The result of Fenwick's meditation might have been foreseen; he felt
himself the injured person, and went resignedly to the hut on the
following day, prepared to act with magnanimity. Claudia met him as
simply as usual, showing no trace of displeasure. A close observer
might, it is true, have noticed that she was both pale and heavy-eyed,
but, except under the influence of a dominant personal interest, Fenwick
was not a close observer, and he merely registered a mental note that
her young beauty was of too variable a nature to be counted upon. His
sister, however, quickly became aware that he was himself disturbed, and
she took an opportunity of calling Claudia into the next room.
"Something has gone wrong with Arthur, I can see. I know his face so
well! Do be careful what you say," she added anxiously.
"Has anything gone wrong?" asked the girl, with a curious little laugh.
"Well, don't be afraid. Perhaps I can set it right."
Mrs Leslie shook her head. She had no confidence in Claudia's powers,
and she dreaded beyond words, another eight days' wonder over her
brother's love affairs. Major Leslie was waiting for her in the garden,
and when she went out she was so full of her fears that she confided
them, with signs towards the window.
"I am dreadfully afraid there is something in the wind. Arthur looks
like a thundercloud."
"Pleasant for her!" said little Major Leslie, whistling.
"That's the worst of it. She might manage, but unfortunately she has no
tact whatever, and Arthur will require the most delicate handling from
his wife. Lawrence, this gardener is absolutely no good."
"I don't see anything amiss."
"Then look at that border."
The two wrangled, and strolled away together. Claudia, after a
momentary hesitation, a momentary locking of her small fingers, went
back to the pretty cool room, and sat down on the window-seat. Through
the trees came glints of bright colour, as soldiers passed up and down
the road, and now and then a cheery note of bugle or pipes rose shrill
above other sounds. Fenwick walked restlessly about the room.
"I suppose you'll be at the polo this afternoon," he remarked, stopping
to straighten a picture, "as you're so awfully keen on that sort of
thing, aren't you?"
"I suppose I am," she said slowly. "But I am not going to the polo. It
was about this afternoon that I wanted to say something."
"All right. Here I am!" he said, flinging himself into a low chair by
her side. But there was something ungracious in the movement, and his
face darkened. He thought she intended to reproach him. Claudia spoke
again, still slowly, for her voice was not altogether under control, and
she dreaded above all things a breakdown.
"I am just sending a telegram to Elmslie--to my cousins--to ask them to
expect me to-day."
"Oh!" said Fenwick, sitting up. "And may I ask what has brought about
this sudden change?"
His dry angry voice acted upon Claudia as a spur. Her eyes brightened
as she faced him.
"Need you ask?" Then her voice softened again. "Arthur," she said,
"many words are not necessary, are they? It has all been hasty,
mistaken, foolish, but it has not lasted very long. Now let us both--
forget."
"Do you mean," he asked sharply, "that you wish to break off our
engagement?"
"Yes," she answered, groping for words so carefully that she
hesitated--"yes, that is what I mean. I did foolishly to agree to it,
and that will always be the first thing I shall remember. Why you
wished it I don't know,"--she drew a long breath--"happily it is not yet
too late, and it has just got to be as though it had never been."
"I should still like to know what is my offence. That I left you to go
back alone yesterday? I should have supposed that would have pleased
you."
"I think you are ungenerous," said the girl, with a flash. "Do you take
me for a stone? I am not reproaching you. Oh," she broke out more
wildly, "can't you let it be over and done with without words?"
"No," said Fenwick savagely. "I suppose this is all woman's confounded
jealousy."
He was really angry, and conflicting with a sense of relief came
indignation that she could let him go.
"Have it as you like," Claudia answered proudly; "I have said enough.
It has been a mistake, a mistake made by us both; but fortunately there
is still time to draw back. Some day perhaps you will see that I could
not have acted otherwise." She flung out her hands. "There! It is
over. Will you ring the bell that I may send this?"
Her manner still stung him, and he was not generous enough to own to
himself how entirely he had forced it upon her.
"You have taken the law into your own hands with a vengeance," he said
bitterly, as he crossed the room. "Apparently I am expected to accept
sentence without so much as being told the manner of my offending.
Gloriously feminine, upon my word! Warren, take this to the telegraph
office." He held it another moment in his hand and turned to her. "You
wish it to go?"
She bent her head, finding words impossible; and when the man had left
the room, Fenwick hung back and stood staring at her.
"Well," he said imperiously, "I am waiting for an explanation."
She shook her head.
"Don't expect me to be satisfied with signs. I must have chapter and
verse."
It was Claudia's turn to be impatient. She sprang to her feet, her eyes
passionately reproachful, her voice firm--
"But I will not say more! Words--words are absolutely vain, and yet you
want them: you want my thoughts and feelings put into shape for you to
handle them. Don't you see, can't you see, that your very lack of power
to do this for yourself shows what a gulf has opened between us? If you
loved me,"--her voice faltered and recovered itself--"if you loved me,
you would understand without words--" She was going to call to witness
her own power of entering into his feelings, but checked herself in
time, for no tenderness in his manner had gained the right to wring
admissions from her which she instinctively knew would be but food for
his vanity. That night, tossing sleepless, she had sworn that she would
not let him learn how she had suffered, and to make sure of this kept
her face turned from him, fancying that he might read it there. But she
raised her hand as she spoke, and when she broke off it dropped heavily
by her side.
"No, I don't pretend to be clever enough to understand you," he said
sharply. "You judge me harshly, you draw unwarrantable deductions, and
refuse either to hear me speak or to speak yourself. How are we ever to
hope to set matters right?" He stopped. The mere unexpected discovery
that she could give him up, immeasurably raised her value, and yet at
the same moment the thought of Helen Arbuthnot rushed into his brain.
"I suppose," he went on more quietly, "you are vexed with something I
have done or left undone?"
"Is that it?" she asked faintly, with the same consciousness of tension
in her speech--a tension which was growing well-nigh intolerable.
"Perhaps--I don't know--no, I think it is something much deeper.
Whatever it is, I cannot change, but there need be no unkindness between
us."
"Oh," he said scornfully, "you have the stock phrases at your fingers'
ends!" And then his better angel moved him to compunction. "Claudia,
forgive me!"
It was the old intonation, the old tender tune which could yet shake her
like a leaf.
"Don't say that," she stammered hastily; "if--if it will make you
happier, be sure I shall not ever think hardly of you. It has been what
I said--a mistake--that is all. And there is one thing more," she went
on in a stronger voice. "In these matters, I don't know, but I suppose
the world always thinks that some one is to blame. I am that one,
remember. It is I who have done it. Only, would you mind saying this
to your sister yourself, and telling her that I must--I must go away
to-day?"
He had turned from her, and was leaning against the mantelpiece, his
head buried in his arms. Claudia stood and looked at him for one
yearning moment, her face troubled, her eyes full of tears.
Before he had time to answer she was gone.
Fenwick neither spoke nor stirred. For a moment he was shaken by a
strange rush of feeling, pricked by an involuntary shame, conscious of
something higher and better than himself. But the moment did not last.
Other thoughts crowded thickly, and leapt into prominence. The habit of
constantly appealing to his own personality, and measuring all things by
their relation to it, the invariable dwarfing question which strangled
nobler impulses, and could only ask, "How will this affect me?" rose up
strong and strangling as ever. They made him hesitate, when generosity
would have rushed the words, lest in their utterance he might say more
than he would--later--find convenient. Self had through these
instruments dominated his nature, checked his expansion, left him cold
and self-conscious, made the nobler side of him hate himself. While
Claudia spoke, something within him urged quick response, words which
should at least answer more adequately to the sweetness of her farewell,
more bravely own his fault. But he had crushed the whisper, from a base
dread of saying too much, and with the opportunity gone, the poorer part
of him began to dominate again. She had voluntarily given him up, and
an irritable vanity, fastening upon this offence, swelled and fumed
around it until all other issues were blotted from view. More than once
in these latter days, he had been conscious of a wish that he could live
over again those days at Huntingdon, but this was an altogether
different matter from supposing that Claudia might also desire to
reconsider them. He left his position, and, crossing to the window,
stood staring blackly out of it, foreseeing many awkwardnesses, but
without a thought for poor Claudia, who had flung herself face downwards
upon her bed upstairs, and was sobbing passionately. Whatever pressure
was put upon the wind bag of his vanity only forced it out on another
side. He was standing, immovable, in the same place when his sister
came in.
"Oh, Arthur!" she exclaimed, stopping in the doorway.
He did not look round.
"Well, why `Oh, Arthur!'?"
"Something has happened. I was certain something was going to happen.
I wish I had not gone out. You and Claudia have quarrelled."
"Certainly not." He laughed shortly.
"If you like, we have agreed to differ." He broke off, and added with
the same abruptness, "You've got to know, and you may as well know at
once that it's all over--amicably, and probably for the best. Claudia
goes back to Elmslie to-day, and the only thing for you and Lawrence to
do is to hold your tongues."
"That's very easy for you to say, but you must be aware that I shall
have to give some sort of explanation," said Mrs Leslie, with a sense
of affront underlying her real dismay.
"No, I am not aware. To whom?" said Fenwick, facing round fiercely.
"If the fools want to talk, let them!"
"Of course they will talk."
"As I say--let them!"
Mrs Leslie drew herself up.
"You might be more civil, Arthur, considering you have brought it on
yourself. Pray do you suppose the situation will be agreeable for us?"
"Hang it all!" he burst out. "Say what you like, then! The plain truth
is, as any one might see, that we're unsuited, and it's come home to her
at last. There it lies in a nutshell, and you may make what you can of
it."
"I saw it long ago."
"I'll wager you did!"
"And," went on his sister coldly, "I can't wonder at the poor child
discovering it too. You forced it upon her pretty clearly, you and
Helen Arbuthnot."
Fenwick, not displeased at this conjunction of names, moderated his
tone.
"There was nothing for her to fuss about, only a woman's jealousy warps
her common sense. You'll see that some one goes with her?"
But this provision for her comfort Claudia resolutely declined. It had
been only to please her lover that she had consented to be guarded by an
escort on her journey to Aldershot, and now that she had no lover to
please she would certainly go back in the manner she preferred; she was
not in the mood to forego one of her privileges, and Mrs Leslie argued
with her in vain. Free from personal vanity, she had much of the
egotism of youth. She belonged to an age which was to reanimate the
world, and to a cluster of girls who felt themselves instinct with
corporate force, and whose ignorance had this in it that was noble, that
it at least stretched out eager helping hands, with passionate impulses
for good. This strong hopeful faith, this assurance that they had to
show the world how different a thing a woman's life might become from
what it had been in the ages past when shrinking dependence was her
distinguishing characteristic, had been cruelly wounded in Claudia as
much by her own acts as by the verdict of others. If she had not
suffered from obloquy, she had been dangerously near to being laughed
out of court, and she had yielded ignominiously to almost the first
touch of so-called love. Sore and shamed, she doubted ever getting back
to her starting-point. Her career had been cruelly shorn of its
dignity, and she felt, not only miserable, but commonplace.
At any rate she could--she would take care of herself in the train.
Once there, she could think more consecutively, if more sadly. In the
forlornness and humiliation of her experience, as unlike what she had
pictured for herself as it was possible for experience to be, her
remembrances turned gratefully to Elmslie; nay, even lingered with a
certain tenderness round the Thornbury home. From there, at any rate,
no wounding had come, although it seemed to her, looking back, that she
had been singularly aggressive and unaccommodating. Mrs Hilton's
amazement had been modulated by her fine instincts of courtesy, and
Harry--Harry, if he had been foolish, at least believed in her.