The Career of Katherine Bush Part 13

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 pa.s.sage--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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s.

"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 s.p.a.ce 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 ladys.h.i.+p'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."