Connie

“ I say, Connie, look at Mamma: what a grand old woman, the way she walks, laughs and talks! Now that's something like: you see at once that she's a great lady. Look at old Mrs. Friesesteijn beside her: common, noisy, spiteful; a figure like a charwoman's. Hideous, hideous!... Look at Ernst, Connie. Would you ever believe that was a brother of mine? Just like an old Jew; and what a dress-coat, what a dress-coat! Where on earth did the beggar get it cut? He spends all his money on jugs and vases!... Look at Gerrit, Connie. ”

“ The soft, slow movement outside sent a nervous shiver through him; he was aware the next instant that he gripped the pencil more closely in his hand; and then, rising to his feet with a breathless impulse to be face to face at once with the inevitable moment, he made a single step forward, while he watched the knob turn, the door open slowly, and Connie cross the threshold and pause confusedly as if blinded by the lamplight. ”

“ Then Connie rose.
“I told the coachman, Aunt Marcia, I should ride for an hour or so after tea. If I take the Lawley road, does that go anywhere near Flood?”
“It takes you to the top of the moor, and you have a glorious view of the castle and all its woods. Yes, do go that way. You’ll see what the poor things have lost. You did like Douglas, didn’t you?”
“‘Like’ is not exactly the word, is it?” said Constance with a little laugh, vexed to feel that she could not keep the colour out of her cheeks. “And he doesn’t care whether you like him or not!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ After that Connie drooped more and more, until by the time they left Interlaken for Geneva her life seemed to have gone from her, leaving her a pale, silent girl, with a hopeless look in her eyes pitiful to see in one so young. Absolutely true herself, and a child in many things, owing to her convent training, it was hard to imagine deception in any one whom she trusted, and doubly so in him who, if he were alive and well, had deceived her cruelly. ”

“ A stream, fired with the sunset, ran in loops and windings through the park, and all around the hills rose and fell, clothed with dark hanging woods.
Lady Connie held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon Flood Castle and its woods
Constance held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon the castle and its woods. Her mind, as she looked, was one riot of excuse for Douglas Falloden. She knew very well—her own father had been an instance of it—that a man can be rich and well-born, and still remain modest and kind. But—but—“How hardly shall they that have riches—!” ”

“ As soon as she was alone, Connie locked her door, and walked restlessly up and down her room, till by sheer movement she had tamed a certain wild spirit within her let loose by Nora’s question. And as she walked, the grey Oxford walls, the Oxford lilacs and laburnums, vanished from perception. She was in another scene. Hot sun—gleaming orange-gardens and blue sea—bare-footed, black-eyed children—and a man beside her, on whom she has been showering epithets that would have shamed—surely!—any other human being in the world. Tears of excitement are in her eyes ”

“ They puzzle me a good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie."
"You can't help doing that, papa," interrupted Connie, adding with her old roguishness, "You mustn't pass yourself off for very knowing for that. By the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried."
"I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie."
A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us, passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
"I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at best—a creature you can't understand." ”

“ Connie’s mind was steeped in passionate feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses, then her pity. Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his to adjust himself to Otto’s weakness and irritability, he was stirring sympathies and enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul in Connie which was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the more, perhaps, because in Falloden’s manner towards her there was nothing left of the lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it so. Life was all doubt, expectation, thrill—its colour heightened, its meanings underlined. ”

“ Nothing more could be gained from Connie at present; and by-and-by Father John and the two detectives left her alone with Harris. When the door closed behind the three men a timid expression came into Connie's gentle eyes. Beyond doubt her father was sober, but he looked very queer—fearfully red in the face, nervous, trembling, bad in his temper. Connie had seen him in many moods, but this particular mood she had never witnessed in him before. He must really love her. ”

“ But that had been the only spot of pleasure in Connie’s fortnight. Lady Langmoor was puzzled by her pale looks and her evident lack of zest for the amusements offered her. She could only suppose that her niece was tired out with the balls of Commem., and Connie accepted the excuse gratefully. In reality she cared for nothing day after day but the little notes she got from Sorell night and morning giving her news of Radowitz. Till now he had been too ill to see her. ”

“ He suffered, and could not endure to suffer. That life, which had grown up with him as a flattering and obsequious friend, obeying all his whims, yielding to all his desires, should now have turned upon him in this traitorous way, inflicting such monstrous reprisals and rebuffs, roused in him the astonishment and resentment natural to such a temperament.
He, too, drew rein for a moment at the spot where Connie had looked out over Flood Castle and its valley. The beautiful familiar sight produced in him now only a mingling of pain and irritation. The horrid thing was settled, decided. ”

“ But Connie also was playing an important part. Both Lord and Lady Risborough had possessed devoted friends in Paris, and Connie had made others of her own among the young folk with whom she had danced and flirted and talked during a happy spring with her parents in the Avenue Marceau. She had set these playfellows of hers to work, and with most brilliant success. Otto’s story, as told by her vivacious letters, had gone the round. No woman of twice her age could have told it more adroitly. ”

“ It is more than a year since the baby came, and he is now a sturdy boy, disputing his rights with his cousin Connie, a little, delicate, timid girl, who always gives up to him unless his mother interferes to prevent what might become tyranny but for her judicious treatment. Should you be at The 4 Corners some wintry day when the sleighing is good and the sun is shining warm and bright, you may perhaps see the sled on which the first Connie once rode in the mud, and on which little Connie now frequently rides in the snow, with Dr. Kenneth in front. ”

“ From Connie he had gathered that the feminine mind tended naturally toward a material philosophy—toward a deification of the body, a faith in the fugitive allurement of the senses, and because of his earlier initiation he had taken Laura's intellectual radiance as the shining of a virtually disembodied spirit. His own senses had led him, he recognised now, to disastrous issues; his love for Connie had been the prompting of mere physical impulse, and he had emerged from it with a feeling of escaping into freedom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It alone nourishes amid the wilderness of brick; and one can imagine it as feeling a positive satisfaction, a quiet triumph, in the absence of its stronger rivals, oak and beech and ash, like some gentle human life escaped from the tyrannies of competition. These two great trees were the guardian genii of poor Otto’s afternoons. They brought him shade and coolness, even in the hottest hours of a burning June.
Connie sat down beside him, and they looked at each other in silence. Sorell, after a few gay words, had left them together. Radowitz held her hand in his own left. ”

“ To live at all one must live with a dream, he knew, and to his present flashing vision it seemed that Connie's ecstasy of possession and his own ecstasy of desire served a like end when they transfigured for a little while the brutal actuality from which there was no escape except by the way of a man's own soul. ”

“ She had impressed upon Connie that, although the country might be nice in many respects, it was not a desirable place in which to stay, or to visit very often, and Connie was about equally divided between her love for the city and country. She had had a “jam up good time,” she said, remembering Harry’s letter, but before she could get farther, her aunt stopped her.
“You have learned a great deal of slang,” she said; “more than you will forget in a year. You have spoiled your blue cloak and two pairs of boots, besides romping quite too much with the cats and the dog and Kenneth. ”

“ I shall never forget the first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an infant coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of a child of eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received the new impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much for her at first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a wild thing on a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more than she could bear. ”

“ They stayed at the Bijou, a whole crowd of them, and Connie never let them out of her sight until they closed their bedroom doors for the night. They talked in brief broken sentences, rather curtly, but their voices were quiet and low, and they weren't half as slangy as cowgirls, by every literary precedent, ought to be. They were not like Connie, of course, tall and slim, with the fine exalted face, with soft pink palms and soft round arms. ”

“ At half-past eight next morning Connie Carmyle, wearing a tweed coat and skirt and neat brown brogues, came whistling downstairs, intent upon a constitutional before breakfast.
Upon the sofa in front of the hall-fire, self-consciously perusing a Sunday newspaper, sat a large man of slightly sheepish appearance. At the sight of Connie he rose guiltily to his feet. Mrs. Carmyle embraced him in a motherly fashion. ”

“ Turning from the stall, Connie saw and hailed them. "Have you seen the fish-market?" she asked after greeting them gayly. "Oh, you must not miss that. I always go there."
She led them past a long bench where sat several nice white-capped old women beside huge baskets of spotlessly washed eggs or round rolls of fresh, unsalted butter wrapped in cool green cabbage leaves. Some of them nodded and smiled and once Connie stopped to ask after a sick child. Everybody spoke in French and seemed most kind and cordial. ”

“ Connie’s “Oh!” was a sound of consternation. Bateson, the ex-scout had become a most efficient and comfortable valet, and Otto depended greatly upon him.
“It’s all right,” said Falloden quickly. “I grovelled. I ate all the humble-pie I could think of. It was of course impossible to let him go. Otto can’t do without him. I seem somehow to have offended his dignity.”
“They have so much!” said Connie, laughing, but rather unsteadily.
“One lives and learns.” The tone of the words was serious—a little anxious. Then the speaker took up his hat. “But I’m not good at managing touchy people. ”

“ It was a glance of independent and impersonal criticism which the two exchanged, covering with instantaneous swiftness an infinitude of details as to dress, coiffure, complexion, figure, temperament and origin. Connie wondered if the new-comer was really quite a lady, long before she formulated an inquiring thought about her errand. Even as she finally looked this question of business, she decided that it was an actress with a play for the provinces, and asked herself if she did not seem to recognize the face. ”

“ This was Charlie’s account, and after he left, Kenneth stayed a long time with his horse, rubbing her down and talking to her as if she could understand what he said and know he was indignant. And every tender, loving word he said to her and every caress he gave her was more for the Connie over the sea than for her. He called her Connie two or three times, and wondered what the real Connie would think of the house-party, and especially of Pondy.
The “blow-out” was to come off the next night; the last of the young men’s stay at the Corners. ”

“ Hooper added with her little obstinate air—
“Any girl who likes admiration as much as Connie does must be vain. Of course, I don’t blame her.”
“Likes admiration? Hm,” said Nora, still chewing at her twig. “Yes, I suppose she does. But she’s good at snubbing, too.” And she threw a glance at her sister. She was thinking of a small evening party the night before, at which, it seemed to her, Connie had several times snubbed Herbert Pryce rather severely. Alice said nothing. She knew what Nora meant. But that Connie should despise what she had filched away only made things worse. ”