Lady Connie Part 23

"You should not allow him to dance with you," he said imperiously. "He is too eccentric. He doesn't know how to behave; and he makes his partners conspicuous."

Constance too had risen, and they confronted each other--she all wilfulness.

"I shall certainly dance with him!" she said, with a little determined air. "You see, I like foreign ways!"

He said good night abruptly. As he stood a few minutes on the further side of the room, making a few last arrangements as to the ball with Mrs. Hooper and Alice, Constance, still standing by the piano, and apparently chatting with Herbert Pryce, was really aware of Falloden's every movement. His manner to her aunt was brusque and careless; and he forgot, apparently, to say good night either to Alice or Nora. n.o.body in the room, as she well knew, except herself, found any pleasure in his society. Nora's hostile face in the background was a comic study. And yet, so long as he was there, n.o.body could forget or overlook him; so splendid was the physical presence of the man, and so strong the impression of his personality--even in trivial things.

Meanwhile, everybody in the house had gone to bed, except Nora and her father. She had lit a little fire in his study, as the night had grown chilly; she had put a little tray with tea on it by his side, and helped him to arrange the Greats papers, in which he was still immersed, under his hand. And finally she brought his pipe and filled it for him.

"Must you sit up long, father?"

"An hour or two," said Ewen Hooper wearily. "I wish I didn't get so limp. But these Honour exams take it out of one. And I have to go to Winchester to-morrow."

"For the scholarship?"

He nodded.

"Father! you work a great deal too hard--you look dog-tired!" cried Nora in distress. "Why do you do so much?"

He shook his head sadly.

"You know, darling."

Nora did know. She knew that every pound was of importance to the household, that the temporary respite caused by the legacy from Lord Risborough and by Connie's prepayment would very soon come to an end, and that her father seemed to be more acutely aware of the position than he had yet been. Her own cleverness, and the higher education she was steadily getting for herself enabled her to appreciate, as no one else in the family could or did, her father's delicate scholarly gifts, which had won him his reputation in Oxford and outside. But the reputation might have been higher, if so much time had not been claimed year after year by the sheer pressure of the family creditors. With every year, Nora had grown up into a fuller understanding of her father's tragedy; a more bitter, a more indignant understanding. They might worry through; one way or another she supposed they would worry through. But her father's strength and genius were being sacrificed. And this child of seventeen did not see how to stop it.

After she had brought him his pipe, and he was drawing at it contentedly over the fire, she stood silent beside him, bursting with something she could not make up her mind to say. He put out an arm, as she stood beside his chair, and drew her to him.

"Dear little Trotty Veck!" It had been his pet name for her as a child.

Nora, for answer, bent her head, and kissed him.

"Father"--she broke out--"I've got my first job!"

He looked up enquiringly.

"Mr. Hurst"--she named her English Literature tutor, a fellow of Marmion--"has got it for me. I've been doing some Norman-French with him; and there's a German professor has asked him to get part of a romance copied that's in the Bodleian--the only ma.n.u.script. And Mr.

Hurst says he'll coach me--I can easily do it--and I shall get ten pounds!"

"Well done, Trotty Veck!" Ewen Hooper smiled at her affectionately.

"But won't it interfere with your work?"

"Not a bit. It will help it. Father!--I'm going to earn a lot before long. If it only didn't take such a long time to grow up!" said Nora impatiently. "One ought to be as old as one feels--and I feel quite twenty-one!"

Ewen Hooper shook his head.

"That's all wrong. One should be young--and taste being young, every moment, every day that one can. I wish I'd done it--now that I'm getting old."

"You're not old!" cried Nora. "You're not, father! You're not to say it!"

And kneeling down by him, she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and put one of his long gaunt hands to her lips.

Her affection was very sweet to him, but it could not comfort him. There are few things, indeed, in which the old can be comforted by the young--the old, who know too much, both of life and themselves.

But he pulled himself together.

"Dear Trotty Veck, you must go to bed, and let me do my work. But--one moment!" He laid a hand on her shoulder, and abruptly asked her whether she thought her Cousin Constance was in love with Douglas Falloden.

"Your mother's always talking to me about it," he said, with a wearied perplexity.

"I don't know," said Nora, frowning. "But I shouldn't wonder."

"Then I shall have to make some enquiries," said Connie's guardian, with resignation. "She's a masterful young woman. But she can be very sweet when she likes. Do you see what she gave me to-day?"

He pointed to a beautiful Viennese edition of Aeschylus, in three sumptuous volumes, which had just appeared and was now lying on the Reader's table.

Nora took it up with a cry of pleasure. She had her father's pa.s.sion for books.

"She heard me say to Sorell, apparently, that I would give my eyes for it, and couldn't afford it. That was a week ago. And to-day, after luncheon, she stole in here like a mouse--you none of you saw or heard her--holding the books behind her--and looking as meek as milk. You would have thought she was a child, coming to say she was sorry! And she gave me the books in the prettiest way--just like her mother!--as though all the favour came from me. I'm beginning to be very fond of her. She's so nice to your old father. I say, Nora!"--he held her again--"you and I have got to prevent her from marrying the wrong man!"

Nora shook her head, with an air of middle-aged wisdom.

"Connie will marry whomever she has a mind to!" she said firmly. "And it's no good, father, you imagining anything else."

Ewen Hooper laughed, released her, and sent her to bed.

The days that followed represented the latter part of the interval between the Eights and Commemoration, before Oxford plunged once more into high festival.

It was to be a brilliant Commem.; for an ex-Viceroy of India, a retired Amba.s.sador, England's best General, and five or six foreign men of science and letters, of rather exceptional eminence, were coming to get their honorary degrees. When Mrs. Hooper, _Times_ in hand, read out at the breakfast-table the names of Oxford's expected guests, Constance Bledlow looked up in surprised amus.e.m.e.nt. It seemed the Amba.s.sador and she were old friends; that she had sat on his knee as a baby through various Carnival processions in the Corso, showing him how to throw _confetti_; and that he and Lady F. had given a dance at the Emba.s.sy for her coming-out, when Connie, at seventeen, and His Excellency--still the handsomest man in the room, despite years and gout--had danced the first waltz together, and a subsequent minuet; which--though Connie did not say so--had been the talk of Rome.

As to the ex-Viceroy, he was her father's first cousin, and had pa.s.sed through Rome on his way east, staying three or four days at the Palazzo Barberini. Constance, however, could not be induced to trouble her head about him. "He bored Mamma and me dreadfully," she said--"he had seven pokers up his back, and was never human for a minute. I don't want to see him at all." Oxford, however, seemed to be of the opinion that ex-viceroys do want to see their cousins; for the Hooper party found themselves asked as a matter of course to the All Souls' luncheon, the Vice-Chancellor's garden-party, and to a private dinner-party in Christ Church on the day of the Encaenia, at which all the new-made doctors were to be present. As for the ball-tickets for Commem. week, they poured in; and meanwhile there were endless dinner-parties, and every afternoon had its river picnic, now on the upper, now on the lower river.

It was clear, indeed, both to her relations and to Oxford in general, that Constance Bledlow was to be the heroine of the moment. She would be the "star" of Commem., as so many other pretty or charming girls had been before her. But in her case, it was no mere undergraduate success.

Old and young alike agreed to praise her. Her rank inevitably gave her precedence at almost every dinner-party, Oxford society not being rich in the peerage. The host, who was often the head of a college and grey-haired, took her in; and some other University big-wig, equally mature, flanked her on the right. When she was undressing in her little room after these entertainments, she would give Annette a yawning or plaintive account of them. "You know, Annette, I never talk to anybody under fifty now!" But at the time she never failed to play her part. She was born with the wish to please, which, as every one knows, makes three parts of the art of pleasing.

Meanwhile Sorell, who was at all times a very popular man, in great request, accepted many more invitations than usual in order to see as much as he could of this triumphal progress of Lady Risborough's daughter. Oxford society was then much more limited than now, and he and she met often. It seemed to him whenever he came across Douglas Falloden in Connie's company during these days, that the young man's pursuit of Constance, if it was a pursuit, was making no progress at all, and that his temper suffered accordingly. Connie's endless engagements were constantly in the way. Sorell thought he detected once or twice that Falloden had taken steps to procure invitations to houses where Constance was expected; but when they did meet it was evident that he got but a small share of her attention.

Once Sorell saw them in what appeared intimate conversation at a Christ Church party. Falloden--who was flushed and frowning--was talking rapidly in a low voice; and Constance was listening to him with a look half soft, half mocking. Her replies seemed to irritate her companion, for they parted abruptly, Constance looking back to smile a sarcastic good-bye.

Again, on the Sunday before the Encaenia, a famous high churchman preached in the University church. The church was densely crowded, and Sorell, sitting in the masters' seats under the pulpit, saw Constance dimly, in the pews reserved for wives and families of the University doctors and masters, beneath the gallery. Immediately to her right, in the very front of the undergraduates' gallery, he perceived the tall form and striking head of Douglas Falloden; and when the sermon was over he saw that the young man was one of the first to push his way out.

"He hopes to waylay her," thought Sorell.

If so, he was unsuccessful. Sorell emerging with the stream into the High Street saw Connie's black and white parasol a little ahead.

Falloden was on the point of overtaking her, when Radowitz, the golden-haired, the conspicuous, crossed his path. Constance looked round, smiled, shook hands with Radowitz, and apparently not seeing Falloden in her rear, walked on, in merry talk with the beaming musician. Sorell, perhaps, was the only person who noticed the look of pale fury with which Falloden dropped out of the crowded pathway, crossed the street, and entered a smart club opposite, exclusively frequented by "bloods."

Commem. week itself, however, would give a man in love plenty of chances. Sorell was well aware of it. Monday dawned with misty sunshine after much rain. In the Turl after luncheon, Sorell met Nora Hooper hurrying along with note-books under her arm. They turned down Brasenose Lane together, and she explained that she was on her way to the Bodleian where she was already at work on her first paid job. Her pleasure in it, and the childish airs she gave herself in regard to it, touched and amused Sorell, with whom--through the Greek lessons--she had become a great favourite.

As they parted at the doorway leading to the Bodleian, she said with a mischievous look--