Lady Connie. Mrs. Humphry Ward

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing from his desk with all his brains alert. Anyway, the Reader, when there was no college or university engagement to pin him down, would stand often--"spilling the morning in recreation"; in other words, gossiping with his wife and children, or loitering over the newspapers, till the inner monitor turned upon him. Then he would work furiously for hours; and the work when done was good. For there would be in it a kind of passion, a warmth born of the very effort and friction of the will which had been necessary to get it done at all.

      Nora, however, had not come in to gossip. She was in a white heat.

      "Father!--we ought not to let Connie furnish her own rooms!"

      "But, my dear, who thinks of her doing any such thing? What do you mean?" And Dr. Hooper took his pipe out of his mouth, and stood protesting.

      "She's gone out, she and Annette. They slipped out just now when mother came in to you; and I'm certain they've gone to B's"--the excited girl named a well-known Oxford furniture shop--"to buy all sorts of things."

      "Well, after all, it's my house!" said the Reader, smiling. "Connie will have to ask my leave first."

      "Oh, she'll persuade you!" cried Nora, standing before her father with her hands behind her. "She'll make us all do what she wants. She'll be like a cuckoo in the nest. She'll be too strong for us."

      Ewen Hooper put out a soothing hand, and patted his youngest daughter on the shoulder.

      "Wait a bit, my dear. And when Connie comes back just ask her to step in here a moment. And now will you both please be gone--at once?--quick march!"

      And taking his wife and daughter by the shoulders, he turned them both forcibly out, and sat down to make his final preparations for a lecture that afternoon on the "feminism" of Euripides.

      Meanwhile Connie Bledlow and her maid were walking quickly down the Broad towards the busy Cornmarket with its shops. It was a brilliant morning--one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun. Every outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright air. The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts. The figures, even, passing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees and the buildings. The white in the women's dresses; the short black gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the children's frocks; the overhanging masses of hawthorn and lilac that here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through and over college walls:--everything shimmered and shone in the May sunlight. The air too was tonic and gay, a rare thing for Oxford; and Connie, refreshed by sleep, walked with such a buoyant and swinging step that her stout maid could hardly keep up with her. Many a passer-by observed her. Men on their way to lecture, with battered caps and gowns slung round their necks, threw sharp glances at the tall girl in black, with the small pale face, so delicately alive, and the dark eyes that laughed--aloof and unabashed--at all they saw.

      "What boys they are!" said Constance presently, making a contemptuous lip. "They ought to be still in the nursery."

      "What--the young men in the caps, my lady?"

      "Those are the undergraduates, Annette--the boys who live in the colleges."

      "They don't stare like the Italian young gentlemen," said Annette, shrugging her shoulders. "Many a time I wanted to box their ears for the way they looked at you in the street."

      Connie laughed. "I liked it! They were better-looking than these boys. Annette, do you remember that day two years ago when I took you to that riding competition--what did they call it?--that gymkhana--in the Villa Borghese--and we saw all those young officers and their horses? What glorious fellows they were, most of them! and how they rode!"

      Her cheek flushed to the recollection. For a moment the Oxford street passed out of sight. She saw the grassy slopes, the stone pines, the white walls, the classic stadium of the Villa Borghese, with the hot June sun stabbing the open spaces, and the deep shadows under the ilexes; and in front of the picture, the crowd of jostling horses, with their riders, bearing the historic names of Rome--Colonnas, Orsinis, Gaetanis, Odescalchis, and the rest. A young and splendid brood, all arrogant life and gaiety, as high-mettled as their English and Irish horses. And in front a tall, long-limbed cavalry officer in the Queen's household, bowing to Constance Bledlow, as he comes back, breathless and radiant from the race he has just won, his hand tight upon the reins, his athlete's body swaying to each motion of his horse, his black eyes laughing into hers. Why, she had imagined herself in love with him for a whole week!

      Then, suddenly, she perceived that in her absence of mind she was running straight into a trio of undergraduates who were hurriedly stepping off the path to avoid her. They looked at her, and she at them. They seemed to her all undersized, plain and sallow. They carried books, and two wore glasses. "Those are what he used to call 'smugs'!" she thought contemptuously, her imagination still full of the laughing Italian youths on their glistening horses. And, she began to make disparaging remarks about English young men to Annette. If this intermittent stream of youths represented them, the English gioventù was not much to boast of.

      Next a furniture shop appeared, with wide windows, and a tempting array of wares, and in they went. Constance had soon bought a wardrobe and a cheval-glass for herself, an armchair, a carpet, and a smaller wardrobe for Annette, and seeing a few trifles, like a French screen, a small sofa, and an inlaid writing-table in her path, she threw them in. Then it occurred to her that Uncle Ewen might have something to say to these transactions, and she hastily told the shopman not to send the things to Medburn House till she gave the order.

      Out they went, this time into the crowded Cornmarket, where there were no colleges, and where the town that was famous long before the University began, seemed to be living its own vigorous life, untrammelled by the men in gowns. Only in seeming, however, for in truth every single shop in the street depended upon the University.

      They walked on into the town, looking into various colleges, sitting in Broad Walk, and loitering over shops, till one o'clock struck from Oxford's many towers.

      "Heavens!" said Constance--"and lunch is at 1.15!"

      They turned and walked rapidly along the "Corn," which was once more full of men hurrying back to their own colleges from the lecture rooms of Balliol and St. John's. Now, it seemed to Constance that the men they passed were of a finer race. She noticed plenty of tall fellows, with broad shoulders, and the look of keen-bitten health.

      "Look at that pair coming!" she said to Annette. "That's better!"

      The next moment, she stopped, confused, eyes wide, lips parted. For the taller of the two had taken off his cap, and stood towering and smiling in her path. A young man, of about six foot three, magnificently made, thin with the leanness of an athlete in training,--health, power, self-confidence, breathing from his joyous looks and movements--was surveying her. His lifted cap showed a fine head covered with thick brown curls. The face was long, yet not narrow; the cheek-bones rather high, the chin conspicuous. The eyes--very dark and heavily lidded--were set forward under strongly marked eyebrows; and both they, the straight nose with its close nostrils, and the red mouth, seemed to be drawn in firm yet subtle strokes on the sunburnt skin, as certain Dutch and Italian painters define the features of their sitters in a containing outline as delicate as it is unfaltering. The aspect of this striking person was that of a young king of men, careless, audacious, good-humoured; and Constance Bledlow's expression, as she held out her hand to him, betrayed, much against her will, that she was not indifferent to the sight of him.

      "Well СКАЧАТЬ