“Women like that always invent a lot of scandal.” Claudia shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a sort of convention with them to think that all women in society live immoral lives.... Billie, no, you mustn’t bite little boys’ legs. I know it’s only in play, but they don’t like it.”
“Mother must have been stunning when she was young, in the days of the portrait,” continued Pat reflectively. “If I had been a man I should have fallen in love with her. Nothing mild and namby-pamby for me, thank you. I’ve a good deal of sympathy with her, for father is a bore. Only I can’t see how she could have been in love with so many men. Most men are so deadly uninspiring. I expect falling in love became a habit with mother.”
“Really, Pat, I don’t think we ought to discuss her.”
“Why? Because she is our mother? But she doesn’t feel like our mother—she told me so the other day—and she wouldn’t mind our discussing her a bit, just as though she were next-door neighbour.” Claudia could not contradict this, for Mrs. Iverson had never tried or wanted to be a mother to her children. The children had “happened” and been promptly relegated to the nursery. As soon as she was well she forgot them just as she forgot an annoying attack of influenza.
“Claudia, do you feel you could fall in love with a lot of men?”
“Pat! what awful questions you ask. I should think that——” She stopped herself. She was going to add, “No nice woman could fall in love with a lot of men,” but this would reflect on her mother, and out of loyalty and decency she could not say it, rather for what her mother might have been to her than what she was. So she said instead, “I haven’t thought about it, and if I were you, I shouldn’t. You’re too young to worry about sex problems. The little I have thought about them has only confused me; it seems such an enormous subject. One would have to be a Methuselah to have time enough to study it. I am sure threescore years and ten is too little.”
“I suppose it is all a question of experience,” said Pat slowly. “If only mother would tell us all she had learned! That would be better than all the silly morals and maxims that surround you like a barbed wire fence.”
Claudia stole a glance at Pat as she strode along, her skin flushed by the warmth of the sun, her corn-coloured hair glowing under her big white hat. How much did Pat know of the things she discussed so lightly? How much did she herself know, for that matter. And yet, quietly and earnestly, she had been watching men and women since her début a year since. She had seen the fair surface and some of the dark undercurrent, she had kept her ears and her eyes open and her mind as far as possible unbiased, but what was the harvest? How much did she really know? She did not make the mistake of thinking men angels or devils, she tried, on Paton’s advice, not to generalize—the temptation of youth—she knew that, on the whole, she liked the masculine sex better than her own, but what did she know that she could impart to a younger sister? As she looked at Pat, she wondered if she ought to try and find out where Pat stood. Ought she to try and influence her sister in any way? Pat was such a queer mixture. Sometimes she talked like an overgrown, slangy schoolgirl, and the next minute she would speak with the callous knowledge of a woman of forty; sometimes she showed signs of deep affection and strong emotions, which again would give place to a curious aloofness and independence.
Lady Currey was coming to lunch that day with the Iversons, an event which Claudia dreaded. Mrs. Iverson had lazily decided that, under the circumstances, she ought to offer her some hospitality, and Lady Currey had felt it only right and fitting to accept. Her husband was confined to their house in the country with an attack of gout. Gilbert had pleaded that he was too busy to accompany her.