Lady Connie Part 7

"You can't think what I owed to her dear people in Rome three years ago!" he said to the Vice-Chancellor. "I adored her mother! And Constance is a charming child. She and I made great friends. Has she come to live in Oxford for a time? Lucky Oxford! What--with the Hoopers?

Don't know 'em. I shall introduce her to some of my particular allies."

Which he did in profusion, so that Constance found herself bewildered by a constant stream of new acquaintances--fellows, professors, heads of colleges--of various ages and types, who looked at her with amused and kindly eyes, talked to her for a few pleasant minutes and departed, quite conscious that they had added a pebble to the girl's pile and delighted to do it.

"It is your cousin, not the Lord Chancellor, who is the guest of the evening!" laughed Herbert Pryce, who had made his way back at last to Alice Hooper. "I never saw such a success!"

Alice tossed her head in a petulant silence; and a madrigal by the college choir checked any further remarks from Mr. Pryce. After the madrigal came a general move for refreshments, which were set out in the college library and in the garden. The Lord Chancellor must needs offer his arm to his host's sister, and lead the way. The Warden followed, with the wife of the Dean of Christ Church, and the hall began to thin.

Lord Glaramara looked back, smiling and beckoning to Constance, as though to say--"Don't altogether desert me!"

But a voice--a tall figure--interposed--

"Lady Constance, let me take you into the garden? It's much nicer than upstairs."

A slight s.h.i.+ver ran, unseen, through the girl's frame. She wished to say no; she tried to say no. And instead she looked up--haughty, but acquiescent.

"Very well."

And she followed Douglas Falloden through the panelled pa.s.sage outside the hall leading to the garden. Sorell, who had hurried up to find her, arrived in time to see her disappearing through the lights and shadows of the moonlit lawn.

"We can do this sort of thing pretty well, can't we? It's ba.n.a.l because it happens every year, and because it's all mixed up with salmon mayonnaise, and cider-cup--and it isn't ba.n.a.l, because it's Oxford!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Constance sat in the shadow of a plane-tree with Falloden at her feet_]

Constance was sitting under the light shadow of a plane-tree, not yet fully out; Falloden was stretched on the gra.s.s at her feet. Before her ran a vast lawn which had taken generations to make; and all round it, ma.s.ses of flowering trees, chestnuts, lilacs, laburnums, now advancing, now receding, made inlets or promontories of the gra.s.s, turned into silver by the moonlight. At the furthest edge, through the pus.h.i.+ng pyramids of chestnut blossom and the dim drooping gold of the laburnums, could be seen the bastions and battlements of the old city wall, once a fighting reality, now tamed into the mere ornament and appendage of this quiet garden. Over the trees and over the walls rose the spires and towers of a wondrous city; while on the gra.s.s, or through the winding paths disappearing into bosky distances, flickered white dresses, and the slender forms of young men and maidens. A murmur of voices rose and fell on the warm night air; the sound of singing--the thin sweetness of boyish notes--came from the hall, whose decorated windows, brightly lit, shone out over the garden.

"It's Oxford--and it's Brahms," said Constance. "I seem to have known it all before in music: the trees--the lawn--the figures--appearing and disappearing--the distant singing--"

She spoke in a low, dreamy tone, her chin propped on her hand. Nothing could have been, apparently, quieter or more self-governed than her att.i.tude. But her inner mind was full of tumult; resentful memory; uneasy joy; and a tremulous fear, both of herself and of the man at her feet. And the man knew it, or guessed it. He dragged himself a little nearer to her on the gra.s.s.

"Why didn't you tell me when you were coming?"

The tone was light and laughing.

"I owe you no account of my actions," said the girl quickly.

"We agreed to be friends."

"No! We are not friends." She spoke with suppressed violence, and breaking a twig from the tree overshadowing her, she threw it from her, as though the action were a relief.

He sat up, looking up into her face, his hands clasped round his knees.

"That means you haven't forgiven me?"

"It means that I judge and despise you," she said pa.s.sionately; "and that it was not an attraction to me to find you here--quite the reverse!"

"Yet here you are--sitting with me in this garden--and you are looking delicious! That dress becomes you so--you are so graceful--so exquisitely graceful. And you never found a more perfect setting than this place--these lawns and trees--and the old college walls. Oxford was waiting for you, and you for Oxford. Are you laughing at me?"

"Naturally!"

"I could rave on by the hour if you would listen to me."

"We have both something better to do--thank goodness! May I ask if you are doing any work?"

He laughed.

"Ten hours a day. This is my first evening out since March. I came to meet you."

Constance bowed ironically. Then for the first time, since their conversation began, it might have been seen that she had annoyed him.

"Friends are not allowed to doubt each other's statements!" he said with animation. "You see I still persist that you allowed me that name, when--you refused me a better. As to my work, ask any of my friends.

Talk to Meyrick. He is a dear boy, and will tell you anything you like.

He and I 'dig' together in Beaumont Street. My schools are now only three weeks off. I work four hours in the morning. Then I play till six--and get in another six hours between then and 1 a.m."

"Wonderful!" said Constance coolly. "Your ways at Cannes were different.

It's a mercy there's no Monte Carlo within reach."

"I play when I play, and work when I work!" he said with emphasis. "The only thing to hate and shun always--is moderation."

"And yet you call yourself a cla.s.sic! Well, you seem to be sure of your First. At least Uncle Ewen says so."

"Ewen Hooper? He is a splendid fellow--a real h.e.l.lenist. He and I get on capitally. About your aunt--I am not so sure."

"n.o.body obliges you to know her," was the tranquil reply.

"Ah!--but if she has the keeping of you! Are you coming to tea with me and my people? I have got a man in college to lend me his rooms. My mother and sister will be up for two nights. Very inconsiderate of them--with my schools coming on--but they would do it. Thursday?--before the Eights? Won't my mother be chaperon enough?"

"Certainly. But it only puts off the evil day."

"When I must grovel to Mrs. Hooper?--if I am to see anything of you?

Splendid! You are trying to discipline me again--as you did at Cannes!"

In the semidarkness she could see the amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes. Her own feeling, in its mingled weakness and antagonism, was that of the feebler wrestler just holding his ground, and fearing every moment to be worsted by some unexpected trick of the game. She gave no signs of it, however.

"I tried, and I succeeded!" she said, as she rose. "You found out that rudeness to my friends didn't answer! Shall we go and get some lemonade?

Wasn't that why you brought me here? I think I see the tent."

They walked on together. She seemed to see--exultantly--that she had both angered and excited him.

"I am never rude," he declared. "I am only honest! Only n.o.body, in this mealy-mouthed world, allows you to be honest; to say and do exactly what represents you. But I shall not be rude to anybody under your wing.

Promise me to come to tea, and I will appear to call on your aunt and behave like any sucking dove."

Constance considered it.

"Lady Laura must write to Aunt Ellen."

"Of course. Any other commands?"