The Career of Claudia — Edition Insights

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.

"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."

"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.

"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."

"Debating clubs do that for one, at any rate," went on the girl, unheeding. "They take away all fear of one's own voice. But I haven't gone in for them much, because, of course, that sort of thing is not required in my profession."

This time she was more successful in moving her audience. Emily said eagerly--"Your profession? Oh, Claudia, this is very interesting! What is it?"

"I am a landscape gardener. Didn't you know that I had been studying at the college?"

"Yes, but we thought--well, we did not realise that you were actually working there." She assured them that this had been the case, keenly enjoying their surprise. Philippa, however, asked at once--

"Well, but the result, the outcome? Shall you practice?"

"If I did not, I should have no right to enter the market at all. I go into the ranks, to be treated exactly like the others."

"Only what is play to you is living to them," remarked Philippa. "You can never place yourself on the same footing. However, as Emily says, this is interesting. Had you a particular fondness for gardening?" Claudia could not say that she had. "But one had to choose something. I could not have been idle. I did think of shop-dressing."

"Yes; a girl I know has taken to that. She starts very early every morning in order to arrange the things in certain shop-windows. 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."

"Oh, not necessarily. Of course one might have to rearrange a park; but your garden, for instance, is a delightful size. And now you know why your river enchanted me. 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."

"That is what I say," returned Claudia, smiling. "England is so full of absurd restrictions that, do what you will, you run your head against them."

"You will have to try the colonies," said Anne.

"Or a thousand miles or so of prairies."

Claudia coloured. She had an uncomfortable conviction that her cousin Philippa was mocking.

"It is opportunity I want--not size," she said with dignity, and as she spoke she looked at Harry, who had been listening to the conversation in amazement--mute, except for an occasional muttered "By Jove!" But to her look he answered at once.

"Of course," he said boldly. "There must be dozens of people who want their places set to rights. Would Thornbury do to begin with? If you would come to Thornbury, you could have a free hand, and lots of flowers to do anything with."

Claudia turned her face towards him with a sigh.

"I am not a florist, and I know nothing whatever about flowers, because they don't in the least enter into my scheme. But as to grouping and re-arranging trees, if I can be of any use I shall be happy to do all I can."

"The Thornbury trees!" murmured Philippa.

"And transplanting is so easily managed now," the girl went on, "that really I can't conceive why people are not more enterprising in trying new effects. If you think of it, how should the planting at haphazard which went on everywhere, produce the best combinations? Whereas, bring art to bear, and the whole falls into a beautiful unity."

He agreed enthusiastically.

"Exactly. I never thought of it before, but now you speak of it, it does seem extraordinary that we should leave so much to chance, I believe ours may be very much improved."

Philippa, with an amused twinkle in her eyes, inquired whether Claudia had found an opportunity of trying her powers.

"At the college, of course. But I am hoping for larger work," said Claudia, eagerly. "It is like everything else, one has to begin in a small way, and get known by degrees."

And, as she spoke, vague shadows floated before Harry Hilton's eyes. He saw a girl's light figure flitting along the grassy rides at Thornbury, transformations, golden sunshine everywhere. The evening was touched to him with a strange strong delight which marked it out from all the other evenings he had ever known.

Claudia herself awoke to enthusiasm and plans. From her window she saw food for both in a stretch of fair wooded country lying in a morning haze, with the silver arrow of the river flashing through the green. Her thoughts immediately busied themselves with planting, thinning, and grouping, and Harry Hilton's cheerful whistle to his dog under her window only suggested a hope that he would carry out his proposal of getting her a free hand at Thornbury. She resolved to talk to her cousins that day, and explain fully how she was desirous of making their house her head-quarters, holding herself absolutely at liberty to go and come as her calling required. She expected argument and disapproval, since it was unlikely that three sisters living on the outskirts of a provincial town, should have sufficiently caught the spirit of the age, and the new development of woman, not to detect strong objections in any career which offered independence to a girl of her age. But against argument she felt herself duly fortified, even thirsted for it as a young soldier might thirst for the first brush of battle. She was the least little bit in the world therefore disappointed that her announcement of the evening before had not shocked them into stiffer protest, but she told herself that they had not been alone, and that the struggle would be in private.

"You see, Philippa," she found herself saying with eagerness, when after several vain attempts to capture her cousin, she had run her to the earth in the small morning-room which was called the den, "I should be simply wretched if I had nothing to do, and in these days everything is over-stocked. I dare say you feel that it would be more useful to undertake something in the philanthropic line, but I haven't the least inclination for that sort of thing--I should hate to go about collecting rents from poor creatures who can't pay, and oughtn't to be made to; or dragging girls into clubs. I couldn't, indeed!"

"My dear," said Philippa, "please don't set me up as an imaginary nine-pin in order to knock me down flat. I assure you you will discover I haven't nearly so many opinions as you have, for as I grow older, I find a privilege of age consists in putting away pre-conceived notions, and possessing one's self of a receptive mind."

Claudia glanced quickly at her.

"Most people," murmured the girl, "rather object."

"We shan't try you in that way. So long as we ourselves are not improved upon by force, nobody here will interfere with your improving other people. And really I thought Harry's a handsome offer last night."

"Oh," said Claudia, carelessly, "it didn't come from conviction. He thought I was a girl and not bad-looking, and that I didn't mean actual business."

Miss Cartwright smiled behind a newspaper; but Claudia's tone was quite frank and free from self-consciousness.