Chapter 1 #3
"Is Lord Northcliff delayed?" she asked.
"Why, no, Irene," Mrs. Framble said. "Not that I've heard. We are to expect him tomorrow, after the noon train."
"How nice," Irene said, and sank back into her thoughts.
Mrs. Framble eyed her sharply. The females in the Earl's employ (and, though Mrs. Framble was not aware of it, several of the males) were forever falling in love with the Viscount Northcliff, who was thankfully too well-mannered to take advantage of these infatuations.
Nevertheless, whenever lovesickness afflicted Mrs. Framble's girls, they spent too much time sighing and not enough scrubbing.
An engagement, with all of its attendant bustle, was not an opportune time for a lady's maid to lose her head over a gentleman, and Mrs. Framble resolved to take steps, should any further signs appear.
Irene, pleased with her new plan of action and unaware of Mrs. Framble's suspicions, completed her duties for the day and returned to her solitary room.
She finished the taking in of one of Flora's old gowns for herself, released her plain brown hair and braided it neatly, and composed herself to prayer.
"Please, God, help me make it right," is not the most eloquent petition ever uttered silently in the dark of a person's soul, but what Irene's prayer lacked in eloquence—and in originality—was more than surpassed in its sincerity.
"My God," said Simon Young. "It's enormous."
"It is an ancient pile of rock," said James, Viscount Northcliff, as he swung down from the Rabton family carriage. "But it's home. Take the brown trunk up to Mr. Young's room, would you, Bains? There's a good chap. Be careful, it's four-fifths books."
"You said I would find time to study," Simon protested mildly, still staring up at the impressive bulk of Rabton Hall.
James slung an arm over his shoulder and hustled him through the oak doors. "A ruse, old boy. A damnable lie, be it known. We're here to wench and carouse our way to the Hell they reserve for bad scholars."
"You're teasing me," Simon said, blinking his large grey eyes behind his spectacles. "You are, aren't you?"
James laughed and let his friend go. "Couldn't let you moulder in the stacks all vac, Simon. It's Christmas! But there'll be time for your books, never fear. Ah, Caldwell, very good, where might I find Pater?"
"In his study, my lord, with Lord Chomondley," the butler supplied.
"Chommers is here? What a bore. And Flora?"
"In the yellow room, my lord."
"Excellent. We'll go pay our respects and take tea, Simon, and I will show you a few things around the place, and then you may spend as long as you like with your books before dinner. Do remember to dress for it, won't you?"
James was a good-humoured man of one-and-twenty, and if selfish considerations of wanting male company his own age for Christmas had prompted him to extend an invitation to Simon, he had been at least equally moved by concern for the well-being of his studious friend, who had grown pale and thin during a trying term.
The bounty of his father's table, James thought, was just the thing to improve Simon's health, and to be removed from the Cambridge libraries was to be removed from the temptation to skip meals, rest, and fresh air.
Simon was a good sort and a really top-notch scholar, but he did rather forget the body in his determination to develop the mind.
Accordingly, as the young men entered the yellow room, James was startled to note a sudden flush of pink in the sallow cheek as Simon beheld Flora for the first time, wearing a pretty cream frock and sitting in a chair near the fire.
"Flora, may I introduce Mr. Simon Young? Simon, this is Lady Flora Wittingham, my sister."
Simon murmured something inaudible about the pleasure.
"Mr. Young, how do you do?" Flora asked, distractedly offering her hand.
James, who thought his sister pretty enough, but inclined to fretting and an excess of sensibility, really saw her radiant beauty in this moment, and felt pity for his friend.
But Flora did not notice Simon's condition, releasing his hand at once and turning to her brother.
"Have you heard, Jamie? I am to be married. "
James observed the colour draining out of Simon's face and moved at once to cover his friend's embarrassment. "Really?" he said, almost at random. "Jolly good show! To whom?"
"To the Marquess of Chomondley. He is with Papa now, discussing the terms of the marriage settlement."
"To Chomondley!" James ejaculated. "Well, that is certainly— I mean to say that—"
"Is it not wonderful?" Flora breathed. "I vow, I am the happiest woman alive. Oh! Here he comes now! My darling lord, have you met my brother Jamie?"
"Chomondley," James said, nodding.
"Northcliff," the Marquess returned, equally coolly.
"And this is—" Flora paused.
"Mr. Young," James said, startled again.
Flora was a scatterwit, but not an unmannerly one, and once introduced to someone, she had never before neglected to commit their name to memory.
He was embarrassed for his friend, and worried for his sister, who instead of apologising for her gaffe was gazing at her intended with something very like worship in her eyes.
Simon's own eyes were blank with suppressed feeling, and though James had intended to take his friend on a tour of the portrait gallery and point out the rare books in the library, he did not prevent Simon from making his excuses and slipping away when Flora remembered her duties and rang for tea.
The mystery only deepened over dinner, when, during Rabton’s inquiries into his son’s progress at Cambridge, the subject of women’s education was touched upon.
James, knowing his father’s view of the matter, warned Simon to stay out of the conversation with a look, but sallied into the fray himself with remarkable verve.
James came by his opinions honestly, but it occurred to him that perhaps the topic would shake Flora’s odd complacency, so he was perhaps a touch more fervent than he might otherwise have been at table.
"Ridiculous,” harrumphed the Earl, who had taken a Third in History, granted more to his pedigree than to his application.
"Girls don’t have the brains or stamina for sustained study.
These educated females will unfit themselves for the proper work of women, which is the family.
I wonder that the University will even allow them to attend lectures, and as for this outrageous notion of granting degrees—”
“There are a few women students in our magickal theory lectures,” James said. “That takes both brains and stamina, and they seem to make out all right.”
“These females are permitted to perform magick with men?” the Earl said, really shocked.
“Certainly not, Pater. We speak of Cambridge, not Cheapside. The women students have practical magick lessons separately, with a lady of most fearsome aspect who I believe to be a Scottish sorceress. But there’s no harm in studying theory in the same room as women, and Dr. Gillard’s lectures are awfully popular, you know. Why shouldn’t the women attend?”
Mr. Young quietly vouchsafed that even the most unmagickal of students, such as himself, found great value in the study of theory.
“I wonder that the female students don’t break under the strain,” Chomondley said, smirking into his soup. “The feminine mind, you know…”
“I wouldn’t know at all,” James said cheerfully.
“I can tell you that the ladies are frightfully proper. They travel back and forth to lectures in a group and never talk to the men. But since they can’t take degrees, there’s no knowing if they’re all dunces or if they’d all be in for Firsts.
I rather suspect it would be the latter.
It takes such effort for them to be there at all; I don’t think any of them would bother if they didn’t have the brains.
I’m sure they all work much harder than I do. ”
“Making a display,” the Earl grunted. “Trying to hook themselves a man, no doubt.”
“Have a heart, Pater! You can’t say they’re unwomanly and that they’re all angling for husbands.”
The Earl of Rabton angrily said that of course not, he supposed it was one or the other, not both at the same time, and instructed his son and heir not to be a bloody fool.
“I think the University should give them the degrees they’ve earned,” James persisted.
“Personally, I think it’s all cowardice, each Vice-Chancellor pushing the decision off to the next.
But it will happen. Enough of the women want it—if not for themselves, then for their sisters.
You can’t say women don’t have guts, even if you think they lack brains.
They’ll push it through, see if they don’t. ”
“I should never allow my daughter to attend,” the Earl said, in stentorian tones.
“Your daughter doesn’t want to,” James pointed out, seizing on the opportunity. “Flora doesn’t care a bit for her own education, and never has, but last hols she read me the riot act on spending all my time in games when a thousand brilliant women were champing at the bit to take a place.”
“With no effect whatsoever, I expect,” Flora said, and bent a gaze of sisterly reproach upon him.
“On the contrary, I’m a changed man,” James said, greatly cheered by this glimpse of spirit. “Every time I thought of pushing off early to the Bull and Bird or cutting a lecture, I thought of those thousand women and harnessed myself to the load like a good little carthorse. Didn’t I, Simon?”
Mr. Young ventured that the Viscount Northcliff had indeed been observed in the library more often than had been his former habit.
“But Flora has also changed,” Chomondley broke in. He caught up his fiancée’s hand, in a motion James thought both vulgar and oddly sinister. “She is now quite of my opinion that women should leave higher education to the men and dedicate themselves to proper womanly pursuits. Isn’t that so?”