She knocked and went in. Standing with her back to the door she said abruptly--
"I hope you won"t mind, Uncle Ewen, but I"ve been buying a few things we want, for my room and Annette"s. When I go, of course they can be turned out. But may I tell the shop now to send them in?"
The Reader turned in some embarra.s.sment, his spectacles on his nose.
"My dear girl, anything to make you comfortable! But I wish you had consulted me. Of course, we would have got anything you really wanted."
"Oh, that would have been dreadfully unfair!" laughed Constance. "It"s my fault, you see. I"ve got far too many dresses. One seemed not to be able to do without them at Cannes."
"Well, you won"t want so many here," said Dr. Ewen cheerfully, as he rose from his table crowded with books. "We"re all pretty simple at Oxford. We ought to be of course--even our guests. It"s a place of training." He dropped a Greek word absently, putting away his papers the while, and thinking of the subject with which he had just been busy.
Constance opened the door again to make her escape, but the sound recalled Dr. Ewen"s thoughts.
"My dear--has your aunt asked you? We hope you"ll come with us to the Vice-Chancellor"s party to-night. I think it would interest you. After all, Oxford"s not like other places. I think you said last night you knew some undergraduates--"
"I know Mr. Falloden of Marmion," said Constance, "and Mr. Sorell."
The Reader"s countenance broke into smiles.
"Sorell? The dearest fellow in the world! He and I help each other a good deal, though of course we differ--and fight--sometimes. But that"s the salt of life. Yes, I remember, your mother used to mention Sorell in her letters. Well, with those two and ourselves, you"ll have plenty of starting-points. Ah, luncheon!" For the bell rang, and sent Constance hurrying upstairs to take off her things.
As she washed her hands, her thoughts were very busy with the incidents of her morning"s walk. The colours had suddenly freshened in the Oxford world. No doubt she had expected them to freshen; but hardly so soon. A tide of life welled up in her--a tide of pleasure. And as she stood a moment beside the open window of her room before going down, looking at the old Oxford garden just beneath her, and the stately college front beyond, Oxford itself began to capture her, touching her magically, insensibly, as it had touched the countless generations before her. She was the child of two scholars, and she had been brought up in a society both learned and cosmopolitan, traversed by all the main currents and personalities of European politics, but pa.s.sionate all the same for the latest find in the Forum, the newest guesses in criticism, for any fresh light that the present could shed upon the past. And when she looked back upon the moments of those Roman years which had made the sharpest mark upon her, she saw three figures stand out--her gracious and graceful mother; her father, student and aristocrat, so eagerly occupied with life that he had scarcely found the time to die; and Mr. Sorell, her mother"s friend, and then her own. Together--all four--they had gone to visit the Etruscan tombs about Viterbo, they had explored Norba and Ninfa, and had spent a marvellous month at Syracuse.
"And I have never seen him since papa"s death!--and I have only heard from him twice. I wonder why?" She pondered it resentfully. And yet what cause of offence had she? At Cannes, had she thought much about him? In that scene, so troubled and feverish, compared with the old Roman days, there had been for her, as she well knew, quite another dominating figure.
"Just the same!" she thought angrily. "Just as domineering--and provoking. Boggling about Uncle Ewen"s name, as if it was not worth his remembering! I shall compel him to be civil to my relations, just because it will annoy him so much."
At lunch Constance declared prettily that she would be delighted to go to the Vice-Chancellor"s party. Nora sat silent through the meal.
After lunch, Connie went to talk to her aunt about the incoming furniture. Mrs. Hooper made no difficulties at all. The house had long wanted these additions, only there had been no money to buy them with.
Now Mrs. Hooper felt secretly certain that Constance, when she left them, would not want to take the things with her, so that she looked on Connie"s purchases of the morning as her own prospective property.
A furniture van appeared early in the afternoon with the things. Nora hovered about the hall, severely dumb, while they were being carried upstairs. Annette gave all the directions.
But when later on Connie was sitting at her new writing-table contemplating her transformed room with a childish satisfaction, Nora knocked and came in.
She walked up to Connie, and stood looking down upon her. She was very red, and her eyes sparkled.
"I want to tell you that I am disappointed in you--dreadfully disappointed in you!" said the girl fiercely.
"What do you mean!" Constance rose in amazement.
"Why didn"t you insist on my father"s buying these things? You ought to have insisted. You pay us a large sum, and you had a right. Instead, you have humiliated us--because you are rich, and we are poor! It was mean--and purse-proud."
"How dare you say such things?" cried Connie. "You mustn"t come into my room at all, if you are going to behave like this. You know very well I didn"t do it unkindly. It is you who are unkind! But of course it doesn"t matter. You don"t understand. You are only a child!" Her voice shook.
"I am not a child!" said Nora indignantly. "And I believe I know a great deal more about money than you do--because you have never been poor. I have to keep all the accounts here, and make mother and Alice pay their debts. Father, of course, is always too busy to think of such things.
Your money is dreadfully useful to us. I wish it wasn"t. But I wanted to do what was honest--if you had only given me time. Then you slipped out and did it!"
Constance stared in bewilderment.
"Are you the mistress in this house?" she said.
Nora nodded. Her colour had all faded away, and her breath was coming quick. "I practically am," she said stoutly.
"At seventeen?" asked Connie, ironically.
Nora nodded again.
Connie turned away, and walked to the window. She was enraged with Nora, whose attack upon her seemed quite inexplicable and incredible. Then, all in a moment, a bitter forlornness overcame her. Nora, standing by the table, and already pierced with remorse, saw her cousin"s large eyes fill with tears. Connie sat down with her face averted. But Nora--trembling all over--perceived that she was crying. The next moment, the newcomer found Nora kneeling beside her, in the depths of humiliation and repentance.
"I am a beast!--a horrid beast! I always am. Oh, please, please don"t cry!"
"You forget"--said Connie, with difficulty--"how I--how I miss my mother!"
And she broke into a fit of weeping. Nora, beside herself with self-disgust, held her cousin embraced, and tried to comfort her. And presently, after an agitated half-hour, each girl seemed to herself to have found a friend. Reserve had broken; they had poured out confidences to each other; and after the thunder and the shower came the rainbow of peace.
Before Nora departed, she looked respectfully at the beautiful dress of white satin, draped with black, which Annette had laid out upon the bed in readiness for the Vice-Chancellor"s party.
"It will suit you perfectly!" she said, still eager to make up.
Then--eyeing Constance--
"You know, of course, that you are good-looking?"
"I am not hideous--I know that," said Constance, laughing. "You odd girl!"
"We have heard often how you were admired in Rome. I wonder--don"t be offended!"--said Nora, bluntly--"have you ever been in love?"
"Never!" The reply was pa.s.sionately prompt.
Nora looked thoughtful.
"Perhaps you don"t know whether you were or not. Girls get so dreadfully mixed up. But I am sure people--men--have been in love with you."
"Well, of course!" said Connie, with the same emphatic gaiety.
Nora opened her eyes.
""Of course?" But I know heaps of girls with whom n.o.body has ever been in love!"
As soon as she was alone, Connie locked her door, and walked restlessly up and down her room, till by sheer movement she had tamed a certain wild spirit within her let loose by Nora"s question. And as she walked, the grey Oxford walls, the Oxford lilacs and laburnums, vanished from perception. She was in another scene. Hot sun--gleaming orange-gardens and blue sea--bare-footed, black-eyed children--and a man beside her, on whom she has been showering epithets that would have shamed--surely!--any other human being in the world. Tears of excitement are in her eyes; in his a laughing triumph mixed with astonishment.
"But, now--" she thinks, drawing herself up, erect and tense, her hands behind her head; "now, I am ready for him. Let him try such ways again--if he dare!"
CHAPTER III
The party given at St. Hubert"s on this evening in the Eights week was given in honour of a famous guest--the Lord Chancellor of the day, one of the strongest members of a strong Government, of whom St. Hubert"s, which had nurtured him through his four academic years, was quite inordinately proud. It was very seldom that their great nursling was able or willing to revisit the old nest. But the head of the college, who had been in the same cla.s.s-list and rowed in the same boat with the politician, was now Vice-Chancellor of the University; and the greater luminary had come to shine upon the lesser, by way of heightening the dignity of both. For the man who has outsoared his fellows likes to remind himself by contrast of his callow days, before the hungry and fighting impulses had driven him down--a young eaglet--upon the sheepfolds of law and politics; while to the majority of mankind, even to-day, hero-worship, when it is not too exacting, is agreeable.