The Career of Katherine Bush Part 28

But what in Heaven's name had caused it? Did it concern him?--Or was he only the medium connecting some memory?--He wished he could feel sure.

Then there was the incident of his flowers; why had she worn them, and then thrown them from her as if they had burnt her?

His rather tormenting thoughts kept him too frequent company--especially as the provoking girl seemed to have retired from sight, and except on rare occasions, before everyone, he never had the chance of even a word.

Lady Garribardine's rheumatism was better, so Miss Bush had not even been required to pour out the tea.

It was with a sigh of intense relief that he returned into the hall after tucking Lao and his wife into the motor en route for London town, on Sat.u.r.day morning an hour or two before lunch.

The hostess was not down to speed her parting guests; she was very much occupied in her boudoir, and they had gone thither to bid her farewell.

As Mr. Strobridge mounted the stairs, he met Katherine coming out of the room with her arms full of papers and small parcels, and a couple of big books, which she had some ado to carry.

"Let me help you," he said, eagerly--and she gave him the heavy volumes without a word.

A sense of exasperation arose in him. He would not be flouted like this!

He followed her to the old schoolroom, merely remarking on the way that now all the guests, except Colonel Hawthorne, had departed, he felt there was breathing s.p.a.ce.

Katherine seemed quite unconcerned and indifferent as to whether he did or did not; and she took his burden from him and thanked him absently, with a look towards the door evidently expecting him to go back again whence he came.

But he showed no signs of moving.

"Am I to be offered a chair on this my first call upon Miss Bush?"

"It isn't a call--you helped me to carry the books. I am very busy to-day."

"I don't care. I am here now, and I am going to stay--I shall tell my aunt how inhospitable and ungracious you are!"

"Sneak!" and she began sorting the little parcels into a row, her sullen eyes smiling. "I always hated tell-tales at school."

"So did I--but I could commit any crime to be with you. I have been tantalized all the week--Miss Bush not even seen at tea--and only glimpses of her scurrying along pa.s.sages and up stairs!"

"What then do you want with Miss Bush?--Have you some more charity business to do?"

"No--The charity will be quite on the side of the fair Katherine, if she will allow a weary wayfarer to bask in the suns.h.i.+ne of her presence for a little while."

"Mr. Strobridge, you are talking nonsense, and I have not a moment's time to waste on you."

"I love to talk nonsense. It annoys you, and I want to see your eyes flash. I have seen them laughing--and full of pain--and snakily cold. Now I want them to flash--and then I would like them to grow tender.--They would be divine like that."

Katherine sat down and took up a pen, with a glance of withering indifference; then she began to address the labels of the packets from a list.

He came quite close to her; he was feeling a number of things.

"What a temptress you are--aren't you?--teasing me like this!"

Katherine now opened her eyes wide and stared at him, but she did not move away an inch.

"The whole thing is only in your imagination," she said, calmly. "You are a proof of my theory that personal emotion creates appearance, and hides reality."

"You understand then that I do feel emotion?"

"Why, of course. A man of your brains and cultivation could not behave in so foolish a way otherwise."

He drew back and leaned against the mantelpiece while he laughed shortly.

Katherine continued to work.

"I am merely waiting until you have finished directing those confounded parcels, which I presume are for this post--and then I am going to coax you to talk to me--May I smoke?"

"Yes, if you like--" still with lowered head.

"Won't you have a cigarette?"

"Thanks."

He handed her one from his case. She pulled a box of matches near and lit it casually, going on with her work as a boy might have done--There was no knocking off of ash or graceful movement of the hand in the fas.h.i.+on of Lao, who loved her white jewelled fingers to be seen to advantage.

Neither of them spoke. He might not have been in the room as far as she was concerned! He, on the contrary, was profoundly aware of her presence. Emotion such as he had not felt for years was surging through him.

She was the most d.a.m.nably attractive creature, he thought, he had ever met. She awoke primitive pa.s.sions, and stirred his blood. There was that intense note of reality and strength about her. She was like some dangerous lazy lioness. She made him feel that civilisation was slipping from him, and that he could willingly seize her for a jungle mate.

She, however, continued to smoke and to write for quite ten minutes, until all the parcels were addressed, and several papers examined and annotated and filed. Then she looked up. His eyes had never left her face.

"I can't think how you can stare like that," she said, with abominable matter-of-factness. "It would make me blink."

"I can enjoy looking at the sun--Now are those infernal things finished?

I have been waiting with the patience of Job."

"But I can't think what for?"

"To talk to you."

"Well, talk then! I must do some typing," and she got up and went to her machine, which was on another table by the window. She knew perfectly well that she was driving him mad; it gave her a savage pleasure, and seemed a sort of balance to her own emotions on Christmas night about Algy.

He came and leant against the mantelpiece and looked down at her and quoted Dryden:

"She knows her man, and when you rant and swear Can draw you to her with a single hair."

and stretching out his hand, he touched for an instant the faint broad waves on her forehead.

And now he saw her eyes flash brilliantly enough!

"If you are going to be impertinent, Mr. Strobridge, the staircase into the garden is quite close, and the sooner you find your way to it, the better I shall be pleased."

"I would not be impertinent for the world--the temptation was overwhelming; it is so lovely, your hair--"

His voice was quite sincere, and it was not in her plan to quarrel with him.