But she always laughed and went. And presently, as she crossed the hall again and heard animated voices in the schoolroom, her brown eyes would show a merry satisfaction.
Meanwhile Nora was growing thinner and handsomer day by day. She was shedding awkwardness without any loss of that subacid sincerity that was her charm. Connie, as much as she dared, took her dressing in hand. She was never allowed to give a thing; but Annette’s fingers were quick and clever, and Nora’s Spartan garb was sometimes transformed by them under the orders of a coaxing or audacious Constance. The mere lifting of the load of care had let the young plant shoot, so that many persons passing Ewen Hooper’s second daughter in the street would turn round now to look at her in surprise. Was that really the stout, podgy schoolgirl, who had already, by virtue of her strong personality, made a certain impression in the university town? People had been vaguely sorry for her, or vaguely thought of her as plain but good. Alice, of course, was pretty; Nora had the virtues. And now here she was, bursting into good looks, more positive than her sister’s.
The girl’s heart indeed was young at last. For the neighbourhood of Connie was infectious. The fairy-godmothering of that young woman was going finely. It was the secret hope at the centre of her own life which was playing like captured sunshine upon all the persons about her. Her energy was prodigious. Everything to do with money-matters had been practically settled between her and Sorell and Uncle Ewen; and settled in Connie’s way, expressed, no doubt, in business form. And now she was insisting firmly on the New Year visit to Rome, in spite of many protests from Uncle Ewen and Nora. It was a promise, she declared. They should be let off Athens, if they chose, but Rome—Rome—was their fate. She wrote endless letters, inquiring for rooms, and announcing their coming to her old friends. Uncle Ewen soon had the startled impression that all Rome was waiting for them, and that they could never live up to it.
Finally, Connie persuaded them to settle on rooms in a well-known small hotel, overlooking the garden-front of the Palazzo Barberini, where she had grown up. She wrote to the innkeeper, Signor B., ‘a very old friend of mine,’ who replied that the ‘amici’ of the ‘distintissima signorina’ should be most tenderly looked after. As for the Contessas and Marchesas who wrote, eagerly promising their ‘dearest Constance’ that they would be kind to her relations, they were many; and when Ewen Hooper said nervously that it was clear he must take out both a frock-coat and dress-clothes, Constance laughed and said, ‘Not at all! Signor B. will lend you anything you want,’—a remark which, in the ears of the travellers to be, threw new and unexpected light on the functions of an Italian innkeeper. Meanwhile she piled up guide-books, she gathered maps; and she taught both her uncle and Nora Italian. And so long as she was busied with such matters she seemed the gayest of creatures, and would go singing and laughing about the house.
In another old house in Oxford, too, her coming made delight. She spent many winter hours beside the Master of Beaumont’s fire, gathering fresh light on the ways of scholarship and scholars. The quarrels of the learned had never hitherto come her way. Her father had never quarrelled with anybody. But the Master—poor great man!—had quarrelled with so many people! He had missed promotions which should have been his; he had made discoveries of which others had got the credit; and he kept a quite amazing stock of hatreds in some pocket of his vast intelligence. Constance would listen at first to the expression of them in an awed silence. Was it possible the world contained such mean and treacherous monsters? And why did it matter so much to a man who knew everything?—who held all the classics and all the Renaissance in the hollow of his hand, to whom ‘Latin was no more difficile Than to a blackbird ’tis to whistle’? Then, gradually, she began to have the courage to laugh; to try a little soft teasing of her new friend and mentor, who was at once so wonderful and so absurd. And the Master bore it well, could indeed never have too much of her company; while his white-haired sister beamed at the sight of her. She became the child of a childless house, and when Lady Langmoor sent her peremptory invitations to this or that country mansion where she would meet ‘some charming young men,’ Connie would reply—‘Best thanks, dear Aunt Langmoor—but I am very happy here—and comfortably in love with a gentleman on the sunny side of seventy. Please don’t interfere!’
Only with Herbert Pryce was she ever thorny in these days. She could not forgive him that it was not till his appointment at the Conservative Central Office, due to Lord Glaramara’s influence, was actually signed and sealed, that he proposed to Alice. Till the goods had been delivered, he never finally committed himself. Even Nora had underrated his prudence. But at last one evening he arrived at Medburn Hall after dinner with the look of one whose mind is magnificently made up. By common consent, the drawing-room was abandoned to him and Alice, and when they emerged, Alice held her head triumphantly, and her lover was all jocosity and self-satisfaction.
‘She really is a dear little thing,’ he said complacently to Connie, when the news had been told, and excitement subsided. ‘We shall do capitally.’
‘Enfin?’ said Connie, with the old laugh in her eyes. ‘You are quite sure?’
He looked at her uneasily.
‘It never does to hurry these things,’ he said, rather pompously. ‘I wanted to feel I could give her what she had a right to expect. We owe you a great deal, Lady Constance—or—perhaps now—I may call you Constance?’