Chapter Seventeen.
Miss Arbuthnot was everywhere, and Mr Pelham shadowed her. Opinions were freely bandied as to the existence or non-existence of an engagement, the majority inclining to the belief that one existed. Fenwick, on the other hand, was seldom seen near her, Mrs Leslie began to recover her equanimity, and perhaps only Claudia was aware that when he was in the same room with Helen his eyes followed her, or that he was more than usually silent and self-occupied. She was invariably well dressed, in a manner which set off her large figure; people turned to look at her as she passed, and she seemed to fling into insignificance such slim beauties as Claudia. Whether from chance or intention, the two seldom said much to each other, but it happened that one grey afternoon at the club-house, they found themselves near each other watching a game of bicycle polo.
Miss Arbuthnot deliberately walked up to Claudia.
“Detesting games! I am bored to death,” she said, “and so—I imagine—are you. Don’t you think we should suffer less if we escaped beyond the sounds of croquet and lawn-tennis, and everything except the clack of our own voices?”
Claudia hesitated, and Helen added—
“You had better come. I assure you there are times when I can be intelligent, and Captain Fenwick will not be here just yet.”
The girl walked quickly on as if she had been stung.
“What has that to do with it?” she said recklessly.
Miss Arbuthnot was engaged in disentangling a bramble which had caught in her dress. When she looked up she said coolly—
“A good deal to me. You know—or do you not know?—that I have always liked him.”
Amazement struck Claudia almost speechless. She stammered with her sudden rush of anger.
“You tell me—you can tell me—”
“The truth. Isn’t that always desirable? Besides, after all, have I said anything that should affront you? That I liked him. That was my remark.”
There was a pause.
“It implied that he liked you,” said Claudia, more calmly, though still choking.
“Oh, not at all. Does the one thing invariably imply the other?”
It might have been that there was—it seemed so to Claudia—a touch of mockery in the question.
“If not—” she began hastily, and stopped.
“If not, you think I was a fool? Well—perhaps. We were engaged, at any rate.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, stopping short. This was more than she had dreamed of.
“You did not know it? But I imagine you are prepared to hear of such episodes?” Is any woman prepared? Claudia bit her lip to keep back the answer she would have liked to fling at her tormentor, and Miss Arbuthnot went on—
“It did not last very long. To adopt the stock phrase proper to these humiliating occasions, we discovered that we had made a mistake. Probably you wonder why I am going back to that not-too-agreeable time. I will tell you—”
“Don’t!” cried Claudia, quite suddenly. She hardly knew what she said, conscious only of a sharp thrill of pain, and a sickening dread of worse to come. Miss Arbuthnot glanced quickly at her, and went on as if she had not spoken.
“It is because I am certain you are falling into the same mistake.”
She turned away as she spoke, and stood resting her arms upon a railing. Behind her she heard the girl breathing heavily. Then it seemed as if Claudia made an effort to speak, for her voice was strangely hoarse and low.
“This is unendurable!” she said.
“Oh no,” returned Helen, “not by any means unendurable. The unendurable is when you have made the mistake permanent. If you could bring yourself to admit it to me—and you might, since I have gone through the same humiliation myself—you would own that you are uneasy, shaken, unhappy. I don’t know what plan you adopt with him, perhaps you reproach him—I found it irresistible—perhaps you take refuge in silence. Take my word for it, there is no remedy in either. Love has flown, and you will never whistle him back. Be thankful he did not stay longer. Hug the wound, if you will, but go.”
Perhaps, in the sick bewilderment of the moment, the sensation uppermost in Claudia’s mind was vexation at the manner in which Miss Arbuthnot reviewed the position. She spoke with a cool confidence always impressive, and she seemed to be able to express herself dispassionately, as if she were no more than a critic, looking on from the outside. It was true that she had taken extreme care to place herself on the same level with Claudia, but the girl was too angry and excited to accept this fellowship. It was, indeed, made impossible to her by the unacknowledged conviction that the dominion Miss Arbuthnot once possessed, she had, in some inexplicable manner, regained. She stood pale, furious, yet trying hard to prevent excitement from showing itself in voice or manner.
“Why do you say this to me?”
“Ah, why?” returned the other, lapsing into her usual careless tone. “To tell you the truth, you have me there. I did not intend to speak. I thought you might find out for yourself, but—who can account for impulses? Perhaps I imagined it might shorten the business. I see that so far I have failed, and you are only angry.”
“Angry!” Claudia flung back her head impetuously. “That isn’t the word.”
“Well, I won’t use a stronger,” said Miss Arbuthnot, with an amused smile. “I dare say I should have felt the same myself. Yet, look at the matter philosophically. You only hate me for speaking, because your heart tells you I am right.”
“Oh, for more than that!” broke in the girl wildly.
“For more than that?” The older woman turned and glanced curiously at her. She went on slowly. “You think, perhaps, then, that I am the cause of your unhappiness?”
“Yes, I do. I think that you are treacherous, treacherous!” cried Claudia, stung beyond control. “You failed to keep his love yourself, yet could not endure to see it given to me. You set yourself to take it again—”
Her voice failed—choked. It was Miss Arbuthnot’s turn to grow a little pale, and she stood for a moment staring out at a bit of near common, across which soldiers were marching, light now and then flashing on their accoutrements.
“But—if I have proved to you that it is worthless?” she said slowly at last.
“Ah!” exclaimed Claudia scornfully, “do you think it worthless?”
Then Helen Arbuthnot did a strange thing. She turned and looked into Claudia’s eyes, her own unflinching, and she spoke as people speak in a great crisis of their life.
“Before Heaven, I do,” she said, “and that although I once cared for it more than for anything else in the world. Now have I set myself low enough?”
Something in her words, but more in the manner of their utterance, had indeed shaken and curiously affected Claudia. They might have been spoken by one who cared enough for her to venture much on her behalf. And yet they came from the lips of Miss Arbuthnot, the woman whom she had just accused of acting towards her in the most heartless manner in which woman can act towards woman, and who at this moment, she believed, was holding her love up to scorn. For a moment she was shaken, but she recovered herself.
“You own you want it yourself!” she cried relentlessly.
The other still gazed at her for a moment, and then her mood changed. The fire died out of her eyes, her look relaxed; she laughed, though not mirthfully.
“Ah, well,” she said, “I have already made you a present of the situation, so far as I am concerned. Doesn’t that mollify you?”
“So far as you are concerned!” Claudia repeated with scorn. “Oh, you are very much concerned! The situation, as far as I can read it, is that you are trying to persuade me to take myself out of the way, in order that you may feel still more perfectly free.”
Miss Arbuthnot looked at her once more.
“Do you not see,” she said slowly and cruelly, “that you are not in the way? It is what he cannot have which has the attraction for Arthur Fenwick.”
Was it so? The girl breathed hard, and put the question a second time.
“Then why do you speak?” She had forgotten Helen’s words.
“Ah, why? That’s what I have asked myself half a dozen times in as many minutes. Answer it as you like. Perhaps I love meddling.”
She turned as she spoke, and began to walk towards the club-house. Claudia, hot, bewildered, angry, marched by her side, unwilling either to go with her or to remain behind. She felt bruised and beaten, yet, after all, the pain came from an unacknowledged source. Were they not her own convictions which had taken shape from the mouth of another?
Before they reached the garden, Fenwick met them. His first glad look, his first glad word, were for Helen.
“At last I have escaped!”
It was little enough, but there are times when a little does as well as a great deal. He recollected himself, it is true, and turned sharply to Claudia, but she could have sworn that the exclamation neither belonged to her, nor was caused by her presence. It was to Helen he had escaped. She tried to speak quietly, though her tongue felt stiffened.
“I see Gertrude on the croquet ground, and she must be wondering what has become of me.”
If she was abrupt, she could not help it, yet, as she went, she was bitterly conscious that a short fortnight ago, Fenwick would have been almost tiresomely scrupulous that she did not cross the ground alone. And still, with her wretchedness, there was something of the joy of restored freedom. The shackles which she had worn gladly when she believed they belonged to excess of love, galled again, as soon as the love was wanting; so that when Mrs Leslie, vexed with her brother, vented her vexation on Claudia by whispering—
“Where is Arthur? My dear Claudia, you really ought not to walk about all over the place by yourself; he will be so annoyed!” the girl’s answer was a repetition of his words. She drew a long breath.
“At last I have escaped!”
Fenwick, meanwhile, was in the midst of an interesting conversation. Both he and Miss Arbuthnot followed Claudia with their eyes. Then Helen turned hers upon him.
“Well?” she said.
He thrust his hands into his pockets.
“She can take care of herself for once. And—I never see you.”
“I should have said we met fairly often.”
“I don’t call it seeing to find you engulfed in a crowd.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Since when have you been so desirous for a conversation à deux?”
Fenwick looked at her hardily. The look did not seem to agree with his words.
“You might have a little pity!”
“I have a great deal. I have just been expressing it to your Claudia.”
He frowned.
“To Claudia? And pity for me?”
“Oh no!” said Miss Arbuthnot in her softest voice. “For her.”
This time there was a short silence. Fenwick walked away a few yards, and came back to where Miss Arbuthnot still stood waiting.
“You are right,” he said in an altered tone; “you are right. From beginning to end it has been a miserable mistake.”
She expressed no surprise, the two appearing to understand each other. She only inquired—
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I must go on with it. We must marry,” he returned moodily.
“Certainly,” said Miss Arbuthnot briskly, “certainly. No other course is open to you.” He looked at her again.
“And yet you haven’t a word of pity to throw!”
“Why should I? You are marrying the girl you chose, a nice girl, too, who had no thought of you until you insisted upon her falling in love. And now that you have got her there, you are discontented. Pity! Yes, I pity her with all my heart!”
He still kept his eyes on her.
“You won’t be any better off yourself,” he said with significance.
She turned and faced him.
“What do you mean?” she asked coldly.
“That fellow—that Pelham—can you tell me honestly that you care for him?”
“You have no possible right to put such a question,” she said haughtily. “Be sure of one thing. I do not marry the man I do not care for. Here we are at the polo again, and here is Mrs Menzies.”
Fenwick had his dismissal, and swung away in a rage, angry with Helen, angry with Claudia, most angry with himself. He rated fate for opening his eyes when it was too late, and allowing him then, and not till then, to find out the insane folly of his conduct in letting slip the one woman for whom he was now certain that he cared. Glancing at the rapidly thinning group of brightly dressed people, he muttered an exclamation as he caught a glimpse of his sister’s figure, and, with the intention of avoiding a meeting, went out of the place, and struck from the Farnborough road, with its oddly isolated groups of firs, across the common.
By this time the sun was low, and, catching the fir stems, turned them to ruddy gold. A few wild clouds, threatening storm, barred the western sky, but the threat was splendid in colour and contrast, and, while bringing out the rich tints of the near common, had the effect of only adding to the serene beauty of the blue distance. Here and there a patch of white tents dotted a slope; smoke curled upwards from the camp fires; and an occasional sharp sound or call struck the silence. Fenwick neither saw nor heard. He walked, staring at the ground, caring nothing where he went, and only bent upon avoiding his kind.
What devil was there in him, he asked himself impatiently, which was for ever dragging him into positions from which, when his eyes were open, he recoiled? In this question which he flung, it is possible that he caught a fleeting glimpse of the inordinate vanity which was the real cause of his disasters, but vanity is too subtle an imp not to have a hundred disguises ready for such a moment. Fenwick freely cursed an impetuous nature, idleness, imprudence, and left the actual mover unscathed and grinning. He had tired of Helen Arbuthnot for the very reason that he was secure of her preference; and when he accepted his dismissal and moved away, it was with the absolute confidence that if ever he liked to step back, he would find her waiting. And now apparently—by her own act, which was quite a different affair from his—she was placing herself beyond his reach; while he, like a raw fool, had bound himself to a girl who had ceased to be attractive from the moment in which he knew he had gained her heart.
He did not put it so crudely, nor had he any thought of drawing back from his engagement. Fenwick was an honourable man, and he fully intended not only to marry Claudia, but to make her happy. As to his power to do this, he was curiously free from misgivings. On his own future life he bestowed a groan, but she loved him, and that would be enough for her. He even went so far as to glance at some of her crude latter-day ideas, and to decide that he would allow her a certain amount of freedom to exercise them; under careful control, of course, and, above all, in ways that should bring no ridicule upon him. Such an outlet for her enthusiasms would occupy and prevent her finding out that—that—well, that he no longer felt for her all that he had imagined. How he had imagined it still puzzled him, for he had no impulse towards solving the enigma in the only way in which it could have been solved—the confession that her cool indifference had piqued him into trying to stir it into warmth. So accustomed was he to flutter the hearts of the women who crossed his path, that to find a country girl treating him with profound carelessness, was not to be endured. It was very natural that Harry Hilton’s clumsy attentions should fail to touch her—he liked her the better for being their object, and for rejecting them—but to be placed in the same category himself was another matter. Then, to win her cost him something. He had to let him-self go. For a time he felt the ardour of chase, the longing to gain; some, at least, of the many sensations which help to make up love; enough, indeed, as he bitterly owned, to deceive himself.
And now, now he had won Claudia, and lost Helen.
He walked far, so that when he turned all the fires of sunset had dulled in the west, and the firs stood black against a saffron sky. The camp was alive and busy, though the more active work of the day was over. Fenwick came back as he went. He told himself bitterly that this was no more than he expected. It was no question of future conduct which he had taken out into the solitudes to solve, but a burden which he was girding himself to bear. He had thought of himself from beginning to end, and of Claudia only as one towards whom he had a duty. For him to fulfil this was enough for her.
But he could not see her that night. When he reached his quarters he sent a note to the hut saying that he was dining at mess, and would not be able to look in. He made another resolution, which appeared to him an admirable example of sacrifice, for there was a party to which Miss Arbuthnot was bidden and not the Leslies: he had intended to find himself there, and now resigned it.