Lady Connie Part 46

She had never thought of any such plan as had actually sprung to light.

And she understood Sorell's opposition.

All the same, her heart sang over it. When she had asked Radowitz and Douglas to meet, each unbeknown to the other, when she had sent away the kind old aunts and prepared it all, she had reckoned on powers of feeling in Falloden, in which apparently only she and Aunt Marcia believed; and she had counted on the mystical and religious fervour she had long since discovered in Radowitz. That night--after Sir Arthur's death--she had looked tremblingly into the boy's very soul, had perceived his wondering sense of a special message to him through what had happened, from a G.o.d who suffered and forgives.

Yes, she had tried to make peace.

And she guessed--the tears blinding her as she walked--at the true meaning of Falloden's sudden impulse, and Otto's consent. Falloden's was an impulse of repentance; and Otto's had been an impulse of pardon, in the Christian sense. "If I am to die, I will die at peace with him." Was that the thought--the tragic and touching thought--in the boy's mind?

As to Falloden, could he do it?--could he rise to the height of what was offered him? She prayed he might; she believed he could.

Her whole being was aflame. Douglas was no longer in love with her; that was clear. What matter, if he made peace with his own soul? As for her, she loved him with her whole heart, and meant to go on loving him, whatever any one might say. And that being so, she would of course never marry.

Could she ever make Nora understand the situation? By letter, it was certainly useless to try!

PART III

CHAPTER XVI

Constance Bledlow stepped out of the Bletchley train into the crowded Oxford station. Annette was behind her. As they made their way towards the luggage van, Connie saw a beckoning hand and face. They belonged to Nora Hooper, and in another minute Connie found herself taken possession of by her cousin. Nora was deeply sunburnt. Her colour was more garishly red and brown, her manner more trenchant than ever. At sight of Connie her face flushed with a sudden smile, as though the owner of the face could not help it. Yet they had only been a few minutes together before Connie had discovered that, beneath the sunburn, there was a look of tension and distress, and that the young brown eyes, usually so bright and bold, were dulled with fatigue. But to notice such things in Nora was only to be scorned. Connie held her tongue.

"Can't you leave Annette to bring the luggage, and let us walk up?" said Nora.

Connie a.s.sented, and the two girls were soon in the long and generally crowded street leading to the Cornmarket. Nora gave rapidly a little necessary information. Term had just begun, and Oxford was "dreadfully full." She had got another job of copying work at the Bodleian, for which she was being paid by the University Press, and what with that and the work for her coming exam, she was "pretty driven." But that was what suited her. Alice and her mother were "all right."

"And Uncle Ewen?" said Connie.

Nora paused a moment.

"Well, you won't think he looks any the better for his holiday," she said at last, with an attempt at a laugh. "And of course he's doing ten times too much work. Hang work! I loathe work: I want to 'do nothing forever and ever.'"

"Why don't you set about it then?" laughed Connie.

"Because--" Nora began impetuously; and then shut her lips. She diverged to the subject of Mr. Pryce. They had not seen or heard anything of him for weeks, she said, till he had paid them an evening call, the night before, the first evening of the new term.

Connie interrupted.

"Oh, but that reminds me," she said eagerly, "I've got an awfully nice letter--to-day--from Lord Glaramara. Mr. Pryce is to go up and see him."

Nora whistled.

"You have! Well, that settles it. He'll now graciously allow himself to propose. And then we shall all pretend to be greatly astonished. Alice will cry, and mother will say she 'never expected to lose her daughter so soon.' What a humbug everybody is!" said the child, bitterly, with more emphasis than grammar.

"But suppose he doesn't get anything!" cried Connie, alarmed at such a sudden jump from the possible to the certain.

"Oh, but he will! He's the kind of person that gets things," said Nora contemptuously. "Well, we wanted a bit of good news!"

Connie jumped at the opening.

"Dear Nora!--have things been going wrong? You look awfully tired. Do tell me!"

Nora checked herself at once. "Oh, not much more than usual," she said repellently. "And what about you, Connie? Aren't you very bored to be coming back here, after all your grand times?"

They had emerged into the Corn. Before them, was the old Church of St.

Mary Magdalen, and the modern pile of Balliol. In the distance stretched the Broad, over which the October evening was darkening fast; the Sheldonian in the far distance, with its statued railing; and the gates of Trinity on the left. The air was full of bells, and the streets of undergraduates; a stream of young men taking fresh possession, as it were, of the grey city, which was their own as soon as they chose to come back to it. The Oxford damp, the Oxford mist, was everywhere, pierced by lamps, and window-lights, and the last red of a stormy sunset.

Connie drew in her breath.

"No, I am not sorry, I am very glad to be back--though my aunts have been great dears to me."

"I'll bet anything Annette isn't glad to be back--after the Langmoors!"

said Nora grimly.

Connie laughed.

"She'll soon settle in. What do you think?" She slipped her arm into her cousin's. "I'm coming down to breakfast!"

"You're not! I never heard such nonsense! Why should you?"

Connie sighed.

"I think I must begin to do something."

"Do something! For goodness' sake, don't!" Nora's voice was fierce. "I did think you might be trusted!"

"To carry out your ideals? So kind of you!"

"If you take to muddling about with books and lectures and wearing ugly clothes, I give you up," said Nora firmly.

"Nora, dear, I'm the most shocking ignoramus. Mayn't I learn something?"

"Mr. Sorell may teach you Greek. I don't mind that."

Connie sighed again, and Nora stole a look at the small pale face under the sailor hat. It seemed to her that her cousin had somehow grown beautiful in these months of absence. On her arrival in May, Connie's good looks had been a freakish and variable thing, which could be often and easily disputed. She could always make a certain brilliant or bizarre effect, by virtue of her mere slenderness and delicacy, combined with the startling beauty of her eyes and hair. But the touch of sarcasm, of a half-hostile remoteness, in her look and manner, were often enough to belie the otherwise delightful impression of first youth, to suggest something older and sharper than her twenty years had any right to be. It meant that she had been brought up in a world of elder people, sharing from her teens in its half-amused, half-sceptical judgments of men and things. Nothing was to be seen of it in her roused moments of pleasure or enthusiasm; at other times it jarred, as though one caught a glimpse of autumn in the spring.

But since she and Nora had last met, something had happened. Some heat of feeling or of sympathy had fused in her the elements of being; so that a more human richness and warmth, a deeper and tenderer charm breathed from her whole aspect. Nora, though so much the younger, had hitherto been the comforter and sustainer of Connie; now for the first time, the tired girl felt an impulse--firmly held back--to throw her arms round Connie's neck and tell her own troubles.

She did not betray it, however. There were so many things she wanted to know. First--how was it that Connie had come back so soon? Nora understood there were invitations to the Tamworths and others. Mr.

Sorell had reported that the Langmoors wished to carry their niece with them on a round of country-house visits in the autumn, and that Connie had firmly stuck to it that she was due at Oxford for the beginning of term.

"Why didn't you go," said Nora, half scoffing--"with all those frocks wasting in the drawers?"

Connie retorted that, as for parties, Oxford, had seemed to her in the summer term the most gay and giddy place she had ever been in, and that she had always understood that in the October and Lent terms people dined out every night.

"But all the same--one can think a little here," she said slowly.