CHAPTER XRadowitz 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—Ifshehad 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 inThe 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.
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—
Ifshehad 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 inThe 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.