“Three more invitations!—since lunch,” said Mrs. Hooper, as she came
into the schoolroom, where her elder daughter sat by the window
renovating a garden hat.
Her mother dropped the envelopes on a small table beside Alice, and
sitting down on the other side of it, she waited for her daughter’s
comments.
Alice threw down her work, and hastily opened the notes. She flushed an
angry pink as she read them.
“I might as well not exist!” she said shortly, as she pushed them away
again.
For two of the notes requested the pleasure of Dr. and Mrs. Hooper’s
and Lady Constance Bledlow’s company at dinner, and the third, from a
very great lady, begged “dear Mrs. Hooper” to bring Lady Constance to a
small party in Wolsey College Gardens, to meet the Chancellor of the
University, a famous Tory peer, who was coming down to a public,
meeting. In none of the three was there any mention of the elder Miss
Hooper.
Mrs. Hooper looked worried. It was to her credit that her maternal
feeling, which was her only passion, was more irritated by this sudden
stream of invitations than her vanity was tickled.
What was there indeed to tickle anybody’s vanity in the situation? It
was all Constance—Constance—Constance! Mrs. Hooper was sometimes sick
of the very name “Lady Constance Bledlow,” It had begun to get on her
nerves. The only defence against any sort of “superiority,” as some one
has said, is to love it. But Mrs. Hooper did not love her husband’s
niece. She was often inclined to wish, as she caught sight of Alice’s
pinched face, that the household had never seen her. And yet without
Connie’s three hundred a year, where would the household be!
Mrs. Hooper was painfully, one might have said, guiltily aware of that
side of the business. She was an incompetent, muddling woman, who had
never learnt to practise the simple and dignified thrift so common in
the academic households of the University. For nowhere, really, was
plain living gayer or more attractive than in the new Oxford of this
date. The young mothers who wheeled their own perambulators in the
Parks, who bathed and dressed and taught their children, whose
house-books showed a spirited and inventive economy of which they were
inordinately proud, who made their own gowns of Liberty stuff in scorn
of the fashion, were at the same time excellent hostesses, keeping open
house on Sundays for their husbands’ undergraduate pupils, and
gallantly entertaining their own friends and equals at small flowery
dinner-parties in Morris-papered rooms, where the food and wine
mattered little, and good talk and happy comradeship were the real
fare. Meanwhile the same young mothers were going to lectures on the
Angevins, or reading Goethe or Dante in the evenings—a few friends
together, gathering at each other’s houses; then were discussing
politics and social reform; and generally doing their
best—unconsciously—to silence the croakers and misogynists who
maintained that when all the girl babies in the perambulators were
grown up, and Oxford was flooded with womenkind like all other towns,
Oxford would have gone to “Death and damnation.”
But Mrs. Hooper, poor lady, was not of this young and wholesome
generation. She was the daughter of a small Midland manufacturer, who
had rushed into sudden wealth, for a few years, had spent it all in
riotous living, over a period just sufficient to spoil his children,
and had then died leaving them penniless. Ewen Hooper had come across
her when he was lecturing at a northern university, immediately after
his own appointment at Oxford. He had passed a harassed and penurious
youth, was pining for a home. In ten days he was engaged to this girl
whom he met at the house of a Manchester professor. She took but little
wooing, was indeed so enchanted to be wooed that Ewen Hooper soon
imagined himself in love with her; and all was done.
Nor indeed had it answered so badly for him—for a time. She had given
him children, and a home, though an uncomfortable one. Greek
scholarship and Greek beauty were the real idols of his heart and
imagination. They did not fail him. But his wife did him one
conspicuous ill turn. From the first days of their marriage, she ran
her husband badly into debt; and things had got slowly worse with the
years. Mrs. Hooper was the most wasteful of managers; servants came and
went interminably; and while money oozed away, there was neither
comfort nor luxury to show for it. As the girls grew up, they learnt to
dread the sound of the front doorbell, which so often meant an angry
tradesman; and Ewen Hooper, now that he was turning grey, lived amid a
perpetual series of mean annoyances with which he was never meant to
cope, and which he was now beginning to hand over, helplessly, to his
younger daughter Nora, the one member of the family who showed some
power to deal with them.
The situation had been almost acute, when Lord Risborough died. But
there was a legacy in his will for Ewen Hooper which had given a
breathing space; and Connie had readily consented to pay a year’s
maintenance in advance. Yet still the drawer of bills, on which Nora
kept anxious watch, was painfully full; and of late the perennial
difficulty of ready money had reappeared.
Mrs. Hooper declared she must have a new dress, if these invitations
were to be accepted.
“I don’t want anything extravagant,” she said fretfully. “But really
it’s too bad of Nora to say that I could have my old blue one done up.
She never seems to care how her mother looks. If all this fuss is going
to be made about Constance and I am to take her out, I must be decent!”
The small underhung mouth shut obstinately. These musts of her mother’s
and Alice’s were Nora’s terror. They always meant a new bill.
Alice said—“Of course! And especially when Constance dresses so
extravagantly!” she added bitterly. “One can’t look like her
scullery-maid!”
Mrs. Hooper sighed. She glanced round her to see that the door was
shut.
“That silly child, Nora, had quite a scene with Connie this morning,
because Connie offered to give her that pretty white dress in Brandon’s
window. She told me Connie had insulted her. Such nonsense! Why
shouldn’t Connie give her a dress—and you too? She has more money than
she knows how to spend.”
Alice did not reply. She, too, wanted new dresses; she could hardly
endure the grace and costliness of Connie’s garments, when she compared
them with her own; but there was something in her sad little soul also
that would not let her be beholden to Connie. Not without a struggle,
anyway.
“I don’t want Connie to give me things either,” she said sulkily.
“She’s never been the least nice to me. She makes a pet of Nora, and
the rest of us might be doormats for all the notice she takes of us.”
“Well, I don’t know—she’s quite civil,” said Mrs. Hooper reflectively.
She added, after a minute—“It’s extraordinary how the servants will do
anything for her!”
“Why, of course, she tips them!” cried Alice, indignantly. Mrs. Hooper
shrugged her shoulders. It was quite indifferent to her whether Connie
tipped them or not, so long as she gained by the result. And there was
no denying the fact that the house had never gone so smoothly as since
Connie’s arrival. At the same time her conscience reminded her that
there was probably something else than “tipping” in the matter. For
instance—both Constance and Annette were now intimately acquainted with
each of Mrs. Hooper’s three maids, and all their family histories;
whereas Mrs. Hooper always found it impossible to remember their
surnames. A few days before this date, Susan the housemaid had received
a telegram telling her of the sudden death of a brother in South
Africa. In Mrs. Hooper’s view it was providential that the death had
occurred in South Africa, as there could be no inconvenient question of
going to the funeral. But Connie had pleaded that the girl might go
home for two days to see her mother; Annette had done the housework
during her absence; and both maid and mistress had since been eagerly
interested in the girl’s mourning, which had been largely supplied out
of Connie’s wardrobe. Naturally the opinion of the kitchen was that
“her ladyship is sweet!”
Alice, however, had not found any sweetness in Connie. Was it because
Mr. Herbert Pryce seemed to take a mysterious pleasure in pointing out
her, charms to Alice? Alice supposed he meant it well. There was a
didactic element in him which was always leading him to try and improve
other people. But it filled her with a silent fury.
“Is everybody coming to the picnic to-morrow?” asked Mrs. Hooper
presently.
“Everybody.” Alice pointed indifferently to a pile of notes lying on
her desk.
“You asked Connie if we should invite Mr. Falloden?”
“Of course I did, mother. He is away till next week.”
“I wonder if she cares for him?” said Mrs. Hooper vaguely.
Alice laughed.
“If she does, she consoles herself pretty well, when he’s not here.”
“You mean with Mr. Sorell?”
Alice nodded.
“Such a ridiculous pretence, those Greek lessons!” she said, her small
face flaming. “Nora says, after they have done a few lines, Constance
begins to talk, and Mr. Sorell throws himself back in his chair, and
they chatter about the places they’ve seen together, and the people
they remember, till there’s no more time left. Nora says it’s a farce.”
“I say, who’s taking my name in vain?” said Nora, who had just opened
the schoolroom door and overheard the last sentence.
“Come in and shut the door,” said Alice, “we were talking about your
Greek lessons.”
“Jolly fun they are!” said Nora, balancing herself, as usual, on the
window-sill. “We don’t do much Greek, but that don’t matter! What are
these notes, mother?”
Mrs. Hooper handed them over. Alice threw a mocking look at her sister.
“Who said that Oxford didn’t care about titles? When did any of those
people ever take any notice of us?”
“It isn’t titles—it’s Connie!” said Nora stoutly. “It’s because she’s
handsome and clever—and yet she isn’t conceited; she’s always
interested in other people. And she’s an orphan—and people were very
fond of her mother. And she talks scrumptiously about Italy. And she’s
new—and there’s a bit of romance in it—and—well, there it is!”
And Nora pulled off a twig from the banksia rose outside, and began to
chew it energetically with her firm white teeth, by way of assisting
her thoughts.
“Isn’t conceited!” repeated Alice with contempt. “Connie is as proud as
Lucifer.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t. But she isn’t vain.”
Alice laughed.
“Can’t you see the difference?” said Nora impatiently. “‘Proud’ means
‘Don’t be such a fool as to imagine that I’m thinking of you!’—‘Vain’
means ‘I wonder dreadfully what you’re thinking of me?’”
“Well then, Connie is both proud and vain,” said Alice with decision.
“I don’t mean she doesn’t know she’s rich, and good-looking and run
after,” said Nora, beginning to flounder. “But half the time, anyway,
she forgets it.”
“Except when she is talking to men,” said Alice vindictively, to which
Mrs. Hooper added with her little obstinate air—
“Any girl who likes admiration as much as Connie does must be vain. Of
course, I don’t blame her.”
“Likes admiration? Hm,” said Nora, still chewing at her twig. “Yes, I
suppose she does. But she’s good at snubbing, too.” And she threw a
glance at her sister. She was thinking of a small evening party the
night before, at which, it seemed to her, Connie had several times
snubbed Herbert Pryce rather severely. Alice said nothing. She knew
what Nora meant. But that Connie should despise what she had filched
away only made things worse.
Mrs. Hooper sighed again—loudly.
“The point is—is she carrying on with that man, Mr. Falloden?”
Nora looked up indignantly. Her mother’s vulgarity tormented her.
“How can she be ‘carrying on,’ mother? He won’t be in Oxford again till
his schools.”
“Oh, you never know,” said Mrs. Hooper vaguely. “Well, I must go and
answer these notes.”
She went away. Nora descended gloomily from the window-sill.
“Mother wants a new dress. If we don’t all look out, we shall be in
Queer Street again.”
“You’re always so dismal,” said Alice impatiently. “Things are a great
deal better than they were.”
“Well, goodness knows what would have happened to us if they weren’t!”
cried Nora. “Besides they’re not nearly so much better as you think.
And the only reason why they’re better is that Uncle Risborough left us
some money, and Connie’s come to live here. And you and mother do
nothing but say horrid things about her, behind her back!”
She looked at her sister with accusing eyes. But Alice tossed her head,
and declared she wasn’t going to be lectured by her younger sister.
“You yourself told mother this morning that Connie had insulted you.”
“Yes, and I was a beast to say so!” cried the girl “She meant it
awfully well. Only I thought she thought I had been trying to sponge on
her; because I said something about having no dresses for the Commem.
balls, even if I wanted to ‘come out’ then—which I don’t!—and she
straightaway offered to give me that dress in Brandon’s. And I was
cross, and behaved like a fiend. And afterwards Connie said she was
awfully sorry if she’d hurt my feelings.”
And suddenly Nora’s brown eyes filled with tears.
“Well, you get on with her,” said Alice, with fresh impatience—“and I
don’t. That’s all there is to it. Now do go away and let me get on with
the hat.”
That night, after Connie had finished her toilet for the night and was
safely in bed, with a new novel of Fogazzaro before her and a reading
lamp beside her, she suddenly put out her arms, and took Annette’s
apple-red countenance—as the maid stooped over her to straighten the
bed-clothes—between her two small hands.
“Netta, I’ve had a real bad day!”
“And why, please, my lady?” said Annette rather severely, as she
released herself.
“First I had a quarrel with Nora—then some boring people came to
lunch—then I had a tiresome ride—and now Aunt Ellen has been pointing
out to me that it’s all my fault she has to get a new dress, because
people will ask me to dinner-parties. I don’t want to go to
dinner-parties!”
And Connie fell back on her pillows, with a great stretch, her black
brows drawn over eyes that still smiled beneath them.
“It’s very ungrateful of you to talk of a tiresome ride—when that
gentleman took such pains to get you a nice horse,” said Annette, still
tidying and folding as she moved about the room. Constance watched her,
her eyes shining absently as the thoughts passed through them. At last
she said:
“Do come here, Annette!”
Annette came, rather unwillingly. She sat down on the end of
Constance’s bed, and took out some knitting from her pocket. She
foresaw a conversation in which she would need her wits about her, and
some mechanical employment steadied the mind.
“Annette, you know,” said Constance slowly, “I’ve got to be married
some time.”
“I’ve heard you say that before.” Annette began to count some stitches.
“Oh, it’s all very well,” said Constance, with amusement—“you think you
know all about me, but you don’t. You don’t know, for instance, that I
went to ride over a week ago with a young man, without telling you, or
Aunt Ellen, or Uncle Ewen, or anybody!” She waited to see the effect of
her announcement. Annette did appear rather startled.
“I suppose you met him on the road?”
“I didn’t! I made an appointment with him. We went to a big wood, some
miles out of Oxford, belonging to some people he knows, where there are
beautiful grass rides. He has the key of the gates—we sent away the
groom—and I was an hour alone with him—quite! There!”
There was a defiant accent on the last word. Annette shook her head.
She had been fifteen years in the Risboroughs’ service, and remembered
Connie when she was almost a baby.
“Whatever were you so silly for? You know your mamma wouldn’t have let
you.”
“Well, I’ve not got my mamma,” said Connie slowly. “And I’m not going
to be managed by Aunt Ellen, Netta. I intend to run my own show.”
“Who is it?” said Annette, knitting busily.
Connie laughed.
“Do you think I’m going to tell you?”
“You needn’t. I’ve got eyes in my head. It’s that gentleman you met in
France.”
Connie swung herself round and laid violent hands on Annette’s
knitting.
“You shan’t knit. Look at me! You can’t say he’s not good-looking?”
“Which he knows—a deal sight more than is good for him,” said Annette,
setting her mouth a little grimly.
“Everybody knows when they’re good-looking, you dear silly! Of course,
he’s most suitable—dreadfully so. And I can’t make up my mind whether I
care for him a bit!”
She folded her arms in front of her, her little chin fell forward on
her white wrappings, and she stared rather sombrely into vacancy.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Annette after a pause—adopting a tone in
which she might have discussed a new hat.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Connie dreamily.
She was thinking of Falloden’s sudden departure from Oxford, after his
own proposal of two more rides. His note, “crying off” till after the
schools, had seemed to her not quite as regretful as it might have
been; his epistolary style lacked charm. And it was impertinent of him
to suggest Lord Meyrick as a substitute. She had given the Lathom Woods
a wide berth ever since her first adventure there; and she hoped that
Lord Meyrick had spent some disappointed hours in those mossy rides.
All the same it looked as though she were going to see a good deal of
Douglas Falloden. She raised her eyes suddenly.
“Annette, I didn’t tell you I’d heard from two of my aunts to-day!”
“You did!” Annette dropped her knitting of her own accord this time,
and sat open-mouthed.
“Two long letters. Funny, isn’t it? Well, Aunt Langmoor wants me to go
to her directly—in time anyway for a ball at Tamworth House—horribly
smart—Prince and Princess coming—everybody begging for tickets. She’s
actually got an invitation for me—I suppose by asking for it!—rather
calm of her. She calls me ‘Dearest Connie.’ And I never saw her! But
papa used to be fond of her, and she was never rude to mamma. What
shall I say?”
“Well, I think you’d much better go,” said Annette decidedly. “You’ve
never worn that dress you got at Nice, and it’ll be a dish-cloth if you
keep it much longer. The way we have to crush things in this place!”
And she looked angrily even at the capacious new wardrobe which took up
one whole side of the room.
“All right!” laughed Constance. “Then I’ll accept Aunt Langmoor,
because you can’t find any room for my best frock. It’s a toss up. That
settles it. Well, but now for Aunt Marcia—”
She drew a letter from the pages of her French book, and opened it.
“My dear Constance”—so it ran—“I should like to make your acquaintance,
and I hear that you are at Oxford with your uncle. I would come and see
you but that I never leave home. Oxford, too, depresses me dreadfully.
Why should people learn such a lot of useless things? We are being
ruined by all this education. However, what I meant to say was that
Winifred and I would be glad to see you here if you care to come.
Winifred, by the way, is quite aware that she behaved like a fool
twenty-two years ago. But as you weren’t born then, we suggest it
shouldn’t matter. We have all done foolish things. I, for instance,
invented a dress—a kind of bloomer thing—only it wasn’t a bloomer. I
took a shop for it in Bond Street, and it nearly ruined me. But I
muddled through—that’s our English way, isn’t it?—and somehow things
come right. Now, I am very political, and Winifred’s very churchy—it
doesn’t really matter what you take up. So do come. You can bring your
maid and have a sitting-room. Nobody would interfere with you. But, of
course, we should introduce you to some nice people. If you are a
sensible girl—and I expect you are, for your father was a very clever
man—you must know that you ought to marry as soon as possible. There
aren’t many young men about here. What becomes of all the young men in
England, I’m sure I don’t know. But there are a few—and quite possible.
There are the Kenbarrows, about four miles off—a large family—_nouveaux
riches_—the father made buttons, or something of the kind. But the
children are all most presentable, and enormously rich. And, of course,
there are the Fallodens—quite near—Mr. and Lady Laura, Douglas, the
eldest son, a girl of seventeen, and two children. You’ll probably see
Douglas at Oxford. Oh, I believe Sir Arthur Falloden, _père_, told me
the other day you had already met him somewhere. Winifred and I don’t
like Douglas. But that’s neither here nor there. He’s a magnificent
creature, who can’t be bothered with old ladies. He’ll no doubt make
himself agreeable to you—_cela va sans dire_. I don’t altogether like
what I hear sometimes about the Fallodens. Of course Sir Arthur’s very
rich, but they say he’s been speculating enormously, and that he’s been
losing a good deal of money lately. However, I don’t suppose it
matters. Their place, Flood Castle, is really splendid—old to begin
with, and done up! They have copied the Americans and given every room
a bathroom. Absurd extravagance! And think of the plumbing! It was that
kind of thing gave the Prince of Wales typhoid. I hate drains!
“Well, anyway, do come and see us. Sophia Langmoor tells me she has
written to you, and if you go to her, you might come on here
afterwards. Winifred who has just read this letter says it will ‘put
you off.’ I don’t see why it should. I certainly don’t want it to. I’m
downright, I know, but I’m not hypocritical. The world’s just run on
white lies nowadays—and I can’t stand it. I don’t tell any—if I can
help.
“Oh, and there is Penfold Rectory not very far off—and a very nice man
there, though too ‘broad’ for Winifred. He tells me he’s going to have
some people staying with him—a Mr. Sorell, and a young musician with a
Polish name—I can’t remember it. Mr. Sorell’s going to coach the young
man, or something. They’re to be paying guests, for a month at least.
Mr. Powell was Mr. Sorell’s college tutor—and Mr. Powell’s dreadfully
poor—so I’m glad. No wife, mercifully!
“Anyway, you see, there are plenty of people about. Do come.
“I am, dear Constance,
Your affectionate aunt,
MARCIA RISBOROUGH.”
“Now what on earth am I going to do about that?” said Constance,
tossing the letter over to Annette.
“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Hooper are going, cook says, to the Isle of Wight,
and Miss Alice is going with them,” said Annette, “and Miss Nora’s
going to join them after a bit in Scotland.”
“I know all that,” said Constance impatiently. “The question is—do you
see me sitting in lodgings at Ryde with Aunt Ellen for five or six
weeks, doing a little fancy-work, and walking out with Aunt Ellen and
Alice on the pier?”
Annette laughed discreetly over her knitting, but said nothing.
“No,” said Connie decidedly. “That can’t be done. I shall have to
sample Aunt Marcia. I must speak to Uncle Ewen to-morrow. Now put the
light out, please, Annette; I’m going to sleep.”
But it was some time before she went to sleep. The night was hot and
thunderous, and her windows were wide open. Drifting in came the
ever-recurring bells of Oxford, from the boom of the Christ Church
“Tom,” far away, through every variety of nearer tone. Connie lay and
sleepily listened to them. To her they were always voices, half alive,
half human, to which the dreaming mind put words that varied with the
mood of the dreamer.
Presently, she breathed a soft good night into the
darkness—“Mummy—mummy darling! good night!” It was generally her last
waking thought. But suddenly another—which brought with it a rush of
excitement—interposed between her and sleep.
“Tuesday,” she murmured—“Mr. Sorell says the schools will be over by
Tuesday. I wonder!—”
And again the bluebell carpet seemed to be all round her—the light and
fragrance and colour of the wood. And the man on the black horse beside
her was bending towards her, all his harsh strength subdued, for the
moment, to the one end of pleasing her. She saw the smile in his dark
eyes; and the touch of sarcastic _brusquerie_ in the smile, that could
rouse her own fighting spirit, as the touch of her whip roused the
brown mare.
“Am I really so late?” said Connie, in distress, running downstairs the
following afternoon to find the family and various guests waiting for
her in the hall.
“Well, I hope we shan’t miss everybody,” said Alice sharply. “How late
are we?”
She turned to Herbert Pryce.
The young don smiled and evaded the question.
“Nearly half an hour!” said Alice. “Of course they’ll think we’re not
coming.”
“They” were another section of the party who were taking a couple of
boats round from the lower river, and were to meet the walkers coming
across the Parks, at the Cherwell.
“Dreadfully sorry!” said Connie, who had opened her eyes, however, as
though Alice’s tone astonished her. “But my watch has gone quite mad.”
“It does it every afternoon!” murmured Alice to a girl friend of Nora’s
who was going with the party. It was an aside, but plainly heard by
Constance—whose cheeks flushed.
She turned appealingly to Herbert Pryce.
“Please carry my waterproof, while I button my gloves.” Pryce was
enchanted. As the party left the house, he and Constance walked on
together, ahead of the others. She put on her most charming manners,
and the young man was more than flattered.
What was it, he asked himself, complacently, that gave her such a
delicate distinction? Her grey dress, and soft grey hat, were, he
supposed, perfect of their kind. But Oxford in the summer term was full
of pretty dresses. No, it must be her ease, her sureness of herself
that banished any awkward self-consciousness both in herself and her
companions, and allowed a man to do himself justice.
He forgot her recent snubs and went off at score about his own affairs,
his college, his prospects of winning a famous mathematical prize given
by the Berlin Academy, his own experience of German Universities, and
the shortcomings of Oxford. On these last he became scornfully voluble.
He was inclined to think he should soon cut it, and go in for public
life. These university towns were really very narrowing!
“Certainly,” said Constance amiably. Was he thinking of Parliament?
Well, no, not at once. But journalism was always open to a man with
brains, and through journalism one got into the House, when the chance
came along. The House of Commons was dangerously in want of new blood.
“I am certain I could speak,” he said ardently. “I have made several
attempts here, and I may say they have always come off.”
Constance threw him a shy glance. She was thinking of a dictum of Uncle
Ewen’s which he had delivered to her on a walk some days previously.
“What is it makes the mathematicians such fools? They never seem to
grow up. They tell us they’re splendid fellows, and of course we must
believe them. But who’s to know?”
Meanwhile, Alice and Sorell followed them at some distance behind,
while Mrs. Hooper and three or four other members of the party brought
up the rear. Sorell’s look was a little clouded. He had heard what
passed in the hall, and he found himself glancing uncomfortably from
the girl beside him to the pair forging so gaily ahead. Alice Hooper’s
expression seemed to him that of something weak and tortured. All
through the winter, in the small world of Oxford, the flirtation
between Pryce of Beaumont and Ewen Hooper’s eldest girl had been a
conspicuous thing, even for those who had little or no personal
knowledge of the Hoopers. It was noticed with amusement that Pryce had
at last found some one to whom he might talk as long and egotistically
as he pleased about himself and his career; and kindly mothers had said
to each other that it would be a comfort to the Hoopers to have one of
the daughters settled, though in a modest way.
“It is pleasant to see that your cousin enjoys Oxford so much,” said
Sorell, as they neared the museum, and saw Pryce and Connie
disappearing through the gate of the park.
“Yes. She seems to like it,” said Alice coldly.
Sorell began to talk of his first acquaintance with the Risboroughs,
and of Connie’s mother. There was no hint in what he said of his own
passionate affection for his dead friends. He was not a profaner of
shrines. But what he said brought out the vastness of Connie’s loss in
the death of her mother; and he repeated something of what he had heard
from others of her utter physical and mental collapse after the double
tragedy of the year before.
“Of course you’ll know more about it than I do. But one of the English
doctors in Rome, who is a friend of mine, told me that they thought at
one time they couldn’t pull her through. She seemed to have nothing
else to live for.”
“Oh, I don’t think it was as bad as that,” said Alice drily. “Anyway,
she’s quite well and strong now.”
“She’s found a home again. That’s a great comfort to all her mother’s
old friends.”
Sorell smiled upon his companion; the sensitive kindness in his own
nature appealing to the natural pity in hers.
But Alice made no reply; and he dropped the subject.
They walked across the park, under a wide summer sky, towards the
winding river, and the low blue hills beyond it. At the Cherwell
boat-house they found the two boats, with four or five men, and Nora,
as usual, taking charge of everything, at least till Herbert Pryce
should appear.
Connie was just stepping into the foremost boat, assisted by Herbert
Pryce, who was in his shirt-sleeves, while Lord Meyrick and another
Marmion man were already in the boat.
“Sorell, will you stroke the other boat?” said Pryce, “and Miss Nora,
will you have a cushion in the bows? Now I think we’re made up. No—we
want another lady. And running his eyes over those still standing on
the bank, he called a plump little woman, the wife of a Llandaff tutor,
who had been walking with Mrs. Hooper.
“Mrs. Maddison, will you come with us? I think that will about trim
us.”
Mrs. Maddison obeyed him with alacrity, and the first boat pushed off.
Mrs. Hooper, Alice, Sorell, two St. Cyprian undergraduates and Nora’s
girl friend, Miss Watson, followed in the second.
Then, while the June evening broadened and declined, the party wound in
and out of the curves of the Cherwell. The silver river, brimming from
a recent flood, lay sleepily like a gorged serpent between the hay
meadows on either side. Flowers of the edge, meadow-sweet, ragged-robin
and yellow flags, dipped into the water; willows spread their thin
green over the embattled white and blue of the sky; here and there a
rat plunged or a bird fled shrieking; bushes of wild roses flung out
their branches, and everywhere the heat and the odours of a rich open
land proclaimed the fulness of the midland summer.
Connie made the life of the leading boat. Something had roused her, and
she began to reveal some of the “parlour-tricks,” with which she had
amused the Palazzo Barberini in her Roman days. A question from Pryce
stirred her into quoting some of the folk-songs of the Campagna, some
comic, some tragic, fitting an action to them so lively and true that
even those of her hearers who could not follow the dialect sat
entranced. Then some one said—“But they ought to be sung!” And
suddenly, though rather shyly, she broke into a popular _canzone_ of
the Garibaldian time, describing the day of Villa Gloria; the march of
the morning, the wild hopes, the fanfaronade; and in the evening, a
girl hiding a wounded lover and weeping both for him and “Italia”
undone.
The sweet low sounds floated along the river.
“Delicious!” said Sorell, holding his oar suspended to listen. He
remembered the song perfectly. He had heard her sing it in many
places—Rome, Naples, Syracuse. It was a great favourite with her
mother, for whom the national upheaval of Italy—the heroic struggle of
the Risorgimento—had been a life-long passion.
“Why did Connie never tell us she could sing!” said Mrs. Hooper in her
thin peevish voice. “Girls really shouldn’t hide their
accomplishments.”
Sorell’s oar dropped into the water with a splash.
At Marston Ferry, there was a general disembarking, a ramble along the
river bank and tea under a group of elms beside a broad reach of the
stream. Sorell noticed, that in spite of the regrouping of the two boat
loads, as they mingled in the walk, Herbert Pryce never left Connie’s
side. And it seemed to him, and to others, that she was determined to
keep him there. He must gather yellow flag and pink willow-herb for
her, must hook a water-lily within reach of the bank with her parasol,
must explain to her about English farms, and landlords, and why the
labourers were discontented—why there were no peasant owners, as in
Italy—and so on, and so on. Round-faced Mrs. Maddison, who had never
seen the Hoopers’ niece before, watched her with amusement, deciding
that, distinguished and refined as the girl was, she was bent on
admiration, and not too critical as to whence it came. The
good-natured, curly-haired Meyrick, who was discontentedly reduced to
helping Alice and Nora with the tea, and had never been so bored with a
river picnic before, consoled himself by storing up rich materials for
a “chaff” of Douglas when they next met—perhaps that evening, after
hall? Alice meanwhile laughed and talked with the freshman whom Meyrick
had brought with him from Marmion. Her silence and pallor had gone; she
showed a kind of determined vivacity. Sorell, with his strange gift of
sympathy, found himself admiring her “pluck.”
When the party returned to the boat-house in the evening, Sorell, whose
boat had arrived first at the landing-stage, helped Constance to land.
Pryce, much against his will, was annexed by Nora to help her return
the boats to the Isis; the undergraduates who had brought them being
due at various engagements in Oxford. Sorell carried Constance off. He
thought that he had never seen her look more radiant. She was flushed
with success and praise, and the gold of the river sunset glorified her
as she walked. Behind them, dim figures in the twilight, followed Mrs.
Hooper and Alice, with the two other ladies, their cavaliers having
deserted them.
“I am so glad you like Mr. Pryce,” said Sorell suddenly.
Constance looked at him in astonishment.
“But why? I don’t like him very much!”
“Really? I was glad because I suppose—doesn’t everybody suppose?”—he
looked at her smiling—“that there’ll be some news in that quarter
presently?”
Constance was silent a moment. At last, she said—
“You mean—he’ll propose to Alice?”
“Isn’t that what’s expected?” He too had reddened. He was a shy man,
and he was suddenly conscious that he had done a marked thing.
Another silence. Then Constance faced him, her face now more than
flushed—aflame.
“I see. You think I have been behaving badly?”
He stammered.
“I didn’t know perhaps—whether—you have been such a little while
here—whether you had come across the Oxford gossip. I wish
sometimes—you know I’m an old friend of your uncle—that it could be
settled. Little Miss Alice has begun to look very worn.”
Constance walked on, her eyes on the ground. He could see the soft lace
on her breast fluttering. What foolish quixotry—what jealousy for an
ideal—had made him run this hideous risk of offending her? He held his
breath till she should look at him again. When she did, the beauty of
the look abashed him.
“Thank you!” she said quietly. “Thank you very much. Alice annoyed
me—she doesn’t like me, you see—and I took a mean revenge. Well, now
you understand—how I miss mamma!”
She held out her hand to him impulsively, and he enclosed it warmly in
his; asking her, rather incoherently, to forgive his impertinence. Was
it to be Ella Risborough’s legacy to him—this futile yearning to
help—to watch over—her orphaned child?
Much good the legacy would do him, when Connie’s own will was really
engaged! He happened to know that Douglas Falloden was already in
Oxford again, and in a few more days Greats would be over, and the
young man’s energies released. What possible justification had he,
Sorell, for any sort of interference in this quarter? It seemed to him,
indeed, as to many others, that the young man showed every sign of a
selfish and violent character. What then? Are rich and handsome
husbands so plentiful? Have the moralists ever had their way with youth
and sex in their first turbulent hour?