away. She was afraid he might say something to her about yesterday, and
regardless of his expressed wish, nay his command, so far as he could be
said to exercise any authority over her, she had disobeyed him. It had
never so much as entered the realm of possibilities that she could defy
him, and he was hurt. Never until that moment did he realise how much
he counted upon her steady affection. He had always been so sure that
he and Lallie thoroughly understood each other. From the time, when a
little baby in her nurse's arms, she would hold out her own, struggling
to be "taken" by the tall, shy undergraduate; throughout the somewhat
stormy years of her childhood, when he was ever her confidant and her
ally; during the many holidays he spent with Fitz and his family in
Ireland, till the day, two years ago, when he first beheld her in a long
frock with her clouds of dusky hair bound demurely round her head, and
became aware with a little shock of foreboding that Lallie was growing
up--never had he doubted her. And when he had got accustomed to her
more grown-up appearance he speedily discovered that the real and
essential Lallie was unchanged, that she was just as kind and merry and
easily pleased, just as warm hearted and quick tempered, as neat
fingered and capable and unexpected, as when her frocks reached barely
to her knees.
"If I had seen her yesterday I don't believe she would have done this,"
Tony thought to himself; "it's not like her somehow to take the
opportunity of my being away to do what she knows I would have done my
best to prevent had I been at home. And this young Ballinger--he's no
fit guardian for Lallie out hunting. Confound him! I wish he had
stayed in his own shire. Fitz said I was not to discourage him, but I'm
convinced he never meant she was to go out hunting with him. I suppose
he is going to these Chesters, too; probably that's why she's going. I
know nothing about the young man, but, like Charles Lamb, 'I'll d----
him at a venture.' It's too bad of Fitz shelving his parental
responsibilities like this. Suppose anything happened to her
to-day----"
This thought was so disquieting that Tony got up and walked about the
room. Finally he opened and read his letters. Then Miss Foster came
and added to his anxieties by informing him that A. J. Tarrant, a new
boy, had that morning started a bad feverish cold and complained of sore
throat.
"No rash yet," Miss Foster added gloomily, "but of course we've isolated
him."
Altogether Tony wished he could have stayed in Oxford. Yet the day
seemed very long, and when half-past five at last arrived Tony actually
sprinted from the College to B. House.
A great wave of sound met him as he opened the front door. Lallie was
playing the overture to _Tanhäuser_. It certainly was neither meek nor
repentant music. Nevertheless Tony ejaculated "Thank God!"
He opened the drawing-room door very gently. The ruddy firelight glowed
and gloomed in waves of flame and shadow, but the opening of the door
let in a long shaft of light from the hall, and with a final crash of
chords Lallie turned on the piano stool, demanding:
"Is it you, Tony?"
"I didn't need to ask if it was you, and it was a great relief, I assure
you. Had you a good day?"
Out of the shadows Lallie came forward into the ruddy circle of light.
"Your voice doesn't sound quite pleased with me," she said. "I must see
your face to make sure. Please switch on a light and let me see."
She laid her little hands upon his shoulders and looked up searchingly
into his face. The bright glare of the electric light made Tony blink,
and he was so inexpressibly glad to see her again that his joy wholly
crowded out the reproachful expression he had intended his homely
features to assume.
He felt an overwhelming desire to take her in his arms, kiss her, and
implore her to swear she would never go away again. It was only the
certainty that she would kiss him back with the best will in the world,
probably bursting into tears of repentance on his shoulder, that
restrained Tony. He felt that it would not be playing the game. So very
gently, with big hands that trembled somewhat, he removed those that lay
so lightly on his shoulders and said, in a matter-of-fact voice:
"Naturally I was anxious. You see I thought we had agreed that there
was to be no hunting until we heard from your father; and how could I
tell how this--Mr. Ballinger might have mounted you?"
Lallie clasped her hands loosely in front of her, and stood before Tony
with downcast eyes, and he forgot all about the matter under discussion
in admiring her eyelashes.
"I didn't exactly promise," she murmured; then louder: "no, that's mean
of me, and untruthful; I broke my word. I knew you wouldn't wish me to
go--but I went--and I enjoyed it--rather. Not quite so much as I
expected, though the little mare went like a bird. It was quite a short
run; I was back here by three o'clock."
"Who brought you back?"
"Who brought me back? My dear, good Tony, I'm not a parcel nor a
passenger; I came back. I studied the ordnance map of this district
that's hanging in your study for a good hour last night. It was broad
daylight when the run was over, and it's a very good country for
signposts. I returned. Did you see Mr. Ballinger's cards in the hall?
He came fussing here to see that I was all right when I was in the
middle of changing, and he dutifully asked for Miss Foster, but she'd
gone to the sewing-meeting for the Mission--I _ought_ to have been
there; I forgot all about it; I'm so sorry--and she's not back yet, so I
sent down word that I was perfectly all right and _resting_, so he went
empty away, poor man, longing for tea, I've no doubt; so must you be,
we'll have it brought in here, Miss Foster won't be back till six. Some
one's reading a paper to them while they sew, poor things! I'll have
another tea with you, Tony. No lunch yesterday, no lunch to-day, and
to-morrow will be the third day, though Mr. Ballinger did bring me a
beautiful box of sandwiches, but I had no time to eat them."
"Mr. Ballinger! Why should he bring you sandwiches? Why didn't you ask
Matron for some?"
"Oh, you dear goose! How could I ask for sandwiches when I was supposed
to be going out to lunch. What would Miss Foster have said? Do you
think anybody will tell her I went out hunting all by my gay lonesome?"
"It depends how many people knew you in the field."
"Ah, there you touch me on a tender spot. With the exception of one old
curmudgeon who used to hunt sometimes with the "Cockshots" at Fareham
last year, there was no one I knew at all, and he rode all round me
staring, and then grunted out, 'Where's your father, Miss Clonmell?' I
passed him at the first fence, that's one comfort; but you're right,
Tony--I missed Dad. People stared at me. It was all right when the
hounds were running, I forgot everything and everybody but the fun and
excitement, but at the meet it was horrid. Is your tea nice? Oh, it is
good to have you back again!"
"And you prove your joy at my return by going off to-morrow!"
"That's only for the week-end. I always promised them to help at their
old meeting--and me a Home-Ruler--isn't it an anomaly?"
"I didn't know that your politics were so pronounced."
"You might guess I'd be 'ag'in the Government,' whichever party's in
power. Neither really cares a jot for Ireland. I think the Tories are
perhaps the less hypocritical of the two. But any sort of a political
meeting is fun. I always long to shout, and boo, and kick the floor. I
think all the disturbances they're able to make is what is so supremely
attractive about the Suffragettes."
"Are you a Suffragette as well as a Home-Ruler? I shall begin to be
quite afraid of you."
"I _should_ have been a Suffragette if I might have gone to meetings,
carried banners, or thumped on a gong to disturb Mr. Winston Churchill,
but Dad was quite stuffy about it, and put down his foot--really put
down his foot with a stamp; fancy Dad!--and forbade me to have anything
to do with any of them, so what was the use? It wasn't the vote I
wanted."
"Fitz really has, upon occasion, wonderful flashes of common sense, even
in his dealings with you."
"Now don't you be pretending to think Dad spoils me, for you know very
well he does nothing of the kind. He has never been petty nor
interfering, but in things that really matter, I'd no more think of
disobeying him than----"
"Of going out hunting without asking his permission," Tony suggested
mildly. "And since we have approached the subject of your general
submissiveness, might I suggest that you fall in with one little
regulation of mine, mentioned on the very first evening you came. Do you
remember my asking you not on any account to use the boys' part of the
house?"
"Well, neither I have, _ever_."
"What about the back staircase?"
Lallie flushed angrily and began indignantly, "It wasn't my--"; then
suddenly she stopped and said with studied gentleness, "I'm sorry, Tony;
you did forbid me, but I quite forgot that those stairs came under your
ban."
Tony smiled at her.
"That's all right then. You'll remember in future. In some ways,
Lallie, you are very like a boy."
"Good ways, I hope?" her voice was anxious.
"Some of them are quite good. Some of them--well, they are apt to get
other people in trouble. See what was sent to me by the incensed master
to whom the remarks refer," and Tony held out to her a large sheet of
lined paper, closely written in her own neat little upright writing.
The first few lines comprised a decorous statement to the effect that
"Marlborough underrated the difficulty of managing a coalition. In his
necessary absence abroad this difficult operation was in the hands of
Godolphin, always a timid minister without any real political
convictions," when suddenly the style of the Reverend J. Franck Bright
lapsed into the wholly indefensible statement that "cross old Nick is a
silly old Ass," and this was repeated line after line throughout nearly
half a page.
Lallie gasped, then burst into uncontrollable laughter, exclaiming:
"It's Cripps's lines. He told me he had to do five hundred, and that no
one ever looked at them, so I said I'd do three hundred for him as he
wanted awfully to play fives that day. So I copied the dry old History
Book till I was sick to death of the long words, and then in the middle
I put that in just to cheer things up. What had I better do? Go and see
Mr. Nichol, or what? He simply must not punish Cripps. He knew nothing
whatever about it, poor boy. I sent him the lines in a neat bundle, and
I don't suppose he ever looked at them."
"As it happened it was Mr. Nichol who looked at them, for Cripps omitted
the very simple precaution of putting his own pages on the top, and as
his writing in no way resembles yours, Mr. Nichol naturally suspected
extraneous assistance. He turned the pages over and came upon the one
you have in your hand--your capital 'A's' simply jump to the eye.
Naturally he was much annoyed, and I am sorry to say he describes your
friend Cripps as 'a surly, insubordinate fellow,' and demands that he
should be starred."
"But he can't be starred, for he didn't do it."
"That, very naturally, Cripps did not explain; and after all he is
responsible for the lines he gives up."
"Tony, have you seen Cripps?"
"I have."
"Oh, what did you say?"
"I told him that he was a lazy young dog, and ought to do his lines
himself; that I hadn't an ounce of sympathy with him, and that he
deserved all he got and more; but I need hardly say I did not send him
to the Principal with the suggestion that his prefect's star should be
taken from him."
"Oh, Tony, I hear Miss Foster; quick--ought _I_ to run out and see Mr.
Nichol? I'm not a bit afraid of him."
"I think that the matter may now rest in oblivion; only let me offer you
one bit of sound advice. If you are charitable enough to help any poor
beggar with his lines, write large; it's a fearful waste of energy to do
neat little writing like that--eight words to a line is the regulation
thing--and, for Heaven's sake refrain from personal remarks."
"Tony, you are a real dear. I will fly now, for Miss Foster may want to
talk to you about the house."
Lallie darted at Tony, dropped a hasty kiss on the top of his head, and
fled across the room, opening the door to admit Miss Foster, who had
removed her outdoor things. She never came into a sitting-room before
going upstairs; she considered it slovenly.
Tony folded the large closely written sheet of paper containing the
reiterated animadversions upon the intelligence of Mr. Nichol senior,
put it in his pocket, and rose to place a chair for Miss Foster, who
regarded the tea things with a look of acute distress.
"I took the opportunity," Tony remarked, "of speaking to Miss Clonmell
on the subject you mentioned to me yesterday afternoon, and--er--I
reminded her that I had on her first arrival asked her on no account to
use the boys' part of the house." Here Tony made a little pause, as
though he expected Miss Foster to make some observation. "I confess
that the fact of her being on that staircase at all did surprise me," he
added meditatively, looking full at Miss Foster with kind, beseeching
eyes.
That lady flushed and sat up very straight in her chair, but she did not
meet his gaze.
"What explanation did Miss Clonmell give?" she asked.
"None; she expressed regret that she had forgotten my prohibition, but
said that she did not suppose that staircase came under it, though why,
I can't imagine."
Again Miss Foster felt herself encompassed by that glance, so full of
dumb, entreating kindness. This time she raised her eyes to his and met
them fairly as she said slowly:
"Perhaps I am somewhat to blame for Miss Clonmell's presence upon that
staircase, though you may imagine I never dreamt of the use to which she
would put it. I confess that it never occurred to me as being in any
way objectionable during the day. The boys never go up or down, and she
often has such exceedingly muddy boots--I may have even suggested she
should go that way. I am sorry----"
"It doesn't matter in the least really," Tony said heartily, and his
whole face beamed. "Thank you very much for explaining."
He did not add that it was just what he had suspected from the first
moment that Lallie's frivolous conduct was revealed to him; but he meant
Miss Foster to own up, and she had owned up. Had she failed to do so
Tony could never have respected her again.
"As to Lallie," he reflected tenderly, "you never know what she'll do
next, but there are things you can depend on her not doing, and that's
to try and drag any one else into the unpleasant results of her
vagaries. She'll never go back on any one, never make mischief; and who
the devil is Ballinger that he should have all this?"
*CHAPTER XV*
That evening Lallie went into the study to say good-night to Tony. He
was reading by the fire, and she came and sat on the floor at his feet,
leaning back against his knees as she had done on the evening he
corrected papers in the drawing-room. The green silk bag was slung over
her arm, but her work was allowed to remain therein, and for once she
was content to let her hands lie idle.
"I've come early," she announced, "because if you're not very busy I'd
like a little chat. I've turned out the lights and shut the door, for
Miss Foster's not coming down again, she says. Isn't it funny to like to
go to bed so early?"
"She gets up early, I expect; and perhaps she's very tired at night.
Wouldn't you like a cushion or something, don't you find the floor very
hard?"
"I'm quite comfortable, thank you. Now listen to me, Tony. Do you
think I'm getting to an age when I'd be better with a home of my own?"
With a mental ejaculation of "Ballinger!" Tony adjusted his mind to the
question, saying quickly:
"But surely you've got that already."
"No, Tony; that's just what I have not got. As long as old Madame was
alive it was all right. Dad came and went as he pleased, but there was
always the house for Paddy and me, whether we were in France or in
Ireland. But lately I've begun to feel I'm a bit of a drag on Dad; you
know how restless he is sometimes, how unexpected----"
"It's a family failing, Lallie," Tony interrupted.
"And, you see, when he rushes off he won't leave me alone in whatever
house we happen to be in, and Aunt Emileen seems no comfort to him
unless he's in the house along with her; and there's all the fuss of
arranging for me, and I'm sent off here and there on visits, whether I
like it or not; and I begin to feel that I've no abiding place at all."
"Is your visit here one of the 'nots'?"
"Now that's nasty of you. You know I meant nothing of the kind, and I
jumped for joy when Dad said I should come to you for all these months;
but when Dad has been home for a bit and the first delight in having me
again has worn off, he'll want to be wandering. If it's wandering I can
do too, that's all right. I love going about with Dad, but if it's
somewhere that he doesn't care to take me, like this time, then it'll
all come over again--the placing out--and I hate it."
"But, Lallie, most young people like plenty of change and variety; the
one thing they cannot away with is monotony. That's what most of them,
girls especially, complain of."
"Tony, I'm going to make a confession." Lallie turned half round, and
leaning an elbow on his knee lifted her face, earnest and serious, so
that she might look into his. "I'm fond of a house. I like
housekeeping, and pottering, and looking after things, and ordering
dinner, and sewing, and mending, and arranging flowers, and cooking if I
want to, and I can cook well; and you can't do any of these things in
other people's houses--at least, only the sewing part."
"I'm sure you may cook here if you wish to. I'll undertake to eat
anything you make if it's really good."
"Oh, it's not that. I don't mean that I'd like to be always cooking,
but I like to feel that I've got a house to look after--my own house.
I'd be perfectly happy if Dad wanted a house, but he doesn't. He kept
it up for Paddy and me when we were small because he thought it was the
right thing to do; but now he doesn't seem to think it so necessary.
Poor man, he's too young to have grown-up children, Tony, and that's a
fact. He has small patience with Paddy, because, you know, their
interests clash. It's different with a woman, the younger she is the
prouder is she to have grown-up sons and the cleverer she thinks herself
that they are grown up. Don't you think I'm right?"
"Your generalisation," Tony began deliberately, when Lallie interrupted
by pinching his knee and exclaiming:
"Now, none of the schoolmaster, I won't have it."
"As I was about to remark when you interrupted me, what you say has a
certain amount of truth in it, but your father has not yet returned from
India. When he does return he may not feel the slightest inclination
for wandering; at any rate, not for some considerable time--so why
worry?"
"I should like to feel settled and secure."
"My dear Lallie, you'll never feel settled, you're not that sort; and as
to security, pray in what way do you feel insecure at present?"
Lallie removed her elbow from Tony's knee, she leant back against him
again so that he could not see her face, and said, very low:
"I feel insecure because in the course of the next few weeks I'll have
to make up my mind definitely one way or other, and whichever way it is,
it seems to me I shall regret it."
Again the whole of Tony's mentality fairly cried the name of Ballinger
aloud, and although the stillness in the quiet room was so great that
you might have heard a pin drop it seemed that his thought must have
reached Lallie, for she broke the silence by saying in quite a different
tone:
"I wish you had met Dad's friend, Mr. Ballinger, Tony; I'd like to know
what you think of him."
"That can be easily managed; we'll ask him to dinner when you come
back."
"He is going to the Chesters, you know."
"I didn't know, but I'm glad to hear it for your sake, since you like
him."
"Then you don't think I'd be better in a home of my own--married, I
mean," said Lallie with startling bluntness.
"I never said anything of the kind."
"Well, you didn't seem to smile upon the notion."
"The notion, as you call it, appears to me in itself quite admirable, if
not exactly novel; but you would need to make sure, wouldn't you? that
the husband--I think a husband is included in your scheme of
felicity--is in keeping--in the picture as it were."
Tony's voice was dry as that in which he instilled the rules of prosody
into his form. In fact it was less impassioned, for on occasion he
waxed eloquent though vituperative when dealing with that form's Latin
prose.
Again Lallie turned half round and leant her elbow on his knee. Again
her grey eyes searched his face, apparently in vain, for some clue to
the tone in which he spoke.
"I wish I was a rich widow," she said vindictively, "with a nice little
place of my own, then there'd be no bother at all, and you could come
and stay with me and arrange cricket matches all the summer holidays.
I'd put up that eleven you always go off with, and we'd have a cricket
week and lovely times."
"The prospect is certainly pleasing," Tony remarked, without enthusiasm;
"but it seems to me a little callous on your part to be so anxious to
kill off your husband before ever you've tried one."
"Do you think Mr. Johns would make a nice husband?" Lallie asked in a
detached, impersonal sort of way.
"Good heavens! How should I know? I hope he won't think of being any
one's husband for years to come. He couldn't keep a wife; for one
thing, he's too poor."
"Oh, but he is sure to get on; he'll be a headmaster some day. You'll
see. I never met a young man who was more wrapped up in his profession.
He's influencing boys all day long."
"By Jove! is he though? I'm glad to hear it."
"I think he'd be a very _kind_ husband," said Lallie, "but a bit boring
sometimes. I suppose I'd better be thinking of bed. You haven't helped
me much, Tony," and Lallie arose and stood in front of him, slender and
upright, in her straight green gown. Tony rose too.
"I don't quite know what you wanted me to say, Lallie, but I'd like to
say this: Don't you marry anybody for the sake of having a house of your
own. Your mother's daughter is capable of something finer and better
than that. I cannot in all my experience recall such a happy marriage
as hers. Child, there is such a thing. Don't you believe people who
say that respect, and affection, and mutual suitability, and all the
rest of it are one atom of good if you're not in love with the man. You
spoke to-night of your father's restlessness. Do you think he would have
been like that if your mother had lived? It was simply that he had the
most perfect home man ever had on this earth; and when she was taken
away from him the wrench destroyed his will-power, and he has been at
the mercy of his impulses ever since. Never judge him, Lallie; he can't
help it."
The tears welled up into Lallie's eyes.
"I don't judge him," she faltered; "it's myself I judge, and blame, and
yet I tried so hard to make his home happy and comfortable, so that he'd
want to stay with me; and I can make a nice home, I really can, but it
wasn't enough for Dad. Last winter I thought we were settled. He liked
the hunting, and we were so happy, and had such jokes about Aunt
Emileen, but it all came to an end--and _he'd like me to marry_, Tony;
that's the har-r-d part."
The big tears hung on Lallie's lashes, the corners of her mouth drooped,
and she looked so small, and pathetic, and forlorn that Tony fairly
turned his back upon her and leant his arms on the chimneypiece, staring
with the greatest interest at the shield bearing his college arms, which
he did not see.
"I am convinced," he said, and his voice was almost gruff, "that your
father would hate to think you married anybody simply for the sake of
getting married. Of course he would like to see you well and happily
married--but----"
"Good-night, Tony," Lallie said meekly.
He turned and shook her outstretched hand and stood at the door watching
her as she went slowly up the stairs with drooping head and deep
depression in every line of the slender little figure that always looked
so much taller than it really was. She never turned her head to look
back at him, and Tony shut the door and sat down at his desk with a
groan.
Matron was right: he'd got it late, and he'd got it badly. But she was
wrong when she informed Val that he didn't know what was the matter with
him.
He cursed himself for an old fool; for a betrayer of trust; for a dog in
the manger.
Fitz wanted Lallie to marry this Ballinger; told him so. And here was
he, Tony Bevan, actually using what influence he had to prevent her
doing anything of the kind. Fitz wouldn't want it unless Ballinger were
a good fellow. He knew Ballinger and Tony didn't. Was it likely that
Fitz would be anxious for the marriage unless Ballinger was the best of
good fellows? And yet, he, Tony, who knew nothing whatever about the
man, had interfered. "But she doesn't love him!" cried this old fool,
this betrayer of a father's trust.
"How do you know?" sternly demanded the inward mentor; "is she a girl to
wear her heart upon her sleeve? She may be deeply in love with him, but
won't confess it to herself even, just because he is rich and eligible,
and because she would like a home of her own."
"She doesn't seem a bit in love with him," pleaded the fatuous one.
"Lallie in love would----"