CHAPTER XIV

Lallie came down to breakfast in her habit. Miss Foster did not ask where she was going or why she was riding so early, but contented herself with a remark to the effect that the very short and skimpy habits now in vogue were singularly ungraceful and unbecoming. Lallie replied that the shortness of the habit mattered very little if only the boots below it were irreproachable, and that after all a habit was not for walking in and that it was better to look a bit bunchy on foot than to be dragged if you happened to be thrown. Whereupon Miss Foster made a complicated sort of sound, something between a snort and a sniff, and the meal proceeded in silence.

Only by going straight into College from the station could Tony take his class at the proper time, but immediately morning school was over he rushed down to B. House, hoping to find Lallie and take her up to watch the pick-up.

His letters were spread out on the hall table, and one, conspicuous from the fact that it was unstamped, caught his eye at once. He recognised the little upright writing so like Fitzroy Clonmell's.

As he read, Tony's honest face flushed, then paled to a look of pain and perplexity.

"Tony, dear," it ran, "I've disobeyed you and gone to the opening meet after all. I've not gone alone, and I assure you all will be well. Yesterday, in the town, I met a hunting friend of whom we saw a good deal last season, and he tempted me with a charming little mare whose clear destiny it was to carry me once; anyway--I fell--I gave in. His name is Ballinger--he is quite a nice man; but he doesn't ride a bit better than you, Tony, dear, so except as an escort I don't fancy I shall see much of him.

"This morning I had a letter from the Chesters up at Fareham, and they have asked me to go from to-morrow till Tuesday. They want me to sing at a Primrose meeting on Saturday; that I know you won't mind: it will get rid of me for a few days, and give you all a rest. Try not to be cross with me. I'm a tiresome wretch, I know, but I am also your loving Lallie."

Very deliberately Tony folded the letter, put it back in the envelope, and into his breast-pocket. He gathered up the rest of his letters and went to his study, but he made no attempt to read them. He forgot that he ought to go and watch the pick-up. He sat down by his desk, staring straight in front of him at nothing.

Evidently, he reflected, Lallie was unhappy in B. House; glad to get away. She was afraid he might say something to her about yesterday, and regardless of his expressed wish, nay his command, so far as he could be said to exercise any authority over her, she had disobeyed him. It had never so much as entered the realm of possibilities that she could defy him, and he was hurt. Never until that moment did he realise how much he counted upon her steady affection. He had always been so sure that he and Lallie thoroughly understood each other. From the time, when a little baby in her nurse's arms, she would hold out her own, struggling to be "taken" by the tall, shy undergraduate; throughout the somewhat stormy years of her childhood, when he was ever her confidant and her ally; during the many holidays he spent with Fitz and his family in Ireland, till the day, two years ago, when he first beheld her in a long frock with her clouds of dusky hair bound demurely round her head, and became aware with a little shock of foreboding that Lallie was growing up--never had he doubted her. And when he had got accustomed to her more grown-up appearance he speedily discovered that the real and essential Lallie was unchanged, that she was just as kind and merry and easily pleased, just as warm hearted and quick tempered, as neat fingered and capable and unexpected, as when her frocks reached barely to her knees.

"If I had seen her yesterday I don't believe she would have done this," Tony thought to himself; "it's not like her somehow to take the opportunity of my being away to do what she knows I would have done my best to prevent had I been at home. And this young Ballinger--he's no fit guardian for Lallie out hunting. Confound him! I wish he had stayed in his own shire. Fitz said I was not to discourage him, but I'm convinced he never meant she was to go out hunting with him. I suppose he is going to these Chesters, too; probably that's why she's going. I know nothing about the young man, but, like Charles Lamb, 'I'll d---- him at a venture.' It's too bad of Fitz shelving his parental responsibilities like this. Suppose anything happened to her to-day----"

This thought was so disquieting that Tony got up and walked about the room. Finally he opened and read his letters. Then Miss Foster came and added to his anxieties by informing him that A. J. Tarrant, a new boy, had that morning started a bad feverish cold and complained of sore throat.

"No rash yet," Miss Foster added gloomily, "but of course we've isolated him."

Altogether Tony wished he could have stayed in Oxford. Yet the day seemed very long, and when half-past five at last arrived Tony actually sprinted from the College to B. House.

A great wave of sound met him as he opened the front door. Lallie was playing the overture to Tanh?user. It certainly was neither meek nor repentant music. Nevertheless Tony ejaculated "Thank God!"

He opened the drawing-room door very gently. The ruddy firelight glowed and gloomed in waves of flame and shadow, but the opening of the door let in a long shaft of light from the hall, and with a final crash of chords Lallie turned on the piano stool, demanding:

"Is it you, Tony?"

"I didn't need to ask if it was you, and it was a great relief, I assure you. Had you a good day?"

Out of the shadows Lallie came forward into the ruddy circle of light.

"Your voice doesn't sound quite pleased with me," she said. "I must see your face to make sure. Please switch on a light and let me see."

She laid her little hands upon his shoulders and looked up searchingly into his face. The bright glare of the electric light made Tony blink, and he was so inexpressibly glad to see her again that his joy wholly crowded out the reproachful expression he had intended his homely features to assume.

He felt an overwhelming desire to take her in his arms, kiss her, and implore her to swear she would never go away again. It was only the certainty that she would kiss him back with the best will in the world, probably bursting into tears of repentance on his shoulder, that restrained Tony. He felt that it would not be playing the game. So very gently, with big hands that trembled somewhat, he removed those that lay so lightly on his shoulders and said, in a matter-of-fact voice:

"Naturally I was anxious. You see I thought we had agreed that there was to be no hunting until we heard from your father; and how could I tell how this--Mr. Ballinger might have mounted you?"

Lallie clasped her hands loosely in front of her, and stood before Tony with downcast eyes, and he forgot all about the matter under discussion in admiring her eyelashes.

"I didn't exactly promise," she murmured; then louder: "no, that's mean of me, and untruthful; I broke my word. I knew you wouldn't wish me to go--but I went--and I enjoyed it--rather. Not quite so much as I expected, though the little mare went like a bird. It was quite a short run; I was back here by three o'clock."

"Who brought you back?"

"Who brought me back? My dear, good Tony, I'm not a parcel nor a passenger; I came back. I studied the ordnance map of this district that's hanging in your study for a good hour last night. It was broad daylight when the run was over, and it's a very good country for signposts. I returned. Did you see Mr. Ballinger's cards in the hall? He came fussing here to see that I was all right when I was in the middle of changing, and he dutifully asked for Miss Foster, but she'd gone to the sewing-meeting for the Mission--I ought to have been there; I forgot all about it; I'm so sorry--and she's not back yet, so I sent down word that I was perfectly all right and resting, so he went empty away, poor man, longing for tea, I've no doubt; so must you be, we'll have it brought in here, Miss Foster won't be back till six. Some one's reading a paper to them while they sew, poor things! I'll have another tea with you, Tony. No lunch yesterday, no lunch to-day, and to-morrow will be the third day, though Mr. Ballinger did bring me a beautiful box of sandwiches, but I had no time to eat them."

"Mr. Ballinger! Why should he bring you sandwiches? Why didn't you ask Matron for some?"

"Oh, you dear goose! How could I ask for sandwiches when I was supposed to be going out to lunch. What would Miss Foster have said? Do you think anybody will tell her I went out hunting all by my gay lonesome?"

"It depends how many people knew you in the field."

"Ah, there you touch me on a tender spot. With the exception of one old curmudgeon who used to hunt sometimes with the "Cockshots" at Fareham last year, there was no one I knew at all, and he rode all round me staring, and then grunted out, 'Where's your father, Miss Clonmell?' I passed him at the first fence, that's one comfort; but you're right, Tony--I missed Dad. People stared at me. It was all right when the hounds were running, I forgot everything and everybody but the fun and excitement, but at the meet it was horrid. Is your tea nice? Oh, it is good to have you back again!"

"And you prove your joy at my return by going off to-morrow!"

"That's only for the week-end. I always promised them to help at their old meeting--and me a Home-Ruler--isn't it an anomaly?"

"I didn't know that your politics were so pronounced."

"You might guess I'd be 'ag'in the Government,' whichever party's in power. Neither really cares a jot for Ireland. I think the Tories are perhaps the less hypocritical of the two. But any sort of a political meeting is fun. I always long to shout, and boo, and kick the floor. I think all the disturbances they're able to make is what is so supremely attractive about the Suffragettes."

"Are you a Suffragette as well as a Home-Ruler? I shall begin to be quite afraid of you."

"I should have been a Suffragette if I might have gone to meetings, carried banners, or thumped on a gong to disturb Mr. Winston Churchill, but Dad was quite stuffy about it, and put down his foot--really put down his foot with a stamp; fancy Dad!--and forbade me to have anything to do with any of them, so what was the use? It wasn't the vote I wanted."

"Fitz really has, upon occasion, wonderful flashes of common sense, even in his dealings with you."

"Now don't you be pretending to think Dad spoils me, for you know very well he does nothing of the kind. He has never been petty nor interfering, but in things that really matter, I'd no more think of disobeying him than----"

"Of going out hunting without asking his permission," Tony suggested mildly. "And since we have approached the subject of your general submissiveness, might I suggest that you fall in with one little regulation of mine, mentioned on the very first evening you came. Do you remember my asking you not on any account to use the boys' part of the house?"

"Well, neither I have, ever."

"What about the back staircase?"

Lallie flushed angrily and began indignantly, "It wasn't my--"; then suddenly she stopped and said with studied gentleness, "I'm sorry, Tony; you did forbid me, but I quite forgot that those stairs came under your ban."

Tony smiled at her.

"That's all right then. You'll remember in future. In some ways, Lallie, you are very like a boy."

"Good ways, I hope?" her voice was anxious.

"Some of them are quite good. Some of them--well, they are apt to get other people in trouble. See what was sent to me by the incensed master to whom the remarks refer," and Tony held out to her a large sheet of lined paper, closely written in her own neat little upright writing. The first few lines comprised a decorous statement to the effect that "Marlborough underrated the difficulty of managing a coalition. In his necessary absence abroad this difficult operation was in the hands of Godolphin, always a timid minister without any real political convictions," when suddenly the style of the Reverend J. Franck Bright lapsed into the wholly indefensible statement that "cross old Nick is a silly old Ass," and this was repeated line after line throughout nearly half a page.

Lallie gasped, then burst into uncontrollable laughter, exclaiming:

"It's Cripps's lines. He told me he had to do five hundred, and that no one ever looked at them, so I said I'd do three hundred for him as he wanted awfully to play fives that day. So I copied the dry old History Book till I was sick to death of the long words, and then in the middle I put that in just to cheer things up. What had I better do? Go and see Mr. Nichol, or what? He simply must not punish Cripps. He knew nothing whatever about it, poor boy. I sent him the lines in a neat bundle, and I don't suppose he ever looked at them."

"As it happened it was Mr. Nichol who looked at them, for Cripps omitted the very simple precaution of putting his own pages on the top, and as his writing in no way resembles yours, Mr. Nichol naturally suspected extraneous assistance. He turned the pages over and came upon the one you have in your hand--your capital 'A's' simply jump to the eye. Naturally he was much annoyed, and I am sorry to say he describes your friend Cripps as 'a surly, insubordinate fellow,' and demands that he should be starred."

"But he can't be starred, for he didn't do it."

"That, very naturally, Cripps did not explain; and after all he is responsible for the lines he gives up."

"Tony, have you seen Cripps?"

"I have."

"Oh, what did you say?"

"I told him that he was a lazy young dog, and ought to do his lines himself; that I hadn't an ounce of sympathy with him, and that he deserved all he got and more; but I need hardly say I did not send him to the Principal with the suggestion that his prefect's star should be taken from him."

"Oh, Tony, I hear Miss Foster; quick--ought I to run out and see Mr. Nichol? I'm not a bit afraid of him."

"I think that the matter may now rest in oblivion; only let me offer you one bit of sound advice. If you are charitable enough to help any poor beggar with his lines, write large; it's a fearful waste of energy to do neat little writing like that--eight words to a line is the regulation thing--and, for Heaven's sake refrain from personal remarks."

"Tony, you are a real dear. I will fly now, for Miss Foster may want to talk to you about the house."

Lallie darted at Tony, dropped a hasty kiss on the top of his head, and fled across the room, opening the door to admit Miss Foster, who had removed her outdoor things. She never came into a sitting-room before going upstairs; she considered it slovenly.

Tony folded the large closely written sheet of paper containing the reiterated animadversions upon the intelligence of Mr. Nichol senior, put it in his pocket, and rose to place a chair for Miss Foster, who regarded the tea things with a look of acute distress.

"I took the opportunity," Tony remarked, "of speaking to Miss Clonmell on the subject you mentioned to me yesterday afternoon, and--er--I reminded her that I had on her first arrival asked her on no account to use the boys' part of the house." Here Tony made a little pause, as though he expected Miss Foster to make some observation. "I confess that the fact of her being on that staircase at all did surprise me," he added meditatively, looking full at Miss Foster with kind, beseeching eyes.

That lady flushed and sat up very straight in her chair, but she did not meet his gaze.

"What explanation did Miss Clonmell give?" she asked.

"None; she expressed regret that she had forgotten my prohibition, but said that she did not suppose that staircase came under it, though why, I can't imagine."

Again Miss Foster felt herself encompassed by that glance, so full of dumb, entreating kindness. This time she raised her eyes to his and met them fairly as she said slowly:

"Perhaps I am somewhat to blame for Miss Clonmell's presence upon that staircase, though you may imagine I never dreamt of the use to which she would put it. I confess that it never occurred to me as being in any way objectionable during the day. The boys never go up or down, and she often has such exceedingly muddy boots--I may have even suggested she should go that way. I am sorry----"

"It doesn't matter in the least really," Tony said heartily, and his whole face beamed. "Thank you very much for explaining."

He did not add that it was just what he had suspected from the first moment that Lallie's frivolous conduct was revealed to him; but he meant Miss Foster to own up, and she had owned up. Had she failed to do so Tony could never have respected her again.

"As to Lallie," he reflected tenderly, "you never know what she'll do next, but there are things you can depend on her not doing, and that's to try and drag any one else into the unpleasant results of her vagaries. She'll never go back on any one, never make mischief; and who the devil is Ballinger that he should have all this?"