“You do have the oddest ways,” said Nora, perched at the foot of her
cousin’s bed; “why do you stay in bed to breakfast?”
“Because I always have—and because it’s the proper and reasonable thing
to do,” said Constance defiantly. “Your English custom of coming down
at half past eight to eat poached eggs and bacon is perfectly
detestable.”
She waved her teaspoon in Nora’s face, and Nora reflected—though her
sunburnt countenance was still severe—that Connie was never so
attractive as when, in the freshest of white dressing-gowns, propped
among the lace and silk of her ridiculous pillows and bedspreads, she
was toying with the coffee and roll which Annette brought her at eight
o’clock, as she had been accustomed to bring it since Connie was a
child. Mrs. Hooper had clearly expressed her disapproval of such
habits, but neither Annette nor Connie had paid any attention. Annette
had long since come to an understanding with the servants, and it was
she who descended at half past seven, made the coffee herself, and
brought up with it the nearest thing to the morning rolls of the
Palazzo Barberini which Oxford could provide—with a copy of _The Times_
specially ordered for Lady Constance. The household itself subsisted on
a copy of the _Morning Post_, religiously reserved to Mrs. Hooper after
Dr. Hooper had glanced through it—he, of course, saw _The Times_ at the
Union. But Connie regarded a newspaper at breakfast as a necessary part
of life.
After her coffee, accordingly, she read _The Times_, and smoked a
cigarette, proceedings which were a daily source of wonder to Nora and
reprobation in the minds of Mrs. Hooper and Alice. Then she generally
wrote her letters, and was downstairs after all by half past ten,
dressed and ready for the day. Mrs. Hooper declared to Dr. Ewen that
she would be ashamed for any of their Oxford friends to know that a
niece of his kept such hours, and that it was a shocking example for
the servants. But the maids took it with smiles, and were always ready
to run up and down stairs for Lady Connie; while as for Oxford, the
invitations which had descended upon the Hooper family, even during the
few days since Connie’s arrival, had given Aunt Ellen some feverish
pleasure, but perhaps more annoyance. So far from Ewen’s “position”
being of any advantage to Connie, it was Connie who seemed likely to
bring the Hoopers into circles of Oxford society where they had till
now possessed but the slenderest footing. An invitation to dinner from
the Provost of Winton and Mrs. Manson, to “Dr. and Mrs. Hooper, Miss
Hooper and Lady Constance Bledlow,” to meet an archbishop, had fairly
taken Mrs. Hooper’s breath away. But she declaimed to Alice none the
less in private on the innate snobbishness of people.
Nora, however, wished to understand.
“I can’t imagine why you should read _The Times_,” she said with
emphasis, as Connie pushed her tray away, and looked for her
cigarettes. “What have you to do with politics?”
“Why, _The Times_ is all about people I know!” said Connie, opening
amused eyes. “Look there!” And she pointed to the newspaper lying open
amid the general litter of her morning’s post, and to a paragraph among
the foreign telegrams describing the excitement in Rome over a change
of Ministry. “Fall of the Italian Cabinet. The King sends for the
Marchese Bardinelli.”
“And there’s a letter from Elisa Bardinelli, telling me all about it!”
She tossed some closely-written sheets to Nora, who took them up
doubtfully.
“It is in Italian!” she said, as though she resented the fact.
“Well, of course! Did you think it would be in Russian? You really
ought to learn Italian, Nora. Shall I teach you?”
“Well—it might be useful for my Literature,” said Nora slowly. “There
are all those fellows Chaucer borrowed from—and then Shakespeare. I
wouldn’t mind.”
“Thank you!” said Connie, laughing. “And then look at the French news.
That’s thrilling! Sir Wilfrid’s going to throw up the Embassy and
retire. I stayed with them a night in Paris on my way through—and they
never breathed. But I thought something was up. Sir Wilfrid’s a queer
temper. I expect he’s had a row with the Foreign Office. They were
years in Rome, and of course we knew them awfully well. Mamma adored
her!”
And leaning back with her hands behind her head, Connie’s sparkling
look subsided for a moment into a dreamy sweetness.
“I suppose you think Oxford a duck-pond after all that!” said Nora
pugnaciously.
Constance laughed.
“Why, it’s new. It’s experience. It’s all to the good.”
“Oh, you needn’t suppose I am apologising for Oxford!” cried Nora. “I
think, of course, it’s the most interesting place in the world. It’s
ideas that matter, and ideas come from the universities!” And the
child-student of seventeen drew herself up proudly, as though she bore
the honour of all _academie_ on her sturdy shoulders.
Constance went into a fit of laughter.
“And I think they come from the people who do things, and not only from
the people who read and write about them when they’re done. But
goodness—what does it matter where they come from? Go away, Nora, and
let me dress!”
“There are several things I want to know,” said Nora deliberately, not
budging. “Where did you get to know Mr. Falloden?”
The colour ran up inconveniently in Connie’s cheeks.
“I told you,” she said impatiently. “No!—I suppose you weren’t there. I
met him on the Riviera. He came out for the Christmas holidays. He was
in the villa next to us, and we saw him every day.”
“How you must have hated him!” said Nora, with energy, her hands round
her knees, her dark brows frowning.
Constance laughed again, but rather angrily.
“Why should I hate him, please? He’s extraordinarily clever—”
“Yes, but such a snob!” said Nora, setting her white teeth. Connie
sprang up in bed.
“Nora, really, the way you talk of other people’s friends. You should
learn—indeed, you should—not to say rude and provoking things!”
“Why should it provoke you? I’m certain you don’t care for him—you
can’t!” cried Nora. “He’s the most hectoring, overbearing creature! The
way he took possession of you the other day at the boats! Of course he
didn’t care, if he made everybody talk about you!”
Constance turned a little white.
“Why should anybody talk?” she said coldly. “But really, Nora, I must
turn you out. I shall ring for Annette.” She raised herself in bed.
“No, no!” Nora caught her hand as it stretched out towards the bell.
“Oh, Connie, you shall not fall in love with Mr. Falloden! I should go
mad if you did.”
“You are mad already,” said Constance, half laughing, half furious. “I
tell you Mr. Falloden is a friend of mine—as other people are. He is
very good company, and I won’t have him abused—for nothing. His manners
are abominable. I have told him so dozens of times. All the same, he
amuses me—and interests me—and you are not to talk about him, Nora, if
you can’t talk civilly.”
And looking rather formidably great-ladyish, Constance threw severe
glances at her cousin.
Nora stood up, first on one foot, then on the other. She was bursting
with things to say, and could not find words to say them in. At last
she broke out—
“I’m not abusing him for nothing! If you only knew the horrid, rude
things—mean things too—at dances and parties—he does to some of the
girls I know here; just because they’re not swells and not rich, and he
doesn’t care what they think about him. That’s what I call a
snob—judging people by whether they’re rich and important—by whether
it’s worth while to know them. Hateful!”
“You foolish child!” cried Connie. “He’s so rich and important himself,
what can it matter to him? You talk as though he were a hanger-on—as
though he had anything to gain by making up to people. You are absurd!”
“Oh, no—I know he’s not like Herbert Pryce,” said Nora, panting, but
undaunted. “There, that was disgusting of me!—don’t remember that I
ever said that, Connie!—I know Mr. Falloden needn’t be a snob, because
he’s got everything that snobs want—and he’s clever besides. But it is
snobbish all the same to be so proud and stand-off, to like to make
other people feel small and miserable, just that you may feel big.”
“Go away!” said Constance, and taking up one of her pillows, she threw
it neatly at Nora, who dodged it with equal skill. Nora retreated to
the other side of the door, then quickly put her head through again.
“Connie!—don’t!”
“Go away!” repeated Connie, smiling, but determined.
Nora looked at her appealingly, then shut her lips firmly, turned and
went away. Connie spent a few minutes in meditation. She resented the
kind of quasi-guardianship that this clever _backfisch_ assumed towards
her, though she knew it meant that Nora had fallen in love with her.
But it was inconvenient to be so fallen in love with—if it was to mean
interference with her private affairs.
“As if I couldn’t protect myself!”
The mere thought of Douglas Falloden was agitating enough, without the
consciousness that a pair of hostile eyes, so close to her, were on the
watch.
She sprang up, and went through her dressing, thinking all the time.
“What do I really feel about him? I am going to ride with him on
Monday—without telling anybody; I vowed I would never put myself in his
power again. And I am deliberately doing it. I am in my guardian’s
house, and I am treating Uncle Ewen vilely.”
And why?—why these lapses from good manners and good feeling? Was she
after all in love with him? If he asked her to marry him again, as he
had asked her to marry him before, would she now say yes, instead of
no? Not at all! She was further—she declared—from saying yes now, than
she had been under his first vehement attack. And yet she was quite
determined to ride with him. The thought of their rides in the radiant
Christmas sunshine at Cannes came back upon her with a rush. They had
been one continuous excitement, simply because it was Falloden who rode
beside her—Falloden, who after their merry dismounted lunch under the
pines, had swung her to her saddle again—her little foot in his strong
hand—so easily and powerfully. It was Falloden who, when she and two or
three others of the party found themselves by mistake on a dangerous
bridle-path, on the very edge of a steep ravine in the Esterels, and
her horse had become suddenly restive, had thrown himself off his own
mount, and passing between her horse and the precipice, where any
sudden movement of the frightened beast would have sent him to his
death, had seized the bridle and led her into safety. And yet all the
time, she had disliked him almost as much as she had been drawn to him.
None of the many signs of his autocratic and imperious temper had
escaped her, and the pride in her had clashed against the pride in him.
To flirt with him was one thing. The cloud of grief and illness, which
had fallen so heavily on her youth, was just lifting under the natural
influences of time at the moment when she and Falloden first came
across each other. It was a moment for her of strong reaction, of a
welling-up and welling-back of life, after a kind of suspension. The
strong young, fellow, with his good looks, his masterful ways, and his
ability—in spite of the barely disguised audacity which seemed
inseparable from the homage it pleased him to pay to women—had made a
deep and thrilling impression upon her youth and sex.
And yet she had never hesitated when he had asked her to marry him.
Ride with him—laugh with him—quarrel with him, yes!—marry him, no!
Something very deep in her recoiled. She refused him, and then had lain
awake most of the night thinking of her mother and feeling ecstatically
sure, while the tears came raining, that the dear ghost approved that
part of the business at least, if no other.
And how could there be any compunction about it? Douglas Falloden, with
his egotism, his pride in himself, his family, his wits, his boundless
confidence in his own brilliant future, was surely fair game. Such men
do not break their hearts for love. She had refused his request that he
might write to her without a qualm; and mostly because she imagined so
vividly what would have been his look of triumph had she granted it.
Then she had spent the rest of the winter and early spring in thinking
about him. And now she was going to do this reckless thing, out of
sheer wilfulness, sheer thirst for adventure. She had always been a
spoilt child, brought up with boundless indulgence, and accustomed to
all the excitements of life. It looked as though Douglas Falloden were
to be her excitement in Oxford. Girls like the two Miss Mansons might
take possession of him in public, so long as she commanded those
undiscovered rides and talks which revealed the real man. At the same
time, he should never be able to feel secure that she would do his
bidding, or keep appointments. As soon as Lady Laura’s civil note
arrived, she was determined to refuse it. He had counted on her coming;
therefore she would not go. Her first move had been a deliberate check;
her second should be a concession. In any case she would keep the upper
hand.
Nevertheless there was an inner voice which mocked, through all the
patting and curling and rolling applied by Annette’s skilled hands to
her mistress’s brown hair. Had not Falloden himself arranged this whole
adventure ahead?—found her a horse and groom, while she was still in
the stage of thinking about them, and settled the place of rendezvous?
She could not deny it; but her obstinate confidence in her own powers
and will was not thereby in the least affected. She was going because
it amused her to go; not because he prescribed it.
The following day, Saturday, witnessed an unexpected stream of callers
on Mrs. Hooper. She was supposed to be at home on Saturday afternoons
to undergraduates; but the undergraduates who came were few and shy.
They called out of respect for the Reader, whose lectures they attended
and admired. But they seldom came a second time; for although Alice had
her following of young men, it was more amusing to meet her anywhere
else than under the eyes of her small, peevish mother, who seemed to be
able to talk of nothing else than ailments and tabloids, and whether
the Bath or the Buxton waters were the better for her own kind of
rheumatism.
On this afternoon, however, the Hoopers’ little drawing-room and the
lawn outside were crowded with folk. Alexander Sorell arrived early,
and found Constance in a white dress strolling up and down the lawn
under a scarlet parasol and surrounded by a group of men with whom she
had made acquaintance on the Christ Church barge. She received him with
a pleasure, an effusion, which made a modest man blush.
“This is nice of you!—I wondered whether you’d come!”
“I thought you’d seen too much of me this week already!” he said,
smiling—“but I wanted to arrange with you when I might take you to call
on the Master of Beaumont. To-morrow?”
“I shall be plucked, you’ll see! You’ll be ashamed of me.”
“I’ll take my chance. To-morrow then, at four o’clock before chapel?”
Constance nodded—“Delighted!”—and was then torn from him by her uncle,
who had fresh comers to introduce to her. But Sorell was quite content
to watch her from a distance, or to sit talking in a corner with Nora,
whom he regarded as a child,—“a jolly, clever, little thing!”—while his
mind was full of Constance.
The mere sight of her—the slim willowy creature, with her distinguished
head and her beautiful eyes—revived in him the memory of some of his
happiest and most sacred hours. It was her mother who had produced upon
his own early maturity one of those critical impressions, for good or
evil, which men so sensitive and finely strung owe to women. The
tenderness, the sympathy, the womanly insight of Ella Risborough had
drawn him out of one of those fits of bitter despondency which are so
apt to beset the scholar just emerging, strained and temporarily
injured, from the first contests of life.
He had done brilliantly at Oxford—more than brilliantly—and he had paid
for overwork by a long break-down. After getting his fellowship he had
been ordered abroad for rest and travel. There was nobody to help him,
nobody to think for him. His father and mother were dead; and of near
relations he had only a brother, established in business at Liverpool,
with whom he had little or nothing in common. At Rome he had fallen in
with the Risboroughs, and had wandered with them during a whole spring
through enchanted land of Sicily, where it gradually became bearable
again to think of the too-many things he knew, and to apply them to his
own pleasure and that of his companions. Ella Risborough was then
forty-two, seventeen years older than himself, and her only daughter
was a child of sixteen. He had loved them all—father, mother, and
child—with the adoring gratitude of one physically and morally
orphaned, to whom a new home and family has been temporarily given. For
Ella and her husband had taken a warm affection to the refined and
modest fellow, and could not do enough for him. His fellowship, and
some small savings, gave him all the money he wanted, but he was
starved of everything else that Man’s kindred can generally
provide—sympathy, and understanding without words, and the little
gaieties and kindnesses of every day. These the Risboroughs offered him
without stint, and rejoiced to see him taking hold on life again under
the sunshine they made for him. After six months he was quite restored
to health, and he went back to Oxford to devote himself to his college
work.
Twice afterwards he had gone to Rome on short visits to see the
Risboroughs. Then had come the crash of Lady Risborough’s sudden death
followed by that of her husband. The bitterness of Sorell’s grief was
increased by the fact that he saw no means, at that time, of continuing
his friendship with their orphan child. Indeed his fastidious and
scrupulous temperament forbade him any claim of the kind. He shrank
from being misunderstood. Constance, in the hands of Colonel King and
his wife, was well cared for, and the shrewd and rather suspicious
soldier would certainly have looked askance on the devotion of a man
around thirty, without fortune or family, to a creature so attractive
and so desirable as Constance Bledlow.
So he had held aloof, and as Constance resentfully remembered she had
received but two letters from him since her father’s death. Ewen
Hooper, with whom he had an academic rather than a social acquaintance,
had kept him generally informed about her, and he knew that she was
expected in Oxford. But again he did not mean to put himself forward,
or to remind her unnecessarily of his friendship with her parents. At
the Vice-Chancellor’s party, indeed, an old habit of looking after her
had seized him again, and he had not been able to resist it. But it was
her long disappearance with Falloden, her heightened colour, and
preoccupied manner when they parted at the college gate, together with
the incident at the boat-races of which he had been a witness, which
had suddenly developed a new and fighting resolve in him. If there was
one type in Oxford he feared and detested more than another it was the
Falloden type. To him, a Hellene in temper and soul—if to be a Hellene
means gentleness, reasonableness, lucidity, the absence of all selfish
pretensions—men like Falloden were the true barbarians of the day, and
the more able the more barbarian.
Thus, against his own will and foresight, he was on the way to become a
frequenter of the Hoopers’ house. He had called on Wednesday, taken the
whole party to the boats on Thursday, and given them supper afterwards
in his rooms. They had all met again at the boats on Friday, and here
he was on Saturday, that he might make plans with Constance for Sunday
and for several other days ahead. He was well aware that things could
not go on at that pace; but he was determined to grasp the situation,
and gauge the girl’s character, if he could.
[Illustration: The tea-party at Mrs. Hooper’s]
He saw plainly that her presence at the Hoopers was going to transform
the household in various unexpected ways. On this Saturday afternoon
Mrs. Hooper’s stock of teacups entirely ran out; so did her garden
chairs. Mrs. Manson called—and Lord Meyrick, under the wing of a young
fellow of All Souls, smooth-faced and slim, one of the “mighty men” of
the day, just taking wing for the bar and Parliament. Falloden, he
understood, had put in an appearance earlier in the afternoon; Herbert
Pryce, and Bobbie Vernon of Magdalen, a Blue of the first eminence,
skirmished round and round the newcomer, taking possession of her when
they could. Mrs. Hooper, under the influence of so much social success,
showed a red and flustered countenance, and her lace cap went awry.
Alice helped her mother in the distribution of tea, but was curiously
silent and self-effaced. It was dismally true that the men who usually
paid attention to her were now entirely occupied with Constance. Bobbie
Vernon, who was artistic, was holding an ardent though intermittent
discussion with Constance on the merits of old pictures and new. Pryce
occasionally took part in it, but only, as Sorell soon perceived, for
the sake of diverting a few of Connie’s looks and gestures, a sally or
a smile, now and then to himself.
In the middle of it she turned abruptly towards Sorell. Her eyes
beckoned, and he carried her off to the further end of the garden,
where they were momentarily alone. There she fell upon him.
“Why did you never write to me all last winter?”
He could not help a slight flush.
“You had so many friends without me,” he said, stammeringly, at last.
“One hasn’t so many old friends.” The voice was reproachful. “I thought
you must be offended with me.”
“How could I be!”
“And you call me Lady Constance,” she went on indignantly. “When did
you ever do such a thing in Rome, or when we were travelling?”
His look betrayed his feeling.
“Ah, but you were a little girl then, and now—”
“Now”—she said impatiently—“I am just Constance Bledlow, as I was
then—to you. But I don’t give away my Christian name to everybody. I
don’t like, for instance, being forced to give it to Aunt Ellen!”
And she threw a half-laughing, half-imperious glance towards Mrs.
Hooper in the distance.
Sorell smiled.
“I hope you’re going to be happy here!” he said earnestly.
“I shall be happy enough—if I don’t quarrel with Aunt Ellen!”
“Don’t quarrel with anybody! Call me in, before you do. And do make
friends with your uncle. He is delightful.”
“Yes, but far too busy for the likes of me. Oh, I dare say I shall keep
out of mischief.”
But he thought he detected in her tone a restlessness, a forlornness,
which pained him.
“Why not take up some study—some occupation? Learn something—go in for
Honours!” he said, laughing.
She laughed too, but with a very decided shake of the head. Then she
turned upon him suddenly.
“But there is something I should like to learn! Papa began to teach me.
I should like to learn Greek.”
“Bravo!” he said, with a throb of pleasure. “And take me for a
teacher!”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Entirely.” They strolled on, arranging times and seasons, Constance
throwing herself into the scheme with a joyous and childlike zest.
“Mind you—I shall make you work!” he said firmly.
“Rather! May Nora come too?—if she wishes? I like Nora!”
“Does that mean—”
“Only that Alice doesn’t like me!” she said with a frank smile. “But I
agree—my uncle is a dear.”
“And I hear you are going to ride?”
“Yes. Mr. Falloden has found me a horse and groom.”
“When did you come to know Mr. Falloden? I don’t remember anybody of
that name at the Barberini.”
She explained carelessly.
“You are going out alone?”
“In general. Sometimes, no doubt, I shall find a friend. I must
ride!”—she shook her shoulders impatiently—“else I shall suffocate in
this place. It’s beautiful—Oxford!—but I don’t understand it—it’s not
my friend yet. You remember that mare of mine in Rome—Angelica! I want
a good gallop—God and the grass!”
She laughed and stretched her long and slender arms, clasping her hands
above her head. He realised in her, with a disagreeable surprise, the
note that was so unlike her mother—the note of recklessness, of
vehement will. It was really ill-luck that some one else than Douglas
Falloden could not have been found to look after her riding.
“I suppose you will be ‘doing’ the Eights all next week?” said Herbert
Pryce to the eldest Miss Hooper.
Alice coldly replied that she supposed it was necessary to take Connie
to all the festivities.
“What!—such a _blasé_ young woman! She seems to have been everywhere
and seen everything already. She will be able to give you and Miss Nora
all sorts of hints,” said the mathematical tutor, with a touch of that
patronage which was rarely absent from his manner to Alice Hooper. He
was well aware of her interest in him, and flattered by it; but, to do
him justice, he had not gone out of his way to encourage it. She had
been all very well, with her pretty little French face, before this
striking creature, her cousin, appeared on the scene. And now of course
she was jealous—that was inevitable. But it was well girls should learn
to measure themselves against others—should find their proper place.
All the same, he was quite fond of her, the small kittenish thing. An
old friend of his, and of the Hoopers, had once described her as a girl
“with a real talent for flirtation and an engaging penury of mind.”
Pryce thought the description good. She could be really engaging
sometimes, when she was happy and amused, and properly dressed. But
ever since the appearance of Constance Bledlow she seemed to have
suffered eclipse; to have grown plain and dull.
He stayed talking to her, however, a little while, seeing that
Constance Bledlow had gone indoors; and then he departed. Alice ran
upstairs, locked her door, and stood looking at herself in the glass.
She hated her dress, her hat, the way she had done her hair. The image
of Constance in her white silk hat with its drooping feathers, her
delicately embroidered dress and the necklace on her shapely throat,
tormented her. She was sick with envy—and with fear. For months she had
clung to the belief that Herbert Pryce would ask her to marry him. And
now all expectation of the magic words was beginning to fade from her
mind. In one short week, as it seemed to her, she had been utterly
eclipsed and thrown aside. Bob Vernon too, whose fancy for her, as
shown in various winter dances, had made her immensely proud, he being
then in that momentary limelight which flashes on the Blue, as he
passes over the Oxford scene—Vernon had scarcely had a word for her.
She never knew that he cared about pictures! And there was
Connie—knowing everything about pictures!—able to talk about
everything! As she had listened to Connie’s talk, she had felt fairly
bewildered. Of course it was no credit to Connie to be able to rattle
off all those names and things. It was because she had lived in Italy.
And no doubt a great deal of it was showing off.
All the same, poor miserable Alice felt a bitter envy of Connie’s
opportunities.