Lady Connie Part 47

"You didn't care a bit about that when you first came!" cried Nora. "You despised us because we weren't soldiers, or diplomats, or politicians.

You thought we were a little priggish, provincial world where nothing mattered. You were sorry for us because we had only books and ideas!"

"I wasn't!" said Connie indignantly. "Only I didn't think Oxford was everything--and it isn't! Nora!"--she looked round the Oxford street with a sudden ardour, her eyes running over the groups of undergraduates hurrying back to hall--"do you think these English boys could ever--well, fight--and die--for what you call ideas--for their country--as Otto Radowitz could die for Poland?"

"Try them!" The reply rang out defiantly. Connie laughed.

"They'll never have the chance. Who'll ever attack England? If we had only something--something splendid, and not too far away!--to look back upon, as the Italians look back on Garibaldi--or to long and to suffer for, as the Poles long and suffer for Poland!"

"We shall some day!" said Nora hopefully. "Mr. Sorell says every nation gets its turn to fight for its life. I suppose Otto Radowitz has been talking Poland to you?"

"He talks it--and he lives it," said Connie, with emphasis. "It's marvellous!--it shames one."

Nora shrugged her shoulders.

"But what can he do--with his poor hand! You know Mr. Sorell has taken a cottage for him at Boar's Hill--above Hinksey?"

Yes, Connie knew. She seemed suddenly on her guard.

"But he can't live alone?" said Nora. "Who on earth's going to look after him?"

Connie hesitated. Down a side street she perceived the stately front of Marmion, and at the same moment a tall man emerging from the dusk crossed the street and entered the Marmion gate. Her heart leapt. No!

Absurd! He and Otto had not arrived yet. But already the Oxford dark, and the beautiful Oxford distances were peopled for her with visions and prophecies of hope. The old and famous city, that had seen so much youth bloom and pa.s.s, spoke magic things to her with its wise, friendly voice.

Aloud, she said--

"You haven't heard? Mr. Falloden's going to live with him."

Nora stopped in stupefaction.

"_What?_"

Connie repeated the information--adding--

"I dare say Mr. Sorell didn't speak of it to you, because--he hates it."

"I suppose it's just a theatrical _coup_," said Nora, pa.s.sionately, as they walked on--"to impress the public."

"It isn't!--it isn't anything of the kind. And Otto had only to say no."

"It's ridiculous!--preposterous! They'll clash all day long."

Connie replied with difficulty, as though she had so pondered and discussed this matter with herself that every opinion about it seemed equally reasonable.

"I don't think so. Otto wishes it."

"But why--but _why_?" insisted Nora. "Oh, Connie!--as if Douglas Falloden could look after anybody but himself!"

Then she repented a little. Connie smiled, rather coldly.

"He looked after his father," she said quietly. "I told you all that in my letters. And you forget how it was--that he and Otto came across each other again."

Nora warmly declared that she had not forgotten it, but that it did not seem to her to have anything to do with the extraordinary proposal that the man more responsible than any one else for the maiming--possibly for the death--of Otto Radowitz, if all one heard about him were true, should be now installed as his companion and guardian during these critical months.

She talked with obvious and rather angry common sense, as one who had not pa.s.sed her eighteenth birthday for nothing.

But Connie fell silent. She would not discuss it, and Nora was obliged to let the subject drop.

Mrs. Hooper, whose pinched face had grown visibly older, received her husband's niece with an evident wish to be kind. Alice, too, was almost affectionate, and Uncle Ewen came hurrying out of his study to greet her. But Connie had not been an hour in the house before she had perceived that everybody in it was preoccupied and unhappy; unless, indeed, it were Alice, who had evidently private thoughts of her own, which, to a certain extent, released her from the family worries.

What was the matter? She was determined to know.

It happened that she and Alice went up to bed together. Nora had been closeted with her father in the little schoolroom on the ground floor, since nine o'clock, and when Connie proposed to look in and wish them good night, Alice said uncomfortably--

"Better not. They're--they're very busy."

Connie ruminated. At the top of the stairs, she turned--

"Look here--do come in to me, and have a talk!"

Alice agreed, after a moment's hesitation. There had never been any beginnings of intimacy between her and Connie, and she took Connie's advance awkwardly.

The two girls were however soon seated in Connie's room, where a blazing fire defied the sudden cold of a raw and bleak October. The light danced on Alice's beady black eyes, and arched brows, on her thin but very red lips, on the bright patch of colour in each cheek. She was more than ever like a Watteau sketch in black chalk, heightened with red, and the dress she wore, cut after the pattern of an eighteenth-century sacque, according to an Oxford fas.h.i.+on of that day, fell in admirably with the natural effect. Connie had very soon taken off her tea-gown, loosened and shaken out her hair, and put on a white garment in which she felt at ease. Alice noticed, as Nora had done, that Connie was fast becoming a beauty; but whether the indisputable fact was to be welcomed or resented had still to be decided.

Connie had no sooner settled herself on the small sofa she had managed to fit into her room than she sprang up again.

"Stupid!--where are those letters!" She rummaged in various drawers and bags, hit upon what she wanted, after an impetuous hunt, and returned to the fire.

"Do you know I think Mr. Pryce has a good chance of that post? I got this to-day."

She held out a letter, smiling. Alice flushed and took it. It was from Lord Glaramara, and it concerned that same post in the Conservative Central Office on which Herbert Pryce had had his eyes for some time.

The man holding it had been "going" for months, but was now, at last, gone. The post was vacant, and Connie, who had a pretty natural turn for wire-pulling, fostered by her Italian bringing up, had been trying her hand, both with the Chancellor and her Uncle Langmoor.

"You little intriguer!" wrote Lord Glaramara--"I will do what I can.

Your man sounds very suitable. If he isn't, I can tell you plainly he won't get the post. Neither political party can afford to employ fools just now. But if he is what you say--well, we shall see! Send him up to see me, at the House of Lords, almost any evening next week. He'll have to take his chance, of course, of finding me free. If I cotton to him, I'll send him on to somebody else. And--_don't talk about it!_ Your letter was just like your mother. She had an art of doing these things!"

Alice read and reread the note. When she looked up from it, it was with a rather fl.u.s.tered face.

"Awfully good of you, Connie! May I show it--to Mr. Pryce?"

"Yes--but get it back. Tell him to write to Lord Glaramara to-morrow.

Well, now then"--Connie discovered and lit a cigarette, the sight of which stirred in Alice a kind of fascinated disapproval,--"now then, tell me what's the matter!--why Uncle Ewen looks as if he hadn't had a day's rest since last term, and Nora's so glum--and why he and she go sitting up at night together when they ought to be in their beds?"

Connie's little woman-of-the-world air--very evident in this speech--which had always provoked Alice in their earlier acquaintance, pa.s.sed now unnoticed. Miss Hooper sat perplexed and hesitating, staring into the fire. But with that note in her pocket, Alice felt herself at once in a new and detached position towards her family.

"It's money, of course," she said at last, her white brow puckering.

"It's not only bills--they're dreadfully worrying!--we seem never to get free from them, but it's something else--something quite new--which has only happened, lately. There is an old loan from the bank that has been going on for years. Father had almost forgotten it, and now they're pressing him. It's dreadful. They know we're so hard up."