They were unpunctual and unpractical, but they were amusing and deliciously happy-go-lucky. If they had any real feelings none appeared upon the surface; even Lady Beatrice and her coterie of highly evolved poetesses and other artistic worldings, flew from theme to theme, turning intent faces upon new fads each week.
Most people's manners were casual, and their attitudes, too, would often have shocked Mabel Cawber, so far were they from being genteel. The few who truly fulfilled Katherine Bush's ideas of the meaning of the word "lady" stood out like stars. But with all these flaws, as a collection of people, there was that ease of manner, that total absence of self-consciousness, about them which never could be known at Bindon's Green.
"I suppose times are changed," Katherine told herself, "and the laxity is producing a new type – I do wonder how they would all behave if some cataclysm happened again, like the French Revolution. But when my day comes I mean to uphold the order which I shall join, as Her Ladyship does."
At the last moment, Lady Beatrice did not go as Ganymede to the Artist Models' ball. The history of her alteration of character was a rather bitterly humorous story for Gerard Strobridge's ears. She had been trying on the dress when a note had arrived with a parcel for her from her husband's aunt, which contained a very beautiful Greek mantle with these few words:
Dear Child,
I send you this mantle which I hope you will wear; it will not really spoil the character of your Ganymede dress, and from the back it will hide the fact that your legs are very slightly bowed. Your charming face will help to distract eyes from the front view, and this very small flaw in your anatomy will pass unnoticed.
Affectionately yours,Sarah Garribardine.
She had written it with her own hand. Lady Beatrice stamped with rage, and then flew to her looking-glass. She stood this way and that, and finally came to the conclusion that there might be the faintest substratum of truth in the accusation. The rest of the limbs were not so perfect as her tiny ankles. It would not be safe to risk criticism. So the costume was altered and became a Flora with garlands of roses and long diaphanous draperies – and Gerard and Lady Garribardine watched her entry with the Vermont party with relieved eyes, and the wily aunt said:
"You can achieve the impossible with women, G., if you only appeal to, or wound, their vanity. You must never give orders to one unless she is in love with you – then she glories in obedience – but a modern wife can only be controlled either on the principle of the Irish-man's pig being driven towards Dublin when it was intended for Cork, or by a Machiavellian manipulation of her self-love."
"And then the game is not worth the candle," Mr. Strobridge sighed with a little discouragement. "I wonder, Seraphim, what is worth while? Striving for the infinite, I suppose – certainly the finite things are but Dead Sea fruit."
"Gerard, my poor boy, you make me fear, when you talk like that, that one day you will be profoundly in love!"
"Heaven forbid! – It would upset my digestion. I was thirty-five last month and have to be careful!"
And in her comfortable bed in Berkeley Square, Katherine Bush read "The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" far into the night.
Society had not altered in many respects since these hundred and sixty odd years ago, she thought!
The tableaux were the greatest success and a large sum of money was secured for one of Lady Garribardine's pet charities.
Time went on, Christmas was approaching. It was to be spent at Blissington Court, the place Lady Garribardine had inherited with the barony of d'Estaire from her father. Garribardine was a Scotch title while her ladyship was rabidly English. They would go down to Blissington and have a family party. Her three grandchildren (her daughter, Lady Mereton, was far away, the bored wife of a Colonial Governor), Gerard Strobridge and perhaps Lady Beatrice and the two old cousins with a young niece of theirs, and a stray man or two, and Mrs. Delemar – but no one could be sure who would turn up at the end. Katherine was not to have any holiday; she had come too recently, her employer explained to her, and the Christmas accumulations were quite beyond her power to tackle alone.