"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 sn.o.b as Fred, and even more ignorant. I would not let him b.u.t.ton 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 n.o.bby 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 "s.e.x and Character." This latter had interested her deeply.

There was a great deal of biting truth in his a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d, 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 had not the slightest sentiment about "leaving home"; she would have found such a thing quite ridiculous. On the contrary, a sense of exaltation filled her. She was going forever from this cramped, small attic and the uncongenial environment of the house. And she must hold herself in stern command and never waste an opportunity to improve herself in manner and mind. Of course, she might be liable to make a few mistakes at first, and the work might be hard, but if will was strong and emotions were checked, the road to success and development of her personality could not be a long one. And when she had gained freedom--how splendidly would she use it! There should be no false values for her!

Her new dress, the one in the style of Lady Beatrice Strobridge, would be home by the Tuesday night, and she had got a "dressy" blouse from Oxford Street, in case she should ever have to appear in the evenings.

She would do very well, she felt.

The family, with the exception of Matilda, were not sorry that she was departing. The father had left Laburnum Villa and a certain sum to keep it up for the benefit of the whole bunch of them; and when Mr. Frederick Bush would move into a house of his own with the refined Mabel Cawber, Gladys and Bert and Ethel looked forward to an uninterrupted time of jollity, unclouded by Katherine's aloofness and contempt.

Matilda alone grieved in secret. She thought Katherine was superior to them all in spite of her reserve, and the last evening, while she sat with her by the attic fire, she told her so.

"No, I am not, Tild--I am not superior. I am just different--all our aims are as wide apart as the poles. Glad and Ethel and the boys never want to learn anything--they resent the thought that there could be anything that they do not know. Their whole att.i.tude is resentful towards any knowledge. They like to browse on deceiving themselves over every question and aspect of life. So they will all just stay where they are. Fred, an auctioneer, henpecked by Mabel; Bert, a clerk. Poor Glad, the downtrodden drudge of Bob Hartley, and Ethel probably something of the same. You, dear old Tild, will be a sentimental old maid looking after the others' children--because you are entirely a 'mother woman'--unless you take Charlie Prodgers, as I said the other day, and have heaps of little Prodgers! Oh! it is all just respectable, comfortable squalor--and words won't express how glad I am to get out of it!"

Matilda was quite incensed.

"I'd rather be a lady, however poor, in my own circle, and treated as such there, than a servant in a grand house as you're going to be, Kitten. I'd let them see I'd be above taking their orders!"

She hoped this taunt would tell, but Katherine only smiled.

"Poor, dear old Tild," she said. "You do not know, perhaps, that it is a wise man who understands how to obey those placed over him, and to exact the same obedience from those beneath. When I have learned my lessons and have obtained a place of command, then I shall not only enforce obedience, but I shall remove from my path anyone who crosses my will."

"Oh, my!" gasped Matilda.

"Do you suppose I argued with Liv and Dev and showed them that I would not take their orders? No, of course not; they valued me and raised my salary because I did what I was told to do. They were paying me money and were in a position to command. No one forced me to take their money; I went there of my own free will, and was to do specified things for a specified remuneration. I did them to the best of my ability, and so I am going on to something better. Lady Garribardine is paying me ninety pounds a year with a rise; and I am to be hers to command for certain things. When I have learned all that that situation can teach me, I shall get a larger and higher position, and so on until I reach my goal, when I shall rule--do not fear, Tild. _I shall rule._"

"I daresay you will," Matilda admitted, awed.

Katherine's face had a strange, compelling force when she spoke thus.

"But we aren't all the same, Kitten. Glad, for instance, has more pride; look how she left Brown and Melbury's, where she was getting more than at Ermantine's, because she would not take orders from the new manager they put over her department."

"That sort of pride was entirely worthy of Gladys' intelligence, and it had landed her with a less salary, no one's added respect, and not much to look forward to in the future." And then, with a burst of feeling, "Oh! Tild, if I only could make laws, I would enforce education to such an extent that there could not be left any fools like Gladys!"

Then she said good-night to Matilda and gently pushed her from the room, where she looked as though she meant to stay for another half-hour, and returning to her armchair, she began to read that book of Theophile Gautier's which she had bought on the Monday morning, and discovered that its t.i.tle was simply "Mademoiselle de Maupin."

CHAPTER VI

Lady Garribardine was having a tea-party with some good music, when Katherine Bush arrived. She realised immediately that it was stupid of her to have chosen the afternoon for her entrance into her new post, and Bronson, the dignified butler, left her in no doubt as to his view of the matter, as he directed the hurried transport of her luggage through the hall.

"Her Ladyship expected you this morning, miss," he said, severely.

"Then she should have told me at what hour I was to come," Katherine answered, quietly; "she mentioned none."

Bronson stared. Miss Arnott, clergyman's daughter though she was, would never have said a thing like that; she would have been nervous and apologetic in a minute, poor thing! But this young woman, whom Bronson had very good reason to believe, from what he had been able to gather, belonged merely to the lower middle cla.s.s, had yet the audacity to give herself all the airs and calm a.s.surance appertaining to a lady of the world!

Here the entrance of two guests took up his attention, a man and a woman.

Katherine stood back and waited for directions, while she watched closely. The man was the same that she had seen on the former occasion.

The woman interested her; she was tall and droopy, with wide vague eyes, and a wisp of buffish chiffon about her neck inside her furs, which Bronson a.s.sisted her to remove. Then Katherine saw that she wore the dress which Gladys had described, and which in its general features had been taken more or less as the model for her own.

This must be Lady Beatrice Strobridge.

"Gerard," the lady said, rather querulously, "I don't mean to stay for more than ten minutes--so don't get away into some difficult corner with Lao, if you mean to leave with me."

The man answered with polite indifference.

"Bronson will see you safely to the motor; I promised my aunt to stay to hear Venzoni; he is sure to be late."

Then they went on up the marble stairs and a young footman was sent with Katherine Bush in the lift at the back of the hall.

"'Gerard'--it is a nice name--and he looks a nice man," she mused, while they were carried aloft, "and he is bored with his wife. Gladys was quite right; why did she have that rag of chiffon? It spoilt the whole dress."

The housekeeper met her when they arrived in the top pa.s.sage, and took her under her wing.