Chapter One.

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!”

Anne shook her head gravely. “You don’t like her.”

“I do, I do, I do! Don’t you know me well enough to see that I am at this moment dying of jealousy? 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.”

“Harry?”

“Yes. I am not sure he did not do so a little the first time that he met her. Well—he must take his chance. You and his mother are always fussing about his marrying, and here’s his opportunity. 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.

“He is a very good fellow, bless him!” she declared heartily, “a very good fellow indeed, even if he has a few more faults than you and Minnie will admit, and I must see a great deal more of Miss Claudia before I give my consent—which has so much to do with the matter!” she added, falling back on her usual manner.

“Harry thinks a great deal of your judgment.”

“That’s an appreciation apt to be tucked on one side in the great affairs of life. Still, I’m very much obliged to Harry for the compliment, and it will certainly make me careful to avoid rash counsels.”

Claudia came down to dinner in excellent time. Her black dress was well cut, and set off the small dark head, and the eager eyes; if she were at all shy, she did not show it, and she kissed her cousins and shook hands with Mr Hilton without a trace of the new manners for which Philippa was amusedly watching.

“I remember you now,” she said to Harry; “at least I think it was you who told me about a fox-terrier?”

“I have her here,” said Harry, flushing with pleasure.

He was a young man with, as she decided at once, an excellent face, although both in face and figure there was a wasteful inclination to breadth. The eyes were grey and honest, however, and would have redeemed worse faults. He laughed readily and happily, and Claudia reflected further that if he were never likely to set the Thames on fire, he was certain to be a popular man in his own neighbourhood. He did not interest her, but inwardly she gave him a half-contemptuous credit for a dozen safe and good qualities, which she reflected were probably allowed to run idly to seed. 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. She knew exactly how many pounds of butter and pots of jam were necessary for a parish tea; she slaved at school-treats, and did the work of two curates in her district. Claudia, whose schemes swept to the regeneration of mankind, and a general equalisation of things in the world, was partly contemptuous of, and partly irritated by Emily’s absorption in what she regarded as miserable make-shifts, unworthy of the consideration of any one who had passed a course in political economy, and whose papers had been favourably annotated by the examiner.

She spent her evening in garnering observations, telling herself that she was naturally curious about her new surroundings; what, however, continued to surprise her most, was that she herself appeared to excite less interest. Her cousins, Anne especially, accepted her with kindly goodwill, but when Philippa had said that from the first she was to be treated as one of the family, it was evident that she was not using a figure of speech. No one was in the least overwhelmed by her arrival, nor did it cause any divergence in the currents of interest which flowed strongly. Claudia listened, wondering whether under any circumstances of life could she be carried along by such currents; she hoped that would never be expected of her, but meanwhile could not doubt that expectations of some sort existed, and began to have an unacknowledged desire to say something which should astonish her hostesses. She had no such wish as to Harry Hilton, perhaps instinctively aware that she could impress him by simpler means, and she talked chiefly to him, suiting her remarks to his capacity, while listening as attentively as she could to the remarks which dropped from the others.

“Well, Emily,” Philippa was saying, “I warn you that if you’re going to trust to Mr Helmore’s eloquence, your meeting will be a dismal failure. He’s a stick. You had better get some one sent down from head-quarters, even if it does increase the expenses.”

“I really must try to avoid that,” said her sister, nervously; “and I assure you I haven’t come to the end of my resources yet.”

“You’re a wonderful woman.”

“Here’s Harry,” put in Anne. “Harry has done nothing for a long while.”

“They know my jests by heart. No, no: here is Miss Hamilton.”

“To make a speech?” asked Claudia, smiling.

She was careful to express no surprise, for, so far as she knew, there was no possible reason why she should not make a speech. But Harry was evidently of another opinion.

“Good gracious, no!” he protested. “Only to help in the entertainment.”

“Don’t ask her,” interrupted Philippa. “She’s a Radical.”

“Of course,” said Claudia, calmly; “and a Socialist. I don’t see how one can be anything else—that is to say, any one who takes the least interest in his fellow-creatures.”

She was a little disappointed at the effect upon her listeners. Harry, it is true, became rather redder, and Emily uttered a protesting “Oh!” but Philippa and Anne showed no signs of having received a shock.

They were smiling. It was Harry who hastened to say—

“Oh, you’ll be converted. You’ve come to the right house.”

“I don’t think I ever converted any one in my life except old Pentecost, who you all vow is half-witted,” said Philippa, shaking her head. “In these days no one is converted. He or she grows up with an idea, and takes in the newspaper which supports it. But I am rather glad about Claudia, and I think she shall make a speech after all.”

“Just as you like,” said Claudia, easily.

“Do you speak yourself?”

“Oh no; I have never been young enough.”