“My dear Ellen, I beg you will not interfere any more with Connie’s
riding. I have given leave, and that really must settle it. She tells
me that her father always allowed her to ride alone—with a groom—in
London and the Campagna; she will of course pay all the expenses of it
out of her own income, and I see no object whatever in thwarting her.
She is sure to find our life dull enough anyway, after the life she has
been living.”
“I don’t know why you should call Oxford dull, Ewen!” said Mrs. Hooper
resentfully. “I consider the society here much better than anything
Connie was likely to see on the Riviera—much more respectable anyway.
Well, of course, everybody will call her fast—but that’s your affair. I
can see already she won’t be easily restrained. She’s got an uncommonly
strong will of her own.”
“Well, don’t try and restrain her, dear, too much,” laughed her
husband. “After all she’s twenty, she’ll be twenty-one directly. She
may not be more than a twelvemonth with us. She need not be, as far as
my functions are concerned. Let’s make friends with her and make her
happy.”
“I don’t want my girls talked about, thank you, Ewen!” His wife gave an
angry dig to the word “my.” “Everybody says what a nice ladylike girl
Alice is. But Nora often gives me a deal of trouble—and if she takes to
imitating Connie, and wanting to go about without a chaperon, I don’t
know what I shall do. My dear Ewen, do you know what I discovered last
night?”
Mrs. Hooper rose and stood over her husband impressively.
“Well—what?”
“You remember Connie went to bed early. Well, when I came up, and
passed her door, I noticed something—somebody in that room was—smoking!
I could not be mistaken. And this morning I questioned the housemaid.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said, ‘her ladyship smoked two cigarettes last night,
and Mrs. Tinkler’—that’s the maid—‘says she always smokes two before
she goes to bed.’ Then I spoke to Tinkler—whose manner to me, I
consider, is not at all what it should be—and she said that Connie
smoked three cigarettes a day always—that Lady Risborough smoked—that
all the ladies in Rome smoked—that Connie began it before her mother
died—and her mother didn’t mind—”
“Well then, my dear, you needn’t mind,” exclaimed Dr. Hooper.
“I always thought Ella Risborough went to pieces—rather—in that
dreadful foreign life,” said Mrs. Hooper firmly. “Everybody does—you
can’t help it.”
“I don’t know what you mean by going ‘to pieces,’” said Ewen Hooper
warmly. “I only know that when they came here ten years ago, I thought
her one of the most attractive—one of the most charming women I had
ever seen.”
From where he stood, on the hearth-rug of his study, smoking an
after-breakfast pipe, he looked down—frowning—upon his wife, and Mrs.
Hooper felt that she had perhaps gone too far. Never had she forgotten,
never had she ceased to resent her own sense of inferiority and
disadvantage, beside her brilliant sister-in-law on the occasion of
that long past visit. She could still see Ella Risborough at the All
Souls’ luncheon given to the newly made D.C.Ls, sitting on the right of
the Vice-Chancellor, and holding a kind of court afterwards in the
library; a hat that was little more than a wreath of forget-me-nots on
her dark hair, and a long, lace cloak draping the still young and
graceful figure. She remembered vividly the soft, responsive eyes and
smile, and the court of male worshippers about them. Professors, tutors
young and old, undergraduates and heads of houses, had crowded round
the mother and the long-legged, distinguished-looking child, who clung
so closely to her side; and if only she could have given Oxford a few
more days, the whole place would have been at Ella Risborough’s feet.
“So intelligent too!” said the enthusiastic—“so learned even!” A member
of the Roman “Accademia dei Lincei,” with only one other woman to keep
her company in that august band; and yet so modest, so unpretending, so
full of laughter, and life, and sex! Mrs. Hooper, who generally found
herself at these official luncheons in a place which her small egotism
resented, had watched her sister-in-law from a distance, envying her
dress, her title, her wealth, bitterly angry that Ewen’s sister should
have a place in the world that Ewen’s wife could never hope to touch,
and irrevocably deciding that Ella Risborough was “fast” and gave
herself airs. Nor did the afternoon visit, when the Risboroughs, with
great difficulty, had made time for the family call on the Hoopers,
supply any more agreeable memories. Ella Risborough had been so
rapturously glad to see her brother, and in spite of a real effort to
be friendly had had so little attention to spare for his wife! It was
true she had made much of the Hooper children, and had brought them all
presents from Italy. But Mrs. Hooper had chosen to think the laughing
sympathy and evident desire to please “affectation,” or patronage, and
had been vexed in her silent corner to see how little her own two girls
could hold their own beside Constance.
As for Lord Risborough, he had frankly found it difficult to remember
Mrs. Hooper’s identity, while on the other hand he fell at once into
keen discussion of some recent finds in the Greek islands with Ewen
Hooper, to whom in the course of half an hour it was evident that he
took a warm liking. He put up his eye-glass to look at the Hooper
children; he said vaguely, “I hope that some day you and Mrs. Hooper
will descend upon us in Rome;” and then he hurried his wife away with
the audible remark—“We really must get to Blenheim, Ellie, in good
time. You promised the Duchess—”
So ill-bred—so snobbish—to talk of your great acquaintances in public!
And as for Lady Risborough’s answer—“I don’t care twopence about the
Duchess, Hugh! and I haven’t seen Ewen for six years,”—it had been
merely humbug, for she had obediently followed her husband, all the
same.
Recollections of this kind went trickling through Mrs. Hooper’s mind,
roused by Ewen’s angry defence of his sister. It was all very well, but
now the long-legged child had grown up, and was going to put her—Ellen
Hooper’s—daughters in the shade, to make them feel their inferiority,
just as the mother had done with herself. Of course the money was
welcome. Constance was to contribute three hundred a year, which was a
substantial addition to an income which, when all supplemental
earnings—exams, journalism, lectures—were counted, rarely reached seven
hundred. But they would be “led into expenses”—the maid was evidently a
most exacting woman; and meanwhile, Alice, who was just out, and was
really quite a pretty girl, would be entirely put in the background by
this young woman with her forward manner, and her title, and the way
she had as though the world belonged to her. Mrs. Hooper felt no
kinship with her whatever. She was Ewen’s blood—not hers; and the
mother’s jealous nature was all up in arms for her own brood—especially
for Alice. Nora could look after herself, and invariably did. Besides
Nora was so tiresome! She was always ready to give the family case
away—to give everything away, preposterously. And, apropos, Mrs. Hooper
expressed her annoyance with some silly notions Nora had just expressed
to her.
“I do hope, Ewen, you won’t humour and spoil Constance too much! Nora
says now she’s dissatisfied with her room and wants to buy some
furniture. Well, let her, I say. She has plenty of money, and we
haven’t. We have given her a great deal more than we give our own
daughters—”
“She pays us, my dear!”
Mrs. Hooper straightened her thin shoulders.
“Well, and you give her the advantage of your name and your reputation
here. It is not as though you were a young don, a nobody. You’ve made
your position. Everybody asks us to all the official things—and Connie,
of course, will be asked, too.”
A smile crept round Dr. Hooper’s weak and pleasant mouth.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Ellen, that Connie will find Oxford society
very amusing after Rome and the Riviera.”
“That will be her misfortune,” said Mrs. Hooper, stoutly. “Anyway, she
will have all the advantages we have. We take her with us, for
instance, to the Vice-Chancellor’s to-night?”
“Do we?” Dr. Hooper groaned. “By the way, can’t you let me off, Ellen?
I’ve got such a heap of work to do.”
“Certainly not! People who shut themselves up never get on, Ewen. I’ve
just finished mending your gown, on purpose. How you tear it as you do,
I can’t think! But I was speaking of Connie. We shall take her, of
course—”
“Have you asked her?”
“I told her we were all going—and to meet Lord Glaramara. She didn’t
say anything.”
Dr. Hooper laughed.
“You’ll find her, I expect, a very independent young woman—”
But at that moment his daughter Nora, after a hurried and perfunctory
knock, opened the study door vehemently, and put in a flushed face.
“Father, I want to speak to you!”
“Come in, my dear child. But I can’t spare more than five minutes.”
And the Reader glanced despairingly at a clock, the hands of which were
pointing to half past ten a.m. How it was that, after an eight o’clock
breakfast, it always took so long for a man to settle himself to his
work he really could not explain. Not that his conscience did not
sometimes suggest the answer, pointing to a certain slackness and
softness in himself—the primal shrinking from work, the primal instinct
to sit and dream—that had every day to be met and conquered afresh,
before the student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing
from his desk with all his brains alert. Anyway, the Reader, when there
was no college or university engagement to pin him down, would stand
often—“spilling the morning in recreation”; in other words, gossiping
with his wife and children, or loitering over the newspapers, till the
inner monitor turned upon him. Then he would work furiously for hours;
and the work when done was good. For there would be in it a kind of
passion, a warmth born of the very effort and friction of the will
which had been necessary to get it done at all.
Nora, however, had not come in to gossip. She was in a white heat.
“Father!—we ought not to let Connie furnish her own rooms!”
“But, my dear, who thinks of her doing any such thing? What do you
mean?” And Dr. Hooper took his pipe out of his mouth, and stood
protesting.
“She’s gone out, she and Annette. They slipped out just now when mother
came in to you; and I’m certain they’ve gone to B’s”—the excited girl
named a well-known Oxford furniture shop—“to buy all sorts of things.”
“Well, after all, it’s my house!” said the Reader, smiling. “Connie
will have to ask my leave first.”
“Oh, she’ll persuade you!” cried Nora, standing before her father with
her hands behind her. “She’ll make us all do what she wants. She’ll be
like a cuckoo in the nest. She’ll be too strong for us.”
Ewen Hooper put out a soothing hand, and patted his youngest daughter
on the shoulder.
“Wait a bit, my dear. And when Connie comes back just ask her to step
in here a moment. And now will you both please be gone—at once?—quick
march!”
And taking his wife and daughter by the shoulders, he turned them both
forcibly out, and sat down to make his final preparations for a lecture
that afternoon on the “feminism” of Euripides.
Meanwhile Connie Bledlow and her maid were walking quickly down the
Broad towards the busy Cornmarket with its shops. It was a brilliant
morning—one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the
air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun. Every
outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright
air. The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of
winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the
yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts. The
figures, even, passing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees
and the buildings. The white in the women’s dresses; the short black
gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the
children’s frocks; the overhanging masses of hawthorn and lilac that
here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through
and over college walls:—everything shimmered and shone in the May
sunlight. The air too was tonic and gay, a rare thing for Oxford; and
Connie, refreshed by sleep, walked with such a buoyant and swinging
step that her stout maid could hardly keep up with her. Many a
passer-by observed her. Men on their way to lecture, with battered caps
and gowns slung round their necks, threw sharp glances at the tall girl
in black, with the small pale face, so delicately alive, and the dark
eyes that laughed—aloof and unabashed—at all they saw.
“What boys they are!” said Constance presently, making a contemptuous
lip. “They ought to be still in the nursery.”
“What—the young men in the caps, my lady?”
“Those are the undergraduates, Annette—the boys who live in the
colleges.”
“They don’t stare like the Italian young gentlemen,” said Annette,
shrugging her shoulders. “Many a time I wanted to box their ears for
the way they looked at you in the street.”
Connie laughed. “I liked it! They were better-looking than these boys.
Annette, do you remember that day two years ago when I took you to that
riding competition—what did they call it?—that gymkhana—in the Villa
Borghese—and we saw all those young officers and their horses? What
glorious fellows they were, most of them! and how they rode!”
Her cheek flushed to the recollection. For a moment the Oxford street
passed out of sight. She saw the grassy slopes, the stone pines, the
white walls, the classic stadium of the Villa Borghese, with the hot
June sun stabbing the open spaces, and the deep shadows under the
ilexes; and in front of the picture, the crowd of jostling horses, with
their riders, bearing the historic names of Rome—Colonnas, Orsinis,
Gaetanis, Odescalchis, and the rest. A young and splendid brood, all
arrogant life and gaiety, as high-mettled as their English and Irish
horses. And in front a tall, long-limbed cavalry officer in the Queen’s
household, bowing to Constance Bledlow, as he comes back, breathless
and radiant from the race he has just won, his hand tight upon the
reins, his athlete’s body swaying to each motion of his horse, his
black eyes laughing into hers. Why, she had imagined herself in love
with him for a whole week!
Then, suddenly, she perceived that in her absence of mind she was
running straight into a trio of undergraduates who were hurriedly
stepping off the path to avoid her. They looked at her, and she at
them. They seemed to her all undersized, plain and sallow. They carried
books, and two wore glasses. “Those are what _he_ used to call
‘smugs’!” she thought contemptuously, her imagination still full of the
laughing Italian youths on their glistening horses. And, she began to
make disparaging remarks about English young men to Annette. If this
intermittent stream of youths represented them, the English _gioventù_
was not much to boast of.
Next a furniture shop appeared, with wide windows, and a tempting array
of wares, and in they went. Constance had soon bought a wardrobe and a
cheval-glass for herself, an armchair, a carpet, and a smaller wardrobe
for Annette, and seeing a few trifles, like a French screen, a small
sofa, and an inlaid writing-table in her path, she threw them in. Then
it occurred to her that Uncle Ewen might have something to say to these
transactions, and she hastily told the shopman not to send the things
to Medburn House till she gave the order.
Out they went, this time into the crowded Cornmarket, where there were
no colleges, and where the town that was famous long before the
University began, seemed to be living its own vigorous life,
untrammelled by the men in gowns. Only in seeming, however, for in
truth every single shop in the street depended upon the University.
They walked on into the town, looking into various colleges, sitting in
Broad Walk, and loitering over shops, till one o’clock struck from
Oxford’s many towers.
“Heavens!” said Constance—“and lunch is at 1.15!”
They turned and walked rapidly along the “Corn,” which was once more
full of men hurrying back to their own colleges from the lecture rooms
of Balliol and St. John’s. Now, it seemed to Constance that the men
they passed were of a finer race. She noticed plenty of tall fellows,
with broad shoulders, and the look of keen-bitten health.
“Look at that pair coming!” she said to Annette. “That’s better!”
The next moment, she stopped, confused, eyes wide, lips parted. For the
taller of the two had taken off his cap, and stood towering and smiling
in her path. A young man, of about six foot three, magnificently made,
thin with the leanness of an athlete in training,—health, power,
self-confidence, breathing from his joyous looks and movements—was
surveying her. His lifted cap showed a fine head covered with thick
brown curls. The face was long, yet not narrow; the cheek-bones rather
high, the chin conspicuous. The eyes—very dark and heavily lidded—were
set forward under strongly marked eyebrows; and both they, the straight
nose with its close nostrils, and the red mouth, seemed to be drawn in
firm yet subtle strokes on the sunburnt skin, as certain Dutch and
Italian painters define the features of their sitters in a containing
outline as delicate as it is unfaltering. The aspect of this striking
person was that of a young king of men, careless, audacious,
good-humoured; and Constance Bledlow’s expression, as she held out her
hand to him, betrayed, much against her will, that she was not
indifferent to the sight of him.
“Well met, indeed!” said the young man, the gaiety in his look, a
gaiety full of meaning, measuring itself against the momentary
confusion in hers. “I have been hoping to hear of you—for a long
time!—Lady Constance. Are you with the—the Hoopers—is it?”
“I am staying with my uncle and aunt. I only arrived yesterday.” The
girl’s manner had become, in a few seconds, little less than repellent.
“Well, Oxford’s lively. You’ll find lots going on. The Eights begin the
day after to-morrow, and I’ve got my people coming up. I hope you’ll
let Mrs. Hooper bring you to tea to meet them? Oh, by the way, do you
know Meyrick? I think you must have met him.” He turned to his
companion, a fair-haired giant, evidently his junior. “Lord
Meyrick—Lady Constance Bledlow. Will you come, Lady Connie?”
“I don’t know what my aunt’s engagements are,” said Constance stiffly.
The trio had withdrawn into the shade of a wide doorway belonging to an
old Oxford inn. Annette was looking at the windows of the milliner’s
shop next door.
“My mother shall do everything that is polite—everything in the world!
And when may I come to call? You have no faith in my manners, I know!”
laughed the young man. “How you did sit upon me at Cannes!” And again
his brilliant eyes, fixed upon her, seemed to be saying all sorts of
unspoken things.
“How has he been behaving lately?” said Constance drily, turning to
Lord Meyrick, who stood grinning.
“Just as usual! He’s generally mad. Don’t depend on him for anything.
But I hope you’ll let me do anything I can for you! I should be only
too happy.”
The girl perceived the eager admiration with which the young fellow was
regarding her, and her face relaxed.
“Thank you very much. Of course I know all about Mr. Falloden! At
Cannes, we made a league to keep him in order.”
Falloden protested vehemently that he had been a persecuted victim at
Cannes; the butt of Lady Connie and all her friends.
Constance, however, cut the speech short by a careless nod and
good-bye, beckoned to Annette and was moving away, when he placed
himself before her.
“But I hope we shall meet this very night—shan’t we?—at the
Vice-Chancellor’s party?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, but of course you will be there! The Hoopers are quite sure to
bring you. It’s at St. Hubert’s. Some old swell is coming down. The
gardens are terribly romantic—and there’ll be a moon. One can get away
from all the stuffy people. Do come!”
He gave her a daring look.
“Good-bye,” said Constance again, with a slight decided gesture, which
made him move out of her way.
In a few moments, she and her maid were lost to sight on the crowded
pavement.
Falloden threw back his head and laughed, as he and Lord Meyrick
pursued the opposite direction. But he said nothing. Meyrick, his
junior by two years, who was now his most intimate friend in the
Varsity, ventured at last on the remark—
“Very good-looking! But she was certainly not very civil to you,
Duggy!”
Falloden flushed hotly.
“You think she dislikes me? I’ll bet you anything you please she’ll be
at the party to-night.”
Constance and her maid hurried home along the Broad. The girl perceived
little or nothing on the way; but her face was crossed by a multitude
of expressions, which meant a very active brain. Perhaps sarcasm or
scorn prevailed, yet mingled sometimes with distress or perplexity.
The sight of the low gabled front of Medburn. House recalled her
thoughts. She remembered her purchases and Nora’s disapproving eyes. It
would be better to go and beard her uncle at once. But just as she
approached the house, she became aware of a slenderly built man in
flannels coming out of the gates of St. Cyprian’s, the college of which
the gate and outer court stood next door to the Hoopers.
He saw her, stopped with a start of pleasure, and came eagerly towards
her.
“Lady Constance! Where have you sprung from? Oh, I know—you are with
the Hoopers! Have you been here long?”
They shook hands, and Constance obediently answered the newcomer’s
questions. She seemed indeed to like answering them, and nothing could
have been more courteous and kind than his manner of asking them. He
was clearly a senior man, a don, who, after a strenuous morning of
lecturing, was hurrying—in the festal Eights week—to meet some friends
on the river. His face was one of singular charm, the features regular,
the skin a pale olive, the hair and eyes intensely black. Whereas
Falloden’s features seemed to lie, so to speak, on the surface, the
mouth and eyes scarcely disturbing the general level of the face
mask—no indentation in the chin, and no perceptible hollow tinder the
brow,—this man’s eyes were deeply sunk, and every outline of the
face—cheeks, chin and temples—chiselled and fined away into an almost
classical perfection. The man’s aspect indeed was Greek, and ought only
to have expressed the Greek blitheness, the Greek joy in life. But, in
truth, it was a very modern and complex soul that breathed from both
face and form.
Constance had addressed him as “Mr. Sorell.” He turned to walk with her
to her door, talking eagerly. He was asking her about various friends
in whose company they had last met—apparently at Rome; and he made
various references to “your mother,” which Constance accepted gently,
as though they pleased her.
They paused at the Hoopers’ door.
“But when can I see you?” he asked. “Has Mrs. Hooper a day at home?
Will you come to lunch with me soon? I should like to show you my
rooms. I have some of those nice things we bought at Syracuse—your
father and I—do you remember? And I have a jolly look out over the
garden. When will you come?”
“When you like. But chaperons seem to be necessary!”
“Oh, I can provide one—any number! Some of the wives of our married
fellows are great friends of mine. I should like you to know them. But
wouldn’t Mrs. Hooper bring you?”
“Will you write to her?”
He looked a little confused.
“Of course I know your uncle very well. He and I work together in many
things. May I come and call?”
“Of course you may!” She laughed again, with that wilful sound in the
laugh which he remembered. He wondered how she was going to get on at
the Hoopers. Mrs. Hooper’s idiosyncrasies were very generally known. He
himself had always given both Mrs. Hooper and her eldest daughter a
wide berth in the social gatherings of Oxford. He frankly thought Mrs.
Hooper odious, and had long since classed Miss Alice as a stupid little
thing with a mild talent for flirtation.
Then, as he held out his hand to say good-bye, he suddenly remembered
the Vice-Chancellor’s party.
“By the way, there’s a big function to-night. You’re going, of course?
Oh, yes—make them take you! I hadn’t meant to go—but now I shall—on the
chance!”
He grasped her hand, holding it a little. Then he was gone, and the
Hoopers’ front door swung suddenly wide, opened by some one invisible.
Connie, a little flushed and excited, stepped into the hall, and there
perceived Mrs. Hooper behind the door.
“You are rather late, Constance,” said that lady coldly. “But, of
course, it doesn’t matter. The servants are at their dinner still, so I
opened the door. So you know Mr. Sorell?”
From which Constance perceived that her aunt had observed her approach
to the house, in Mr. Sorell’s company, through the little side window
of the hall. She straightened her shoulders impatiently.
“My father and mother knew him in Rome, Aunt Ellen. He used to come to
our apartment. Is Uncle Ewen in the study? I want to speak to him.”
She knocked and went in. Standing with her back to the door she said
abruptly—
“I hope you won’t mind, Uncle Ewen, but I’ve been buying a few things
we want, for my room and Annette’s. When I go, of course they can be
turned out. But may I tell the shop now to send them in?”
The Reader turned in some embarrassment, his spectacles on his nose.
“My dear girl, anything to make you comfortable! But I wish you had
consulted me. Of course, we would have got anything you really wanted.”
“Oh, that would have been dreadfully unfair!” laughed Constance. “It’s
my fault, you see. I’ve got far too many dresses. One seemed not to be
able to do without them at Cannes.”
“Well, you won’t want so many here,” said Dr. Ewen cheerfully, as he
rose from his table crowded with books. “We’re all pretty simple at
Oxford. We ought to be of course—even our guests. It’s a place of
training.” He dropped a Greek word absently, putting away his papers
the while, and thinking of the subject with which he had just been
busy. Constance opened the door again to make her escape, but the sound
recalled Dr. Ewen’s thoughts.
“My dear—has your aunt asked you? We hope you’ll come with us to the
Vice-Chancellor’s party to-night. I think it would interest you. After
all, Oxford’s not like other places. I think you said last night you
knew some undergraduates—”
“I know Mr. Falloden of Marmion,” said Constance, “and Mr. Sorell.”
The Reader’s countenance broke into smiles.
“Sorell? The dearest fellow in the world! He and I help each other a
good deal, though of course we differ—and fight—sometimes. But that’s
the salt of life. Yes, I remember, your mother used to mention Sorell
in her letters. Well, with those two and ourselves, you’ll have plenty
of starting-points. Ah, luncheon!” For the bell rang, and sent
Constance hurrying upstairs to take off her things.
As she washed her hands, her thoughts were very busy with the incidents
of her morning’s walk. The colours had suddenly freshened in the Oxford
world. No doubt she had expected them to freshen; but hardly so soon. A
tide of life welled up in her—a tide of pleasure. And as she stood a
moment beside the open window of her room before going down, looking at
the old Oxford garden just beneath her, and the stately college front
beyond, Oxford itself began to capture her, touching her magically,
insensibly, as it had touched the countless generations before her. She
was the child of two scholars, and she had been brought up in a society
both learned and cosmopolitan, traversed by all the main currents and
personalities of European politics, but passionate all the same for the
latest find in the Forum, the newest guesses in criticism, for any
fresh light that the present could shed upon the past. And when she
looked back upon the moments of those Roman years which had made the
sharpest mark upon her, she saw three figures stand out—her gracious
and graceful mother; her father, student and aristocrat, so eagerly
occupied with life that he had scarcely found the time to die; and Mr.
Sorell, her mother’s friend, and then her own. Together—all four—they
had gone to visit the Etruscan tombs about Viterbo, they had explored
Norba and Ninfa, and had spent a marvellous month at Syracuse.
“And I have never seen him since papa’s death!—and I have only heard
from him twice. I wonder why?” She pondered it resentfully. And yet
what cause of offence had she? At Cannes, had she thought much about
him? In that scene, so troubled and feverish, compared with the old
Roman days, there had been for her, as she well knew, quite another
dominating figure.
“Just the same!” she thought angrily. “Just as domineering—and
provoking. Boggling about Uncle Ewen’s name, as if it was not worth his
remembering! I shall compel him to be civil to my relations, just
because it will annoy him so much.”
At lunch Constance declared prettily that she would be delighted to go
to the Vice-Chancellor’s party. Nora sat silent through the meal.
After lunch, Connie went to talk to her aunt about the incoming
furniture. Mrs. Hooper made no difficulties at all. The house had long
wanted these additions, only there had been no money to buy them with.
Now Mrs. Hooper felt secretly certain that Constance, when she left
them, would not want to take the things with her, so that she looked on
Connie’s purchases of the morning as her own prospective property.
A furniture van appeared early in the afternoon with the things. Nora
hovered about the hall, severely dumb, while they were being carried
upstairs. Annette gave all the directions.
But when later on Connie was sitting at her new writing-table
contemplating her transformed room with a childish satisfaction, Nora
knocked and came in.
She walked up to Connie, and stood looking down upon her. She was very
red, and her eyes sparkled.
“I want to tell you that I am disappointed in you—dreadfully
disappointed in you!” said the girl fiercely.
“What do you mean!” Constance rose in amazement.
“Why didn’t you insist on my father’s buying these things? You ought to
have insisted. You pay us a large sum, and you had a right. Instead,
you have humiliated us—because you are rich, and we are poor! It was
mean—and purse-proud.”
“How dare you say such things?” cried Connie. “You mustn’t come into my
room at all, if you are going to behave like this. You know very well I
didn’t do it unkindly. It is you who are unkind! But of course it
doesn’t matter. You don’t understand. You are only a child!” Her voice
shook.
“I am not a child!” said Nora indignantly. “And I believe I know a
great deal more about money than you do—because you have never been
poor. I have to keep all the accounts here, and make mother and Alice
pay their debts. Father, of course, is always too busy to think of such
things. Your money is dreadfully useful to us. I wish it wasn’t. But I
wanted to do what was honest—if you had only given me time. Then you
slipped out and did it!”
Constance stared in bewilderment.
“Are you the mistress in this house?” she said.
Nora nodded. Her colour had all faded away, and her breath was coming
quick. “I practically am,” she said stoutly.
“At seventeen?” asked Connie, ironically.
Nora nodded again.
Connie turned away, and walked to the window. She was enraged with
Nora, whose attack upon her seemed quite inexplicable and incredible.
Then, all in a moment, a bitter forlornness overcame her. Nora,
standing by the table, and already pierced with remorse, saw her
cousin’s large eyes fill with tears. Connie sat down with her face
averted. But Nora—trembling all over—perceived that she was crying. The
next moment, the newcomer found Nora kneeling beside her, in the depths
of humiliation and repentance.
“I am a beast!—a horrid beast! I always am. Oh, please, please don’t
cry!”
“You forget”—said Connie, with difficulty—“how I—how I miss my mother!”
And she broke into a fit of weeping. Nora, beside herself with
self-disgust, held her cousin embraced, and tried to comfort her. And
presently, after an agitated half-hour, each girl seemed to herself to
have found a friend. Reserve had broken; they had poured out
confidences to each other; and after the thunder and the shower came
the rainbow of peace.
Before Nora departed, she looked respectfully at the beautiful dress of
white satin, draped with black, which Annette had laid out upon the bed
in readiness for the Vice-Chancellor’s party.
“It will suit you perfectly!” she said, still eager to make up.
Then—eyeing Constance—
“You know, of course, that you are good-looking?”
“I am not hideous—I know that,” said Constance, laughing. “You odd
girl!”
“We have heard often how you were admired in Rome. I wonder—don’t be
offended!”—said Nora, bluntly—“have you ever been in love?”
“Never!” The reply was passionately prompt.
Nora looked thoughtful.
“Perhaps you don’t know whether you were or not. Girls get so
dreadfully mixed up. But I am sure people—men—have been in love with
you.”
“Well, of course!” said Connie, with the same emphatic gaiety.
Nora opened her eyes.
“‘Of course?’ But I know heaps of girls with whom nobody has ever been
in love!”
As soon as she was alone, Connie locked her door, and walked restlessly
up and down her room, till by sheer movement she had tamed a certain
wild spirit within her let loose by Nora’s question. And as she walked,
the grey Oxford walls, the Oxford lilacs and laburnums, vanished from
perception. She was in another scene. Hot sun—gleaming orange-gardens
and blue sea—bare-footed, black-eyed children—and a man beside her, on
whom she has been showering epithets that would have shamed—surely!—any
other human being in the world. Tears of excitement are in her eyes; in
his a laughing triumph mixed with astonishment.
“But, now—” she thinks, drawing herself up, erect and tense, her hands
behind her head; “now, I am ready for him. Let him try such ways
again—if he dare!”