The Career of Katherine Bush Part 50

Then she scolded herself. To fear was to draw inevitably the thing feared. She must have no fears and no regrets. She must pursue her plan with intelligence, and if the feeling that she was using deception grew to be insupportable, then she must have courage to face the result of her own past action, and she must admit herself beaten and retire from the game. She went over the chances of discovery. Lord Algy would never give her away; she had calculated upon that fact when she had chosen an aristocrat for her partner in initiation. There remained only the valet Hanson, who had seen her often enough possibly to recognise her again.

But he did not know her real name, and had shown no interest in her--too accustomed, probably, to the changes in his master's fancies to remark upon individuals. Also, she was so completely altered since those days, no casual remembrance Hanson might have kept of her would be likely to revive if he chanced to see her now.

The odds were ten thousand to one that neither the Duke nor anyone else would ever know of her adventure. It thus resolved itself only into a question for her own honest soul to decide.

The common sense way to look at everything was that the time for these heart-searchings was not yet; and that her energies must be concentrated upon continuing to profit by the results of her first sensible action in making the impression upon the Duke's imagination unbiased by cla.s.s prejudices.

So presently she grew quieter and at last fell asleep over the wood fire, the volume of the "Letters of Abelard and Heloise" still in her hand.

She was awakened after a while by the entrance of Lady Garribardine, and quickly rose from her seat.

"I am sorry to disturb your well-earned Sunday peace, Miss Bush, but some of the guests are growing restive with the wet. Go and take charge of those in the drawing-room and accompany their songs. I don't think this party has been well chosen, the elements do not a.s.similate."

Katherine was laboriously doing her duty when the Duke came in. He did not attempt to come near her, but stayed by the great centre fireplace talking to one of the newcomers without his usual air of making a virtue of necessity, which his att.i.tude towards the three charmers had hitherto suggested to Katherine.

She could get a good view of him from the piano, and found her eye greatly pleased. He was certainly very attractive. He had that same humorous and rather cynical expression which so often distinguished her mistress. His figure was so perfect and his clothes, with their air of a bygone day!

For a second, Katherine's hand seemed to tingle again in the place which he had kissed, and she experienced that nameless thrill which is half quiver and half shock. She felt that she hated having to play the accompaniments, and resented her position. It gave her some relief to crash loud chords. None of the younger men could approach the Duke in charm. What was he talking to that woman about? Interesting books? some of their mutual friends, perhaps? She wished she could hear--but she could not. His voice was lazy again; she caught its tones now and then, but not the words, and the firelight made his emerald ring sparkle. She wondered if there was some history connected with it; it was so large and so unusual a signet for a man to wear. How exquisite it would have been to have been able to have let him come up to the schoolroom, then she could have asked him about it, perhaps. She sighed unconsciously, and presently they all went in to tea.

There was some inscrutable expression in her eyes as they met his in handing him his cup. They were a little shadowed and sorrowful. They drew him like a magnet, so that desire made him at last use sophistry in his arguments with himself.

What harm could there be in a little casual conversation? and he took a seat near.

"Had you profitable repose this afternoon in your armchair, Miss Bush?"

"Yes, I hope so--I was sorting things and getting them into their niches in my mind. I hope you had not too wet a walk; I saw you from the window pa.s.sing the end of the rose garden."

"I wish you had come out; the air was fresh and it is rather nice to have the wet in one's face at times----So you put everything into niches in your mind? Was it in chaos before, then?"

"Yes, partly."

"What has caused this upset?"

"That----" and there was a peculiar tone in her voice--"I should much like to know--We seem to come to new vistas in life, do we not--when everything must be looked at in a fresh perspective?"

"That is very true----"

"And then we must call up all our sense of balance to grasp the new outlines accurately, and not to be led away into false conceptions through emotion."

The Duke was greatly interested. How exactly she was describing his own state of mind--but what had caused such thoughts to arise in hers?

"It is extremely difficult to see things as they are when emotion enters into the question," he said, "and how dull everything appears when it does not!"

She looked at him, and there were rebellion and suppressed pa.s.sion in her compelling eyes--and the Duke's pulses suddenly began to bound; but this was the sole exchange of sentences they were vouchsafed, for Blanche Montague subsided into a sofa close to his side and beamed at him with a whispered challenge. So Katherine turned and devoted herself to some other guests beyond.

She did not come into the drawing-room again that night. She asked her mistress if she might be excused, for if not really wanted, there were numbers of letters to write. And Mordryn looked for her in vain, and eventually manoeuvred the conversation round to the reason for her absence, when speaking to old Gwendoline l'Estaire who, he had perceived, was devoted to the girl.

"I think she must be tired to-night, having asked Sarah to excuse her. I don't remember her ever to have done such a thing before. She is such a dear child, I don't know what Sarah would do without her--we are all very fond of her. A perfect lady, wherever she came from, but I really do not care from where."

"Of course not!" cordially responded the Duke. And he wondered what had made her tired, and why her eyes had been rebellious and sad. Was she wounded because he had suggested coming to the schoolroom, with the risk of drawing down censure upon her head? She needed some explanation certainly from him, he felt, upon this matter. It had been thoughtless on his part and not really kind. He would not leave to-morrow, after all. Why should not Gwendoline, who was stupid and good-natured, be used to further his plans if the chance to see Miss Bush looked too impossibly difficult of attainment? But he went to bed with no sense of happiness or satisfaction in his heart.

He liked rising early, and escaped to the rose garden alone about nine o'clock on Easter Monday morning. No windows but those of the smoking-room wing and those of the picture gallery and the main hall looked out upon this secluded spot. He had walked to the end when he saw in the distance at a turn in the shrubbery, the figure of Katherine disappearing towards the park. This was luck, indeed! He hurried after her, and overtook her as she opened the shrubbery gate. She carried a basket of fresh eggs and a black bottle.

"Whither away, Mistress?" he asked, as he raised his cap and walked by her side.

"I am going to take these to old Mrs. Peterson at the far lodge; she has not been well these last days."

"Jacob's wife?"

"Yes."

"Then may I come, too? I must have some exercise; look upon it like that, since I strongly suspect if I told you that it was simply for the pleasure of being with you, you would send me back."

"I should not want to, but I suppose I should have to say that."

She was looking very pretty in her rough homespun suit and green felt hat. The wind had blown no colour as yet into her cheeks, but had made her little ears almost a scarlet pink. She seemed the embodiment of sensuous youth and health and life. Her type was so far from being ascetic. What ever the mental gifts might be, Nature would have a strong say in everything concerning her. The Duke admired her supple, slender limbs, and he reflected, just as Gerard had done long before, how very stately she would become presently--if she married and had children----Sir John--but he banished Sir John!

"Shall we forget all those stupid conventions on this wild March morning, and return to the stage in our acquaintance at which we were when we said good-night at Gerard Strobridge's?"

"That would be nice."

"Is it a bargain, then?"

"Yes."

"I am not to be 'Your Grace,' and you are not to remind me every two minutes that you are Lady Garribardine's secretary."

"Very well."

"If you remember, the last words we had together then were finished by a question from you to me, as to whether there was not something else in love beyond that pa.s.sionate side which you intimated that you already knew."

"Yes, I remember."

"I think there is a great deal more, but it would not be complete alone.

Love to be lasting must be a mixture of both pa.s.sion and idealism, but where can one find such a combination in these days? The emotion which most people call love is composed of self-interest, and a little transitory exaltation of the senses. But such old-fashioned and divine qualities as devotion and tenderness and self-sacrifice are almost unknown."

Katherine did not speak; the "Letters of Abelard and Heloise" were very fresh in her memory; one pa.s.sage in _Heloise's_ first letter had struck her forcibly:

If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is in the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination and satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full of love and leave no vacancy for any other pa.s.sion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity, because they enjoy content.

And now, with sudden illumination of the spirit, the conviction came to her that this was the truth, and that this man walking by her side talking in his exquisite voice to her, looking at her with his deep blue eyes, could inspire in her all the pa.s.sion and all the devotion, and all the tenderness which _Heloise_ had felt of old. And the magnitude of the discovery kept her silent, with lowered lids.

He waited for her to speak, but when no words came, he bent forward and looked into her face. The eyes which at last met his were troubled and sweet, and not falcon-like in their proud serenity as usual.

"Do not let us talk about love," she said at last. "It is a moving theme, and better left alone. Yesterday I was reading the 'Letters of Abelard and Heloise,' and it is wiser to remember the wisdom in this phrase of _Abelard's_ than to talk of love: 'What great advantages would philosophy give us over other men, if by studying it we could learn to govern our pa.s.sions.'"

Mordryn smiled.

"Finish the quotation," he commanded, "or shall I? 'What efforts, what relapses, what agitations do we undergo. And how long are we tossed in this confusion unable to exert our reason to possess our souls, or to rule our affections. What a troublesome employment is love!'

Philosophers remember _Abelard_ as a great scholar and ethical teacher, but he lives not by his learning or his philosophy, but by the memory of his profound and pa.s.sionate love."