The day was still young in Lathom Woods. A wood-cutter engaged in
cutting coppice on the wood’s eastern skirts, hearing deep muffled
sounds from “Tom” clock-tower, borne to him from Oxford on the light
easterly breeze, stopped to count the strokes.
Ten o’clock.
He straightened himself, wiped the sweat from his brow, and was
immediately aware of certain other sounds approaching from the wood
itself. Horses—at a walk. No doubt the same gentleman and lady who had
passed him an hour earlier, going in a contrary direction.
He watched them as they passed him again, repeating his reflection that
they were a “fine-lookin’ couple”—no doubt sweethearts. What else
should bring a young man and a young woman riding in Lathom Woods at
that time in the morning? “Never seed ’em doin’ it before, anyways.”
Connie threw the old man a gracious “Good morning!”—to which he
guardedly responded, looking full at her, as he stood leaning on his
axe.
“I wonder what the old fellow is thinking about us!” she said lightly,
when they had moved forward. Then she flushed, conscious that the
remark had been ill-advised.
Falloden, who was sitting erect and rather sombre, his reins lying
loosely on his horse’s neck, said slowly—
“He is probably thinking all sorts of foolish things, which aren’t
true. I wish they were.”
Connie’s eyes were shining with a suppressed excitement.
“He supposes at any rate we have had a good time, and in fact—we
haven’t. Is that what you mean?”
“If you like to put it so.”
“And we haven’t had a good time, because—unfortunately—we’ve
quarrelled!”
“I should describe it differently. There are certain proofs and tests
of friendship that any friend may ask for. But when they are all
refused—”
“Friendship itself is strained!” laughed Constance, looking round at
her companion. She was breathing quickly. “In other words, we have been
quarrelling—about Radowitz—and there seems no way of making it up.”
“You have only to promise me the very little thing I asked,” said
Falloden stiffly.
“That I shouldn’t dance with him to-night, or again this week? You call
that a little thing?”
“I should have thought it a small thing, compared—”
He turned and faced her. His dark eyes were full of proud agitation—of
things unspoken. But she met them undaunted.
“Compared to—friendship?”
He was silent, but his eyes held her.
“Well then”—said Constance—“let me repeat that—in my opinion,
friendship which asks unreasonable things—is not friendship—but
tyranny!”
She drew herself up passionately, and gave a smart touch with her whip
to the mare’s flank, who bounded forward, and had to be checked by
Falloden’s hand on her bridle.
“Don’t get run away with, while you are denouncing me!” he said,
smiling, as they pulled up.
“I really didn’t want any help!” said Constance, panting. “I could have
stopped her quite easily.”
“I doubt it. She is really not the lamb you think her!”
“Nor is her mistress: I return the remark.”
“Which has no point. Because only a mad-man—”
“Could have dreamed of comparing me—to anything soft and docile?”
laughed Constance.
There was another silence. Before them at the end of a long green vista
the gate opening on the main road could be seen.
Constance broke it. “Wounded pride, and stubborn will were hot within
her.
“Well, it is a great pity we should have been sparring like this. I
can’t remember who began it. But now I suppose I may do what I like
with the dances I promised you?”
“I keep no one to their word who means to break it,” said Falloden
coldly.
Constance grew suddenly white.
“That”—she said quietly—“was unpardonable!”
“It was. I retract it.”
“No. You have said it—which means that you could think it. That decides
it.”
They rode on in silence. As they neared the gate, Constance, whose face
showed agitation and distress, said abruptly—
“Of course I know I must seem very ungrateful—”
A sound, half bitter, half scornful from Falloden stopped her. She
threw her head back defiantly.
“All the same I could be grateful enough, in my own way, if you would
let me. But what you don’t understand is that men can’t lord it over
women now as they used to do. You say—you”—she stammered a little—“you
love me. I don’t know yet—what I feel. I feel many different things.
But I know this: A man who forbids me to do this and that—to talk to
this person—or dance with some one else—a man who does not trust and
believe in me—if I were ever so much in love with him, I would not
marry him! I should feel myself a coward and a slave!”
“One is always told”—said Falloden hoarsely—“that love makes it easy to
grant even the most difficult things. And I have begged the merest
trifle.”
“‘Begged’?” said Constance, raising her eyebrows. “You issued a decree.
I am not to dance with Radowitz—and I am not to see so much of Mr.
Sorell—if I am to keep your—friendship. I demurred. You repeated it—as
though you were responsible for what I do, and had a right to command
me. Well, that does not suit me. I am perfectly free, and I have given
you no right to arrange my life for me. So now let us understand each
other.”
Falloden shrugged his shoulders.
“You have indeed made it perfectly plain!”
“I meant to,” said Constance vehemently.
But they could not keep their eyes from each other. Both were pale. In
both the impulse to throw away pride and hold out a hand of yielding
was all but strong enough to end their quarrel. Both suffered, and if
the truth were told, both were standing much deeper than before in the
midstream of passion.
But neither spoke another word—till the gate was reached.
Falloden opened it, and backed his horse out of Connie’s way. In the
road outside, at a little distance, the groom was waiting.
“Good-bye,” said Falloden, with ceremonious politeness. “I wish I had
not spoilt your ride. Please do not give up riding in the woods,
because you might be burdened with my company. I shall never intrude
upon you. All the woodmen and keepers have been informed that you have
full permission. The family will be all away till the autumn. But the
woodmen will look after you, and give you no trouble.”
“Thank you!” said Constance, lightly, staying the mare for a moment.
“But surely some of the rides will be wanted directly for the
pheasants? Anyway I think I shall try the other side of Oxford. They
say Bagley is delightful. Good-bye!”
She passed through, made a signal to Joseph, and was soon trotting fast
towards Oxford.
On that return ride, Constance could not conceal from herself that she
was unhappy. Her lips quivered, her eyes had much ado to keep back the
onset of tears—now that there was no Falloden to see her, or provoke
her. How brightly their ride had begun!—how miserably it had ended! She
thought of that first exhilaration; the early sun upon the wood; the
dewy scents of moss and tree; Falloden’s face of greeting—“How can you
look so fresh! You can’t have slept more than four hours—and here you
are! Wonderful! ‘Did ever Dian so become a grove’—”
An ominous quotation, if she had only remembered at the time where it
came from! For really his ways were those of a modern Petruchio—ways
that no girl of any decent spirit could endure.
Yet how frank and charming had been his talk as they rode into the
wood!—talk of his immediate plans, which he seemed to lay at her feet,
asking for her sympathy and counsel; of his father and his two sisters;
of the Hoopers even. About them, his new tone was no doubt a trifle
patronising, but still, quite tolerable. Ewen Hooper, he vowed, was “a
magnificent scholar,” and it was too bad that Oxford had found nothing
better for him than “a scrubby readership.” But “some day, of course,
he’ll have the regius professorship.” Nora was “a plucky little
thing—though she hates me!” And he, Falloden, was not so sure after all
that Miss Alice would not land her Pryce. “Can’t we bring it about?”
And Falloden ran, laughing, through a catalogue of his own smart or
powerful relations, speculating what could be done. It was true, wasn’t
it, that Pryce was anxious to turn his back on Oxford and the higher
mathematics, and to try his luck in journalism, or politics? Well,
Falloden happened to know that an attractive post in the Conservative
Central Office would soon be vacant; an uncle of his was a very
important person on the Council; that and other wires might be pulled.
Constance, eagerly, began to count up her own opportunities of the same
kind; and between them, they had soon—in imagination—captured the post.
Then, said Falloden, it would be for Constance to clinch the matter. No
man could do such a thing decently. Pryce would have to be told—”‘The
world’s your oyster—but before you open it, you will kindly go and
propose to my cousin!—which of course you ought to have done months
ago!’”
And so laughing and plotting like a couple of children they had gone
rambling through the green rides and glades of the wood, occasionally
putting their horses to the gallop, that the pulse of life might run
still faster.
But a later topic of conversation had brought them into even closer
contact. Connie spoke of her proposed visit to her aunts. Falloden,
radiant, could not conceal his delight.
“You will be only five miles from us. Of course you must come and stay
at Flood! My mother writes they have collected a jolly party for the
12th. I will tell her to write to you at once. You must come! You must!
Will you promise?”
And Constance, wondering at her own docility, had practically promised.
“I want you to know my people—I want you to know my father!” And as he
plunged again into talk about his father, the egotistical man of
fashion disappeared; she seemed at last to have reached something
sincere and soft, and true.
And then—what had begun the jarring? Was it—first—her account of her
Greek lessons with Sorell? Before she knew what had happened, the brow
beside her had clouded, the voice had changed. Why did she see so much
of Sorell? He, like Radowitz, was a _poseur_—a wind-bag. That was what
made the attraction between them. If she wished to learn Greek—
“Let me teach you!” And he had bent forward, with his most brilliant
and imperious look, his hand upon her reins.
But Constance, surprised and ruffled, had protested that Sorell had
been her mother’s dear friend, and was now her own. She could not and
would not give up her lessons. Why indeed should she?
“Because friends”—Falloden had laid a passionate emphasis on the
word—“must have some regard—surely—to each other’s likes and dislikes.
If you have an enemy, tell me—he or she shall be mine—instantly! Sorell
dislikes me. You will never hear any good of me from him. And, of
course, Radowitz hates me. I have given him good cause. Promise—at
least—that you will not dance with Radowitz again. You don’t know what
I suffered last night. He has the antics of a monkey!”
Whereupon the quarrel between them had broken like thunder, Constance
denouncing the arrogance and unkindness that could ask such promises of
her; Falloden steadily, and with increasing bitterness, pressing his
demand.
And so to the last scene between them, at the gate.
Was it a breach?—or would it all be made up that very night at the
Magdalen ball?
No!—it was and should be a breach! Constance fought back her tears, and
rode proudly home.
“What are you going to wear to-night?” said Nora, putting her head in
at Constance’s door. Constance was lying down by Annette’s strict
command, in preparation for her second ball, which was being given by
Magdalen, where the college was reported to have surpassed itself in
the lavishness of all the preparations made for lighting up its
beautiful walks and quadrangles.
Constance pointed languidly to the sofa, where a creation in white silk
and tulle, just arrived from London, had been laid out by the
reverential hands of Annette.
“Why on earth does one go to balls?” said Constance, gloomily pressing
both hands upon a pair of aching temples.
Nora shut the door behind her, and came to the side of the bed.
“It’s time to dress,” she said firmly. “Alice says you had a _succès
fou_ last night.”
“Go away, and don’t talk nonsense!” Constance turned on her side, and
shut her eyes.
“Oh, Alice hadn’t a bad time either!” said Nora, complacently, sitting
on the bed. “Herbert Pryce seems to have behaved quite decently. Shall
I tell you something?” The laughing girl stooped over Connie, and said
in her ear—“Now that Herbert knows it would be no good proposing to
you, he thinks it might be a useful thing to have you for a relation.”
“Don’t be horrid!” said Constance. “If I were Alice—”
“You’d punch my head?” Nora laughed. “All very well. But Alice doesn’t
much care why Herbert Pryce marries her, so long as he does marry her.”
Constance did not reply. She continued to feign a headache. But all the
time she was thinking of the scene in the wood that morning, when she
and Falloden had—to amuse themselves—plotted the rise in life, and the
matrimonial happiness, of Herbert and Alice. How little they had cared
for what they talked about! They talked only that they might laugh
together—hear each other’s voices, look into each other’s eyes—
“Where did you ride this morning?” said Nora suddenly.
“Somewhere out towards Godstowe,” said Constance vaguely.
“I saw Mr. Falloden riding down the High this morning, when I was on
the way to the Bodleian. He just looks splendid on horseback—I must
give him that. Why doesn’t he ride with you sometimes, as he chose your
horse?”
“I understand the whole of Oxford would have a fit if a girl went out
riding with an undergraduate,” said Constance, her voice muffled in the
pillow. Then, after a moment she sprang up, and began to brush her
hair.
“Mr. Falloden’s not an undergraduate now. He can do what he likes,”
said Nora.
Constance made no reply. Nora observed her with a pair of shrewd brown
eyes.
“There are two bouquets for you downstairs,” she said abruptly.
Constance turned round startled, almost hidden by the thick veil of her
brown hair.
“Who’s sent them?”
“One comes from Mr. Radowitz—a beauty. The other’s from Lord Meyrick.
Isn’t he a jolly boy?”
Constance turned back to the dressing-table, disappointed. She had half
expected another name. And yet she would have felt insulted if Falloden
had dared to send her flowers that evening, without a word of
apology—of regret for their happy hour, spoilt by his absurd demands.
“Well, I can’t carry them both; and one will be offended.”
“Oh, you must take Radowitz’s!” cried Nora. “Just to show that you
stand by him. Mr. Sorell says everybody likes him in college—except Mr.
Falloden’s horrid set, who think themselves the lords of creation. They
say that Otto Radowitz made such an amusing speech last week in the
college debating society attacking ‘the bloods.’ Of course they didn’t
hear it, because they have their own club, and turn up their nose at
the college society. But it’s going to be printed somewhere, and then
it’ll make them still more furious with him. They’ll certainly pay him
out some time.”
“All right,” said Constance, who had suddenly recovered colour and
vivacity. “I’ll take Mr. Radowitz’s bouquet.”
“Then, of course, Lord Meyrick will feel snubbed. Serve him right! He
shouldn’t be so absurdly fond of Mr. Falloden!”
Nora was quite aware that she might be provoking Constance. She did it
with her eyes open. Her curiosity and concern after what Alice had told
her of the preceding night’s ball were becoming hard to conceal. Would
Connie really engage herself to that horrid man?
But no rise could be got out of Constance. She said nothing. Annette
appeared, and the important business of hair-dressing went forward.
Nora, however, had yet another fly to throw.
“Alice passed Mr. Falloden on the river this afternoon—he was with the
Mansons, and another lady, an awfully pretty person. Mr. Falloden was
teaching her to row. Nobody knew who she was. But she and he seemed
great friends. Alice saw them also walking about together at Iffley,
while the others were having tea.”
“Indeed?” said Constance. “Annette, I think I’ll wear my black after
all—the black tulle, and my pearls.”
Annette unwillingly hung up the “creation.”
“You’d have looked a dream in it, my lady. Why ever won’t you wear it?”
But Constance was obstinate. And very soon she stood robed in clouds of
black tulle and jet, from which her delicate neck and arms, and her
golden-brown head stood out with brilliant effect. Nora, still sitting
on the bed, admired her hugely. “She’ll look like that when she’s
married,” she thought, by which she meant that the black had added a
certain proud—even a sombre—stateliness to Connie’s good looks.
“Now my pearls, Annette.”
“Won’t you have some flowers, my lady?”
“No. Not one. Only my pearls.”
Annette brought them, from the locked dressing-case under her own bed
where she jealously kept them. They were famous pearls and many of
them. One string was presently wound in and out through the coils of
hair that crowned the girl’s delicate head; the other string coiled
twice round her neck and hung loose over the black dress. They were her
only ornament of any kind, but they were superb.
Connie looked at herself uneasily in the glass.
“I suppose I oughtn’t to wear them,” she said doubtfully.
“Why?” said Nora, staring with all her eyes. “They’re lovely!”
“I suppose girls oughtn’t to wear such things. I—I never have worn
them, since—mamma’s death.”
“They belonged to her?”
“Of course. And to papa’s mother. She bought them in Rome. It was said
they belonged to Marie Antoinette. Papa always believed they were
looted at the sack of the Tuileries in the Revolution.”
Nora sat stupefied. How strange that a girl like Connie should possess
such things!—and others, nothing!
“Are they worth a great deal of money?”
“Oh, yes, thousands,” said Connie, still looking at herself, in mingled
vanity and discomfort. “That’s why I oughtn’t to wear them. But I shall
wear them!” She straightened her tall figure imperiously. “After all
they were mamma’s. I didn’t give them myself.”
Popular as the Marmion ball had been, the Magdalen ball on the
following night was really the event of the week. The beauty of its
cloistered quadrangle, its river walks, its President’s garden, could
not be rivalled elsewhere; and Magdalen men were both rich and lavish,
so that the illuminations easily surpassed the more frugal efforts of
other colleges. The midsummer weather still held out, and for all the
young creatures, plain and pretty, in their best dancing frocks, whom
their brothers and cousins and friends were entertaining, this
particular ball struck the top note of the week’s romance.
“Who is that girl in black!” said his partner to Douglas Falloden, as
they paused to take breath after the first round of waltzing. “And—good
heavens, what pearls! Oh, they must be sham. Who is she?”
Falloden looked round, while fanning his partner. But there was no need
to look. From the moment she entered the room, he had been aware of
every movement of the girl in black.
“I suppose you mean Lady Constance Bledlow.”
The lady beside him raised her eyebrows in excited surprise.
“Then they’re not sham! But how ridiculous that an unmarried girl
should wear them! Yes they are—the Risborough pearls! I saw them once,
before I married, on Lady Risborough, at a gorgeous party at the
Palazzo Farnese. Well, I hope that girl’s got a trustworthy maid!”
“I dare say Lady Constance values them most because they belonged to
her mother!” said Falloden drily.
The lady sitting beside him laughed, and tapped him on the arm.
“Sentimentalist! Don’t you know that girls nowadays—babes in the
schoolroom—know the value of everything? Who is she staying with?”
Falloden briefly explained and tried to change the subject. But Mrs.
Glendower could not be persuaded to leave it. She was one of the
reigning beauties of the moment, well acquainted with the Falloden
family, and accustomed since his Eton days to lay violent hands on
Douglas whenever they met. She and her husband had lately agreed to
live apart, and she was now pursuing amusement wherever it was to be
had. A certain Magdalen athlete was at the moment her particular
friend, and she had brought down a sister to keep her in countenance.
She had no intention, indeed, of making scandal, and Douglas Falloden
was a convenient string to her bow.
Falloden was quite aware of the situation. But it suited him to dance
with Mrs. Glendower, and to dance with her a great deal. He and
Constance exchanged greetings; he went through the form of asking her
to dance, knowing very well that she would refuse him; and then, for
the rest of the evening, when he was not dancing with Mrs. Glendower,
he was standing about, “giving himself airs,” as Alice repeated to her
mother, and keeping a sombre watch on Constance.
“My dear—what has happened to Connie!” said Mrs. Hooper to Alice in
bewilderment. Lord Meyrick had just good-naturedly taken Aunt Ellen
into supper, brought her back to the ballroom, and bowed himself off,
bursting with conscious virtue, and saying to himself that Constance
Bledlow must now give him at least two more dances.
Mrs. Hooper had found Alice sitting solitary, and rather drooping.
Nobody had offered her supper; Herbert Pryce was not at the ball; her
other friends had not showed her any particular attention, and her
prettiness had dribbled away, like a bright colour washed out by rain.
Her mother could not bear to see her—and then to look at Connie across
the room, surrounded by all those silly young men, and wearing the
astonishing jewels that were the talk of the ball, and had only been
revealed to Mrs. Hooper’s bewildered gaze, when the girl threw off her
wraps in the cloak-room.
Alice answered her mother’s question with an irritable shake of the
head, meant to indicate that Connie was nothing to her.
Whereupon Mrs. Hooper settled herself carefully in the chair which she
meant to keep for the rest of the evening, smoothing the bright folds
of the new dress over her knee. She was much pleased with the new
dress; and, of course, it would be paid for some time. But she was
almost forgetting it in the excitement of Connie’s behaviour.
“She has never danced once with Mr. Falloden!” she whispered in Alice’s
ear. “It has been all Mr. Radowitz. And the talk!” She threw up her
hands maliciously.
“It’s the way they dance—that makes people talk!” said Alice. “As for
Mr. Falloden—perhaps she’s found out what a horrid creature he is.”
The band struck up. It was a mazurka with a swinging tune. Radowitz
opposite sprang to his feet, with a boyish gesture of delight.
“Come!” he said to Constance; and they took the floor. Supper had
thinned the hall, and the dancers who stood in the doorways and along
the walls involuntarily paused to watch the pair. Falloden and Mrs.
Glendower had just returned from supper. They too stood among the
spectators.
The dance they watched was the very embodiment of youth, and youth’s
delight in itself. Constance knew, besides, that Falloden was looking
on, and the knowledge gave a deeper colour to her cheek, a touch of
wildness to her perfect grace of limb and movement. Radowitz danced the
Polish dance with a number of steps and gestures unknown to an English
ballroom, as he had learnt them in his childhood from a Polish
dancing-mistress; Constance, with the instinct of her foreign training,
adapted herself to him, and the result was enchanting. The slim girl in
black, and the handsome youth, his golden hair standing up straight,
_en brosse_, round his open brow and laughing eyes, seemed, as dancers,
made for each other. They were absorbed in the poetry of concerted
movement, the rhythm of lilting sound.
“Mountebank!” said Falloden to Meyrick, contemptuously, as the couple
passed.
Radowitz saw his enemy, and though he could not hear what was said, was
sure that it was something insulting. He drew himself up, and as he
passed on with Constance he flung a look of mingled triumph and
defiance at the group of “bloods” standing together, at Falloden in
particular. Falloden had not danced once with her, had not been allowed
once to touch her white hand. It was he, Radowitz, who had carried her
off—whom she had chosen—whom she had honoured. The boy’s heart swelled
with joy and pride; the artist in him, of another race than ours,
realising and sharpening the situation, beyond the English measure.
And, afterwards, he danced with her again—many times. Moreover with him
and an escort of his friends—for in general the young Pole with his
musical gift and his romantic temperament was popular in
Oxford—Constance made the round of the illuminated river-walks and the
gleaming cloisters, moving like a goddess among the bevy of youths who
hung upon her smiles. The intoxication of it banished thought and
silenced regret.
But it was plain to all the world, no less than to Mrs. Hooper, that
Falloden of Marmion, who had seemed to be in possession of her the
night before, had been brusquely banished from her side; that Oxford’s
charming newcomer had put her supposed suitor to open contumely; and
that young Radowitz reigned in his stead.
Radowitz walked home in a whirl of sensations and recollections that
made of the Oxford streets an “insubstantial fairy place,” where only
Constance lived.
He entered Marmion about four o’clock in a pearly light of dawn.
Impossible to go to bed or to sleep!
He would change his clothes, go out for a bathe, and walk up into the
Cumnor hills.
In the quadrangle he passed a group of men in evening dress returned
like himself from the ball. They were talking loudly, and reading
something which was being passed from hand to hand. As he approached,
there was a sudden dead silence. But in his abstraction and excitement
he noticed nothing.
When he had vanished within the doorway of his staircase, Meyrick, who
had had a great deal too much champagne, said fiercely—
“I vote we give that young beggar a lesson! I still owe him one for
that business of a month ago.”
“When he very nearly settled you, Jim,” laughed a Wykehamist, a
powerfully built fellow, who had just got his Blue for the Eleven, had
been supping freely and was in a mood for any riotous deed.
“That was nothing,” said Meyrick—“but this can’t be stood!”
And he pointed to the sheet that Falloden, who was standing in the
centre of the group, was at the moment reading. It was the latest
number of an Oxford magazine, one of those _éphémérides_ which are
born, and flutter, and vanish with each Oxford generation. It contained
a verbatim report of the attack on the Marmion “bloods” made by
Radowitz at the dinner of the college debating society about a
fortnight earlier. It was witty and damaging in the highest degree, and
each man as he read it had vowed vengeance. Falloden had been
especially mocked in it. Some pompous tricks of manner peculiar to
Falloden in his insolent moods, had been worked into a
pseudo-scientific examination of the qualities proper to a “blood,”
with the happiest effect. Falloden grew white as he read it. Perhaps on
the morrow it would be in Constance Bledlow’s hands. The galling
memories of the evening just over were burning too in his veins. That
open humiliation in the sight of Oxford had been her answer to his
prayer—his appeal. Had she not given him a right to make the appeal?
What girl could give two such rendezvous to a man, and not admit some
right on his part to advise, to influence her? It was monstrous she
should have turned upon him so!
And as for this puppy!—
A sudden gust of passion, of hot and murderous wrath, different from
anything he had ever felt before, blew fiercely through the man’s soul.
He wanted to crush—to punish—to humiliate. For a moment he saw red.
Then he heard Meyrick say excitedly: “This is our last chance! Let’s
cool his head for him—in Neptune.”
Neptune was the Græco-Roman fountain in the inner quad, which a former
warden had presented to the college. The sea god with his trident,
surrounded by a group of rather dilapidated nymphs, presided over a
broad basin, filled with running water and a multitude of goldfish.
There was a shout of laughing assent, and a rush across the grass to
Radowitz’s staircase. College was nearly empty; the Senior Tutor had
gone to Switzerland that morning; and those few inmates who still
remained, tired out with the ball of the night before, were fast
asleep. The night porter, having let everybody in and closed the gate,
was dozing in his lodge.
There was a short silence in the quadrangle. Then the rioters who had
been for a few minutes swallowed up in a distant staircase on the
western side of the quadrangle reëmerged, with muffled shouts and
laughter, bringing their prey with them—a pale, excited figure.
“Let me alone, you cowardly bullies!—ten of you against one!”
But they hurried him along, Radowitz fighting all the way, and too
proud to call for help. The intention of his captors—of all save
one—was mere rowdy mischief. To duck the offender and his immaculate
white flannels in Neptune, and then scatter to their beds before any
one could recognise or report them, was all they meant to do.
But when they reached the fountain, Radowitz, whose passion gave him
considerable physical strength, disengaged himself, by a sudden effort,
from his two keepers, and leaping into the basin of the fountain, he
wrenched a rickety leaden shell from the hand of one of Neptune’s
attendant nymphs and began to fling the water in the faces of his
tormentors. Falloden was quickly drenched, and Meyrick and others
momentarily blinded by the sudden deluge in their eyes. Robertson, the
Winchester Blue, was heavily struck. In a wild rage he jumped into the
fountain and closed with Radowitz. The Pole had no chance against him,
and after a short struggle, Radowitz fell heavily, catching in his fall
at a piece of rusty piping, part of some disused machinery of the
fountain.
There was a cry. In a moment it sobered the excited group of men.
Falloden, who had acted as leader throughout, called peremptorily to
Robertson. “Is he hurt? Let him up at once.”
Robertson in dismay stooped over the prostrate form of Radowitz, and
carried him to the edge of the fountain. There it was seen that the lad
had fainted, and that blood was streaming from his right hand.
“He’s cut it on that beastly piping—it’s all jagged,” gasped Robertson.
“I say, can anybody stop the bleeding?”
One Desmond, an Etonian who had seen one or two football accidents,
knelt down, deadly pale, by Radowitz and rendered a rough first-aid. By
a tourniquet of handkerchiefs he succeeded in checking the bleeding.
But it was evident that an artery was injured.
“Go for a doctor,” said Falloden to Meyrick, pointing to the lodge.
“Tell the porter that somebody’s been hurt in a lark. You’ll probably
find a cab outside. We’ll carry him up.”
In a few minutes they had laid the blood-stained and unconscious
Radowitz on his bed, and were trying in hideous anxiety to bring him
round. The moment when he first opened his eyes was one of unspeakable
relief to the men who in every phase of terror and remorse were
gathered round him. But the eyelids soon fell again.
“You’d better go, you fellows,” said Falloden, looking round him.
“Robertson and I and Desmond will see the doctor.”
The others stole away. And the three men kept their vigil. The
broad-shouldered Wykehamist, utterly unnerved, sat by the bed trembling
from head to foot. Desmond kept watch over the tourniquet.
Falloden stood a little apart, in a dead silence, his eyes wandering
occasionally from the figure on the bed to the open window, through
which could be seen the summer sky, and a mounting sun, just touching
the college roofs. The college clock struck half past four. Not two
hours since Radowitz and Constance Bledlow had held the eyes of Oxford
in the Magdalen ballroom.