Lady Connie. Mrs. Humphry Ward
Constance! Where have you sprung from? Oh, I know--you are with the Hoopers! Have you been here long?"
They shook hands, and Constance obediently answered the newcomer's questions. She seemed indeed to like answering them, and nothing could have been more courteous and kind than his manner of asking them. He was clearly a senior man, a don, who, after a strenuous morning of lecturing, was hurrying--in the festal Eights week--to meet some friends on the river. His face was one of singular charm, the features regular, the skin a pale olive, the hair and eyes intensely black. Whereas Falloden's features seemed to lie, so to speak, on the surface, the mouth and eyes scarcely disturbing the general level of the face mask--no indentation in the chin, and no perceptible hollow tinder the brow,--this man's eyes were deeply sunk, and every outline of the face--cheeks, chin and temples--chiselled and fined away into an almost classical perfection. The man's aspect indeed was Greek, and ought only to have expressed the Greek blitheness, the Greek joy in life. But, in truth, it was a very modern and complex soul that breathed from both face and form.
Constance had addressed him as "Mr. Sorell." He turned to walk with her to her door, talking eagerly. He was asking her about various friends in whose company they had last met--apparently at Rome; and he made various references to "your mother," which Constance accepted gently, as though they pleased her.
They paused at the Hoopers' door.
"But when can I see you?" he asked. "Has Mrs. Hooper a day at home? Will you come to lunch with me soon? I should like to show you my rooms. I have some of those nice things we bought at Syracuse--your father and I--do you remember? And I have a jolly look out over the garden. When will you come?"
"When you like. But chaperons seem to be necessary!"
"Oh, I can provide one--any number! Some of the wives of our married fellows are great friends of mine. I should like you to know them. But wouldn't Mrs. Hooper bring you?"
"Will you write to her?"
He looked a little confused.
"Of course I know your uncle very well. He and I work together in many things. May I come and call?"
"Of course you may!" She laughed again, with that wilful sound in the laugh which he remembered. He wondered how she was going to get on at the Hoopers. Mrs. Hooper's idiosyncrasies were very generally known. He himself had always given both Mrs. Hooper and her eldest daughter a wide berth in the social gatherings of Oxford. He frankly thought Mrs. Hooper odious, and had long since classed Miss Alice as a stupid little thing with a mild talent for flirtation.
Then, as he held out his hand to say good-bye, he suddenly remembered the Vice-Chancellor's party.
"By the way, there's a big function to-night. You're going, of course? Oh, yes--make them take you! I hadn't meant to go--but now I shall--on the chance!"
He grasped her hand, holding it a little. Then he was gone, and the Hoopers' front door swung suddenly wide, opened by some one invisible.
Connie, a little flushed and excited, stepped into the hall, and there perceived Mrs. Hooper behind the door.
"You are rather late, Constance," said that lady coldly. "But, of course, it doesn't matter. The servants are at their dinner still, so I opened the door. So you know Mr. Sorell?"
From which Constance perceived that her aunt had observed her approach to the house, in Mr. Sorell's company, through the little side window of the hall. She straightened her shoulders impatiently.
"My father and mother knew him in Rome, Aunt Ellen. He used to come to our apartment. Is Uncle Ewen in the study? I want to speak to him."
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 embarrassment, 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 passionate 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