Lady Connie Part 14

"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--G.o.d and the gra.s.s!"

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 _blase_ 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 gla.s.s. 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 pa.s.ses 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.

CHAPTER VI

"My brother will be here directly. He wants to show you his special books," said Miss Wenlock shyly.

The Master's sister was a small and withered lady, who had been something of a beauty, and was now the pink of gentle and middle-aged decorum. She was one of those women it is so easy to ignore till you live with them. Then you perceive that in their relations to their own world, the world they make and govern, they are of the stuff which holds a country together, without which a country can not exist. She might have come out of a Dutch picture--a Terburg or a Metsu--so exquisite was she in every detail--her small, white head, her regular features, the lace coif tied under her chin, the ruffles at her wrist, the black brocade gown, which never altered in its fashion and which she herself cut out, year after year, for her maid to make,--the chatelaine of old Normandy silver, given her by her brother years before, which hung at her waist.

Opposite her sat a very different person, yet of a type no less profitable to this mixed life of ours. Mrs. Mulholland was the widow of a former scientific professor, of great fame in Oxford for his wit and Liberalism. Whenever there was a contest on between science and clericalism in the good old fighting days, Mulholland's ample figure might have been seen swaying along the road from the Parks to Convocation, his short-sighted eyes blinking at every one he pa.s.sed, his fair hair and beard streaming in the wind, a flag of battle to his own side, and an omen of defeat to the enemy. His _mots_ still circulated, and something of his gift for them had remained with the formidable woman who now represented him. At a time when short dresses for women were coming in universally, she always wore hers long and ample, though they were looped up by various economical and thrifty devices; on the top of the dress--which might have covered a crinoline, but didn't--a shawl, long after every one else had ceased to wear shawls; and above the shawl a hat, of the large mushroom type and indecipherable age. And in the midst of this antique and generally untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, under snow-white hair: black eyes full of Irish fun, a pugnacious and humorous mouth, and the general look of one so steeped in the rich, earthy stuff of life that she might have stepped out of a novel of Fielding's or a page of "Lavengro."

When Constance entered, Mrs. Mulholland turned round suddenly to look at her. It was a glance full of good will, but penetrating also, and critical. It was as though the person from whom it came had more than a mere stranger's interest in the tall young lady in white, now advancing towards Miss Wenlock.

But she gave no immediate sign of it. She and Miss Wenlock had been discussing an Oxford acquaintance, the newly-married wife of one of the high officials of the University. Miss Wenlock, always amiable, had discreetly p.r.o.nounced her "charming."

"Oh, so dreadfully charming!" said Mrs. Mulholland with a shrug, "and so sentimental that she hardens every heart. Mine becomes stone when I talk to her. She cried when I went to tea with her--a wedding visit if you please! I think it was because one of the kangaroos at Blenheim had just died in childbirth. I told her it was a mercy, considering that any of them would hug us to death if they got a chance. Are you a sentimentalist, Lady Constance?" Mrs. Mulholland turned gaily to the girl beside her, but still with the same touch of something coolly observant in her manner.

Constance laughed.

"I never can cry when I ought to," she said lightly.

"Then you should go to tea with Mrs. Crabbett. She could train anybody to cry--in time. She cultivates with care, and waters with tears, every sorrow that blows! Most of us run away from our troubles, don't we?"

Constance again smiled a.s.sent. But suddenly her face stiffened. It was like a flower closing, or a light blown out.

Mrs. Mulholland thought--"She has lost a father and a mother within a year, and I have reminded her. I am a cruel, clumsy wretch."

And thenceforward she roared so gently that Miss Wenlock, who never said a malicious thing herself, and was therefore entirely dependent on Sarah Mulholland's tongue for the salt of life, felt herself cheated of her usual Sunday entertainment. For there were few Sundays in term-time when Mrs. Mulholland did not "drop in" for tea and talk at Beaumont before going on to the Cathedral service.

But under the gentleness, Constance opened again, and expanded. Mrs.

Mulholland seemed to watch her with increasing kindness. At last, she said abruptly--

"I have already heard of you from two charming young men."

Constance opened a pair of conscious eyes. It was as though she were always expecting to hear Falloden's name, and protecting herself against the shock of it. But the mistake was soon evident.

"Otto Radowitz told me you had been so kind to him! He is an enthusiastic boy, and a great friend of mine. He deals always in superlatives. That is so refreshing here in Oxford where we are all so clever that we are deadly afraid of each other, and everybody talks drab. And his music is divine! I hear they talk of him in Paris as another Chopin. He pa.s.sed his first degree examination the other day magnificently! Come and hear him some evening at my house. Jim Meyrick, too, has told me all about you. His mother is a cousin of mine, and he condescends occasionally to come and see me. He is, I understand, a 'blood.' All I know is that he would be a nice youth, if he had a little more will of his own, and had nicer friends!" The small black eyes under the white hair flamed.

Constance started. Miss Wenlock put up a soothing hand--

"Dear Sarah, are you thinking of any one?"

"Of course I am!" said Mrs. Mulholland firmly. "There is a young gentleman at Marmion who thinks the world belongs to him. Oh, you know Mr. Falloden, Grace! He got the Newdigate last year, and the Greek Verse the other day. He got the Ireland, and he's going to get a First. He might have been in the Eleven, if he'd kept his temper, and they say he's going to be a magnificent tennis player. And a lot of other tiresome distinctions. I believe he speaks at the Union, and speaks well--bad luck to him!"

Constance laughed, fidgeted, and at last said, rather defiantly--

"It's sometimes a merit to be disliked, isn't it? It means that you're not exactly like other people. Aren't we all turned out by the gross!"

Mrs. Mulholland looked amused.

"Ah, but you see I know something about this young man at home. His mother doesn't count. She has her younger children, and they make her happy. And of course she is absurdly proud of Douglas. But the father and this son Douglas are of the same stuff. They have a deal more brains and education than their forbears ever wanted; but still, in soul, they remain our feudal lords and superiors, who have a right to the services of those beneath them. And everybody is beneath them--especially women; and foreigners--and artists--and people who don't shoot or hunt. Ask their neighbours--ask their cottagers. Whenever the revolution comes, their heads will be the first to go! At the same time they know--the clever ones--that they can't keep their place except by borrowing the weapons of the cla.s.s they really fear--the professional cla.s.s--the writers and thinkers--the lawyers and journalists. And so they take some trouble to sharpen their own brains. And the cleverer they are, the more tyrannous they are. And that, if you please, is Mr. Douglas Falloden!"

"I wonder why you are so angry with him, my dear Sarah," said Miss Wenlock mildly.

"Because he has been bullying my nice boy, Radowitz!" said Mrs.

Mulholland vehemently. "I hear there has been a disgraceful amount of ragging in Marmion lately, and that Douglas Falloden--can you conceive it?--a man in his last term, whom the University imagines itself to be turning out as an educated specimen!--is one of the ring-leaders--the ring-leader. It appears that Otto wears a frilled dress shirt--why shouldn't he?--that, having been brought up in Paris till he was nineteen, he sometimes tucks his napkin under his chin--that he uses French words when he needn't--that he dances like a Frenchman--that he recites French poetry actually of his own making--that he plays too well for a gentleman--that he doesn't respect the customs of the college, et cetera. There is a sacred corner of the Junior Common Room, where no freshman is expected to sit after hall. Otto sat in it--quite innocently--knowing nothing--and, instead of apologising, made fun of Jim Meyrick and Douglas Falloden who turned him out. Then afterwards he composed a musical skit on 'the bloods,' which delighted every one in college, who wasn't a 'blood.' And now there is open war between him and them. Otto doesn't talk of it. I hear of it from other people. But he looks excited and pale--he is a very delicate creature!--and we, who are fond of him, live in dread of some violence. I never can understand why the dons are so indulgent to ragging. It is nothing but a continuation of school bullying. It ought to be put down with the strongest possible hand."

Miss Wenlock had listened in tremulous sympathy, nodding from time to time. Constance sat silent and rather pale--looting down. But her mind was angry. She said to herself that n.o.body ought to attack absent persons who can't defend themselves,--at least so violently. And as Mrs. Mulholland seemed to wait for some remark from her, she said at last, with a touch of impatience:

"I don't think Mr. Radowitz minds much. He came to us--to my uncle's--to play last night. He was as gay as possible."

"Radowitz would make jokes with the hangman!" said Mrs. Mulholland. "Ah, well, I think you know Douglas Falloden"--the tone was just lightly touched with significance--"and if you can lecture him--do!" Then she abruptly changed her subject:

"I suppose you have scarcely yet made acquaintance with your two aunts who live quite close to the Fallodens in Yorkshire?"

Constance looked up in astonishment.

"Do you know them?"