Frances Mary Peard

“ In an armchair close by, Miss Arbuthnot was sitting. She looked lazily up.
“Harry,” she said, “you might take me in to dinner for once instead of your father. All my wits have gone out into the suburbs this evening, and as you never had any, you won’t miss them.”
“All right,” he agreed, rather dejectedly. “There’s the gong.”
He hoped to sit next Claudia, but Fenwick was too quick for him.
“Never mind,” said Miss Arbuthnot, “or if you do mind, bear it. Life, like art, is made up of sacrifices, and for once you might put up with me, particularly as I, too, should prefer you to be somebody else.” ”

“ Claudia looked white and worried. Her fears had returned upon her, and she could not laugh lightly as Lady Wilmot seemed able to laugh, even when things were at their worst. Imagination often paints in stronger colours than reality; she had not seen Fenwick, and pictured him more suffering than was the case. Besides, she had just heard that the doctors could express no decided opinion for two or three days, a time which to her restlessness seemed unendurable. She looked blankly at Lady Wilmot, not at first realising who she was talking about. ”

“ Harry Hilton flushed like a girl to the roots of his hair, as he took it.
“You’re—you’re too good, Miss Hamilton,” he stammered.
“Why?” said Claudia, opening her eyes and smiling. “Don’t you think it’s nice to have friends? I had so many at the college, and I really miss them here. I can’t stand writing and that sort of thing—I haven’t the time. So that if you like it.”
“Like it!”
“People are so stupid,” she went on; “they always talk as if men and women couldn’t be friends without fancying themselves in love, or some such nonsense. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ As age creeps on, there are other deaths than those we mourn openly. Sometimes hope dies, or faith, or love—and from the infinite blackness of such loss, may God in His mercy keep us!—sometimes it is ambition, or friendship, which is worse. But all death is sad, except, as perhaps we shall find, our own, for that should mean recovering again some good things which we have lost.
Claudia went through several phases at this time. It was not extraordinary; most men and women do after a crisis, particularly a crisis which has in it anything humiliating. ”

“ Philippa said afterwards to Anne. “If you had heard that ‘Oh, I know!’ and the depth of experience it conveyed! The world is topsy-turvy, frivolity will soon become a virtue of the aged, all the merrymakings and junketings will be reserved for the end of life, we shall be the last left to pipe and dance, while youth regards us scornfully. Claudia depresses me. A hundred wrinkles have grown in my face during the past week. ”

“ It is such a splendid thing to be young, as one only finds out too late. Her dark eyes are so pretty, and her figure is so pretty, and her frock fits so well! One oughtn’t to have such contrasts forced upon one if one is expected to keep amiable. Why, up to to-day, I had fancied that because Emily had so few grey hairs, she was quite a young thing! It is all very well to pretend to be philosophical. I say straight out that I hate growing old.”
“Is that all you have against Claudia?” asked Anne, smiling.
“Oh, it’s enough! It means that you will lose your heart to her, and so will Harry.” ”

“ Claudia exclaimed. “It is Captain Fenwick, and we shall not be able to talk any more. Perhaps he has not seen us, and we can escape.”
“Oh, he has seen us. Bring your philosophy to bear, for, after all, you find him more endurable than the others—him or his bicycle, which is it?” As Captain Fenwick came swiftly up, and swung himself off, she added, “That is one point I particularly dislike in the thing. It is always taking you unawares. There is no time to prepare, or to call up one’s blandest expression. However, here is Miss Hamilton who has just been singing its praises—yours, I mean.” ”

“ Claudia, for instance, had never guessed its existence. She thought of him as a shrewd keen man, forgave him some shortness of temper, and liked the touch of roughness he occasionally showed. It had struck her that Miss Arbuthnot cared for him, and that he was indifferent, so that his evident attraction for herself flattered her. These were trifles, the real tie lay in his dash to her rescue and consequent suffering. Nothing could have smitten down her spirited independence so completely as the knowledge that he lay helpless owing to what he had done for her ”

“ Claudia was in the first ferment of life, in which she required that every one’s work should be spread before them, parcelled out as distinctly as any allotment ground.
Yet her cousin Emily, the youngest of the three sisters, whose views ran in the same direction if in a different groove, roused in her an immediate antagonism. Emily was the useful woman of the town; secretary to two or three societies, warden, committee woman, what not! To her turned the thoughts of all the clergy when a new work had to be started, or an old one revived. ”

“ Ruth Baynes, who carried off Claudia, was tall and slight, with a small aquiline nose and a good-tempered expression. It did not take lone to discover that she had two brothers whom she adored, and various nephews an I nieces, almost equally near her heart. Whatever Claudia said or did was capped by something they had said or done—generally better. She left her at last to peace and a bath, and no one could look fresher or less jaded than Claudia when the dinner-gong sounded.
Mr Hilton took her in to dinner—a thin querulous man, bent with rheumatism, and walking by the help of a stick. ”

“ Philippa announced. “What a pity it is that nothing of the sort ever happened to Emily!”
“Philippa!”
“To be sure Emily has never taken her independence fiercely, has never, indeed, taken it at all, but she has always sighed for it. If once the thing had advanced towards her, Emily would have screamed and run away, while Claudia has been so entranced with its charms that she has been ready to take shadow for substance. Harry, now, Harry’s good stout sense would have allowed her a long tether, but no doubt Captain Fenwick jerked the rope too sharply.” ”

“ A new girl was a far more interesting subject to her than any mere man; the girls at the college, and the lines they took or might be expected to take, had been fertile objects of speculation for their fellow-students.
“She,” said Fenwick, slowly, “is a daughter of Lord Ambleton. What is she like?” He hesitated. “How am I to answer?”
Claudia opened her eyes.
“Why? Is she so inscrutable?”
“Inscrutable? Yes, perhaps. But just then I was reflecting on the difficulties of describing a woman to a woman without setting her against her.”
“Why?” asked the girl again, coolly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I always wanted to try my hand upon a river.”
“Did I not tell you she was a Radical?” asked Philippa, addressing the others. “Imagine our good, respectable, steady-going river turned out of his centuries-old groove! No, Claudia, we are not going to deliver him up to your tender mercies, and could not if we would. A river—a real river—is a more important personage than you conceive; not to be trifled with even so much as the government of a country.” ”

“ He had enough shrewd common sense to be aware, not only that Claudia flung no glance in the direction where he would have had her look, but that her friendliness was, to say the least, pitying. He had heard her inveigh—with the vigour she was apt to put into her lightest words—against the drones who have no purpose in the world, and something in her manner had made him fully understand that she looked on him as a drone. ”

“ It is pleasant work enough, and she gets three hundred a year. But it is rather a bore having to go out at such an unearthly hour, and on the whole I thought landscape gardening preferable.”
“But what is it? How do you do it?” asked Anne, leaning forward and smiling. She was the softest of the sisters, large and fair.
“I lay out gardens for people,” said Claudia. She scented ridicule, and was determined to speak simply.
“Gardens? Gardens on a great scale, I suppose?” put in Philippa. “A landscape means something vast.” ”

“ Up jumped Claudia on her stilts. “I can’t understand any one not wishing for the best.”
“No? That’s your youth. It’s the same sort of rage which sets people scraping ruins, when such charming weeds vanish! Half the attraction of everything consists in its little defects.”
Miss Arbuthnot spoke with extreme laziness, quite indifferent to the impression she produced; and the girl, who hated to be reminded of her youth, and felt as if her own efforts were belittled, was provoked. ”

“ She had been anxious to impress those about her with the gravity of woman’s work, to see that they put it on a level with man’s, to shake off the faintest accusation of frivolity; and, to accomplish this end she was prepared to be pointed at and scorned. With such lofty aspirations nothing could be well more humiliating than to find herself considered a bore. Here lay the point of Fenwick’s moral, it was from this he wanted to save her. “A bore, a bore, a bore!” She scourged herself with the taunt, and vowed there should be no more of it, for to the young, ridicule is intolerable. ”

“ She arrived rather late.
“Here you are, my dear,” said Mrs Hilton, kindly. “How have you slept? Are you rested? Watkins said you would not let her do anything for you.”
“Thank you,” said Claudia, pleasantly. “I always manage for myself.” Her morning’s round had put her into the best of humours, and she was fresh and smiling, but before breakfast was half over, longing to escape to the work which no one appeared disposed to regard gravely. Captain Fenwick, who was last of all, and dropped into the empty chair by her side, made no attempt to conceal his amusement. ”

“ She pictured Thornbury, its opportunities, its deficiencies, and its altered aspect when she, Claudia, once more took the road back to Elmslie. The people she might meet were not nearly so interesting. The road, however, was neither good nor level, and often she was obliged to confine her attention to its roughnesses. Her real sense of beauty, too, was charmed by the tremulous gladness of the day, soft sunshine veiled in sudden glooms, which yet never became threatening; a hedge-growth rich in ever-varying depths of green ”

“ Is not any man the better for such a benediction? Whether the desire of his heart be granted or not, I think the strength of a mother’s unselfish love carries it straight to the throne of God, and brings back a blessing, rich and plentiful.
Harry had learnt wisdom, and did not rush off impetuously to Elmslie, as he felt inclined. He stayed away, indeed, so long that Philippa began to grumble, and Claudia to feel guiltily that she was depriving her cousins of their favourite visitor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don’t know that even you can wish for anything better. An extremely good-looking girl, and a pretty fortune.” Philippa began to laugh.
“What is it?”
“Only something she told me. Never mind. She will tell you all without loss of time.”
“Well, as to Harry, I give my consent—if you do; for, in spite of jeers, you will be quite as particular as I. I wonder whether there is really any chance of his taking a fancy?” questioned the elder sister, with a touch of wistfulness behind her words to which Philippa at once became responsive. ”

“ And Anne could truthfully assure her that she was not the first person to receive a dog from Thornbury; but without this assurance, she did justice to a certain generosity in Harry Hilton’s character, which would prevent his trying to place her under an obligation.
The dog was a greater success than the bicycle, partly from his merits, partly from an aptitude for getting into trouble; not from disagreeableness—for he had a delightful temper, but from a cheerful joy in fighting for fighting’s sake, which kept Claudia constantly on the alert. ”

“ Claudia did see, and coloured.
“I dare say I am tiresome,” she said frankly. “At the college they declared that no one rode their hobbies to death as I did. Only,”—she drew a deep breath—“these are wonderful times, aren’t they? And how can one take one’s part in the movement without enthusiasm?”
“And pray, where are you moving?” asked Miss Arbuthnot. Then she changed her tone. “Was there ever such a heavenly day? I’m glad you’ve spared the grass ride. There’s nothing like it at Huntingdon, whatever Captain Fenwick may say. When do you go?” ”

“ She put up her glasses as she spoke.
“My Claudia—as you call her—has a trick of looking pretty.”
“She has, and I never denied it. But she has upset my theories. I thought she would prove herself indifferent to you all for some time to come. Oh, don’t smile! A man may be vain—he can’t help himself, I suppose, but when his vanity peeps out it is insupportable.”
“Have you impressed that upon the individual to your right?”
“Time enough,” said Miss Arbuthnot coolly. “Besides, you are mistaken. He is not vain.” ”