Chapter Sixteen.Claudia’s young and vigorous interests were attracted by all that was connected with the camp, too much so, indeed, to please Fenwick. She ran out whenever a regiment passed, or when she heard distant sounds of drill.“You don’t want to be shown the stables, do you?”“Oh, I do, particularly.”He gave way, but with a discontent which took the pleasure out of it. Another time he remarked to his sister—“Can’t you give Claudia a hint not to be so tremendously excited about the band in church? She talked of it to Dawson till he must suppose she comes from the wilds.”Something in his tone made Mrs Leslie look at him in dismay.“Arthur,” she said impressively, “you are not getting tired of her, are you?”He turned angrily upon her.“Tired! Rubbish!”She went on, disregarding.“It would be simply disgraceful. I should be ashamed to look any one in the face. First Helen Arbuthnot, and then this poor girl.”“Have you done?” he said savagely. “No. I mean to speak. I must. I have thought at times, I own, that in spite of the break off between you and Helen, you had a sneaking kindness for each other, but now you have both split away in different directions, so that is quite at an end.”“She’s not married yet, and I don’t believe she can like that idiot,” growled Fenwick.“Arthur!”“Well?”“You’re not—”He interrupted her.“What have I said? Nothing about marrying her myself, have I? Take my advice, Gertrude, and don’t meddle. I’ve never stood meddling yet, and I’m not going to now. Mind you, this doesn’t matter to you or to any one else.”“It does matter,” she persisted. “With the girl in my house, I am certainly responsible.”“I deny it. If she’s satisfied, what have you to say?”“Oh,” she said impatiently, “of course she’s satisfied! You know how to talk, and it is easy enough to please a girl of that age.”“Very well, then. By your own showing, you’ve nothing to say. I’m going to marry her, and that’s the end of it.”Fenwick was not a pleasant person to have an argument with; almost invariably it brought out in him a certain hard tenacity, which made other men angry. Perhaps Mrs Leslie was less sensitive to it than was the rest of the world, but even she shrank from the shock of clashing wills, which more than once had led to a bitter dispute between brother and sister. The conversation, however, had left her distinctly uncomfortable, and she reflected long whether she should give Claudia a hint. Yet it was difficult to know how much or how little she should say, and it seemed better that if nothing were really amiss, the girl should not have her suspicions raised. Only—for she was really a conscientious woman, and Claudia was a fatherless girl—she resolved that if things became worse, she would take her part determinedly against Arthur or any one else. And this not so much from liking as from an innate feeling for justice.Unfortunately, her hidden fear did not act very wisely. It made her watchful and almost irritable with Claudia. She could not say in so many words, “Don’t do this, don’t say that, your fate is trembling in the balance,” but she contrived to convey it in her actions, growing so evidently anxious over the most trifling movements or expressions, that the girl, in spite of indignant self-protests, became nervously inflicted by her companion’s distrust, and developed a new self-consciousness. She grew restless too.“I do wish you would not give yourself so much trouble over my amusement,” she said one day to Mrs Leslie. “For instance, please don’t imagine that it is necessary for me to go to the club-house every afternoon.”“One must go somewhere,” said her hostess vaguely. She could not explain that she had offered the pony-cart to Fenwick for him to drive Claudia into the country, and he had refused it.“I don’t see that,” said the girl, with a laugh. She added after a pause, “What I really should like would be to bicycle over some of the country round. But Arthur won’t hear of it.”“Don’t tease him about it, pray don’t,” said Mrs Leslie, with over—expressed anxiety.Claudia looked at her.“Why?” she asked, and such interrogations were becoming more and more difficult to answer. Mrs Leslie was hesitating over it when the young subaltern, Claudia’s neighbour at the Thorntons’ dinner-party, looked in.“You’ll forgive my coming at this unearthly hour, won’t you?” he said. “Fact is, Major Leslie asked me to tell you that you and Miss Hamilton had better come out. Orders are given that the Scots Greys are not to be allowed to get back to barracks, and he thinks you might like to see the fun. Can you get along by yourselves? I must be off.”Mrs Leslie jumped up with a sense of relief, but she was an imprudent woman, and her imprudence broke out.“Why couldn’t Arthur have let us know?” she said in a vexed voice. “There, I have let the children go off, and Frank will be so disappointed!”“Perhaps Arthur didn’t know himself.”“He must have found out by this time. However, be quick, Claudia. We can’t wait for the cart; we’ll walk.”Claudia did what she was often doing at this time, hastily packed misgivings out of sight, and they started. Rain had fallen in the night; great pools of water stood waiting to be sucked up by the yellow soil, and massive banks of clouds moved sullenly to the east. Out from behind them the sun had flashed, and was shining steadily, transforming all he touched, and bringing, as he does in our northern lands, no languor, but an added energy. Now and then a body of troops marched briskly along up the road, passed the cavalry barracks, and turned to their right.“Where are the Greys, I wonder?” said Mrs Leslie impatiently. “I hate to be left in this way, knowing nothing of what is doing.”Claudia had no answer ready, and they went on. Presently her companion broke out again—“I always vow I will not come and see these things from the outside.”“How can one see them otherwise?” asked Claudia, in good faith.“Oh, you must know what I mean. I call it outside when you toil along roads as we are toiling, and have no one to tell you where to go.”“As to that, I suppose they’re all trying to cut off the Greys.”“Ah, you’re not married,” said Mrs Leslie gloomily. Presently she stopped. “I don’t see the good of going on.”“Oh yes!”“Most likely we are all wrong.”“One can’t tell—nobody here ever knows what’s going to happen next. Suppose we walk across to that clump?”“Well—” began her companion, turning reluctantly. The next moment she exclaimed, “Here comes the Thorntons’ carriage; we can ask them.”Instinctively Claudia longed to break away, but, instead of doing so, stood still and tried to look indifferent. Mrs Thornton was driving Miss Arbuthnot, and, before there was time for inquiry, called out—“You’re going the wrong way. You should make for that mound.” She flourished her whip.“Who told you so?”“Captain Fenwick. He looked in to say that would be the best place.”“Really?”“Sosorry we can’t give you a lift!”“Oh,” said Mrs Leslie mendaciously, “we prefer walking. So I do,” she added as the carriage rolled away—“so I do, to going with her. She irritates me. She’s always in the right. But I think it was simply abominable of Arthur.”“What does it matter?” said Claudia, with a fine display of indifference.“It matters a great deal, because, of course, if I had known it was going to be so far, I should have brought the carriage.”“Well, don’t let us toil to that mound. Let us go to the place we intended before. It is such a pretty day!”“I dare say it is, but we didn’t come out to see the country.”To her surprise, however, by dint of a little more pressure, Claudia carried her point, with the result that they saw nothing. But this she did not seem to mind, for she talked and laughed vigorously, in spite of many “I told you so’s” from Mrs Leslie.“You are the oddest girl!” exclaimed that lady at last.“Why?”“Because you don’t appear to care to stand on your rights. Now, I think that Arthur has behaved shamefully.”It is certain that she would not have spoken so imprudently if she had conceived it possible that a young girl of Claudia’s inexperience could seriously resent her lover’s conduct; she only considered it desirable to point out to her that she might be too easy with him, and that it would be better for her were she to assert herself. And the girl’s own anxiety to hide her wounds added to Mrs Leslie’s failure to understand her. She showed no disturbance.“Aren’t you hard on him? He may have been close to their quarters,” she suggested, “and just turned in.”“I dare say! He would not have found it so convenient if Helen Arbuthnot hadn’t been then.” Mrs Leslie liked to justify her statements.“No?” said Claudia indifferently. It would have taken a close observer to note a certain slight rigidity in the way she carried her head.“No. My dear Claudia, it’s all very well to be magnanimous, but if you expect peace in your married life, you had better make up your mind to the fact that Arthur—though a good fellow in the main—is a bit of a flirt.”Claudia did not turn her head.“I dare say,” she said coolly, so coolly that Mrs Leslie prepared to strengthen her warning.“And I advise you to show him you don’t like it—beforehand.”“Thank you.”Mrs Leslie could not have quite explained the character of this “thank you,” but she preferred to consider that it breathed gratitude; and the morning having in other ways proved such a dismal failure, accepted this as partial compensation, feeling that now she had done her best to open Claudia’s eyes, and that, whatever happened, she could not be blamed for having uttered no warning.She had been altogether tired and annoyed by her long vain tramp, and was not in the mood to spare her brother. Claudia, too, had been so provokingly quiescent that it was only to be supposed she did not see, and Arthur’s wife would require to have all her senses about her.She therefore carried home both a grievance and a sense of fulfilled duty; which, together, make a person pretty nearly intolerable.But, though Claudia kept her proud silence, and could even say “thank you” to her counsellor, it must not be supposed that she was patient at heart. It was not this or that trifling circumstance; they were not the events of the morning, taken by themselves, which affected her; it was that, gradually, little by little, the conviction forced itself upon her that Fenwick no longer loved her, nay, possibly, that he was loving another woman. Why it should be so, she struggled to fathom, and failed. Why, when both were free, he should have preferred her to Helen Arbuthnot, who could tell? Only that it was so, she could now scarcely doubt. And with a yearning which seized and shook her with the violence of its desire, the motherless girl longed unutterably for some one to whom she could turn, some one who could give her the aid for which she was groping. What ought she to do? How do it? How, given if her love were smitten, maimed, down-trodden, should her womanly pride keep its dignity, and shield her from the pitying scorn with which she knew the world regarded a jilted woman? One day, although it was understood that she did not go out by herself, she slipped away, and, finding a church open, went in, and in its quiet silence, poured forth a torrent of tears and prayers, which brought relief.Her fears, like much else characteristic of Claudia in those days, were young, crude, and ill-balanced. Later on, she would have known that the world casts a few sentences, a few jibes, and has forgotten, before the sufferer has time to realise that the thing is known. Everything whirls past; we and our petty concerns, whisked to the surface one moment, are swept under the next. But, as with other things, it takes years to teach our inexperience the lesson.There was another difficulty. Think as she might, plan as she might, Claudia could not see before her the words or the moment she wanted for letting Fenwick know that he was free. There were times when she thought of rushing back to Elmslie, but to do this until the explanation had been made, was, she fancied, impossible. She had come for a three weeks’ stay, and of this only a fortnight—was it credible? only a fortnight!—had passed. Then the college—for a moment she reflected hopefully on the college, and some proffered engagement. But, alas! again. Engagements did not pour in every day, and she flushed furiously as she realised that her own, which she had proudly regarded as an offering on the shrine of emancipated woman, were more probably due only to the efforts of two men who liked her. Humiliating conviction! Besides, at Fenwick’s instigation, she had obediently written a request to the principal to withdraw her name from the lists of those seeking employment.Look as she would, she could not clearly see the road by which she might escape; yet each day seemed to make her position more unbearable.And Mrs Leslie, Mrs Leslie added tenfold to her difficulties, and this with the best intentions in the world. Claudia’s wounded love flung itself for support on her woman’s pride; like her race she could endure magnificently, if only she were allowed, unquestioned, to hide the anguish of the wound. But Mrs Leslie saw too much, pointed out what the girl would fain have passed over in silence, grumbled, protested, excused. She was personally affronted with her brother, and used Claudia as a weapon of retaliation. She did not approve of Helen Arbuthnot, she considered that Arthur was behaving scandalously, and she felt a large degree of responsibility for the girl under her care; so that it was constantly—“Well, certainly, Arthur, you have been most attentive to Claudia to-day!” or, “If I were Claudia, I should not thank you much for looking in upon me at the end of the afternoon;” or, “Claudia and I seem left very much to our own devices!” And these reproaches, uttered before Claudia herself, had the effect of paralysing the girl, and of taking from her what seemed her own just cause of complaint.There were dangerous moments, too, when Fenwick, smitten with remorse or swayed by caprice—who can say?—regained his old ascendancy; when she could almost believe that all was as it had been, moments when he was charming, tender; moments, alas! too fleeting, but sweet enough to make her own with a pang that if only they lasted, she must still be his. For the sake of their delicious glamour, a weaker nature might have readily consented to keep its eyes blinded, and to believe that all would yet be well. But Claudia was not weak. Her training, whatever else it had done or left undone, had exercised her intellect, and given her powers of self-control which came to her rescue now. She saw clearly that when Fenwick was charming, it was because he had made up his mind to charm; that it was not due to spontaneous love, but to intentional love-making, and that such intervals were succeeded by evident indifference.
Claudia’s young and vigorous interests were attracted by all that was connected with the camp, too much so, indeed, to please Fenwick. She ran out whenever a regiment passed, or when she heard distant sounds of drill.
“You don’t want to be shown the stables, do you?”
“Oh, I do, particularly.”
He gave way, but with a discontent which took the pleasure out of it. Another time he remarked to his sister—
“Can’t you give Claudia a hint not to be so tremendously excited about the band in church? She talked of it to Dawson till he must suppose she comes from the wilds.”
Something in his tone made Mrs Leslie look at him in dismay.
“Arthur,” she said impressively, “you are not getting tired of her, are you?”
He turned angrily upon her.
“Tired! Rubbish!”
She went on, disregarding.
“It would be simply disgraceful. I should be ashamed to look any one in the face. First Helen Arbuthnot, and then this poor girl.”
“Have you done?” he said savagely. “No. I mean to speak. I must. I have thought at times, I own, that in spite of the break off between you and Helen, you had a sneaking kindness for each other, but now you have both split away in different directions, so that is quite at an end.”
“She’s not married yet, and I don’t believe she can like that idiot,” growled Fenwick.
“Arthur!”
“Well?”
“You’re not—”
He interrupted her.
“What have I said? Nothing about marrying her myself, have I? Take my advice, Gertrude, and don’t meddle. I’ve never stood meddling yet, and I’m not going to now. Mind you, this doesn’t matter to you or to any one else.”
“It does matter,” she persisted. “With the girl in my house, I am certainly responsible.”
“I deny it. If she’s satisfied, what have you to say?”
“Oh,” she said impatiently, “of course she’s satisfied! You know how to talk, and it is easy enough to please a girl of that age.”
“Very well, then. By your own showing, you’ve nothing to say. I’m going to marry her, and that’s the end of it.”
Fenwick was not a pleasant person to have an argument with; almost invariably it brought out in him a certain hard tenacity, which made other men angry. Perhaps Mrs Leslie was less sensitive to it than was the rest of the world, but even she shrank from the shock of clashing wills, which more than once had led to a bitter dispute between brother and sister. The conversation, however, had left her distinctly uncomfortable, and she reflected long whether she should give Claudia a hint. Yet it was difficult to know how much or how little she should say, and it seemed better that if nothing were really amiss, the girl should not have her suspicions raised. Only—for she was really a conscientious woman, and Claudia was a fatherless girl—she resolved that if things became worse, she would take her part determinedly against Arthur or any one else. And this not so much from liking as from an innate feeling for justice.
Unfortunately, her hidden fear did not act very wisely. It made her watchful and almost irritable with Claudia. She could not say in so many words, “Don’t do this, don’t say that, your fate is trembling in the balance,” but she contrived to convey it in her actions, growing so evidently anxious over the most trifling movements or expressions, that the girl, in spite of indignant self-protests, became nervously inflicted by her companion’s distrust, and developed a new self-consciousness. She grew restless too.
“I do wish you would not give yourself so much trouble over my amusement,” she said one day to Mrs Leslie. “For instance, please don’t imagine that it is necessary for me to go to the club-house every afternoon.”
“One must go somewhere,” said her hostess vaguely. She could not explain that she had offered the pony-cart to Fenwick for him to drive Claudia into the country, and he had refused it.
“I don’t see that,” said the girl, with a laugh. She added after a pause, “What I really should like would be to bicycle over some of the country round. But Arthur won’t hear of it.”
“Don’t tease him about it, pray don’t,” said Mrs Leslie, with over—expressed anxiety.
Claudia looked at her.
“Why?” she asked, and such interrogations were becoming more and more difficult to answer. Mrs Leslie was hesitating over it when the young subaltern, Claudia’s neighbour at the Thorntons’ dinner-party, looked in.
“You’ll forgive my coming at this unearthly hour, won’t you?” he said. “Fact is, Major Leslie asked me to tell you that you and Miss Hamilton had better come out. Orders are given that the Scots Greys are not to be allowed to get back to barracks, and he thinks you might like to see the fun. Can you get along by yourselves? I must be off.”
Mrs Leslie jumped up with a sense of relief, but she was an imprudent woman, and her imprudence broke out.
“Why couldn’t Arthur have let us know?” she said in a vexed voice. “There, I have let the children go off, and Frank will be so disappointed!”
“Perhaps Arthur didn’t know himself.”
“He must have found out by this time. However, be quick, Claudia. We can’t wait for the cart; we’ll walk.”
Claudia did what she was often doing at this time, hastily packed misgivings out of sight, and they started. Rain had fallen in the night; great pools of water stood waiting to be sucked up by the yellow soil, and massive banks of clouds moved sullenly to the east. Out from behind them the sun had flashed, and was shining steadily, transforming all he touched, and bringing, as he does in our northern lands, no languor, but an added energy. Now and then a body of troops marched briskly along up the road, passed the cavalry barracks, and turned to their right.
“Where are the Greys, I wonder?” said Mrs Leslie impatiently. “I hate to be left in this way, knowing nothing of what is doing.”
Claudia had no answer ready, and they went on. Presently her companion broke out again—
“I always vow I will not come and see these things from the outside.”
“How can one see them otherwise?” asked Claudia, in good faith.
“Oh, you must know what I mean. I call it outside when you toil along roads as we are toiling, and have no one to tell you where to go.”
“As to that, I suppose they’re all trying to cut off the Greys.”
“Ah, you’re not married,” said Mrs Leslie gloomily. Presently she stopped. “I don’t see the good of going on.”
“Oh yes!”
“Most likely we are all wrong.”
“One can’t tell—nobody here ever knows what’s going to happen next. Suppose we walk across to that clump?”
“Well—” began her companion, turning reluctantly. The next moment she exclaimed, “Here comes the Thorntons’ carriage; we can ask them.”
Instinctively Claudia longed to break away, but, instead of doing so, stood still and tried to look indifferent. Mrs Thornton was driving Miss Arbuthnot, and, before there was time for inquiry, called out—
“You’re going the wrong way. You should make for that mound.” She flourished her whip.
“Who told you so?”
“Captain Fenwick. He looked in to say that would be the best place.”
“Really?”
“Sosorry we can’t give you a lift!”
“Oh,” said Mrs Leslie mendaciously, “we prefer walking. So I do,” she added as the carriage rolled away—“so I do, to going with her. She irritates me. She’s always in the right. But I think it was simply abominable of Arthur.”
“What does it matter?” said Claudia, with a fine display of indifference.
“It matters a great deal, because, of course, if I had known it was going to be so far, I should have brought the carriage.”
“Well, don’t let us toil to that mound. Let us go to the place we intended before. It is such a pretty day!”
“I dare say it is, but we didn’t come out to see the country.”
To her surprise, however, by dint of a little more pressure, Claudia carried her point, with the result that they saw nothing. But this she did not seem to mind, for she talked and laughed vigorously, in spite of many “I told you so’s” from Mrs Leslie.
“You are the oddest girl!” exclaimed that lady at last.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t appear to care to stand on your rights. Now, I think that Arthur has behaved shamefully.”
It is certain that she would not have spoken so imprudently if she had conceived it possible that a young girl of Claudia’s inexperience could seriously resent her lover’s conduct; she only considered it desirable to point out to her that she might be too easy with him, and that it would be better for her were she to assert herself. And the girl’s own anxiety to hide her wounds added to Mrs Leslie’s failure to understand her. She showed no disturbance.
“Aren’t you hard on him? He may have been close to their quarters,” she suggested, “and just turned in.”
“I dare say! He would not have found it so convenient if Helen Arbuthnot hadn’t been then.” Mrs Leslie liked to justify her statements.
“No?” said Claudia indifferently. It would have taken a close observer to note a certain slight rigidity in the way she carried her head.
“No. My dear Claudia, it’s all very well to be magnanimous, but if you expect peace in your married life, you had better make up your mind to the fact that Arthur—though a good fellow in the main—is a bit of a flirt.”
Claudia did not turn her head.
“I dare say,” she said coolly, so coolly that Mrs Leslie prepared to strengthen her warning.
“And I advise you to show him you don’t like it—beforehand.”
“Thank you.”
Mrs Leslie could not have quite explained the character of this “thank you,” but she preferred to consider that it breathed gratitude; and the morning having in other ways proved such a dismal failure, accepted this as partial compensation, feeling that now she had done her best to open Claudia’s eyes, and that, whatever happened, she could not be blamed for having uttered no warning.
She had been altogether tired and annoyed by her long vain tramp, and was not in the mood to spare her brother. Claudia, too, had been so provokingly quiescent that it was only to be supposed she did not see, and Arthur’s wife would require to have all her senses about her.
She therefore carried home both a grievance and a sense of fulfilled duty; which, together, make a person pretty nearly intolerable.
But, though Claudia kept her proud silence, and could even say “thank you” to her counsellor, it must not be supposed that she was patient at heart. It was not this or that trifling circumstance; they were not the events of the morning, taken by themselves, which affected her; it was that, gradually, little by little, the conviction forced itself upon her that Fenwick no longer loved her, nay, possibly, that he was loving another woman. Why it should be so, she struggled to fathom, and failed. Why, when both were free, he should have preferred her to Helen Arbuthnot, who could tell? Only that it was so, she could now scarcely doubt. And with a yearning which seized and shook her with the violence of its desire, the motherless girl longed unutterably for some one to whom she could turn, some one who could give her the aid for which she was groping. What ought she to do? How do it? How, given if her love were smitten, maimed, down-trodden, should her womanly pride keep its dignity, and shield her from the pitying scorn with which she knew the world regarded a jilted woman? One day, although it was understood that she did not go out by herself, she slipped away, and, finding a church open, went in, and in its quiet silence, poured forth a torrent of tears and prayers, which brought relief.
Her fears, like much else characteristic of Claudia in those days, were young, crude, and ill-balanced. Later on, she would have known that the world casts a few sentences, a few jibes, and has forgotten, before the sufferer has time to realise that the thing is known. Everything whirls past; we and our petty concerns, whisked to the surface one moment, are swept under the next. But, as with other things, it takes years to teach our inexperience the lesson.
There was another difficulty. Think as she might, plan as she might, Claudia could not see before her the words or the moment she wanted for letting Fenwick know that he was free. There were times when she thought of rushing back to Elmslie, but to do this until the explanation had been made, was, she fancied, impossible. She had come for a three weeks’ stay, and of this only a fortnight—was it credible? only a fortnight!—had passed. Then the college—for a moment she reflected hopefully on the college, and some proffered engagement. But, alas! again. Engagements did not pour in every day, and she flushed furiously as she realised that her own, which she had proudly regarded as an offering on the shrine of emancipated woman, were more probably due only to the efforts of two men who liked her. Humiliating conviction! Besides, at Fenwick’s instigation, she had obediently written a request to the principal to withdraw her name from the lists of those seeking employment.
Look as she would, she could not clearly see the road by which she might escape; yet each day seemed to make her position more unbearable.
And Mrs Leslie, Mrs Leslie added tenfold to her difficulties, and this with the best intentions in the world. Claudia’s wounded love flung itself for support on her woman’s pride; like her race she could endure magnificently, if only she were allowed, unquestioned, to hide the anguish of the wound. But Mrs Leslie saw too much, pointed out what the girl would fain have passed over in silence, grumbled, protested, excused. She was personally affronted with her brother, and used Claudia as a weapon of retaliation. She did not approve of Helen Arbuthnot, she considered that Arthur was behaving scandalously, and she felt a large degree of responsibility for the girl under her care; so that it was constantly—“Well, certainly, Arthur, you have been most attentive to Claudia to-day!” or, “If I were Claudia, I should not thank you much for looking in upon me at the end of the afternoon;” or, “Claudia and I seem left very much to our own devices!” And these reproaches, uttered before Claudia herself, had the effect of paralysing the girl, and of taking from her what seemed her own just cause of complaint.
There were dangerous moments, too, when Fenwick, smitten with remorse or swayed by caprice—who can say?—regained his old ascendancy; when she could almost believe that all was as it had been, moments when he was charming, tender; moments, alas! too fleeting, but sweet enough to make her own with a pang that if only they lasted, she must still be his. For the sake of their delicious glamour, a weaker nature might have readily consented to keep its eyes blinded, and to believe that all would yet be well. But Claudia was not weak. Her training, whatever else it had done or left undone, had exercised her intellect, and given her powers of self-control which came to her rescue now. She saw clearly that when Fenwick was charming, it was because he had made up his mind to charm; that it was not due to spontaneous love, but to intentional love-making, and that such intervals were succeeded by evident indifference.
Chapter Seventeen.Miss Arbuthnot was everywhere, and Mr Pelham shadowed her. Opinions were freely bandied as to the existence or non-existence of an engagement, the majority inclining to the belief that one existed. Fenwick, on the other hand, was seldom seen near her, Mrs Leslie began to recover her equanimity, and perhaps only Claudia was aware that when he was in the same room with Helen his eyes followed her, or that he was more than usually silent and self-occupied. She was invariably well dressed, in a manner which set off her large figure; people turned to look at her as she passed, and she seemed to fling into insignificance such slim beauties as Claudia. Whether from chance or intention, the two seldom said much to each other, but it happened that one grey afternoon at the club-house, they found themselves near each other watching a game of bicycle polo.Miss Arbuthnot deliberately walked up to Claudia.“Detesting games! I am bored to death,” she said, “and so—I imagine—are you. Don’t you think we should suffer less if we escaped beyond the sounds of croquet and lawn-tennis, and everything except the clack of our own voices?”Claudia hesitated, and Helen added—“You had better come. I assure you there are times when I can be intelligent, and Captain Fenwick will not be here just yet.”The girl walked quickly on as if she had been stung.“What has that to do with it?” she said recklessly.Miss Arbuthnot was engaged in disentangling a bramble which had caught in her dress. When she looked up she said coolly—“A good deal to me. You know—or do you not know?—that I have always liked him.”Amazement struck Claudia almost speechless. She stammered with her sudden rush of anger.“You tell me—you can tell me—”“The truth. Isn’t that always desirable? Besides, after all, have I said anything that should affront you? That I liked him. That was my remark.”There was a pause.“It implied that he liked you,” said Claudia, more calmly, though still choking.“Oh, not at all. Does the one thing invariably imply the other?”It might have been that there was—it seemed so to Claudia—a touch of mockery in the question.“If not—” she began hastily, and stopped.“If not, you think I was a fool? Well—perhaps. We were engaged, at any rate.”“Oh!” cried the girl, stopping short. This was more than she had dreamed of.“You did not know it? But I imagine you are prepared to hear of such episodes?” Is any woman prepared? Claudia bit her lip to keep back the answer she would have liked to fling at her tormentor, and Miss Arbuthnot went on—“It did not last very long. To adopt the stock phrase proper to these humiliating occasions, we discovered that we had made a mistake. Probably you wonder why I am going back to that not-too-agreeable time. I will tell you—”“Don’t!” cried Claudia, quite suddenly. She hardly knew what she said, conscious only of a sharp thrill of pain, and a sickening dread of worse to come. Miss Arbuthnot glanced quickly at her, and went on as if she had not spoken.“It is because I am certain you are falling into the same mistake.”She turned away as she spoke, and stood resting her arms upon a railing. Behind her she heard the girl breathing heavily. Then it seemed as if Claudia made an effort to speak, for her voice was strangely hoarse and low.“This is unendurable!” she said.“Oh no,” returned Helen, “not by any means unendurable. The unendurable is when you have made the mistake permanent. If you could bring yourself to admit it to me—and you might, since I have gone through the same humiliation myself—you would own that you are uneasy, shaken, unhappy. I don’t know what plan you adopt with him, perhaps you reproach him—I found it irresistible—perhaps you take refuge in silence. Take my word for it, there is no remedy in either. Love has flown, and you will never whistle him back. Be thankful he did not stay longer. Hug the wound, if you will, but go.”Perhaps, in the sick bewilderment of the moment, the sensation uppermost in Claudia’s mind was vexation at the manner in which Miss Arbuthnot reviewed the position. She spoke with a cool confidence always impressive, and she seemed to be able to express herself dispassionately, as if she were no more than a critic, looking on from the outside. It was true that she had taken extreme care to place herself on the same level with Claudia, but the girl was too angry and excited to accept this fellowship. It was, indeed, made impossible to her by the unacknowledged conviction that the dominion Miss Arbuthnot once possessed, she had, in some inexplicable manner, regained. She stood pale, furious, yet trying hard to prevent excitement from showing itself in voice or manner.“Why do you say this to me?”“Ah, why?” returned the other, lapsing into her usual careless tone. “To tell you the truth, you have me there. I did not intend to speak. I thought you might find out for yourself, but—who can account for impulses? Perhaps I imagined it might shorten the business. I see that so far I have failed, and you are only angry.”“Angry!” Claudia flung back her head impetuously. “That isn’t the word.”“Well, I won’t use a stronger,” said Miss Arbuthnot, with an amused smile. “I dare say I should have felt the same myself. Yet, look at the matter philosophically. You only hate me for speaking, because your heart tells you I am right.”“Oh, for more than that!” broke in the girl wildly.“For more than that?” The older woman turned and glanced curiously at her. She went on slowly. “You think, perhaps, then, that I am the cause of your unhappiness?”“Yes, I do. I think that you are treacherous, treacherous!” cried Claudia, stung beyond control. “You failed to keep his love yourself, yet could not endure to see it given to me. You set yourself to take it again—”Her voice failed—choked. It was Miss Arbuthnot’s turn to grow a little pale, and she stood for a moment staring out at a bit of near common, across which soldiers were marching, light now and then flashing on their accoutrements.“But—if I have proved to you that it is worthless?” she said slowly at last.“Ah!” exclaimed Claudia scornfully, “doyouthink it worthless?”Then Helen Arbuthnot did a strange thing. She turned and looked into Claudia’s eyes, her own unflinching, and she spoke as people speak in a great crisis of their life.“Before Heaven, I do,” she said, “and that although I once cared for it more than for anything else in the world. Now have I set myself low enough?”Something in her words, but more in the manner of their utterance, had indeed shaken and curiously affected Claudia. They might have been spoken by one who cared enough for her to venture much on her behalf. And yet they came from the lips of Miss Arbuthnot, the woman whom she had just accused of acting towards her in the most heartless manner in which woman can act towards woman, and who at this moment, she believed, was holding her love up to scorn. For a moment she was shaken, but she recovered herself.“You own you want it yourself!” she cried relentlessly.The other still gazed at her for a moment, and then her mood changed. The fire died out of her eyes, her look relaxed; she laughed, though not mirthfully.“Ah, well,” she said, “I have already made you a present of the situation, so far as I am concerned. Doesn’t that mollify you?”“So far as you are concerned!” Claudia repeated with scorn. “Oh, you are very much concerned! The situation, as far as I can read it, is that you are trying to persuade me to take myself out of the way, in order that you may feel still more perfectly free.”Miss Arbuthnot looked at her once more.“Do you not see,” she said slowly and cruelly, “that you are not in the way? It is what he cannot have which has the attraction for Arthur Fenwick.”Was it so? The girl breathed hard, and put the question a second time.“Then why do you speak?” She had forgotten Helen’s words.“Ah, why? That’s what I have asked myself half a dozen times in as many minutes. Answer it as you like. Perhaps I love meddling.”She turned as she spoke, and began to walk towards the club-house. Claudia, hot, bewildered, angry, marched by her side, unwilling either to go with her or to remain behind. She felt bruised and beaten, yet, after all, the pain came from an unacknowledged source. Were they not her own convictions which had taken shape from the mouth of another?Before they reached the garden, Fenwick met them. His first glad look, his first glad word, were for Helen.“At last I have escaped!”It was little enough, but there are times when a little does as well as a great deal. He recollected himself, it is true, and turned sharply to Claudia, but she could have sworn that the exclamation neither belonged to her, nor was caused by her presence. It was to Helen he had escaped. She tried to speak quietly, though her tongue felt stiffened.“I see Gertrude on the croquet ground, and she must be wondering what has become of me.”If she was abrupt, she could not help it, yet, as she went, she was bitterly conscious that a short fortnight ago, Fenwick would have been almost tiresomely scrupulous that she did not cross the ground alone. And still, with her wretchedness, there was something of the joy of restored freedom. The shackles which she had worn gladly when she believed they belonged to excess of love, galled again, as soon as the love was wanting; so that when Mrs Leslie, vexed with her brother, vented her vexation on Claudia by whispering—“Where is Arthur? My dear Claudia, you really ought not to walk about all over the place by yourself; he will be so annoyed!” the girl’s answer was a repetition of his words. She drew a long breath.“At last I have escaped!”Fenwick, meanwhile, was in the midst of an interesting conversation. Both he and Miss Arbuthnot followed Claudia with their eyes. Then Helen turned hers upon him.“Well?” she said.He thrust his hands into his pockets.“She can take care of herself for once. And—I never see you.”“I should have said we met fairly often.”“I don’t call it seeing to find you engulfed in a crowd.”She lifted her eyebrows. “Since when have you been so desirous for a conversationà deux?”Fenwick looked at her hardily. The look did not seem to agree with his words.“You might have a little pity!”“I have a great deal. I have just been expressing it to your Claudia.”He frowned.“To Claudia? And pity for me?”“Oh no!” said Miss Arbuthnot in her softest voice. “For her.”This time there was a short silence. Fenwick walked away a few yards, and came back to where Miss Arbuthnot still stood waiting.“You are right,” he said in an altered tone; “you are right. From beginning to end it has been a miserable mistake.”She expressed no surprise, the two appearing to understand each other. She only inquired—“And what do you intend to do?”“I must go on with it. We must marry,” he returned moodily.“Certainly,” said Miss Arbuthnot briskly, “certainly. No other course is open to you.” He looked at her again.“And yet you haven’t a word of pity to throw!”“Why should I? You are marrying the girl you chose, a nice girl, too, who had no thought of you until you insisted upon her falling in love. And now that you have got her there, you are discontented. Pity! Yes, I pity her with all my heart!”He still kept his eyes on her.“You won’t be any better off yourself,” he said with significance.She turned and faced him.“What do you mean?” she asked coldly.“That fellow—that Pelham—can you tell me honestly that you care for him?”“You have no possible right to put such a question,” she said haughtily. “Be sure of one thing. I do not marry the man I do not care for. Here we are at the polo again, and here is Mrs Menzies.”Fenwick had his dismissal, and swung away in a rage, angry with Helen, angry with Claudia, most angry with himself. He rated fate for opening his eyes when it was too late, and allowing him then, and not till then, to find out the insane folly of his conduct in letting slip the one woman for whom he was now certain that he cared. Glancing at the rapidly thinning group of brightly dressed people, he muttered an exclamation as he caught a glimpse of his sister’s figure, and, with the intention of avoiding a meeting, went out of the place, and struck from the Farnborough road, with its oddly isolated groups of firs, across the common.By this time the sun was low, and, catching the fir stems, turned them to ruddy gold. A few wild clouds, threatening storm, barred the western sky, but the threat was splendid in colour and contrast, and, while bringing out the rich tints of the near common, had the effect of only adding to the serene beauty of the blue distance. Here and there a patch of white tents dotted a slope; smoke curled upwards from the camp fires; and an occasional sharp sound or call struck the silence. Fenwick neither saw nor heard. He walked, staring at the ground, caring nothing where he went, and only bent upon avoiding his kind.What devil was there in him, he asked himself impatiently, which was for ever dragging him into positions from which, when his eyes were open, he recoiled? In this question which he flung, it is possible that he caught a fleeting glimpse of the inordinate vanity which was the real cause of his disasters, but vanity is too subtle an imp not to have a hundred disguises ready for such a moment. Fenwick freely cursed an impetuous nature, idleness, imprudence, and left the actual mover unscathed and grinning. He had tired of Helen Arbuthnot for the very reason that he was secure of her preference; and when he accepted his dismissal and moved away, it was with the absolute confidence that if ever he liked to step back, he would find her waiting. And now apparently—by her own act, which was quite a different affair from his—she was placing herself beyond his reach; while he, like a raw fool, had bound himself to a girl who had ceased to be attractive from the moment in which he knew he had gained her heart.He did not put it so crudely, nor had he any thought of drawing back from his engagement. Fenwick was an honourable man, and he fully intended not only to marry Claudia, but to make her happy. As to his power to do this, he was curiously free from misgivings. On his own future life he bestowed a groan, but she loved him, and that would be enough for her. He even went so far as to glance at some of her crude latter-day ideas, and to decide that he would allow her a certain amount of freedom to exercise them; under careful control, of course, and, above all, in ways that should bring no ridicule upon him. Such an outlet for her enthusiasms would occupy and prevent her finding out that—that—well, that he no longer felt for her all that he had imagined. How he had imagined it still puzzled him, for he had no impulse towards solving the enigma in the only way in which it could have been solved—the confession that her cool indifference had piqued him into trying to stir it into warmth. So accustomed was he to flutter the hearts of the women who crossed his path, that to find a country girl treating him with profound carelessness, was not to be endured. It was very natural that Harry Hilton’s clumsy attentions should fail to touch her—he liked her the better for being their object, and for rejecting them—but to be placed in the same category himself was another matter. Then, to win her cost him something. He had to let him-self go. For a time he felt the ardour of chase, the longing to gain; some, at least, of the many sensations which help to make up love; enough, indeed, as he bitterly owned, to deceive himself.And now, now he had won Claudia, and lost Helen.He walked far, so that when he turned all the fires of sunset had dulled in the west, and the firs stood black against a saffron sky. The camp was alive and busy, though the more active work of the day was over. Fenwick came back as he went. He told himself bitterly that this was no more than he expected. It was no question of future conduct which he had taken out into the solitudes to solve, but a burden which he was girding himself to bear. He had thought of himself from beginning to end, and of Claudia only as one towards whom he had a duty. For him to fulfil this was enough for her.But he could not see her that night. When he reached his quarters he sent a note to the hut saying that he was dining at mess, and would not be able to look in. He made another resolution, which appeared to him an admirable example of sacrifice, for there was a party to which Miss Arbuthnot was bidden and not the Leslies: he had intended to find himself there, and now resigned it.
Miss Arbuthnot was everywhere, and Mr Pelham shadowed her. Opinions were freely bandied as to the existence or non-existence of an engagement, the majority inclining to the belief that one existed. Fenwick, on the other hand, was seldom seen near her, Mrs Leslie began to recover her equanimity, and perhaps only Claudia was aware that when he was in the same room with Helen his eyes followed her, or that he was more than usually silent and self-occupied. She was invariably well dressed, in a manner which set off her large figure; people turned to look at her as she passed, and she seemed to fling into insignificance such slim beauties as Claudia. Whether from chance or intention, the two seldom said much to each other, but it happened that one grey afternoon at the club-house, they found themselves near each other watching a game of bicycle polo.
Miss Arbuthnot deliberately walked up to Claudia.
“Detesting games! I am bored to death,” she said, “and so—I imagine—are you. Don’t you think we should suffer less if we escaped beyond the sounds of croquet and lawn-tennis, and everything except the clack of our own voices?”
Claudia hesitated, and Helen added—
“You had better come. I assure you there are times when I can be intelligent, and Captain Fenwick will not be here just yet.”
The girl walked quickly on as if she had been stung.
“What has that to do with it?” she said recklessly.
Miss Arbuthnot was engaged in disentangling a bramble which had caught in her dress. When she looked up she said coolly—
“A good deal to me. You know—or do you not know?—that I have always liked him.”
Amazement struck Claudia almost speechless. She stammered with her sudden rush of anger.
“You tell me—you can tell me—”
“The truth. Isn’t that always desirable? Besides, after all, have I said anything that should affront you? That I liked him. That was my remark.”
There was a pause.
“It implied that he liked you,” said Claudia, more calmly, though still choking.
“Oh, not at all. Does the one thing invariably imply the other?”
It might have been that there was—it seemed so to Claudia—a touch of mockery in the question.
“If not—” she began hastily, and stopped.
“If not, you think I was a fool? Well—perhaps. We were engaged, at any rate.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, stopping short. This was more than she had dreamed of.
“You did not know it? But I imagine you are prepared to hear of such episodes?” Is any woman prepared? Claudia bit her lip to keep back the answer she would have liked to fling at her tormentor, and Miss Arbuthnot went on—
“It did not last very long. To adopt the stock phrase proper to these humiliating occasions, we discovered that we had made a mistake. Probably you wonder why I am going back to that not-too-agreeable time. I will tell you—”
“Don’t!” cried Claudia, quite suddenly. She hardly knew what she said, conscious only of a sharp thrill of pain, and a sickening dread of worse to come. Miss Arbuthnot glanced quickly at her, and went on as if she had not spoken.
“It is because I am certain you are falling into the same mistake.”
She turned away as she spoke, and stood resting her arms upon a railing. Behind her she heard the girl breathing heavily. Then it seemed as if Claudia made an effort to speak, for her voice was strangely hoarse and low.
“This is unendurable!” she said.
“Oh no,” returned Helen, “not by any means unendurable. The unendurable is when you have made the mistake permanent. If you could bring yourself to admit it to me—and you might, since I have gone through the same humiliation myself—you would own that you are uneasy, shaken, unhappy. I don’t know what plan you adopt with him, perhaps you reproach him—I found it irresistible—perhaps you take refuge in silence. Take my word for it, there is no remedy in either. Love has flown, and you will never whistle him back. Be thankful he did not stay longer. Hug the wound, if you will, but go.”
Perhaps, in the sick bewilderment of the moment, the sensation uppermost in Claudia’s mind was vexation at the manner in which Miss Arbuthnot reviewed the position. She spoke with a cool confidence always impressive, and she seemed to be able to express herself dispassionately, as if she were no more than a critic, looking on from the outside. It was true that she had taken extreme care to place herself on the same level with Claudia, but the girl was too angry and excited to accept this fellowship. It was, indeed, made impossible to her by the unacknowledged conviction that the dominion Miss Arbuthnot once possessed, she had, in some inexplicable manner, regained. She stood pale, furious, yet trying hard to prevent excitement from showing itself in voice or manner.
“Why do you say this to me?”
“Ah, why?” returned the other, lapsing into her usual careless tone. “To tell you the truth, you have me there. I did not intend to speak. I thought you might find out for yourself, but—who can account for impulses? Perhaps I imagined it might shorten the business. I see that so far I have failed, and you are only angry.”
“Angry!” Claudia flung back her head impetuously. “That isn’t the word.”
“Well, I won’t use a stronger,” said Miss Arbuthnot, with an amused smile. “I dare say I should have felt the same myself. Yet, look at the matter philosophically. You only hate me for speaking, because your heart tells you I am right.”
“Oh, for more than that!” broke in the girl wildly.
“For more than that?” The older woman turned and glanced curiously at her. She went on slowly. “You think, perhaps, then, that I am the cause of your unhappiness?”
“Yes, I do. I think that you are treacherous, treacherous!” cried Claudia, stung beyond control. “You failed to keep his love yourself, yet could not endure to see it given to me. You set yourself to take it again—”
Her voice failed—choked. It was Miss Arbuthnot’s turn to grow a little pale, and she stood for a moment staring out at a bit of near common, across which soldiers were marching, light now and then flashing on their accoutrements.
“But—if I have proved to you that it is worthless?” she said slowly at last.
“Ah!” exclaimed Claudia scornfully, “doyouthink it worthless?”
Then Helen Arbuthnot did a strange thing. She turned and looked into Claudia’s eyes, her own unflinching, and she spoke as people speak in a great crisis of their life.
“Before Heaven, I do,” she said, “and that although I once cared for it more than for anything else in the world. Now have I set myself low enough?”
Something in her words, but more in the manner of their utterance, had indeed shaken and curiously affected Claudia. They might have been spoken by one who cared enough for her to venture much on her behalf. And yet they came from the lips of Miss Arbuthnot, the woman whom she had just accused of acting towards her in the most heartless manner in which woman can act towards woman, and who at this moment, she believed, was holding her love up to scorn. For a moment she was shaken, but she recovered herself.
“You own you want it yourself!” she cried relentlessly.
The other still gazed at her for a moment, and then her mood changed. The fire died out of her eyes, her look relaxed; she laughed, though not mirthfully.
“Ah, well,” she said, “I have already made you a present of the situation, so far as I am concerned. Doesn’t that mollify you?”
“So far as you are concerned!” Claudia repeated with scorn. “Oh, you are very much concerned! The situation, as far as I can read it, is that you are trying to persuade me to take myself out of the way, in order that you may feel still more perfectly free.”
Miss Arbuthnot looked at her once more.
“Do you not see,” she said slowly and cruelly, “that you are not in the way? It is what he cannot have which has the attraction for Arthur Fenwick.”
Was it so? The girl breathed hard, and put the question a second time.
“Then why do you speak?” She had forgotten Helen’s words.
“Ah, why? That’s what I have asked myself half a dozen times in as many minutes. Answer it as you like. Perhaps I love meddling.”
She turned as she spoke, and began to walk towards the club-house. Claudia, hot, bewildered, angry, marched by her side, unwilling either to go with her or to remain behind. She felt bruised and beaten, yet, after all, the pain came from an unacknowledged source. Were they not her own convictions which had taken shape from the mouth of another?
Before they reached the garden, Fenwick met them. His first glad look, his first glad word, were for Helen.
“At last I have escaped!”
It was little enough, but there are times when a little does as well as a great deal. He recollected himself, it is true, and turned sharply to Claudia, but she could have sworn that the exclamation neither belonged to her, nor was caused by her presence. It was to Helen he had escaped. She tried to speak quietly, though her tongue felt stiffened.
“I see Gertrude on the croquet ground, and she must be wondering what has become of me.”
If she was abrupt, she could not help it, yet, as she went, she was bitterly conscious that a short fortnight ago, Fenwick would have been almost tiresomely scrupulous that she did not cross the ground alone. And still, with her wretchedness, there was something of the joy of restored freedom. The shackles which she had worn gladly when she believed they belonged to excess of love, galled again, as soon as the love was wanting; so that when Mrs Leslie, vexed with her brother, vented her vexation on Claudia by whispering—
“Where is Arthur? My dear Claudia, you really ought not to walk about all over the place by yourself; he will be so annoyed!” the girl’s answer was a repetition of his words. She drew a long breath.
“At last I have escaped!”
Fenwick, meanwhile, was in the midst of an interesting conversation. Both he and Miss Arbuthnot followed Claudia with their eyes. Then Helen turned hers upon him.
“Well?” she said.
He thrust his hands into his pockets.
“She can take care of herself for once. And—I never see you.”
“I should have said we met fairly often.”
“I don’t call it seeing to find you engulfed in a crowd.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Since when have you been so desirous for a conversationà deux?”
Fenwick looked at her hardily. The look did not seem to agree with his words.
“You might have a little pity!”
“I have a great deal. I have just been expressing it to your Claudia.”
He frowned.
“To Claudia? And pity for me?”
“Oh no!” said Miss Arbuthnot in her softest voice. “For her.”
This time there was a short silence. Fenwick walked away a few yards, and came back to where Miss Arbuthnot still stood waiting.
“You are right,” he said in an altered tone; “you are right. From beginning to end it has been a miserable mistake.”
She expressed no surprise, the two appearing to understand each other. She only inquired—
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I must go on with it. We must marry,” he returned moodily.
“Certainly,” said Miss Arbuthnot briskly, “certainly. No other course is open to you.” He looked at her again.
“And yet you haven’t a word of pity to throw!”
“Why should I? You are marrying the girl you chose, a nice girl, too, who had no thought of you until you insisted upon her falling in love. And now that you have got her there, you are discontented. Pity! Yes, I pity her with all my heart!”
He still kept his eyes on her.
“You won’t be any better off yourself,” he said with significance.
She turned and faced him.
“What do you mean?” she asked coldly.
“That fellow—that Pelham—can you tell me honestly that you care for him?”
“You have no possible right to put such a question,” she said haughtily. “Be sure of one thing. I do not marry the man I do not care for. Here we are at the polo again, and here is Mrs Menzies.”
Fenwick had his dismissal, and swung away in a rage, angry with Helen, angry with Claudia, most angry with himself. He rated fate for opening his eyes when it was too late, and allowing him then, and not till then, to find out the insane folly of his conduct in letting slip the one woman for whom he was now certain that he cared. Glancing at the rapidly thinning group of brightly dressed people, he muttered an exclamation as he caught a glimpse of his sister’s figure, and, with the intention of avoiding a meeting, went out of the place, and struck from the Farnborough road, with its oddly isolated groups of firs, across the common.
By this time the sun was low, and, catching the fir stems, turned them to ruddy gold. A few wild clouds, threatening storm, barred the western sky, but the threat was splendid in colour and contrast, and, while bringing out the rich tints of the near common, had the effect of only adding to the serene beauty of the blue distance. Here and there a patch of white tents dotted a slope; smoke curled upwards from the camp fires; and an occasional sharp sound or call struck the silence. Fenwick neither saw nor heard. He walked, staring at the ground, caring nothing where he went, and only bent upon avoiding his kind.
What devil was there in him, he asked himself impatiently, which was for ever dragging him into positions from which, when his eyes were open, he recoiled? In this question which he flung, it is possible that he caught a fleeting glimpse of the inordinate vanity which was the real cause of his disasters, but vanity is too subtle an imp not to have a hundred disguises ready for such a moment. Fenwick freely cursed an impetuous nature, idleness, imprudence, and left the actual mover unscathed and grinning. He had tired of Helen Arbuthnot for the very reason that he was secure of her preference; and when he accepted his dismissal and moved away, it was with the absolute confidence that if ever he liked to step back, he would find her waiting. And now apparently—by her own act, which was quite a different affair from his—she was placing herself beyond his reach; while he, like a raw fool, had bound himself to a girl who had ceased to be attractive from the moment in which he knew he had gained her heart.
He did not put it so crudely, nor had he any thought of drawing back from his engagement. Fenwick was an honourable man, and he fully intended not only to marry Claudia, but to make her happy. As to his power to do this, he was curiously free from misgivings. On his own future life he bestowed a groan, but she loved him, and that would be enough for her. He even went so far as to glance at some of her crude latter-day ideas, and to decide that he would allow her a certain amount of freedom to exercise them; under careful control, of course, and, above all, in ways that should bring no ridicule upon him. Such an outlet for her enthusiasms would occupy and prevent her finding out that—that—well, that he no longer felt for her all that he had imagined. How he had imagined it still puzzled him, for he had no impulse towards solving the enigma in the only way in which it could have been solved—the confession that her cool indifference had piqued him into trying to stir it into warmth. So accustomed was he to flutter the hearts of the women who crossed his path, that to find a country girl treating him with profound carelessness, was not to be endured. It was very natural that Harry Hilton’s clumsy attentions should fail to touch her—he liked her the better for being their object, and for rejecting them—but to be placed in the same category himself was another matter. Then, to win her cost him something. He had to let him-self go. For a time he felt the ardour of chase, the longing to gain; some, at least, of the many sensations which help to make up love; enough, indeed, as he bitterly owned, to deceive himself.
And now, now he had won Claudia, and lost Helen.
He walked far, so that when he turned all the fires of sunset had dulled in the west, and the firs stood black against a saffron sky. The camp was alive and busy, though the more active work of the day was over. Fenwick came back as he went. He told himself bitterly that this was no more than he expected. It was no question of future conduct which he had taken out into the solitudes to solve, but a burden which he was girding himself to bear. He had thought of himself from beginning to end, and of Claudia only as one towards whom he had a duty. For him to fulfil this was enough for her.
But he could not see her that night. When he reached his quarters he sent a note to the hut saying that he was dining at mess, and would not be able to look in. He made another resolution, which appeared to him an admirable example of sacrifice, for there was a party to which Miss Arbuthnot was bidden and not the Leslies: he had intended to find himself there, and now resigned it.
Chapter Eighteen.The result of Fenwick’s meditation might have been foreseen; he felt himself the injured person, and went resignedly to the hut on the following day, prepared to act with magnanimity. Claudia met him as simply as usual, showing no trace of displeasure. A close observer might, it is true, have noticed that she was both pale and heavy-eyed, but, except under the influence of a dominant personal interest, Fenwick was not a close observer, and he merely registered a mental note that her young beauty was of too variable a nature to be counted upon. His sister, however, quickly became aware that he was himself disturbed, and she took an opportunity of calling Claudia into the next room.“Something has gone wrong with Arthur, I can see. I know his face so well! Do be careful what you say,” she added anxiously.“Has anything gone wrong?” asked the girl, with a curious little laugh. “Well, don’t be afraid. Perhaps I can set it right.”Mrs Leslie shook her head. She had no confidence in Claudia’s powers, and she dreaded beyond words, another eight days’ wonder over her brother’s love affairs. Major Leslie was waiting for her in the garden, and when she went out she was so full of her fears that she confided them, with signs towards the window.“I am dreadfully afraid there is something in the wind. Arthur looks like a thundercloud.”“Pleasant for her!” said little Major Leslie, whistling.“That’s the worst of it. She might manage, but unfortunately she has no tact whatever, and Arthur will require the most delicate handling from his wife. Lawrence, this gardener is absolutely no good.”“I don’t see anything amiss.”“Then look at that border.”The two wrangled, and strolled away together. Claudia, after a momentary hesitation, a momentary locking of her small fingers, went back to the pretty cool room, and sat down on the window-seat. Through the trees came glints of bright colour, as soldiers passed up and down the road, and now and then a cheery note of bugle or pipes rose shrill above other sounds. Fenwick walked restlessly about the room.“I suppose you’ll be at the polo this afternoon,” he remarked, stopping to straighten a picture, “as you’re so awfully keen on that sort of thing, aren’t you?”“I suppose I am,” she said slowly. “But I am not going to the polo. It was about this afternoon that I wanted to say something.”“All right. Here I am!” he said, flinging himself into a low chair by her side. But there was something ungracious in the movement, and his face darkened. He thought she intended to reproach him. Claudia spoke again, still slowly, for her voice was not altogether under control, and she dreaded above all things a breakdown.“I am just sending a telegram to Elmslie—to my cousins—to ask them to expect me to-day.”“Oh!” said Fenwick, sitting up. “And may I ask what has brought about this sudden change?”His dry angry voice acted upon Claudia as a spur. Her eyes brightened as she faced him.“Need you ask?” Then her voice softened again. “Arthur,” she said, “many words are not necessary, are they? It has all been hasty, mistaken, foolish, but it has not lasted very long. Now let us both—forget.”“Do you mean,” he asked sharply, “that you wish to break off our engagement?”“Yes,” she answered, groping for words so carefully that she hesitated—“yes, that is what I mean. I did foolishly to agree to it, and that will always be the first thing I shall remember. Why you wished it I don’t know,”—she drew a long breath—“happily it is not yet too late, and it has just got to be as though it had never been.”“I should still like to know what is my offence. That I left you to go back alone yesterday? I should have supposed that would have pleased you.”“I think you are ungenerous,” said the girl, with a flash. “Do you take me for a stone? I am not reproaching you. Oh,” she broke out more wildly, “can’t you let it be over and done with without words?”“No,” said Fenwick savagely. “I suppose this is all woman’s confounded jealousy.”He was really angry, and conflicting with a sense of relief came indignation that she could let him go.“Have it as you like,” Claudia answered proudly; “I have said enough. It has been a mistake, a mistake made by us both; but fortunately there is still time to draw back. Some day perhaps you will see that I could not have acted otherwise.” She flung out her hands. “There! It is over. Will you ring the bell that I may send this?”Her manner still stung him, and he was not generous enough to own to himself how entirely he had forced it upon her.“You have taken the law into your own hands with a vengeance,” he said bitterly, as he crossed the room. “Apparently I am expected to accept sentence without so much as being told the manner of my offending. Gloriously feminine, upon my word! Warren, take this to the telegraph office.” He held it another moment in his hand and turned to her. “You wish it to go?”She bent her head, finding words impossible; and when the man had left the room, Fenwick hung back and stood staring at her.“Well,” he said imperiously, “I am waiting for an explanation.”She shook her head.“Don’t expect me to be satisfied with signs. I must have chapter and verse.”It was Claudia’s turn to be impatient. She sprang to her feet, her eyes passionately reproachful, her voice firm—“But I will not say more! Words—words are absolutely vain, and yet you want them: you want my thoughts and feelings put into shape for you to handle them. Don’t you see, can’t you see, that your very lack of power to do this for yourself shows what a gulf has opened between us? If you loved me,”—her voice faltered and recovered itself—“if you loved me, you would understand without words—” She was going to call to witness her own power of entering into his feelings, but checked herself in time, for no tenderness in his manner had gained the right to wring admissions from her which she instinctively knew would be but food for his vanity. That night, tossing sleepless, she had sworn that she would not let him learn how she had suffered, and to make sure of this kept her face turned from him, fancying that he might read it there. But she raised her hand as she spoke, and when she broke off it dropped heavily by her side.“No, I don’t pretend to be clever enough to understand you,” he said sharply. “You judge me harshly, you draw unwarrantable deductions, and refuse either to hear me speak or to speak yourself. How are we ever to hope to set matters right?” He stopped. The mere unexpected discovery that she could give him up, immeasurably raised her value, and yet at the same moment the thought of Helen Arbuthnot rushed into his brain. “I suppose,” he went on more quietly, “you are vexed with something I have done or left undone?”“Is that it?” she asked faintly, with the same consciousness of tension in her speech—a tension which was growing well-nigh intolerable. “Perhaps—I don’t know—no, I think it is something much deeper. Whatever it is, I cannot change, but there need be no unkindness between us.”“Oh,” he said scornfully, “you have the stock phrases at your fingers’ ends!” And then his better angel moved him to compunction. “Claudia, forgive me!”It was the old intonation, the old tender tune which could yet shake her like a leaf.“Don’t say that,” she stammered hastily; “if—if it will make you happier, be sure I shall not ever think hardly of you. It has been what I said—a mistake—that is all. And there is one thing more,” she went on in a stronger voice. “In these matters, I don’t know, but I suppose the world always thinks that some one is to blame. I am that one, remember. It is I who have done it. Only, would you mind saying this to your sister yourself, and telling her that I must—I must go away to-day?”He had turned from her, and was leaning against the mantelpiece, his head buried in his arms. Claudia stood and looked at him for one yearning moment, her face troubled, her eyes full of tears.Before he had time to answer she was gone.Fenwick neither spoke nor stirred. For a moment he was shaken by a strange rush of feeling, pricked by an involuntary shame, conscious of something higher and better than himself. But the moment did not last. Other thoughts crowded thickly, and leapt into prominence. The habit of constantly appealing to his own personality, and measuring all things by their relation to it, the invariable dwarfing question which strangled nobler impulses, and could only ask, “How will this affect me?” rose up strong and strangling as ever. They made him hesitate, when generosity would have rushed the words, lest in their utterance he might say more than he would—later—find convenient. Self had through these instruments dominated his nature, checked his expansion, left him cold and self-conscious, made the nobler side of him hate himself. While Claudia spoke, something within him urged quick response, words which should at least answer more adequately to the sweetness of her farewell, more bravely own his fault. But he had crushed the whisper, from a base dread of saying too much, and with the opportunity gone, the poorer part of him began to dominate again. She had voluntarily given him up, and an irritable vanity, fastening upon this offence, swelled and fumed around it until all other issues were blotted from view. More than once in these latter days, he had been conscious of a wish that he could live over again those days at Huntingdon, but this was an altogether different matter from supposing that Claudia might also desire to reconsider them. He left his position, and, crossing to the window, stood staring blackly out of it, foreseeing many awkwardnesses, but without a thought for poor Claudia, who had flung herself face downwards upon her bed upstairs, and was sobbing passionately. Whatever pressure was put upon the wind bag of his vanity only forced it out on another side. He was standing, immovable, in the same place when his sister came in.“Oh, Arthur!” she exclaimed, stopping in the doorway.He did not look round.“Well, why ‘Oh, Arthur!’?”“Something has happened. I was certain something was going to happen. I wish I had not gone out. You and Claudia have quarrelled.”“Certainly not.” He laughed shortly.“If you like, we have agreed to differ.” He broke off, and added with the same abruptness, “You’ve got to know, and you may as well know at once that it’s all over—amicably, and probably for the best. Claudia goes back to Elmslie to-day, and the only thing for you and Lawrence to do is to hold your tongues.”“That’s very easy for you to say, but you must be aware that I shall have to give some sort of explanation,” said Mrs Leslie, with a sense of affront underlying her real dismay.“No, I am not aware. To whom?” said Fenwick, facing round fiercely. “If the fools want to talk, let them!”“Of course they will talk.”“As I say—let them!”Mrs Leslie drew herself up.“You might be more civil, Arthur, considering you have brought it on yourself. Pray do you suppose the situation will be agreeable for us?”“Hang it all!” he burst out. “Say what you like, then! The plain truth is, as any one might see, that we’re unsuited, and it’s come home to her at last. There it lies in a nutshell, and you may make what you can of it.”“I saw it long ago.”“I’ll wager you did!”“And,” went on his sister coldly, “I can’t wonder at the poor child discovering it too. You forced it upon her pretty clearly, you and Helen Arbuthnot.”Fenwick, not displeased at this conjunction of names, moderated his tone.“There was nothing for her to fuss about, only a woman’s jealousy warps her common sense. You’ll see that some one goes with her?”But this provision for her comfort Claudia resolutely declined. It had been only to please her lover that she had consented to be guarded by an escort on her journey to Aldershot, and now that she had no lover to please she would certainly go back in the manner she preferred; she was not in the mood to forego one of her privileges, and Mrs Leslie argued with her in vain. Free from personal vanity, she had much of the egotism of youth. She belonged to an age which was to reanimate the world, and to a cluster of girls who felt themselves instinct with corporate force, and whose ignorance had this in it that was noble, that it at least stretched out eager helping hands, with passionate impulses for good. This strong hopeful faith, this assurance that they had to show the world how different a thing a woman’s life might become from what it had been in the ages past when shrinking dependence was her distinguishing characteristic, had been cruelly wounded in Claudia as much by her own acts as by the verdict of others. If she had not suffered from obloquy, she had been dangerously near to being laughed out of court, and she had yielded ignominiously to almost the first touch of so-called love. Sore and shamed, she doubted ever getting back to her starting-point. Her career had been cruelly shorn of its dignity, and she felt, not only miserable, but commonplace.At any rate she could—she would take care of herself in the train.Once there, she could think more consecutively, if more sadly. In the forlornness and humiliation of her experience, as unlike what she had pictured for herself as it was possible for experience to be, her remembrances turned gratefully to Elmslie; nay, even lingered with a certain tenderness round the Thornbury home. From there, at any rate, no wounding had come, although it seemed to her, looking back, that she had been singularly aggressive and unaccommodating. Mrs Hilton’s amazement had been modulated by her fine instincts of courtesy, and Harry—Harry, if he had been foolish, at least believed in her.
The result of Fenwick’s meditation might have been foreseen; he felt himself the injured person, and went resignedly to the hut on the following day, prepared to act with magnanimity. Claudia met him as simply as usual, showing no trace of displeasure. A close observer might, it is true, have noticed that she was both pale and heavy-eyed, but, except under the influence of a dominant personal interest, Fenwick was not a close observer, and he merely registered a mental note that her young beauty was of too variable a nature to be counted upon. His sister, however, quickly became aware that he was himself disturbed, and she took an opportunity of calling Claudia into the next room.
“Something has gone wrong with Arthur, I can see. I know his face so well! Do be careful what you say,” she added anxiously.
“Has anything gone wrong?” asked the girl, with a curious little laugh. “Well, don’t be afraid. Perhaps I can set it right.”
Mrs Leslie shook her head. She had no confidence in Claudia’s powers, and she dreaded beyond words, another eight days’ wonder over her brother’s love affairs. Major Leslie was waiting for her in the garden, and when she went out she was so full of her fears that she confided them, with signs towards the window.
“I am dreadfully afraid there is something in the wind. Arthur looks like a thundercloud.”
“Pleasant for her!” said little Major Leslie, whistling.
“That’s the worst of it. She might manage, but unfortunately she has no tact whatever, and Arthur will require the most delicate handling from his wife. Lawrence, this gardener is absolutely no good.”
“I don’t see anything amiss.”
“Then look at that border.”
The two wrangled, and strolled away together. Claudia, after a momentary hesitation, a momentary locking of her small fingers, went back to the pretty cool room, and sat down on the window-seat. Through the trees came glints of bright colour, as soldiers passed up and down the road, and now and then a cheery note of bugle or pipes rose shrill above other sounds. Fenwick walked restlessly about the room.
“I suppose you’ll be at the polo this afternoon,” he remarked, stopping to straighten a picture, “as you’re so awfully keen on that sort of thing, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am,” she said slowly. “But I am not going to the polo. It was about this afternoon that I wanted to say something.”
“All right. Here I am!” he said, flinging himself into a low chair by her side. But there was something ungracious in the movement, and his face darkened. He thought she intended to reproach him. Claudia spoke again, still slowly, for her voice was not altogether under control, and she dreaded above all things a breakdown.
“I am just sending a telegram to Elmslie—to my cousins—to ask them to expect me to-day.”
“Oh!” said Fenwick, sitting up. “And may I ask what has brought about this sudden change?”
His dry angry voice acted upon Claudia as a spur. Her eyes brightened as she faced him.
“Need you ask?” Then her voice softened again. “Arthur,” she said, “many words are not necessary, are they? It has all been hasty, mistaken, foolish, but it has not lasted very long. Now let us both—forget.”
“Do you mean,” he asked sharply, “that you wish to break off our engagement?”
“Yes,” she answered, groping for words so carefully that she hesitated—“yes, that is what I mean. I did foolishly to agree to it, and that will always be the first thing I shall remember. Why you wished it I don’t know,”—she drew a long breath—“happily it is not yet too late, and it has just got to be as though it had never been.”
“I should still like to know what is my offence. That I left you to go back alone yesterday? I should have supposed that would have pleased you.”
“I think you are ungenerous,” said the girl, with a flash. “Do you take me for a stone? I am not reproaching you. Oh,” she broke out more wildly, “can’t you let it be over and done with without words?”
“No,” said Fenwick savagely. “I suppose this is all woman’s confounded jealousy.”
He was really angry, and conflicting with a sense of relief came indignation that she could let him go.
“Have it as you like,” Claudia answered proudly; “I have said enough. It has been a mistake, a mistake made by us both; but fortunately there is still time to draw back. Some day perhaps you will see that I could not have acted otherwise.” She flung out her hands. “There! It is over. Will you ring the bell that I may send this?”
Her manner still stung him, and he was not generous enough to own to himself how entirely he had forced it upon her.
“You have taken the law into your own hands with a vengeance,” he said bitterly, as he crossed the room. “Apparently I am expected to accept sentence without so much as being told the manner of my offending. Gloriously feminine, upon my word! Warren, take this to the telegraph office.” He held it another moment in his hand and turned to her. “You wish it to go?”
She bent her head, finding words impossible; and when the man had left the room, Fenwick hung back and stood staring at her.
“Well,” he said imperiously, “I am waiting for an explanation.”
She shook her head.
“Don’t expect me to be satisfied with signs. I must have chapter and verse.”
It was Claudia’s turn to be impatient. She sprang to her feet, her eyes passionately reproachful, her voice firm—
“But I will not say more! Words—words are absolutely vain, and yet you want them: you want my thoughts and feelings put into shape for you to handle them. Don’t you see, can’t you see, that your very lack of power to do this for yourself shows what a gulf has opened between us? If you loved me,”—her voice faltered and recovered itself—“if you loved me, you would understand without words—” She was going to call to witness her own power of entering into his feelings, but checked herself in time, for no tenderness in his manner had gained the right to wring admissions from her which she instinctively knew would be but food for his vanity. That night, tossing sleepless, she had sworn that she would not let him learn how she had suffered, and to make sure of this kept her face turned from him, fancying that he might read it there. But she raised her hand as she spoke, and when she broke off it dropped heavily by her side.
“No, I don’t pretend to be clever enough to understand you,” he said sharply. “You judge me harshly, you draw unwarrantable deductions, and refuse either to hear me speak or to speak yourself. How are we ever to hope to set matters right?” He stopped. The mere unexpected discovery that she could give him up, immeasurably raised her value, and yet at the same moment the thought of Helen Arbuthnot rushed into his brain. “I suppose,” he went on more quietly, “you are vexed with something I have done or left undone?”
“Is that it?” she asked faintly, with the same consciousness of tension in her speech—a tension which was growing well-nigh intolerable. “Perhaps—I don’t know—no, I think it is something much deeper. Whatever it is, I cannot change, but there need be no unkindness between us.”
“Oh,” he said scornfully, “you have the stock phrases at your fingers’ ends!” And then his better angel moved him to compunction. “Claudia, forgive me!”
It was the old intonation, the old tender tune which could yet shake her like a leaf.
“Don’t say that,” she stammered hastily; “if—if it will make you happier, be sure I shall not ever think hardly of you. It has been what I said—a mistake—that is all. And there is one thing more,” she went on in a stronger voice. “In these matters, I don’t know, but I suppose the world always thinks that some one is to blame. I am that one, remember. It is I who have done it. Only, would you mind saying this to your sister yourself, and telling her that I must—I must go away to-day?”
He had turned from her, and was leaning against the mantelpiece, his head buried in his arms. Claudia stood and looked at him for one yearning moment, her face troubled, her eyes full of tears.
Before he had time to answer she was gone.
Fenwick neither spoke nor stirred. For a moment he was shaken by a strange rush of feeling, pricked by an involuntary shame, conscious of something higher and better than himself. But the moment did not last. Other thoughts crowded thickly, and leapt into prominence. The habit of constantly appealing to his own personality, and measuring all things by their relation to it, the invariable dwarfing question which strangled nobler impulses, and could only ask, “How will this affect me?” rose up strong and strangling as ever. They made him hesitate, when generosity would have rushed the words, lest in their utterance he might say more than he would—later—find convenient. Self had through these instruments dominated his nature, checked his expansion, left him cold and self-conscious, made the nobler side of him hate himself. While Claudia spoke, something within him urged quick response, words which should at least answer more adequately to the sweetness of her farewell, more bravely own his fault. But he had crushed the whisper, from a base dread of saying too much, and with the opportunity gone, the poorer part of him began to dominate again. She had voluntarily given him up, and an irritable vanity, fastening upon this offence, swelled and fumed around it until all other issues were blotted from view. More than once in these latter days, he had been conscious of a wish that he could live over again those days at Huntingdon, but this was an altogether different matter from supposing that Claudia might also desire to reconsider them. He left his position, and, crossing to the window, stood staring blackly out of it, foreseeing many awkwardnesses, but without a thought for poor Claudia, who had flung herself face downwards upon her bed upstairs, and was sobbing passionately. Whatever pressure was put upon the wind bag of his vanity only forced it out on another side. He was standing, immovable, in the same place when his sister came in.
“Oh, Arthur!” she exclaimed, stopping in the doorway.
He did not look round.
“Well, why ‘Oh, Arthur!’?”
“Something has happened. I was certain something was going to happen. I wish I had not gone out. You and Claudia have quarrelled.”
“Certainly not.” He laughed shortly.
“If you like, we have agreed to differ.” He broke off, and added with the same abruptness, “You’ve got to know, and you may as well know at once that it’s all over—amicably, and probably for the best. Claudia goes back to Elmslie to-day, and the only thing for you and Lawrence to do is to hold your tongues.”
“That’s very easy for you to say, but you must be aware that I shall have to give some sort of explanation,” said Mrs Leslie, with a sense of affront underlying her real dismay.
“No, I am not aware. To whom?” said Fenwick, facing round fiercely. “If the fools want to talk, let them!”
“Of course they will talk.”
“As I say—let them!”
Mrs Leslie drew herself up.
“You might be more civil, Arthur, considering you have brought it on yourself. Pray do you suppose the situation will be agreeable for us?”
“Hang it all!” he burst out. “Say what you like, then! The plain truth is, as any one might see, that we’re unsuited, and it’s come home to her at last. There it lies in a nutshell, and you may make what you can of it.”
“I saw it long ago.”
“I’ll wager you did!”
“And,” went on his sister coldly, “I can’t wonder at the poor child discovering it too. You forced it upon her pretty clearly, you and Helen Arbuthnot.”
Fenwick, not displeased at this conjunction of names, moderated his tone.
“There was nothing for her to fuss about, only a woman’s jealousy warps her common sense. You’ll see that some one goes with her?”
But this provision for her comfort Claudia resolutely declined. It had been only to please her lover that she had consented to be guarded by an escort on her journey to Aldershot, and now that she had no lover to please she would certainly go back in the manner she preferred; she was not in the mood to forego one of her privileges, and Mrs Leslie argued with her in vain. Free from personal vanity, she had much of the egotism of youth. She belonged to an age which was to reanimate the world, and to a cluster of girls who felt themselves instinct with corporate force, and whose ignorance had this in it that was noble, that it at least stretched out eager helping hands, with passionate impulses for good. This strong hopeful faith, this assurance that they had to show the world how different a thing a woman’s life might become from what it had been in the ages past when shrinking dependence was her distinguishing characteristic, had been cruelly wounded in Claudia as much by her own acts as by the verdict of others. If she had not suffered from obloquy, she had been dangerously near to being laughed out of court, and she had yielded ignominiously to almost the first touch of so-called love. Sore and shamed, she doubted ever getting back to her starting-point. Her career had been cruelly shorn of its dignity, and she felt, not only miserable, but commonplace.
At any rate she could—she would take care of herself in the train.
Once there, she could think more consecutively, if more sadly. In the forlornness and humiliation of her experience, as unlike what she had pictured for herself as it was possible for experience to be, her remembrances turned gratefully to Elmslie; nay, even lingered with a certain tenderness round the Thornbury home. From there, at any rate, no wounding had come, although it seemed to her, looking back, that she had been singularly aggressive and unaccommodating. Mrs Hilton’s amazement had been modulated by her fine instincts of courtesy, and Harry—Harry, if he had been foolish, at least believed in her.