She was, it must be owned, rather surprised that no one had come to meet
her at the station. Certainly she had assured them in her last letter
that it was unnecessary, and that she could manage very well by herself;
but, in spite of assurances, she had hardly expected to be taken at her
word, and when the train stopped, looked questioningly up and down the
platform for the faces of her cousins. No one, however, whom she had
ever seen before, presented herself, and Claudia found that she was
thrust upon her own resources. They were fully equal to the strain, the
arrival offered no difficulty and required no assistance; it was merely
that she had pictured its causing some thrill of excitement in her new
home, since it is not every day that a young cousin, so much in advance
of the world, as she could not help believing herself to be, comes to
live with three elderly, and, therefore, from sheer necessity of
circumstance, commonplace sisters. Put into words the thought smacks of
conceit, but nothing would have shocked Claudia more than to have seen
it in words: it was not even sufficiently formed to deserve to be called
a thought, and was, rather, a vague impression, a shadowy groundwork for
the surprise.
Still, it existed sufficiently to impel her to look out of the window of
the fly, after having assured herself that her bicycle was safe, and to
wonder whether, even yet, some unpunctual feminine figure might not be
seen hurrying along the street, all excuses and welcome. She looked
also critically at the rows of houses on either side, such as are common
enough in every country town, and at the grey towers of the cathedral
rising beyond the roofs. Roads branched away, she passed a church,
defiant in the ugliness of some sixty years ago, the rows of houses
changed to lower walls with tall trees feathering over them, and at last
the fly turned at an iron gate, and drove towards a white house, with a
door set squarely on the western side, and a blaze of colour about it
which Claudia dismissed with contempt as "bedding-out stuff." It was
likely, she felt, that the door would be hospitably open, and an
expectant flutter of draperies prove that she was eagerly watched for;
when nothing of the sort was visible, Claudia philosophically withdrew
her head, convinced that urgent engagements stood in the way of her
cousins' welcome, and, although still surprised, she was not in the
least affronted.
The few moments which remained she spent in a flying wonder as to what
her future life would be like, if wonder is not too strong a word, for
to herself she had pictured it as clearly as she ever pictured anything,
being a young woman who held that definite outlines savoured of
Philistinism, and that in order to receive impressions truthfully, the
mind should be in the condition of blotting-paper. She wished to begin
her new life in this recipient state, and she piqued herself upon her
powers of adaptation, which, to say the truth, had not as yet been much
exercised. Possibly it was to prove their strength that she had chosen
to run counter to the prognostications of the world--her world--and when
her mother died, and a dozen relations opened their doors to receive
her, at the end of a year which she spent at a college, preferred to
write to the three sisters who had made no sign, and ask them to admit
her into their home--for the present. She was careful to make that
reservation.
Claudia took this step from choice, not from disgust, feeling nothing
but kindliness in the opening of the dozen doors, to her and her
fortune. She flattered herself that she was a cynic, but her nature was
really frankly unsuspicious, and, finding no difficulty in believing
that her society might add a pleasantness to life, it did not surprise
her that her relations should wish to enjoy it. But something--it is
difficult to say what--drew her imagination to fasten upon the prosaic
aspect of the three cousins, living in a remote county, near a quiet
cathedral city. She had reasons for the step which she considered
sufficient, but perhaps it was the very prose of the situation which
chiefly attracted her, for she loved poetry so passionately that she
would be certain to do prosaic things.
The fly stopped, and the bell was rung, without a head appearing at
either window, and though the maid who opened the door looked agreeably
expectant, it appeared that neither of the Miss Cartwrights was at home.
Miss Philippa, however, had left a message that if she were not in she
hoped to be back very shortly, and Miss Hamilton must have tea without
waiting.
Claudia accordingly went through the hall into the drawing-room,
smiling, but a little disappointed that the house in which she found
herself was not more like what she had expected, a home in which she
might have worked a beneficent revolution. There was a good-sized, if
rather dark, hall, hung with fine prints, and the drawing-room was
almost too bright and cheerful. Flowers, books, and china, she might
have expected, but there was grouping on which her eye fell with some
surprise. She reflected with a sigh for which she might have found it
difficult to account, that fashion now penetrated everywhere. Then she
sat down in an extremely easy-chair, took off her hat, took up a book,
and waited.
Seen thus, Claudia's beauty was more striking than when the hat hid a
small dark head, and to some extent shadowed eyes which were at once
sweet and eager. Her nose was rather piquante than classical, and her
cheek had a charming dimpled roundness. Her figure was both small and
slight, and her clothes fitted admirably. Altogether, when Philippa
Cartwright came hurriedly in, her eyes fell upon a pretty picture of a
young girl lying in a deep chair, her dark hair flung into strong relief
by the red silk cushion in which it was buried, and on which slanted the
rays of an afternoon sun.
"My dear Claudia," she exclaimed, "how inhospitable you must think us!
And why didn't you have your tea? I told Jane to insist upon it. Anne
and Emily are in the town with Harry Hilton, and I intended to have been
at home long ago. I might have known better. But you shall have tea at
once. Here it comes, and plenty of scones, I hope. Sugar?"
"Please. But let me pour it out," said the girl, pleasantly. "I dare
say you are much more tired than I am."
Miss Philippa laughed.
"I? Oh, I am never tired," she said. "I haven't the time. Let me see,
Claudia, I quite forget if you know our country?"
"Not at all. And I thought it lovely as I came along, though one
couldn't say much for the farming." Her voice changed, and she said
more shyly, "It is very good of you to have me in this way."
"Well, it is simply an experiment on either side," returned her cousin,
giving her a comprehensive look. "We don't in the least know whether
you will be able to do with us, and of course it will take you a little
time to discover, so that no one is to feel at all bound in the matter.
That is my one stipulation. And we have agreed that from the very
beginning--unless you dislike it--you are not to be treated as a
visitor, but as if you lived here, and had all the independence of home.
I began, you see, by coming back too late to receive you," added Miss
Philippa, with twinkling eyes. "Otherwise it doesn't seem to me as if
you could judge fairly whether you like the position or not. What do
you think about it?"
Claudia was looking straight at her and evidently considering.
"Yes," she said, with a little nod, "I agree with you. There is a good
deal I have to explain, but that can wait. Yes. That will leave us
freedom on both sides, for I warn you, you are very likely to disapprove
of me. I hardly liked to use the word experiment, but I should have had
to get at it somehow. You see, my sympathies are very much with what I
suppose you call the new woman."
"When you're my age, my dear," said Philippa, bluntly, "you will have
discovered that there's nothing new under the sun. However, you can be
as new as you like here, and you will charm Emily--so long as you don't
consider it a part of your mission to call for brandies and sodas. She
is a blue-ribboner, and so is Jane, the parlourmaid."
Claudia detected ridicule, and flushed.
"I think teetotalers are extraordinarily ill-balanced, though I respect
them," she returned stiffly.
"Yes, please respect them," said Philippa, with a laugh. "Now, will you
come to your room?"
Claudia got up and went to the window.
She turned with easier excitement.
"A river! Is that really a river? Oh, delightful!"
"Yes, we can provide you with that, and it is a very tidy river for
fish, I believe--at least Harry Hilton says so," said her cousin,
following her. "He will be able to tell you more about it."
"Oh, I don't care about fishing," the girl said hastily. "I was
thinking of its capabilities, and how splendidly one can utilise them."
"Its capabilities?" repeated Philippa, puzzled. "Well, whatever they
are, your window commands them, for we have given you the south room on
account of the view, otherwise there is a larger one to the west. But
come and see for yourself, for if you prefer the other, it is quite easy
to change. Jane will help you to unpack."
"No, thank you,"--Claudia spoke firmly--"I like to do everything for
myself."
"Well, you know best, only don't crowd your experiments. Here is your
room," went on Miss Cartwright, opening a door at the end of a passage;
"your room, that is, unless you like the other better. I hope they have
brought up all your things. Dinner is at seven, because Emily has a
meeting to-night. You will have to accommodate yourself to meetings.
By the way, Harry Hilton is staying with us, and he says he once met you
at the Grants'."
"I dare say," returned Claudia, indifferently. "I don't remember."
"Well, he is a cousin on the other side of the house, one of the Hiltons
of Thornbury, you know--or perhaps you don't know--and is here a good
deal--on and off. Now I will leave you in peace."
She was gone, and Claudia, barely glancing at her pretty room, sat down
on the window-seat, and stared enthusiastically at the strip of silver
light which marked the course of the river.
It gave a charm and variety which would otherwise have been wanting, for
though the country round was fertile and smiling, it had neither breadth
nor distinctive features. At one point, indeed, there was a tantalising
peep of vanishing blue hills, but the foliage of the elms was heavy, and
the trees themselves stiff with the cutting which deprived them of their
lower branches. After a long silent gaze, Claudia broke out into an
exclamation--
"Oh, how one could improve it!" she cried, leaning forward, and eagerly
tracing lines and curves in the air with a sweeping finger. "What
opportunities they have thrown away! To raise the ground there by a
long beautiful slope of grass, to plant out those hideous chimneys, and
cut, cut, cut! They will--they must--let me do it, and then one could
get the most splendid effects of light out of the water. Emily and her
meetings and her blue ribbons may be an infliction, but I could bear
almost anything for the sake of having a river to study."
She jumped up eagerly, unlocked a bag, and took out a book full of blank
pages, in which she was presently alternately writing and drawing, not
pausing so much as to look at the garden below when she heard voices
beneath her window.
Meanwhile Philippa Cartwright ran downstairs to a small morning-room
where she wrote notes with vigour until her sister, Anne, the eldest of
the three, a woman rather heavily built, and with a kindly sympathetic
face, looked in upon her.
"Is Claudia come?"
"Yes--and--unfortunately--I--was--not--home--in time," said Philippa,
speaking more slowly as she wrote more hastily. "There!" She folded
and flattened the note, addressed it, and began another. "Where's
Harry?"
"Matthews has got hold of him about the vines. Can't I help you?"
"Bless you, my dear Anne, haven't you yet learned to keep in your own
sphere? Notes belong to mine. By the way, talking of spheres, I think
you may as well enlarge yours and take in Claudia."
"Why? Isn't she nice?"
"Very! Charming! And I don't deserve that speech when I am presenting
her to you just because I think she will be such an effective charge.
See if she doesn't distinguish our house!"