“When are we going to forgather?” it ran. “Letters are always so inadequate. I have crowds of things to tell you, and why don’t you write more about yourself? Your account of life at Wynnstay was most amusing. I could picture the deadly regularity of its clockwork, but what about the alien in its midst? Has she become a carefully adjusted machine too? I know what it must be to live with the Curreys day after day, and I wish I could help you in some way. I am sending you down a couple of books I think you will like, and a newspaper-cutting in which you will see I am described as an earnest, middle-aged man! Rather a blow, that! I wonder if I do impress people that way? Of course, it was probably written by some reporter at the back of the hall, but—’tis a horrid thought. Earnest! Middle-aged! I’ve still got two thirties to spare....”
“When are we going to forgather?” it ran. “Letters are always so inadequate. I have crowds of things to tell you, and why don’t you write more about yourself? Your account of life at Wynnstay was most amusing. I could picture the deadly regularity of its clockwork, but what about the alien in its midst? Has she become a carefully adjusted machine too? I know what it must be to live with the Curreys day after day, and I wish I could help you in some way. I am sending you down a couple of books I think you will like, and a newspaper-cutting in which you will see I am described as an earnest, middle-aged man! Rather a blow, that! I wonder if I do impress people that way? Of course, it was probably written by some reporter at the back of the hall, but—’tis a horrid thought. Earnest! Middle-aged! I’ve still got two thirties to spare....”
At lunch—or, as Sir John would insist on everyone calling it, luncheon—she did not sit next to him or have an opportunity for any private conversation. She had to be content with a long look and a smile. The vicar and his wife always dined with them on Sunday, and there were two or three other people, quite uninteresting, but very chatty. Claudia wondered vaguely why uninteresting people generally are chatty.
It was not until nearly four that Claudia found herself free to talk to Colin, and she had been sitting so long that she jumped to her feet as the vicaress was lost to sight.
“Let’s go for a little stroll before tea. Colin, do you know the view from the windmill? It’s rather jolly. Come and see it. Get up, Pat.”
“No, mum, it’s too nerve-racking looking after Socrates. Now he’s chained to the tree I don’t want to disturb him. No, go thou to the view. Peradventure thy servant will slumber a little. Those beastly ducks and a perfectly abominable creature called a guinea-fowl wouldn’t let me sleep this morning, and the hardness of the bed wouldn’t let me sleep last night. These facts, combined with an English Sunday lunch (I beg his pardon—eon) make me what writers call somnolent. Go away and leave me to somnol.”
Claudia gave a great sigh of relief as they turned out of the gates of Wynnstay, and he looked at her with quick sympathy.
“It isn’t an exhilarating existence at Wynnstay, is it?” he said. “I know how you feel about it. But it won’t be for much longer, I gather?”
“No, thank goodness. Itisrather dreadful. I either feel perfectly comatose or so irritably alive that I want to scream. Don’t let us talk about it. Let me tell you how glad I am at the success of your book. What a magnificent notice you had in theTimes. Don’t you feel on top of yourself?”
“I won’t pretend that I’m not glad. But, honestly, it has been rather a surprise. I had a horrible feeling all the time I was writing it that it wasvieux jeu, that it had all been said before. It is charming to find people so appreciative,” he concluded modestly.
“You’ve waited and done something worth doing,” said Claudia slowly. “That was prophesied of you long ago.”
“My waiting was pure laziness,” he said lightly. “The silent man is not always the wise one, though he does look unutterables.”
“Well, I’m glad, I’m very, very glad,” said his companion simply. “It gives me quite a thrill when I read the notices. Now tell me about Pat and her farm.”
Claudia found that he had gone into the whole mattervery thoroughly, as he did everything he took up, and that Pat, through him, had made a very sound and promising bargain.
“And you approve of Pat going out there?” she said. “It sounds rather mad. Suppose I took a craze in my head to go out to Canada and farm, would you do all this for me and pack me off with your blessing?”
He laughed. “You and Pat are two very different propositions. Besides, you are not a bachelor like Pat.”
“No.”
There was a slight pause.
“Pat doesn’t seem to want to marry. She snaps her fingers at your sex.”
“Oh! that will come later on. She’ll marry right enough one day, when the right man comes along. Pat isn’t unfeminine or a crank.”
Claudia shot a sideways glance at him as they walked in step together. They were passing a hedge fragrant with honeysuckle and she stopped and picked a piece.
“Do you know—oh! do you mind getting that top piece—I once thought you had a—a fancy for her.”
He looked down at her, honeysuckle in hand, a curious twinkle in his grey eyes. “I’m very fond of Pat, but not as a wife, thank you. I’m neither old enough nor young enough for her. Middle-age would not mate well with the Amazon.”
“What ridiculous nonsense! The reporter was blind. You don’t look middle-aged.... Are you ever going to take a wife, Colin? Thank you. Doesn’t it smell sweet?”
They were approaching the top of the hill on which stood the windmill revolving very slowly, and from whence a magnificent view of the country around could be obtained. Perhaps the jerks in their conversation were due to the need of economy in breathing, for the climb was fairly steep.
“Do you insist on my marrying?”
“No ... of course not.... Isn’t it hot? Why did I choose this walk? But most men get married sooner or later, and—you—don’t dislike women, do you? You’re not unmasculine or a crank! But as a matter of fact,” she added recklessly and breathlessly, “I’d rather you didn’t, I think.”
She thought he gave a little exclamation, but she could not be sure.
“Why would you rather—I didn’t?”
“Married friends are never the same as before they were married. Oh! here we are at the top at last! Isn’t the view worth the climb? No, please, don’t get married. I—I don’t want you to.”
What was she saying? She hardly knew, except that it was the truth, the plain, unvarnished truth. She had reallyhatedthe idea of his marrying anyone, even Pat. There was something in the air this warm summer afternoon that made her take a reckless joy in saying the things she should have decently hid.
“I—I don’t want you to,” she repeated, suddenly raising her eyes to his as they stood side by side, each apparently a little breathless still.
She found he was looking at her and the quiet strength of his face was all broken up. The eyes looked at her as they had looked once before. When? When she had been flirting with Frank Hamilton at her mother’s.
And suddenly she knew.
It was as though something that had always been hiding round the corner for many years unexpectedly came into view. And with the knowledge came a rush of joy, so great, so overpowering, that she reeled. Instinctively she put out her hands and he took them in his.
“Colin, I never knew until just this minute. Isn’t it curious.... I’m so glad, so glad.”
The hands held hers very tightly, the warm, capablehands that had always held her heart so safely, so securely, if she had only known it. He was looking at her as though he could never look enough. She knew now the love that she had wanted so badly, so desperately, had been at her side all the time, faithful, tender, and, what means so much to a woman, understanding.
The scent of the honeysuckle, delicately persistent over the other field flowers, was around them both. The windmill across the field was giving slow, rheumatic creaks. A bird was chirping noisily in the bushy hedge.
“Claudia, you can’t mean that you——”
“Yes.... I think I have always loved you, only I didn’t realize it. The very strength of my love made it so quiet that I didn’t notice it. When you are a girl you imagine that love will come with a great stir and noise, with a flourish of trumpets, so that all your senses will be deafened, and you will be bound a captive. One doesn’t think of it as a great, noiseless, silent thing.” She gave a queer little laugh that was a half sigh. “One always expects the big drum, a sort of circus, in fact.... Oh, my dear! I’m so glad I know. That’s all I can think of now.”
As she looked at him she saw that his love for her had taken its toll. There were little lines round the eyes—lines of repression, of unsatisfied desire that had not been there when she first knew him. He had suffered in that year in the Argentine when, because he was very human, he could not bear the sight of her happiness, when he had fled from her. He had schooled himself to be her friend, to aid her whenever she should call upon him, after that year, but it had not been done easily. Most men would have ridden away, unable to fulfil the demands of friendship, unwilling to bear the continued sting which the sight of her brought them. She saw now that his one aim had always been to make her happy, he himself had always come in a poor second. Gilbert had wanted herto make him happy, and she had chosen—Gilbert!
“Oh, Colin!” she cried, “I don’t deserve that you should have gone on caring for me all this time.”
“Claudia, I can’t believe it. I’ve hungered for your love so long that, like a starving man, I can’t eat. I tried to be content with your friendship. I tried not to think of you in any other way, even when——”
“Yes?”
How steady and tender her eyes were.
“Even when I knew you were not happy. I’d given up all hope. I had almost made myself believe I was content with your platonic affection.”
She laughed a little mischievously.
“Shall I take my love back? Ah, no! I couldn’t. It’s been out of my keeping so long. Yes, it’s true, Colin.” She blushed hotly. “I will be honest. I have felt passion for two other men, Gilbert—I thought that was passion born of love—and another. But the best part of me has always mated with you, always loved you. And yet I didn’t discover it until I thought you were going to marry Pat.”
The wordmarrysobered both of them a little, but did not detract from their happiness.
“Colin,” she said gently, “why did you let me marry Gilbert? I asked you once before in a different form. I think—I am almost sure, I was ripe for love in those old days when we used to poke round picture-galleries and book-shops together. I was always perfectly happy with you. Didn’t that mean love? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“My dear, I wanted to give you plenty of time. Perhaps it was a mistake, but I felt it was your due. You were so young, so beautiful, such a success in Society, that I wanted you to have every chance. I’m nothing in particular, and I didn’t feel it was fair to press my suit until you’d got to know what the world and men were like. You see, you were always a little romantic, idealistic, enthusiastic, and such women as you are difficultto woo fairly. One is afraid to take advantage of you. Because we were good chums didn’t necessarily mean that you could be happy with me as a husband.”
“And yet isn’t friendship, comradeship, the best foundation for marriage?”
“Some people say yes, some say no. I suppose one can’t generalize. It depends on temperament, age, experience, many things. I adored you, but that was natural. There were any amount of men who adored you. I thought I knew those you were at all likely to marry. Oh! I watched carefully, sometimes agonizedly. And then, as you turned them down one by one, I began to hope.... Your engagement to Gilbert came as a bomb-shell. Gilbert, my old college friend! Why, I was hardly aware you knew him, except that you had been neighbours as children.”
“I didn’t.... He just carried me off my feet. I can’t think, even now, how it happened ... a sort of intoxication—youth, music, passion. In those days he was very much the male animal, and you see ... it was the flourish of trumpets ... I was deafened ... I thought it was the real thing, just because I was moved. When will women learn that the men who move them physically are not always the men they really love? No one can say I was brought up ignorantly; there were certain broad-minded, lax ideas I grew up with side by side, but I didn’t know. I thought it was love, because I liked the feeling of his arms around me. The two things are so horribly alike at crucial moments. If only they were differently dressed!”
“I know.... I never moved you that way.”
“You never tried. If I had once thought of you as a possible lover ... who knows? At least, I have learned what a large part a woman’s imagination plays in the game of love, but the woman is poor indeed who finds nothing for her imagination to feed on after marriage....Why,” she exclaimed in wonderment, “I can’t imagine life without you. As I look back I see that our friendship has been a thread in my life for years, and I really believe the whole fabric would fall to pieces without it. Unconsciously I have always turned to you, always applied your standards to things.”
“Claudia!”
“Yes.... I thinkyousaved me from a terrible mistake.... You said I wasn’t to speak of it. But I must now, just this once, then it goes into the realm of things utterly forgotten. You remember the night you found me on the stairs.... I expect you guess somewhere near the truth. Don’t look like that. It was as much my fault as his. I was ready to snatch at anything to fill my life. I thought I could—but I couldn’t.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference to me,” he said steadily. “I should have understood the reasons that drove you to it.”
She looked at him, and marvelled that what he saidwastrue.
“But I’m glad,” she whispered, “that I—couldn’t. It would have made a difference tome. I think we should not have been standing here now. It wouldn’t have lasted, I should have gone on plunging.... Let me tell you something. That night your card was on the mantelpiece in the studio. I picked it up, and from that moment my mood changed. Somehow you seemed in the room with us.... Then I hated the way he had painted me. I knew you wouldn’t like it, and I wouldn’t like you to see it exhibited. I didn’t want to be that woman—because of you. I see it now. I didn’t understand why my mood changed at the time. Now it’s clear to me, and I can only marvel that I have been blind so long.” The mingled tenderness and strength of her face were very beautiful, as she added, “That temptation can never happen again. I shan’t feel so restless any more.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Claudia, it’s like an impossibly sweet dream that you should be saying these things to me. I know what you have meant to me for years; but that I can mean anything to you! Is it all quite real? You are sure it doesn’t come from your generous heart, just to comfort me, now you have found out my secret?”
“It’s real,” she smiled, standing in front of him, and putting a piece of the honeysuckle in his buttonhole. “It’s the only thing that is real in my life. Fay and I have both been trying to fight, each in our own way—she’s helped me too with her pluck and courage, but now this makes the fight much easier. Now I shall go on almost happily, because I’ve got my wish, the greatest wish in the world.”
“And that is——?”
“To be first with the man I love. I am first, am I not?”
“Don’t you know? Need you ask? If—if I ever had the chance, my one aim would be to makeyouhappy, because—a man is always selfish, you see—that would make me happy.”
“And that knowledge does make me happy. You and I belong to one another, just as much as if we were married, wherever we are, whatever we may do.” Then she gave a little laugh of contentment, and threw out her arms to the countryside, so green and smiling all around them. “This afternoon you and I, Colin, are on the top of the hill. We’ve climbed away from the stuffy, humdrum houses in the valleys. To-day we can shout and sing and be glad! Do you know, I seem to hear that Sullivan madrigal ringing in my ears, ‘All creation seems to say, earth was made for man’s delight’—do you remember? I am so happy, so happy. But it won’t always be as easy as it is this afternoon. We’re of the earth, earthy. At least, I am very earthy sometimes.”
“My darling,” he cried, passionately, more moved than he had ever been in his life, “you are the most wonderful woman in the world!”
“Dearest, shall I tell you a secret in the greatest of confidence? You won’t tell anyone?I’m not.I like to think you think so, but I’m the most ‘ornery’ person, really. I shan’t remain on the hill-top. I shall sigh and groan and grunt inwardly, and—I shall want you just as much as you’ll want me.... I should hate to think you were too placid without me, I should hate to see serene, ethereal content in your eyes.... But if you know I’m feeling just as you are feeling, but, like you, resolutely sitting on those feelings, it makes it easier, doesn’t it? Sexless, unemotional people never helped anyone. And because we look things in the face we won’t be afraid to meet as friends; we won’t run away from our happiness and—our pain; we won’t fret because of a mistake that we can’t alter, will we? We’ll just make the best of what we have, shall we?”
“Everything shall always be exactly as you wish,” he said, raising her hands to his lips. For a moment she wished that he would take her in his arms and kiss her, just once. Then she knew that he was right. Things in the future would be hard enough without that memory. For this was no sudden rush of passion that she felt, so that she longed to have his arms close round her. This man, standing on the hill-top with her, was her mate, her man, and naturally all that she had or was was his, by Nature’s unalterable laws. If she could have then and there gone away with him, there would have been no hesitation, no fear, no breathlessness, only a joyous and calm acceptance of the beauty that such mating would hold for them.
After a while he said, “I shall go back to Manchester to-morrow, but at any time you send me the word ‘Come,’ I shall be with you by the next train. If you feel youwant to talk to me, if you are in any difficulty, you won’t hesitate to send for me?”
“No.”
When they arrived back at Wynnstay they found only stewed tea, an empty cake-dish, Patricia and an unrepentant cheerful Socrates under the trees.
“He demolished the plate of cakes at one fell swoop when my back was turned, and Lady Currey has gone into the house in disgust. She finally, I am sure, washed her hands of the Iverson family. A little cold stew?” Her blue eyes, at present so sexless and so keen, noted the exaltation of the hill-top upon their glad faces, and she raised her eyebrows as she peered into the teapot.
“Well, she’s tumbled to it at last,” she muttered. “And I can go to Canada with an easy mind. I don’t care what she does or does not do with Colin Paton.”
“What on earth are you muttering about, Pat?” laughed Colin. “Is it an incantation to the Family Genie—the teapot?”
Pat looked at him with a broad and bland smile.
“I was thinking out your epitaph, Colin Paton. But it will keep for a few years yet.”
In the weeks that followed, Wynnstay was galvanized into life through the political and economic fray brought about by the discontent at Langton. Sir John and Gilbert talked the thing outad nauseam, for Sir John was infuriated at what he termed the ingratitude of the mill employés whom he had kept going for so many years. Had the Curreys even considered another point of view than that of the capitalist it would not have been uninteresting to Claudia to experience at close quarters one of the big problems of the day. But all Sir John’s narrowness and bigotry came out in the contest, so that even Gilbert had occasionally to tell him to moderate a little. It was most important that the men at Langton should be conciliated and kept on his side, in order that the seat should be safe for Gilbert, but how to do that and at the same time enforce his will upon the men was something of a difficulty.
On September the 20th practically the whole factory went out on strike, and Sir John nearly had apoplexy in his wrath.
“My mills! The mills my father had before me! The men I’ve employed regularly in good times and bad! It’s outrageous. Parliament ought to deal with such things. The country is at the mercy of the Labour party.”
“I always was against this general education,” cried Lady Currey, examining a new piece of Sèvres she had just acquired. “Why, one of Robson’s children is a school-teacher.”
Robson was the ringleader in the strike, and a few months before had come to loggerheads with Sir John. One of his daughters—not the school-teacher—had gone away from the village some four years previously, and had recently returned with two children and no husband, and Sir John had refused her application for an empty cottage or to take her back again in the mill. Sir John said, “One must uphold the principle of the thing.” But as Claudia gradually learned, Sir John had never been popular, and though Robson’s grievance had inflamed the workmen, they had been in a state of ferment for some time—partly because they had become infected with the strike fever, and partly because Sir John refused to replace some old machinery with the modern which is used in most big paper mills. He was a strictly just employer and landlord, but he did not err on the side of leniency.
“I won’t give way. I won’t be intimidated by these scoundrels. You agree with me, don’t you, Gilbert?”
“Yes.” Gilbert’s lower lip protruded pugnaciously. “Give way now, and you’ll have no more peace. After all, you can afford to shut down for a time; then they’ll come to their senses.”
This went on every day in different forms, explanations to visitors all sympathetic to the Curreys, accounts in the daily papers, until Claudia was glad to go over to Rockingham and see Fay and her strange guests.
For they were very strange, according to Rockingham ideas. Fay had asked them indiscriminately, the only qualification being that they needed a holiday and could not afford one. Old Joey Robins was there, watching over Fay like a grotesque old clown in a wonderfulmedley of garments that he imagined were suitable to the country. He had obtained from somewhere a pair of white flannel trousers, very much shrunk and yellow through washing, a brown velvet coat and a grey Trilby hat much too large for him. There was often a little mishap with the glazed white front which would pop out of the black waistcoat, but his celluloid collar was always spotless. A girl who did sand-dancing and had broken down in health, a once famous comedienne who had lost her popularity, an acrobat who had injured his foot, and a woman with a young baby, who had been deserted by her husband, were her other guests on this particular morning when Claudia went over. Fay, who was getting very thin and hollow-eyed, gave them of her best, for she had insisted on paying for the venture herself, and had, for that purpose, sold all her much-loved jewellery. “I shall never want it again,” she had said to Claudia, biting her lips to keep back the tears.
Claudia had helped her to furnish the big old house with simple, comfortable furniture, and had procured a staff of servants to run it. And because of their liking and pity for their odd little mistress with her extraordinary ideas the servants stayed, though the vagaries of the guests, the conflicting orders of Polly—“head cook and bottle-washer,” Fay called her—and the nurses nearly sent them distracted occasionally. When things got in too much of a tangle Claudia’s presence was urgently demanded.
On this particular morning Fay was lying out under one of the big trees, the comedienne, a stout woman in her sixties, with the most obvious toupée Claudia had ever seen, sitting beside her doing “a bit of crochy.” A little way off was the dancer, a thin, white-cheeked girl, engaged in making a pink muslin blouse from a pattern out of a penny journal, and snipping the bits over the lawn. The acrobat, in full view of them all, was doingamazing stunts on the grass for their amusement.
Claudia had met them all before. Behind her back she was voted “a perfect lady, such high class, don’t you know.” More than that, they liked and admired her.
“Madam, welcome!” cried the acrobat, coming towards her performing the most extraordinary double-somersaults. “I bow to you! I go down on the ground before you! Hail!”
There was a chorus of laughs from the group under the trees. Claudia never failed to marvel at the ease with which they were amused.
“You’re too funny to live,” cried the dancer shrilly, who was by way of having a flirtation with him. “I don’t believe you’re no man at all. Your mother made a mistake. You’re a piece of indiarubber.”
“My mother was a highly respectable lady,” returned the acrobat, with his hand on his heart, “and her portrait is here. It wasn’t her fault she had a genius for a son. I say, is that a pocky-hanky for me you’re making?”
“No, silly, it ain’t. It’s a blawse. Do behave yourself while Mrs. Currey’s here, or I don’t know what she’ll think of us.... Oh! there goes the old muffin-bell for dinner. Funny how my pecker keeps up here. I get a hole in my bread-basket long before it’s time to feed.”
“Well, my dear, you take all you want or can pocket,” called out Fay hospitably. “No charge for a second helping here, and the meat isn’t all gristle and bone, like the chops the landladies get you.” There was a chorus of assent. “If there’s anything you want, you’ve only got to mention it.”
“You’re an ainjool, that’s what you are,” said the girl emphatically. “It’s like ’Eaven to be here. It ain’t ’alf doing me good, not much! I can pinch a bit up on my arm now. Talk about State Insurance; you give me Fay’s insurance.”
There was a general hearty murmur of agreement, and they all trooped off.
“I can see you didn’t have a good night,” said Claudia solicitously.
“No, I got the jim-jams a bit. How sweet you look in that frock; and yet, really, it’s awfully plain, isn’t it? Hardly anything on it except the lace collar. It’s only really handsome people who can wear them plain things. I always have—had to have—lots of fluff.... I say, is it true you’re going back to town next week?”
“Yes. My husband is so much better that he hopes to get back to his chambers again.”
“Crikey! whatever will I do? I wish you could have stopped here.”
What a little face it was now under the big white chiffon hat that Madame Rose had sent her as suitable for the country; her idea of country being apparently drawn from the “sets” at the halls.
“I’ll come down quite often, dear. Then you think of stopping on here?” It had only been started for the summer months.
“Well, it’s perfectly amazing what a lot of people want a holiday—no bunkum either; and somehow”—she looked round the neglected old garden; it had only been superficially tidied up, but it was full of flowers—“I don’t want to leave here, now I’ve come. It’s awful sweet, isn’t it? I used to think I hated the country and that it was beastly slow and tame, but I like to smell the flowers—different somehow to those you have in vases—and I like to see the birds jigging about so mighty busy over nothing. Wouldn’t my old pals laugh at me! Fancy me watching the birds! The only bird I ever thought of was the one the gallery gives you sometimes. Not that the boys ever gavemethe bird. Once I had a little trouble with some young fool that started to hiss in the middle of my song. It made me that mad! I stopped right dead and I lookedup and said, ‘Well, come down here, my boy, and sing something better.’ Ah, I got him! They started clapping me till you couldn’t hear yourself speak. Ah, well!”
Claudia laid her hand on her sister-in-law’s, but Fay was quite cheerful again when she spoke.
“And I think I’d like to be buried in the country; it’s so clean and nice. Such a lot of smuts in town. Ever been in Kensal Green? My mother’s there. They subscribed and bought her a grave. But I can’t stand Kensal Green; gives you the bloomingest of humps. No, I’d like a nice, clean tombstone with bits of ivy and things. It would be such a trouble to bring me down from town.... I don’t feel I want to be moved much more, only from the house to the garden while it’s summer.”
A rush of tears blinded Claudia, for Fay said it in such a natural, unaffected way that it was inexpressibly pathetic.
“My dear! Don’t!”
“Oh! I am a beast to make you miserable. I didn’t mean to, darling. Between ourselves, I shan’t be sorry when it’s finished now. I’m ashamed of all the trouble I am to the nurses, though they don’t complain—me, that used to be so nippy on my feet and do everything for myself. I’m more trouble than a baby.... Well, you never know what you’ll come to, do you? My mother used to say, ‘You’re born, but you’re not buried.’ She had a bad time before she turned up her toes, poor old thing. I might be in a worse place than this. I might have been in one of those hospitals. Got a horror of hospitals myself.... I told them you’d have lunch out here with me. Here it comes.”
She waited until the servant had gone, then she leaned towards Claudia and said earnestly, “I want you to promise me something, Claudia.”
“Yes, Fay, what is it?”
“When I do the shuffle, you see that there are pars. inall the papers, with my photograph. You’re soon forgotten, but that’ll wake ’em up. The Girlie Girl’s got to have her farewell performance. I know I can trust you. I say, these peas remind me that Polly wants to see you about the kitchen-garden. She says the gardener is cheating us on the peas. Never seen anyone as sharp as she is now. She’ll count the pods every day soon. She loves it here.”
Claudia spent the day there, getting glimpses into strange ideas and modes of living, and arrived back at Wynnstay about six. Directly she got inside the house Lady Currey came out of the drawing-room in a very—for her—excited state.
“Oh, Claudia! what do you think? We’ve just heard that the strikers have become violent, and they are stoning the windows of the mills and the police are powerless to keep order. Poor John is nearly beside himself. I do hope he’ll take care, with the stones flying about.”
Claudia gave an exclamation of surprise.
“You don’t mean he has gone over to Langton?”
“Yes, he would go. He thought if he talked to them he might calm them. I’m sure I don’t know. It’s all very dreadful, something like the French Revolution. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Claudia from where she stood could see through the open door of the library where Gilbert usually sat in one of the big chairs. But the room was empty.
“Gilbert—where is he?”
“He’s gone too. He promised to look after John and keep him calm.”
“What! You ought not to have let him go. When did they start?”
“About four o’clock. I wanted them to wait for tea, but they wouldn’t. It takes three-quarters of an hour to drive over. I don’t know what the world is coming to. I’ve always sent them a lot of things for their rummagesale, and last winter the blankets that I sent would——”
“Gilbert ought not to have gone. Why didn’t you stop him? You know what Dr. Neeburg said. He isn’t fit to go into a scene of excitement like that. He is just as furious about the whole thing as his father. He is not strong yet. How could you let him go?”
“He says he feels quite well now,” stammered Lady Currey, not liking the look in her daughter-in-law’s eye. “I told himhewasn’t to try and address the men.”
“I should think not.”
“They ought to be back soon,” concluded Lady Currey. “Oh, dear! I feel so faint and queer.”
Claudia thought the situation over rapidly, but there was nothing she could do. It would be no good going over to Langton. Probably they would be returning by now. If only Gilbert wouldbelieveother people occasionally! Neeburg, when he had come down and given Gilbert permission to go back to town, had told him emphatically that he would still have to take things very quietly for another year or two. And he had gone with his father to face an infuriated rabble of strikers!
“Stones are so dangerous,” feebly remarked Lady Currey, “but after all, men know best. I’ve never interfered with my husband.”
Claudia said nothing more as she went to take off her hat. She wished she had been at home. Yet, after all, if Gilbert had made up his mind to go, would she have been able to prevent his going? The Curreys were not used to women “interfering,” and he was not a child.
It was nearly seven when she went downstairs, but the carriage had not returned. Sir John had refused to have the house put on the telephone, so they could get no news. She and Billie went into the library, and she tried to read, but it was only a pretence. Her ears were listening for the sound of carriage-wheels. It was almost dark. Surely they ought to be home by now. Still, a horse-broughamis not like a motor. The hills were rather worse coming back.
At half-past seven Lady Currey came in, carefully arrayed for dinner.
“Claudia, aren’t you going to dress? You’ll be late.” Though the heavens might fall, Lady Currey would punctually and carefully dress for dinner.
“I’m getting anxious,” said her daughter-in-law shortly. “They will be late too.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, and there’s a fish soufflé. John does so dislike a heavy soufflé. But of course it can’t be helped. Itislate. You don’t think any accident has happened?”
“I hope not.”
“Claudia, do you think it is healthy to nurse a dog on your lap? But there, he’s your dog! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Another quarter of an hour elapsed, and Claudia was just getting up to do something—she hardly knew what—when at last she heard the sound of wheels. A growing sense of disaster lifted. The wheels had a homely, encouraging sound. For once there was some irregularity in the Curreyménage. Claudia rushed to the door herself and opened it.
She peered out into the sweet-scented darkness, but the brougham was closed. That, at least, was wise of Gilbert, for the night was a little chilly now.
“We were getting so anxious,” she called out to two white, blurred faces she saw within. “What a long time you have been away.”
Then a figure, unfamiliar to her, alighted. Surely there were only two people in the brougham. She heard Lady Currey behind her exclaim “Dr. Green!” in tones of surprise.
The man turned again to the brougham, and helped out a very old man. As Claudia saw the limpness and dejection of Sir John she turned sick. Something had happened.
The coachman shut the door.
Dr. Green and her father-in-law came up the steps, the doctor supporting the older man. Why did Sir John need support? He was usually quite hale and hearty for his age.
The coachman was making ready to drive away. Where was Gilbert?
With fascinated, frightened eyes she watched the two mount almost abreast of her.
Then the old man raised his eyes, as heavy and sombre as Gilbert’s and now dark with suffering.
“Gil——” Claudia tried to articulate, but something choked her.
“Where’s Gilbert?” said his mother behind her.
The eyes of the old man told her nothing, but the eyes of the doctor were full of pity for the two women. It was the same look as had been in the doctor’s eyes the night of Fay’s accident. As she saw it, Claudia instinctively put up her hand as if to ward off a blow.
The old man tried to explain.
“Hewouldspeak ... they’ve killed him ... wouldn’t listen to me ... thought he could.... God have mercy on us all!”
“Do you mean—he’s dead?” whispered Claudia.
The old man passed on heavily into the study. The doctor answered her very gently.
“It was too late when I got there.... Heart failure.... I’m told he knew. Mrs. Currey, I am dreadfully sorry.”
Claudia tried vainly to realize that what had been a few hours previously was not. There was no such person as Gilbert Currey. She, Claudia, was a widow.
The windmill was creaking in the same protesting, painful manner as Claudia climbed the hill where she and Colin had stood more than a year ago and looked at the view. But the waving fields of corn were all cut now, only a yellowish stubble remained. The hedges were beginning to show the approach of autumn, the yellowing leaf, the reddening berry. But it looked very much the same, just as peaceful and full of promise, though harvest-time was over. The sun was warm, but not so hot as it had been that Sunday afternoon.
Claudia felt her pulses stir as she gazed around her, for there is a richness and beauty in autumn that the earlier months lack. She seemed to feel Nature tugging at her sleeve, whispering in her ear, calling to her to rejoice that the fruit of the earth was ripe, the time of waiting was over.
It was more than a year since she had gone to live with poor Fay at Rockingham, but Fay was asleep now. As she stood there she thought of her with tears in her eyes, and her face turned to where in the distance a cluster of white gravestones lay bathed in the rays of the sun. By an ironic coincidence she lay in the same churchyard asGilbert, though the grass had not yet grown over the little music-hall artiste. Death had loosened the feeble hands that had clung so desperately—ah! how desperately in the last few weeks!—round her neck, and that duty was done.
She stood leaning against a gate, thinking a little soberly but not unhappily of many things. Then she drew forth a couple of letters from her pocket. The first that she re-read was from Pat, giving her a buoyant description of the harvesting on her farm, extolling the work and the climate, and cataloguing with evident pride the bushels of fruit that the trees had yielded.
“Do come out, Claudia, now poor Fay has gone. There’s nothing to keep you in England; at least, if there is, bring the impediment with you. You must be tired out after all the troubles of the last year. I am really very worried about you, and if you don’t come I shall have to leave the farm and fetch you. Colin writes me you are looking very pulled down. You are a brick to have stuck at Rockingham, but that’s finished now. I’m writing to Colin by the same post. When I left I gave you to him with my blessing! Like my cheek, wasn’t it?“But, seriously, the trip would interest you, and I won’t feed you exclusively on fruit! I think Colin would like to see my farm. Fancy his blossoming into an M.P. I’m so afraid he’ll lose his sense of humour in the House....”
“Do come out, Claudia, now poor Fay has gone. There’s nothing to keep you in England; at least, if there is, bring the impediment with you. You must be tired out after all the troubles of the last year. I am really very worried about you, and if you don’t come I shall have to leave the farm and fetch you. Colin writes me you are looking very pulled down. You are a brick to have stuck at Rockingham, but that’s finished now. I’m writing to Colin by the same post. When I left I gave you to him with my blessing! Like my cheek, wasn’t it?
“But, seriously, the trip would interest you, and I won’t feed you exclusively on fruit! I think Colin would like to see my farm. Fancy his blossoming into an M.P. I’m so afraid he’ll lose his sense of humour in the House....”
Claudia laughed a little as she put back the letter in the pocket of her white golf-coat.
The windmill creaked, and the wind rustling the dry leaves in the hedges blew her white serge skirt against her ankles, and seemed to sing “Go! go! go!”
The other was from Colin. She turned to the passage she wanted. It was on the last page.
“Dearest, I don’t want to suggest any unseemly haste. It is always for you to make the decision, and I shall understand and acquiesce in anything you wish. Only, sweetheart, I am a good many years older than you, and time has cheated so many lovers. Shall we let him cheat us of any more years? Oh! if you only knew how I long for the time when we shall always be together, when just a whispered ‘Claudia’ will bring you to my side! You are with me in thought every hour of the day, but I want your dear presence. Dearest of friends, best of chums, when will you let me make you my wife?”
“Dearest, I don’t want to suggest any unseemly haste. It is always for you to make the decision, and I shall understand and acquiesce in anything you wish. Only, sweetheart, I am a good many years older than you, and time has cheated so many lovers. Shall we let him cheat us of any more years? Oh! if you only knew how I long for the time when we shall always be together, when just a whispered ‘Claudia’ will bring you to my side! You are with me in thought every hour of the day, but I want your dear presence. Dearest of friends, best of chums, when will you let me make you my wife?”
The wind fluttered the pages of the letter, so that she could not read any more. The sun was warm on her bare hand. All the earth seemed to say “Don’t delay any longer, don’t let the gods think you are ungrateful. Are you afraid of happiness?”
She raised the letter passionately to her lips.
“My Colin! My man!”
Then hastily thrusting it into her pocket, she half-walked, half-ran down the hill to the village. Her cheeks, a little thin from her self-imposed task, were a bright pink with excitement, and her whole body was aglow and superbly alive with the exercise as she pushed open a small, clanging door at the foot of the hill. There were oddments of sweets, toys and newspapers in the window, and a small boy who had just purchased some sweets that looked exactly like bootlaces stared at her in dull surprise as she passed him with a radiant smile. She had not just spent a whole halfpenny in two separate farthings’-worth at the sweet-counter, so why should she look so happy?
At the end of the shop was a small post-office department. The atmosphere was stuffy, and reeked of sealing-wax and tobacco. But the telegram would go all the same.
The romance of all the ages, of all the world, was in that piece of formal, ruled paper. The room might have been perfumed with attar of roses, and the boy with the liquorice bootlaces might have been Cupid himself! The telegram was not going on the prosaic wires, but on the wings of Love!
Yet, when it was written, it only contained two words, beside the address: