CHAPTER XVIIFalloden had just finished a solitary luncheon in the little dining-room of the Boar’s Hill cottage. There was a garden door in the room, and lighting a cigarette, he passed out through it to the terrace outside. A landscape lay before him, which has often been compared to that of the Val d’Arno seen from Fiesole, and has indeed some common points with that incomparable mingling of man’s best with the best of mountain and river. It was the last week of October, and the autumn was still warm and windless, as though there were no shrieking November to come. Oxford, the beautiful city, with its domes and spires, lay in the hollow beneath the spectator, wreathed in thin mists of sunlit amethyst. Behind that ridge in the middle distance ran the river and the Nuneham woods; beyond rose the long blue line of the Chilterns. In front of the cottage the ground sank through copse and field to the river level, the hedge lines all held by sentinel trees, to which the advancing autumn had given that significance the indiscriminate summer green denies. The gravely rounded elms with their golden caps, the scarlet of the beeches, the pale lemon-yellow of the nearly naked limes, the splendid blacks of yew and fir—they were all there, mingled in the autumn cup of misty sunshine like melting jewels. And among them, the enchanted city shone, fair and insubstantial, from the depth below; as it were, the spiritual word and voice of all the scene.Falloden paced up and down the terrace, smoking and thinking. That was Otto’s open window. But Radowitz had not yet appeared that morning, and the ex-scout, who acted butler and valet to the two men, had brought word that he would come down in the afternoon, but was not to be disturbed till then.“What lunacy made me do it?” thought Falloden, standing still at the end of the terrace which fronted the view.He and Radowitz had been nearly three weeks together. Had he been of the slightest service or consolation to Radowitz during that time? He doubted it. That incalculable impulse which had made him propose himself as Otto’s companion for the winter still persisted indeed. He was haunted still by a sense of being “under command”—directed—by a force which could not be repelled. Ill at ease, unhappy, as he was, and conscious of being quite ineffective, whether as nurse or companion, unless Radowitz proposed to “throw up,” he knew that he himself should hold on; though why, he could scarcely have explained.But the divergences between them were great; the possibilities of friction many. Falloden was astonished to find that he disliked Otto’s little fopperies and eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done in college days; his finicky dress, his foreign ways in eating, his tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing to Radowitz; his Tory habits of thought, his British contempt for vague sentimentalisms and heroics, for all thatpanachemeans to the Frenchman, or “glory” to the Slav.“Then why, in the name of common sense, are we living together?”He could really give no answer but the answer of “necessity”—of a spiritual need—issuing from a strange tangle of circumstance. The helpless form, the upturned face of his dying father, seemed to make the centre of it, and those faint last words, so sharply, and, as it were, dynamically connected with the hateful memory of Otto’s fall and cry in the Marmion Quad, and the hateful ever-present fact of his maimed life. Constance too—his scene with her on the river bank—her letter, breaking with him—and then the soft, mysterious change in her—and that passionate, involuntary promise in her eyes and voice, as they stood together in her aunts’ garden—all these various elements, bitter and sweet, were mingled in the influence which was shaping his own life. He wanted to forgive himself; and he wanted Constance to forgive him, whether she married him or no. A kind of sublimated egotism, he said to himself, after all!But Otto? What had really made him consent to take up daily life with the man to whom he owed his disaster? Falloden seemed occasionally to be on the track of an explanation, which would then vanish and evade him. He was conscious, however, that here also, Constance Bledlow was somehow concerned; and, perhaps, the Pole’s mystical religion. He asked himself, indeed, as Constance had already done, whether some presentiment of doom, together with the Christian doctrines of forgiveness and vicarious suffering, were not at the root of it? There had been certain symptoms apparent during Otto’s last weeks at Penfold known only to the old vicar, to himself and Sorell. The doctors were not convinced yet of the presence of phthisis; but from various signs, Falloden was inclined to think that the boy believed himself sentenced to the same death which had carried off his mother. Was there then a kind of calculated charity in his act also—but aiming in his case at an eternal reward?“He wants to please God—and comfort Constance—by forgiving me. I want to please her—and relieve myself, by doing something to make up to him. He has the best of it! But we are neither of us disinterested.”The manservant came out with a cup of coffee.“How is he!” said Falloden, as he took it, glancing up at a still curtained window.The man hesitated.“Well, I don’t know, sir, I’m sure. He saw the doctor this morning, and told me afterwards not to disturb him till three o’clock. But he rang just now, and said I was to tell you that two ladies were coming to tea.”“Did he mention their names?”“Not as I’m aware of, sir.”Falloden pondered a moment.“Tell Mr. Radowitz, when he rings again, that I have gone down to the college ground for some football, and I shan’t be back till after six. You’re sure he doesn’t want to see me?”“No, sir, I think not. He told me to leave the blind down, and not to come in again till he rang.”Falloden put on flannels, and ran down the field paths towards Oxford and the Marmion ground, which lay on the hither side of the river. Here he took hard exercise for a couple of hours, walking on afterwards to his club in the High Street, where he kept a change of clothes. He found some old Marmion friends there, including Robertson and Meyrick, who asked him eagerly after Radowitz.“Better come and see,” said Falloden. “Give you a bread and cheese luncheon any day.”They got no more out of him. But his reticence made them visibly uneasy, and they both declared their intention of coming up the following day. In both men there was a certain indefinable change which Falloden soon perceived. Both seemed, at times, to be dragging a weight too heavy for their youth. At other times, they were just like other men of their age; but Falloden, who knew them well, realised that they were both hag-ridden by remorse for what had happened in the summer. And indeed the attitude of a large part of the college towards them, and towards Falloden, when at rare intervals he showed himself there, could hardly have been colder or more hostile. The “bloods” were broken up; the dons had set their faces steadily against any form of ragging; and the story of the maimed hand, of the wrecking of Radowitz’s career, together with sinister rumours as to his general health, had spread through Oxford, magnifying as they went. Falloden met it all with a haughty silence; and was but seldom seen in his old haunts.And presently it had become known, to the stupefaction of those who were aware of the earlier facts, that victim and tormentor, the injured and the offender, were living together in the Boar’s Hill cottage where Radowitz was finishing the composition required for his second musical examination, and Falloden—having lost his father, his money and his prospects—was reading for a prize fellowship to be given by Merton in December.It was already moonlight when Falloden began to climb the long hill again, which leads up from Folly Bridge to the height on which stood the cottage. But the autumn sunset was not long over, and in the mingled light all the rich colours of the fading woodland seemed to be suspended in, or fused with, the evening air. Forms and distances, hedges, trees, moving figures, and distant buildings were marvellously though dimly glorified; and above the golds and reds and purples of the misty earth, shone broad and large—an Achilles shield in heaven—the autumn moon, with one bright star beside it.Suddenly, out of the twilight, Falloden became aware of a pony-carriage descending the hill, and two ladies in it. His blood leapt. He recognised Constance Bledlow, and he supposed the other lady was Mrs. Mulholland.Constance on her side knew in a moment from the bearing of his head and shoulders who was the tall man approaching them. She spoke hurriedly to Mrs. Mulholland.“Do you mind if I stop and speak to Mr. Falloden?”Mrs. Mulholland shrugged her shoulders—“Do as you like, my dear. Only don’t expect me to be very forthcoming!”Constance stopped the carriage, and bent forward.“Mr. Falloden!”He came up to her. Connie introduced him to Mrs. Mulholland, who bowed coldly.“We have just been to see Otto Radowitz,” said Constance. “We found him—very sadly, to-day.” Her hesitating voice, with the note of wistful appeal in it, affected him strangely.“Yes, it has been a bad day. I haven’t seen him at all.”“He gave us tea, and talked a great deal. He was rather excited; but he looked wretched. And why has he turned against his doctor?”“Has he turned against his doctor?” Falloden’s tone was one of surprise. “I thought he liked him.”“He said he was a croaker, and he wasn’t going to let himself be depressed by anybody—doctor or no.”Falloden was silent. Mrs. Mulholland interposed.“Perhaps you would like to walk a little way with Mr. Falloden? I can manage the pony.”Constance descended. Falloden turned back with her towards Oxford. The pony-carriage followed at some distance behind.Then Falloden talked freely. The presence of the light figure beside him, in its dark dress and close-fitting cap, seemed to thaw the chill of life. He began rapidly to pour out his own anxieties, his own sense of failure.“I am the last man in the world who ought to be looking after him; I know that as well as anybody,” he said, with emphasis. “But what’s to be done? Sorell can’t get away from college. And Radowitz knows very few men intimately. Neither Meyrick nor Robertson would be any better than I.”“Oh, not so good—not nearly so good!” exclaimed Constance eagerly. “You don’t know! He counts on you.”Falloden shook his head.“Then he counts on a broken reed. I irritate and annoy him a hundred times a day.”“Oh, no, no—he does count on you,” repeated Connie in her soft, determined voice. “If you give up, he will be much—much worse off!” Then she added after a moment—“Don’t give up! I—I ask you!”“Then I shall stay.”They moved on a few steps in silence, till Connie said eagerly—“Have you any news from Paris?”“Yes; we wrote in the nick of time. The whole thing was just being given up for lack of funds. Now I have told him he may spend what he pleases, so long as he does the thing.”“Please—mayn’t I help?”“Thank you. It’s my affair.”“It’ll be very, very expensive.”“I shall manage it.”“It would be kinder”—her voice shook a little—“if I might help.”He considered it—then said doubtfully:“Suppose you provide the records?—the things it plays? I don’t know anything about music—and I have been racking my brains to think of somebody in Paris who could look after that part of it.”Constance exclaimed. Why, she had several friends in Paris, in the very thick of the musical world there! She had herself had lessons all one winter in Paris at the Conservatoire from a dear old fellow—a Pole—a pupil of Chopin in his youth, and in touch with the whole Polish colony in Paris, which was steeped in music.“He made love to me a little”—she said, laughing—“I’m sure he’d do anything for us. I’ll write at once! And there is somebody at the Embassy—why, of course, I can set all kinds of people to work!”And her feet began to dance along the road beside him.“We must get some Polish music”—she went on—“there’s that marvellous young pianist they rave about in Paris—Paderewski. I’m sure he’d help! Otto has often talked to me about him. We must have lots of Chopin—and Liszt—though of course he wasn’t a Pole!—And Polish national songs!—Otto was only telling me to-day how Chopin loved them—how he and Liszt used to go about the villages and farms and note them down. Oh, we’ll have a wonderful collection!”Her eyes shone in her small, flushed face. They walked on fast, talking and dreaming, till there was Folly Bridge in front of them, and the beginnings of Oxford. Falloden pulled up sharply.“I must run back to him. Will you come again?”She held out her hand. The moonlight, shining on his powerful face and curly hair, stirred in her a sudden, acute sense of delight.“Oh yes—we’ll come again. But don’t leave him!—don’t, please, think of it! He trusts you—he leans on you.”“It is kind of you to believe it. But I am no use!”He put her back into the carriage, bowed formally, and was gone, running up the hill at an athlete’s pace.The two ladies drove silently on, and were soon among the movement and traffic of the Oxford streets. Connie’s mind was steeped in passionate feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses, then her pity. Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his, to adjust himself to Otto’s weakness and irritability, he was stirring sympathies and enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul in Connie which was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the more, perhaps, because in Falloden’s manner towards her there was nothing left of the lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it so. Life was all doubt, expectation, thrill—its colour heightened, its meanings underlined. And in her complete uncertainty as to what turn it would take, and how the doubt would end, lay the spell—the potent tormenting charm—of the situation.She was sorry, bitterly sorry for Radowitz—the victim. But she loved Falloden—the offender! It was the perennial injustice of passion, the eternal injustice of human things.When Falloden was half-way up the hill, he left the road, and took a short cut through fields, by a path which led him to the back of the cottage, where its sitting-room window opened on the garden and the view. As he approached the house, he saw that the sitting-room blinds had not been drawn, and some of the windows were still open. The whole room was brilliantly lit by fire and lamp. Otto was there alone, sitting at the piano, with his back to the approaching spectator and the moonlit night outside. He was playing something with his left hand; Falloden could see him plainly. Suddenly, he saw the boy’s figure collapse. He was still sitting, but his face was buried in his arm which was lying on the piano; and through the open window, Falloden heard a sound which, muffled as it was, produced upon him a strange and horrible impression. It was a low cry, or groan—the voice of despair itself.Falloden stood motionless. All he knew was that he would have given anything in the world to recall the past; to undo the events of that June evening in the Marmion quadrangle.Then, before Otto could discover his presence, he went noiselessly round the corner of the house, and entered it by the front door. In the hall, he called loudly to the ex-scout, as he went upstairs, so that Radowitz might know he had come back. When he returned, Radowitz was sitting over the fire with sheets of scribbled music-paper on a small table before him. His eyes shone, his cheeks were feverishly bright. He turned with forced gaiety at the sight of Falloden—“Well, did you meet them on the road?”“Lady Constance, and her friend? Yes. I had a few words with them. How are you now? What did the doctor say to you?”“What on earth does it matter!” said Radowitz impatiently. “He is just a fool—a young one—the worst sort—I can put up with the old ones. I know my own case a great deal better than he does.”“Does he want you to stop working?” Falloden stood on the hearth, looking down on the huddled figure in the chair; himself broad and tall and curly-haired, like the divine Odysseus, when Athene had breathed ambrosial youth upon him. But he was pale, and his eyes frowned perpetually under his splendid brows.“Some nonsense of that sort!” said Radowitz. “Don’t let’s talk about it.”They went into dinner, and Radowitz sent for champagne.“That’s the only sensible thing the idiot said—that I might have that stuff whenever I liked.”His spirits rose with the wine; and presently Falloden could have thought what he had seen from the dark had been a mere illusion. A review inThe Timesof a book of Polish memoirs served to let loose a flood of boastful talk, which jarred abominably on the Englishman. Under the Oxford code, to boast in plain language of your ancestors, or your own performances, meant simply that you were an outsider, not sure of your footing. If a man really had ancestors, or more brains than other people, his neighbours saved him the trouble of talking about them. Only the fools and theparvenustrumpeted themselves; a process in any case not worth while, since it defeated its own ends. You might of course be as insolent or arrogant as you pleased; but only an idiot tried to explain why.In Otto, however, there was the characteristic Slav mingling of quick wits with streaks of childish vanity. He wanted passionately to make this tough Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he hit against an answering stubbornness—or coolness—in Falloden, the more he held forth. So that it was an uncomfortable dinner. And again Falloden said to himself—“Why did I do it? I am only in his way. I shall bore and chill him; and I don’t seem to be able to help it.”But after dinner, as the night frost grew sharper, and as Otto sat over the fire, piling on the coal, Falloden suddenly went and fetched a warm Scotch plaid of his own. When he offered it, Radowitz received it with surprise, and a little annoyance.“I am not the least cold—thank you!”But, presently, he had wrapped it round his knees; and some restraint had broken down in Falloden.“Isn’t there a splendid church in Cracow?” he asked casually, stretching himself, with his pipe, in a long chair on the opposite side of the fire.“One!—five or six!” cried Otto indignantly. “But I expect you’re thinking of Panna Marya. Panna means Lady. I tell you, you English haven’t got anything to touch it!”“What’s it like?—what date?” said Falloden, laughing.“I don’t know—I don’t know anything about architecture. But it’s glorious. It’s all colour and stained glass—and magnificent tombs—like the gate of heaven,” said the boy with ardour. “It’s the church that every Pole loves. Some of my ancestors are buried there. And it’s the church where, instead of a clock striking, the hours are given out by a watchman who plays a horn. He plays an old air—ever so old—we call it the ‘Heynal,’ on the top of one of the towers. The only time I was ever in Cracow I heard a man at a concert—a magnificent player—improvise on it. And it comes into one of Chopin’s sonatas.”He began to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other flashed over the piano, while the boy’s blue eyes shone beneath his vivid frieze of hair. Falloden, lying back in his chair, noticed the emaciation of the face, the hollow eyes, the contracted shoulders; and as he did so, he thought of the scene in the Magdalen ballroom—the slender girl, wreathed in pearls, and the brilliant foreign youth—dancing, dancing, with all the eyes of the room upon them.Presently, with a sound of impatience, Radowitz left the piano. He could do nothing that he wanted to do. He stood at the window for some minutes looking out at the autumn moon, with his back to Falloden.Falloden took up one of the books he was at work on for his fellowship exam. When Radowitz came back to the fire, however, white and shivering, he laid it down again, and once more made conversation. Radowitz was at first unwilling to respond. But he was by naturebavard, and Falloden played him with some skill.Very soon he was talking fast and brilliantly again, about his artistic life in Paris, his friends at the Conservatoire or in the Quartier Latin; and so back to his childish days in Poland, and the uprising in which the family estates near Warsaw had been forfeited. Falloden found it all very strange. The seething, artistic, revolutionary world which had produced Otto was wholly foreign to him; and this patriotic passion for a dead country seemed to his English common sense a waste of force. But in Otto’s eyes Poland was not dead; the White Eagle, torn and blood-stained though she was, would mount the heavens again; and in those dark skies the stars were already rising!At eleven, Falloden got up—“I must go and swat. It was awfully jolly, what you’ve been telling me. I know a lot I didn’t know before.”A gleam of pleasure showed in the boy’s sunken eyes.“I expect I’m a bore,” he said, with a shrug; “and I’d better go to bed.”Falloden helped him carry up his books and papers. In Otto’s room, the windows were wide open, but there was a bright fire, and Bateson, the ex-scout, was waiting to help him undress. Falloden asked some questions about the doctor’s orders. Various things were wanted from Oxford. He undertook to get them in the morning.When he came back to the sitting-room, he stood some time in a brown study. He wondered again whether he had any qualifications at all as a nurse. But he was inclined to think now that Radowitz might be worse off without him; what Constance had said seemed less unreal; and his effort of the evening, as he looked back on it, brought him a certain bitter satisfaction.The following day, Radowitz came downstairs with the course of the second movement of his symphony clear before him. He worked feverishly all day, now writing, now walking up and down, humming and thinking, now getting but of his piano—a beautiful instrument hired for the winter—all that his maimed state allowed him to get; and passing hour after hour, between an ecstasy of happy creation, and a state of impotent rage with his own helplessness. Towards sunset he was worn out, and with tea beside him which he had been greedily drinking, he was sitting huddled over the fire, when he heard some one ride up to the front door.In another minute the sitting-room door opened, and a girl’s figure in a riding habit appeared.“May I come in?” said Connie, flushing rather pink.Otto sprang up, and drew her in. His fatigue disappeared as though by magic. He seemed all gaiety and force.“Come in! Sit down and have some tea! I was so depressed five minutes ago—I was fit to kill myself. And now you make the room shine—you do come in like a goddess!”He busied himself excitedly in putting a chair for her, in relighting the spirit kettle, in blowing up the fire.Constance meanwhile stood in some embarrassment with one hand on the back of a chair—a charming vision in her close fitting habit, and the same blacktricornethat she had worn in the Lathom Woods, at Falloden’s side.“I came to bring you a book, Otto, the book we talked of yesterday.” She held out a paper-covered volume. “But I mustn’t stay.”“Oh, do stay!” he implored her. “Don’t bother about Mrs. Grundy. I’m so tired and so bored. Anybody may visit an invalid. Think this is a nursing home, and you’re my daily visitor. Falloden’s miles away on a drag-hunt. Ah, that’s right!” he cried delightedly, as he saw that she had seated herself. “Now you shall have some tea!”She let him provide her, watching him the while with slightly frowning brows. How ill he looked—how ill! Her heart sank.“Dear Otto, how are you? You don’t seem so well to-day.”“I’ve been working myself to death. It won’t come right—this beastlyandante. It’s too jerky—it wantsliaison. And I can’t hear it—I can’t hear it!—that’s the devilish part of it.”And taking his helpless hand out of the sling in which it had been resting, he struck it bitterly against the arm of his chair. The tears came to Connie’s eyes.“Don’t!—you’ll hurt yourself. It’ll be all right—it’ll be all right! You’ll hear it in your mind.” And bending forward under a sudden impulse, she took the maimed hand in her two hands—so small and soft—and lifting it tenderly she put her lips to it.He looked at her in amazement.“You do that—for me?”“Yes. Because you are a great artist—and a brave man!” she said, gulping. “You are not to despair. Your music is in your soul—your brain. Other people shall play it for you.”He calmed down.“At least I am not deaf, like Beethoven,” he said, trying to please her. “That would have been worse. Do you know, last night Falloden and I had a glorious talk? He was awfully decent. He made me tell him all about Poland and my people. He never scoffed once. He makes me do what the doctor says. And last night—when it was freezing cold—he brought a rug and wrapped it round me. Think of that!”—he looked at her—half-shamefaced, half-laughing—“Falloden!”Her eyes shone.“I’m glad!” she said softly. “I’m glad!”“Yes, but do you know why he’s kind—why he’s here at all?” he asked her abruptly.“What’s the good of silly questions?” she said hastily. “Take it as it comes.”He laughed.“He does it—I’m going to say it!—yes, I am—and you are not to be angry—he does it because—simply—he’s in love with you!”Connie flushed again, more deeply, and he, already alarmed by his own boldness, looked at her nervously.“You are quite wrong.” Her tone was quiet, but decided. “He did it, first of all, because of what you did for his father—”“I did nothing!” interposed Radowitz.She took no notice.“And secondly”—her voice shook a little—“because—he was sorry. Now—now—he is doing it”—suddenly her smile flashed out, with its touch of humour—“just simply because he likes it!”It was a bold assertion. She knew it. But she straightened her slight shoulders, prepared to stick to it.Radowitz shook his head.“And what am I doing it for? Do you remember when I said to you I loathed him?”“No—not him.”“Well, something in him—the chief thing, it seemed to me then. I felt towards him really—as a man might feel towards his murderer—or the murderer of some one else, some innocent, helpless person who had given no offence. Hatred—loathing—abhorrence!—you couldn’t put it too strongly. Well then,”—he began poking at the fire, while he went on thinking aloud—“God brought us together in that strange manner. By the way”—he turned to her—“are you a Christian?”“I—I don’t know. I suppose I am.”“I am,” he said firmly. “I am a practising Catholic. Catholicism with us Poles is partly religion, partly patriotism—do you understand? I go to confession—I am a communicant. And for some time I couldn’t go to Communion at all. I always felt Falloden’s hand on my shoulder, as he was pushing me down the stairs; and I wanted to kill him!—just that! You know our Polish blood runs hotter than yours. I didn’t want the college to punish him. Not at all. It was my affair. After I saw you in town, it grew worse—it was an obsession. When we first got to Yorkshire, Sorell and I, and I knew that Falloden was only a few miles away, I never could get quit of it—of the thought that some day—somewhere—I should kill him. I never, if I could help it, crossed a certain boundary line that I had made for myself, between our side of the moor, and the side which belonged to the Fallodens. I couldn’t be sure of myself if I had come upon him unawares. Oh, of course, he would soon have got the better of me—but there would have been a struggle—I should have attacked him—and I might have had a revolver. So for your sake”—he turned to look at her with his hollow blue eyes—“I kept away. Then, one evening, I quite forgot all about it. I was thinking of the theme for the slow movement in my symphony, and I didn’t notice where I was going. I walked on and on over the hill—and at last I heard a man groaning—and there was Sir Arthur by the stream. I saw at once that he was dying. There I sat, alone with him. He asked me not to leave him. He said something about Douglas, ‘Poor Douglas!’ And when the horrible thing came back—the last time—he just whispered, ‘Pray!’ and I said our Catholic prayers that our priest had said when my mother died. Then Falloden came—just in time—and instead of wanting to kill him, I waited there, a little way off, and prayed hard for myself and him! Queer, wasn’t it? And afterwards—you know—I saw his mother. Then the next day, I confessed to a dear old priest, who was very kind to me, and on the Sunday he gave me Communion. He said God had been very gracious to me; and I saw what he meant. That very week I had a hemorrhage, the first I ever had.”Connie gave a sudden, startled cry. He turned again to smile at her.“Didn’t you know? No, I believe no one knew, but Sorell and the doctors. It was nothing. It’s quite healed. But the strange thing was how extraordinarily happy I felt that week. I didn’t hate Falloden any more. It was as though a sharp thorn had gone from one’s mind. It didn’t last long of course, the queer ecstatic feeling. There was always my hand—and I got very low again. But something lasted; and when Falloden said that extraordinary thing—I don’t believe he meant to say it at all!—suggesting we should settle together for the winter—I knew that I must do it. It was a kind of miracle—one thing after another—driving us.”His voice dropped. He remained gazing absently into the fire.“Dear Otto”—said Constance softly—“you have forgiven him?”He smiled.“What does that matter? Have you?”His eager eyes searched her face. She faltered under them.“He doesn’t care whether I have or not.”At that he laughed out.“Doesn’t he? I say, did you ask us both to come—on purpose—that afternoon?—in the garden?”She was silent.“It was bold of you!” he said, in the same laughing tone. “But it has answered. Unless, of course, I bore him to death. I talk a lot of nonsense—I can’t help it—and he bears it. And he says hard, horrid things, sometimes—and my blood boils—and I bear it. And I expect he wants to break off a hundred times a day—and so do I. Yet here we stay. And it’s you”—he raised his head deliberately—“it’s you who are really at the bottom of it.”Constance rose trembling from her chair.“Don’t say any more, dear Otto. I didn’t mean any harm. I—I was so sorry for you both.”He laughed again softly.“You’ve got to marry him!” he said triumphantly. “There!—you may go now. But you’ll come again soon. I know you will!”She seemed to slip, to melt, out of the room. But he had a last vision of flushed cheeks, and half-reproachful eyes.
Falloden had just finished a solitary luncheon in the little dining-room of the Boar’s Hill cottage. There was a garden door in the room, and lighting a cigarette, he passed out through it to the terrace outside. A landscape lay before him, which has often been compared to that of the Val d’Arno seen from Fiesole, and has indeed some common points with that incomparable mingling of man’s best with the best of mountain and river. It was the last week of October, and the autumn was still warm and windless, as though there were no shrieking November to come. Oxford, the beautiful city, with its domes and spires, lay in the hollow beneath the spectator, wreathed in thin mists of sunlit amethyst. Behind that ridge in the middle distance ran the river and the Nuneham woods; beyond rose the long blue line of the Chilterns. In front of the cottage the ground sank through copse and field to the river level, the hedge lines all held by sentinel trees, to which the advancing autumn had given that significance the indiscriminate summer green denies. The gravely rounded elms with their golden caps, the scarlet of the beeches, the pale lemon-yellow of the nearly naked limes, the splendid blacks of yew and fir—they were all there, mingled in the autumn cup of misty sunshine like melting jewels. And among them, the enchanted city shone, fair and insubstantial, from the depth below; as it were, the spiritual word and voice of all the scene.
Falloden paced up and down the terrace, smoking and thinking. That was Otto’s open window. But Radowitz had not yet appeared that morning, and the ex-scout, who acted butler and valet to the two men, had brought word that he would come down in the afternoon, but was not to be disturbed till then.
“What lunacy made me do it?” thought Falloden, standing still at the end of the terrace which fronted the view.
He and Radowitz had been nearly three weeks together. Had he been of the slightest service or consolation to Radowitz during that time? He doubted it. That incalculable impulse which had made him propose himself as Otto’s companion for the winter still persisted indeed. He was haunted still by a sense of being “under command”—directed—by a force which could not be repelled. Ill at ease, unhappy, as he was, and conscious of being quite ineffective, whether as nurse or companion, unless Radowitz proposed to “throw up,” he knew that he himself should hold on; though why, he could scarcely have explained.
But the divergences between them were great; the possibilities of friction many. Falloden was astonished to find that he disliked Otto’s little fopperies and eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done in college days; his finicky dress, his foreign ways in eating, his tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing to Radowitz; his Tory habits of thought, his British contempt for vague sentimentalisms and heroics, for all thatpanachemeans to the Frenchman, or “glory” to the Slav.
“Then why, in the name of common sense, are we living together?”
He could really give no answer but the answer of “necessity”—of a spiritual need—issuing from a strange tangle of circumstance. The helpless form, the upturned face of his dying father, seemed to make the centre of it, and those faint last words, so sharply, and, as it were, dynamically connected with the hateful memory of Otto’s fall and cry in the Marmion Quad, and the hateful ever-present fact of his maimed life. Constance too—his scene with her on the river bank—her letter, breaking with him—and then the soft, mysterious change in her—and that passionate, involuntary promise in her eyes and voice, as they stood together in her aunts’ garden—all these various elements, bitter and sweet, were mingled in the influence which was shaping his own life. He wanted to forgive himself; and he wanted Constance to forgive him, whether she married him or no. A kind of sublimated egotism, he said to himself, after all!
But Otto? What had really made him consent to take up daily life with the man to whom he owed his disaster? Falloden seemed occasionally to be on the track of an explanation, which would then vanish and evade him. He was conscious, however, that here also, Constance Bledlow was somehow concerned; and, perhaps, the Pole’s mystical religion. He asked himself, indeed, as Constance had already done, whether some presentiment of doom, together with the Christian doctrines of forgiveness and vicarious suffering, were not at the root of it? There had been certain symptoms apparent during Otto’s last weeks at Penfold known only to the old vicar, to himself and Sorell. The doctors were not convinced yet of the presence of phthisis; but from various signs, Falloden was inclined to think that the boy believed himself sentenced to the same death which had carried off his mother. Was there then a kind of calculated charity in his act also—but aiming in his case at an eternal reward?
“He wants to please God—and comfort Constance—by forgiving me. I want to please her—and relieve myself, by doing something to make up to him. He has the best of it! But we are neither of us disinterested.”
The manservant came out with a cup of coffee.
“How is he!” said Falloden, as he took it, glancing up at a still curtained window.
The man hesitated.
“Well, I don’t know, sir, I’m sure. He saw the doctor this morning, and told me afterwards not to disturb him till three o’clock. But he rang just now, and said I was to tell you that two ladies were coming to tea.”
“Did he mention their names?”
“Not as I’m aware of, sir.”
Falloden pondered a moment.
“Tell Mr. Radowitz, when he rings again, that I have gone down to the college ground for some football, and I shan’t be back till after six. You’re sure he doesn’t want to see me?”
“No, sir, I think not. He told me to leave the blind down, and not to come in again till he rang.”
Falloden put on flannels, and ran down the field paths towards Oxford and the Marmion ground, which lay on the hither side of the river. Here he took hard exercise for a couple of hours, walking on afterwards to his club in the High Street, where he kept a change of clothes. He found some old Marmion friends there, including Robertson and Meyrick, who asked him eagerly after Radowitz.
“Better come and see,” said Falloden. “Give you a bread and cheese luncheon any day.”
They got no more out of him. But his reticence made them visibly uneasy, and they both declared their intention of coming up the following day. In both men there was a certain indefinable change which Falloden soon perceived. Both seemed, at times, to be dragging a weight too heavy for their youth. At other times, they were just like other men of their age; but Falloden, who knew them well, realised that they were both hag-ridden by remorse for what had happened in the summer. And indeed the attitude of a large part of the college towards them, and towards Falloden, when at rare intervals he showed himself there, could hardly have been colder or more hostile. The “bloods” were broken up; the dons had set their faces steadily against any form of ragging; and the story of the maimed hand, of the wrecking of Radowitz’s career, together with sinister rumours as to his general health, had spread through Oxford, magnifying as they went. Falloden met it all with a haughty silence; and was but seldom seen in his old haunts.
And presently it had become known, to the stupefaction of those who were aware of the earlier facts, that victim and tormentor, the injured and the offender, were living together in the Boar’s Hill cottage where Radowitz was finishing the composition required for his second musical examination, and Falloden—having lost his father, his money and his prospects—was reading for a prize fellowship to be given by Merton in December.
It was already moonlight when Falloden began to climb the long hill again, which leads up from Folly Bridge to the height on which stood the cottage. But the autumn sunset was not long over, and in the mingled light all the rich colours of the fading woodland seemed to be suspended in, or fused with, the evening air. Forms and distances, hedges, trees, moving figures, and distant buildings were marvellously though dimly glorified; and above the golds and reds and purples of the misty earth, shone broad and large—an Achilles shield in heaven—the autumn moon, with one bright star beside it.
Suddenly, out of the twilight, Falloden became aware of a pony-carriage descending the hill, and two ladies in it. His blood leapt. He recognised Constance Bledlow, and he supposed the other lady was Mrs. Mulholland.
Constance on her side knew in a moment from the bearing of his head and shoulders who was the tall man approaching them. She spoke hurriedly to Mrs. Mulholland.
“Do you mind if I stop and speak to Mr. Falloden?”
Mrs. Mulholland shrugged her shoulders—
“Do as you like, my dear. Only don’t expect me to be very forthcoming!”
Constance stopped the carriage, and bent forward.
“Mr. Falloden!”
He came up to her. Connie introduced him to Mrs. Mulholland, who bowed coldly.
“We have just been to see Otto Radowitz,” said Constance. “We found him—very sadly, to-day.” Her hesitating voice, with the note of wistful appeal in it, affected him strangely.
“Yes, it has been a bad day. I haven’t seen him at all.”
“He gave us tea, and talked a great deal. He was rather excited; but he looked wretched. And why has he turned against his doctor?”
“Has he turned against his doctor?” Falloden’s tone was one of surprise. “I thought he liked him.”
“He said he was a croaker, and he wasn’t going to let himself be depressed by anybody—doctor or no.”
Falloden was silent. Mrs. Mulholland interposed.
“Perhaps you would like to walk a little way with Mr. Falloden? I can manage the pony.”
Constance descended. Falloden turned back with her towards Oxford. The pony-carriage followed at some distance behind.
Then Falloden talked freely. The presence of the light figure beside him, in its dark dress and close-fitting cap, seemed to thaw the chill of life. He began rapidly to pour out his own anxieties, his own sense of failure.
“I am the last man in the world who ought to be looking after him; I know that as well as anybody,” he said, with emphasis. “But what’s to be done? Sorell can’t get away from college. And Radowitz knows very few men intimately. Neither Meyrick nor Robertson would be any better than I.”
“Oh, not so good—not nearly so good!” exclaimed Constance eagerly. “You don’t know! He counts on you.”
Falloden shook his head.
“Then he counts on a broken reed. I irritate and annoy him a hundred times a day.”
“Oh, no, no—he does count on you,” repeated Connie in her soft, determined voice. “If you give up, he will be much—much worse off!” Then she added after a moment—“Don’t give up! I—I ask you!”
“Then I shall stay.”
They moved on a few steps in silence, till Connie said eagerly—
“Have you any news from Paris?”
“Yes; we wrote in the nick of time. The whole thing was just being given up for lack of funds. Now I have told him he may spend what he pleases, so long as he does the thing.”
“Please—mayn’t I help?”
“Thank you. It’s my affair.”
“It’ll be very, very expensive.”
“I shall manage it.”
“It would be kinder”—her voice shook a little—“if I might help.”
He considered it—then said doubtfully:
“Suppose you provide the records?—the things it plays? I don’t know anything about music—and I have been racking my brains to think of somebody in Paris who could look after that part of it.”
Constance exclaimed. Why, she had several friends in Paris, in the very thick of the musical world there! She had herself had lessons all one winter in Paris at the Conservatoire from a dear old fellow—a Pole—a pupil of Chopin in his youth, and in touch with the whole Polish colony in Paris, which was steeped in music.
“He made love to me a little”—she said, laughing—“I’m sure he’d do anything for us. I’ll write at once! And there is somebody at the Embassy—why, of course, I can set all kinds of people to work!”
And her feet began to dance along the road beside him.
“We must get some Polish music”—she went on—“there’s that marvellous young pianist they rave about in Paris—Paderewski. I’m sure he’d help! Otto has often talked to me about him. We must have lots of Chopin—and Liszt—though of course he wasn’t a Pole!—And Polish national songs!—Otto was only telling me to-day how Chopin loved them—how he and Liszt used to go about the villages and farms and note them down. Oh, we’ll have a wonderful collection!”
Her eyes shone in her small, flushed face. They walked on fast, talking and dreaming, till there was Folly Bridge in front of them, and the beginnings of Oxford. Falloden pulled up sharply.
“I must run back to him. Will you come again?”
She held out her hand. The moonlight, shining on his powerful face and curly hair, stirred in her a sudden, acute sense of delight.
“Oh yes—we’ll come again. But don’t leave him!—don’t, please, think of it! He trusts you—he leans on you.”
“It is kind of you to believe it. But I am no use!”
He put her back into the carriage, bowed formally, and was gone, running up the hill at an athlete’s pace.
The two ladies drove silently on, and were soon among the movement and traffic of the Oxford streets. Connie’s mind was steeped in passionate feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses, then her pity. Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his, to adjust himself to Otto’s weakness and irritability, he was stirring sympathies and enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul in Connie which was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the more, perhaps, because in Falloden’s manner towards her there was nothing left of the lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it so. Life was all doubt, expectation, thrill—its colour heightened, its meanings underlined. And in her complete uncertainty as to what turn it would take, and how the doubt would end, lay the spell—the potent tormenting charm—of the situation.
She was sorry, bitterly sorry for Radowitz—the victim. But she loved Falloden—the offender! It was the perennial injustice of passion, the eternal injustice of human things.
When Falloden was half-way up the hill, he left the road, and took a short cut through fields, by a path which led him to the back of the cottage, where its sitting-room window opened on the garden and the view. As he approached the house, he saw that the sitting-room blinds had not been drawn, and some of the windows were still open. The whole room was brilliantly lit by fire and lamp. Otto was there alone, sitting at the piano, with his back to the approaching spectator and the moonlit night outside. He was playing something with his left hand; Falloden could see him plainly. Suddenly, he saw the boy’s figure collapse. He was still sitting, but his face was buried in his arm which was lying on the piano; and through the open window, Falloden heard a sound which, muffled as it was, produced upon him a strange and horrible impression. It was a low cry, or groan—the voice of despair itself.
Falloden stood motionless. All he knew was that he would have given anything in the world to recall the past; to undo the events of that June evening in the Marmion quadrangle.
Then, before Otto could discover his presence, he went noiselessly round the corner of the house, and entered it by the front door. In the hall, he called loudly to the ex-scout, as he went upstairs, so that Radowitz might know he had come back. When he returned, Radowitz was sitting over the fire with sheets of scribbled music-paper on a small table before him. His eyes shone, his cheeks were feverishly bright. He turned with forced gaiety at the sight of Falloden—
“Well, did you meet them on the road?”
“Lady Constance, and her friend? Yes. I had a few words with them. How are you now? What did the doctor say to you?”
“What on earth does it matter!” said Radowitz impatiently. “He is just a fool—a young one—the worst sort—I can put up with the old ones. I know my own case a great deal better than he does.”
“Does he want you to stop working?” Falloden stood on the hearth, looking down on the huddled figure in the chair; himself broad and tall and curly-haired, like the divine Odysseus, when Athene had breathed ambrosial youth upon him. But he was pale, and his eyes frowned perpetually under his splendid brows.
“Some nonsense of that sort!” said Radowitz. “Don’t let’s talk about it.”
They went into dinner, and Radowitz sent for champagne.
“That’s the only sensible thing the idiot said—that I might have that stuff whenever I liked.”
His spirits rose with the wine; and presently Falloden could have thought what he had seen from the dark had been a mere illusion. A review inThe Timesof a book of Polish memoirs served to let loose a flood of boastful talk, which jarred abominably on the Englishman. Under the Oxford code, to boast in plain language of your ancestors, or your own performances, meant simply that you were an outsider, not sure of your footing. If a man really had ancestors, or more brains than other people, his neighbours saved him the trouble of talking about them. Only the fools and theparvenustrumpeted themselves; a process in any case not worth while, since it defeated its own ends. You might of course be as insolent or arrogant as you pleased; but only an idiot tried to explain why.
In Otto, however, there was the characteristic Slav mingling of quick wits with streaks of childish vanity. He wanted passionately to make this tough Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he hit against an answering stubbornness—or coolness—in Falloden, the more he held forth. So that it was an uncomfortable dinner. And again Falloden said to himself—“Why did I do it? I am only in his way. I shall bore and chill him; and I don’t seem to be able to help it.”
But after dinner, as the night frost grew sharper, and as Otto sat over the fire, piling on the coal, Falloden suddenly went and fetched a warm Scotch plaid of his own. When he offered it, Radowitz received it with surprise, and a little annoyance.
“I am not the least cold—thank you!”
But, presently, he had wrapped it round his knees; and some restraint had broken down in Falloden.
“Isn’t there a splendid church in Cracow?” he asked casually, stretching himself, with his pipe, in a long chair on the opposite side of the fire.
“One!—five or six!” cried Otto indignantly. “But I expect you’re thinking of Panna Marya. Panna means Lady. I tell you, you English haven’t got anything to touch it!”
“What’s it like?—what date?” said Falloden, laughing.
“I don’t know—I don’t know anything about architecture. But it’s glorious. It’s all colour and stained glass—and magnificent tombs—like the gate of heaven,” said the boy with ardour. “It’s the church that every Pole loves. Some of my ancestors are buried there. And it’s the church where, instead of a clock striking, the hours are given out by a watchman who plays a horn. He plays an old air—ever so old—we call it the ‘Heynal,’ on the top of one of the towers. The only time I was ever in Cracow I heard a man at a concert—a magnificent player—improvise on it. And it comes into one of Chopin’s sonatas.”
He began to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other flashed over the piano, while the boy’s blue eyes shone beneath his vivid frieze of hair. Falloden, lying back in his chair, noticed the emaciation of the face, the hollow eyes, the contracted shoulders; and as he did so, he thought of the scene in the Magdalen ballroom—the slender girl, wreathed in pearls, and the brilliant foreign youth—dancing, dancing, with all the eyes of the room upon them.
Presently, with a sound of impatience, Radowitz left the piano. He could do nothing that he wanted to do. He stood at the window for some minutes looking out at the autumn moon, with his back to Falloden.
Falloden took up one of the books he was at work on for his fellowship exam. When Radowitz came back to the fire, however, white and shivering, he laid it down again, and once more made conversation. Radowitz was at first unwilling to respond. But he was by naturebavard, and Falloden played him with some skill.
Very soon he was talking fast and brilliantly again, about his artistic life in Paris, his friends at the Conservatoire or in the Quartier Latin; and so back to his childish days in Poland, and the uprising in which the family estates near Warsaw had been forfeited. Falloden found it all very strange. The seething, artistic, revolutionary world which had produced Otto was wholly foreign to him; and this patriotic passion for a dead country seemed to his English common sense a waste of force. But in Otto’s eyes Poland was not dead; the White Eagle, torn and blood-stained though she was, would mount the heavens again; and in those dark skies the stars were already rising!
At eleven, Falloden got up—
“I must go and swat. It was awfully jolly, what you’ve been telling me. I know a lot I didn’t know before.”
A gleam of pleasure showed in the boy’s sunken eyes.
“I expect I’m a bore,” he said, with a shrug; “and I’d better go to bed.”
Falloden helped him carry up his books and papers. In Otto’s room, the windows were wide open, but there was a bright fire, and Bateson, the ex-scout, was waiting to help him undress. Falloden asked some questions about the doctor’s orders. Various things were wanted from Oxford. He undertook to get them in the morning.
When he came back to the sitting-room, he stood some time in a brown study. He wondered again whether he had any qualifications at all as a nurse. But he was inclined to think now that Radowitz might be worse off without him; what Constance had said seemed less unreal; and his effort of the evening, as he looked back on it, brought him a certain bitter satisfaction.
The following day, Radowitz came downstairs with the course of the second movement of his symphony clear before him. He worked feverishly all day, now writing, now walking up and down, humming and thinking, now getting but of his piano—a beautiful instrument hired for the winter—all that his maimed state allowed him to get; and passing hour after hour, between an ecstasy of happy creation, and a state of impotent rage with his own helplessness. Towards sunset he was worn out, and with tea beside him which he had been greedily drinking, he was sitting huddled over the fire, when he heard some one ride up to the front door.
In another minute the sitting-room door opened, and a girl’s figure in a riding habit appeared.
“May I come in?” said Connie, flushing rather pink.
Otto sprang up, and drew her in. His fatigue disappeared as though by magic. He seemed all gaiety and force.
“Come in! Sit down and have some tea! I was so depressed five minutes ago—I was fit to kill myself. And now you make the room shine—you do come in like a goddess!”
He busied himself excitedly in putting a chair for her, in relighting the spirit kettle, in blowing up the fire.
Constance meanwhile stood in some embarrassment with one hand on the back of a chair—a charming vision in her close fitting habit, and the same blacktricornethat she had worn in the Lathom Woods, at Falloden’s side.
“I came to bring you a book, Otto, the book we talked of yesterday.” She held out a paper-covered volume. “But I mustn’t stay.”
“Oh, do stay!” he implored her. “Don’t bother about Mrs. Grundy. I’m so tired and so bored. Anybody may visit an invalid. Think this is a nursing home, and you’re my daily visitor. Falloden’s miles away on a drag-hunt. Ah, that’s right!” he cried delightedly, as he saw that she had seated herself. “Now you shall have some tea!”
She let him provide her, watching him the while with slightly frowning brows. How ill he looked—how ill! Her heart sank.
“Dear Otto, how are you? You don’t seem so well to-day.”
“I’ve been working myself to death. It won’t come right—this beastlyandante. It’s too jerky—it wantsliaison. And I can’t hear it—I can’t hear it!—that’s the devilish part of it.”
And taking his helpless hand out of the sling in which it had been resting, he struck it bitterly against the arm of his chair. The tears came to Connie’s eyes.
“Don’t!—you’ll hurt yourself. It’ll be all right—it’ll be all right! You’ll hear it in your mind.” And bending forward under a sudden impulse, she took the maimed hand in her two hands—so small and soft—and lifting it tenderly she put her lips to it.
He looked at her in amazement.
“You do that—for me?”
“Yes. Because you are a great artist—and a brave man!” she said, gulping. “You are not to despair. Your music is in your soul—your brain. Other people shall play it for you.”
He calmed down.
“At least I am not deaf, like Beethoven,” he said, trying to please her. “That would have been worse. Do you know, last night Falloden and I had a glorious talk? He was awfully decent. He made me tell him all about Poland and my people. He never scoffed once. He makes me do what the doctor says. And last night—when it was freezing cold—he brought a rug and wrapped it round me. Think of that!”—he looked at her—half-shamefaced, half-laughing—“Falloden!”
Her eyes shone.
“I’m glad!” she said softly. “I’m glad!”
“Yes, but do you know why he’s kind—why he’s here at all?” he asked her abruptly.
“What’s the good of silly questions?” she said hastily. “Take it as it comes.”
He laughed.
“He does it—I’m going to say it!—yes, I am—and you are not to be angry—he does it because—simply—he’s in love with you!”
Connie flushed again, more deeply, and he, already alarmed by his own boldness, looked at her nervously.
“You are quite wrong.” Her tone was quiet, but decided. “He did it, first of all, because of what you did for his father—”
“I did nothing!” interposed Radowitz.
She took no notice.
“And secondly”—her voice shook a little—“because—he was sorry. Now—now—he is doing it”—suddenly her smile flashed out, with its touch of humour—“just simply because he likes it!”
It was a bold assertion. She knew it. But she straightened her slight shoulders, prepared to stick to it.
Radowitz shook his head.
“And what am I doing it for? Do you remember when I said to you I loathed him?”
“No—not him.”
“Well, something in him—the chief thing, it seemed to me then. I felt towards him really—as a man might feel towards his murderer—or the murderer of some one else, some innocent, helpless person who had given no offence. Hatred—loathing—abhorrence!—you couldn’t put it too strongly. Well then,”—he began poking at the fire, while he went on thinking aloud—“God brought us together in that strange manner. By the way”—he turned to her—“are you a Christian?”
“I—I don’t know. I suppose I am.”
“I am,” he said firmly. “I am a practising Catholic. Catholicism with us Poles is partly religion, partly patriotism—do you understand? I go to confession—I am a communicant. And for some time I couldn’t go to Communion at all. I always felt Falloden’s hand on my shoulder, as he was pushing me down the stairs; and I wanted to kill him!—just that! You know our Polish blood runs hotter than yours. I didn’t want the college to punish him. Not at all. It was my affair. After I saw you in town, it grew worse—it was an obsession. When we first got to Yorkshire, Sorell and I, and I knew that Falloden was only a few miles away, I never could get quit of it—of the thought that some day—somewhere—I should kill him. I never, if I could help it, crossed a certain boundary line that I had made for myself, between our side of the moor, and the side which belonged to the Fallodens. I couldn’t be sure of myself if I had come upon him unawares. Oh, of course, he would soon have got the better of me—but there would have been a struggle—I should have attacked him—and I might have had a revolver. So for your sake”—he turned to look at her with his hollow blue eyes—“I kept away. Then, one evening, I quite forgot all about it. I was thinking of the theme for the slow movement in my symphony, and I didn’t notice where I was going. I walked on and on over the hill—and at last I heard a man groaning—and there was Sir Arthur by the stream. I saw at once that he was dying. There I sat, alone with him. He asked me not to leave him. He said something about Douglas, ‘Poor Douglas!’ And when the horrible thing came back—the last time—he just whispered, ‘Pray!’ and I said our Catholic prayers that our priest had said when my mother died. Then Falloden came—just in time—and instead of wanting to kill him, I waited there, a little way off, and prayed hard for myself and him! Queer, wasn’t it? And afterwards—you know—I saw his mother. Then the next day, I confessed to a dear old priest, who was very kind to me, and on the Sunday he gave me Communion. He said God had been very gracious to me; and I saw what he meant. That very week I had a hemorrhage, the first I ever had.”
Connie gave a sudden, startled cry. He turned again to smile at her.
“Didn’t you know? No, I believe no one knew, but Sorell and the doctors. It was nothing. It’s quite healed. But the strange thing was how extraordinarily happy I felt that week. I didn’t hate Falloden any more. It was as though a sharp thorn had gone from one’s mind. It didn’t last long of course, the queer ecstatic feeling. There was always my hand—and I got very low again. But something lasted; and when Falloden said that extraordinary thing—I don’t believe he meant to say it at all!—suggesting we should settle together for the winter—I knew that I must do it. It was a kind of miracle—one thing after another—driving us.”
His voice dropped. He remained gazing absently into the fire.
“Dear Otto”—said Constance softly—“you have forgiven him?”
He smiled.
“What does that matter? Have you?”
His eager eyes searched her face. She faltered under them.
“He doesn’t care whether I have or not.”
At that he laughed out.
“Doesn’t he? I say, did you ask us both to come—on purpose—that afternoon?—in the garden?”
She was silent.
“It was bold of you!” he said, in the same laughing tone. “But it has answered. Unless, of course, I bore him to death. I talk a lot of nonsense—I can’t help it—and he bears it. And he says hard, horrid things, sometimes—and my blood boils—and I bear it. And I expect he wants to break off a hundred times a day—and so do I. Yet here we stay. And it’s you”—he raised his head deliberately—“it’s you who are really at the bottom of it.”
Constance rose trembling from her chair.
“Don’t say any more, dear Otto. I didn’t mean any harm. I—I was so sorry for you both.”
He laughed again softly.
“You’ve got to marry him!” he said triumphantly. “There!—you may go now. But you’ll come again soon. I know you will!”
She seemed to slip, to melt, out of the room. But he had a last vision of flushed cheeks, and half-reproachful eyes.