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 so very indifferent, so very much 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.