Chapter Eight.
Huntingdon Hall was a comfortable house, with rooms which Lady Wilmot had already transformed. The grounds, however, were not to compare with those of Thornbury, for they had passed through a long season of neglect, and the trees were tall and lank, requiring both thinning and autumn planting. Claudia’s labours would not bear fruit for years. She said this to Sir Peter one day when she had sent to ask him to come and decide for himself whether a certain important change should be carried out. She liked Sir Peter. He was a big clumsy man, rather shy, with twinkling eyes which, when he smiled, screwed themselves into innumerable wrinkles, and a slight hesitation—not amounting to a stammer—in his speech. He invariably gave his decisions clearly.
“We are very much obliged to you, Miss Hamilton,” he said finally; “but my wife told me to tell you that you must take an off-day now and then, and she wants you to go to Barton Towers to-day.” As Claudia hesitated he went on, “I warn you she will accept no denial, and really it is a place which you ought to see.”
A week ago she would have taken refuge behind her occupation, and afterwards she wished she had done so, at whatever cost; but her new dread of making it and herself ridiculous stopped the words which rose to her lips, and she was just agreeing when Lady Wilmot with her two pugs rustled round the corner.
“Ah! here you are, Peter,” she called out. “I wish you wouldn’t let that boy, Charlie Carter, have your gun. Do go and take it away from him before he kills anybody.” He went obediently, and she turned smilingly to Claudia. “Miss Hamilton, has Peter told you? I am not going to have any more unsociable excuses.”
“I should like to come, please,” said Claudia at once.
“I knew I should get you!” Lady Wilmot exclaimed triumphantly. “Come with me to the hothouses, and let the men go to their dinner. Do you mind going to Barton on your bicycle? I’d give anything to ride mine, but Peter says I can’t because of old Lady Bodmin. It’s such a nuisance having to sit up in the victoria with her.” And then Lady Wilmot, who was noted for making imprudent speeches, made a very imprudent one indeed. “I’m so glad you will come. We see nothing of you, and I am tired of trying to console Arthur Fenwick.”
“Captain Fenwick? I don’t understand,” said Claudia coldly.
Lady Wilmot laughed. “Don’t you?” she said gaily. “Well, I can’t help being amused, because generally it’s the other way, and now any one can see that he’s devoted, and you treat the poor fellow quite cruelly.”
“Oh, you are very much mistaken!” cried the girl, frowning. “You ought not—I beg your pardon, but really people ought not to imagine such foolish things. Captain Fenwick is absolutely nothing to me, nor I to him.”
“Now you are certainly blind. And do you mean to say you haven’t thought of him—seriously, I mean?”
“I? Never!” returned Claudia proudly. “Nor he of me.”
“Oh, there you are wrong,” said Lady Wilmot, with amusement. She was going on, when Claudia interrupted her with a ring of indignation in her tone which took the other woman by surprise.
“Please don’t say any more; I hate it! I should hate it if it were true, and it isn’t. I can’t tell you how much I dislike such things being said!”
She stopped. Lady Wilmot looked at her with interest. All emotion is impressive, and Claudia was very much moved in quite an unexpected way. She stood facing her hostess, her girlish features stirred and changed by an expression which had never before touched them.
“I beg your pardon,” said Lady Wilmot quickly. “I spoke carelessly, as one does sometimes—much too often, if I’m to believe Peter. Don’t think of it again. It was only nonsense.”
“Yes,” said Claudia, drawing a deep breath, “it was nonsense. Of course I shan’t think of it again.”
Lady Wilmot hurried after her husband, and caught him in the library.
“Peter, Peter,” she said in an injured tone, “I thought new women didn’t mind what was said to them, and I thought Miss Hamilton was a new woman, and I said the least little bit in the world to her about Arthur, and found myself in quite the wrong box. She fired up, and told me to hold my tongue, or as good as told me. Imagine a girl who is so exceedingly independent, and bent upon taking care of herself, minding a little chaff! I supposed she would mind nothing.”
“Did Arthur ask you to say anything?”
“Don’t be annoying. It was a small voyage of discovery on my own account, because I really think he likes her—seriously, I mean, and I wanted to find out.” She went on impressively, “I don’t think she cares herself one little bit.”
“Then there’s an end of it.”
“How tiresome you are, Peter!” she said petulantly. “I’ll never believe she can stand up against him if he takes the trouble to make love to her. Anyway, I think it very hard she should fly out at me when my intentions were so good.”
“Well, I hope your good intentions won’t do any harm.”
“How can they? She’d never thought of him. You’re rather priggish this morning, Peter, but I may as well tell you that I mean some of them to go on their bicycles—Arthur, and Charlie Carter at all events. I shall give her the chance. If she likes it better, she can drive.”
The same question was in Claudia’s mind. She felt hunted, disdainful, indignant, all at once. First Harry and then Captain Fenwick thrust down her unwilling throat. It was persecution! She, who would have none of them, who was thinking of much more important business, who had meant to live her own life, and, so far as in her lay, to be mistress of her fate, bitterly resented an interruption which seemed to place her at once on a level with all the other pleasure-loving idle girls of the day, whose heads were full of offers and settlements. She! Claudia raised her chin, and looked like an angry nymph. If Fenwick had passed that way he would have met with scant civility. She thought Lady Wilmot impertinent, she wished she had not come to the place, and then suddenly, to her added annoyance, found her eyes brimming with hot tears, which put the final touch to her humiliation. She dashed them away with scornful fierceness. “So,”—she rated herself—“so it has come to this, that if a stupid thing happens, you cry about it! Oh, do pluck up a little spirit and resolve not to think twice about such folly! Most likely it is all her invention, or else he has just been amusing himself in the way men do, and pretending—pretending!—to her that he cares. You should expect to meet such men, Claudia. And what ought you to do? Certainly not trouble yourself about them. Turn yourself into a stone wall. I suppose you have sense enough left to go on just as usual? But I wish, I do wish she hadn’t said it! It makes everything disagreeable and stupid. It shan’t, though! What’s the use of having a will of one’s own if one can’t use it? If he wants to speak, let him, and there’s an end of it; and if he has the better sense to hold his tongue, I shall know she was wrong. And if, as I suppose, we are to go on our bicycles to this tiresome place to-day, I’m not going to blush prettily and draw back; I shall do exactly as I should have done if she hadn’t come out and spoilt my morning. The most annoying part of it all is that I have quite forgotten what I meant to do with those hollies. I know that I had some capital notion, and it has gone. Oh, how tiresome men are!”
Claudia sat wrathfully down, pulled out her pocket-book, rested her chin on her hands, and forced her mind to stern consideration of her plans. In some degree this brought back her calm, so that when she appeared at luncheon, and ways and means for reaching Barton Towers were discussed, she did not allow a shadow of hesitation to appear in her manner. Lady Bodmin clung to the victoria, and Lady Wilmot made a little face of dismay. Claudia said calmly that of course she could bicycle, and inwardly hoped that Captain Fenwick would not be of the party. But this was far from his intention.
“I thought you hated calls?” said Lady Wilmot mischievously.
“One has to suffer sometimes.”
Lady Wilmot laid down her fork.
“You might stay at home.”
“I should never hear the last of it.”
“Well, then,” she said, looking meditatively at Claudia, “you three are provided for.”
“Three?” said Fenwick quickly.
“Yes, Charlie—Charlie Carter. You always try to forget him.”
“He ought to be forgotten. He’s not in the least wanted. Good heavens! a boy who plays practical jokes!”
“That is why I want you to look after him,” said Lady Wilmot in a firm voice. “Besides, he must go. Lady Bodmin agrees with me.”
Fenwick flung an aggrieved glance at Claudia, but she was gazing out of the window. In her heart she was saying joyfully—
“He may play practical jokes as much as he likes, and I shall take care he is not forgotten. If worse comes to worst I’ll fetch him myself.”
But this sense of relief was so derogatory to the standard of the professional young woman which she had set up, that she was torn by different feelings, extremely pleased when Charlie Carter arrived, dripping, from a practical investigation of the Black Pond, yet so ashamed of clinging to such a fossilised an institution as a chaperon, that she took herself to task for not agreeing to Captain Fenwick’s strongly expressed desire to start and leave the boy to follow. When she refused he hinted at a chancre in herself.
“When we came here, you didn’t mind trusting yourself to me.”
“Mind!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Do you suppose I mind, when if you weren’t going I should go by myself?”
He bit his lip, but pressed his point.
“Then come along,” he said, “and leave that wretched boy to follow. He has to get food and dry clothes, and will be an hour at least.”
“There’s no hurry,” said Claudia coolly. “If you want to overtake the others—go. We’ll come after.”
“You are cruel,” he said in a low voice. To this she made no reply, determined to ignore such speeches, but she could not help perceiving that her insistence annoyed him very much, or that he had scarcely recovered himself when they set off. The day was full of the rich strong beauty of late summer, freshened by recent rain which had washed the dusty hedges green again; the clouds were no longer grey and uniform, but broken into great precipitous masses, dazzlingly white in part, and here and there fading softly into blue. Their way at first ran along a road high on a hill, and commanding exquisite views of the country round. But Claudia, in spite of self-scolding, could not call back the fresh and delightful enjoyment of that other day when they had come to Huntingdon. She was on the watch, at times on the defensive, despising herself that it should be so, but heartily wishing that the ride was over. Nor could she utilise Charlie Carter as much as she would have liked, for he was one of a large family, with a profound contempt for all girls except his own sisters, and a yet more profound admiration for Captain Fenwick. He was therefore gruff, and disregardful of Claudia, sidling out of her way, and ready to please his hero by acting as scout and rushing along side lanes in search of short cuts. At such times Claudia made desperate attempts to push on, but there is a limit to this means of escape even on a bicycle, and when hills came, she was obliged to walk up them. Perhaps Fenwick noted the disturbance, and perhaps he preferred it to her former indifference, for now and then a smile crossed his face which it would have enraged her to see. He asked her suddenly whether she liked Huntingdon better than Thornbury. This was safe ground, and she breathed freely.
“I have a bigger opening there,” she said. “Thornbury was already beautiful, and Huntingdon has to be made so. It’s very interesting.”
“You have said so little about it lately that I had fears.”
“Women go into extremes, you know,” returned Claudia, dimpling, and quoting his own words.
“Yes, but you are not like other women. You have independence and originality.” As Claudia struggled breathlessly against the hill, he added in a vexed tone, “Why on earth must you be in such a hurry?”
“You were in a hurry yourself just now.” But she was obliged to get off, and all she could do was to walk with the bicycle between them.
“That was to start, not to arrive. Did you really suppose I cared to find myself at Barton Towers?”
“I don’t know. I know I do. I expect to pick up a great many hints, after what Sir Peter said about the place.”
“All in good time,” he said crossly. “What I want to say, if you will only give me the chance to speak— Good gracious! what is it now?”
“Isn’t there something wrong with the wheel?”
“Nothing at all. What do you suppose I’m going to say, that you won’t listen?”
Claudia called all her dignity to her aid, and turned an offended face upon him.
“Pray go on. I am quite ready to listen.”
“Well, it’s only this. I think it hard that you should shut me out of your hopes and ambitions so determinedly as you have been doing lately. I had flattered myself that you, above all women, were fair enough not to visit on an unfortunate man’s head his awkward carrying out of a good intention.”
“Oh,” she cried rashly, “did you suppose—”
And then she yet more rashly stopped, for it was a hundred times worse to let him guess at the real reason for her coldness.
“If not?” he said, perceiving his advantage, and pushing it.
Claudia took refuge in petulancy.
“Why on earth must one explain why one does this, or doesn’t do that? What do you complain of? That I haven’t talked over my ideas with you? Very well, I will talk now. I suppose you have happened to notice a big group of firs, the only fine thing about the place?” And she flourished the note-book Miss Arbuthnot found so obnoxious. “There! As no one can see them unless they go to look, I suggest making a clean sweep of those worthless trees in front, then—”
He put up his hand.
“Spare me; I don’t want detail.”
“Very well,” said Claudia triumphantly. “Then you mustn’t complain.”
“You have run off the track. All that has nothing to do with my complaint. I am anxious, very anxious, to be told what—if you were really not offended at my plain speaking—has altered you towards me.” His voice changed, there crept into it a thrill which made Claudia miserably conscious of what might be at hand. She frowned and stared straight before her. “You don’t know,” he was saying, “how I have looked forward to a chance like this, when I might have you to myself, and now I can hardly get a glance. And yet you are not offended? Then why are you so different from what you were ten days ago?”
“How can one always be exactly the same?” she asked coldly. “Besides, you are exaggerating; I don’t feel any change.”
“Oh yes, you do. Something has brought it about. Some confounded tongues have been tattling.”
“Tattling!” repeated Claudia, frowning harder.
“Yes, old cats like Lady Bodmin, who can’t see a man and woman talking—”
“I know! Isn’t it idiotic?” said the girl frankly, turning a relieved face upon him.
If she had not looked, perhaps he would not have spoken. In spite of his manoeuvring for a quiet and uninterrupted time with Claudia, he had no intention of saying anything serious—at least so soon. But, like many another man, he lost his balance when he least expected it, and, curiously enough, as with Harry Hilton, it was her name which broke from his lips.
“Claudia!”
To her unutterable relief, Charlie Carter shot out of a lane, not ten feet ahead of them.
“I say, that ways no good,” he shouted. “I’ve been ever so far. You’ve got to go down this hill, and you’d better look out, for there’s a nasty sharp turn at the bottom.” Claudia neither heard him nor would she have heeded. Anything at such a moment would have seemed better to her than being forced to listen to the words she felt were imminent. She got quickly on her bicycle, and called out joyfully—
“Oh, I am so tired of pushing! Who will race me down the hill?”
“Stop!” cried Fenwick peremptorily.
But nothing would have stopped her then. Escape, escape from what she most dreaded to hear lay before her. She was confident in her own powers, and, with a gay wave of the hand, down the steep rough road she went flying at a speed which she found dangerously intoxicating. Charlie Carter, giving an answering whoop of wild delight, rushed after, and Fenwick, inwardly anathematising the folly of his companions, spun past the boy, and closely followed Claudia’s track, shouting to her to be careful, and each moment expecting to see her overturned by some of the many stones or ruts. In spite, however, of her excitement, she guided herself cleverly, and only called laughingly back without checking her pace. All might have gone well had it not been for the sharp turn at the foot of the hill. What made this perilous, and what neither Fenwick nor Claudia knew, was that another lane emerged at the same point. The old high-road which the three had taken was but little used for carriages, or such a danger would never have been tolerated. Fenwick realised it before the others, owing to his catching sight over the hedge of the top of a carter’s hat. But the cart was jogging down its own hill into the road, and though he pressed his bell, and shouted at the top of his voice, the man did not hear, nor, indeed, so close was Claudia, did it seem possible to avert a collision. By a really prodigious effort, Fenwick shot in between them, pushing her bicycle so violently that it fell on one side, although clear of the cart. He himself was not so fortunate, for the near horse knocked him over, and before the startled driver could pull up, one of the heavy wheels had gone over him.