“My brother will be here directly. He wants to show you his special
books,” said Miss Wenlock shyly.
The Master’s sister was a small and withered lady, who had been
something of a beauty, and was now the pink of gentle and middle-aged
decorum. She was one of those women it is so easy to ignore till you
live with them. Then you perceive that in their relations to their own
world, the world they make and govern, they are of the stuff which
holds a country together, without which a country can not exist. She
might have come out of a Dutch picture—a Terburg or a Metsu—so
exquisite was she in every detail—her small, white head, her regular
features, the lace coif tied under her chin, the ruffles at her wrist,
the black brocade gown, which never altered in its fashion and which
she herself cut out, year after year, for her maid to make,—the
chatelaine of old Normandy silver, given her by her brother years
before, which hung at her waist.
Opposite her sat a very different person, yet of a type no less
profitable to this mixed life of ours. Mrs. Mulholland was the widow of
a former scientific professor, of great fame in Oxford for his wit and
Liberalism. Whenever there was a contest on between science and
clericalism in the good old fighting days, Mulholland’s ample figure
might have been seen swaying along the road from the Parks to
Convocation, his short-sighted eyes blinking at every one he passed,
his fair hair and beard streaming in the wind, a flag of battle to his
own side, and an omen of defeat to the enemy. His _mots_ still
circulated, and something of his gift for them had remained with the
formidable woman who now represented him. At a time when short dresses
for women were coming in universally, she always wore hers long and
ample, though they were looped up by various economical and thrifty
devices; on the top of the dress—which might have covered a crinoline,
but didn’t—a shawl, long after every one else had ceased to wear
shawls; and above the shawl a hat, of the large mushroom type and
indecipherable age. And in the midst of this antique and generally
untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, under
snow-white hair: black eyes full of Irish fun, a pugnacious and
humorous mouth, and the general look of one so steeped in the rich,
earthy stuff of life that she might have stepped out of a novel of
Fielding’s or a page of “Lavengro.”
When Constance entered, Mrs. Mulholland turned round suddenly to look
at her. It was a glance full of good will, but penetrating also, and
critical. It was as though the person from whom it came had more than a
mere stranger’s interest in the tall young lady in white, now advancing
towards Miss Wenlock.
But she gave no immediate sign of it. She and Miss Wenlock had been
discussing an Oxford acquaintance, the newly-married wife of one of the
high officials of the University. Miss Wenlock, always amiable, had
discreetly pronounced her “charming.”
“Oh, so dreadfully charming!” said Mrs. Mulholland with a shrug, “and
so sentimental that she hardens every heart. Mine becomes stone when I
talk to her. She cried when I went to tea with her—a wedding visit if
you please! I think it was because one of the kangaroos at Blenheim had
just died in childbirth. I told her it was a mercy, considering that
any of them would hug us to death if they got a chance. Are you a
sentimentalist, Lady Constance?” Mrs. Mulholland turned gaily to the
girl beside her, but still with the same touch of something coolly
observant in her manner.
Constance laughed.
“I never can cry when I ought to,” she said lightly.
“Then you should go to tea with Mrs. Crabbett. She could train anybody
to cry—in time. She cultivates with care, and waters with tears, every
sorrow that blows! Most of us run away from our troubles, don’t we?”
Constance again smiled assent. But suddenly her face stiffened. It was
like a flower closing, or a light blown out.
Mrs. Mulholland thought—“She has lost a father and a mother within a
year, and I have reminded her. I am a cruel, clumsy wretch.”
And thenceforward she roared so gently that Miss Wenlock, who never
said a malicious thing herself, and was therefore entirely dependent on
Sarah Mulholland’s tongue for the salt of life, felt herself cheated of
her usual Sunday entertainment. For there were few Sundays in term-time
when Mrs. Mulholland did not “drop in” for tea and talk at Beaumont
before going on to the Cathedral service.
But under the gentleness, Constance opened again, and expanded. Mrs.
Mulholland seemed to watch her with increasing kindness. At last, she
said abruptly—
“I have already heard of you from two charming young men.”
Constance opened a pair of conscious eyes. It was as though she were
always expecting to hear Falloden’s name, and protecting herself
against the shock of it. But the mistake was soon evident.
“Otto Radowitz told me you had been so kind to him! He is an
enthusiastic boy, and a great friend of mine. He deals always in
superlatives. That is so refreshing here in Oxford where we are all so
clever that we are deadly afraid of each other, and everybody talks
drab. And his music is divine! I hear they talk of him in Paris as
another Chopin. He passed his first degree examination the other day
magnificently! Come and hear him some evening at my house. Jim Meyrick,
too, has told me all about you. His mother is a cousin of mine, and he
condescends occasionally to come and see me. He is, I understand, a
‘blood.’ All I know is that he would be a nice youth, if he had a
little more will of his own, and had nicer friends!” The small black
eyes under the white hair flamed.
Constance started. Miss Wenlock put up a soothing hand—
“Dear Sarah, are you thinking of any one?”
“Of course I am!” said Mrs. Mulholland firmly. “There is a young
gentleman at Marmion who thinks the world belongs to him. Oh, you know
Mr. Falloden, Grace! He got the Newdigate last year, and the Greek
Verse the other day. He got the Ireland, and he’s going to get a First.
He might have been in the Eleven, if he’d kept his temper, and they say
he’s going to be a magnificent tennis player. And a lot of other
tiresome distinctions. I believe he speaks at the Union, and speaks
well—bad luck to him!”
Constance laughed, fidgeted, and at last said, rather defiantly—
“It’s sometimes a merit to be disliked, isn’t it? It means that you’re
not exactly like other people. Aren’t we all turned out by the gross!”
Mrs. Mulholland looked amused.
“Ah, but you see I know something about this young man at home. His
mother doesn’t count. She has her younger children, and they make her
happy. And of course she is absurdly proud of Douglas. But the father
and this son Douglas are of the same stuff. They have a deal more
brains and education than their forbears ever wanted; but still, in
soul, they remain our feudal lords and superiors, who have a right to
the services of those beneath them. And everybody is beneath
them—especially women; and foreigners—and artists—and people who don’t
shoot or hunt. Ask their neighbours—ask their cottagers. Whenever the
revolution comes, their heads will be the first to go! At the same time
they know—the clever ones—that they can’t keep their place except by
borrowing the weapons of the class they really fear—the professional
class—the writers and thinkers—the lawyers and journalists. And so they
take some trouble to sharpen their own brains. And the cleverer they
are, the more tyrannous they are. And that, if you please, is Mr.
Douglas Falloden!”
“I wonder why you are so angry with him, my dear Sarah,” said Miss
Wenlock mildly.
“Because he has been bullying my nice boy, Radowitz!” said Mrs.
Mulholland vehemently. “I hear there has been a disgraceful amount of
ragging in Marmion lately, and that Douglas Falloden—can you conceive
it?—a man in his last term, whom the University imagines itself to be
turning out as an educated specimen!—is one of the ring-leaders—the
ring-leader. It appears that Otto wears a frilled dress shirt—why
shouldn’t he?—that, having been brought up in Paris till he was
nineteen, he sometimes tucks his napkin under his chin—that he uses
French words when he needn’t—that he dances like a Frenchman—that he
recites French poetry actually of his own making—that he plays too well
for a gentleman—that he doesn’t respect the customs of the college, et
cetera. There is a sacred corner of the Junior Common Room, where no
freshman is expected to sit after hall. Otto sat in it—quite
innocently—knowing nothing—and, instead of apologising, made fun of Jim
Meyrick and Douglas Falloden who turned him out. Then afterwards he
composed a musical skit on ‘the bloods,’ which delighted every one in
college, who wasn’t a ‘blood.’ And now there is open war between him
and them. Otto doesn’t talk of it. I hear of it from other people. But
he looks excited and pale—he is a very delicate creature!—and we, who
are fond of him, live in dread of some violence. I never can understand
why the dons are so indulgent to ragging. It is nothing but a
continuation of school bullying. It ought to be put down with the
strongest possible hand.”
Miss Wenlock had listened in tremulous sympathy, nodding from time to
time. Constance sat silent and rather pale—looting down. But her mind
was angry. She said to herself that nobody ought to attack absent
persons who can’t defend themselves,—at least so violently. And as Mrs.
Mulholland seemed to wait for some remark from her, she said at last,
with a touch of impatience:
“I don’t think Mr. Radowitz minds much. He came to us—to my uncle’s—to
play last night. He was as gay as possible.”
“Radowitz would make jokes with the hangman!” said Mrs. Mulholland.
“Ah, well, I think you know Douglas Falloden”—the tone was just lightly
touched with significance—“and if you can lecture him—do!” Then she
abruptly changed her subject:
“I suppose you have scarcely yet made acquaintance with your two aunts
who live quite close to the Fallodens in Yorkshire?”
Constance looked up in astonishment.
“Do you know them?”
“Oh, quite well!” The strong wrinkled face flashed into laughter. But
suddenly the speaker checked herself, and laid a worn hand gently on
Constance’s knee—“You won’t mind if I tell you things?—you won’t think
me an impertinent old woman? I knew your father”—was there just an
imperceptible pause on the words?—“when he was quite a boy; and my
people were small squires under the shelter of the Risboroughs before
your father sold the property and settled abroad. I was brought up with
all your people—your Aunt Marcia, and your Aunt Winifred, and all the
rest of them. I saw your mother once in Rome—and loved her, like
everybody else. But—as probably you know—your Aunt Winifred—who was
keeping house for your father—gathered up her silly skirts, and
departed when your father announced his engagement. Then she and your
Aunt Marcia settled together in an old prim Georgian house, about five
miles from the Fallodens; and there they have been ever since. And now
they are tremendously excited about you!”
“About me?” said Constance, astonished. “I don’t know them. They never
write to me. They never wrote to father!”
Mrs. Mulholland smiled.
“All the same you will have a letter from them soon. And of course you
remember your father’s married sister, Lady Langmoor?”
“No, I never even saw her. But she did sometimes write to father.”
“Yes, she was not quite such a fool as the others. Well, she will
certainly descend on you. She’ll want you for some balls—for a
drawing-room—and that kind of thing. I warn you!”
The girl’s face showed her restive.
“Why should she want me?—when she never wanted me before—or any of us?”
“Ah, that’s her affair! But it is your other aunts who delight me. Your
Aunt Marcia, when I first knew her, was in an ascetic phase. People
called it miserliness—but it wasn’t; it was only a moral hatred of
waste—in anything. We envied her abominably, when I was a girl in my
early teens, much bothered with dressing, because she had invented a
garment—the only one of any kind that she wore under her dress. She
called it a ‘Unipantaloonicoat’—you can imagine why! It included
stockings. It was thin in summer and thick in winter. There was only
one putting on—pouf!—and then the dress. I thought it a splendid idea,
but my mother wouldn’t let me copy it. Your Aunt Winifred had just the
opposite mania—of piling on clothes—because she said there were ‘always
draughts.’ If one petticoat fastened at the back, there must be another
over that which fastened at the front—and another at the side—and so
on, _ad infinitum_. But then, alack!—they suddenly dropped all their
absurdities, and became quite ordinary people. Aunt Winifred took to
religion; she befriends all the clergy for miles round. She is the
mother of Mother Church. And Aunt Marcia, after having starved herself
of clothes for years and collected nothing more agreeable than snails,
now wears silks and satins, and gossips and goes out to tea, and
collects blue china like anybody else. I connect it with the advent of
a certain General who after all went off solitary to Malta, and died
there. Poor Marcia! But you will certainly have to go and stay there.”
“I don’t know!” said Constance, her delicate mouth setting rather
stiffly.
“Ah, well—they are getting old!”
Mrs. Mulholland’s tone had softened again, and when it softened there
was a wonderful kindness in it.
A door opened suddenly. The Master came in, followed by Alexander
Sorell.
“My dear Edward!” said Miss Wenlock, “how late you are!”
“I was caught by a bore, dear, after chapel. Horace couldn’t get rid of
his, and I couldn’t get rid of mine. But now all is well. How do you
do, Lady Constance? Have you had enough tea, and will you come and see
my books?”
He carried her off, Connie extremely nervous, and wondering into what
bogs she was about to flounder.
But she was a scholar’s daughter, and she had lived with books. She
would have scorned to pretend, and her pose, if she had one, was a pose
of ignorance—she claimed less than she might. But the Master soon
discovered that she had many of her father’s tastes, that she knew
something of archæology—he bore it even when she shyly quoted
Lanciani—that she read Latin, and was apparently passionately fond of
some kinds of poetry. And all the time she pleased his tired eyes by
her youth and freshness, and when as she grew at ease with him, and
began to chatter to him about Rome, and how the learned there love one
another, the Master’s startling, discordant laugh rang out repeatedly.
The three in the other room heard it.
“She is amusing him,” said Miss Wenlock, looking rather bewildered.
“They are generally so afraid of him.”
The Master put his head into the drawing-room.
“I am taking Lady Constance into the garden, my dear. Will you three
follow when you like?”
He took her through the old house, with the dim faces of former masters
and college worthies shining softly on its panelled walls, in the
golden lights from the level sun outside, and presently they emerged
upon the garden which lay like an emerald encased on three sides by
surfaces of silver-grey stone, and overlooked by a delicate classical
tower designed by the genius of Christopher Wren. Over one-half of the
garden lay an exquisite shadow; the other was in vivid light. The air
seemed to be full of bells—a murmurous voice—the voice of Oxford; as
though the dead generations were perpetually whispering to the
living—“We who built these walls, and laid this turf for you—we, who
are dead, call to you who are living—carry on our task, continue our
march:
“On to the bound of the waste—
On to the City of God!”
A silence fell upon Constance as she walked beside the Master. She was
thinking involuntarily of that absent word dropped by her
uncle—“_Oxford is a place of training_”—and there was a passionate and
troubled revolt in her. Other ghostly wills seemed to be threatening
her—wills that meant nothing to her. No!—her own will should shape her
own life! As against the austere appeal that comes from the inner heart
of Oxford, the young and restless blood in her sang defiance. “I will
ride with him to-morrow—I will—I will!”
But the Master merely thought that she was feeling the perennial spell
of the Oxford beauty.
“You are going to like Oxford, I hope?”
“Yes—” said Constance, a little reluctantly. “Oh, of course I shall
like it. But it oppresses me—rather.”
“I know!” he said eagerly—always trying to place himself in contact
with the young mind and life, always seeking something from them in
which he was constantly disappointed. “Yes, we all feel that! We who
are alive must always fight the past, though we owe it all we have.
Oxford has been to me often a witch—a dangerous—almost an evil witch. I
seemed to see her—benumbing the young forces of the present. And the
scientific and practical men, who would like to scrap her, have
sometimes seemed to me right. And then one changes—one changes!”
His voice dropped. All that was slightly grotesque in his outer man,
the broad flat head, the red hair, the sharp wedge-like chin,
disappeared for Constance in the single impression of his eyes—pale
blue, intensely melancholy, and most human.
“Take up some occupation—some study—” he said to her gently. “You won’t
be long here; but still, ask us for what we can give. In Oxford one
must learn something—or teach something. If not, life here goes sour.”
Constance repeated Sorell’s promise to teach her Greek.
“Excellent!” said the Master. “You will be envied. Sorell is a capital
fellow! And one of the ablest of our younger scholars—though of
course”—the speaker drew himself up with a slight acerbity—“he and I
belong to different schools of criticism. He was devoted to your
mother.”
Constance assented dumbly.
“And shows already”—thought the Master—“some dangerous signs of being
devoted to you. Poor wretch!” Aloud he said—“Ah, here they come. I must
get some more chairs.”
The drawing-room party joined them, and the gathering lasted a little
longer. Sorell walked up and down with Constance. She liked him
increasingly—could not help liking him. And apart from his personal
charm, he recalled all sorts of pleasant things and touching memories
to her. But he was almost oppressively refined and scrupulous and
high-minded. “He is too perfect!” she thought rebelliously. “One can’t
be as good as that. It isn’t allowed.”
As to Mrs. Mulholland, Constance felt herself taken possession
of—mothered—by that lady. She could not understand why, but though
rather puzzled and bewildered, she did not resist. There was something,
indeed, in the generous dark eyes that every now and then touched the
girl’s feeling intolerably, as though it reminded her of a tenderness
she had been long schooling herself to do without.
“Come and see me, my dear, whenever you like. I have a house in St.
Giles, and all my husband’s books. I do a lot of things—I am a
guardian—I work at the schools—the town schools for the town children,
et cetera. We all try to save our souls by committees nowadays. But my
real business is to talk, and make other people talk. So I am always at
home in the evenings after dinner, and a good many people come. Bring
Nora sometimes. Alice doesn’t like me. Your aunt will let you
come—though we don’t know each other very well. I am very respectable.”
The laughing face looked into Constance’s, which laughed back.
“That’s all right!” said Mrs. Mulholland, as though some confidences
had been exchanged between them. “You might find me useful. Consider me
a friend of the family. I make rather a good umbrella-stand. People can
lean against me if they like. I hold firm. Good-bye. That’s the
Cathedral bell.”
But Constance and Sorell, followed discreetly by Annette, departed
first. Mrs. Mulholland stayed for a final word to the Master, before
obeying the silver voice from St. Frideswide’s tower.
“To think of that girl being handed over to Ellen Hooper, just when all
her love affairs will be coming on! A woman with the wisdom of a
rabbit, and the feelings of a mule! And don’t hold your finger up at
me, Master! You know you can’t suffer fools at all—either gladly—or
sadly. Now let me go, Grace!—or I shan’t be fit for church.”
“A very pretty creature!” said Ewen Hooper admiringly—“and you look
very well on her, Constance.”
He addressed his niece, who had been just put into her saddle by the
neat groom who had brought the horses.
Mrs. Hooper, Alice and Nora were standing on the steps of the old
house. A knot of onlookers had collected on the pavement—mostly errand
boys. The passing undergraduates tried not to look curious, and hurried
by. Constance, in her dark blue riding-habit and a _tricorne_ felt hat
which she had been accustomed to wear in the Campagna, kept the mare
fidgeting and pawing a little that her uncle might inspect both her and
her rider, and then waved her hand in farewell.
“Where are you going, Connie?” cried Nora.
“Somewhere out there—beyond the railway,” she said vaguely, pointing
with her riding-whip. “I shall be back in good time.”
And she went off followed by Joseph, the groom, a man of forty, lean
and jockey-like, with a russet and wrinkled countenance which might
mean anything or nothing.
“A ridiculous hat!” said Alice, maliciously. “Nobody wears such a hat
in England to ride in. Think of her appearing like that in the Row!”
“It becomes her.” The voice was Nora’s, sharp and impatient.
“It is theatrical, like everything Connie does,” said Mrs. Hooper
severely. “I beg that neither of you will copy her.”
Nora walked to the door opening on the back garden, and stood there
frowning and smiling unseen.
Meanwhile Joseph followed close at Connie’s side, directing her, till
they passed through various crowded streets, and left the railway
behind. Then trotting under a sunny sky, on a broad vacant road, they
made for a line of hills in the middle distance.
The country was early June at its best. The river meadows blazed with
buttercups; the river itself, when Constance occasionally caught a
glimpse of its windings, lay intensely blue under a wide azure sky,
magnificently arched on a great cornice built of successive strata of
white and purple cloud, which held the horizon. Over the Lathom Woods
the cloud-line rose and fell in curves that took the line of the hill.
The woods themselves lay in a haze of heat, the sunlight on the rounded
crests of the trees, and the shadows cast by the westerly sun, all
fused within the one shimmering veil of blue. The air was fresh and
life-giving. Constance felt herself in love with life and the wide
Oxford scene. The physical exercise delighted her, and the breathless
sense of adventure.
But it was disagreeable to reflect, as she must do occasionally, that
the sphinx-like groom knew perfectly well that she was going to the
Lathom Woods, that he had the key of the nearest gate in his pocket,
that he would be a witness of her meeting with Falloden, whatever they
did with him afterwards, and that Falloden had in all probability paid
him largely to hold his tongue. All that side of it was
odious—degrading. But the thought of the green rides, and the man
waiting for her, set all the blood in her wild veins dancing. Yet there
was little or nothing in her feeling of a girl’s yearning for a lover.
She wanted to see Falloden—to talk with him and dispute with him. She
could not be content for long without seeing him. He excited
her—provoked her—haunted her. And to feel her power over him was
delightful, if it had not been spoilt by a kind of recurrent fear—a
panic fear of his power over her.
What did she know of him after all? She was quite aware that her
friends, the Kings, had made some enquiries at Cannes before allowing
her to see so much of him as she had done during his stay with the rich
and hospitable Jaroslavs. She believed Colonel King had not liked him
personally. But Douglas Falloden belonged to one of the oldest English
families, settled on large estates in Yorkshire, with distinguished
records in all the great services; he was heir presumptive to a
marquisate, so long as his uncle, Lord Dagnall, now past seventy, did
not take it into his head to marry; and there was his brilliant career
at Oxford, his good looks and all the rest of it. Constance had a
strong dash of the worldling in her mixed character. She had been
brought up with Italian girl friends of the noble class, in whom the
practical instincts of a practical race were closely interwoven with
what the Englishman thinks of as Italian “romance” or “passion.” She
had discussed dowries and settlements since she was fifteen; and took
the current values of wealth and birth for granted. She was quite aware
of her own advantages, and was not at all minded to throw them away. A
brilliant marriage was, perhaps, at the back of her mind, as it is at
the back of the minds of so many beautiful creatures who look and
breathe poetry, while they are aware, within a few pounds, of what can
be done in London on five thousand—or ten thousand—a year. She
inevitably thought of herself as quite different from the girls of poor
or middle-class families, who must earn their living—Nora, for
instance.
And yet there was really a gulf between her and the ordinary worldling.
It consisted in little else than a double dose of personality—a richer
supply of nerve and emotion. She could not imagine life without money,
because she had always lived with rich people. But money was the mere
substratum; what really mattered was the excitement of loving, and
being loved. She had adored her parents with an absorbing affection.
Then, as she grew up, everywhere in her Roman life, among her girl
friends, or the handsome youths she remembered riding in the Villa
Borghese gymkhana, she began to be aware of passion and sex; she caught
the hints of them, as it were of a lightning playing through the web of
life, flashing, and then gone—illuminating or destroying. Her mind was
full of love stories. At twenty she had been the confidante of many,
both from her married and her unmarried friends. It was all, so far, a
great mystery to her. But there was in her a thrilled expectation. Not
of a love, tranquil and serene, such as shone on her parents’ lives,
but of something overwhelming and tempestuous; into which she might
fling her life as one flings a flower into the current of Niagara.
It was the suggestion of such a possibility that had drawn her first to
Douglas Falloden. For three golden days she had imagined herself
blissfully in love with him. Then had come disillusion and repulsion.
What was violent and imperious in him had struck on what was violent
and imperious in her. She had begun to hold him off—to resist him. And
that resistance had been more exciting even than the docility of the
first phase. It had ended in his proposal, the snatched kiss, and a
breach. And now, she had little idea of what would happen; and would
say to herself, recklessly, that she did not care. Only she must see
him—must go on exploring him. And as for allowing her intimacy with him
to develop in any ordinary way—under the eyes of the Hoopers—or of
Oxford—it was not to be thought of. Rather than be tamely handed over
to him in a commonplace wooing, she would have broken off all
connection with him; and that she had not the strength to do.
“Here is the gate, my lady.”
The man produced a key from his pocket and got down to open it.
Constance passed into a green world. Three “drives” converged in front
of her, moss-carpeted, and close-roofed by oak-wood in its first rich
leaf. After the hot sun on the straight and shadeless road outside,
these cool avenues stretching away into a forest infinity, seemed to
beckon a visitant towards some distant Elysian scene—some glade haunted
of Pan.
Constance looked down them eagerly. Which was she to take?—suddenly,
far down the right hand drive, a horseman—coming into view. He
perceived her, gave a touch to his horse, and was quickly beside her.
Both were conscious of the groom, who had reined in a few yards behind,
and sat impassive.
Falloden saluted her joyously. He rode a handsome Irish horse, nearly
black, with a white mark on its forehead; a nervous and spirited
creature, which its rider handled with the ease of one trained from his
childhood to the hunting field. His riding dress, with its
knee-breeches and leggings pleased the feminine eye; so did his strong
curly head as he bared it, and the animation of his look.
“This is better, isn’t it, than ‘’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer on the ’ard
’igh road!’ I particularly want to show you the bluebells—they’re
gorgeous! But they’re quite on the other side—a long way off. And then
you’ll be tired—you’ll want tea. I’ve arranged it.”
“Joseph”—he turned to the groom—“you know the head keeper’s cottage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, go off there and wait. Tell the keeper’s wife that I shall bring
a lady to tea there in about an hour. She knows.” Joseph turned
obediently, took the left hand road, and was soon out of sight.
The two riders paced side by side through the green shadows of the
wood. Constance was flushed—but ‘she looked happy and gracious.
Falloden had not seen her so gracious since Oxford had brought them
again across each other. They fell at once, for the first time since
her arrival, into the easy talk of their early Riviera days; and he
found himself doing his very best to please her. She asked him
questions about his approaching schools; and it amused him, in the case
of so quick a pupil, to frame a “chaffing” account of Oxford
examinations and degrees; to describe the rush of an Honour man’s first
year before the mods’ gate is leaped; the loitering and “slacking” of
the second year and part of the third; and then the setting of teeth
and girding of loins, when a man realises that some of the lost time is
gone forever, and that the last struggle is upon him.
“What I am doing now is degrading!—getting ‘tips’ from the
tutors—pinning up lists—beastly names and dates—in my rooms—learning
hard bits by heart—cribbing and stealing all I can. And I have still
some of my first year’s work to go through again. I must cut Oxford for
the last fortnight—and go into retreat.”
Constance expressed her wonder that any one could ever do any work in
the summer term—
“You are all so busy lunching each other’s Sisters and cousins and
aunts! It is a great picnic—not a university,” she said flippantly.
“Distracting, I admit—but—”
He paused.
“But—what?”
After a moment, he turned a glowing countenance towards her.
“That is not my chief cause of flight!”
She professed not to understand.
“It is persons distract me—not tea-parties. Persons I want to be seeing
and talking to—persons I can not keep myself away from.”
He looked straight before him. The horses ambled on together, the reins
on their necks. In the distance a cuckoo called from the river meadows,
and round the two young figures one might have fancied an attendant
escort of birds, as wrens, tits, pippets, fled startled by their
approach.
Constance laughed. The laugh, though very musical, was sarcastic.
“I don’t see you as a shuttlecock!”
“Tossed by the winds of fate? You think I can always make myself do
what I wish?”
“That’s how I read you—at present.”
‘Hm—a charming character! Everything calculated—nothing spontaneous.
That I think is what you mean?”
“No. But I doubt your being carried away.”
He flushed hotly.
“Lady Connie!—”
He paused. Her colour rushed too. She saw what he was thinking of; she
perceived her blunder.
“For what else did you castigate me at Cannes?” he said, in a low
voice. And his black eyes looked passionately into hers. But she
recovered herself quickly.
“At any rate, you have more will than most people,” she said lightly.
“Aren’t you always boasting of it? But you are quite right to go away.”
“I am not going for a week,” he put in quickly. “There will be time for
two more rides.”
She made no reply, and they paced on. Suddenly the trees began to thin
before them, and a splendid wave of colour swept across an open glade
in full sunlight.
“Marvellous!” cried Constance. “Oh, stop a moment!”
They pulled up on the brink of a sea of blue. All around them the
bluebells lay glowing in the sunshine. The colour and sparkle of them
was a physical delight; and with occasional lingering tufts of
primroses among them and the young oak scrub pushing up through the
blue in every shade of gold and bronze, they made an enchanted garden
of the glade.
Falloden dismounted, tied up his horse, and gathered a bunch for his
companion.
“I don’t know—ought we?” she said regretfully. “They are not so
beautiful when they are torn away. And in a week they will be
gone—withered!”
She stooped over them, caressing them, as, taking a strap from the
pocket of his own saddle, he tied the flowers to her pommel.
He looked up impetuously.
“Only to spring again!—in this same wood—in other woods—for us to see.
Do you ever think how full the world is of sheer pleasure—small and
great?” And his eyes told her plainly what his pleasure was at that
moment.
Something jarred. She drew herself away, though with fluttering pulses.
Falloden, with a strong effort, checked the tide of impulse in himself.
He mounted again, and suggested a gallop, through a long stretch of
green road on the further side of the glade. They let their horses go,
and the flying hoof-beats woke the very heart of the wood.
“That was good!” cried Falloden, as they pulled up, drawing in deep
draughts of the summer wind. Then he looked at her admiringly.
“How well you hold yourself! You are a perfect rider!”
Against her will Constance sparkled under his praise. Then they turned
their horses towards the keeper’s cottage, and the sun fell lower in
the west.
“Mr. Falloden,” said Constance presently, “I want you to promise me
something.”
“Ask me,” he said eagerly.
“I want you to give up ragging Otto Radowitz!”
His countenance changed.
“Who has been talking to you?”
“That doesn’t matter. It is unworthy of you. Give it up.”
Falloden laughed with good humour.
“I assure you it does him a world of good!”
She argued hotly; astonished, in her young inexperience, that his will
could so soon reassert itself against hers; sharply offended, indeed,
that after she had given him the boon of this rendezvous, he could
hesitate for a moment as to the boon she asked in return—had humbled
herself to ask. For had she not often vowed to herself that she would
never, never ask the smallest favour of him; while on her side a diet
of refusals and rebuffs was the only means to keep him in check?
But that diet was now gaily administered to herself.
Falloden argued with energy that a man who has never been to a public
school has got to be “disciplined” at the university; that Otto
Radowitz, being an artist, was specially in need of discipline; that no
harm had been done him, or would be done him. But he must be made to
understand that certain liberties and impertinences would not be
tolerated by the older men.
“He never means them!” cried Constance. “He doesn’t understand. He is a
foreigner.”
“No! He is an Englishman here—and must behave as such. Don’t spoil him,
Lady Connie!”
He looked at her imperiously—half smiling, half frowning.
“Remember!—he is my friend!”
“I do remember,” he said drily. “I am not likely to forget.” Constance
flushed, and proudly dropped the subject. He saw that he had wounded
her, but he quietly accepted it. There was something in the little
incident that made her more aware of his overbearing character than
ever.
“If I married him,” she thought, “I should be his slave!”
Tea had been daintily spread for them under a birch-tree near the
keeper’s lodge. The keeper’s wife served them with smiles and curtsies,
and then discreetly disappeared. Falloden waited on Constance as a
squire on his princess; and all round them lay the green encircling
rampart of the wood. In the man’s every action, there was the homage of
one who only keeps silence because the woman he loves imposes it. But
Constance again felt that recurrent fear creeping over her. She had
been a fool—a fool!
He escorted her to the gate of the wood where Joseph was waiting.
“And now for our next merry meeting?” he said, as he got down to
tighten her stirrup which had stretched a little.
Constance hurriedly said she could not promise—there were so many
engagements.
Falloden did not press her. But he held her hand when she gave it him.
“Are you angry with me?” he said, in a low voice, while his eyes mocked
a little.
“No—only disappointed!”
“Isn’t that unkind? Haven’t we had a golden time?” His tone smote her a
little.
“It was heavenly,” she said, “till—”
“Till I behaved like a brute?”
She laughed excitedly, and waved farewell.
Falloden, smiling, watched her go, standing beside his horse—a
Siegfried parting from Brunhilde.
When she and the groom had disappeared, he mounted and rode off towards
another exit.
“I must be off to-morrow!” he said to himself with decision—“or my
schools will go to the dogs!”