CHAPTER X

Radowitz woke up the following morning, after the effects of the dose

of morphia administered by the surgeon who had dressed his hand had

worn off, in a state of complete bewilderment. What had happened to

him? Why was he lying in this strange, stiff position, propped up with

pillows?

He moved a little. A sharp pain wrung a groan from him. Then he

perceived his bandaged hand and arm; and the occurrences of the

preceding night began to rush back upon him. He had soon reconstructed

them all; up to the moment of his jumping into the fountain. After that

he remembered nothing.

He had hurt himself somehow in the row, that was clear. A sudden terror

ran through him. “It’s my right hand!—Good God! if I lost my hand!—if I

couldn’t play again!” He opened his eyes, trembling, and saw his little

college room; his clothes hanging on the door, the photographs of his

father and mother, of Chopin and Wagner on the chest of drawers. The

familiar sight reassured him at once, and his natural buoyancy of

spirit began to assert itself.

“I suppose they got a doctor. I seem to remember somebody coming. Bah,

it’ll be all right directly. I heal like a baby. I wonder who else was

hurt. Who’s that? Come in!”

The door opened, and his scout looked in cautiously. “Thought I heard

you moving, sir. May the doctor come in?”

The young surgeon appeared who had been violently rung up by Meyrick

some five hours earlier. He had a trim, confident air, and pleasant

eyes. His name was Fanning.

“Well, how are you? Had some sleep? You gave yourself an uncommonly

nasty wound. I had to set a small bone, and put in two or three

stitches. But I don’t think you knew much about it.”

“I don’t now,” said Radowitz vaguely. “How did I do it?”

“There seems to have been a ‘rag’ and you struck your hand against some

broken tubing. But nobody was able to give a clear account.” The doctor

eyed him discreetly, having no mind to be more mixed up in the affair

than was necessary.

“Who sent for you?”

“Lord Meyrick rang me up, and when I got here I found Mr. Falloden and

Mr. Robertson. They had done what they could.”

The colour rushed back into the boy’s pale cheeks.

“I remember now,” he said fiercely. “Damn them!”

The surgeon made no reply. He looked carefully at the bandage, asked if

he could ease it at all—took pulse and temperature, and sat some time

in silence, apparently thinking, by the bed. Then rising, he said:

“I shan’t disturb the dressing unless it pains you. If it does, your

scout can send a message to the surgery. You must stay in bed—you’ve

got a little fever. Take light food—I’ll tell your scout all about

that—and I’ll come in again to-night.”

He departed. The scout brought warm water and a clean sheet. Radowitz

was soon washed and straightened as well as masculine fingers could

achieve it.

“You seem to have lost a lot of blood, sir, last night!” said the man

involuntarily, as he became aware in some dismay of the white flannels

and other clothes that Radowitz had been wearing when the invaders

broke into his room, which were now lying in a corner, where the doctor

had thrown them.

“That’s why I feel so limp!” said Radowitz, shutting his eyes again.

“Please get me some tea, and send a message round to St. Cyprian’s—to

Mr. Sorell—that I want to see him as soon as he can come.”

The door closed on the scout.

Left alone Radowitz plunged into a tumult of feverish thought. He

seemed to be standing again, just freshly dressed, beside his bed—to

hear the noise on the stairs, the rush into his sitting-room. Falloden,

of course, was the leader—insolent brute! The lad, quivering once more

with rage and humiliation, seemed to feel again Falloden’s iron grip

upon his shoulders—to remember the indignity of his forced descent into

the quad—the laughter of his captors. Then he recollected throwing the

water—and Robertson’s spring upon him—

If _she_ had seen it! Whereupon, a new set of images displaced the

first. He was in the ballroom again, he had her hand in his; her

charming face with its small features and its beautiful eyes was turned

to him. How they danced, and how deliriously the music ran! And there

was Falloden in the doorway, with his dark face,—looking on. The rag on

his part, had been mere revenge; not for the speech, but for the ball.

Was she in love with him? Impossible! How could such a hard, proud

being attract her? If she did marry him he would crush and wither her.

Yet of course girls did do—every day—such idiotic things. And he

thought uncomfortably of a look he had surprised in her face, as he and

she were sitting in the New Quad under the trees and Falloden passed

with a handsome dark lady—one of the London visitors. It had been

something involuntary—a flash from the girl’s inmost self. It had

chilled and checked him as he sat by her. Yet the next dance had driven

all recollection of it away.

“She can’t ever care for me,” he thought despairingly. “I know that.

I’m not her equal. I should be a fool to dream of it. But if she’s

going to throw herself away—to break her heart for that

fellow—it’s—it’s devilish! Why aren’t we in Paris—or Warsaw—where I

could call him out?”

He tossed about in pain and fever, irritably deciding that his bandage

hurt him, and he must recall the doctor, when he heard Sorell’s voice

at the door. It quieted him at once.

“Come in!”

Sorell came in with a scared face.

“My dear boy—what’s the matter?”

“Oh, there was a bit of a row last night. We were larking round the

fountain, trying to push each other in, and I cut my hand on one of

those rotten old pipes. Beastly luck! But Fanning’s done everything. I

shall be all right directly. There’s a little bone broken.”

“A bone broken!—your hand!” ejaculated Sorell, who sat down and looked

at him in dismay.

“Yes—I wish it had been my foot! But it doesn’t matter. That kind of

thing gets well quickly, doesn’t it?” He eyed his visitor anxiously.

“You see I never was really ill in my life.”

“Well, we can’t run any risks about it,” said Sorell decidedly. “I

shall go and see Fanning. If there’s any doubt about it, I shall carry

you up to London, and get one of the crack surgeons to come and look at

it. What was the row about?”

Radowitz’s eyes contracted so that Sorell could make nothing out of

them.

“I really can’t remember,” said the lad’s weary voice. “There’s been a

lot of rowing lately.”

“Who made the row?”

“What’s the good of asking questions?” The speaker turned irritably

away. “I’ve had such a lot of beastly dreams all night, I can’t tell

what happened, and what didn’t happen. It was just a jolly row, that’s

all I know.”

Sorell perceived that for some reason Radowitz was not going to tell

him the story. But he was confident that Douglas Falloden had been at

the bottom of it, and he felt a fierce indignation. He had however to

keep it to himself, as it was clear that questions excited and annoyed

the patient.

He sat by the boy a little, observing him. Then he suggested that

Bateson the scout and he should push the bed into the sitting-room, for

greater air and space. Radowitz hesitated, and then consented. Sorell

went out to speak to Bateson.

“All right, sir,” said the scout. “I’ve just about got the room

straight; but I had to get another man to help me. They must have gone

on something fearful. There wasn’t an article in the room that wasn’t

knocked about.”

“Who did it?” said Sorell shortly.

The scout looked embarrassed.

“Well, of course, sir, I don’t know for certain. I wasn’t there to see.

But I do hear Mr. Falloden, and Lord Meyrick, and Mr. Robertson were in

it—and there were some other gentlemen besides. There’s been a deal of

ragging in this college lately, sir. I do think, sir, as the fellows

should stop it.”

Sorell agreed, and went off to the surgery, thinking furiously. Suppose

the boy’s hand—and his fine talent—had been permanently injured by that

arrogant bully, Falloden, and his set! And Constance Bledlow had been

entangling herself with him—in spite of what anybody could say! He

thought with disgust of the scenes of the Marmion ball, of the reckless

way in which Constance had encouraged Falloden’s pursuit of her, of the

talk of Oxford. His work with the Greats’ papers had kept him away from

the Magdalen ball, and he had heard nothing of it. No doubt that

foolish child had behaved in the same way there. He was thankful he had

not been there to see. But he vowed to himself that he would find out

the facts of the attack on Radowitz, and that she should know them.

Yet the whole thing was very surprising. He had seen on various

occasions that Falloden was jealous of Connie’s liking for Radowitz, of

the boy’s homage, and of Connie’s admiration for his musical gift. But

after the Marmion night, and the triumph she had so unwisely given the

fellow—to behave in this abominable way! There couldn’t be a spark of

decent feeling in his composition.

Radowitz lay still—thinking always of Falloden, and Lady Constance.

Another knock at his door—very timid and hesitating. Radowitz said

“Come in.”

The door opened partially, and a curly head was thrust in. Another head

appeared behind it.

“May we come in?” said a muffled voice. “It’s Meyrick—and Robertson.”

“I don’t care if you do,” said Radowitz coldly. “What do you want?”

The two men came in, stepping softly. One was fair and

broad-shouldered. The other exceedingly dark and broad-shouldered. Each

was a splendid specimen of the university athlete. And two more

sheepish and hang-dog individuals it would have been difficult to find.

“We’ve come to apologise,” said Meyrick, standing by the bed, his hands

in his pockets, looking down on Radowitz. “We didn’t mean to hurt you

of course, and we’re awfully sorry—aren’t we, Robertson?”

Robertson, sheltering behind Meyrick, murmured a deep-voiced assent.

“If we hadn’t been beastly drunk we should never have done it,” said

Meyrick; “but that’s no excuse. How are you? What does Fanning say?”

They both looked so exceedingly miserable that Radowitz, surveying them

with mollified astonishment, suddenly went into a fit of hysterical

laughter. The others watched him in alarm.

“Do sit down, you fellows!—and don’t bother!” said Radowitz, as soon as

he could speak. “I gave it to you both as hard as I could in my speech.

And you hit back. We’re quits. Shake hands.”

And he held out his left hand, which each of them gingerly shook. Then

they both sat down, extremely embarrassed, and not knowing what to say

or do next, except that Meyrick again enquired as to Fanning’s opinion.

“Let’s have some swell down,” said Meyrick urgently. “We could get him

in a jiffy.”

But Radowitz impatiently dismissed the subject. Sorell, he said, had

gone to see Fanning, and it would be all right. At the same time it was

evident through the disjointed conversation which followed that he was

suffering great pain. He was alternately flushed and deadly pale, and

could not occasionally restrain a groan which scared his two

companions. At last they got up to go, to the relief of all three.

Meyrick said awkwardly:

“Falloden’s awfully sorry too. He would have come with us—but he

thought perhaps you wouldn’t want him.”

“No, I don’t want him!” said Radowitz vehemently. “That’s another

business altogether.”

Meyrick hummed and hawed, fidgeting from one foot to the other.

“It was I started the beastly thing,” he said at last. “It wasn’t

Falloden at all.”

“He could have stopped it,” said Radowitz shortly. “And you can’t deny

he led it. There’s a long score between him and me. Well, never mind, I

shan’t say anything. And nobody else need. Good-bye.”

A slight ghostly smile appeared in the lad’s charming eyes as he raised

them to the pair, again holding out his free hand. They went away

feeling, as Meyrick put it, “pretty beastly.”

By the afternoon various things had happened. Falloden, who had not got

to bed till six, woke towards noon from a heavy sleep in his Beaumont

Street “diggings,” and recollecting in a flash all that had happened,

sprang up and opened his sitting-room door. Meyrick was sitting on the

sofa, fidgeting with a newspaper.

“Well, how is he?”

Meyrick reported that the latest news from Marmion was that Sorell and

Fanning between them had decided to take Radowitz up to town that

afternoon—for the opinion of Sir Horley Wood, the great surgeon.

“Have you seen Sorell?”

“Yes. But he would hardly speak to me. He said we’d perhaps spoilt his

life.”

“Whose?”

“Radowitz’s.”

Falloden’s expression stiffened.

“That’s nonsense. If he’s properly treated, he’ll get all right.

Besides it was a pure accident. How could any of us know those broken

pipes were there?”

“Well, I shall be glad when we get Wood’s opinion,” said Meyrick

gloomily. “It does seem hard lines on a fellow who plays that it should

have been his hand. But of course—as you say, Duggy—it’ll probably be

all right. By the way, Sorell told me Radowitz had absolutely refused

to let anybody in college know—any of the dons—and had forbidden Sorell

himself to say a word.”

“Well of course that’s more damaging to us than any other line of

action,” said Falloden drily. “I don’t know that I shall accept it—for

myself. The facts had better be known.”

“Well, you’d better think of the rest of us,” said Meyrick. “It would

hit Robertson uncommonly hard if he were sent down. If Radowitz is

badly hurt, and the story gets out, they won’t play him for the

Eleven—”

“If he’s badly hurt, it will get out,” said Falloden coolly.

“Well, let it alone, anyway, till we see.”

Falloden nodded—“Barring a private friend or two. Well, I must dress.”

When he opened the door again, Meyrick was gone.

In an unbearable fit of restlessness, Falloden went out, passed

Marmion, looked into the quad which was absolutely silent and deserted,

and found his way aimlessly to the Parks.

He must see Constance Bledlow, somehow, before the story reached her

from other sources, and before everybody separated for the vac. A large

Nuneham party had been arranged by the Mansons for the following day in

honour of the ex-Ambassador and his wife, who were prolonging their

stay in Christ Church so as to enjoy the river and an Oxford without

crowds or functions. Falloden was invited, and he knew that Constance

had been asked. In his bitterness of the day before, after their

quarrel in the wood, he had said to himself that he would certainly go

down before the party. Now he thought he would stay.

Suddenly, as he was walking back along the Cherwell edge of the park,

under a grey sky with threatening clouds, he became aware of a lady in

front of him. Annoying or remorseful thought became in a moment

excitement. It was impossible to mistake the springing step and tall

slenderness of Constance Bledlow.

He rapidly weighed the pros and cons of overtaking her. It was most

unlikely that she had yet heard of the accident. And yet she might have

seen Sorell.

He made up his mind and quickened his pace. She heard the steps behind

her and involuntarily looked round. He saw, with a passionate delight,

that she could not immediately hide the agitation with which she

recognised him.

“Whither away?” he said as he took off his hat. “Were you up as late as

I? And are balls worth their headaches?”

She was clearly surprised by the ease and gaiety of his manner, and at

the same time—he thought—inclined to resent his interruption of her

walk, before she had made up her mind in what mood, or with what aspect

to meet him next. But he gave her no time for further pondering. He

walked beside her, while she coldly explained that she had taken Nora

to meet some girl friends at the Cherwell boat-house, and was now

hurrying back herself to pay some calls with her aunt in the afternoon.

“What a week you have had!” he said when she paused. “Is there anything

left of you? I saw that you stayed very late last night.”

She admitted it.

“As for me, of course, I thought the ball—intolerable. But that of

course you know—you must know!” he added with a sudden vehement

emphasis. “May I not even say that you intended it? You meant to

scourge me, and you succeeded.”

Constance laughed, though he perceived that her lip trembled a little.

“The scourging had, I think—compensations.”

“You mean I took refuge with Mrs. Glendower? Yes, she was kind—and

useful. She is an old friend—more of the family than mine. She is

coming to stay at Flood in August.”

“Indeed?” The tone was as cool as his own. There was a moment’s pause.

Then Falloden turned another face upon her.

“Lady Constance!—I have something rather serious and painful to tell

you—and I am glad of this opportunity to tell you before you hear it

from any one else. There was a row in college last night, or rather

this morning, after the ball, and Otto Radowitz was hurt.”

The colour rushed into Connie’s face. She stopped. All around them the

park stretched, grey and empty. There was no one in sight on the path

where they had met.

“But not seriously,” she breathed.

“His hand was hurt in the scuffle!”

Constance gave a cry.

“His hand!”

“Yes. I knew you’d feel that. It was a horrible shame—and a pure

accident. But you’d better know the whole truth. It was a rag, and I

was in it. But, of course, nobody had the smallest intention of hurting

Radowitz.”

“No—only of persecuting and humiliating him!” cried Constance, her eyes

filling with tears. “His hand!—oh, how horrible! If it were really

injured, if it hindered his music—if it stopped it—it would just kill

him!”

“Very likely it is only a simple injury which will quickly heal,” said

Falloden coldly. “Sorell has taken him up to town this afternoon to see

the best man he can get. We shall know to-morrow, but there is really

no reason to expect anything—dreadful.”

“How did it happen?”

“We tried to duck him in Neptune—the college fountain. There was a

tussle, and his hand was cut by a bit of broken piping. You perhaps

don’t know that he made a speech last week, attacking several of us in

a very offensive way. The men in college got hold of it last night. A

man who does that kind of thing runs risks.”

“He was only defending himself!” cried Constance. “He has been ragged,

and bullied, and ill-treated—again and again—just because he is a

foreigner and unlike the rest of you. And you have been the worst of

any—you know you have! And I have begged you to let him alone! And

if—if you had really been my friend—you would have done it—only to

please me!”

“I happened to be more than your friend!”—said Falloden passionately.

“Now let me speak out! You danced with Radowitz last night, dance after

dance—so that it was the excitement, the event of the ball—and you did

it deliberately to show me that I was nothing to you—nothing!—and he,

at any rate, was something. Well!—I began to see red. You

forget—that”—he spoke with difficulty—“my temperament is not exactly

saintly. You have had warning, I think, of that often. When I got back

to college, I found a group of men in the quad reading the skit in _The

New Oxonian_. Suddenly Radowitz came in upon us. I confess I lost my

head. Oh, yes, I could have stopped it easily. On the contrary, I led

it. But I must ask you—because I have so much at stake!—was I alone to

blame?—Was there not some excuse?—had you no part in it?”

He stood over her, a splendid accusing figure, and the excited girl

beside him was bewildered by the adroitness with which he had carried

the war into her own country.

“How mean!—how ungenerous!” Her agitation would hardly let her speak

coherently. “When we were riding, you ordered me—yes, it was

practically that!—you warned me, in a manner that nobody—_nobody_ —has

any right to use with me—unless he were my fiancé or my husband—that I

was not to dance with Otto Radowitz—I was not to see so much of Mr.

Sorell. So just to show you that I was really not at your beck and

call—that you could not do exactly what you liked with me—I danced with

Mr. Radowitz last night, and I refused to dance with you. Oh, yes, I

know I was foolish—I daresay I was in a temper too—but how you can make

that any excuse for your attack on that poor boy—how you can make me

responsible, if—”

Her voice failed her. But Falloden saw that he had won some advantage,

and he pushed on.

“I only want to point out that a man is not exactly a stock or a stone

to be played with as you played with me last night. Those things are

dangerous! Can you deny—that you have given me some reason to

hope—since we met again—to hope confidently, that you might change your

mind? Would you have let me arrange those rides for you—unknown to your

friends—would you have met me in the woods, those heavenly times—would

you have danced with me as you did—would you have let me pay you in

public every sort of attention that a man can pay to a girl, when he

wants to marry her, the night of the Marmion ball—if you had not felt

something for me—if you had not meant to give me a little hope—to keep

the thing at least uncertain? No!—if this business does turn out badly,

I shall have remorse enough, God knows—but you can’t escape! If you

punish me for it, if I alone am to pay the penalty, it will be not only

Radowitz that has a grievance—not only Radowitz whose life will have

been spoilt!”

She turned to him—hypnotised, subdued, by the note of fierce

accusation—by that self-pity of the egotist—which looked out upon her

from the young man’s pale face and tense bearing.

“No”—she said trembling—“no—it is quite true—I have treated you badly.

I have behaved wilfully and foolishly. But that was no reason—no

excuse—”

“What’s the good of talking of ‘reason’—or excuse’?” Falloden

interrupted violently. “Do you understand that I am in love with

you—and what that means to a man? I tore myself away from Oxford,

because I knew that if I stayed another day within reach of you—after

that first ride—I should lose my class—disappoint my father—and injure

my career. I could think of nothing but you—dream of nothing but you.

And I said to myself that my success—my career—might after all be your

affair as well as mine. And so I went. And I’m not going to boast of

what it cost me to go, knowing that other people would be seeing

you—influencing you—perhaps setting you against me—all the time I was

away. But then when I came back, I couldn’t understand you. You avoided

me. It was nothing but check after check—which you seemed to enjoy

inflicting. At last, on the night of our ball I seemed to see clear. On

that night, I did think—yes, I did think, that I was something to

you!—that you could not have been so sweet—so adorable—in the sight of

the whole world—unless you had meant that—in time it would all come

right. And so next day, on our ride, I took the tone I did. I was a

fool; of course. All men are, when they strike too soon. But if you had

had any real feeling in your heart for me—if you had cared one

ten-thousandth part for me, as I care for you, you couldn’t have

treated me as you did last night—so outrageously—so cruelly!”

The strong man beside her was now trembling from head to foot.

Constance, hard-pressed, conscience-struck, utterly miserable, did not

know what to reply. Falloden went on impetuously:

“And now at least don’t decide against me without thinking—without

considering what I have been saying. Of course the whole thing may blow

over. Radowitz may be all right in a fortnight. But if he is not—if

between us, we’ve done something sad and terrible, let’s stand

together, for God’s sake!—let’s help each other. Neither of us meant

it. Don’t let’s make everything worse by separating and stabbing each

other. I shall hear what has happened by to-night. Let me come and

bring you the news. If there’s no great harm done—why—you shall tell me

what kind of letter to write to Radowitz. I’m in your hands. But if

it’s bad—if there’s blood-poisoning and Radowitz loses his hand—that

they say is the worst that can happen—I of course shall feel like

hanging myself—everybody will, who was in the row. But next to him, to

Radowitz himself, whom should you pity more than—the man—who—was three

parts to blame—for injuring him?”

His hoarse voice dropped. They came simultaneously, involuntarily to a

standstill. Constance was shaken by alternate waves of feeling. Half of

what he said seemed to her insolent sophistry; but there was something

else which touched—which paralysed her. For the first time she knew

that this had been no mere game she had been playing with Douglas

Falloden. Just as Falloden in his careless selfishness might prove to

have broken Otto Radowitz’s life, as a passionate child breaks a toy,

so she had it in her power to break Falloden.

They had wandered down again, without knowing it, to the banks of the

river, and were standing in the shelter of a group of young chestnuts,

looking towards the hills, over which hung great thunder-clouds.

At last Constance held out her hand.

“Please go now,” she said pleadingly. “Send me word to-night. But don’t

come. Let’s hope. I—I can’t say any more.”

And indeed he saw that she could bear no more. He

hesitated—yielded—took her unresisting hand, which he pressed violently

to his lips—and was gone.

Hour after hour passed. Falloden had employed Meyrick as an

intermediary with a great friend of Sorell’s, one Benham, another

fellow of St. Cyprian’s, who had—so Meyrick reported—helped Sorell to

get Radowitz to the station in time for the two o’clock train to

London. The plan, according to Benham, was to go straight to Sir Horley

Wood, who had been telegraphed to in the morning, and had made an

appointment for 4.30. Benham was to hear the result of the great

surgeon’s examination as soon as possible, and hoped to let Meyrick

have it somewhere between seven and eight.

Four or five other men, who had been concerned in the row, including

Desmond and Robertson, hung about college, miserably waiting. Falloden

and Meyrick ordered horses and went off into the country, hardly

speaking to each other during the whole of the ride. They returned to

their Beaumont Street lodgings about seven, and after a sombre dinner

Meyrick went out to go and enquire at St. Cyprian’s.

He had scarcely gone when the last Oxford post arrived, and a letter

was brought up for Falloden. It was addressed in his father’s

hand-writing. He opened it mechanically; and in his preoccupation, he

read it several times before he grasped his meaning.

“My dear Son,”—wrote Sir Arthur Falloden—“We expected you home early

this week, for you do not seem to have told us that you were staying up

for Commem. In any case, please come home at once. There are some very

grave matters about which I must consult with you, and which will I

fear greatly affect your future. You will find me in great trouble, and

far from well. Your poor mother means very kindly, but she can’t advise

me. I have long dreaded the explanations which can not now be avoided.

The family situation has been going from bad to worse,—and I have said

nothing—hoping always to find some way out. But now it is precisely my

fear that—if we can’t discover it—you will find yourself, without

preparation, ruined on the threshold of life, which drives me to tell

you everything. Your head is a cleverer one than mine. You may think of

something. It is of course the coal-mining that has come to grief, and

dragged in all the rest. I have been breaking down with anxiety. And

you, my poor boy!—I remember you said when we met last, that you hoped

to marry soon—perhaps this year—and go into Parliament. I am afraid all

that is at an end, unless you can find a girl with money, which of

course you ought to have no difficulty in doing, with your advantages.

“But it is no good writing. Come to-morrow, and wire your train.

“Your loving father,

ARTHUR FALLODEN.”

“‘Ruined on the threshold of life’—what does he mean?”—thought Falloden

impatiently. “Father always likes booky phrases like that. I suppose

he’s been dropping a thousand or two as he did last year—hullo!”

As he stood by the window, he perceived the Hoopers’ parlourmaid coming

up Beaumont Street and looking at the numbers on the houses. He ran out

to meet her, and took a note from her hand.

“I will send or bring an answer. You needn’t wait.” He carried it into

his own room, and locked the door before opening it.

“Dear Mr. Falloden,—Mr. Sorell has just been here. He left Mr. Radowitz

at a nursing home after seeing the surgeons. It is all terrible. The

hand is badly poisoned. They hope they may save it, but the injuries

will make it impossible for him ever to play again as he has done. He

may use it again a little, he may compose of course, but as a performer

it’s all over. Mr. Sorell says he is in despair—and half mad. They will

watch him very carefully at the home, lest he should do himself any

mischief. Mr. Sorell goes back to him to-morrow. He is himself

broken-hearted.

“I am very, very sorry for you—and for Lord Meyrick,—and everybody. But

I can’t get over it—I can’t ever forget it. There is a great deal in

what you said this afternoon. I don’t deny it. But, when it’s all said,

I feel I could never be happy with you; I should be always afraid of

you—of your pride and your violence. And love mustn’t be afraid.

“This horrible thing seems to have opened my eyes. I am of course very

unhappy. But I am going up to-morrow to see Mr. Radowitz, who has asked

for me. I shall stay with my aunt, Lady Langmoor, and nurse him as much

as they will let me. Oh, and I must try and comfort him! His poor

music!—it haunts me like something murdered. I could cry—and cry.

“Good night—and good-bye!

“CONSTANCE BLEDLOW.”

The two notes fell at Falloden’s feet. He stood looking out into

Beaumont Street. The long narrow street, which only two days before had

been alive with the stream of Commemoration, was quiet and deserted. A

heavy thunder rain was just beginning to plash upon the pavements; and

in the interval since he had taken the note from the maid’s hand, it

seemed to Falloden that the night had fallen.

PART II

CHAPTER XI

“So, Connie, you don’t want to go out with me this afternoon?” said

Lady Langmoor, bustling into the Eaton Square drawing-room, where

Connie sat writing a letter at a writing-table near the window, and

occasionally raising her eyes to scan the street outside.

“I’m afraid I can’t, Aunt Sophia. You remember, I told you, Mr. Sorell

was coming to fetch me.”

Lady Langmoor looked rather vague. She was busy putting on her white

gloves, and inspecting the fit of her grey satin dress, as she saw it

in the mirror over Connie’s head.

“You mean—to see the young man who was hurt? Dreadfully sad of course,

and you know him well enough to go and see him in bed? Oh, well, of

course, girls do anything nowadays. It is very kind of you.”

Connie laughed, but without irritation. During the week she had been

staying in the Langmoors’ house, she had resigned herself to the fact

that her Aunt Langmoor—as it seemed to her—was a very odd and hardly

responsible creature, the motives of whose existence she did not even

begin to understand. But both her aunt and Lord Langmoor had been very

kind to their new-found niece. They had given a dinner-party and a

tea-party in her honour; they had taken her to several crushes a night,

and introduced her to a number of their own friends. And they would

have moved Heaven and earth to procure her an invitation to the Court

ball they themselves attended, on the day after Connie’s arrival, if

only, as Lady Langmoor plaintively said—“Your poor mother had done the

right thing at the right time.” By which she meant to express—without

harshness towards the memory of Lady Risborough—how lamentable it was

that, in addition to being christened, vaccinated and confirmed,

Constance had not also been “presented” at the proper moment. However

Constance probably enjoyed the evening of the Court ball more than any

other in the week, since she went to the Italian Embassy after dinner

to help her girl friend, the daughter of Italy’s new Prime Minister,

Elisa Bardinelli, to dress for the function; and the two girls were so

enchanted to see each other, and had so much Roman gossip to get

through, that Donna Elisa was scandalously late, and the Ambassador

almost missed the Royal Procession.

But that had been the only spot of pleasure in Connie’s fortnight. Lady

Langmoor was puzzled by her pale looks and her evident lack of zest for

the amusements offered her. She could only suppose that her niece was

tired out with the balls of Commem., and Connie accepted the excuse

gratefully. In reality she cared for nothing day after day but the

little notes she got from Sorell night and morning giving her news of

Radowitz. Till now he had been too ill to see her. But at last the

doctor had given leave for a visit, and as soon as Lady Langmoor had

gone off on her usual afternoon round of concerts and teas, Connie

moved to the window, and waited for Sorell.

How long was it since she had first set foot in England and Oxford?

Barely two months! And to Constance it seemed as if these months had

been merely an unconscious preparation for this state of oppression and

distress in which she found herself. Radowitz in his misery and

pain—Falloden on the Cherwell path, defending himself by those

passionate retorts upon her of which she could not but admit the

partial justice—by these images she was perpetually haunted. Certainly

she had no reason to look back with pleasure or self-approval on her

Oxford experiences. In all her dealings with Falloden she had behaved

with a reckless folly of which she was now quite conscious; courting

risks; in love with excitement rather than with the man; and careless

whither the affair might lead, so long as it gratified her own romantic

curiosities as to the power of woman over the masculine mind.

Then, suddenly, all this had become serious. She was like the playing

child on whose hand the wasp sat down. But in this case the moral sting

of what had happened was abidingly sharp and painful. The tragedy of

Radowitz, together with the charm interwoven with all her few

recollections of him, had developed in Connie feelings of unbearable

pity and tenderness, altogether new to her. Yet she was constantly

thinking of Falloden; building up her own harrowed vision of his

remorse, or dreaming of the Marmion ball, and the ride in the bluebell

wood,—those two meetings in which alone she had felt happiness with

him, something distinct from vanity, and a challenging love of power.

Now it was all over. They would probably not meet again, till he had

forgotten her, and had married some one else. She was quite aware of

his fixed and businesslike views for himself and his career—as to

marriage, travel, Parliament and the rest; and it had often pleased her

wilfulness to think of modifying or upsetting them. She had now far

more abundant proof of his haughty self-centredness than their first

short acquaintance on the Riviera had given her; and yet—though she

tried to hide it from herself—she was far more deeply absorbed in the

thought of him. When all was said, she knew that she had treated him

badly. The effect of his violence and cruelty towards Radowitz had been

indeed to make her shudder away from him. It seemed to her still that

it would be impossible to forgive herself should she ever make friends

with Douglas Falloden again. She would be an accomplice in his hardness

of heart and deed. Yet she recognised guiltily her own share in that

hardness. She had played with and goaded him; she had used Radowitz to

punish him; her championship of the boy had become in the end mere

pique with Falloden; and she was partly responsible for what had

happened. She could not recall Falloden’s face and voice on their last

walk without realising that she had hit him recklessly hard, and that

her conduct to him had been one of the causes of the Marmion tragedy.

She was haunted by these thoughts, and miserable for lack of some

comforting, guiding, and—if possible—absolving voice. She missed her

mother childishly day and night, and all that premature self-possession

and knowledge of the world, born of her cosmopolitan training, which at

Oxford had made her appear so much older than other English girls of

twenty, seemed to have broken away, and left her face to face with

feelings she could not check, and puzzles she wanted somebody else to

judge.

For instance—here was this coming visit to her aunts in Yorkshire.

Their house in Scarfedale was most uncomfortably near to Flood Castle.

The boundaries of the Falloden estate ran close to her aunts’ village.

She would run many chances of coming across Douglas himself, however

much she might try to avoid him. At the same time Lady Marcia wrote

continually, describing the plans that were being made to entertain

her—eager, affectionate letters, very welcome in spite of their oddity

to the girl’s sore and orphaned mood. No she really couldn’t frame some

clumsy excuse, and throw her aunts over. She must go, and trust to

luck.

And there would be Sorell and Otto to fall back upon—to take refuge

with. Sorell had told her that the little rectory on the moors, whither

he and Otto were bound as soon as the boy could be moved, stood

somewhere about midway between her aunts’ house and Flood, on the

Scarfedale side of the range of moors girdling the Flood Castle valley.

It was strange perhaps that she should be counting on Sorell’s

neighbourhood. If she had often petulantly felt at Oxford that he was

too good, too high above her to be of much use to her, she might

perhaps have felt it doubly now. For although in some undefined way,

ever since the night of the Vice-Chancellor’s party, she had realised

in him a deep interest in her, even a sense of responsibility for her

happiness, which made him more truly her guardian than poor harassed

Uncle Ewen, she knew very well that she had disappointed him, and she

smarted under it. She wanted to have it out with him, and didn’t dare!

As she listened indeed to his agitated report on Radowitz’s injuries,

after the first verdict of the London surgeons, Connie had been

conscious of a kind of moral terror. In the ordinary man of the world,

such an incident as the Marmion ragging of a foreign lad, who had

offended the prejudices of a few insolent and lordly Englishmen, would

have merely stirred a jest. In Sorell it roused the same feelings that

made him a lover of Swinburne and Shelley and the nobler Byron; a

devoted reader of everything relating to the Italian Risorgimento; and

sent him down every long vacation to a London riverside parish to give

some hidden service to those who were in his eyes the victims of an

unjust social system. For him the quality of behaviour like Falloden’s

towards Otto Radowitz was beyond argument. The tyrannical temper in

things great or small, and quite independent of results, represented,

for him, the worst treason that man can offer to man. In this case it

had ended in hideous catastrophe to an innocent and delightful being,

whom he loved. But it was not thereby any the worse; the vileness of it

was only made manifest for all to see.

This hidden passion in him, as he talked, seemed to lay a fiery hand on

Constance, she trembled under it, conscience-stricken. “Does he see the

same hateful thing in me?—though he never says a word to hurt

me?—though he is so gentle and so courteous?”

A tall figure became visible at the end of the street. Connie shut up

her writing and ran upstairs to put on her things. When she came down,

she found Sorell waiting for her with a furrowed brow.

“How is he?” She approached him anxiously. Sorell’s look changed and

cleared. Had she put on her white dress, had she made herself a vision

of freshness and charm, for the poor boy’s sake? He thought so; and his

black eyes kindled.

“Better in some ways. He is hanging on your coming. But these are

awfully bad times for the nurses—for all of us.”

“I may take him some roses?” she said humbly, pointing to a basket she

had brought in with her.

Sorell smiled assent and took it from her. As they were speeding in a

hansom towards the Portland Place region, he gave her an account of the

doctors’ latest opinion. It seemed that quite apart from the

blood-poisoning, which would heal, the muscles and nerves of the hand

were fatally injured. All hope of even a partial use of it was gone.

“Luckily he is not a poor man. He has some hundreds a year. But he had

a great scheme, after he had got his Oxford degree, of going to the new

Leschetizsky school in Vienna for two years, and then of giving

concerts in Warsaw and Cracow, in aid of the great Polish museum now

being formed at Cracow. You know what a wild enthusiasm he has for

Polish history and antiquities. He believes his country will rise

again, and it was his passion—his most cherished hope—to give his life

and his gift to her. Poor lad!”

The tears stood in Connie’s eyes.

“But he can still compose?” she urged piteously.

Sorell shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, if he has the heart—and the health. I never took much account

before of his delicacy. One can see, to look at him, that he’s not

robust. But somehow he was always so full of life that one never

thought of illness in connection with him. But I had a long talk with

one of the doctors last week, who takes rather a gloomy view. A shock

like this sometimes lets loose all the germs of mischief in a man’s

constitution. And his mother was undoubtedly consumptive. Well, we must

do our best.”

He sighed. There was silence till they turned into Wimpole Street and

were in sight of the nursing home. Then Connie said in a queer,

strained voice: “You don’t know that it was partly I who did it.”

Sorell turned upon her with a sudden change of expression. It was as

though she had said something he had long expected, and now that it was

said a great barrier between them had broken down. He looked at her

with shining eyes from which the veil of reserve had momentarily

lifted. She saw in them both tenderness and sorrow.

“I don’t think you need feel that,” he said gently. Her lips trembled.

She looked straight before her into the hot vista of the street.

“I just played with him—with his whole future, as it’s turned

out—without a thought.”

Sorell knew that she was thinking of the Magdalen ball, of which he had

by now heard several accounts. He guessed she meant that her

provocation of Falloden had contributed to the tragedy, and that the

thought tormented her. But neither of them mentioned Falloden’s name.

Sorell put out his hand and grasped hers. “Otto’s only thought about

you is that you gave him the happiest evening he ever spent in

England,” he said with energy. “You won’t misunderstand.”

Her eyes filled with tears. But there was no time to say more. The

hansom drew up.

[Illustration: Connie sat down beside Radowitz and they looked at

each other in silence]

They found Radowitz lying partly dressed on the balcony of his back

room, which overlooked a tiny walled patch of grass and two

plane-trees. The plane-tree seems to have been left in pity to London

by some departing rural deity. It alone nourishes amid the wilderness

of brick; and one can imagine it as feeling a positive satisfaction, a

quiet triumph, in the absence of its stronger rivals, oak and beech and

ash, like some gentle human life escaped from the tyrannies of

competition. These two great trees were the guardian genii of poor

Otto’s afternoons. They brought him shade and coolness, even in the

hottest hours of a burning June.

Connie sat down beside him, and they looked at each other in silence.

Sorell, after a few gay words, had left them together. Radowitz held

her hand in his own left. The other was bandaged and supported on a

pillow. “When she got used to the golden light filtering through the

plane leaves, she saw that he was pale and shrunken, that his eyes were

more living and blue than ever, and his hair more like the burnished

halo of some Florentine or Siennese saint. Yet the whole aspect was of

something stricken. She felt a foreboding, a terror, of which she knew

she must let nothing appear.

“Do you mind my staring?” he said presently, with his half-sad,

half-mischievous smile. “You are so nice to look at.”

She tried to laugh.

“I put on my best frock. Do you like it?”

“For me?” he said, wondering. “And you brought me these roses?”

He lifted some out of the basket, looked at them, then let them drop

listlessly on his knee. “I am afraid I don’t care for such things, as I

used to do. Before—this happened, I had a language of my own, in which

I could express everything—as artists or poets can. Now—I am struck

dumb. There is something crying in me—that can find no voice. And when

one can’t express, one begins not to feel!”

She had to check the recurring tears before she could reply.

“But you can still compose?”

Her tone, in repeating the same words she had used to Sorell, fell into

the same pleading note.

He shook his head, almost with irritation.

“It was out of the instrument—out of improvisation—that all my

composing grew. Do you remember the tale they tell of George Sand, how

when she began a novel, she made a few dots and scratches on a sheet of

paper, and as she played with them they ran into words, and then into

sentences—that suggested ideas—and so, in half an hour, she had

sketched a plot, and was ready to go to work? So it was with me. As I

played, the ideas came. I am not one of your scientific musicians who

can build up everything _in vacuo_. I must translate everything into

sound—through my fingers. It was the same with Chopin.” He pointed to a

life of Chopin that was lying open on the couch beside him.

“But you will do wonders with your left hand. And your right will

perhaps improve. The doctors mayn’t know,” she pleaded, catching at

straws. “Dear Otto—don’t despair!”

He flushed and smiled. His uninjured hand slipped back into hers again.

“I like you to call me Otto. How dear that was of you! May I call you

Constance?”

She nodded. There was a sob in her throat that would not let her speak.

“I don’t despair—now,” he said, after a moment. “I did at first. I

wanted to put an end to myself. But, of course, it was Sorell who saved

me. If my mother had lived, she could not have done more.”

He turned away his face so that Constance should not see it. When he

looked at her again, he was quite calm and smiling.

“Do you know who come to see me almost every day?”

“Tell me.”

“Meyrick—Lord Meyrick, and Robertson. Perhaps you don’t know him. He’s

a Winchester man, a splendid cricketer. It was Robertson I was

struggling with when I fell. How could he know I should hurt myself? It

wasn’t his fault and he gave up his ‘choice’ for the Oxford Eleven.

They put him in at the last moment. But he wouldn’t play. I didn’t know

till afterwards. I told him he was a great fool.”

There was a pause. Then Connie said—with difficulty—“Did—did Mr.

Falloden write? Has he said anything?”

“Oh yes, he sent a message. After all, when you run over a dog, you

send a message, don’t you?” said the lad with sudden bitterness. “And I

believe he wrote a letter—after I came here. But I didn’t open it. I

gave it to Sorell.”

Then he raised himself on his pillows and looked keenly at Connie.

“You see the others didn’t mean any harm. They were drunk, and it was a

row. But Falloden wasn’t drunk—and he did mean—”

“Oh, not to hurt you so?” cried Connie involuntarily.

“No—but to humble and trample on me,” said the youth with vehemence,

his pale cheeks flaming. “He knew quite well what he was about. I felt

that when they came into my room. He is cruel—he has the temper of the

torturer—in cold blood—”

A shudder of rage went through him. His excitable Slav nature brought

everything back to him—as ugly and as real as when it happened.

“Oh, no—no!” said Constance, putting her hand over her eyes.

Radowitz controlled himself at once.

“I won’t say any more,” he said in a low voice, breathing deep—“I won’t

say any more.” But a minute afterwards he looked up again, his brow

contracting—“Only, for God’s sake, don’t marry him!”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Constance. “I shall never marry him!”

He looked at her piteously. “Only—if you care for him—what then? You

are not to be unhappy!—you are to be the happiest person in the world.

If you did care for him—I should have to see some good in him—and that

would be awful. It is not because he did me an injury, you understand.

The other two are my friends—they will be always my friends. But there

is something in Falloden’s soul that I hate—that I would like to

fight—till either he drops or I. It is the same sort of feeling I have

towards those who have killed my country.”

He lay frowning, his blue eyes sombrely fixed and strained.

“But now”—he drew himself sharply together—“you must talk of something

else, and I will be quite quiet. Tell me where you have been—what you

have seen—the theatre—the opera—everything!”

She did her best, seeing already the anxious face of the nurse in the

window behind. And as she got up to go, she said, “I shall come again

very soon. And when you go to Yorkshire, I shall see you perhaps every

day.”

He looked up in astonishment and delight, and she explained that at

Scarfedale Manor, her aunts’ old house, she would be only two or three

miles from the high moorland vicarage whither he was soon to be moved.

“That will do more for me than doctors!” said Radowitz with decision.

Yet almost before she had reached the window opening on the balcony,

his pain, mental and physical, had clutched him again. He did not look

up as she waved farewell; and Sorell hurried her away.

Thenceforward she saw him almost every day, to Lady Langmoor’s

astonishment. Sorell too, and his relation to Connie, puzzled her

greatly. Connie assured her with smiles that she was not in love with

the handsome young don, and never thought of flirting with him. “He was

mother’s friend, Aunt Sophia,” she would say, as though that settled

the matter entirely. But Lady Langmoor could not see that it settled it

at all. Mr. Sorell could not be much over thirty—the best time of all

for falling in love. And here was Connie going to pictures with him,

and the British Museum, and to visit the poor fellow in the nursing

home. It was true that the aunt could never detect the smallest sign of

love-making between them. And Connie was always putting forward that

Mr. Sorell taught her Greek. As if that kind of thing wasn’t one of the

best and oldest gambits in the great game of matrimony! Lady Langmoor

would have felt it her solemn duty to snub the young man had it been at

all possible. But it was really not possible to snub any one possessed

of such a courteous self-forgetting dignity. And he came of a good

Anglo-Irish family too. Lady Langmoor had soon discovered that she knew

some of his relations, and placed him socially to a T. But, of course,

any notion of his marrying Connie, with her money, her rank, and her

good looks, would be simply ridiculous, so ridiculous that Lady

Langmoor soon ceased to think about it, accepted his visits, and began

to like him on her own account.

One evening towards the end of the first week in July, a hansom drew up

before a house in Portman Square. Douglas Falloden emerged from it, as

the door was opened by a maidservant.

The house, which had been occupied at the beginning of the season by

the family, was given over now to a charwoman and a couple of

housemaids, the senior of whom looked a little scared at the prospect

of having to wait on the magnificent gentleman who had just entered the

house. In general, when Mr. Douglas came up to town in the absence of

his family, he put up at his own very expensive club, and the servants

in Portman Square were not troubled with him. But they, like every one

else, knew that something was going wrong with the Fallodens.

Falloden walked into the deserted and dust-sheeted house, while the

cabman brought in his portmanteau. “Is Mr. Gregory here?” he enquired

of the maid.

“Yes, sir, he is in the library. Please, sir, Mrs. O’Connor wants to

know if you’ll want dinner.”

Falloden impatiently said “No,” and walked on down a long passage to

the library, which had been built out at the back of the house. Here

the blinds had been drawn up, only to reveal the dusty desolation of an

unused room, in which a few chairs had been uncovered, and a table

cleared. A man rose from a chair beside the table, and he and Falloden

shook hands. He was a round-faced and broad-shouldered person, with one

of the unreadable faces developed by the life of a prominent solicitor,

in contact with all sorts of clients and many varieties of business;

and Falloden’s sensitive pride had soon detected in his manner certain

shades of expression to which the heir of Flood Castle was not

accustomed.

“I am sorry to hear Sir Arthur is not well.” Mr. Gregory spoke

politely, but perhaps without that accent of grave and even tragic

concern which six months earlier he would have given to the same words.

“There is a great deal of heavy, and, I am afraid, disagreeable

business to be done.”

“My father is not fit for it,” said Falloden abruptly. “I must do the

best I can.”

Mr. Gregory gave a sign of assent. He drew a packet of documents from

his pocket, and spreading out a letter from Sir Arthur Falloden on the

table, proceeded to deal with the points in it seriatim. Falloden sat

beside him, looking carefully through the various documents handed to

him, asking questions occasionally, and making notes of his own. In the

dusty northern light of the room, his face had a curiously purple and

congested look; and his eyes were dead tired. But he showed so much

shrewdness in his various remarks that the solicitor secretly admitted

his capacity, reflecting indeed once or twice that, young as he was, it

would have been a good thing if his father had taken him into counsel

earlier. After the discussion had lasted half an hour, Falloden pushed

the papers away.

“I think I see. The broad facts are that my father can raise no more

money, either on his securities, or on the land; his two banks are

pressing him; and the Scotch mortgages must be paid. The estates, of

course, will have to be sold. I am quite willing.”

“So I understand. But it will take time and the bank overdrafts are

urgent. Mason’s Bank declare that if their debt is not paid—or freshly

secured—within a month from now, they will certainly take proceedings.

I must remind you they have been exceedingly forbearing.”

“And the amount?” Falloden consulted his papers.

“Forty thousand. The securities on which Sir Arthur obtained it are now

not worth more than eight.”

The lawyer paused a moment, looked at his companion, and at last said—

“There are, of course, your own expectations from Lord Dagnall. I do

not know whether you and your father have considered them. But I

imagine it would be possible to raise money on them.”

Falloden laughed. The sound was a mixture of irritation and contempt.

“Uncommonly little! The fact is my uncle—at seventy-two—is philandering

with a lady-housekeeper he set up a year ago. She seems to be bent on

netting him, and my father thinks she’ll do it. If she does, my uncle

will probably find himself with an heir of his own. Anyway the value of

my prospects is enormously less than it was. All the neighbours are

perfectly aware of what is going on. Oh, I suppose he’ll leave me

something—enough to keep me out of the workhouse. But there’s nothing

to be got out of it now.”

There was another silence. Falloden pondered the figures before him.

“There are always the pictures,” he said at last, looking up.

The lawyer’s face lightened.

“If you and Sir Arthur will sell! But as you know they are heirlooms,

and you could stop it.”

“On the contrary, I am ready to agree to it,” said Falloden briefly.

“But there will be a lot of legal business, won’t there?”

“Certainly. But it can all be put through in time. And directly it was

known that you would sell, the whole situation would be changed.”

“We might save something out of the wreck?” said Falloden, looking up.

The lawyer nodded gravely.

“Something—certainly.”

“What are they worth?” said Falloden, taking a note-book from his

pocket, and looking at a list scribbled on its first page.

Mr. Gregory laughed.

“There is no market in the ordinary sense for such pictures as yours.

There are only half a dozen millionaires in the world who could buy

them—and one or two museums.” He paused a moment, looking thoughtfully

at the young man before him. “There happens, however,”—he spoke

slowly—“to be a buyer at this moment in London, whom it would be

difficult to beat—in the matter of millions.”

He mentioned the name.

“Not an American? Well, send him along.” Falloden raised his eyebrows.

“If my father doesn’t feel able to see him, I can tackle him. He can

choose his own day and hour. All our best pictures are at Flood.”

“And they include—”

“Four Rembrandts,” said Falloden, looking at his list, “two Titians,

two Terburgs, a Vermeer of Delft, heaps of other Dutchmen—four

full-length Gainsboroughs, and three half-lengths—two full-length

Reynoldses, three smaller—three Lawrences, a splendid Romney, three

Hoppners, two Constables, etc. The foreign pictures were bought by my

grandfather from one of the Orléans collections about 1830. The English

pictures—the portraits—have all been at Flood since they were painted,

and very few of them have ever been exhibited. I scribbled these few

facts down before I left home. There is, of course, an elaborate

catalogue.”

For the first time the lawyer’s countenance as he listened showed a

flash of active sympathy. He was himself a modest collector, and his

house at Richmond contained a number of pretty things.

“Sir Arthur will mind parting with them very much, I fear,” he said

with real concern. “I wish with all my heart it had been possible to

find some other way out. But we have really done our best.”

Falloden nodded. He sat looking straight before him, one hand drumming

on the table. The whole attitude was haughtily irresponsive. The slight

note of compassion in Mr. Gregory’s tone was almost intolerable to him,

and the lawyer guessed it.

“Insolent cub!” he thought to himself; and thenceforward allowed

himself no departure from a purely business tone. It was settled that

the buyer—with legal caution, Mr. Gregory for the moment threw no

further light upon him—was, if possible, to be got hold of at once, and

an appointment was to be made for Flood Castle, where Falloden, or his

father, would receive him.

Then the solicitor departed, and Falloden was left to pace up and down

the dismal room, his hands in his pockets—deep in thought.

He looked back upon a fortnight of unbroken worry and distress. The

news with which his father had received him on his return from Oxford

had seemed to him at first incredible. But the facts on which it was

based were only too substantial, and his father, broken in health and

nerve, now that silence was once thrown aside, poured out upon his son

a flood of revelation and confession that soon made what had happened

tragically clear. It was the familiar story of wealth grasping at yet

more wealth, of the man whose judgment and common sense begin to play

him false, when once the intoxication of money has gone beyond a

certain point. Dazzled by some first speculative successes, Sir Arthur

had become before long a gambler over half the world, in Canada, the

States, Egypt, Argentina. One doubtful venture supported another, and

the City, no less than the gambler himself, was for a time taken in.

But the downfall of a great Egyptian company, which was to have

extracted untold wealth from a strip of Libyan desert, had gradually

but surely brought down everything else in its train. Blow after blow

fell, sometimes rapidly, sometimes tardily. Sir Arthur tried every

expedient known to the financier _in extremis_, descending ever lower

in the scale of credit and reputation; and in vain. One tragic day in

June, after a long morning with the Gregory partners, Sir Arthur came

home to the splendid house in Yorkshire, knowing that nothing now

remained but to sell the estates, and tell Douglas that his father had

ruined him. Lady Laura’s settlement was safe; and on that they must

live.

The days of slow realisation, after Douglas’s return, had tried both

father and son severely. Sir Arthur was worn out and demoralised by

long months of colossal but useless effort to retrieve what he had

done. Falloden, with his own remorse, and his own catastrophe to think

over, was called on to put it aside, to think for and help his father.

He had no moral equipment—no trained character—equal to the task. But

mercifully for them both, his pride came into play; his shrewd

intelligence also, and his affection for his father—the most penetrable

spot so far in his hard and splendid youth. He had done his best—a

haughty, ungracious best—but still he had done it, and in the course of

a few days, now that the tension of concealment was over, Sir Arthur

had become almost childishly dependent upon him.

A church clock struck somewhere in the distance. Falloden looked at his

watch. Time to go to some restaurant and dine. With Gregory’s figures

running in his head, he shrank from his Club where he would be sure to

meet a host of Harrow and Oxford acquaintance, up for the Varsity

match, and the latter end of the season. After dinner he would look

into a music-hall, and about eleven make his way to the Tamworth House

ball.

He must come back, however, to Portman Square sometime to dress. Lady

Tamworth had let it be known privately that the Prince and Princess

were coming to her ball, and that the men were expected to appear in

knee-breeches and silk stockings. He had told his valet at Flood to

pack them; and he supposed that fool of a housemaid would be equal to

unpacking for him, and putting out his things.

“How do you do, Douglas?” said Lady Tamworth, an imposing, bejewelled

figure standing at the head of the galleried staircase of Tamworth

House. “Saw your father yesterday and thought him looking very seedy.”

“Yes, he’s not the thing,” said Douglas. “We shall have to get him away

to Marienbad, or somewhere of that kind.”

Lady Tamworth looked at him closely, her eyelids fluttering just a

little. Douglas noticed the flutter, and knew very well what it meant.

Lady Tamworth and his father were first cousins. No doubt all their

relations were busy discussing their affairs day and night; the City,

he knew, was full of rumours, and certain newspapers had already

scented the quarry ahead, and were beginning to make ghoulish hints and

gibberings. As he passed on into the ballroom, every nerve in him was

sensitive and alive. He seemed to have eyes at the back of his head, to

catch everywhere the sudden attention, the looks of curiosity,

sometimes of malice, that followed him through the crowd. He spoke to a

great many acquaintance, to girls he had been accustomed to dance with

and their mothers. The girls welcomed him just as usual; but the casual

or interrupted conversation, which was all the mothers could spare him,

showed him very soon how much was known or guessed, of the family

disasters. He understood that he was no longer in the running for these

exquisite creatures in their silks and satins. The campaigning mothers

had already dropped him out of their lists. His pride recoiled in

self-contempt from its own smart. But he had been accustomed to walk

this world as one of its princelings, and indifference to what it might

think of him was not immediately attainable.

All the same, he was still handsome, distinguished, and well born. No

one could overlook him in a ballroom, and few women could be quite

indifferent to his approach. He danced as much as he wished, and with

the prettiest girls. His eyes meanwhile were always wandering over the

crowd, searching in vain for a delicate face, and a wealth of brown

hair. Yet she had told him herself that Lady Langmoor was to bring her

to this ball. He only wanted to see her—from a distance—not to speak to

her—or be spoken to.

“Douglas,” said a laughing voice in his ear—“will you dance the royal

quadrille with me? Something’s happened to my partner. Mother sent me

to ask you.”

He turned and saw the youngest daughter of the house, Lady Alice, with

whom he had always been on chaffing, cousinly terms; and as she spoke a

sudden stir and hush in the room showed that the royal party had

arrived, and were being received in the hall below.

Falloden’s first irritable instinct was to refuse. Why should he go out

of his way to make himself a show for all these eyes? Then a secret

excitement—an expectation—awoke in him, and he nodded a laughing

comment to Lady Alice, who just stayed to throw him a mocking

compliment on his knee-breeches, and ran away. Immediately afterwards,

the royal party came through the lane made for them, shaking hands with

their acquaintance, and bowing right and left. As they disappeared into

the room beyond, which had been reserved for them, the crowd closed up

behind them. Falloden heard a voice at his elbow.

“How are you? I hear you’re to be in the quadrille. You’ll have the

pretty lady we saw at Oxford for a colleague.”

He turned to see Mrs. Glendower, very much made-up and glittering with

diamonds. Her face seemed to him to have grown harder and plainer, her

smile more brazen since their Oxford meeting. But she filled up time

agreeably till the quadrille was ready. She helped him to pin on the

small rosette made of the Tamworth colours which marked all the dancers

in the royal quadrille, and she told him that Constance Bledlow was to

dance it with the Tamworths’ eldest son, Lord Bletchley.

“There’s a great deal of talk about her, as perhaps you know. She’s

very much admired. The Langmoors are making a great fuss about her, and

people say she’ll have all their money as well as her own some day—not

to speak of the old aunts in Yorkshire. I shouldn’t wonder if the

Tamworths had their eye upon her. They’re not really well off.”

Falloden gaily declared that he would back his cousin Mary Tamworth to

get anything she wanted. Mrs. Glendower threw him a sudden, sharp look.

Then she was swept into the crowd. A couple of men in brilliant uniform

came by, clearing a space in the centre of the room, and Falloden saw

Lady Alice beckoning.

In another minute or two he and she were in their places, and what the

newspapers who record these things call “a brilliant scene” was in full

tide:—the Prince and Princess dancing with the master and mistress of

the house, and the rest of the quadrille made up of the tallest men and

handsomest women that Lady Tamworth, with a proper respect both to rank

and to looks, had been able to collect.

The six-foot-three Falloden and his fairylike partner were much

observed, and Lady Alice bubbling over with fun and spirits, found her

cousin Douglas, whom in general she disliked, far better company than

usual. As for him, he was only really conscious of one face and form in

the stately dance itself, or in the glittering crowd which was eagerly

looking on. Constance Bledlow, in filmy white, was his _vis-à-vis_. He

saw her quick movement as she perceived him. Then she bowed slightly,

he ceremoniously. Their hands touched at intervals, and not a few of

the spectators noticed these momentary contacts with a thrill of

pleasure—the splendid physique of the young man, the flowerlike grace

of the girl. Once or twice, as they stood together in the centre of the

“chain,” a few words would have been possible. But Constance never

spoke, nor did Falloden. He had thought her very pale at first sight.

But her cheek flushed with dancing; and with every minute that passed

she seemed to him more lovely and more remote, like a spirit from

another world, into which he could not pass.

“Isn’t she pretty!—Connie Bledlow?” said Lady Alice enthusiastically.

“She’s having a great success. Of course other people are much

handsomer, but there’s something—”

Yes, there was something!—and something which, like an exquisite

fluttering bird, had just escaped from Douglas Falloden, and would now,

he supposed, forever escape him.

When the quadrille was over he watched her delicate whiteness disappear

amid the uniforms, the jewels, and the festoons or roses hanging across

the ballroom. The barbaric, overdecorated scene, with all its

suggestions of a luxurious and self-confident world, where every one

was rich and privileged, or hunting riches and privilege—a world

without the smallest foreboding of change, the smallest doubt of its

own right to exist—forced upon him by contrast the recollection of the

hour he had just spent with Mr. Gregory in his father’s dusty

dismantled library. He and his were, it seemed, “ruined”—as many people

here already guessed. He looked at the full-length Van Dycks on the

wall of the Tamworths’ ballroom, and thought, not without a grim leap

of humour, that he would be acting showman and auctioneer, within a few

days perhaps, to his father’s possessions of the same kind.

But it was not the loss of money or power that was separating him from

Constance Bledlow. He knew her well enough by now to guess that in

spite of her youth and her luxurious bringing up, there was that in her

which was rapidly shaping a character capable of fighting circumstance,

as her heart might bid. If she loved a man she would stand by him. No,

it was something known only to her and himself in all those crowded

rooms. As soon as he set eyes on her, the vision of Radowitz’s bleeding

hand and prostrate form had emerged in consciousness—a haunting

presence, blurring the many-coloured movements of the ballroom.

And yet it was not that maimed hand, either, which stood between

himself and Constance. It was rather the spiritual fact behind the

visible—that instinct of fierce, tyrannical cruelty which he had felt

as he laid his hands on Radowitz in the Oxford dawn a month ago. He

shrank from it now as he thought of it. It blackened and degraded his

own image of himself. He remembered something like it years before,

when he had joined in the bullying of a small boy at school—a boy who

yet afterwards had become his good friend. If there is such a thing as

“possession,” devilish possession, he had pleaded it on both occasions.

Would it, however, have seemed of any great importance to him now, but

for Constance Bledlow’s horror-struck recoil? All men of strong and

vehement temperament—so his own defence might have run—are liable to

such gusts of violent, even murderous feeling; and women accept it. But

Constance Bledlow, influenced, no doubt, by a pale-blooded

sentimentalist like Sorell, had refused to accept it.

“I should be always afraid of you—of your pride and your violence—and

love mustn’t be afraid. Good-bye!”

He tried to scoff, but the words had burnt into his heart.

CHAPTER XII

It was in the early morning, a few days after her arrival at Scarfedale

Manor, the house of her two maiden aunts, that Connie, while all the

Scarfedale household was still asleep, took pen and paper and began a

letter to Nora Hooper.

On the evening before Connie left Oxford there had been a long and

intimate scene between these two. Constance, motherless and sisterless,

and with no woman friend to turn to more understanding than Annette,

had been surprised in passionate weeping by Nora, the night after the

Marmion catastrophe. The tact and devotion of the younger girl had been

equal to the situation. She humbly admired Connie, and yet was directly

conscious of a strength in herself, in which Connie was perhaps

lacking, and which might be useful to her brilliant cousin. At any rate

on this occasion she showed so much sweetness, such power, beyond her

years, of comforting and understanding, that Connie told her

everything, and thenceforward possessed a sister and a confidante. The

letter ran as follows:—

“DEAREST NORA,—I have only been at Scarfedale Manor a week, and already

I seem to have been living here for months. It is a dear old house,

very like the houses one used to draw when one was four years old—a

doorway in the middle, with a nice semicircular top, and three windows

on either side; two stories above with seven windows each, and a pretty

dormered roof, with twisted brick chimneys, and a rookery behind it;

also a walled garden, and a green oval grass-plot between it and the

road. It seems to me that everywhere you go in England you find these

houses, and, I dare say, people like my aunts living in them.

“They are very nice to me, and as different as possible from each

other. Aunt Marcia must have been quite good-looking, and since she

gave up wearing a rational dress which she patented twenty-five years

ago, she has always worn either black silk or black satin, a large

black satin hat, rather like the old ‘pokes,’ with black feathers in

winter and white feathers in summer, and a variety of lace scarves—real

lace—which she seems to have collected all over the world. Aunt

Winifred says that the Unipantaloonicoat’—the name of the patented

thing—lost Aunt Marcia all her lovers. They were scared by so much

strength of character, and could not make up their minds to tackle her.

She gave it up in order to capture the last of them—a dear old general

who had adored her—but he shook his head, went off to Malta to think it

out, and there died of Malta fever. She considers herself his widow and

his portrait adorns her sitting-room. She has a poor opinion of the

lower orders, especially of domestic servants. But her own servants

don’t seem to mind her much. The butler has been here twenty years, and

does just what he pleases. The amusing thing is that she considers

herself extremely intellectual, because she learnt Latin in her

youth—she doesn’t remember a word of it now!—because she always read

the reviews of papa’s books—and because she reads poetry every morning

before breakfast. Just now she is wrestling with George Meredith; and

she asks me to explain ‘Modern Love’ to her. I can’t make head or tail

of it. Nor can she. But when people come to tea she begins to talk

about Meredith, and asks them if they don’t think him very obscure. And

as most people here who come to tea have never heard of him, it keeps

up her dignity. All the same, she is a dear old thing—and she put a

large case of chocolate in my room before I arrived!

“Aunt Winifred is quite different. Aunt Marcia calls her a

‘reactionary,’ because she is very high church and great friends with

all the clergy. She is a very quiet little thing, short and fair, with

a long thin nose and eyes that look you through. Her two great passions

are—curates, especially consumptive curates—and animals. There is

generally a consumptive curate living the open-air life in the garden.

Mercifully the last patient has just left. As for animals, the house is

full of stray dogs and tame rabbits and squirrels that run up you and

look for nuts in your pocket. There is also a mongoose, who pulled the

cloth off the tea-table yesterday and ran away with all the cakes. Aunt

Marcia bears it philosophically, but the week before I came there was a

crisis. Aunt Winifred met some sheep on the road between here and our

little town. She asked where they were going to. And the man with them

said he was taking them to the slaughter-house. She was horrified, and

she bought them all—there and then! And half an hour later, she

appeared here with the sheep, and Aunt Marcia was supposed to put them

up in the garden. Well, that was too much, and the aunts had words.

What happened to the sheep I don’t know. Probably Aunt Winifred has

eaten them since without knowing it.

“Dear Nora—I wonder why I write you all these silly things when there

is so much else to say—and I know you want to hear it. But it’s

horribly difficult to begin.—Well, first of all, Mr. Sorell and Otto

Radowitz are about three miles from here, in a little vicarage that has

a wide lookout upon the moors and a heavenly air. The aunts have found

me a horse, and I go there often. Otto is in some ways very much

better. He lives an ordinary life, walks a fair amount, and is reading

some classics and history with Mr. Sorell, besides endless books of

musical theory and biography. You know he passed his first musical exam

last May. For the second, which will come off next year, he has to

write a composition in five-part harmony for at least five stringed

instruments, and he is beginning work for it now. He writes and writes,

and his little study at the vicarage is strewn deep in scribbled

music-paper. With his left hand and his piano he does wonders, but the

poor right hand is in a sling and quite useless, up to now. He reads

scores endlessly, and he said to me yesterday that he thought his

intellectual understanding of music—his power of grasping it through

the eye—of hearing it with the mind—‘ditties of no tone!’—had grown

since his hand was injured. But the pathetic thing is that the sheer

pleasure—the joy and excitement—of his life is gone; those long hours

of dreaming and composing with the piano, when he could not only make

himself blissfully happy, but give such exquisite pleasure to others.

“He is very quiet and patient now—generally—and quite determined to

make a name for himself as a composer. But he seems to me

extraordinarily frail. Do you remember that lovely French poem of Sully

Prudhomme’s I read you one night—‘_Le Vase Brisé_’? The vase has had a

blow. No one knew of it. But the little crack widens and grows. The

water ebbs away—the flowers die. ‘_Il est brisé_—_n’y touchez pas_!’ I

can see it is just that Mr. Sorell feels about Otto.

“What makes one anxious sometimes, is that he has hours of a kind of

fierce absent-mindedness, when his real self seems to be far away—as

though in some feverish or ugly dream. He goes away and wanders about

by himself. Mr. Sorell does not attempt to follow him, though he is

always horribly anxious. And after some hours he comes back, limp and

worn out, but quite himself again—as though he had gone through some

terrible wrestle and escaped.

“Mr. Sorell gave him, a little while ago, a wonderful new automatic

thing—a piano-player, I think they call it. It works with a roll like a

musical box and has pedals. But Otto can’t do much with it. To get any

expression out of it you must use your hands—both hands; and I am

afraid it has been more disappointment than joy. But there are rumours

of some development—something electric—that plays itself. They say

there is an inventor at work in Paris, who is doing something

wonderful. I have written to a girl I know at the Embassy to ask her to

find out. It might just help him through some weary hours—that’s all

one can say.

“The relation between him and Mr. Sorell is wonderful. Oh, what an

angel Mr. Sorell is! How can any human being, and with no trouble at

all apparently, be so unselfish, so self-controlled? What will any

woman do who falls in love with him? It won’t make any difference that

he’ll think her so much better than himself—because she’ll know the

truth. I see no chance for her. My dear Nora, the best men are better

than the best women—there! But—take note!—I am not in love with him,

though I adore him, and when he disapproves of me, I feel a worm.

“I hear a good deal of the Fallodens, but nobody sees them. Every one

shrinks from pestering them with society—not from any bad feeling—but

because every one knows by now that they are in hideous difficulties,

and doesn’t want to intrude. Lady Laura, they say, is very much

changed, and Sir Arthur looks terribly ill and broken. Aunt Marcia

hears that Douglas Falloden is doing all the business, and impressing

the lawyers very much. Oh, I do hope he is helping his father!

“I can’t write about him, Nora darling. You would wonder how I can feel

the interest in him I do. I know that. But I can’t believe, as Otto

does, that he is deliberately cruel—a selfish, hard-hearted monster. He

has been a spoilt child all his life. But if some great call were made

upon him, mightn’t it stir up something splendid in him, finer things

than those are capable of ‘who need no repentance’?

“There—something has splashed on my paper. I have written enough. Now

you must tell me of yourselves. How is your father? Does Aunt Ellen

like Ryde? I am so delighted to hear that Mr. Pryce is actually coming.

Tell him that, of course, I will write to Uncle Langmoor, and Lord

Glaramara, whenever he wishes, about that appointment. I am sure

something can be done. Give Alice my love. I thought her new

photographs charming. And you, darling, are you looking after everybody

as usual? I wish I could give you a good hug. Good-bye.”

To which Nora replied, a couple of days later—

“Your account of Aunt Marcia and Aunt Winifred amused father

tremendously. He thinks, however, that he would like Aunt Marcia better

than Aunt Winifred, as he—and I—get more anticlerical every year. But

we keep it to ourselves. Mamma and Alice wouldn’t understand. Ryde is

very full, and mamma and Alice want nothing more than the pier and the

sands and the people. Papa and I take long walks along the coast, or

across the island. We find a cliff to bask on, or a wood that comes

down to the water, and then papa gets out a Greek book and translates

to me. Sometimes I listen to the sea, instead of to him, and go to

sleep. But he doesn’t mind. He is looking better, but work is loading

up for him again as soon as we get back to Oxford about a week from

now. If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the

things he loves. Nobody knows what a mind he has. He is not only a

scholar—he is a poet. He could write things as beautiful as Mr.

Pater’s, but his life is ground out of him.

“I won’t go on writing this—it’s no good.

“Herbert Pryce came down yesterday, and has taken mother and Alice out

boating to-day. If he doesn’t mean to propose to Alice, it is very odd

he should take the trouble to come here. But he doesn’t say anything

definite; he doesn’t propose; and her face often makes me furious. His

manner to mamma—and to me—is often brusque and disagreeable. It is as

though he felt that in marrying Alice—if he is going to marry her—he is

rather unfairly burdened with the rest of us. And it is no good

shirking the fact that you count for a good deal in the matter. He was

delighted with your message, and if you can help him he will propose to

Alice. Goodness, fancy marrying such a man!

“As to Mr. Falloden, I don’t believe he will ever be anything but hard

and tyrannical. I don’t believe in conversion and change of heart, and

that kind of thing. I don’t—I don’t! You are not to be taken in,

Connie! You are not to fall in love with him again out of pity. If he

does lose all his money, and have to work like anybody else, what does

it matter? He was as proud as Lucifer—let him fall like Lucifer. You

may be sure he won’t fall so very far. That kind never does. No, I want

him put down. I want him punished. He won’t repent—he can’t repent—and

there was never any one less like a lost sheep in the world.

“After which I think I will say good-night!”

A few days later, Connie, returning from a ramble with one of Lady

Winifred’s stray dogs along the banks of the Scarfe, found her two

aunts at tea in the garden.

“Sit down, my dear Connie,” said Lady Marcia, with a preoccupied look.

“We have just heard distressing news. The clergy are such gossips!”

The elevation of Aunt Winifred’s sharp nose showed her annoyance.

“And you, Marcia, are always so dreadfully unfair to them. You were

simply dying for Mr. Latimer to tell you all he knew, and then you

abuse him.”

“Perfectly true,” said Lady Marcia provokingly, “but if he had snubbed

me, I should have respected him more.”

Whereupon it was explained to Connie that a Mr. Latimer, rector of the

Fallodens’ family living of Flood Magna, had just been paying a long

visit to the two ladies. He was a distant cousin and old crony of

theirs, and it was not long before they had persuaded him to pour out

all he knew about the Falloden affairs. “They must sell everything!”

said Lady Marcia, raising her hands and eyes in protest—“the estates,

the house, the pictures—my dear, think of the pictures! The nation of

course ought to buy them, but the nation never has a penny. And however

much they sell, it will only just clear them. There’ll be nothing left

but Lady Laura’s settlement—and that’s only two thousand a year.”

“Well, they won’t starve,” said Aunt Winifred, with a sniff, applying

for another piece of tea-cake. “It’s no good, Marcia, your trying to

stir us up. The Fallodens are not beloved. Nobody will break their

hearts—except of course we shall all be sorry for Lady Laura and the

children. And it will be horrid to have new people at Flood.”

“My dear Connie, it is a pity we haven’t been able to take you to

Flood,” said Lady Marcia to her niece, handing a cup of tea. “You know

Douglas, so of course you would have been shown everything. Such

pictures! Such lovely old rooms! And then the grounds—the cedars—the

old gardens! It really is a glorious place. I can’t think why Winifred

is so hard-hearted about it!”

Lady Winifred pressed her thin lips together.

“Marcia, excuse me—but you really do talk like a snob. Before I cry

over people who have lost their property, I ask myself how they have

lost it, and also how they have used it.” The little lady drew herself

up fiercely.

“We have all got beams in our own eyes,” cried Aunt Marcia. “And of

course we all know, Winifred, that Sir Arthur never would give you

anything for your curates.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” said Lady Winifred angrily. “I gave

Sir Arthur a sacred opportunity—which he refused. That’s his affair.

But when a man gambles away his estates, neglects his duties and his

poor people, wastes his money in riotous living, and teaches his

children to think themselves too good for this common world, and then

comes to grief—I am not going to whine and whimper about it. Let him

take it like a man!”

“So he does,” said her sister warmly. “You know Mr. Latimer said so,

and also that Douglas was behaving very well.”

“What else can he do? I never said he wasn’t fond of his father. Well,

now let him look after his father.”

The two maiden ladies, rather flushed and agitated, faced each other

nervously. They had forgotten the presence of their niece. Constance

sat in the shade, her beautiful eyes passing intently from one sister

to the other, her lips parted. Aunt Marcia, by way of proving to her

sister Winifred that she was a callous and unkind creature, began to

rake up inconsequently a number of incidents throwing light on the

relations of father and son; which Lady Winifred scornfully capped by

another series of recollections intended to illustrate the family

arrogance, and Douglas Falloden’s full share in it. For instance:

_Marcia_—“I shall never forget that charming scene when Douglas made a

hundred, not out, the first day of the Flood cricket week, when he was

sixteen. Sir Arthur’s face! And don’t you remember how he went about

half the evening with his arm round the boy’s shoulders?”

_Winifred_—“Yes, and how Douglas hated it! I can see him wriggling now.

Do you remember that just a week after that, Douglas broke his

hunting-whip beating a labourer’s boy, whom he found trespassing in one

of the coverts, and how Sir Arthur paid fifty pounds to get him out of

the scrape?”

_Marcia_, indignantly—“Of course that was just a lad’s high spirits! I

have no doubt the labourer’s boy richly deserved it.”

_Winifred_—“Really, Marcia, your tone towards the lower orders! You

don’t allow a labourer’s boy any high spirits!—not you! And I suppose

you’ve quite forgotten that horrid quarrel between the hunt and the

farmers which was entirely brought about by Douglas’s airs. ‘Pay

them!—pay them!’ he used to say—‘what else do the beggars want?’ As if

money could settle everything! And I remember a farmer’s wife telling

me how she had complained to Douglas about the damage done by the Flood

pheasants in their fields. And he just mocked at her. ‘Why don’t you

send in a bigger bill?’ ‘But it’s not only money, my lady,’ she said to

me. ‘The fields are like your children, and you hate to see them wasted

by them great birds—money or no money. But what’s the good of talking?

Fallodens always best it!’”

_Marcia_—with the air of one defending the institutions of her

country—“Shooting and hunting have to be kept up, Winifred, for the

sake of the physique of our class; and it’s the physique of our class

that maintains the Empire. What do a few fields of corn matter compared

with that! And what young man could have done a more touching—a more

heroic thing—than—”

_Winifred_, contemptuously—“What?—Sir Arthur’s accident? You always did

lose your head about that, Marcia. Nothing much, I consider, in the

story. However, we shan’t agree, so I’d better go to my choir

practice.”

When she was out of sight, and Marcia, who was always much agitated by

an encounter with her sister, was still angrily fanning herself, Connie

laid a hand on her aunt’s knee. “What was the story, Aunt Marcia?”

Lady Marcia composed herself. Connie, in a thin black frock, with a

shady hat and a tea-rose at her waist, was looking up at the elder lady

with a quiet eagerness. Marcia patted the girl’s hand.

“Winifred never asked your opinion, my dear!—and I expect you know him

a great deal better than either of us.”

“I never knew him before this year. That’s a very little while. I—I’m

sure he’s difficult to know. Perhaps he’s one of the people—who”—she

laughed—“who want keeping.”

“That’s it!” cried Lady Marcia, delighted. “Of course that’s it. It’s

like a rough fruit that mellows. Anyway I’m not going to damn him for

good at twenty-three, like Winifred. Well, Sir Arthur was very badly

thrown, coming home from hunting, six years ago now and more, when

Douglas was seventeen. It was in the Christmas holidays. They had had a

run over Leman Moor and Sir Arthur and Douglas got separated from the

rest, and were coming home in the dark through some very lonely

roads—or tracks—on the edge of the moor. They came to a place where the

track went suddenly into a wood, and a pheasant was startled by the

horses, and flew right across Sir Arthur, almost in his face. The

horse—it was always said no one but Sir Arthur Falloden could ride

it—took fright, bolted, dashed in among the trees, threw Sir Arthur,

and made off. When Douglas came up he found his father on the ground,

covered with blood, and insensible. There was no one anywhere near. The

boy shouted—no one came. It was getting dark and pouring with rain—an

awful January night—I remember it well! Douglas tried to lift his

father on his own horse, but the horse got restive, and it couldn’t be

done. If he had ridden back to a farm about a mile away he could have

got help. But he thought his father was dying, and he couldn’t make up

his mind, you see, to leave him. Then—imagine!—he somehow was able—of

course he was even then a splendid young fellow, immensely tall and

strong for his age—to get Sir Arthur on his back, and to carry him

through two fields to a place where he thought there was a cottage. But

when he got there, the cottage was empty—no lights—and the door

padlocked. He laid his father down under the shelter of the cottage,

and called and shouted. Not a sign of help! It was awfully cold—a

bitter north wind—blowing great gusts of rain. Nobody knows quite how

long they were there, but at last they were found by the vicar of the

village near, who was coming home on his bicycle from visiting a sick

woman at the farm. He told me that Douglas had taken off his own coat

and a knitted waistcoat he wore, and had wrapped his father in them. He

was sitting on the ground with his back to the cottage wall, holding

Sir Arthur in his arms. The boy himself was weak with cold and misery.

The vicar said he should never forget his white face, when he found

them with his lamp, and the light shone on them. Douglas was bending

over his father, imploring him to speak to him—in the tenderest,

sweetest way. Then, of course, when the vicar, Mr. Burton, had got a

cart and taken them to the farm, and a carriage had come from Flood

with two doctors, and Sir Arthur had begun to recover his senses,

Douglas—looking like a ghost—was very soon ordering everybody about in

his usual lordly manner. ‘He slanged the farmer,’ said Mr. Burton, ‘for

being slow with the cart; he sent me off on errands as though I’d been

his groom; and when the doctors came, you’d have thought he was more in

charge of the case than they were. They thought him intolerable; so he

was. But I made allowances, because I couldn’t forget how I had seen

them first—the boy’s face, and his chattering teeth, and how he spoke

to his father. He’s spoilt, that lad! He’s as proud as Satan. If his

father and mother don’t look out, he’ll give them sore hearts some day.

But he can feel!—and—if he could have given his life for his father’s

that night, he would have done it with joy.’—Well, there it is,

Connie!—it’s a true story anyway, and why shouldn’t we remember the

nice things about a young man, as well as the horrid ones?”

“Why not, indeed?” said Connie, her chin on her hands, her eyes bent on

the ground.

Lady Marcia was silent a moment, then she said with a tremulous accent

that belied her height, her stateliness and her black satin gown:

“You see, Connie, I know more about men than Winifred does. We have had

different experiences.”

“She’s thinking about the General,” thought Connie. “Poor old dear!”

And she gently touched her aunt’s long thin hand.

Lady Marcia sighed.

“One must make allowances for men,” she said slowly.

Connie offered no reply, and they sat together a few more minutes in

silence. Then Connie rose.

“I told the coachman, Aunt Marcia, I should ride for an hour or so

after tea. If I take the Lawley road, does that go anywhere near

Flood?”

“It takes you to the top of the moor, and you have a glorious view of

the castle and all its woods. Yes, do go that way. You’ll see what the

poor things have lost. You did like Douglas, didn’t you?”

“‘Like’ is not exactly the word, is it?” said Constance with a little

laugh, vexed to feel that she could not keep the colour out of her

cheeks. “And he doesn’t care whether you like him or not!”

She went away, and her elderly aunt watched her cross the lawn. Lady

Marcia looked puzzled. After a few moments’ meditation a half light

broke on her wrinkled face. “Is it possible? Oh, no!”

It was a rich August evening. In the fields near the broad river the

harvest had begun, and the stubbles with their ranged stocks alternated

with golden stretches still untouched. The air was full of voices—the

primal sounds of earth, and man’s food-gathering; calling reapers,

clattering carts, playing children. And on the moors that closed the

valley there were splashes and streaks of rose colour, where the

heather spread under the flecked evening sky.

Constance rode in a passion of thought. “On the other side of that

moor—five miles away—there he is! What is he doing now—at this moment?

What is he thinking of?”

Presently the road bent upward, and she followed it, soothed by the

quiet movement of her horse and by the evening air. She climbed and

climbed, till the upland farms fell behind, and the road came out upon

the open moor. The distance beyond began to show—purple woods in the

evening shadow, dim valleys among them, and wide grassy stretches. A

little more, and she was on the crest. The road ran before

her—westward—a broad bare whiteness through the sun-steeped heather.

And, to the north, a wide valley, where wood and farm and pasture had

been all fashioned by the labour of generations into one proud setting

for the building in its midst. Flood Castle rose on the green bottom of

the valley, a mass of mellowed wall and roof and tower, surrounded by

its stately lawns and terraces, and girdled by its wide “chase,” of

alternating wood and glade—as though wrought into the landscape by the

care of generations, and breathing history. A stream, fired with the

sunset, ran in loops and windings through the park, and all around the

hills rose and fell, clothed with dark hanging woods.

[Illustration: Lady Connie held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon

Flood Castle and its woods]

Constance held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon the castle and its

woods. Her mind, as she looked, was one riot of excuse for Douglas

Falloden. She knew very well—her own father had been an instance of

it—that a man can be rich and well-born, and still remain modest and

kind. But—but—“How hardly shall they that have riches—!”

She moved slowly on, thinking and gazing, till she had gone much

further than she intended, and the light had begun to fail. She would

certainly be late for dinner. Looking round her for her bearings, she

saw on the Scarfedale side of the hill, about three miles away, what

she took to be her aunts’ house. Surely there must be a short cut to

it. Yes! there was a narrow road to be seen, winding down the hill, and

across the valley, which must certainly shorten the distance. And

almost immediately she found herself at the entrance to it, where it

abutted on the moor; and a signpost showed the name of Hilkley, her

aunts’ village. She took the road at once, and trotted briskly along,

as the twilight deepened.

A gate ahead! Well, never mind. The horse was quiet; she could easily

manage any ordinary latch.

But the gate was difficult, and she fumbled at, it. Again and again,

she brought up her horse, only to fail. And the cob began to get

nervous and jump about—to rear a little. Whenever she stooped towards

the gate, it would swerve violently, and each unsuccessful attempt made

it more restive. She began to get nervous herself.

“How abominable! Must I go back? Suppose I get off? But if I do, can I

get on again?” She looked round her for a log or a stone.

Who was that approaching? For suddenly she saw a horse and rider coming

from the Hilkley direction towards the gate. A moment—then through the

dusk she recognised the rider; and agitation—suffocating,

overwhelming—laid hold upon her.

A sharp movement on the part of the horseman checked his horse.

Falloden pulled up in amazement on the further side of the gate.

“You?—Lady Constance!”

She controlled herself, with a great effort.

“How do you do? My horse shies at the gate. He’s so tiresome—I was just

thinking of getting off. It will be most kind if you will let me

through.”

She drew aside, quieting and patting the cob, while he opened the gate.

Then she passed through and paused, looking back.

“Thank you very much. Are there any more gates?”

“Two more I am afraid,” he said formally, as he turned and joined her.

“Will you allow me to open them for you?”

“It would be very good of you,” she faltered, not knowing how to

refuse, or what to say.

They walked their horses side by side, through the gathering darkness.

An embarrassed and thrilling silence reigned between them, till at last

he said: “You are staying at Scarfedale—with your aunts?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you were there. They are only five miles from us.”

She said nothing. But she seemed to realise, through every nerve, the

suppressed excitement of the man beside her.

Another couple of minutes passed. Then he said abruptly:

“I should like to know that you read my last letter to you—only that! I

of course don’t ask for—for any comments upon it.”

“Yes, I received it. I read it.”

He waited a little, but she said no more. He sharply realised his

disappointment, and its inconsequence. The horses slowly descended the

long hill. Falloden opened another gate, with the hurried remark that

there was yet one more. Meanwhile he saw Connie’s slender body, her

beautiful loosened hair and black riding-hat outlined against the still

glowing sky behind. Her face, turned towards the advancing dusk, he

could hardly see. But the small hand in its riding-glove, so close to

him, haunted his senses. One movement, and he could have crushed it in

his.

Far away the last gate came into sight. His bitterness and pain broke

out.

“I can’t imagine why you should feel any interest in my affairs,” he

said, in his stiffest manner, “but you kindly allowed me to talk to you

sometimes about my people. You know, I presume, what everybody knows,

that we shall soon be leaving Flood, and selling the estates.”

“I know.” The girl’s voice was low and soft. “I am awfully, awfully

sorry!”

“Thank you. It doesn’t of course matter for me. I can make my own life.

But for my father—it is hard. I should like you to know”—he spoke with

growing agitation—“that when we met—at Cannes—and at Oxford—I had no

knowledge—no idea—of what was happening.”

She raised her head suddenly, impetuously.

“I don’t know why you say that!”

He saw instantly that his wounded pride had betrayed him into a

blunder—that without meaning it, he had seemed to suggest that she

would have treated him differently, if she had known he was not a rich

man.

“It was a stupid thing to say. Please consider it unsaid.”

The silence deepened, till she broke it again—

“I see Mr. Radowitz sometimes. Won’t you like to know that he is

composing a symphony for his degree? He is always working at it. It

makes him happy—at least—contented.”

“Yes, I am glad. But nothing can ever make up to him. I know that.”

“No—nothing,” she admitted sadly.

“Or to me!”

Constance started. They had reached the last gate.

Falloden threw himself off his horse to open it and as she rode

through, she looked down into his face. Its proud regularity of

feature, its rich colour, its brilliance, seemed to her all blurred and

clouded. A flashing insight showed her the valley of distress and

humiliation through which this man had been passing. His bitter look,

at once of challenge and renunciation, set her trembling; she felt

herself all weakness; and suddenly the woman in her—dumbly,

unguessed—held out its arms.

But he knew nothing of it. Rather her attitude seemed to him one of

embarrassment—even of _hauteur_. It was suddenly intolerable to him to

seem to be asking for her pity. He raised his hat, coldly gave her a

few directions as to her road home, and closed the gate behind her. She

bowed and in another minute he was cantering away from her, towards the

sunset.

Connie went on blindly, the reins on her horse’s neck, the passionate

tears dropping on her hands.

CHAPTER XIII

Douglas Falloden rode home rapidly after parting from Connie. Passion,

impatience, bitter regret consumed him. He suffered, and could not

endure to suffer. That life, which had grown up with him as a

flattering and obsequious friend, obeying all his whims, yielding to

all his desires, should now have turned upon him in this traitorous

way, inflicting such monstrous reprisals and rebuffs, roused in him the

astonishment and resentment natural to such a temperament.

He, too, drew rein for a moment at the spot where Connie had looked out

over Flood Castle and its valley. The beautiful familiar sight produced

in him now only a mingling of pain and irritation. The horrid thing was

settled, decided. There was no avoiding ruin, or saving his

inheritance. Then why these long delays, these endless discomforts and

humiliations? The lawyers prolonged things because it paid them to do

so; and his poor father wavered and hesitated from day to day, because

physically and morally he was breaking up. If only his father and

mother would have cleared out of Flood at once—they were spending money

they could not possibly afford in keeping it up—and had left him,

Douglas, to do the odious things, pay the creditors, sell the place,

and sweep up the whole vast mess, with the help of the lawyers, it

would have been infinitely best. His own will felt itself strong and

determined enough for any such task. But Sir Arthur, in his strange,

broken state, could not be brought to make decisions, and would often,

after days of gloom and depression, pass into a fool’s mood, when he

seemed for the moment to forget and ignore the whole tragedy. Since he

and Douglas had agreed with the trustees to sell the pictures, that

sheer bankruptcy might just be escaped, Sir Arthur had been

extravagantly cheerful. Why not have their usual shooting-party after

all?—one last fling before the end! He supposed he should end his days

in a suburban villa, but till they left Flood the flag should be kept

flying.

During all this time of tension indeed, he was a great trial to his

son. Douglas’s quick and proud intelligence was amazed to find his

father so weak and so incompetent under misfortune. All his boyish life

he had looked up to the slender, handsome man, whom he himself so much

resembled, on a solider, more substantial scale, as the most indulgent

of fathers, the princeliest of hosts, the best of shots and riders,

chief indeed of the Falloden clan and all its glories, who, like other

monarchs, could do no wrong.

But now the glamour which must always attend the central figure of such

a scene withered at the touch of poverty and misfortune. And, in its

absence, Douglas found himself dealing with an enthusiastic, vain,

self-confident being, who had ruined himself and his son by

speculations, often so childishly foolish that Douglas could not think

of them without rage. Intellectually, he could only despise and condemn

his father.

Yet the old bond held. Till he met Constance Bledlow, he had cared only

for his own people, and among them, preëminently, for his father. In

this feeling, family pride and natural affection met together. The

family pride had been sorely shaken, the affection, steeped in a

painful, astonished pity, remained. For the first time in his life

Douglas had been sleeping badly. Interminable dreams pursued him, in

which the scene in Marmion quad, his last walk with Constance along the

Cherwell, and the family crash, were all intermingled, with the fatuity

natural to dreams. And his wakings from them were almost equally

haunted by the figures of Constance and Radowitz, and by a miserable

yearning over his father, which no one who saw his hard, indifferent

bearing during the day could possible have guessed. “Poor—poor old

fellow!”—he had once or twice raised himself from his bed in the early

morning, as though answering this cry in his ears, only to find that he

himself had uttered it.

He had told his people nothing of Constance Bledlow beyond the bare

fact of his acquaintance with her, first at Cannes, and then at Oxford.

And they knew nothing of the Radowitz incident. Very few people indeed

were aware of the true history of that night which had marred an

artist’s life. The college authorities had been painfully stirred by

the reports which had reached them; but Radowitz himself had written to

the Head maintaining that the whole thing was an accident and a frolic,

and insisting that no public or official notice should be taken of it,

a fact which had not prevented the Head from writing severely to

Falloden, Meyrick, and Robertson, or the fellows of the college from

holding a college meeting, even in the long vacation, to discuss what

measures should be taken in the October term to put down and stamp out

ragging.

Falloden had replied to the Head’s letter expressing his “profound

regret” for the accident to Otto Radowitz, and declaring that nobody in

the row had the smallest intention of doing him any bodily harm.

What indeed had anybody but himself to do with his own malignant and

murderous impulse towards Radowitz? It had had no casual connection

whatever with the accident itself. And who but he—and Constance

Bledlow—was entitled to know that, while the others were actuated by

nothing but the usual motives of a college rag, quickened by too much

supping, he himself had been impelled by a mad jealousy of Radowitz,

and a longing to humiliate one who had humiliated him? All the same he

hated himself now for what he had said to Constance on their last walk.

It had been a mean and monstrous attempt to shift the blame from his

own shoulders to hers; and his sense of honour turned from the

recollection of it in disgust.

How pale she had looked, beside that gate, in the evening light—how

heavy-eyed! No doubt she was seeing Radowitz constantly, and grieving

over him; blaming herself, indeed, as he, Falloden, had actually

invited her to do. With fresh poignancy, he felt himself an outcast

from her company. No doubt they sometimes talked of him—his bitter

pride guessed how!—she, and Sorell, and Radowitz together. Was Sorell

winning her? He had every chance. Falloden, in his sober senses, knew

perfectly well that she was not in love with Radowitz; though no one

could say what pity might do with a girl so sensitive and sympathetic.

Well, it was all over!—no good thinking about it. He confessed to

himself that his whole relation to Constance Bledlow had been one

blunder from beginning to end. His own arrogance and self-confidence

with regard to her, appeared to him, as he looked back upon them, not

so much a fault as an absurdity. In all his dealings with her he had

been a conceited fool, and he had lost her. “But I had to be ruined to

find it out!” he thought, capable at last of some ironic reflection on

himself.

He set his horse to a gallop along the moorland turf. Let him get home,

and do his dreary tasks in that great house which was already becoming

strange to him; which, in a sense, he was now eager to see the last of.

On the morrow, the possible buyer of the pictures—who, by the way, was

not an American at all, but a German shipping millionaire from

Bremen—was coming down, with an “expert.” Hang the expert! Falloden,

who was to deal with the business, promised himself not to be

intimidated by him, or his like; and amid his general distress and

depression, his natural pugnacity took pleasure in the thought of

wrestling with the pair.

When he rode up to the Flood gateway everything appeared as usual. The

great lawns in front of the house were as immaculately kept as ever,

and along the shrubberies which bordered the park there were gardeners

still at work pegging down a broad edge of crimson rambler roses, which

seemed to hold the sunset. Falloden observed them. “Who’s paying for

them?” he thought. At the front door two footmen received him; the

stately head butler stood with a detached air in the background.

“Sir Arthur’s put off dinner half an hour, sir. He’s in the library.”

Douglas went in search of his father. He found him smoking and reading

a novel, apparently half asleep.

“You’re very late, Duggy. Never mind. We’ve put off dinner.”

“I found Sprague had a great deal to say.”

Sprague was the subagent living on the further edge of the estate.

Douglas had spent the day with him, going into the recent valuation of

an important group of farms.

“I dare say,” said Sir Arthur, lying back in his armchair. “I’m afraid

I don’t want to hear it.”

Douglas sat down opposite his father. He was dusty and tired, and there

were deep pits tinder his eyes.

“It will make a difference of a good many thousands to us, father, if

that valuation is correct,” he said shortly.

“Will it? I can’t help it. I can’t go into it. I can’t keep the facts

and figures in my head, Duggy. I’ve done too much of them this last ten

years. My brain gives up. But you’ve got a splendid head,

Duggy—wonderful for your age. I leave it to you, my son. Do the best

you can.”

Douglas looked at his father a moment in silence. Sir Arthur was

sitting near the window, and had just turned on an electric light

beside him. Douglas was struck by something strange in his father’s

attitude and look—a curious irresponsibility and remoteness. The deep

depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared.

This mood of easy acquiescence—almost levity—was becoming permanent.

Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a

once splendid man—how shrunken his father was, and how grey. And he was

only fifty-two. But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in

the attempt to double his already great wealth by adventures all over

the world, and latterly in his frantic efforts to escape the

consequences of these adventures, had rapidly made an old man of him.

The waste and pity—and at the same time the irreparableness of it

all—sent a shock, intolerably chill and dreary, through the son’s

consciousness. He was too young to bear it patiently. He hastily shook

it off.

“Those picture chaps are coming to-morrow,” he said, as he got up,

meaning to go and dress.

Sir Arthur put his hands behind his head, and didn’t reply immediately.

He was looking at a picture on the panelled wall opposite, on which the

lingering western glow still shone through the mullioned window on his

right. It was an enchanting Romney—a young woman in a black dress

holding a spaniel in her arms. The picture breathed a distinction, a

dignity beyond the reach of Romney’s ordinary mood. It represented Sir

Arthur’s great-grandmother, on his father’s side, a famous Irish beauty

of the day.

“Wonder what they’ll give me for that,” he Said quietly, pointing to

it. “My father always said it was the pick. You remember the story that

she—my great-grandmother—once came across Lady Hamilton in Romney’s

studio, and Emma Hamilton told Romney afterwards that at last he’d

found a sitter handsomer than herself. It’s a winner. You inherit her

eyes, Douglas, and her colour. What’s it worth?”

“Twenty thousand perhaps.” Douglas’s voice had the cock-sureness that

goes with new knowledge. “I’ve been looking into some of the recent

prices.”

“Twenty thousand!” said Sir Arthur, musing. “And Romney got

seventy-five for it, I believe—I have the receipt somewhere. I shall

miss that picture. What shall I get for it? A few shabby receipts—for

nothing. My creditors will get something out of her—mercifully. But as

for me—I might as well have cut her into strips. She looks annoyed—as

though she knew I’d thrown her away. I believe she was a vixen.”

“I must go and change, father,” said Douglas.

“Yes, yes, dear boy, go and change. Douglas, you think there’ll be a

few thousands over, don’t you, besides your mother’s settlement, when

it’s all done?”

“Precious few,” said Douglas, pausing on his way to the door. “Don’t

count upon anything, father. If we do well to-morrow, there may be

something.”

“Four or five thousand?—ten, even? You know, Duggy, many men have built

up fortunes again on no more. A few weeks ago I had all sorts of

ideas.”

“That’s no good,” said Douglas, with emphasis. “For God’s sake, father,

don’t begin again.”

Sir Arthur nodded silently, and Douglas left the room.

His father remained sitting where his son had left him, his fingers

drumming absently on the arms of his chair, his half-shut eyes

wandering over the splendid garden outside, with its statues and

fountains, and its masses of roses, all fused in the late evening glow.

The door opened softly. His wife came in.

Lady Laura had lost her old careless good humour. Her fair complexion

had changed for the worse; there were lines in her white forehead, and

all her movements had grown nervous and irritable. But her expression

as she stood by her husband was one of anxious though rather childish

affection.

“How are you, Arthur? Did you get a nap?”

“A beauty!” said her husband, smiling at her, and taking her hand. “I

dreamt about Raby, and the first time I saw you there in the old Duke’s

day. What a pretty thing you were, Laura!—like a monthly rose, all

pink.”

He patted her hand; Lady Laura shrugged her shoulders rather pettishly.

“It’s no good thinking about that now.... You’re not really going to

have a shooting-party, Arthur? I do wish you wouldn’t!”

“But of course I am!” said her husband, raising himself with alacrity.

“The grouse must be shot, and the estate is not sold yet! I’ve asked

young Meyrick, and Lord Charles, and Robert Vere. You can ask the

Charlevilles, dear, and if my lady doesn’t come I shan’t break my

heart. Then there are five or six of the neighbours of course. And no

whining and whimpering! The last shoot at Flood shall be a good one!

The keeper tells me the birds are splendid!”

Lady Laura’s lips trembled.

“You forget what Duggy and I shall be feeling all the time, Arthur.

It’s very hard on us.”

“No—nonsense!” The voice was good-humouredly impatient. “Take it

calmly, dear. What do places matter? Come to the Andes with me. Duggy

must work for his fellowship; Nelly can stay with some of our

relations; and we can send the children to school. Or what do you say

to a winter in California? Let’s have a second honeymoon—see something

of the world before we die. This English country gentleman business

ties one terribly. Life in one’s own house is so jolly one doesn’t want

anything else. But now, if we’re going to be uprooted, let’s enjoy it!”

“Enjoy it!” repeated his wife bitterly. “How can you say such things,

Arthur?”

She walked to the window, and stood looking out at the garden with its

grandiose backing of hill and climbing wood, and the strong broken

masses of the cedar trees—the oldest it was said in England—which

flanked it on either side. Lady Laura was, in truth, only just

beginning to realise their misfortunes. It had seemed to her impossible

that such wealth as theirs should positively give out; that there

should be nothing left but her miserable two thousand a year; that

something should not turn up to save them from this preposterous

necessity of leaving Flood. When Douglas came home, she had thrown

herself on her clever son, confident that he would find a way out, and

his sombre verdict on the hopelessness of the situation had filled her

with terror. How could they live with nothing but the London house to

call their own? How could they? Why couldn’t they sell off the land,

and keep the house and the park? Then they would still be the Fallodens

of Flood. It was stupid—simply stupid—to be giving up everything like

this.

So day by day she wearied her husband and son by her lamentations,

which were like those of some petted animal in distress. And every now

and then she had moments of shrinking terror—of foreboding—fearing she

knew not what. Her husband seemed to her changed. Why wouldn’t he take

her advice? Why wouldn’t Douglas listen to her? If only her father had

been alive, or her only brother, they could have helped her. But she

had nobody—nobody—and Arthur and Douglas would do this horrible thing.

Her husband watched her, half smiling—his shrunken face flushed, his

eyes full of a curious excitement. She had grown stout in the last five

years, poor Laura!—she had lost her youth before the crash came. But

she was still very pleasant to look upon, with her plentiful fair hair,

and her pretty mouth—her instinct for beautiful dress—and her soft

appealing manner. He suddenly envisaged her in black—with a plain white

collar and cuffs, and something white on her hair. Then vehemently

shaking off his thought he rose and went to her.

“Dear—didn’t Duggy want you to ask somebody for the shoot? I thought I

heard him mention somebody?’

“That was ages ago. He doesn’t want anybody asked now,” said Lady Laura

resentfully. “He can’t understand why you want a party.”

“I thought he said something about Lady Constance Bledlow?”

“That was in June!” cried Lady Laura. “He certainly wouldn’t let me ask

her, as things are.”

“Have you any idea whether he may have wanted to marry her?”

“He was very much taken with her. But how can he think about marrying,

Arthur? You do say the strangest things. And after Dagnall’s behaviour

too.”

“_Raison de plus!_ That girl has money, my dear, and will have more,

when the old aunts depart this life. If you want Duggy still to go into

Parliament, and to be able to do anything for the younger ones, you’ll

keep an eye on her.”

Lady Laura, however, was too depressed to welcome the subject. The gong

rang for dinner, and as they were leaving the room, Sir Arthur said—

“There are two men coming down to-morrow to see the pictures, Laura. If

I were you, I should keep out of the way.”