Chapter Thirteen.If the wonder Philippa expressed related to Claudia’s own feelings, she need have had no misgivings. In spite of hesitation, reluctance, beforehand, in spite of the coldness which stiffened her on the first day that she saw Fenwick in Lady Wilmot’s den, she was becoming, daily, shyly, yet radiantly happy. Fenwick’s treatment of her was subtly admirable. Her reserves, her pride, raised all his masterful instincts, and perhaps the sudden check to his active physical life inclined him the more to concentrate his energies upon conquering her love. It gave these energies a field. More than once she would have revolted from the touch of the new emotion; quivering and startled, she was inclined to fly, and it needed just the treatment he knew how to apply, to soothe her. The first sight of him, stretched helpless, had struck at her heart. The readiness with which he tossed aside her stammering words of regret made a direct appeal to her own generosity, and day by day the bond tightened. He knew—none better—how to play upon her ambitions and interests, talked as if they would continue, planned what further opportunities might be hers, let her suppose that here was perfect, satisfying sympathy, until it seemed to her that a delightful confidence had sprung up between them, such a confidence as even the college had never afforded. He waited for this, waited until, after some tentative advance and shrinking, it stood strong, and the rest was curiously easy. A few sentences instinct, as he knew how to make them, with all that was both tender and dominant, finished his work; Claudia was his almost before she realised that she had yielded, before Lady Wilmot, who was flitting in and out, could frame a tidy excuse for leaving the two alone. And it was extremely simple. Fenwick looked into her eyes, and thought them charming; she, trying to meet his with her usual frank directness, faltered, and could not face them. Then he whispered three words, and she made a mute sign, eloquent in its vagueness. No collapse could have been more complete, nothing could have been more unlike the manner in which she resolved to go through such a scene when, like other girls, she had rehearsed its possibilities. Claudia had always supposed that she should marry, and, when the moment came, intended to speak decidedly, very decidedly, to her lover, and let him make his choice; either take her with the understanding that she would stick to her profession, and accept whatever ties it imposed, or not take her at all. It is true that she almost invariably pictured him as yielding, but she meant to be dignified and quite firm; reflecting with contempt that the old ways of love-making were altogether unsuitable to the new girl, who was made of different stuff.And this was the result!Nothing, as she had to own, could have been less impressive than the figure she had cut; nothing more commonplace than the words spoken, except that she had a saving conviction that no one had ever spoken them with Fenwick’s strength, and this made a difference. Indeed, although she was obliged to own that she had failed, the fact did not seem to trouble her. She looked in the glass, and smiled at her own dimpling face, remembering what he had said; and recollecting further that she had heard him remark that he liked a particular shade of yellow, sat down and wrote to London for an evening frock of that colour.As for the obnoxious pocket-book, it remained where it had been laid the day before.When she was alone, or with Fenwick, Claudia’s happiness was like herself, eager and brilliant, for all happiness takes its colouring from the person it touches. With others she was not altogether at her ease, having an unacknowledged suspicion that Lady Wilmot was smiling in her sleeve, as indeed she was, and broadly.“Because it is so amusingly unexpected,” she informed her husband. “No two persons could be more unsuited to each other.”Sir Peter twinkled.“Is that recommendation likely to last?”“She was soveryindifferent, soverymuch swallowed up by her own ideas,” pursued his wife, unheeding; “and Arthur has a way of expecting women to flutter round him, and be flattered when he speaks. Oh, he’s a very good fellow, but that’s his little weakness, and that’s what makes me laugh. But I’m really extremely glad. It’s much better for him than marrying a woman like—well, for instance, like Helen Arbuthnot, all bitter herbs.”Sir Peter, who was well aware that his wife was not without her jealousies, let this statement pass uncontradicted, but spoke a word or two as to Claudia.“I suppose she knows her own mind? She hasn’t been talked into it?”“Talked! When she was as easy to get at as a prickly pear. What a dear old donkey you are, Peter! I would have given her all sorts of good advice, and told her a hundred and fifty useful things, but I never had the chance. No. It’s very odd, but I can tell exactly what brought it about, and it’s only another instance of Arthur’s extraordinary luck. You know that day we went to Barton Towers?”“Well?”“Well, he said something which startled her, and, to stop it, away she dashed down the hill, and then came the smash up.”“You call that luck, do you?”“Certainly,” said his wife, with dignity. “What’s a broken leg or two?”“No one would mind it, of course.”“It will mend up all right, and it made Claudia listen to him. I should hope you would not have objected to breaking both legs on the day you proposed to me.”He flicked the ash off his cigar.“Nothing of the sort was necessary,” he remarked. “You were too happy.”Lady Wilmot sighed.“How little you know! I’ve never liked to tell you, but—you’re sure you won’t mind?”“Go on.”“As it happened, I tossed up.”“Tossed up?”“You see, there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t make up my mind between you and Lord Baliol, so I thought of this plan, and you happened to be heads. I shall tell Marjory about it when she grows up. It’s so simple!”“I dare say. And suppose the wrong man comes up?”“Oh, then she needn’t pay,” explained Lady Wilmot, escaping with a laugh. “A woman has always that in reserve.”It seemed, indeed, as if Fenwick’s recovery became extraordinarily, almost suspiciously, rapid. After two or three days’ rain the sun shone bravely again, and he was carried out on the lawn. He chose to have Claudia at command, and as she was scrupulously conscientious in wishing to finish her work, she used to be out at the earliest hour possible, planning and arranging, and leaving directions for the woodmen to carry out. Fenwick, on discovering this, declared she looked fagged.“I won’t have you do it.”“But,” she protested, half laughing, half vexed, “it has to be done.”“Not it! I’ll talk to Peter. I’m your first consideration.”And she yielded. Indeed by a sort of rebound from what Lady Wilmot had called prickliness, she was now extraordinarily yielding, finding it delightful to give up her will to his. Lady Wilmot, who had expected amusement from the situation and was disappointed, shook her head, and even went so far as to warn the girl that there was not a man in the world who could bear spoiling. Claudia was indignant. Fenwick drove her in a low pony carriage for the first time that afternoon, and as they went along the lanes she told him.“Don’t let Flo lecture you,” he said quickly. “I won’t have her interfering.”This fell in with her own desires and she agreed happily. She drew a long breath of content as she spoke. All at that moment seemed perfect, and, looking back, she wondered at nothing so much as her own hesitation. The day was bright and touched with keen exhilaration, the road, cut through deep hedges, ran, richly shadowed, up and down hill, and a fresh wind drove the clouds overhead. They passed the blacksmith’s forge, and a dog flew barking after them, then they went up, up, up, past white cottages, each standing in its garden, and Fenwick let the reins lie loosely on the pony’s back. When they reached the top they stopped. Behind, and on one side, the woods of Huntingdon, gaining dignity by distance, swept down the valley, while in front spread a fair broken view of pasture land running into blue upland, and darkened here and there by veiling cloud. It was Claudia’s moment of absolute content, and Fenwick broke it.“I spoke to Spooner to-day about getting away.”“What did he say?”“He thinks it’s all right, and that I can go soon.”“But—” She hesitated shyly. Fenwick bent forward and untwisted a rein without looking at her. “Doesn’t he think you ought to keep quiet a little longer?”“I dare say. But one can’t stick in one place for ever.” Then, as if he realised that the words might convey a pang, he added quickly, “Of course it’s delightful, only I must get back to the camp, where another fellow is howling at having to do my work.”“I see,” said Claudia, in a low voice. The pang had just touched her, but she would not acknowledge it. “And I have been here an unconscionable time. I shall go to Elmslie, and if the Wilmots want me again about anything, I can run down later on.”“Oh, they won’t want you,” said Fenwick, dryly. “Well, go to Elmslie for a week or two if you think you must, and then come to Aldershot, and stay with Gertrude.”“Will she have me?”He smiled at her.“Won’t she? I believe you’ll enjoy the life there immensely.”She was quite happy and gay again.“And by that time your leg will be well, and we shall be able to go all over the country on our bicycles.”“I think not,” he returned rather grimly. “I don’t care to see a woman at that work near the camp.”“Oh,” she cried impetuously, “I thought you were quite above that sort of thing!”“Did you? I’m not, then.”His tone was the same, and she hesitated. Then she said more slowly—“You’re not afraid for me, are you? Of course, when I was so stupid the other day, it was only because—because—”“I’m not afraid,” he said, touching up the pony. “I think you manage it very fairly well. I don’t care about it for you—that’s all. Except quite in the country.”Her dismay was so evident that he turned and looked at her.“My darling, do you really mind very much? For my sake?”“For your sake?—oh no,” faltered Claudia. “It isn’t the bicycling, but—I—I thought we should have done so much together, and—do you mean that you have always disliked it?”“I don’t object to it in some places, or when it isn’t carried to extremes. Besides, there are sure to be occasional opportunities.” He had her hand in his, and she could but smile and submit, and resolve that there should be no opposition where he felt so strongly. Perhaps, though he disclaimed it, the accident had left him nervous on her account, and, by-and-by, when he had forgotten, his dislike would subside. But, to her dismay, she found that many things of which he had hitherto spoken lightly, and, as she thought, approvingly, were not at all to his taste under the altered condition of things. She began to be aware that he was binding her round with small restrictions, pushing her into the very groove against which she had revolted, and, worse than all, ridiculing the revolt itself. He no longer restrained his mockery of her enthusiasms, enthusiasms which she had fondly imagined he shared. If she talked politics, Fenwick’s face darkened at the opinions she expressed, and he told her in so many words that he did not wish her to allude to professional duties, or even to think about them any more. It is true that these demands were sweetened by the passionate vibrations of the voice in which he told her that he loved her, and at such moments all sacrifice for love seemed joy; but when she was alone her thoughts were not so restful and satisfied as in the first days. She even began to long for a breathing space at Elmslie, when she would no longer be swept away by his impetuous will, and could, as it were, stand, recover her breath, and face the changed view in which life confronted her.It came at last. Fenwick intended to have taken her himself to Elmslie, but was summoned to Aldershot a day sooner than he expected. And Claudia, Claudia who despised those girls who could not travel alone, was obliged to put up with the guardianship of Lady Wilmot’s maid, and to go first class, with her beloved bicycle in the luggage-van.
If the wonder Philippa expressed related to Claudia’s own feelings, she need have had no misgivings. In spite of hesitation, reluctance, beforehand, in spite of the coldness which stiffened her on the first day that she saw Fenwick in Lady Wilmot’s den, she was becoming, daily, shyly, yet radiantly happy. Fenwick’s treatment of her was subtly admirable. Her reserves, her pride, raised all his masterful instincts, and perhaps the sudden check to his active physical life inclined him the more to concentrate his energies upon conquering her love. It gave these energies a field. More than once she would have revolted from the touch of the new emotion; quivering and startled, she was inclined to fly, and it needed just the treatment he knew how to apply, to soothe her. The first sight of him, stretched helpless, had struck at her heart. The readiness with which he tossed aside her stammering words of regret made a direct appeal to her own generosity, and day by day the bond tightened. He knew—none better—how to play upon her ambitions and interests, talked as if they would continue, planned what further opportunities might be hers, let her suppose that here was perfect, satisfying sympathy, until it seemed to her that a delightful confidence had sprung up between them, such a confidence as even the college had never afforded. He waited for this, waited until, after some tentative advance and shrinking, it stood strong, and the rest was curiously easy. A few sentences instinct, as he knew how to make them, with all that was both tender and dominant, finished his work; Claudia was his almost before she realised that she had yielded, before Lady Wilmot, who was flitting in and out, could frame a tidy excuse for leaving the two alone. And it was extremely simple. Fenwick looked into her eyes, and thought them charming; she, trying to meet his with her usual frank directness, faltered, and could not face them. Then he whispered three words, and she made a mute sign, eloquent in its vagueness. No collapse could have been more complete, nothing could have been more unlike the manner in which she resolved to go through such a scene when, like other girls, she had rehearsed its possibilities. Claudia had always supposed that she should marry, and, when the moment came, intended to speak decidedly, very decidedly, to her lover, and let him make his choice; either take her with the understanding that she would stick to her profession, and accept whatever ties it imposed, or not take her at all. It is true that she almost invariably pictured him as yielding, but she meant to be dignified and quite firm; reflecting with contempt that the old ways of love-making were altogether unsuitable to the new girl, who was made of different stuff.
And this was the result!
Nothing, as she had to own, could have been less impressive than the figure she had cut; nothing more commonplace than the words spoken, except that she had a saving conviction that no one had ever spoken them with Fenwick’s strength, and this made a difference. Indeed, although she was obliged to own that she had failed, the fact did not seem to trouble her. She looked in the glass, and smiled at her own dimpling face, remembering what he had said; and recollecting further that she had heard him remark that he liked a particular shade of yellow, sat down and wrote to London for an evening frock of that colour.
As for the obnoxious pocket-book, it remained where it had been laid the day before.
When she was alone, or with Fenwick, Claudia’s happiness was like herself, eager and brilliant, for all happiness takes its colouring from the person it touches. With others she was not altogether at her ease, having an unacknowledged suspicion that Lady Wilmot was smiling in her sleeve, as indeed she was, and broadly.
“Because it is so amusingly unexpected,” she informed her husband. “No two persons could be more unsuited to each other.”
Sir Peter twinkled.
“Is that recommendation likely to last?”
“She was soveryindifferent, soverymuch swallowed up by her own ideas,” pursued his wife, unheeding; “and Arthur has a way of expecting women to flutter round him, and be flattered when he speaks. Oh, he’s a very good fellow, but that’s his little weakness, and that’s what makes me laugh. But I’m really extremely glad. It’s much better for him than marrying a woman like—well, for instance, like Helen Arbuthnot, all bitter herbs.”
Sir Peter, who was well aware that his wife was not without her jealousies, let this statement pass uncontradicted, but spoke a word or two as to Claudia.
“I suppose she knows her own mind? She hasn’t been talked into it?”
“Talked! When she was as easy to get at as a prickly pear. What a dear old donkey you are, Peter! I would have given her all sorts of good advice, and told her a hundred and fifty useful things, but I never had the chance. No. It’s very odd, but I can tell exactly what brought it about, and it’s only another instance of Arthur’s extraordinary luck. You know that day we went to Barton Towers?”
“Well?”
“Well, he said something which startled her, and, to stop it, away she dashed down the hill, and then came the smash up.”
“You call that luck, do you?”
“Certainly,” said his wife, with dignity. “What’s a broken leg or two?”
“No one would mind it, of course.”
“It will mend up all right, and it made Claudia listen to him. I should hope you would not have objected to breaking both legs on the day you proposed to me.”
He flicked the ash off his cigar.
“Nothing of the sort was necessary,” he remarked. “You were too happy.”
Lady Wilmot sighed.
“How little you know! I’ve never liked to tell you, but—you’re sure you won’t mind?”
“Go on.”
“As it happened, I tossed up.”
“Tossed up?”
“You see, there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t make up my mind between you and Lord Baliol, so I thought of this plan, and you happened to be heads. I shall tell Marjory about it when she grows up. It’s so simple!”
“I dare say. And suppose the wrong man comes up?”
“Oh, then she needn’t pay,” explained Lady Wilmot, escaping with a laugh. “A woman has always that in reserve.”
It seemed, indeed, as if Fenwick’s recovery became extraordinarily, almost suspiciously, rapid. After two or three days’ rain the sun shone bravely again, and he was carried out on the lawn. He chose to have Claudia at command, and as she was scrupulously conscientious in wishing to finish her work, she used to be out at the earliest hour possible, planning and arranging, and leaving directions for the woodmen to carry out. Fenwick, on discovering this, declared she looked fagged.
“I won’t have you do it.”
“But,” she protested, half laughing, half vexed, “it has to be done.”
“Not it! I’ll talk to Peter. I’m your first consideration.”
And she yielded. Indeed by a sort of rebound from what Lady Wilmot had called prickliness, she was now extraordinarily yielding, finding it delightful to give up her will to his. Lady Wilmot, who had expected amusement from the situation and was disappointed, shook her head, and even went so far as to warn the girl that there was not a man in the world who could bear spoiling. Claudia was indignant. Fenwick drove her in a low pony carriage for the first time that afternoon, and as they went along the lanes she told him.
“Don’t let Flo lecture you,” he said quickly. “I won’t have her interfering.”
This fell in with her own desires and she agreed happily. She drew a long breath of content as she spoke. All at that moment seemed perfect, and, looking back, she wondered at nothing so much as her own hesitation. The day was bright and touched with keen exhilaration, the road, cut through deep hedges, ran, richly shadowed, up and down hill, and a fresh wind drove the clouds overhead. They passed the blacksmith’s forge, and a dog flew barking after them, then they went up, up, up, past white cottages, each standing in its garden, and Fenwick let the reins lie loosely on the pony’s back. When they reached the top they stopped. Behind, and on one side, the woods of Huntingdon, gaining dignity by distance, swept down the valley, while in front spread a fair broken view of pasture land running into blue upland, and darkened here and there by veiling cloud. It was Claudia’s moment of absolute content, and Fenwick broke it.
“I spoke to Spooner to-day about getting away.”
“What did he say?”
“He thinks it’s all right, and that I can go soon.”
“But—” She hesitated shyly. Fenwick bent forward and untwisted a rein without looking at her. “Doesn’t he think you ought to keep quiet a little longer?”
“I dare say. But one can’t stick in one place for ever.” Then, as if he realised that the words might convey a pang, he added quickly, “Of course it’s delightful, only I must get back to the camp, where another fellow is howling at having to do my work.”
“I see,” said Claudia, in a low voice. The pang had just touched her, but she would not acknowledge it. “And I have been here an unconscionable time. I shall go to Elmslie, and if the Wilmots want me again about anything, I can run down later on.”
“Oh, they won’t want you,” said Fenwick, dryly. “Well, go to Elmslie for a week or two if you think you must, and then come to Aldershot, and stay with Gertrude.”
“Will she have me?”
He smiled at her.
“Won’t she? I believe you’ll enjoy the life there immensely.”
She was quite happy and gay again.
“And by that time your leg will be well, and we shall be able to go all over the country on our bicycles.”
“I think not,” he returned rather grimly. “I don’t care to see a woman at that work near the camp.”
“Oh,” she cried impetuously, “I thought you were quite above that sort of thing!”
“Did you? I’m not, then.”
His tone was the same, and she hesitated. Then she said more slowly—
“You’re not afraid for me, are you? Of course, when I was so stupid the other day, it was only because—because—”
“I’m not afraid,” he said, touching up the pony. “I think you manage it very fairly well. I don’t care about it for you—that’s all. Except quite in the country.”
Her dismay was so evident that he turned and looked at her.
“My darling, do you really mind very much? For my sake?”
“For your sake?—oh no,” faltered Claudia. “It isn’t the bicycling, but—I—I thought we should have done so much together, and—do you mean that you have always disliked it?”
“I don’t object to it in some places, or when it isn’t carried to extremes. Besides, there are sure to be occasional opportunities.” He had her hand in his, and she could but smile and submit, and resolve that there should be no opposition where he felt so strongly. Perhaps, though he disclaimed it, the accident had left him nervous on her account, and, by-and-by, when he had forgotten, his dislike would subside. But, to her dismay, she found that many things of which he had hitherto spoken lightly, and, as she thought, approvingly, were not at all to his taste under the altered condition of things. She began to be aware that he was binding her round with small restrictions, pushing her into the very groove against which she had revolted, and, worse than all, ridiculing the revolt itself. He no longer restrained his mockery of her enthusiasms, enthusiasms which she had fondly imagined he shared. If she talked politics, Fenwick’s face darkened at the opinions she expressed, and he told her in so many words that he did not wish her to allude to professional duties, or even to think about them any more. It is true that these demands were sweetened by the passionate vibrations of the voice in which he told her that he loved her, and at such moments all sacrifice for love seemed joy; but when she was alone her thoughts were not so restful and satisfied as in the first days. She even began to long for a breathing space at Elmslie, when she would no longer be swept away by his impetuous will, and could, as it were, stand, recover her breath, and face the changed view in which life confronted her.
It came at last. Fenwick intended to have taken her himself to Elmslie, but was summoned to Aldershot a day sooner than he expected. And Claudia, Claudia who despised those girls who could not travel alone, was obliged to put up with the guardianship of Lady Wilmot’s maid, and to go first class, with her beloved bicycle in the luggage-van.
Chapter Fourteen.Claudia had her breathing space, and at first enjoyed it. Her cousins were kind without being curious; she could say as little or as much as she liked about her engagement, and only Emily, Emily, whose remarks she assured herself she did not mind, so much as hinted at the changed circumstances of her career, for which, as she could not yet forget them herself, she was grateful. Nor, although she heard of Harry Hilton’s visit, and, putting two and two together, realised that it coincided with her letter of announcement, could she accuse him of having said anything to prejudice her in her cousins’ eyes. She would not have been sorry to find fault with him, but she had to own that he had behaved very well, and there was even a moment when the thought flashed upon her that, in his hands, her liberties would not have been so circumscribed as now appeared probable. She drove it indignantly from her. What was Harry by the side of Arthur Fenwick?On the other hand, Philippa maintained that Claudia was decidedly the better for her engagement. She said to Anne—“She has gained broader views, and is not nearly so self-absorbed. The man must be a man of sense. She does not force her plans for reforming the world down one’s throat with such vigour; indeed, I am almost inclined to doubt whether she now altogether expects to reform the world. That is, indeed, a discovery!”Anne, kind Anne, smiled and sighed, with thought of Harry.“I do hope that she likes him.”“Could he have worked such a miracle if she did not?”In Claudia’s mind there was no doubt. Away from Fenwick, his vigorous personality impressed her the more, and she told herself that his love was such a gift as would make a woman gladly give up all that clashed with it. There was something almost pathetic in her anxiety to put away what she had learnt to see that he disliked, and, though her strong young nature would always demand outlet for its energies, she hastily accepted what little was common to other girls and other lives about her. Her beloved pocket-book was laid aside, or only looked at surreptitiously, she wrote to the college, renouncing all wish for engagements; she cut tickets for Emily, took her bicycle into retired roads, never once tried to shock the Dean’s wife, and controlled her very hand-writing. It was natural enough that after the first welcome breathing space such a life of suppression should soon weary her, and that she began to count the days before she might get her invitation to Aldershot.Once and once only was Harry specially alluded to.“Mr Hilton has been ill again,” Philippa announced, folding a letter. “Poor Harry!” Claudia imagined a reproach.“Why should you call him poor Harry?” she said shortly. “I never saw any one quite so much his own master. Nobody at Thornbury thinks of contradicting him.”“Let Anne enlarge,” said Philippa laughing. “It’s her topic.”“Life has been for him one long contradiction!” Anne exclaimed, nothing loth. “I dare say he never told you how his whole mind was set upon being a soldier, and how he got into the very regiment he wanted, and then had to leave on account of his father’s illness?”“No,” returned Claudia, slowly: “he never told me.”“Then, when Mr Hilton was better, he had a chance of going out to South Africa, and it was the same thing over again, the scheme completely knocked on the head. No one could know Harry, with his love of sport and roughing it, and suppose for a moment that his home life is what he would choose. But, as he never dreams of complaining, his giving up all he cares for is taken as a matter of course.”Anne spoke with quite unusual vehemence, and Claudia reddened and did not answer. A month ago, she would have made light of such a tale, but love had already taught her something of its divine power of self-sacrifice, and it touched her. At the same time, by one of the contrarieties of a woman’s nature, she felt indignant with Harry because she had been the means of losing him another of life’s blessings. Why had he been so stupid? He had only to hold his tongue for them to have remained excellent friends. Then she fell to wondering whether, if the same accident had threatened her when Harry was by her side, he would have acted as Fenwick had acted, and was the more vexed to have to own that he could have done nothing else. She wanted, it will be seen, to keep all the glory for her special hero, but the mental training she had received, would not allow her to make her mind a present to her emotions.They left her, however, restless, and she regretfully decided that Elmslie was dull, and looked impatiently for the invitation to Aldershot. It came quite as quickly as was possible, Fenwick took care of that, and then she—she, Claudia!—had to wait for an escort, to Philippa’s private and unbounded amusement; for although Fenwick wished her to have a maid, space was too limited in the hut to receive her, and that concession to helpless young ladyhood, as Claudia scornfully called it, had to be postponed until her return. Finally she went off in the companionship of two of the Dean’s daughters, and Mrs Leslie’s maid was to meet her at the junction where they parted. The bicycle was left behind, and Emily commented—“How odd! I thought you took it everywhere.”Claudia was trying to forget this innocent speech as she whirled along in the train by the side of the Dean’s daughters, who, had she but known it, were as much astonished at the reversal of the position as she could be, but it rankled. She had made larger concessions without feeling as sore as she felt through the journey, and was only soothed by the glad sight of Fenwick’s tall figure on the junction platform, in place of the maid she had expected. The next moment she frowned. He was not alone, Mrs Leslie was with him, and she felt oddly shy. She reflected, further, that the Dean’s daughters had done nothing to require so many thanks.“As if I were a helpless parcel!” she murmured rebelliously.It was unfortunate, for it revived the spirit of antagonism which had met Mrs Leslie at Huntingdon. There, however, Claudia had seen but little of her, here she was somebody to be taken in hand, advised, checked, arranged for, informed that Arthur did not like this, that, or the other, and treated in fact as a very average young woman of early years, whose inexperience required superior counselling.“Arthur’s is a curious nature,” said his sister on the morning after Claudia’s arrival. The girl lifted her eyebrows.“I think I understand him. Few persons do,” pursued Mrs Leslie, reflectively, “and I always felt anxious that his wife should be a person of experience. You will require patience, for one thing, I warn you.”“Perhaps he will require it, too,” said Claudia, with a short laugh which made Mrs Leslie look at her.“I hope not,” she said gravely. “I don’t think his stock is large. I advise you to be the one to yield.”Claudia found this and similar hints maddening, but when she carried her indignation to Fenwick, he was disposed to take his sister’s side.“She has rather a peremptory manner,” was the utmost he would allow. “It’s only manner. She’s had to pilot old Leslie along, and very well she’s done it.”“I dare say. But I don’t require piloting,” said Claudia stiffly.Fenwick smiled, and her colour rose.“What do you mean?”“By what?”“By looking like that.”He rose and stretched his arms.“My dear Claudia, you’re in an aggressive humour to-day.”Her heart smote her. “I believe I was cross,” she said with difficulty. “I thought that she—Gertrude—treated me as if I was a child.”“Learn philosophy,” he said, with a yawn. “What does it matter?”It is very well to be told to study philosophy, but there are times when the advice carries insult with it. Claudia jumped up and stood at the window. From thence she shot a glance at him. He was not looking at her, but strolling about the room, taking up a book here and there.“They’ve made themselves pretty snug here,” he remarked at last. “Gertrude thoroughly understands how to rig up a hut.”“I like the Marchmonts’ better,” said Claudia coldly.“Do you? Tastes differ, but it isn’t really so good. Thornton, now, has dropped into comfortable quarters. By the way, somebody said that Miss Arbuthnot was due at the Thorntons’ this week.”Claudia was cross, and, conscious of it, tried to swallow her displeasure.“We met her yesterday,” she said, “and—didn’t you hear?—somebody else said that she was going to be married.”He turned sharply.“Married? Miss Arbuthnot? Don’t believe it.”She opened her eyes at his tone.“Why? Is there anything extraordinary in the fact?”“Oh no,” he said, recovering himself rather awkwardly from the momentary excitement. “It’s the sort of thing which is always being said of her. She’s food for gossips. And it never comes to anything.”“It will have to come soon, I suppose,” remarked Claudia, with the scorn of twenty-one for thirty-one.He took no notice of this, but as Mrs Leslie came into the room, turned sharply upon her.“Gertrude, what’s this about Helen Arbuthnot?”“Helen!” reflected Claudia.“Colonel Tomlinson said she was going to marry Lord Dartmoor’s eldest son.”“That stick! Rot!”Mrs Leslie looked at him with warning in her eye.“Really, Arthur, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be true. She is sure to marry somebody.”“Somebody, perhaps. It needn’t be a fool.”He spoke savagely, and Claudia wondered why. His sister made haste to change the subject.“Remember, Claudia, that there is the polo match this afternoon. We must go.”The girl flung an imploring glance at Fenwick.“You?” she said inquiringly.“I can’t,” he returned. “I’m going to try a little bicycling of the most feeble description to suit a cripple.”“Oh,” she cried eagerly, “do let me come! The Marchmonts said I could always have one of their bicycles, and it would be delightful. Please, Arthur!”She went close to him, and he played with the frill of her sleeve.“Delightful, but not to be done. I hate to see women bicycling about these places.”“But,” she urged, “you used to go with the Marchmonts. They told me so.”“He wasn’t engaged to a Marchmont,” said Mrs Leslie, arranging her flowers. “That makes all the difference.”“Why?” asked Claudia. As no one answered her question she turned again to Fenwick, “Won’t you let me come, this once, this first time? You really may want help.”“I should say he had better look after himself—this time,” said Mrs Leslie pointedly, and Claudia crimsoned.“I’m all right,” said Fenwick, stretching himself again. “Look here, Claudia, go to the polo, like a good girl, and—if I can, I’ll drop in there later.”She said no more, and though she had a sense of defeat, it did not prevent her from becoming absorbingly interested in the rush and energy of the polo match. The day was both bright and showery; every now and then a sudden storm sent the carriages under the trees, then the sun broke out again, and no one was much the worse. As the afternoon wore on, her attention began to flag, for she expected Fenwick. He came late.“How have you managed?” she asked eagerly.“Well enough. I didn’t go far.” More hesitatingly he added, “I turned in at the Thorntons’.”“Then,” remarked his sister, “you heard whether the report about Helen Arbuthnot is true?”“I heard nothing.”“I wonder she did not tell you.”“There was an excellent reason,” he said curtly. “They weren’t at home. What’s Bateman racing for?—oh, a new stick. I say, Lucas got that goal cleverly! I wonder what he’d take for his pony.”Claudia’s eyes sparkled. “I wish, oh, how I wish women could play polo!”“Good heavens! I’m thankful they don’t attempt it!”She turned upon him with a laughing retort, but something in his face checked her. She said the next moment, “There is Miss Arbuthnot.”Fenwick looked without making a remark, and exerted himself for Claudia’s entertainment. Before long, however, he left her, strolling over to the carriage where Helen sat. She gave him the slightest of greetings, but, undismayed, he folded his arms on the side of the carriage, and talked in a low voice.“I have been to see you.”“How judicious of you to choose such an admirably safe hour for visits!”“Is that all you have to say after what I’ve been going through? Weeks on a sick bed!”She looked at him between half-shut eyes.“Haven’t I seen you since? Oh, don’t expect me to pity you. I believe your accident was simply an ingenious plant, to get what you had set your mind upon. By the way, let me offer my congratulations.”“Thank you. You are very good. Rumour says you will soon be requiring the same.”“Yes?”The word was distinctly interrogative. Fenwick found himself pondering what it carried with it. Miss Arbuthnot’s appearance was prosperous, her tone—provokingly indifferent—stung him into retort.“Does yes signify yes?”“I have never yet been sure. It so entirely depends on the speaker.”“Then,” he returned boldly, “in your case I should say it meant the opposite.”Miss Arbuthnot appeared to consider.“You were never backward in assertion,” she said. “Tell me, has your Claudia really given up her career and her pocket-book?”“Do you suppose I should allow my wife to make a fool of herself?”“Oh, forgive me! I did not know you were married.”“You know, at any rate, what I mean.”“Perhaps. By the way, I left your rival on a fair way to recovery.”“My rival?”“Your friend, then—Harry Hilton. He is an excellent fellow, and honestly, I think he would have been more suitable to Claudia.”“Thank you,” said Fenwick grimly. “It seems she did not think so.”“No. We women are so slow in learning our lessons that we are left with no time in which to use them.”“You must have learnt yours, then, at an early age.”The two fencers looked at each other, and she bent her head slightly.“Yes. I have at least learned to take the goods the gods send.”“Meaning Mr Pelham, and a future twenty thousand a year?” Fenwick shot out sharply.She raised her eyebrows.“Possibly.”He suddenly drew back, and went to the other side of the carriage. Claudia, in the pony-cart, had lost her interest in the match. She made only monosyllabic replies, but she was listening intently to Mrs Leslie’s remarks, more than one of which related to Miss Arbuthnot. Finally she said—“I wonder whether the report about her is true? It would be curious if she and Arthur married in the same year.”“Why curious?”“Because at one time— Oh, well,” she added with a laugh, “you can cross-question Arthur.”Claudia made no answer; she seemed to be taken up with a wild gallop of the ponies across the ground.As they drove home they passed the Thornton carriage, and were stopped by a sign from its mistress.“Captain Fenwick has gone,” she said, “and has half promised that you will all dine with us after the inspection to-morrow. Will you?”Mrs Leslie hesitated and accepted. Miss Arbuthnot, who had nodded to Claudia, now leaned forward.“The Thornbury trees,” she said, “are beginning to recover from the shocks you gave them, but Harry has to go and explain and apologise to them. I know he apologises.”The girl had not time to answer; the pony did not like stopping, and whisked them away.“Helen was looking very well,” remarked Mrs Leslie. “What was she saying about the Thornbury trees?”“I had to cut down a few,”—Claudia hesitated—was it possible she was becoming reluctant to allude to what had been her pride?—“I went down there, you know,”—she lifted her head, and out came the obnoxious word—“professionally.”“Good gracious, what do you mean?”“Has Arthur not told you that I was—that I am a landscape gardener?” asked Claudia, with all the dignity she could call to her aid.Mrs Leslie broke into a peal of laughter.“My dear child, I beg your pardon, but you are so comic! Arthur’s wife a landscape gardener! How long have you played with this amazing fancy?”“It has not been play,” said Claudia stiffening. “I went through a regular training, and have had two engagements.” And then she broke off suddenly with a miserable wonder how the engagements, in which she had felt such an honest pride, had come to her. One was through Harry Hilton, and the other through Fenwick. Could it be possible! She murmured the Wilmots’ name, and Mrs Leslie’s next words completed her humiliation.“Oh, the Wilmots!” she said, still laughing. “Flo will do anything for Arthur.”“Do you mean—” began the girl hotly.“Oh, of course they liked having you,”—Mrs Leslie felt that she had gone rather far—“but I tell you honestly that I suspect it was more because you were young and pretty, and perhaps because it amused them to see you taking life so seriously, than on account of your—what am I to call it—profession?”“Call it what you like,” said Claudia proudly, and staring in front of her. “We are not likely to agree in the view we take of it. I have been brought up to think that idleness is not the desirable element in a woman’s life which you all seem to consider it. As for Arthur, if he is ashamed of it for his wife, he has changed very much since he talked of it a few weeks ago.”She made her little speech quietly and well, though her voice trembled as she ended, because she could not but feel that he had changed.“Settle that between you,” said Mrs Leslie, in a light tone. “It doesn’t seem to me at all his line.”When she could get hold of her brother, she attacked him. “Arthur, why didn’t you give me a hint? What extraordinary craze is this of Claudia’s? Do you know that she calls herself a landscape gardener?” He frowned.“Has she gone back to that rubbish? I thought it was at an end. Though, mind you, there was something very engaging in the serious view she took of her duties. She hadn’t a thought to fling in another direction.”“Absurd! And you encouraged it?”“It was the only way of getting at her. Besides, I knew if once I made her care, I could stop it, and stopped it I have, unless you have rubbed her the wrong way again. How did you come upon it?”“Helen Arbuthnot alluded to the Thornbury trees. I can’t think why Helen has come here now,” said Mrs Leslie impatiently. “I wish she were married and done with.” Fenwick made no answer. Possibly he had not heard.
Claudia had her breathing space, and at first enjoyed it. Her cousins were kind without being curious; she could say as little or as much as she liked about her engagement, and only Emily, Emily, whose remarks she assured herself she did not mind, so much as hinted at the changed circumstances of her career, for which, as she could not yet forget them herself, she was grateful. Nor, although she heard of Harry Hilton’s visit, and, putting two and two together, realised that it coincided with her letter of announcement, could she accuse him of having said anything to prejudice her in her cousins’ eyes. She would not have been sorry to find fault with him, but she had to own that he had behaved very well, and there was even a moment when the thought flashed upon her that, in his hands, her liberties would not have been so circumscribed as now appeared probable. She drove it indignantly from her. What was Harry by the side of Arthur Fenwick?
On the other hand, Philippa maintained that Claudia was decidedly the better for her engagement. She said to Anne—
“She has gained broader views, and is not nearly so self-absorbed. The man must be a man of sense. She does not force her plans for reforming the world down one’s throat with such vigour; indeed, I am almost inclined to doubt whether she now altogether expects to reform the world. That is, indeed, a discovery!”
Anne, kind Anne, smiled and sighed, with thought of Harry.
“I do hope that she likes him.”
“Could he have worked such a miracle if she did not?”
In Claudia’s mind there was no doubt. Away from Fenwick, his vigorous personality impressed her the more, and she told herself that his love was such a gift as would make a woman gladly give up all that clashed with it. There was something almost pathetic in her anxiety to put away what she had learnt to see that he disliked, and, though her strong young nature would always demand outlet for its energies, she hastily accepted what little was common to other girls and other lives about her. Her beloved pocket-book was laid aside, or only looked at surreptitiously, she wrote to the college, renouncing all wish for engagements; she cut tickets for Emily, took her bicycle into retired roads, never once tried to shock the Dean’s wife, and controlled her very hand-writing. It was natural enough that after the first welcome breathing space such a life of suppression should soon weary her, and that she began to count the days before she might get her invitation to Aldershot.
Once and once only was Harry specially alluded to.
“Mr Hilton has been ill again,” Philippa announced, folding a letter. “Poor Harry!” Claudia imagined a reproach.
“Why should you call him poor Harry?” she said shortly. “I never saw any one quite so much his own master. Nobody at Thornbury thinks of contradicting him.”
“Let Anne enlarge,” said Philippa laughing. “It’s her topic.”
“Life has been for him one long contradiction!” Anne exclaimed, nothing loth. “I dare say he never told you how his whole mind was set upon being a soldier, and how he got into the very regiment he wanted, and then had to leave on account of his father’s illness?”
“No,” returned Claudia, slowly: “he never told me.”
“Then, when Mr Hilton was better, he had a chance of going out to South Africa, and it was the same thing over again, the scheme completely knocked on the head. No one could know Harry, with his love of sport and roughing it, and suppose for a moment that his home life is what he would choose. But, as he never dreams of complaining, his giving up all he cares for is taken as a matter of course.”
Anne spoke with quite unusual vehemence, and Claudia reddened and did not answer. A month ago, she would have made light of such a tale, but love had already taught her something of its divine power of self-sacrifice, and it touched her. At the same time, by one of the contrarieties of a woman’s nature, she felt indignant with Harry because she had been the means of losing him another of life’s blessings. Why had he been so stupid? He had only to hold his tongue for them to have remained excellent friends. Then she fell to wondering whether, if the same accident had threatened her when Harry was by her side, he would have acted as Fenwick had acted, and was the more vexed to have to own that he could have done nothing else. She wanted, it will be seen, to keep all the glory for her special hero, but the mental training she had received, would not allow her to make her mind a present to her emotions.
They left her, however, restless, and she regretfully decided that Elmslie was dull, and looked impatiently for the invitation to Aldershot. It came quite as quickly as was possible, Fenwick took care of that, and then she—she, Claudia!—had to wait for an escort, to Philippa’s private and unbounded amusement; for although Fenwick wished her to have a maid, space was too limited in the hut to receive her, and that concession to helpless young ladyhood, as Claudia scornfully called it, had to be postponed until her return. Finally she went off in the companionship of two of the Dean’s daughters, and Mrs Leslie’s maid was to meet her at the junction where they parted. The bicycle was left behind, and Emily commented—
“How odd! I thought you took it everywhere.”
Claudia was trying to forget this innocent speech as she whirled along in the train by the side of the Dean’s daughters, who, had she but known it, were as much astonished at the reversal of the position as she could be, but it rankled. She had made larger concessions without feeling as sore as she felt through the journey, and was only soothed by the glad sight of Fenwick’s tall figure on the junction platform, in place of the maid she had expected. The next moment she frowned. He was not alone, Mrs Leslie was with him, and she felt oddly shy. She reflected, further, that the Dean’s daughters had done nothing to require so many thanks.
“As if I were a helpless parcel!” she murmured rebelliously.
It was unfortunate, for it revived the spirit of antagonism which had met Mrs Leslie at Huntingdon. There, however, Claudia had seen but little of her, here she was somebody to be taken in hand, advised, checked, arranged for, informed that Arthur did not like this, that, or the other, and treated in fact as a very average young woman of early years, whose inexperience required superior counselling.
“Arthur’s is a curious nature,” said his sister on the morning after Claudia’s arrival. The girl lifted her eyebrows.
“I think I understand him. Few persons do,” pursued Mrs Leslie, reflectively, “and I always felt anxious that his wife should be a person of experience. You will require patience, for one thing, I warn you.”
“Perhaps he will require it, too,” said Claudia, with a short laugh which made Mrs Leslie look at her.
“I hope not,” she said gravely. “I don’t think his stock is large. I advise you to be the one to yield.”
Claudia found this and similar hints maddening, but when she carried her indignation to Fenwick, he was disposed to take his sister’s side.
“She has rather a peremptory manner,” was the utmost he would allow. “It’s only manner. She’s had to pilot old Leslie along, and very well she’s done it.”
“I dare say. But I don’t require piloting,” said Claudia stiffly.
Fenwick smiled, and her colour rose.
“What do you mean?”
“By what?”
“By looking like that.”
He rose and stretched his arms.
“My dear Claudia, you’re in an aggressive humour to-day.”
Her heart smote her. “I believe I was cross,” she said with difficulty. “I thought that she—Gertrude—treated me as if I was a child.”
“Learn philosophy,” he said, with a yawn. “What does it matter?”
It is very well to be told to study philosophy, but there are times when the advice carries insult with it. Claudia jumped up and stood at the window. From thence she shot a glance at him. He was not looking at her, but strolling about the room, taking up a book here and there.
“They’ve made themselves pretty snug here,” he remarked at last. “Gertrude thoroughly understands how to rig up a hut.”
“I like the Marchmonts’ better,” said Claudia coldly.
“Do you? Tastes differ, but it isn’t really so good. Thornton, now, has dropped into comfortable quarters. By the way, somebody said that Miss Arbuthnot was due at the Thorntons’ this week.”
Claudia was cross, and, conscious of it, tried to swallow her displeasure.
“We met her yesterday,” she said, “and—didn’t you hear?—somebody else said that she was going to be married.”
He turned sharply.
“Married? Miss Arbuthnot? Don’t believe it.”
She opened her eyes at his tone.
“Why? Is there anything extraordinary in the fact?”
“Oh no,” he said, recovering himself rather awkwardly from the momentary excitement. “It’s the sort of thing which is always being said of her. She’s food for gossips. And it never comes to anything.”
“It will have to come soon, I suppose,” remarked Claudia, with the scorn of twenty-one for thirty-one.
He took no notice of this, but as Mrs Leslie came into the room, turned sharply upon her.
“Gertrude, what’s this about Helen Arbuthnot?”
“Helen!” reflected Claudia.
“Colonel Tomlinson said she was going to marry Lord Dartmoor’s eldest son.”
“That stick! Rot!”
Mrs Leslie looked at him with warning in her eye.
“Really, Arthur, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be true. She is sure to marry somebody.”
“Somebody, perhaps. It needn’t be a fool.”
He spoke savagely, and Claudia wondered why. His sister made haste to change the subject.
“Remember, Claudia, that there is the polo match this afternoon. We must go.”
The girl flung an imploring glance at Fenwick.
“You?” she said inquiringly.
“I can’t,” he returned. “I’m going to try a little bicycling of the most feeble description to suit a cripple.”
“Oh,” she cried eagerly, “do let me come! The Marchmonts said I could always have one of their bicycles, and it would be delightful. Please, Arthur!”
She went close to him, and he played with the frill of her sleeve.
“Delightful, but not to be done. I hate to see women bicycling about these places.”
“But,” she urged, “you used to go with the Marchmonts. They told me so.”
“He wasn’t engaged to a Marchmont,” said Mrs Leslie, arranging her flowers. “That makes all the difference.”
“Why?” asked Claudia. As no one answered her question she turned again to Fenwick, “Won’t you let me come, this once, this first time? You really may want help.”
“I should say he had better look after himself—this time,” said Mrs Leslie pointedly, and Claudia crimsoned.
“I’m all right,” said Fenwick, stretching himself again. “Look here, Claudia, go to the polo, like a good girl, and—if I can, I’ll drop in there later.”
She said no more, and though she had a sense of defeat, it did not prevent her from becoming absorbingly interested in the rush and energy of the polo match. The day was both bright and showery; every now and then a sudden storm sent the carriages under the trees, then the sun broke out again, and no one was much the worse. As the afternoon wore on, her attention began to flag, for she expected Fenwick. He came late.
“How have you managed?” she asked eagerly.
“Well enough. I didn’t go far.” More hesitatingly he added, “I turned in at the Thorntons’.”
“Then,” remarked his sister, “you heard whether the report about Helen Arbuthnot is true?”
“I heard nothing.”
“I wonder she did not tell you.”
“There was an excellent reason,” he said curtly. “They weren’t at home. What’s Bateman racing for?—oh, a new stick. I say, Lucas got that goal cleverly! I wonder what he’d take for his pony.”
Claudia’s eyes sparkled. “I wish, oh, how I wish women could play polo!”
“Good heavens! I’m thankful they don’t attempt it!”
She turned upon him with a laughing retort, but something in his face checked her. She said the next moment, “There is Miss Arbuthnot.”
Fenwick looked without making a remark, and exerted himself for Claudia’s entertainment. Before long, however, he left her, strolling over to the carriage where Helen sat. She gave him the slightest of greetings, but, undismayed, he folded his arms on the side of the carriage, and talked in a low voice.
“I have been to see you.”
“How judicious of you to choose such an admirably safe hour for visits!”
“Is that all you have to say after what I’ve been going through? Weeks on a sick bed!”
She looked at him between half-shut eyes.
“Haven’t I seen you since? Oh, don’t expect me to pity you. I believe your accident was simply an ingenious plant, to get what you had set your mind upon. By the way, let me offer my congratulations.”
“Thank you. You are very good. Rumour says you will soon be requiring the same.”
“Yes?”
The word was distinctly interrogative. Fenwick found himself pondering what it carried with it. Miss Arbuthnot’s appearance was prosperous, her tone—provokingly indifferent—stung him into retort.
“Does yes signify yes?”
“I have never yet been sure. It so entirely depends on the speaker.”
“Then,” he returned boldly, “in your case I should say it meant the opposite.”
Miss Arbuthnot appeared to consider.
“You were never backward in assertion,” she said. “Tell me, has your Claudia really given up her career and her pocket-book?”
“Do you suppose I should allow my wife to make a fool of herself?”
“Oh, forgive me! I did not know you were married.”
“You know, at any rate, what I mean.”
“Perhaps. By the way, I left your rival on a fair way to recovery.”
“My rival?”
“Your friend, then—Harry Hilton. He is an excellent fellow, and honestly, I think he would have been more suitable to Claudia.”
“Thank you,” said Fenwick grimly. “It seems she did not think so.”
“No. We women are so slow in learning our lessons that we are left with no time in which to use them.”
“You must have learnt yours, then, at an early age.”
The two fencers looked at each other, and she bent her head slightly.
“Yes. I have at least learned to take the goods the gods send.”
“Meaning Mr Pelham, and a future twenty thousand a year?” Fenwick shot out sharply.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Possibly.”
He suddenly drew back, and went to the other side of the carriage. Claudia, in the pony-cart, had lost her interest in the match. She made only monosyllabic replies, but she was listening intently to Mrs Leslie’s remarks, more than one of which related to Miss Arbuthnot. Finally she said—
“I wonder whether the report about her is true? It would be curious if she and Arthur married in the same year.”
“Why curious?”
“Because at one time— Oh, well,” she added with a laugh, “you can cross-question Arthur.”
Claudia made no answer; she seemed to be taken up with a wild gallop of the ponies across the ground.
As they drove home they passed the Thornton carriage, and were stopped by a sign from its mistress.
“Captain Fenwick has gone,” she said, “and has half promised that you will all dine with us after the inspection to-morrow. Will you?”
Mrs Leslie hesitated and accepted. Miss Arbuthnot, who had nodded to Claudia, now leaned forward.
“The Thornbury trees,” she said, “are beginning to recover from the shocks you gave them, but Harry has to go and explain and apologise to them. I know he apologises.”
The girl had not time to answer; the pony did not like stopping, and whisked them away.
“Helen was looking very well,” remarked Mrs Leslie. “What was she saying about the Thornbury trees?”
“I had to cut down a few,”—Claudia hesitated—was it possible she was becoming reluctant to allude to what had been her pride?—“I went down there, you know,”—she lifted her head, and out came the obnoxious word—“professionally.”
“Good gracious, what do you mean?”
“Has Arthur not told you that I was—that I am a landscape gardener?” asked Claudia, with all the dignity she could call to her aid.
Mrs Leslie broke into a peal of laughter.
“My dear child, I beg your pardon, but you are so comic! Arthur’s wife a landscape gardener! How long have you played with this amazing fancy?”
“It has not been play,” said Claudia stiffening. “I went through a regular training, and have had two engagements.” And then she broke off suddenly with a miserable wonder how the engagements, in which she had felt such an honest pride, had come to her. One was through Harry Hilton, and the other through Fenwick. Could it be possible! She murmured the Wilmots’ name, and Mrs Leslie’s next words completed her humiliation.
“Oh, the Wilmots!” she said, still laughing. “Flo will do anything for Arthur.”
“Do you mean—” began the girl hotly.
“Oh, of course they liked having you,”—Mrs Leslie felt that she had gone rather far—“but I tell you honestly that I suspect it was more because you were young and pretty, and perhaps because it amused them to see you taking life so seriously, than on account of your—what am I to call it—profession?”
“Call it what you like,” said Claudia proudly, and staring in front of her. “We are not likely to agree in the view we take of it. I have been brought up to think that idleness is not the desirable element in a woman’s life which you all seem to consider it. As for Arthur, if he is ashamed of it for his wife, he has changed very much since he talked of it a few weeks ago.”
She made her little speech quietly and well, though her voice trembled as she ended, because she could not but feel that he had changed.
“Settle that between you,” said Mrs Leslie, in a light tone. “It doesn’t seem to me at all his line.”
When she could get hold of her brother, she attacked him. “Arthur, why didn’t you give me a hint? What extraordinary craze is this of Claudia’s? Do you know that she calls herself a landscape gardener?” He frowned.
“Has she gone back to that rubbish? I thought it was at an end. Though, mind you, there was something very engaging in the serious view she took of her duties. She hadn’t a thought to fling in another direction.”
“Absurd! And you encouraged it?”
“It was the only way of getting at her. Besides, I knew if once I made her care, I could stop it, and stopped it I have, unless you have rubbed her the wrong way again. How did you come upon it?”
“Helen Arbuthnot alluded to the Thornbury trees. I can’t think why Helen has come here now,” said Mrs Leslie impatiently. “I wish she were married and done with.” Fenwick made no answer. Possibly he had not heard.
Chapter Fifteen.The march past was one of those brilliant spectacles with which the camp delights its visitors. Royalty was there—indeed, royalties had gathered; the day was perfect, not over-hot, with fleecy clouds flinging soft shadows on the downs. There were the usual manoeuvres on the Foxhills; there was the usual futile thirst for information as to what was going to happen, and the usual ignorance; the usual anxious dread on the part of husbands engaged lest their wives should get in the way, and stop the advance of a regiment; the usual thrills of pointing interest over distant puffs of smoke or gleaming metal; the usual captive balloon, and not quite the usual amount of dust. Claudia, eager and ready, was more like her usual self than she had been since her arrival at Aldershot, keenly interested, and rejoicing quite unduly when she found that Fenwick’s battery was on the conquering side. Then came the stirring march past, artillery waggons lumbering along, cheerful regimental bands, a change, a skirl of pipes, and to the proud defiant tones of “The Campbells are comin’,” the Argyll Highlanders swung by in splendid barbaric dress, like a company of giants. Claudia’s eyes were bright, and she did not so much as hear her companion’s criticisms. Fenwick’s battery passed early, and, leaving it, he came back to where his sister and Claudia stood in the foremost row, for the girl had been far too much carried away to consent to remain in the carriage. He looked approvingly at her sparkling and animated face.“You should not have been in this place, though,” he said to his sister. “You’d have seen better on the other side of the Duke.”But Mrs Leslie demurred.“Colonel Manson advised us to come here, and nothing could have been nicer. There, we should have had horses all round us.”“Well, they wouldn’t have hurt you. Come along now, and see the end of it.”“Why should we? Stay here, Claudia. You won’t get such a good view higher up.” The girl thought the same, but went. As soon, however, as Fenwick reached the coveted spot, he began to discover its shortcomings, and to complain of the dust and glare. Claudia laughed.“Let us go somewhere else,” she said. “I don’t mind.”“Well, all the best is over, and there’s no fun in sticking through it to the end. I want to speak to Lucas over there about his pony.”“Is that the polo man?”“Yes.”“And are you going in for polo?”“Not unlikely. If I do, I shall do the thing thoroughly, and his is about the only pony I fancy.”“I shouldn’t think he’d care to part with it.”“So they say.”Something in his tone told her that in the difficulty lay the attraction. They walked across the broken ground to the spot where young Lucas stood, and he laughed the suggestion to scorn.“Sell Tommy!” he said. “My dear fellow, not if I know it!”“Well, if you should—”“But I shan’t. I shall have to be stone broke first.”Fenwick went on unheeding—“Let me have the refusal.”“Oh, as to that, all right! If worse comes to the worst and I’ve got to run, I’ll leave word that Tommy is yours. Will that suit you?”“Down to the ground.”Both men laughed, and as Claudia and Fenwick walked away, she said—“I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with another pony.”“Not I!” he returned. “It’s Tommy or none. But I shall get him.”She glanced curiously at him.“Do you always get what you want?”“Pretty generally. When I set my mind upon it.”“And,” she went on slowly, “do you always care about it when you have got it?” But she did not wait for an answer. “Look,” she said, “all the carriages are on the move, so it must be over. I’m sorry, for it has been delightful.”For a minute he made no reply. Then he asked suddenly—“Who’s that man with the Thorntons?”“Gertrude fancied it was very likely Mr Pelham.”“What an ass the fellow looks!”To this she made no answer. Fenwick was silent and abrupt; he took her to Mrs Leslie, and then left her to ride back to Aldershot.That evening was the Thorntons’ dinner, and Claudia, who plumed herself upon her own powers of independent decision, found herself swept away by Mrs Leslie.“What are you going to wear?” she asked. “It had better be the green. I’m sure Arthur would prefer the green.”And green she wore, although she scourged herself with hard words as she dressed.“It only remains to stick a white camellia in my hair, and go down, blushing and simpering behind ringlets. Whose business is it what I wear? Why do I give way? Why can’t I hold my own? Oh, Claudia, Claudia, is this the end of all your fine theories?” And then the anguish of a question broke from her, a question which she had been prising down, dreading that if once it took form it might be unanswerable—“Does he care? Does he really care? He did, when I did not, and why was he so cruel as to force me into loving him, if he was not certain of himself? If I were only sure of him, should I mind one bit all his sister’s domineering ways? Not I! I could hold my own against her, wear what I liked, say what I liked, do what I liked, in spite of all the ‘in laws’ in the world. But now she has me at a disadvantage, and knows it. He is behind her, and when she says, ‘Arthur prefers this, Arthur chooses that,’ all the resistance goes out of me and leaves me a limp coward. I fancy that she must know best, and that I had better do what she suggests, and I am not myself one bit. I have never been myself since I came here, I am just somebody else, and worse, for I am just the sort of girl I so despised, the very feeble creature I could not have imagined myself sinking into. How we used to laugh at them at the college! How the girls would laugh if they could see me now! And I am afraid I shouldn’t even mind their laughing. I am fallen too low to have any self-respect left, and I know that if I were only sure in my own heart, I should give up all that I cared for—everything—for him, just as he made me tell him I could; if only, only, I were convinced that he felt the same now that he did. And perhaps he does. Perhaps it is only that I don’t quite understand. Perhaps it is all part of my turning into an idiotic girl. Perhaps all men—nice men—are the same. Certainly, I should hate his taking too much notice, being too effusive, too silly! I dare say it is only a foolish fancy of mine. On with your green frock, stupid Claudia, and for pity’s sake look at things healthily, instead of taking to morbid fancies!”She sighed as she finished, but no self-harangue could have been wiser, and she resolutely set herself to carry it out; bore without flinching Mrs Leslie’s comments upon her dress, and tried to be quite content with the young subaltern who fell to her lot at dinner, while to Fenwick was given Miss Arbuthnot, and Mr Pelham took in Mrs Thornton and sat by the side of Miss Arbuthnot. Claudia even tried to convince herself that the arrangement was one she would have chosen, because she was thus able to look at the others. She was curious to know whether the story of Helen’s engagement was true.“She does not say much to him,” she reflected, “but—as Arthur said—he does look rather a non-entity. And then she and Arthur have known each other a long time, and he can be so pleasant, and able to talk of things which I dare say that other man knows nothing about. It is odd, though, that when we were at Thornbury it never struck me that they were particularly friends.” She stifled another sigh. “I suppose I was taken up with other things, and didn’t notice. Well, now I mustn’t stare at them so much, however interesting it is. I must talk to this poor boy next me, who is smiling, and quite pleased all about nothing.”“Your Claudia looks pretty to-night,” Miss Arbuthnot was remarking. She put up her glasses as she spoke.“My Claudia—as you call her—has a trick of looking pretty.”“She has, and I never denied it. But she has upset my theories. I thought she would prove herself indifferent to you all for some time to come. Oh, don’t smile! A man may be vain—he can’t help himself, I suppose, but when his vanity peeps out it is insupportable.”“Have you impressed that upon the individual to your right?”“Time enough,” said Miss Arbuthnot coolly. “Besides, you are mistaken. He is not vain.”“Fortunate man to have secured you as his advocate!”She was silent.“What other excellent characteristics does he boast?”“I did not know we were talking of him.”“Oh, I must talk. I have been thinking of him ever since yesterday.”“And why yesterday?”“Because it was then I heard what the world is saying.”“I should have thought you of all men would have hesitated to believe what the world says.”“Is it wrong, then?” asked Fenwick eagerly.She made a movement as of balancing her hands.“It may or may not be. You will see.”“You speak as if it were a matter of indifference,” he said so bitterly that she slowly turned her face towards him, and lifted her eyebrows.“As it must be—to you,” she replied coldly.“Forgive me—that is impossible,” he said, dropping his voice, and staring before him. The next moment Miss Arbuthnot was addressing a remark to her other neighbour.Fenwick marched up to Claudia directly the men reached the drawing-room. The Thorntons lived in the permanent barracks, and the regimental band was playing on the drilling ground.“How are you getting on? Bored?” he inquired.She might have said no if she had been an older woman. As it was, she replied truthfully that she had been, and allowed her eyes to express the pleasure she felt.“Every one was out of place at dinner. Mrs Thornton pitchforks people about.” He spoke almost apologetically, and added quickly, “That’s a pretty frock you’ve got on, Claudia.”“Is it?” She blest it.“But,” he went on, giving way to some inward irritation, “I agree with you that it’s an awful bore having to come out in this way among a lot of people who can only talk rot. As for that,”—he indicated Pelham with a movement of his head—“I should be surprised to find that he owned a single idea.”He spoke with unusual bitterness, and the girl looked at him, surprised. Fenwick not infrequently showed temper, but it required more to excite it than an occasional foolish young man, whom it was quite easy to avoid. Evidently, however, he was put out. He found fault with the band, with the airs they played, with the quarters, and, indeed, impartially, with whatever topic presented itself. Claudia, armed with a new forbearance, exerted herself to charm away the mood, and partly succeeded. She was conscious that, as he had implied, she was looking her best, and that when his eye fell upon her, it softened. Yet, by a curious contradiction, she was also conscious, and it gave her such a sick conviction of impotence as she had never before experienced, that he was not always attending to her, and, even worse than this, that she was beating her brains for some subject with which to divert him. She knew but little of those everyday topics to which most of us fly as to blessed houses of refuge. She had really bound herself, as Philippa quickly discovered, in narrowest fetters, flinging a strong personality into one interest, of which being suddenly deprived, she became like a dislodged hermit crab, unable to find another resting-place. But she knew this much, that two persons in full sympathy with each other, would have no need to seek for common subjects of interest. The love which Fenwick’s vanity had set himself to awake, was indeed alive, stirring feelings partly of passionate joy, and partly sharp anguish; but she was also aware of strange forces which seemed to draw her in directions where she would not go, and of vague disturbances for which she could not account.It was a curious moment now for a swift flash of such discomfort to dart through her, yet here it was, and for just that moment it blinded her to her surroundings. She looked up with a start to find Fenwick on his feet, and Helen Arbuthnot standing before her. Helen was holding out her hand and smiling.“As you would not come to me, I have come to you,” she said. “So I hear you are no longer a lady of the woods, but have joined the ordinary ways of us mortals.” Claudia coloured. She was taken by surprise, and thought Miss Arbuthnot showed bad taste in harping upon these topics. Displeasure made her answer as she might not otherwise have done—“I hope to be in woods again one day.”“Really?”Somewhat to her surprise, Fenwick came to her assistance.“As she has nothing of that sort here on which to expend her energies, she is going to take up the moral improvement of the British soldier instead. I hear her asking very searching questions on the subject.”His tone was light but not sarcastic, and Claudia turned and smiled at him.“That’s not fair,” she said. “I only asked questions because I know absolutely nothing.”“I should ask questions too, if the answers weren’t so unsatisfactory,” said Miss Arbuthnot, taking the chair Fenwick had left. “Don’t you find that people always know either too much or too little? But of course at this point it is for Captain Fenwick to answer any questions you may be pleased to put.”The girl, who was shy of open allusions to her position, was annoyed by Miss Arbuthnot’s manner. At Thornbury she had almost liked her, and to Thornbury she returned, ignoring the last remark.“Can you tell me anything about Mr Hilton? I hope he is better?”“I suppose so, but I don’t know why you should hope it. Life can’t give him much pleasure, and he manages to make it a burden for everybody else, especially for Harry.”“Oh, Harry! Harry’s a lucky beggar,” said Fenwick. He had not sat down, but stood with his hands behind him, holding the back of the chair against which he leaned.“You say so? That’s what comes of not grumbling. I should like to see you doing Harry’s work for a day. We should all hear of it,” she added sarcastically.“Oh, praise him as much as you like,”—was there a slight emphasis on the him?—“you are right, he deserves it. Granting a few limitations, Harry Hilton is a first-rate fellow.”He looked at Miss Arbuthnot smiling, she, too, smiled back. Claudia, on the contrary, frowned slightly, not from displeasure, but from a feeling of being puzzled.“Now that they are both engaged they seem on better terms than they were before,” she pondered. “I wonder why it should be, I wonder what has brought them together?”For she knew they had not met. The next moment she heard Miss Arbuthnot being invited to drive on the Artillery coach.“Thanks, no,” she said indifferently. “I’ve too much on hand just now.”“To go about with—him, I suppose,” he said sharply. “But you can bring him—if you must.”“What a real gush of hospitality!” she returned in a mocking tone. “Alas! even if I must, it is doubtful whether he would.”“Well—ask him.”“I think not.” She stood up as she spoke, massive and handsome. “I don’t think it would be any use. But I am going back now to talk to him.”Claudia watched her cross the room, and caught Mr Pelham’s beaming look.“Oh, it must be true, he looks so happy!” she cried impulsively. “And, Arthur, I think you are hard on him. He has quite a good face.”She did not catch Fenwick’s muttered ejaculation—“Confound him!”
The march past was one of those brilliant spectacles with which the camp delights its visitors. Royalty was there—indeed, royalties had gathered; the day was perfect, not over-hot, with fleecy clouds flinging soft shadows on the downs. There were the usual manoeuvres on the Foxhills; there was the usual futile thirst for information as to what was going to happen, and the usual ignorance; the usual anxious dread on the part of husbands engaged lest their wives should get in the way, and stop the advance of a regiment; the usual thrills of pointing interest over distant puffs of smoke or gleaming metal; the usual captive balloon, and not quite the usual amount of dust. Claudia, eager and ready, was more like her usual self than she had been since her arrival at Aldershot, keenly interested, and rejoicing quite unduly when she found that Fenwick’s battery was on the conquering side. Then came the stirring march past, artillery waggons lumbering along, cheerful regimental bands, a change, a skirl of pipes, and to the proud defiant tones of “The Campbells are comin’,” the Argyll Highlanders swung by in splendid barbaric dress, like a company of giants. Claudia’s eyes were bright, and she did not so much as hear her companion’s criticisms. Fenwick’s battery passed early, and, leaving it, he came back to where his sister and Claudia stood in the foremost row, for the girl had been far too much carried away to consent to remain in the carriage. He looked approvingly at her sparkling and animated face.
“You should not have been in this place, though,” he said to his sister. “You’d have seen better on the other side of the Duke.”
But Mrs Leslie demurred.
“Colonel Manson advised us to come here, and nothing could have been nicer. There, we should have had horses all round us.”
“Well, they wouldn’t have hurt you. Come along now, and see the end of it.”
“Why should we? Stay here, Claudia. You won’t get such a good view higher up.” The girl thought the same, but went. As soon, however, as Fenwick reached the coveted spot, he began to discover its shortcomings, and to complain of the dust and glare. Claudia laughed.
“Let us go somewhere else,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, all the best is over, and there’s no fun in sticking through it to the end. I want to speak to Lucas over there about his pony.”
“Is that the polo man?”
“Yes.”
“And are you going in for polo?”
“Not unlikely. If I do, I shall do the thing thoroughly, and his is about the only pony I fancy.”
“I shouldn’t think he’d care to part with it.”
“So they say.”
Something in his tone told her that in the difficulty lay the attraction. They walked across the broken ground to the spot where young Lucas stood, and he laughed the suggestion to scorn.
“Sell Tommy!” he said. “My dear fellow, not if I know it!”
“Well, if you should—”
“But I shan’t. I shall have to be stone broke first.”
Fenwick went on unheeding—“Let me have the refusal.”
“Oh, as to that, all right! If worse comes to the worst and I’ve got to run, I’ll leave word that Tommy is yours. Will that suit you?”
“Down to the ground.”
Both men laughed, and as Claudia and Fenwick walked away, she said—
“I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with another pony.”
“Not I!” he returned. “It’s Tommy or none. But I shall get him.”
She glanced curiously at him.
“Do you always get what you want?”
“Pretty generally. When I set my mind upon it.”
“And,” she went on slowly, “do you always care about it when you have got it?” But she did not wait for an answer. “Look,” she said, “all the carriages are on the move, so it must be over. I’m sorry, for it has been delightful.”
For a minute he made no reply. Then he asked suddenly—
“Who’s that man with the Thorntons?”
“Gertrude fancied it was very likely Mr Pelham.”
“What an ass the fellow looks!”
To this she made no answer. Fenwick was silent and abrupt; he took her to Mrs Leslie, and then left her to ride back to Aldershot.
That evening was the Thorntons’ dinner, and Claudia, who plumed herself upon her own powers of independent decision, found herself swept away by Mrs Leslie.
“What are you going to wear?” she asked. “It had better be the green. I’m sure Arthur would prefer the green.”
And green she wore, although she scourged herself with hard words as she dressed.
“It only remains to stick a white camellia in my hair, and go down, blushing and simpering behind ringlets. Whose business is it what I wear? Why do I give way? Why can’t I hold my own? Oh, Claudia, Claudia, is this the end of all your fine theories?” And then the anguish of a question broke from her, a question which she had been prising down, dreading that if once it took form it might be unanswerable—“Does he care? Does he really care? He did, when I did not, and why was he so cruel as to force me into loving him, if he was not certain of himself? If I were only sure of him, should I mind one bit all his sister’s domineering ways? Not I! I could hold my own against her, wear what I liked, say what I liked, do what I liked, in spite of all the ‘in laws’ in the world. But now she has me at a disadvantage, and knows it. He is behind her, and when she says, ‘Arthur prefers this, Arthur chooses that,’ all the resistance goes out of me and leaves me a limp coward. I fancy that she must know best, and that I had better do what she suggests, and I am not myself one bit. I have never been myself since I came here, I am just somebody else, and worse, for I am just the sort of girl I so despised, the very feeble creature I could not have imagined myself sinking into. How we used to laugh at them at the college! How the girls would laugh if they could see me now! And I am afraid I shouldn’t even mind their laughing. I am fallen too low to have any self-respect left, and I know that if I were only sure in my own heart, I should give up all that I cared for—everything—for him, just as he made me tell him I could; if only, only, I were convinced that he felt the same now that he did. And perhaps he does. Perhaps it is only that I don’t quite understand. Perhaps it is all part of my turning into an idiotic girl. Perhaps all men—nice men—are the same. Certainly, I should hate his taking too much notice, being too effusive, too silly! I dare say it is only a foolish fancy of mine. On with your green frock, stupid Claudia, and for pity’s sake look at things healthily, instead of taking to morbid fancies!”
She sighed as she finished, but no self-harangue could have been wiser, and she resolutely set herself to carry it out; bore without flinching Mrs Leslie’s comments upon her dress, and tried to be quite content with the young subaltern who fell to her lot at dinner, while to Fenwick was given Miss Arbuthnot, and Mr Pelham took in Mrs Thornton and sat by the side of Miss Arbuthnot. Claudia even tried to convince herself that the arrangement was one she would have chosen, because she was thus able to look at the others. She was curious to know whether the story of Helen’s engagement was true.
“She does not say much to him,” she reflected, “but—as Arthur said—he does look rather a non-entity. And then she and Arthur have known each other a long time, and he can be so pleasant, and able to talk of things which I dare say that other man knows nothing about. It is odd, though, that when we were at Thornbury it never struck me that they were particularly friends.” She stifled another sigh. “I suppose I was taken up with other things, and didn’t notice. Well, now I mustn’t stare at them so much, however interesting it is. I must talk to this poor boy next me, who is smiling, and quite pleased all about nothing.”
“Your Claudia looks pretty to-night,” Miss Arbuthnot was remarking. She put up her glasses as she spoke.
“My Claudia—as you call her—has a trick of looking pretty.”
“She has, and I never denied it. But she has upset my theories. I thought she would prove herself indifferent to you all for some time to come. Oh, don’t smile! A man may be vain—he can’t help himself, I suppose, but when his vanity peeps out it is insupportable.”
“Have you impressed that upon the individual to your right?”
“Time enough,” said Miss Arbuthnot coolly. “Besides, you are mistaken. He is not vain.”
“Fortunate man to have secured you as his advocate!”
She was silent.
“What other excellent characteristics does he boast?”
“I did not know we were talking of him.”
“Oh, I must talk. I have been thinking of him ever since yesterday.”
“And why yesterday?”
“Because it was then I heard what the world is saying.”
“I should have thought you of all men would have hesitated to believe what the world says.”
“Is it wrong, then?” asked Fenwick eagerly.
She made a movement as of balancing her hands.
“It may or may not be. You will see.”
“You speak as if it were a matter of indifference,” he said so bitterly that she slowly turned her face towards him, and lifted her eyebrows.
“As it must be—to you,” she replied coldly.
“Forgive me—that is impossible,” he said, dropping his voice, and staring before him. The next moment Miss Arbuthnot was addressing a remark to her other neighbour.
Fenwick marched up to Claudia directly the men reached the drawing-room. The Thorntons lived in the permanent barracks, and the regimental band was playing on the drilling ground.
“How are you getting on? Bored?” he inquired.
She might have said no if she had been an older woman. As it was, she replied truthfully that she had been, and allowed her eyes to express the pleasure she felt.
“Every one was out of place at dinner. Mrs Thornton pitchforks people about.” He spoke almost apologetically, and added quickly, “That’s a pretty frock you’ve got on, Claudia.”
“Is it?” She blest it.
“But,” he went on, giving way to some inward irritation, “I agree with you that it’s an awful bore having to come out in this way among a lot of people who can only talk rot. As for that,”—he indicated Pelham with a movement of his head—“I should be surprised to find that he owned a single idea.”
He spoke with unusual bitterness, and the girl looked at him, surprised. Fenwick not infrequently showed temper, but it required more to excite it than an occasional foolish young man, whom it was quite easy to avoid. Evidently, however, he was put out. He found fault with the band, with the airs they played, with the quarters, and, indeed, impartially, with whatever topic presented itself. Claudia, armed with a new forbearance, exerted herself to charm away the mood, and partly succeeded. She was conscious that, as he had implied, she was looking her best, and that when his eye fell upon her, it softened. Yet, by a curious contradiction, she was also conscious, and it gave her such a sick conviction of impotence as she had never before experienced, that he was not always attending to her, and, even worse than this, that she was beating her brains for some subject with which to divert him. She knew but little of those everyday topics to which most of us fly as to blessed houses of refuge. She had really bound herself, as Philippa quickly discovered, in narrowest fetters, flinging a strong personality into one interest, of which being suddenly deprived, she became like a dislodged hermit crab, unable to find another resting-place. But she knew this much, that two persons in full sympathy with each other, would have no need to seek for common subjects of interest. The love which Fenwick’s vanity had set himself to awake, was indeed alive, stirring feelings partly of passionate joy, and partly sharp anguish; but she was also aware of strange forces which seemed to draw her in directions where she would not go, and of vague disturbances for which she could not account.
It was a curious moment now for a swift flash of such discomfort to dart through her, yet here it was, and for just that moment it blinded her to her surroundings. She looked up with a start to find Fenwick on his feet, and Helen Arbuthnot standing before her. Helen was holding out her hand and smiling.
“As you would not come to me, I have come to you,” she said. “So I hear you are no longer a lady of the woods, but have joined the ordinary ways of us mortals.” Claudia coloured. She was taken by surprise, and thought Miss Arbuthnot showed bad taste in harping upon these topics. Displeasure made her answer as she might not otherwise have done—
“I hope to be in woods again one day.”
“Really?”
Somewhat to her surprise, Fenwick came to her assistance.
“As she has nothing of that sort here on which to expend her energies, she is going to take up the moral improvement of the British soldier instead. I hear her asking very searching questions on the subject.”
His tone was light but not sarcastic, and Claudia turned and smiled at him.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “I only asked questions because I know absolutely nothing.”
“I should ask questions too, if the answers weren’t so unsatisfactory,” said Miss Arbuthnot, taking the chair Fenwick had left. “Don’t you find that people always know either too much or too little? But of course at this point it is for Captain Fenwick to answer any questions you may be pleased to put.”
The girl, who was shy of open allusions to her position, was annoyed by Miss Arbuthnot’s manner. At Thornbury she had almost liked her, and to Thornbury she returned, ignoring the last remark.
“Can you tell me anything about Mr Hilton? I hope he is better?”
“I suppose so, but I don’t know why you should hope it. Life can’t give him much pleasure, and he manages to make it a burden for everybody else, especially for Harry.”
“Oh, Harry! Harry’s a lucky beggar,” said Fenwick. He had not sat down, but stood with his hands behind him, holding the back of the chair against which he leaned.
“You say so? That’s what comes of not grumbling. I should like to see you doing Harry’s work for a day. We should all hear of it,” she added sarcastically.
“Oh, praise him as much as you like,”—was there a slight emphasis on the him?—“you are right, he deserves it. Granting a few limitations, Harry Hilton is a first-rate fellow.”
He looked at Miss Arbuthnot smiling, she, too, smiled back. Claudia, on the contrary, frowned slightly, not from displeasure, but from a feeling of being puzzled.
“Now that they are both engaged they seem on better terms than they were before,” she pondered. “I wonder why it should be, I wonder what has brought them together?”
For she knew they had not met. The next moment she heard Miss Arbuthnot being invited to drive on the Artillery coach.
“Thanks, no,” she said indifferently. “I’ve too much on hand just now.”
“To go about with—him, I suppose,” he said sharply. “But you can bring him—if you must.”
“What a real gush of hospitality!” she returned in a mocking tone. “Alas! even if I must, it is doubtful whether he would.”
“Well—ask him.”
“I think not.” She stood up as she spoke, massive and handsome. “I don’t think it would be any use. But I am going back now to talk to him.”
Claudia watched her cross the room, and caught Mr Pelham’s beaming look.
“Oh, it must be true, he looks so happy!” she cried impulsively. “And, Arthur, I think you are hard on him. He has quite a good face.”
She did not catch Fenwick’s muttered ejaculation—“Confound him!”