It was at this juncture that she discovered the capacities of Claudia.
She had, so far, taken very little notice of the newcomer, except by vaguely appreciating the fact of her extreme prettiness. Claudia had not pushed herself, and the intimacy which now sprang up between the two girls came of a mere chance. Miss Kingsley had asked the school to collect fruit-stones and nuts, to be sent to headquarters for use in the manufacture of gas-masks for the army. It was a point of patriotism for everyone to bring as many as possible.
Lorraine, strolling out one Saturday on this errand, did not find it an easy matter to fill her basket. The appeal was a universal one in the town, and the Council School children had been on the common before her, picking up the beech-mast and acorns. As for hazel-nuts, there seemed not a solitary one left in the hedges. She was wandering disconsolately along, foraging with small success, when she happened to meet Claudia. Lorraine held out her quarter-filled basket for sympathy.
"That's all I've been able to find, and if there are any more to be had, I'm sure I don't know where they are!"
"There are heaps of horse-chestnuts in the fields above our house," replied Claudia. "I'm going home now, and, if you care to come with me, I'll help you to get some."
Lorraine jumped at the offer, and the girls set off together up the road, chatting briskly.
The Castletons had only come lately to Porthkeverne. Mr. Castleton was an artist, and, attracted by the quaint streets, picturesque harbour, and the glorious cliffs and sea in the neighbourhood, he had taken Windy Howe, an empty farmhouse on a hill some way above the town, converting a big barn into a studio, and establishing himself there with easels, paint-boxes, and a huge pile of immense canvases.
A critic had once described Mr. Castleton as a genius who had just missed fire, and the simile was an apt one. His large pictures were good, but not always good enough to hit the public taste. He was constantly changing his style, and one year would astonish the exhibitions by misty impressionism, and the next would return to pre-Raphaelite methods. He had dabbled in sculpture, illustration, frescoes, and miniature painting, and had published two volumes of minor poems, which, unfortunately, had never commanded a good sale. He was a handsome, interesting man, utterly unpractical and irrational, delightful to talk to, but exasperating in the extreme to those with whom he had business. The quaint, old-fashioned homestead on the hill, with its low-ceiled bedrooms, panelled parlours, black-beamed kitchen, ivied porch, thick hedge of fuchsias, and view over a stretch of heath and the dancing waters of the bay, satisfied his artistic temperament, and provided a suitable background for the new ideas which he was constantly evolving. Moreover—though this was quite a secondary consideration—it afforded sufficient accommodation for his family.
Lorraine's first impression of the Castletons was that they went in for both quality and quantity. They numbered nine, and all had the same nicely-shaped noses, Cupid mouths, irreproachable complexions, neat teeth, dark-fringed blue eyes, and shining sunlit hair. They were a veritable gold-mine to artists, and their portraits had been painted constantly by their father and his friends. Pictures of them in various costumes and poses had appeared as coloured supplements to annuals or as frontispieces in magazines; they had figured in the Academy, and had been bought for permanent collections in local art galleries. The features of Morland, Claudia, Landry, Beata, Romola, and Madox had for years been familiar to frequenters of provincial exhibitions, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, and sometimes with the lovely mother, whose profile was considered a near approach to that of the classic statue of Ceres.
Five years before this story opens, pretty, impetuous, blue-eyed Mrs. Castleton had suddenly resigned all the sad and glad things that make up the puzzle we call life, and passed on to sample the ways of a wider world. For the first six months her husband had mourned for her distractedly, and had written quite a little volume of poems in her memory; for the next eight months he was attractively pensive, and then—all in a few weeks—he fell in love again and married his model, a girl of barely seventeen, with a beautiful Burne-Jones face and a Cockney accent. In the following few years three more carnation-cheeked, golden-haired little Castletons—Constable, Lilith, and Perugia—had tumbled into this planet to form a second nursery, and were already learning to sit for their portraits in various attractive studio poses.