On the day after the Vice-Chancellor’s party, Falloden, after a
somewhat slack morning’s work, lunched in college with Meyrick. After
hall, the quadrangle was filled with strolling men, hatless and
smoking, discussing the chances of the Eights, the last debate at the
Union, and the prospects of individual men in the schools.
Presently the sound of a piano was heard from the open windows of a
room on the first floor.
“Great Scott!” said Falloden irritably to Meyrick, with whom he was
walking arm in arm, “what a noise that fellow Radowitz makes! Why
should we have to listen to him? He behaves as though the whole college
belonged to him. We can’t hear ourselves speak.”
“Treat him like a barrel-organ and remove him!” said Meyrick, laughing.
He was a light-hearted, easy-going youth, a “fresher” in his first
summer term, devoted to Falloden, whose physical and intellectual
powers seemed to him amazing.
“Bombard him first!” said Falloden. “Who’s got some soda-water
bottles?” And he beckoned imperiously to a neighbouring group of
men,—“bloods”—always ready to follow him in a “rag,” and heroes
together with him of a couple of famous bonfires, in Falloden’s first
year.
They came up, eager for any mischief, the summer weather in their veins
like wine. They stood round Falloden laughing and chaffing, till
finally three of them disappeared at his bidding. They came rushing
back, from various staircases, laden with soda-water bottles.
Then Falloden, with two henchmen, placed himself under Radowitz’s
windows, and summoned the offender in a stentorian voice:
“Radowitz! stop that noise!”
No answer—except that Radowitz in discoursing some “music of the
future,” and quite unaware of the shout from below, pounded and
tormented the piano more than ever. The waves of crashing sound seemed
to fill the quadrangle.
“We’ll summon him thrice!” said Falloden. “Then—fire!”
But Radowitz remained deaf, and the assailant below gave the order.
Three strong right arms below discharged three soda-water bottles,
which went through the open window.
“My goody!” said Meyrick, “I hope he’s well out of the way!” There was
a sound of breaking glass. Then Radowitz, furious, appeared at his
window, his golden hair more halolike than ever in the bright sun.
“What are you doing, you idiots?”
“Stop that noise, Radowitz!” shouted Falloden. “It annoys us!”
“Can’t help it. It pleases me,” said Radowitz shortly, proceeding to
close the window. But he had scarcely done so, when Falloden launched
another bottle, which went smash through the window and broke it. The
glass fell out into the quadrangle, raising all the echoes. The rioters
below held their laughing breaths.
“I say, what about the dons?” said one.
“Keep a lookout!” said another.
But meanwhile Radowitz had thrown up the injured window, and crimson
with rage he leaned far out and flung half a broken bottle at the group
below. All heads ducked, but the ragged missile only just missed
Meyrick’s curly poll.
“Not pretty that!—not pretty at all!” said Falloden coolly. “Might
really have done some mischief. We’ll avenge you, Meyrick. Follow me,
you fellows!”
And in one solid phalanx, they charged, six or seven strong, up
Radowitz’s staircase. But he was ready for them. The oak was sported,
and they could hear him dragging some heavy chairs against it.
Meanwhile, from the watchers left in the quad, came a loud cough.
“Dons!—by Jove! Scatter!” And they rushed further up the staircase,
taking refuge in the rooms of two of the “raggers.” The lookout in the
quadrangle turned to walk quietly towards the porter’s lodge. The
Senior Tutor—a spare tall man with a Jove-like brow—emerged from the
library, and stood on the steps surveying the broken glass.
“All run to cover, of course!” was his reflection, half scornful, half
disgusted. “But I am certain I heard Falloden’s voice. What a puppy
stage it is! They would be much better employed worrying old boots!”
But philosopher or no, he got no clue. The quadrangle was absolutely
quiet and deserted, save for the cheeping of the swallows flitting
across it, and the whistling of a lad in the porter’s lodge. The Senior
Tutor returned to the library, where he was unpacking a box of new
books.
The rioters emerged at discreet intervals, and rejoined each other in
the broad street outside the college.
“Vengeance is still due!”—said Falloden, towering among them, always
with the faithful and grinning Meyrick at his side—“and we will repay.
But now, to our tents! Ta, ta!” And dismissing them all, including
Meyrick, he walked off alone in the direction of Holywell. He was going
to look out a horse for Constance Bledlow.
As he walked, he said to himself that he was heartily sick of this
Oxford life, ragging and all. It was a good thing it was so nearly
done. He meant to get his First, because he didn’t choose, having
wasted so much time over it, not to get it. But it wouldn’t give him
any particular pleasure to get it. The only thing that really mattered
was that Constance Bledlow was in Oxford, and that when his schools
were over, he would have nothing to do but to stay on two or three
weeks and force the running with her. He felt himself immeasurably
older than his companions with whom he had just been rioting. His mind
was set upon a man’s interests and aims—marriage, travel, Parliament;
they were still boys, without a mind among them. None the less, there
was an underplot running through his consciousness all the time as to
how best to punish Radowitz—both for his throw, and his impertinence in
monopolising a certain lady for at least a quarter of an hour on the
preceding evening.
At the well-known livery-stables in Holywell, he found a certain
animation. Horses were in demand, as there were manoeuvres going on in
Blenheim Park, and the minds of both dons and undergraduates were drawn
thither. But Falloden succeeded in getting hold of the manager and
absorbing his services at once.
“Show you something really good, fit for a lady?”
The manager took him through the stables, and Falloden in the end
picked out precisely the beautiful brown mare of which he had spoken to
Constance.
“Nobody else is to ride her, please, till the lady I am acting for has
tried her,” he said peremptorily to Fox. “I shall try her myself
to-morrow. And what about a groom?—a decent fellow, mind, with a decent
livery.”
He saw a possible man and another horse, reserving both provisionally.
Then he walked hurriedly to his lodgings to see if by any chance there
were a note for him there. He had wired to his mother the day before,
telling her to write to Constance Bledlow and Mrs. Hooper by the
evening’s post, suggesting that, on Thursday before the Eights, Lady
Laura should pick her up at Medburn House, take her to tea at
Falloden’s lodgings and then on to the Eights. Lady Laura was to ask
for an answer addressed to the lodgings.
He found one—a little note with a crest and monogram he knew well.
Medburn House.
“Dear Mr. Falloden,—I am very sorry I can not come to tea to-morrow.
But my aunt and cousins seem to have made an engagement for me. No
doubt I shall see Lady Laura at the boats. My aunt thanks her for her
kind letter.
“Yours very truly,
“Constance Bledlow.”
Falloden bit his lip. He had reckoned on an acceptance, having done
everything that had been prescribed to him; and he felt injured. He
walked on, fuming and meditating, to Vincent’s Club, and wrote a reply.
“DEAR LADY CONSTANCE,—A thousand regrets! I hope for better luck next
time. Meanwhile, as you say, we shall meet to-morrow at the Eights. I
have spent much time to-day in trying to find you a horse, as we
agreed. The mare I told you of is really a beauty. I am going to try
her to-morrow, and will report when we meet. I admire your nepticular
(I believe _neptis_ is the Latin for niece) docility!
“Yours sincerely,
“DOUGLAS FALLODEN.”
“Will that offend her?” he thought. “But a pin-prick is owed. I was
distinctly given to understand that if the proprieties were observed,
she would come.”
In reality, however, he was stimulated by her refusal, as he was by all
forms of conflict, which, for him, made the zest of life.
He shut himself up that evening and the following morning with his
Greats work. Then he and Meyrick rushed up to the racket courts in the
Parks for an hour’s hard exercise, after which, in the highest physical
spirits, a splendid figure in his white flannels, with the dark blue
cap and sash of the Harrow Eleven—(he had quarrelled with the captain
of the Varsity Eleven very early in his Oxford career, and by an heroic
sacrifice to what he conceived to be his dignity had refused to let
himself be tried for it)—he went off to meet his mother and sister at
the railway station.
It was, of course, extremely inconsiderate of his mother to be coming
at all in these critical weeks before the schools. She ought to have
kept away. And yet he would be very glad to see her—and Nelly. He was
fond of his home people, and they of him. They were his belongings—and
they were Fallodens. Therefore his strong family pride accepted them,
and made the most of them.
But his countenance fell when, as the train slowed into the railway
station, he perceived beckoning to him from the windows, not two
Fallodens, but four!
“What has mother been about?” He stood aghast. For there were not only
Lady Laura and Nelly, but Trix, a child of eleven, and Roger, the
Winchester boy of fourteen, who was still at home after an attack of
measles.
They beamed at him as they descended. The children were quite aware
they were superfluous, and fell upon him with glee.
“You don’t want us, Duggy, we know! But we made mother bring us.”
“Mother, really you ought to have given me notice!” said her
reproachful son. “What am I to do with these brats?”
But the brats hung upon him, and his mother, “fat, fair and forty,”
smiled propitiatingly.
“Oh, my dear Duggy, never mind. They amuse themselves. They’ve promised
to be good. And they get into mischief in London, directly my back’s
turned. How nice you look in flannels, dear! Are you going to row this
afternoon?”
“Well, considering you know that my schools are coming on in a
fortnight—” said Falloden, exasperated.
“It’s so annoying of them!” said Lady Laura, sighing. “I wanted to
bring Nelly up for two or three weeks. We could have got a house. But
your father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I should rather think not! Mother, do you want me to get a decent
degree, or do you not?”
“But of course you’re sure to,” said Lady Laura with provoking
optimism, hanging on his arm. “And now give us some tea, for we’re all
ravenous! And what about that girl, Lady Constance?”
“She can’t come. Her aunt has made another engagement for her. You’ll
meet her at the boats.”
Lady Laura looked relieved.
“Well then, we can go straight to our tea. But of course I wrote. I
always do what you tell me, Duggy. Come along, children!”
“Trix and I got a packet of Banbury cakes at Didcot,” reported Roger,
in triumph, showing a greasy paper. “But we’ve eat ’em all.”
“Little pigs!” said Falloden, surveying them. “And now I suppose you’re
going to gorge again?”
“We shall disgrace you!” shouted both the children joyously—“we knew we
should!”
But Falloden hunted them all into a capacious fly, and they drove off
to Marmion, where a room had been borrowed for the tea-party. Falloden
sat on the box with folded arms and a sombre countenance. Why on earth
had his mother brought the children? It was revolting to have to appear
on the barge with such a troop. And all his time would be taken up with
looking after them—time which he wanted for quite other things.
However, he was in for it. At Marmion he led the party through two
quads and innumerable passages, till he pointed to a dark staircase up
which they climbed, each member of the family—except the guide—talking
at the top of their voices. On the third floor, Falloden paused and
herded them into the room of a shy second-year man, very glad to do
such a “blood” as Falloden a kindness, and help entertain his
relations.
“Well, thank God, I’ve got you in!” said Falloden gloomily, as he shut
the door behind the last of them.
“How Duggy does hustle us! I’ve had nothing of a tea!” said Roger,
looking resentfully, his mouth full of cake, at his elder brother, who
was already beginning to take out his watch, to bid his mother and
sisters resume their discarded jackets, and to send a scout for a
four-wheeler.
But Falloden was inexorable. He tore his sister Nelly, a soft fluffy
creature of seventeen, away from the shy attentions of the second-year
man, scoffed in disgust at Trix’s desire for chocolates after a
Gargantuan meal, and declared that they would all be late for the
Eights, if any more gorging was allowed. His mother rose obediently. To
be seen with such a son in the crowded Oxford streets filled her with
pride. She could have walked beside him for hours.
At the college gate, Trix pinched her brother’s arm.
“Well, Duggy, say it!”
“Say what, you little scug?”
“‘Thank God, I’ve got you out!’” laughed the child, laying her cheek
against his coat-sleeve. “That’s what you’re thinking. You know you
are. I say, Duggy, you do look jolly in those colours!”
“Don’t talk rot!” grumbled Falloden, but he winked at her in brotherly
fashion, and Trix was more than happy. Like her mother, she believed
that Douglas was simply the handsomest and cleverest fellow in the
world. When he scolded it was better than other people’s praise, and
when he gave you a real private wink, it raised a sister to the skies.
On such soil does male arrogance grow!
Soon they were in the stream of people crossing Christ Church river on
their way to the boats. The May sunshine lay broad on the buttercup
meadows, on the Christ Church elms, on the severe and blackened front
of Corpus, on the long gabled line of Merton. The river glittered in
the distance, and towards it the crowd of its worshippers—young girls
in white, young men in flannels, elderly fathers and mothers from a
distance, and young fathers and mothers from the rising tutorial homes
of Oxford—made their merry way. Falloden looked in all directions for
the Hooper party. A new anxiety and eagerness were stirring in him
which he resented, which he tried to put down. He did not wish, he did
not intend, if he could help it, to be too much in love with anybody.
He was jealous of his own self-control, and intensely proud of his own
strength of will, as he might have been of a musical or artistic gift.
It was his particular gift, and he would not have it weakened. He had
seen men do the most idiotic things for love. He did not intend to do
such things. Love should be strictly subordinate to a man’s career;
women should be subordinate.
At the same time, from the second week of their acquaintance on the
Riviera, he had wished to marry Constance Bledlow. He had proposed to
her, only to be promptly refused, and on one mad afternoon, in the
woods of the Esterels, he had snatched a kiss. What an amazing fuss she
made about that kiss! He thought she would have cut him for ever. It
was with the greatest difficulty, and only after a grovelling apology,
that he had succeeded in making his peace. Yet all through the days of
her wrath he had been quite certain that he would in the end appease
her; which meant a triumphant confidence on his part that to a degree
she did not herself admit or understand, he had captured her. Her
resolute refusal to correspond with him, even after they had made it up
and he was on the point of returning to Oxford, had piqued him indeed.
But he was aware that she was due at Oxford, as her uncle’s ward, some
time in May; and meanwhile he had coolly impressed upon himself that in
the interests of his work, it was infinitely better he should be
without the excitement of her letters. By the time she arrived, he
would have got through the rereading of his principal books, which a
man must do in the last term before the schools, and could begin to
“slack.” And after the schools, he could devote himself.
But now that they had met again, he was aware of doubts and
difficulties that had not yet assailed him. That she was not
indifferent to him—that his presence still played upon her nerves and
senses—so much he had verified. But during their conversation at the
Vice-Chancellor’s party he had become aware of something hard and
resistant in her—in her whole attitude towards him—which had
considerably astonished him. His arrogant self-confidence had reckoned
upon the effect of absence, as making her softer and more yielding when
they met again. The reverse seemed to be the case, and he pondered it
with irritation....
“Oh, Duggy, isn’t it ripping?” cried Trix, leaping and sidling at his
elbow like a young colt.
For they had reached the river, which lay a vivid blue, flashing under
the afternoon sun and the fleecy clouds. Along it lay the barges, a
curving many-tinted line, their tall flag-staffs flying the colours of
the colleges to which they belonged, their decks crowded with
spectators. Innumerable punts were crossing and recrossing the
river—the towing-path opposite was alive with men. Everything danced
and glittered, the white reflections in the river, the sun upon the
oars, the row of extravagantly green poplars on the further bank. How
strong and lusty was the May light!—the yellow green of the elms—the
gold of the buttercupped meadow! Only the dying moon in the high blue
suggested a different note; as of another world hidden behind the
visible world, waiting patiently, mysteriously, to take its place—to
see it fade.
“Oh, Duggy, there’s somebody waving to you. Oh, it’s Lord Meyrick. And
who’s that girl with him? She’s bowing to you, too. She’s got an
awfully lovely frock! Oh, Duggy, do look at her!”
Falloden had long since looked at her. He turned carelessly to his
mother. “There’s Meyrick, mother, on that barge in front. You know
you’re dining with him to-night in Christ Church. And that’s Constance
Bledlow beside him, to whom I asked you to write.”
“Oh, is it? A good-looking girl,” said his mother approvingly. “And who
is that man beside her, with the extraordinary hair? He looks like
somebody in Lohengrin.”
Falloden laughed, but not agreeably.
“You’ve about hit it! He’s a Marmion man. A silly, affected
creature—half a Pole. His music is an infernal nuisance in college. We
shall suppress it and him some day.”
“What barge is it, Duggy? Are we going there?”
Falloden replied impatiently that the barge they were nearing belonged
to Christ Church, and they were bound for the Marmion barge, much
further along.
Meanwhile he asked himself what could have taken the Hooper party to
the Christ Church barge? Ewen Hooper was a Llandaff man, and Llandaff,
a small and insignificant college, shared a barge with another small
college some distance down the river.
As they approached the barge he saw that while Constance had Radowitz
on her right, Sorell of St. Cyprian’s stood on the other side of her.
Ah, no doubt, that accounted for it. Sorell had been originally at “the
House,” was still a lecturer there, and very popular. He had probably
invited the Hoopers with their niece. It was, of course, the best barge
in the best position. Falloden remembered how at the Vice-Chancellor’s
party Sorell had hovered about Constance, assuming a kind of mild
guardianship; until he himself had carried her off. Why? What on earth
had she to do with Sorell? Well, he must find out. Meanwhile, she
clearly did not intend to take any further notice of his neighbourhood.
Sorell and Radowitz absorbed her. They were evidently explaining the
races to her, and she stood between them, a docile and charming vision,
turning her graceful head from side to side. Falloden and his party
crossed her actual line of sight. But she took no further notice; and
he heard her laugh at something Radowitz was saying.
“Oh, Mr. Falloden, is that you—and Lady Laura! This is a pleasure!”
He turned to see a lady whom he cordially detested—a head’s wife, who
happened to be an “Honourable,” the daughter of a small peer, and
terribly conscious of the fact. She might have reigned in Oxford; she
preferred to be a much snubbed dependent of London, and the smart
people whose invitations she took such infinite trouble to get. For she
was possessed of two daughters, tall and handsome girls, who were an
obsession to her, an irritation to other people, and a cause of
blushing to themselves. Her instinct for all men of family or title to
be found among the undergraduates was amazingly extensive and acute;
and she had paid much court to Falloden, as the prospective heir to a
marquisate. He had hitherto treated her with scant attention, but she
was not easily abashed, and she fastened at once on Lady Laura, whom
she had seen once at a London ball.
“Where are you going, Lady Laura? To Marmion? Oh, no! Come on to our
barge, you will see so much better, and save yourself another dusty bit
of walk. Here we are!”
And she waved her parasol gaily towards a barge immediately ahead,
belonging to one of the more important colleges. Lady Laura looked
doubtfully at her son.
Falloden suddenly accepted, and with the utmost cordiality.
“That’s really very good of you, Mrs. Manson! I shall certainly advise
my mother to take advantage of your kind offer. But you can’t do with
all of us!” He pointed smiling to Trix and Roger.
“Of course I can! The more the merrier!” And the lively lady stooped,
laid an affectionate hand on Roger’s shoulder, and said in a stage
aside—“Our ices are very good!”
Roger hastily retreated.
The starting-gun had boomed—communicating the usual thrill and sudden
ripple of talk through the crowded barges.
“Now they’re off!”
Lady Laura, Nelly, and “the babes” hung over the railing of the barge,
looking excitedly for the first nose of a boat coming round the bend.
Falloden, between the two fair-haired Miss Mansons, manoeuvred them and
himself into a position at the rear where he could both see and be seen
by the party on the Christ Church barge, amid which a certain large
white hat with waving feathers shone conspicuous. The two girls between
whom he stood, who had never found him in the least accessible before,
were proud to be seen with him, and delighted to try their smiles on
him. They knew he was soon going down, and they had visions of dancing
with him in London, of finding an acquaintance, perhaps even a friend,
at last, in those chilly London drawing-rooms, before which, if their
mother knew no such weakness, they often shivered.
Falloden looked down upon them with a half sarcastic, half benignant
patronage, and made himself quite agreeable. From the barge next door,
indeed, the Manson and Falloden parties appeared to be on the most
intimate terms. Mrs. Manson, doing the honours of the college boat,
flattering Lady Laura, gracious to the children, and glancing every now
and then at her two girls and their handsome companion, was enjoying a
crowded and successful moment.
But she too was aware of the tall girl in white on the neighbouring
deck, and she turned enquiringly to Falloden.
“Do you know who she is?”
“The Risboroughs’ daughter—Lady Constance Bledlow.” Mrs. Manson’s
eyebrows went up.
“Indeed! Of course I knew her parents intimately! Where is she
staying?”
Falloden briefly explained.
“But how very interesting! I must call upon her at once. But—I scarcely
know the Hoopers!”
Falloden hung over the barge rail, and smiled unseen.
“Here they come!—here they come!” shouted the children, laying violent
hands on Falloden that he might identify the boats for them.
Up rolled a mighty roar from the lower reaches of the river as the
boats came in sight, “Univ” leading; and the crowd of running and
shouting men came rushing along the towing-path. “Univ” was gallantly
“bumped” in front of its own barge, and Magdalen went head of the
river. A delirious twenty minutes followed. Bump crashed on bump. The
river in all its visible length flashed with the rising and falling
oars—the white bodies of the rowers strained back and forth. But it was
soon over, and only the cheering for the victorious crews remained; and
the ices—served to the visitors!—of which Roger was not slow to remind
his hostess.
The barges emptied, and the crowd poured out again into the meadows.
Just outside the Christ Church barge, Constance with Nora beside her,
and escorted by Sorell and Lord Meyrick, lifted a pair of eyes to a
tall fellow in immaculate flannels and a Harrow cap. She had been aware
of his neighbourhood, and he of hers, long before it was possible to
speak. Falloden introduced his mother. Then he resolutely took
possession of Constance.
“I hope you approve what I have been doing about the mare?”
“I am of course most grateful. When am I to try her?”
“I shall take her out to-morrow afternoon. Then I’ll report.”
“It is extremely kind of you.” The tone was strictly conventional.
He said nothing; and after a minute she could not help looking up. She
met an expression which showed a wounded gentleman beside her.
“I hope you saw the races well?” he said coldly.
“Excellently. And Mr. Sorell explained everything.”
“You knew him before?”
“But of course!” she said, laughing. “I have known him for years.”
“You never mentioned him—at Cannes.”
“One does not always catalogue one’s acquaintance, does one?”
“He seems to be more than an acquaintance.”
“Oh, yes. He is a great friend. Mamma was so fond of him. He went with
us to Sicily once. And Uncle Ewen likes him immensely.”
“He is of course a paragon,” said Falloden.
Constance glanced mockingly at her companion.
“I don’t see why he should be called anything so disagreeable. All we
knew of him was—that he was delightful! So learned—and simple—and
modest—the dearest person to travel with! When he left us at Palermo,
the whole party seemed to go flat.”
“You pile it on!”
“Not at all. You asked me if he were more than an acquaintance. I am
giving you the facts.”
“I don’t enjoy them!” said Falloden abruptly.
She burst into her soft laugh.
“I’m so sorry. But I really can’t alter them. Where has my party gone
to?”
She looked ahead, and saw that by a little judicious holding back
Falloden had dexterously isolated her both from his own group and hers.
Mrs. Manson and Lady Laura were far ahead in the wide, moving crowd
that filled the new-made walk across the Christ Church meadow; so were
the Hoopers and the slender figure and dark head of Alexander Sorell.
“Don’t distress yourself, please. We shall catch them up before we get
to Merton Street. And this only pays the very smallest fraction of your
debt! I understood that if my mother wrote—”
She coloured brightly.
“I didn’t promise!” she said hastily. “And I found the Hoopers were
counting on me.”
“No doubt. Oh, I don’t grumble. But when friends—suppose we take the
old path under the wall? It is much less crowded.”
And before she knew where she was, she had been whisked out of the
stream of visitors and undergraduates, and found herself walking almost
in solitude in the shadow of one of the oldest walls in Oxford, the
Cathedral towering overhead, the crowd moving at some distance on their
right.
“That’s better,” said Falloden coolly. “May I go on? I was saying that
when one friend disappoints another—bitterly!—there is such a thing as
making up!”
There were beautiful notes in Falloden’s deep voice, when he chose to
employ them. He employed them now, and the old thrill of something that
was at once delight and fear ran through Constance. But she looked him
in the face, apparently quite unmoved.
“Now it is you who are piling it on! You will use such tragic
expressions for the most trivial things. Of course, I am sorry if—”
“Then make amends!”—he said quickly. “Promise me—if the mare turns out
well—you will ride in Lathom Woods—on Saturday?”
His eyes shone upon her. The force of the man’s personality seemed to
envelope her, to beat down the resistance which, as soon as he was out
of her sight, the wiser mind in her built up.
She hesitated—smiled. And again the smile—or was it the May sun and
wind?—gave her that heightening, that touch of brilliance that a face
so delicate must often miss.
Falloden’s fastidious sense approved her wholly: the white dress; the
hat that framed her brow; the slender gold chains which rose and fell
on her gently rounded breast; her height and grace. Passion beat within
him. He hung on her answer.
“Saturday—impossible! I am not free till Monday, at least. And what
about the groom?” She looked up.
“I shall parade him to-morrow, livery, horse and all. I undertake he
shall give satisfaction. The Lathom Woods just now are a dream!”
“It is all a dream!” she said, looking round her at the beauty of field
and tree, of the May clouds, and the grey college walls—youth and
youth’s emotion speaking in the sudden softening of her eyes.
He saw—he felt her—yielding.
“You’ll come?”
“I—I suppose I may as well ride in Lathom Woods as anywhere else. You
have a key?”
“The groom will have it. I meet you there.”
She flushed a bright pink.
“That might have been left vague!”
“How are you to find your way through those woods without a guide?” he
protested.
She was silent a moment, then she said with decision:
“I must overtake my people.”
“You shall. I want you to talk to my mother—and—you have still to
introduce me to your aunt and cousins.”
Mirth crept into her eyes. The process of taming him had begun.
Falloden on the way back to his lodgings handed over his family to the
tender offices of Meyrick and a couple of other gilded youths, who had
promised to look after them for the evening. They were to dine at the
Randolph, and go to a college concert. Falloden washed his hands of
them, and shut himself up for five or six hours’ grind, broken only by
a very hasty meal. The thought of Constance hovered about him—but his
will banished it. Will and something else—those aptitudes of brain
which determined his quick and serviceable intelligence.
When after his frugal dinner he gave himself in earnest to the article
in a French magazine, on a new French philosopher, which had been
recommended to him by his tutor as likely to be of use to him in his
general philosophy paper, his mind soon took fire; Constance was
forgotten, and he lost himself in the splendour shed by the original
and creative thought of a great man, climbing, under his guidance, as
the night wore on, from point to point, and height to height, amid the
Oxford silence, broken only by the chiming bells, and a benighted
footfall in the street outside, until he seemed to have reached the
bounds of the phenomenal and to be close on that outer vastness whence
stream the primal forces—_Die Mütter_—as Goethe called them—whose play
is with the worlds.
Then by way of calming the brain before sleep, he fell upon some notes
to be copied and revised, on the “Religious Aspects of Greek Drama,”
and finally amused himself with running through an ingenious “Memoria
Technica” on the 6th Book of the Ethics which he had made for himself
during the preceding winter.
Then work was done, and he threw it from him with the same energy as
that wherewith he had banished the remembrance of Constance some hours
before. Now he could walk his room in the May dawn, and think of her,
and only of her. With all the activity of his quickened mental state,
he threw himself into the future—their rides together—their meetings,
few and measured till the schools were done—then!—all the hours of
life, and a man’s most obstinate effort, spent in the winning of her.
He knew well that she would be difficult to win.
But he meant to win her—and before others could seriously approach her.
He was already nervously jealous of Sorell—and contemptuously jealous
of Radowitz. And if they could torment him so, what would it be when
Constance passed into that larger world of society to which sooner or
later she was bound? No, she was to be wooed and married now. The
Falloden custom was to marry early—and a good custom too. His father
would approve, and money from the estate would of course be
forthcoming. Constance was on her father’s side extremely well-born;
the Hooper blood would soon be lost sight of in a Risborough and
Falloden descent. She was sufficiently endowed; and she had all the
grace of person and mind that a Falloden had a right to look for in his
wife.
Marriage, then, in the autumn, when he would be twenty-four—two years
of travel—then Parliament—
On this dream he fell asleep. A brisk wind sprang up with the sunrise,
and rustled round his lightly-darkened room. One might have heard in it
the low laughter of Fortune on the watch.