Lady Connie Part 8

"Not at present."

"Then let me offer some humble counsels in return. I beg you not to make friends with that red-haired _poseur_ I saw you talking to in the hall."

"Mr. Radowitz!--the musician? I thought him delightful! He is coming to play to me to-morrow."

"Ah, I thought so!" said Falloden wrathfully. "He is an impossible person. He wears a frilled shirt, scents himself, and recites his own poems when he hasn't been asked. And he curries favour--abominably--with the dons. He is a smug--of the first water. There is a movement going on in college to suppress him. I warn you I may not be able to keep out of it."

"He is an artist!" cried Constance. "You have only to look at him, to talk to him, to see it. And artists are always persecuted by stupid people. But you are not stupid!"

"Yes, I am, where _poseurs_ are concerned," said Falloden coldly. "I prefer to be. Never mind. We won't excite ourselves. He is not worth it.

Perhaps he'll improve--in time. But there is another man I warn you against--Mr. Herbert Pryce."

"A great friend of my cousins'," said Constance mockingly.

"I know. He is always flirting with the eldest girl. It is a shame; for he will never marry her. He wants money and position, and he is so clever he will get them. He is not a gentleman, and he rarely tells the truth. But he is sure to make up to you. I thought I had better tell you beforehand."

"My best thanks! You breathe charity!"

"No--only prudence. And after my schools I throw my books to the dogs, and I shall have a fortnight more of term with nothing to do except--are you going to ride?" he asked her abruptly. "You said at Cannes that you meant to ride when you came to Oxford."

"My aunt doesn't approve."

"As if that would stop you! I can tell you where you can get a horse--a mare that would just suit you. I know all the stables in Oxford. Wait till we meet on Thursday. Would you care to ride in Lathom Woods? (He named a famous estate near Oxford.) I have a permit, and could get you one. They are relations of mine."

Constance excused herself, but scarcely with decision. Her plans, she said, must depend upon her cousins. Falloden smiled and dropped the subject for the moment. Then, as they moved on together through the sinuous ways of the garden, flooded with the scent of hawthorns and lilacs, towards the open tent crowded with folk at the farther end, there leapt in both the same intoxicating sense of youth and strength, the same foreboding of pa.s.sion, half restlessness, and half enchantment....

"I looked for you everywhere," said Sorell, as he made his way to Constance through the crowd of departing guests in the college gateway.

"Where did you hide yourself? The Lord Chancellor was sad not to say good-bye to you."

Constance summoned an answering tone of regret.

"How good of him! I was only exploring the garden--with Mr. Falloden."

At the name, there was a quick and stiffening change in Sorell's face.

"You knew him before? Yes--he told me. A queer fellow--very able. They say he'll get his First. Well--we shall meet at the Eights and then we'll make plans. Goodnight."

He smiled on her, and went his way, ruminating uncomfortably as he walked back to his college along the empty midnight streets. Falloden?

It was to be hoped there was nothing in that! How Ella Risborough would have detested the type! But there was much that was not her mother in the daughter. He vowed to himself that he would do his small best to watch over Ella Risborough's child.

There was little or no conversation in the four-wheeler that bore the Hooper party home. Mrs. Hooper and Alice were stiffly silent, while the Reader chaffed Constance a little about her successes of the evening.

But he, too, was sleepy and tired, and the talk dropped. As they lighted their bedroom candles in the hall, Mrs. Hooper said to her niece, in her thin, high tone, mincing and coldly polite:

"I think it would have been better, Constance, if you had told us you knew Lord Glaramara. I don't wish to find fault, but such--such concealments--are really very awkward!"

Constance opened her eyes. She could have defended herself easily. She had no idea that her aunt was unaware of the old friendship between her parents and Lord Glaramara, who was no more interesting to her personally than many others of their Roman _habitues_, of whom the world was full. But she was too preoccupied to spend any but the shortest words on such a silly thing.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Ellen. I really didn't understand."

And she went up to bed, thinking only of Falloden; while Alice followed her, her small face pinched and weary, her girlish mind full of pain.

CHAPTER IV

On the day after the Vice-Chancellor's party, Falloden, after a somewhat slack morning's work, lunched in college with Meyrick. After hall, the quadrangle was filled with strolling men, hatless and smoking, discussing the chances of the Eights, the last debate at the Union, and the prospects of individual men in the schools.

Presently the sound of a piano was heard from the open windows of a room on the first floor.

"Great Scott!" said Falloden irritably to Meyrick, with whom he was walking arm in arm, "what a noise that fellow Radowitz makes! Why should we have to listen to him? He behaves as though the whole college belonged to him. We can't hear ourselves speak."

"Treat him like a barrel-organ and remove him!" said Meyrick, laughing.

He was a light-hearted, easy-going youth, a "fresher" in his first summer term, devoted to Falloden, whose physical and intellectual powers seemed to him amazing.

"Bombard him first!" said Falloden. "Who's got some soda-water bottles?" And he beckoned imperiously to a neighbouring group of men,--"bloods"--always ready to follow him in a "rag," and heroes together with him of a couple of famous bonfires, in Falloden's first year.

They came up, eager for any mischief, the summer weather in their veins like wine. They stood round Falloden laughing and chaffing, till finally three of them disappeared at his bidding. They came rushing back, from various staircases, laden with soda-water bottles.

Then Falloden, with two henchmen, placed himself under Radowitz's windows, and summoned the offender in a stentorian voice:

"Radowitz! stop that noise!"

No answer--except that Radowitz in discoursing some "music of the future," and quite unaware of the shout from below, pounded and tormented the piano more than ever. The waves of crashing sound seemed to fill the quadrangle.

"We'll summon him thrice!" said Falloden. "Then--fire!"

But Radowitz remained deaf, and the a.s.sailant below gave the order.

Three strong right arms below discharged three soda-water bottles, which went through the open window.

"My goody!" said Meyrick, "I hope he's well out of the way!" There was a sound of breaking gla.s.s. Then Radowitz, furious, appeared at his window, his golden hair more halolike than ever in the bright sun.

"What are you doing, you idiots?"

"Stop that noise, Radowitz!" shouted Falloden. "It annoys us!"

"Can't help it. It pleases me," said Radowitz shortly, proceeding to close the window. But he had scarcely done so, when Falloden launched another bottle, which went smash through the window and broke it. The gla.s.s fell out into the quadrangle, raising all the echoes. The rioters below held their laughing breaths.

"I say, what about the dons?" said one.

"Keep a lookout!" said another.

But meanwhile Radowitz had thrown up the injured window, and crimson with rage he leaned far out and flung half a broken bottle at the group below. All heads ducked, but the ragged missile only just missed Meyrick's curly poll.

"Not pretty that!--not pretty at all!" said Falloden coolly. "Might really have done some mischief. We'll avenge you, Meyrick. Follow me, you fellows!"

And in one solid phalanx, they charged, six or seven strong, up Radowitz's staircase. But he was ready for them. The oak was sported, and they could hear him dragging some heavy chairs against it.