Lady Connie. Mrs. Humphry Ward
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everywhere," said Sorell, as he made his way to Constance through the crowd of departing guests in the college gateway. "Where did you hide yourself? The Lord Chancellor was sad not to say good-bye to you."
Constance summoned an answering tone of regret.
"How good of him! I was only exploring the garden--with Mr. Falloden."
At the name, there was a quick and stiffening change in Sorell's face.
"You knew him before? Yes--he told me. A queer fellow--very able. They say he'll get his First. Well--we shall meet at the Eights and then we'll make plans. Goodnight."
He smiled on her, and went his way, ruminating uncomfortably as he walked back to his college along the empty midnight streets. Falloden? It was to be hoped there was nothing in that! How Ella Risborough would have detested the type! But there was much that was not her mother in the daughter. He vowed to himself that he would do his small best to watch over Ella Risborough's child.
There was little or no conversation in the four-wheeler that bore the Hooper party home. Mrs. Hooper and Alice were stiffly silent, while the Reader chaffed Constance a little about her successes of the evening. But he, too, was sleepy and tired, and the talk dropped. As they lighted their bedroom candles in the hall, Mrs. Hooper said to her niece, in her thin, high tone, mincing and coldly polite:
"I think it would have been better, Constance, if you had told us you knew Lord Glaramara. I don't wish to find fault, but such--such concealments--are really very awkward!"
Constance opened her eyes. She could have defended herself easily. She had no idea that her aunt was unaware of the old friendship between her parents and Lord Glaramara, who was no more interesting to her personally than many others of their Roman habitués, of whom the world was full. But she was too preoccupied to spend any but the shortest words on such a silly thing.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Ellen. I really didn't understand."
And she went up to bed, thinking only of Falloden; while Alice followed her, her small face pinched and weary, her girlish mind full of pain.
CHAPTER IV
On the day after the Vice-Chancellor's party, Falloden, after a somewhat slack morning's work, lunched in college with Meyrick. After hall, the quadrangle was filled with strolling men, hatless and smoking, discussing the chances of the Eights, the last debate at the Union, and the prospects of individual men in the schools.
Presently the sound of a piano was heard from the open windows of a room on the first floor.
"Great Scott!" said Falloden irritably to Meyrick, with whom he was walking arm in arm, "what a noise that fellow Radowitz makes! Why should we have to listen to him? He behaves as though the whole college belonged to him. We can't hear ourselves speak."
"Treat him like a barrel-organ and remove him!" said Meyrick, laughing. He was a light-hearted, easy-going youth, a "fresher" in his first summer term, devoted to Falloden, whose physical and intellectual powers seemed to him amazing.
"Bombard him first!" said Falloden. "Who's got some soda-water bottles?" And he beckoned imperiously to a neighbouring group of men,--"bloods"--always ready to follow him in a "rag," and heroes together with him of a couple of famous bonfires, in Falloden's first year.
They came up, eager for any mischief, the summer weather in their veins like wine. They stood round Falloden laughing and chaffing, till finally three of them disappeared at his bidding. They came rushing back, from various staircases, laden with soda-water bottles.
Then Falloden, with two henchmen, placed himself under Radowitz's windows, and summoned the offender in a stentorian voice:
"Radowitz! stop that noise!"
No answer--except that Radowitz in discoursing some "music of the future," and quite unaware of the shout from below, pounded and tormented the piano more than ever. The waves of crashing sound seemed to fill the quadrangle.
"We'll summon him thrice!" said Falloden. "Then--fire!"
But Radowitz remained deaf, and the assailant below gave the order. Three strong right arms below discharged three soda-water bottles, which went through the open window.
"My goody!" said Meyrick, "I hope he's well out of the way!" There was a sound of breaking glass. Then Radowitz, furious, appeared at his window, his golden hair more halolike than ever in the bright sun.
"What are you doing, you idiots?"
"Stop that noise, Radowitz!" shouted Falloden. "It annoys us!"
"Can't help it. It pleases me," said Radowitz shortly, proceeding to close the window. But he had scarcely done so, when Falloden launched another bottle, which went smash through the window and broke it. The glass fell out into the quadrangle, raising all the echoes. The rioters below held their laughing breaths.
"I say, what about the dons?" said one.
"Keep a lookout!" said another.
But meanwhile Radowitz had thrown up the injured window, and crimson with rage he leaned far out and flung half a broken bottle at the group below. All heads ducked, but the ragged missile only just missed Meyrick's curly poll.
"Not pretty that!--not pretty at all!" said Falloden coolly. "Might really have done some mischief. We'll avenge you, Meyrick. Follow me, you fellows!"
And in one solid phalanx, they charged, six or seven strong, up Radowitz's staircase. But he was ready for them. The oak was sported, and they could hear him dragging some heavy chairs against it. Meanwhile, from the watchers left in the quad, came a loud cough.
"Dons!--by Jove! Scatter!" And they rushed further up the staircase, taking refuge in the rooms of two of the "raggers." The lookout in the quadrangle turned to walk quietly towards the porter's lodge. The Senior Tutor--a spare tall man with a Jove-like brow--emerged from the library, and stood on the steps surveying the broken glass.
"All run to cover, of course!" was his reflection, half scornful, half disgusted. "But I am certain I heard Falloden's voice. What a puppy stage it is! They would be much better employed worrying old boots!"
But philosopher or no, he got no clue. The quadrangle was absolutely quiet and deserted, save for the cheeping of the swallows flitting across it, and the whistling of a lad in the porter's lodge. The Senior Tutor returned to the library, where he was unpacking a box of new books.
The rioters emerged at discreet intervals, and rejoined each other in the broad street outside the college.
"Vengeance is still due!"--said Falloden, towering among them, always with the faithful and grinning Meyrick at his side--"and we will repay. But now, to our tents! Ta, ta!" And dismissing them all, including Meyrick, he walked off alone in the direction of Holywell. He was going to look out a horse for Constance Bledlow.
As he walked, he said to himself that he was heartily sick of this Oxford life, ragging and all. It was a good thing it was so nearly done. He meant to get his First, because he didn't choose, having wasted so much time over it, not to get it. But it wouldn't give him any particular pleasure to get it. The only thing that really mattered was that Constance Bledlow was in Oxford, and that when his schools were over, he would have nothing to do but to stay on two or three weeks and force the running with her. He felt himself immeasurably older than his companions with whom he had just been rioting. His mind was set upon a man's interests and aims--marriage, travel, Parliament; they were still boys, without a mind among them. None the less, there was an underplot running through his consciousness all the time as to how best to punish Radowitz--both for his throw, and his impertinence in monopolising a certain lady for at least a quarter of an hour on the preceding evening.
At the well-known livery-stables in Holywell, he found a certain animation. Horses were in demand, as