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قراءة كتاب The Career of Claudia
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truth, was not best pleased at the sight. She bit her lip, and rubbed her left ear.
“Now, is she good enough for him, or is she going to make ducks and drakes of the honestest heart in the county? Which, I wonder? And what an old fool I am to suppose that anything I can do will affect either of them! No, my dear Harry, you must manage for yourself, and if Miss Claudia despises you, you will have to put up with it. She is a great deal too narrow-minded at present to fall in love, and, bless her, with all that fine sweeping scorn of grooves, how little she understands what a broad outlook means! Well, well, it’s natural enough, and I am sure the rising generation is delightfully in earnest in views and reforms; only, when it sets to work to reform one’s self, human nature is disposed to be nasty. You will be a wiser woman, Philippa Cartwright, if you step on one side, and accept the position. Is that you, Anne? You have come just in time to assist in an act of abdication.”
“Who is ironic to abdicate?”
“I. From to-day I take a back seat.”
“Claudia again, I suppose?” said her sister, with a laugh. “My dear Philippa, you will not stay there long. Now, I am deeply interested in Claudia.”
“Oh, so am I, and so is Harry. Look under the big beech and see for yourself.” Anne looked, and was silent.
“Well?”
“Well,”—slowly—“I suppose the old story is too strong for the new woman.”
“Of course it is—mercifully,” retorted Philippa with impatience, “and, if it comes to that, I say nothing; but my impression is that the new woman by no means shuts out love of admiration, though she calls it by another name, and I don’t want Harry to be its victim.”
“Oh, she will get over that sort of thing. She is very young.”
“There is just one tiresome point in your character, Anne. You can never hear a person found fault with but you must stand up for him or her. Consequence. Sinners like myself can’t rest till we have proved our case. Claudia has come here with the intention of setting us all to rights, and educating us up to her standard; and if you don’t call that conceited—I do.”
“I dare say we were all conceited at her age.”
“No, I wasn’t; nor were you. We should have been put into our proper places quickly enough. However, you have sent my good resolutions to flight with your exasperating charity, for when you arrived I was thinking most piously about our cousin, and had made my mind up to see Harry make a fool of himself, yet say nothing. Now I am all prickles again.”
Anne laughed and said no more.
Chapter Two.
Claudia, sitting under the great beech with Harry Hilton, was becoming interested in her listener, because he showed what she called a recipient mind, meaning that he attended to all she said, and was ready and eager to admit the good effects which were to result to woman from her taking up landscape gardening. How was she to know that his thoughts meanwhile fastened themselves upon the dimple in her cheek, the waving tendrils of her hair, the whiteness of her throat? He would have agreed to almost anything uttered in her young clear voice, for the mere pleasure of hearing her speak, and his own happy and genial nature accepted the charm frankly. She was good, he was sure, and her schemes, whatever they were—and it cannot be said that he quite understood their aim—must be good too. She wanted her fellow-creatures to be raised, and she had her own ideas as to how the rise was to be effected—he thought her adorable for the wish, and more adorable for telling him about it.
“People will believe me mad,” she said. “I am quite used to that. No one is prepared for a woman who has money enough to let her sit still and fold her hands, choosing to plunge into a regular money-making occupation. Half my friends suppose it to be just a fad, and I can’t tell you how many letters I get asking me to stay, and assuring me that nobody will object to my amusing myself in their gardens. Amusing myself! Why, I make it a strictly professional matter. If I do anything—even here, for my cousins—it must be for payment. I couldn’t oppose the laws of political economy.”
“No, no,” said Harry, doing his best to struggle after her, “of course not. I think it a capital idea. When a woman has no actual home of her own, naturally she wants occupation.”
But this was not right, and Claudia frowned.
“She always wants, or ought to have, her occupations. Do you imagine that if I married, for instance, I should be content to merge all my interests in ordering dinner, or talking about servants?”
He looked at her puzzled.
“I should continue to work,” said Claudia, calmly.
“But,” burst from honest Harry, “you don’t mean—? No man who could work would stand his wife having to grind!”
“Why not?” she demanded. “If the woman has learnt her business, why on earth shouldn’t she grind, as you call it, as well as her husband?”
“Why? Well, simply, he would be a cad if he allowed it, unless it was absolutely necessary.”
Claudia sat up straight, and turned her bright face upon him.
“Ah, these are the behind-hand ideas which we have to live down. Don’t you understand that we hold there ought not to be the social differences which have hitherto existed? We maintain that idleness is a sin, and that we ought all to be working men and women. Of course while different degrees of culture and education handicap some of us, the work cannot be alike, but by decrees that will right itself—By degrees? I believe it is coming by leaps and bounds. I suppose, now,” she added, “you think there is a difference between me and—say a charwoman?”
“By Jove, yes!” blurted out Harry, with a laugh.
“Well, I expect if we could project ourselves fifty years or so, you wouldn’t find much. That difference is something we have to be ashamed of, and to rectify. We must give the people our opportunities and the chance of reaching a higher level. I dare say that horrifies you?”
“Oh, not at all,” he said, struggling between admiration and a sense of the ludicrous. “I am only a little puzzled.”
“Yes?” she said graciously; for to puzzle her hearers and then enlighten them, was a fascinating process. “Yes?”
“I was wondering who would do the washing?”
“They, of course. They, just the same, only with higher standards of perfection and better methods. It will have reached the dignity of a fine art by that time.”
All his admiration could not keep back an explosive laugh.
“You mustn’t be angry,” he said, “I think it’s splendid—as you put it.”
“Oh, I’m not angry,” returned Claudia, frankly. “One can’t expect to make people look at things from one’s own point of view in a minute. You’ve all of you a thousand prejudices to get rid of to begin with. The great point is if you wish to learn.”
“If that’s all, I want to—awfully.”
“Really?”
“I should think so!”
“Well, then, I don’t mind telling you.” She was looking gravely at him, her