Lady Connie Part 3

"You remember Connie went to bed early. Well, when I came up, and pa.s.sed her door, I noticed something--somebody in that room was--smoking! I could not be mistaken. And this morning I questioned the housemaid.

'Yes, ma'am,' she said, 'her ladyship smoked two cigarettes last night, and Mrs. Tinkler'--that's the maid--'says she always smokes two before she goes to bed.' Then I spoke to Tinkler--whose manner to me, I consider, is not at all what it should be--and she said that Connie smoked three cigarettes a day always--that Lady Risborough smoked--that all the ladies in Rome smoked--that Connie began it before her mother died--and her mother didn't mind--"

"Well then, my dear, you needn't mind," exclaimed Dr. Hooper.

"I always thought Ella Risborough went to pieces--rather--in that dreadful foreign life," said Mrs. Hooper firmly. "Everybody does--you can't help it."

"I don't know what you mean by going 'to pieces,'" said Ewen Hooper warmly. "I only know that when they came here ten years ago, I thought her one of the most attractive--one of the most charming women I had ever seen."

From where he stood, on the hearth-rug of his study, smoking an after-breakfast pipe, he looked down--frowning--upon his wife, and Mrs.

Hooper felt that she had perhaps gone too far. Never had she forgotten, never had she ceased to resent her own sense of inferiority and disadvantage, beside her brilliant sister-in-law on the occasion of that long past visit. She could still see Ella Risborough at the All Souls'

luncheon given to the newly made D.C.Ls, sitting on the right of the Vice-Chancellor, and holding a kind of court afterwards in the library; a hat that was little more than a wreath of forget-me-nots on her dark hair, and a long, lace cloak draping the still young and graceful figure. She remembered vividly the soft, responsive eyes and smile, and the court of male worshippers about them. Professors, tutors young and old, undergraduates and heads of houses, had crowded round the mother and the long-legged, distinguished-looking child, who clung so closely to her side; and if only she could have given Oxford a few more days, the whole place would have been at Ella Risborough's feet. "So intelligent too!" said the enthusiastic--"so learned even!" A member of the Roman "Accademia dei Lincei," with only one other woman to keep her company in that august band; and yet so modest, so unpretending, so full of laughter, and life, and s.e.x! Mrs. Hooper, who generally found herself at these official luncheons in a place which her small egotism resented, had watched her sister-in-law from a distance, envying her dress, her t.i.tle, her wealth, bitterly angry that Ewen's sister should have a place in the world that Ewen's wife could never hope to touch, and irrevocably deciding that Ella Risborough was "fast" and gave herself airs. Nor did the afternoon visit, when the Risboroughs, with great difficulty, had made time for the family call on the Hoopers, supply any more agreeable memories. Ella Risborough had been so rapturously glad to see her brother, and in spite of a real effort to be friendly had had so little attention to spare for his wife! It was true she had made much of the Hooper children, and had brought them all presents from Italy. But Mrs.

Hooper had chosen to think the laughing sympathy and evident desire to please "affectation," or patronage, and had been vexed in her silent corner to see how little her own two girls could hold their own beside Constance.

As for Lord Risborough, he had frankly found it difficult to remember Mrs. Hooper's ident.i.ty, while on the other hand he fell at once into keen discussion of some recent finds in the Greek islands with Ewen Hooper, to whom in the course of half an hour it was evident that he took a warm liking. He put up his eye-gla.s.s to look at the Hooper children; he said vaguely, "I hope that some day you and Mrs. Hooper will descend upon us in Rome;" and then he hurried his wife away with the audible remark--"We really must get to Blenheim, Ellie, in good time. You promised the d.u.c.h.ess--"

So ill-bred--so sn.o.bbish--to talk of your great acquaintances in public!

And as for Lady Risborough's answer--"I don't care twopence about the d.u.c.h.ess, Hugh! and I haven't seen Ewen for six years,"--it had been merely humbug, for she had obediently followed her husband, all the same.

Recollections of this kind went trickling through Mrs. Hooper's mind, roused by Ewen's angry defence of his sister. It was all very well, but now the long-legged child had grown up, and was going to put her--Ellen Hooper's--daughters in the shade, to make them feel their inferiority, just as the mother had done with herself. Of course the money was welcome. Constance was to contribute three hundred a year, which was a substantial addition to an income which, when all supplemental earnings--exams, journalism, lectures--were counted, rarely reached seven hundred. But they would be "led into expenses"--the maid was evidently a most exacting woman; and meanwhile, Alice, who was just out, and was really quite a pretty girl, would be entirely put in the background by this young woman with her forward manner, and her t.i.tle, and the way she had as though the world belonged to her. Mrs. Hooper felt no kinship with her whatever. She was Ewen's blood--not hers; and the mother's jealous nature was all up in arms for her own brood--especially for Alice. Nora could look after herself, and invariably did. Besides Nora was so tiresome! She was always ready to give the family case away--to give everything away, preposterously. And, apropos, Mrs. Hooper expressed her annoyance with some silly notions Nora had just expressed to her.

"I do hope, Ewen, you won't humour and spoil Constance too much! Nora says now she's dissatisfied with her room and wants to buy some furniture. Well, let her, I say. She has plenty of money, and we haven't. We have given her a great deal more than we give our own daughters--"

"She pays us, my dear!"

Mrs. Hooper straightened her thin shoulders.

"Well, and you give her the advantage of your name and your reputation here. It is not as though you were a young don, a n.o.body. You've made your position. Everybody asks us to all the official things--and Connie, of course, will be asked, too."

A smile crept round Dr. Hooper's weak and pleasant mouth.

"Don't flatter yourself, Ellen, that Connie will find Oxford society very amusing after Rome and the Riviera."

"That will be her misfortune," said Mrs. Hooper, stoutly. "Anyway, she will have all the advantages we have. We take her with us, for instance, to the Vice-Chancellor's to-night?"

"Do we?" Dr. Hooper groaned. "By the way, can't you let me off, Ellen?

I've got such a heap of work to do."

"Certainly not! People who shut themselves up never get on, Ewen. I've just finished mending your gown, on purpose. How you tear it as you do, I can't think! But I was speaking of Connie. We shall take her, of course--"

"Have you asked her?"

"I told her we were all going--and to meet Lord Glaramara. She didn't say anything."

Dr. Hooper laughed.

"You'll find her, I expect, a very independent young woman--"

But at that moment his daughter Nora, after a hurried and perfunctory knock, opened the study door vehemently, and put in a flushed face.

"Father, I want to speak to you!"

"Come in, my dear child. But I can't spare more than five minutes."

And the Reader glanced despairingly at a clock, the hands of which were pointing to half past ten a.m. How it was that, after an eight o'clock breakfast, it always took so long for a man to settle himself to his work he really could not explain. Not that his conscience did not sometimes suggest the answer, pointing to a certain slackness and softness in himself--the primal shrinking from work, the primal instinct to sit and dream--that had every day to be met and conquered afresh, before the student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing from his desk with all his brains alert. Anyway, the Reader, when there was no college or university engagement to pin him down, would stand often--"spilling the morning in recreation"; in other words, gossiping with his wife and children, or loitering over the newspapers, till the inner monitor turned upon him. Then he would work furiously for hours; and the work when done was good. For there would be in it a kind of pa.s.sion, a warmth born of the very effort and friction of the will which had been necessary to get it done at all.

Nora, however, had not come in to gossip. She was in a white heat.

"Father!--we ought not to let Connie furnish her own rooms!"

"But, my dear, who thinks of her doing any such thing? What do you mean?" And Dr. Hooper took his pipe out of his mouth, and stood protesting.

"She's gone out, she and Annette. They slipped out just now when mother came in to you; and I'm certain they've gone to B's"--the excited girl named a well-known Oxford furniture shop--"to buy all sorts of things."

"Well, after all, it's my house!" said the Reader, smiling. "Connie will have to ask my leave first."

"Oh, she'll persuade you!" cried Nora, standing before her father with her hands behind her. "She'll make us all do what she wants. She'll be like a cuckoo in the nest. She'll be too strong for us."

Ewen Hooper put out a soothing hand, and patted his youngest daughter on the shoulder.

"Wait a bit, my dear. And when Connie comes back just ask her to step in here a moment. And now will you both please be gone--at once?--quick once?--quick march!"

And taking his wife and daughter by the shoulders, he turned them both forcibly out, and sat down to make his final preparations for a lecture that afternoon on the "feminism" of Euripides.

Meanwhile Connie Bledlow and her maid were walking quickly down the Broad towards the busy Cornmarket with its shops. It was a brilliant morning--one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun. Every outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright air. The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts. The figures, even, pa.s.sing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees and the buildings. The white in the women's dresses; the short black gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the children's frocks; the overhanging ma.s.ses of hawthorn and lilac that here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through and over college walls:--everything shimmered and shone in the May sunlight. The air too was tonic and gay, a rare thing for Oxford; and Connie, refreshed by sleep, walked with such a buoyant and swinging step that her stout maid could hardly keep up with her. Many a pa.s.ser-by observed her. Men on their way to lecture, with battered caps and gowns slung round their necks, threw sharp glances at the tall girl in black, with the small pale face, so delicately alive, and the dark eyes that laughed--aloof and unabashed--at all they saw.

"What boys they are!" said Constance presently, making a contemptuous lip. "They ought to be still in the nursery."

"What--the young men in the caps, my lady?"

"Those are the undergraduates, Annette--the boys who live in the colleges."

"They don't stare like the Italian young gentlemen," said Annette, shrugging her shoulders. "Many a time I wanted to box their ears for the way they looked at you in the street."

Connie laughed. "I liked it! They were better-looking than these boys.

Annette, do you remember that day two years ago when I took you to that riding compet.i.tion--what did they call it?--that gymkhana--in the Villa Borghese--and we saw all those young officers and their horses? What glorious fellows they were, most of them! and how they rode!"

Her cheek flushed to the recollection. For a moment the Oxford street pa.s.sed out of sight. She saw the gra.s.sy slopes, the stone pines, the white walls, the cla.s.sic stadium of the Villa Borghese, with the hot June sun stabbing the open s.p.a.ces, and the deep shadows under the ilexes; and in front of the picture, the crowd of jostling horses, with their riders, bearing the historic names of Rome--Colonnas, Orsinis, Gaetanis, Odescalchis, and the rest. A young and splendid brood, all arrogant life and gaiety, as high-mettled as their English and Irish horses. And in front a tall, long-limbed cavalry officer in the Queen's household, bowing to Constance Bledlow, as he comes back, breathless and radiant from the race he has just won, his hand tight upon the reins, his athlete's body swaying to each motion of his horse, his black eyes laughing into hers. Why, she had imagined herself in love with him for a whole week!

Then, suddenly, she perceived that in her absence of mind she was running straight into a trio of undergraduates who were hurriedly stepping off the path to avoid her. They looked at her, and she at them.

They seemed to her all undersized, plain and sallow. They carried books, and two wore gla.s.ses. "Those are what _he_ used to call 'smugs'!" she thought contemptuously, her imagination still full of the laughing Italian youths on their glistening horses. And, she began to make disparaging remarks about English young men to Annette. If this intermittent stream of youths represented them, the English _gioventu_ was not much to boast of.

Next a furniture shop appeared, with wide windows, and a tempting array of wares, and in they went. Constance had soon bought a wardrobe and a cheval-gla.s.s for herself, an armchair, a carpet, and a smaller wardrobe for Annette, and seeing a few trifles, like a French screen, a small sofa, and an inlaid writing-table in her path, she threw them in. Then it occurred to her that Uncle Ewen might have something to say to these transactions, and she hastily told the shopman not to send the things to Medburn House till she gave the order.

Out they went, this time into the crowded Cornmarket, where there were no colleges, and where the town that was famous long before the University began, seemed to be living its own vigorous life, untrammelled by the men in gowns. Only in seeming, however, for in truth every single shop in the street depended upon the University.

They walked on into the town, looking into various colleges, sitting in Broad Walk, and loitering over shops, till one o'clock struck from Oxford's many towers.