Lady Connie. Mrs. Humphry Ward
of the same class, diplomats of all nations, high ecclesiastics, a cardinal or two, the heads of the great artistic or archæological schools, Americans, generals, senators, deputies--with just a sprinkling of young men. A girl of this girl's age and rank would have many opportunities, of course, of meeting young men, in the free and fascinating life of the Roman spring, but primarily her business in her mother's salon would have been to help her mother, to make herself agreeable to the older men, and to gather her education--in art, literature, and politics--as a coming woman of the world from their talk. The Master could see her smiling on a monsignore, carrying tea to a cardinal, or listening to the Garibaldian tales of some old veteran of the Risorgimento.
"It is an education--of its own kind," he thought. "Is it worth more or less than other kinds?"
And he looked round paternally on some of the young girl students then just penetrating Oxford; fresh, pleasant faces--little positive beauty--and on many the stamp, already prematurely visible, of the anxieties of life for those who must earn a livelihood. Not much taste in dress, which was often clumsy and unbecoming; hair, either untidy, or treated as an enemy, scraped back, held in, the sole object being to take as little time over it as possible; and, in general, the note upon them all of an educated and thrifty middle-class. His feelings, his sympathies, were all with them. But the old gallant in him was stirred by the tall figure in white satin, winding its graceful way through the room and conquering as it went.
"Ah--now that fellow, Herbert Pryce, has got hold of her, of course! If ever there was a climber!--But what does Miss Hooper say?"
And retreating to a safe corner the Master watched with amusement the flattering eagerness with which Mr. Pryce, who was a fellow of his own college, was laying siege to the newcomer. Pryce was rapidly making a great name for himself as a mathematician. "And is a second-rate fellow, all the same," thought the Master, contemptuously, being like Uncle Ewen a classic of the classics. But the face of little Alice Hooper, which he caught from time to time, watching--with a strained and furtive attention--the conversation between Pryce and her cousin, was really a tragedy; at least a tragi-comedy. Some girls are born to be supplanted!
But who was it Sorell was, introducing to her now?--to the evident annoyance of Mr. Pryce, who must needs vacate the field. A striking figure of a youth! Golden hair, of a wonderful ruddy shade, and a clear pale face; powerfully though clumsily made; and with a shy and sensitive expression.
The Master turned to enquire of a Christ Church don who had come up to speak to him.
"Who is that young man with a halo like the 'Blessed Damosel'?"
"Talking to Lady Constance Bledlow? Oh, don't you know? He is Sorell's protégé, Radowitz, a young musician--and poet!--so they say. Sorell discovered him in Paris, made great friends with him, and then persuaded him to come and take the Oxford musical degree. He is at Marmion, where the dons watch over him. But they say he has been abominably ragged by the rowdy set in college--led by that man Falloden. Do you know him?"
"The fellow who got the Ireland last year?"
The other nodded.
"As clever and as objectionable as they make 'em! Ah, here comes our great man!"
For amid a general stir, the Lord Chancellor had made his entrance, and was distributing greetings, as he passed up the hall, to his academic contemporaries and friends. He was a tall, burly man, with a strong black head and black eyes under bushy brows, combined with an infantile mouth and chin, long and happily caricatured in all the comic papers. But in his D.C.L. gown he made a very fine appearance; assembled Oxford was proud of him as one of the most successful of her sons; and his progress toward the dais was almost royal.
Suddenly, his voice--a famous voix d'or, well known in the courts and in Parliament--was heard above the general buzz. It spoke in astonishment and delight.
"Lady Constance! where on earth have you sprung from? Well, this is a pleasure!"
And Oxford looked on amused while its distinguished guest shook a young lady in white by both hands, asking eagerly a score of questions, which he would hardly allow her to answer. The young lady too was evidently pleased by the meeting; her face had flushed and lit up; and the bystanders for the first time thought her not only graceful and picturesque, but positively handsome.
"Ewen!" said Mrs. Hooper angrily in her husband's ear, "why didn't Connie tell us she knew Lord Glaramara! She let me talk about him to her--and never said a word!--a single word!"
Ewen Hooper shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm sure I don't know, my dear."
Mrs. Hooper turned to her daughter who had been standing silent and neglected beside her, suffering, as her mother well knew, torments of wounded pride and feeling. For although Herbert Pryce had been long since dismissed by Connie, he had not yet returned to the side of the eldest Miss Hooper.
"I don't like such ways," said Mrs. Hooper, with sparkling eyes. "It was ill-bred and underhanded of Connie not to tell us at once--I shall certainly speak to her about it!"
"It makes us look such fools," said Alice, her mouth pursed and set. "I told Mr. Pryce that Connie knew no one to-night, except Mr. Sorell and Mr. Falloden."
The hall grew more crowded; the talk more furious. Lord Glaramara insisted, with the wilfulness of the man who can do as he pleases, that Constance Bledlow--whoever else came and went--should stay beside him.
"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 shiver 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 passage 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 banal because it happens every year, and because it's all mixed up with salmon mayonnaise, and cider-cup--and it isn't banal, because it's Oxford!"
Constance was sitting under the light shadow of a plane-tree, not yet fully out; Falloden was stretched on the grass at her feet. Before her ran a vast lawn which had taken generations to make; and all round it, masses of flowering trees, chestnuts, lilacs, laburnums, now advancing, now receding, made inlets or promontories of the grass,