Lady Connie Part 32

"But he can still compose?" she urged piteously.

Sorell shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes, if he has the heart--and the health. I never took much account before of his delicacy. One can see, to look at him, that he's not robust. But somehow he was always so full of life that one never thought of illness in connection with him. But I had a long talk with one of the doctors last week, who takes rather a gloomy view. A shock like this sometimes lets loose all the germs of mischief in a man's const.i.tution.

And his mother was undoubtedly consumptive. Well, we must do our best."

He sighed. There was silence till they turned into Wimpole Street and were in sight of the nursing home. Then Connie said in a queer, strained voice: "You don't know that it was partly I who did it."

Sorell turned upon her with a sudden change of expression. It was as though she had said something he had long expected, and now that it was said a great barrier between them had broken down. He looked at her with shining eyes from which the veil of reserve had momentarily lifted. She saw in them both tenderness and sorrow.

"I don't think you need feel that," he said gently. Her lips trembled.

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

"I just played with him--with his whole future, as it's turned out--without a thought."

Sorell knew that she was thinking of the Magdalen ball, of which he had by now heard several accounts. He guessed she meant that her provocation of Falloden had contributed to the tragedy, and that the thought tormented her. But neither of them mentioned Falloden's name. Sorell put out his hand and grasped hers. "Otto's only thought about you is that you gave him the happiest evening he ever spent in England," he said with energy. "You won't misunderstand."

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Connie sat down beside Radowitz and they looked at each other in silence_]

They found Radowitz lying partly dressed on the balcony of his back room, which overlooked a tiny walled patch of gra.s.s and two plane-trees.

The plane-tree seems to have been left in pity to London by some departing rural deity. It alone nourishes amid the wilderness of brick; and one can imagine it as feeling a positive satisfaction, a quiet triumph, in the absence of its stronger rivals, oak and beech and ash, like some gentle human life escaped from the tyrannies of compet.i.tion.

These two great trees were the guardian genii of poor Otto's afternoons.

They brought him shade and coolness, even in the hottest hours of a burning June.

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

Sorell, after a few gay words, had left them together. Radowitz held her hand in his own left. The other was bandaged and supported on a pillow.

"When she got used to the golden light filtering through the plane leaves, she saw that he was pale and shrunken, that his eyes were more living and blue than ever, and his hair more like the burnished halo of some Florentine or Siennese saint. Yet the whole aspect was of something stricken. She felt a foreboding, a terror, of which she knew she must let nothing appear.

"Do you mind my staring?" he said presently, with his half-sad, half-mischievous smile. "You are so nice to look at."

She tried to laugh.

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

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

He lifted some out of the basket, looked at them, then let them drop listlessly on his knee. "I am afraid I don't care for such things, as I used to do. Before--this happened, I had a language of my own, in which I could express everything--as artists or poets can. Now--I am struck dumb. There is something crying in me--that can find no voice. And when one can't express, one begins not to feel!"

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

"But you can still compose?"

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

He shook his head, almost with irritation.

"It was out of the instrument--out of improvisation--that all my composing grew. Do you remember the tale they tell of George Sand, how when she began a novel, she made a few dots and scratches on a sheet of paper, and as she played with them they ran into words, and then into sentences--that suggested ideas--and so, in half an hour, she had sketched a plot, and was ready to go to work? So it was with me. As I played, the ideas came. I am not one of your scientific musicians who can build up everything _in vacuo_. I must translate everything into sound--through my fingers. It was the same with Chopin." He pointed to a life of Chopin that was lying open on the couch beside him.

"But you will do wonders with your left hand. And your right will perhaps improve. The doctors mayn't know," she pleaded, catching at straws. "Dear Otto--don't despair!"

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

"I like you to call me Otto. How dear that was of you! May I call you Constance?"

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

"I don't despair--now," he said, after a moment. "I did at first. I wanted to put an end to myself. But, of course, it was Sorell who saved me. If my mother had lived, she could not have done more."

He turned away his face so that Constance should not see it. When he looked at her again, he was quite calm and smiling.

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

"Tell me."

"Meyrick--Lord Meyrick, and Robertson. Perhaps you don't know him. He's a Winchester man, a splendid cricketer. It was Robertson I was struggling with when I fell. How could he know I should hurt myself? It wasn't his fault and he gave up his 'choice' for the Oxford Eleven. They put him in at the last moment. But he wouldn't play. I didn't know till afterwards. I told him he was a great fool."

There was a pause. Then Connie said--with difficulty--"Did--did Mr.

Falloden write? Has he said anything?"

"Oh yes, he sent a message. After all, when you run over a dog, you send a message, don't you?" said the lad with sudden bitterness. "And I believe he wrote a letter--after I came here. But I didn't open it. I gave it to Sorell."

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

"You see the others didn't mean any harm. They were drunk, and it was a row. But Falloden wasn't drunk--and he did mean--"

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

"No--but to humble and trample on me," said the youth with vehemence, his pale cheeks flaming. "He knew quite well what he was about. I felt that when they came into my room. He is cruel--he has the temper of the torturer--in cold blood--"

A shudder of rage went through him. His excitable Slav nature brought everything back to him--as ugly and as real as when it happened.

"Oh, no--no!" said Constance, putting her hand over her eyes.

Radowitz controlled himself at once.

"I won't say any more," he said in a low voice, breathing deep--"I won't say any more." But a minute afterwards he looked up again, his brow contracting--"Only, for G.o.d's sake, don't marry him!"

"Don't be afraid," said Constance. "I shall never marry him!"

He looked at her piteously. "Only--if you care for him--what then? You are not to be unhappy!--you are to be the happiest person in the world.

If you did care for him--I should have to see some good in him--and that would be awful. It is not because he did me an injury, you understand.

The other two are my friends--they will be always my friends. But there is something in Falloden's soul that I hate--that I would like to fight--till either he drops or I. It is the same sort of feeling I have towards those who have killed my country."

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

"But now"--he drew himself sharply together--"you must talk of something else, and I will be quite quiet. Tell me where you have been--what you have seen--the theatre--the opera--everything!"