Part 6 (2/2)

Then he watched her in what seemed something of a triumphal progress through the crowded hall. He saw the looks of the girl students from the newly-organised women's colleges--as she pa.s.sed--a little askance and chill; he watched a Scotch metaphysical professor, with a fiery face set in a ma.s.s of flaming hair and beard, which had won him the nickname from his philosophical pupils of ”the devil in a mist,” forcing an introduction to her; he saw the Vice-Chancellor graciously unbending, and man after man come up among the younger dons to ask Sorell to present them. She received it all with a smiling and nonchalant grace, perfectly at her ease, it seemed, and ready to say the right thing to young and old. ”It's the training they get--the young women of her sort--that does it,” thought the Master. ”They are in society from their babyhood. Our poor, battered aristocracy--the Radicals have kicked away all its natural supports, and left it _dans l'air_; but it can still teach manners and the art to please. The undergraduates, however, seem shy of her.”

For although among the groups of men, who stood huddled together mostly at the back of the room, many eyes were turned upon the newcomer, no one among them approached her. She held her court among the seniors, as no doubt, thought the Master, she had been accustomed to do from the days of her short frocks. He envisaged the apartment in the Palazzo Barberini whereof the fame had often reached Oxford, for the Risboroughs held open house there for the English scholar and professor on his travels. He himself had not been in Rome for fifteen years, and had never made the Risboroughs' acquaintance in Italy. But the kind of society which gathers round the English peer of old family who takes an apartment in Rome or Florence for the winter was quite familiar to him--the travelling English men and women of the same cla.s.s, diplomats of all nations, high ecclesiastics, a cardinal or two, the heads of the great artistic or archaeological 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, sc.r.a.ped 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-cla.s.s. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 cla.s.sic of the cla.s.sics. 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 protege, 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 pa.s.sed 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; a.s.sembled 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.

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