Billie rose to the situation and barked joyously.
“Thank you, sir. I am sure they were most sincere congratulations. Heigh ho! we shall have to tell mother.... What do you say to breakfast, eh?”
She put her hand on the bell, and Billie blinked happily. He always waited to take his breakfast with Claudia, and really she was very late during the season.
“Billie, don’t rootle about in the bed like that. Be more respectful, because I’m much more important to-day than I was yesterday.” Then she lay back among the pillows and thought happily of Gilbert. She longed to see him or hear from him. She hoped he would telephone or perhaps send her some flowers on his way to his chambers. She was certain he must be thinking of her just as she was thinking of him.
She had a curious and not unpleasant feeling that last night she had settled her whole life. She was like someone who had been standing at the cross-roads awaiting an indication which turning to take. Last night she had taken what she was sure was the right turning. Now the road of her life seemed to stretch before her like a glorious golden riband.
Yet, oddly enough, at the back of her mind was a sense of loss. She had lost the right of making her choice, she had lost a certain excited feeling that life was a great adventure. The adventure had taken definite shape now like a fluid that has been poured into a mould. Some of the delightful indecision, one of the biggest “perhapses” of life had gone. She had always taken it for granted that she would marry without making it her business to do so. She had looked with soft, speculative eyes at the men she met. Perhaps it will be this one—perhaps I shall sit next to him at dinner to-night—perhaps he will be one of my partners at the dance to-morrow! A girl who knows that she is attractive to men always has this feeling consciously or unconsciously. Now this feeling had merged into something else, the happy glow of knowledge. Love had come.
It seemed to Claudia that it had come rather suddenly, although she had known Gilbert for many years. It was only the last month he had seemed a “possible.” She remembered the exact moment that the label had fixed itself upon him. She had been at a big dinner-party, given by the wife of the Home Secretary, and the man who took her in had talked all through the fish and the entrée about him. That was before the Driver case, when he had definitely proved his metal, but her dinner companion had been brought into contact with him over some business and been greatly impressed with his ability. Claudia had heard vaguely of Gilbert’s distinguished career at Oxford, but the thumb-nail sketch which her companion drew of him in his chambers arrested her attention. Then later that very evening she had met him at a reception which her aunt, Lady Pitsea, gave.
Claudia had an almost Greek appreciation and love for physical fitness, and had Gilbert not been a most personable man, her interest in his mental achievements might have evaporated. But because he was strong and came of healthy stock, the night-oil that he had burned had so far left no mark upon him. There was no doubt that he had personality, that he would never be overlooked wherever he went. Claudia could never have married a handsome man without brains, but it is doubtful if she could have loved anything lacking in physical fitness. She demanded a certain amount of beauty and colour in her life, just as she demanded a certain amount of fresh air and food.
Until the reception they had not met for a couple of years, and he showed unmistakably that he admired her. After that he seemed to dwarf the other men with whom she ate and danced and talked. That she did not meet him often at social gatherings—he was too busy to go—whetted her appetite for his company. Sometimes he would come in to some gathering with a little line of fatigue between his brows. It had been an agreeable pastime to smooth it out by her conversation and gaiety.
She realized this morning, as she stirred her coffee, that actually they had talked very little. Not that he was a silent companion, but they had always talked in crowded places of other people and current events. Necessarily their talk had been largely on the surface—a large surface, but yet only the surface of the things that matter. She had never, since childhood’s days, been with him for many consecutive hours. She had never, since those days, been alone with him in the country, tramping side by side, or sitting for long, lazy hours under the green trees. Claudia knew that such times bare the man or woman of mannerisms and conventionalities, and expose the real ego. Two or three times before she had thought she liked men, but always on further and closer knowledge she had found them disappointing. Then she had been annoyed with herself for even that faint stirring of interest. In some unaccountable way she had felt humiliated when her brain failed to approve of them. But Gilbert could not disappoint her. How could such an admittedly clever man disappoint any woman? She was glad he was going to have a career, she saw herself helping him, entering into his thoughts and aims, working and loving side by side. She was glad she had not fallen in love with a nonentity or an idle, rich man.