Lady Connie Part 34

"How do you do, Douglas?" said Lady Tamworth, an imposing, bejewelled figure standing at the head of the galleried staircase of Tamworth House. "Saw your father yesterday and thought him looking very seedy."

"Yes, he's not the thing," said Douglas. "We shall have to get him away to Marienbad, or somewhere of that kind."

Lady Tamworth looked at him closely, her eyelids fluttering just a little. Douglas noticed the flutter, and knew very well what it meant.

Lady Tamworth and his father were first cousins. No doubt all their relations were busy discussing their affairs day and night; the City, he knew, was full of rumours, and certain newspapers had already scented the quarry ahead, and were beginning to make ghoulish hints and gibberings. As he pa.s.sed on into the ballroom, every nerve in him was sensitive and alive. He seemed to have eyes at the back of his head, to catch everywhere the sudden attention, the looks of curiosity, sometimes of malice, that followed him through the crowd. He spoke to a great many acquaintance, to girls he had been accustomed to dance with and their mothers. The girls welcomed him just as usual; but the casual or interrupted conversation, which was all the mothers could spare him, showed him very soon how much was known or guessed, of the family disasters. He understood that he was no longer in the running for these exquisite creatures in their silks and satins. The campaigning mothers had already dropped him out of their lists. His pride recoiled in self-contempt from its own smart. But he had been accustomed to walk this world as one of its princelings, and indifference to what it might think of him was not immediately attainable.

All the same, he was still handsome, distinguished, and well born. No one could overlook him in a ballroom, and few women could be quite indifferent to his approach. He danced as much as he wished, and with the prettiest girls. His eyes meanwhile were always wandering over the crowd, searching in vain for a delicate face, and a wealth of brown hair. Yet she had told him herself that Lady Langmoor was to bring her to this ball. He only wanted to see her--from a distance--not to speak to her--or be spoken to.

"Douglas," said a laughing voice in his ear--"will you dance the royal quadrille with me? Something's happened to my partner. Mother sent me to ask you."

He turned and saw the youngest daughter of the house, Lady Alice, with whom he had always been on chaffing, cousinly terms; and as she spoke a sudden stir and hush in the room showed that the royal party had arrived, and were being received in the hall below.

Falloden's first irritable instinct was to refuse. Why should he go out of his way to make himself a show for all these eyes? Then a secret excitement--an expectation--awoke in him, and he nodded a laughing comment to Lady Alice, who just stayed to throw him a mocking compliment on his knee-breeches, and ran away. Immediately afterwards, the royal party came through the lane made for them, shaking hands with their acquaintance, and bowing right and left. As they disappeared into the room beyond, which had been reserved for them, the crowd closed up behind them. Falloden heard a voice at his elbow.

"How are you? I hear you're to be in the quadrille. You'll have the pretty lady we saw at Oxford for a colleague."

He turned to see Mrs. Glendower, very much made-up and glittering with diamonds. Her face seemed to him to have grown harder and plainer, her smile more brazen since their Oxford meeting. But she filled up time agreeably till the quadrille was ready. She helped him to pin on the small rosette made of the Tamworth colours which marked all the dancers in the royal quadrille, and she told him that Constance Bledlow was to dance it with the Tamworths' eldest son, Lord Bletchley.

"There's a great deal of talk about her, as perhaps you know. She's very much admired. The Langmoors are making a great fuss about her, and people say she'll have all their money as well as her own some day--not to speak of the old aunts in Yorkshire. I shouldn't wonder if the Tamworths had their eye upon her. They're not really well off."

Falloden gaily declared that he would back his cousin Mary Tamworth to get anything she wanted. Mrs. Glendower threw him a sudden, sharp look.

Then she was swept into the crowd. A couple of men in brilliant uniform came by, clearing a s.p.a.ce in the centre of the room, and Falloden saw Lady Alice beckoning.

In another minute or two he and she were in their places, and what the newspapers who record these things call "a brilliant scene" was in full tide:--the Prince and Princess dancing with the master and mistress of the house, and the rest of the quadrille made up of the tallest men and handsomest women that Lady Tamworth, with a proper respect both to rank and to looks, had been able to collect.

The six-foot-three Falloden and his fairylike partner were much observed, and Lady Alice bubbling over with fun and spirits, found her cousin Douglas, whom in general she disliked, far better company than usual. As for him, he was only really conscious of one face and form in the stately dance itself, or in the glittering crowd which was eagerly looking on. Constance Bledlow, in filmy white, was his _vis-a-vis_. He saw her quick movement as she perceived him. Then she bowed slightly, he ceremoniously. Their hands touched at intervals, and not a few of the spectators noticed these momentary contacts with a thrill of pleasure--the splendid physique of the young man, the flowerlike grace of the girl. Once or twice, as they stood together in the centre of the "chain," a few words would have been possible. But Constance never spoke, nor did Falloden. He had thought her very pale at first sight.

But her cheek flushed with dancing; and with every minute that pa.s.sed she seemed to him more lovely and more remote, like a spirit from another world, into which he could not pa.s.s.

"Isn't she pretty!--Connie Bledlow?" said Lady Alice enthusiastically.

"She's having a great success. Of course other people are much handsomer, but there's something--"

Yes, there was something!--and something which, like an exquisite fluttering bird, had just escaped from Douglas Falloden, and would now, he supposed, forever escape him.

When the quadrille was over he watched her delicate whiteness disappear amid the uniforms, the jewels, and the festoons or roses hanging across the ballroom. The barbaric, overdecorated scene, with all its suggestions of a luxurious and self-confident world, where every one was rich and privileged, or hunting riches and privilege--a world without the smallest foreboding of change, the smallest doubt of its own right to exist--forced upon him by contrast the recollection of the hour he had just spent with Mr. Gregory in his father's dusty dismantled library. He and his were, it seemed, "ruined"--as many people here already guessed. He looked at the full-length Van Dycks on the wall of the Tamworths' ballroom, and thought, not without a grim leap of humour, that he would be acting showman and auctioneer, within a few days perhaps, to his father's possessions of the same kind.

But it was not the loss of money or power that was separating him from Constance Bledlow. He knew her well enough by now to guess that in spite of her youth and her luxurious bringing up, there was that in her which was rapidly shaping a character capable of fighting circ.u.mstance, as her heart might bid. If she loved a man she would stand by him. No, it was something known only to her and himself in all those crowded rooms. As soon as he set eyes on her, the vision of Radowitz's bleeding hand and prostrate form had emerged in consciousness--a haunting presence, blurring the many-coloured movements of the ballroom.

And yet it was not that maimed hand, either, which stood between himself and Constance. It was rather the spiritual fact behind the visible--that instinct of fierce, tyrannical cruelty which he had felt as he laid his hands on Radowitz in the Oxford dawn a month ago. He shrank from it now as he thought of it. It blackened and degraded his own image of himself.

He remembered something like it years before, when he had joined in the bullying of a small boy at school--a boy who yet afterwards had become his good friend. If there is such a thing as "possession," devilish possession, he had pleaded it on both occasions. Would it, however, have seemed of any great importance to him now, but for Constance Bledlow's horror-struck recoil? All men of strong and vehement temperament--so his own defence might have run--are liable to such gusts of violent, even murderous feeling; and women accept it. But Constance Bledlow, influenced, no doubt, by a pale-blooded sentimentalist like Sorell, had refused to accept it.

"I should be always afraid of you--of your pride and your violence--and love mustn't be afraid. Good-bye!"

He tried to scoff, but the words had burnt into his heart.

CHAPTER XII

It was in the early morning, a few days after her arrival at Scarfedale Manor, the house of her two maiden aunts, that Connie, while all the Scarfedale household was still asleep, took pen and paper and began a letter to Nora Hooper.

On the evening before Connie left Oxford there had been a long and intimate scene between these two. Constance, motherless and sisterless, and with no woman friend to turn to more understanding than Annette, had been surprised in pa.s.sionate weeping by Nora, the night after the Marmion catastrophe. The tact and devotion of the younger girl had been equal to the situation. She humbly admired Connie, and yet was directly conscious of a strength in herself, in which Connie was perhaps lacking, and which might be useful to her brilliant cousin. At any rate on this occasion she showed so much sweetness, such power, beyond her years, of comforting and understanding, that Connie told her everything, and thenceforward possessed a sister and a confidante. The letter ran as follows:--

"DEAREST NORA,--I have only been at Scarfedale Manor a week, and already I seem to have been living here for months. It is a dear old house, very like the houses one used to draw when one was four years old--a doorway in the middle, with a nice semicircular top, and three windows on either side; two stories above with seven windows each, and a pretty dormered roof, with twisted brick chimneys, and a rookery behind it; also a walled garden, and a green oval gra.s.s-plot between it and the road. It seems to me that everywhere you go in England you find these houses, and, I dare say, people like my aunts living in them.

"They are very nice to me, and as different as possible from each other.

Aunt Marcia must have been quite good-looking, and since she gave up wearing a rational dress which she patented twenty-five years ago, she has always worn either black silk or black satin, a large black satin hat, rather like the old 'pokes,' with black feathers in winter and white feathers in summer, and a variety of lace scarves--real lace--which she seems to have collected all over the world. Aunt Winifred says that the Unipantaloonicoat'--the name of the patented thing--lost Aunt Marcia all her lovers. They were scared by so much strength of character, and could not make up their minds to tackle her.

She gave it up in order to capture the last of them--a dear old general who had adored her--but he shook his head, went off to Malta to think it out, and there died of Malta fever. She considers herself his widow and his portrait adorns her sitting-room. She has a poor opinion of the lower orders, especially of domestic servants. But her own servants don't seem to mind her much. The butler has been here twenty years, and does just what he pleases. The amusing thing is that she considers herself extremely intellectual, because she learnt Latin in her youth--she doesn't remember a word of it now!--because she always read the reviews of papa's books--and because she reads poetry every morning before breakfast. Just now she is wrestling with George Meredith; and she asks me to explain 'Modern Love' to her. I can't make head or tail of it. Nor can she. But when people come to tea she begins to talk about Meredith, and asks them if they don't think him very obscure. And as most people here who come to tea have never heard of him, it keeps up her dignity. All the same, she is a dear old thing--and she put a large case of chocolate in my room before I arrived!

"Aunt Winifred is quite different. Aunt Marcia calls her a 'reactionary,' because she is very high church and great friends with all the clergy. She is a very quiet little thing, short and fair, with a long thin nose and eyes that look you through. Her two great pa.s.sions are--curates, especially consumptive curates--and animals. There is generally a consumptive curate living the open-air life in the garden.

Mercifully the last patient has just left. As for animals, the house is full of stray dogs and tame rabbits and squirrels that run up you and look for nuts in your pocket. There is also a mongoose, who pulled the cloth off the tea-table yesterday and ran away with all the cakes. Aunt Marcia bears it philosophically, but the week before I came there was a crisis. Aunt Winifred met some sheep on the road between here and our little town. She asked where they were going to. And the man with them said he was taking them to the slaughter-house. She was horrified, and she bought them all--there and then! And half an hour later, she appeared here with the sheep, and Aunt Marcia was supposed to put them up in the garden. Well, that was too much, and the aunts had words. What happened to the sheep I don't know. Probably Aunt Winifred has eaten them since without knowing it.

"Dear Nora--I wonder why I write you all these silly things when there is so much else to say--and I know you want to hear it. But it's horribly difficult to begin.--Well, first of all, Mr. Sorell and Otto Radowitz are about three miles from here, in a little vicarage that has a wide lookout upon the moors and a heavenly air. The aunts have found me a horse, and I go there often. Otto is in some ways very much better.

He lives an ordinary life, walks a fair amount, and is reading some cla.s.sics and history with Mr. Sorell, besides endless books of musical theory and biography. You know he pa.s.sed his first musical exam last May. For the second, which will come off next year, he has to write a composition in five-part harmony for at least five stringed instruments, and he is beginning work for it now. He writes and writes, and his little study at the vicarage is strewn deep in scribbled music-paper.

With his left hand and his piano he does wonders, but the poor right hand is in a sling and quite useless, up to now. He reads scores endlessly, and he said to me yesterday that he thought his intellectual understanding of music--his power of grasping it through the eye--of hearing it with the mind--'ditties of no tone!'--had grown since his hand was injured. But the pathetic thing is that the sheer pleasure--the joy and excitement--of his life is gone; those long hours of dreaming and composing with the piano, when he could not only make himself blissfully happy, but give such exquisite pleasure to others.

"He is very quiet and patient now--generally--and quite determined to make a name for himself as a composer. But he seems to me extraordinarily frail. Do you remember that lovely French poem of Sully Prudhomme's I read you one night--'_Le Vase Brise_'? The vase has had a blow. No one knew of it. But the little crack widens and grows. The water ebbs away--the flowers die. '_Il est brise_--_n'y touchez pas_!' I can see it is just that Mr. Sorell feels about Otto.

"What makes one anxious sometimes, is that he has hours of a kind of fierce absent-mindedness, when his real self seems to be far away--as though in some feverish or ugly dream. He goes away and wanders about by himself. Mr. Sorell does not attempt to follow him, though he is always horribly anxious. And after some hours he comes back, limp and worn out, but quite himself again--as though he had gone through some terrible wrestle and escaped.

"Mr. Sorell gave him, a little while ago, a wonderful new automatic thing--a piano-player, I think they call it. It works with a roll like a musical box and has pedals. But Otto can't do much with it. To get any expression out of it you must use your hands--both hands; and I am afraid it has been more disappointment than joy. But there are rumours of some development--something electric--that plays itself. They say there is an inventor at work in Paris, who is doing something wonderful.

I have written to a girl I know at the Emba.s.sy to ask her to find out.

It might just help him through some weary hours--that's all one can say.

"The relation between him and Mr. Sorell is wonderful. Oh, what an angel Mr. Sorell is! How can any human being, and with no trouble at all apparently, be so unselfish, so self-controlled? What will any woman do who falls in love with him? It won't make any difference that he'll think her so much better than himself--because she'll know the truth. I see no chance for her. My dear Nora, the best men are better than the best women--there! But--take note!--I am not in love with him, though I adore him, and when he disapproves of me, I feel a worm.

"I hear a good deal of the Fallodens, but n.o.body sees them. Every one shrinks from pestering them with society--not from any bad feeling--but because every one knows by now that they are in hideous difficulties, and doesn't want to intrude. Lady Laura, they say, is very much changed, and Sir Arthur looks terribly ill and broken. Aunt Marcia hears that Douglas Falloden is doing all the business, and impressing the lawyers very much. Oh, I do hope he is helping his father!

"I can't write about him, Nora darling. You would wonder how I can feel the interest in him I do. I know that. But I can't believe, as Otto does, that he is deliberately cruel--a selfish, hard-hearted monster. He has been a spoilt child all his life. But if some great call were made upon him, mightn't it stir up something splendid in him, finer things than those are capable of 'who need no repentance'?

"There--something has splashed on my paper. I have written enough. Now you must tell me of yourselves. How is your father? Does Aunt Ellen like Ryde? I am so delighted to hear that Mr. Pryce is actually coming. Tell him that, of course, I will write to Uncle Langmoor, and Lord Glaramara, whenever he wishes, about that appointment. I am sure something can be done. Give Alice my love. I thought her new photographs charming. And you, darling, are you looking after everybody as usual? I wish I could give you a good hug. Good-bye."

To which Nora replied, a couple of days later--

"Your account of Aunt Marcia and Aunt Winifred amused father tremendously. He thinks, however, that he would like Aunt Marcia better than Aunt Winifred, as he--and I--get more anticlerical every year. But we keep it to ourselves. Mamma and Alice wouldn't understand. Ryde is very full, and mamma and Alice want nothing more than the pier and the sands and the people. Papa and I take long walks along the coast, or across the island. We find a cliff to bask on, or a wood that comes down to the water, and then papa gets out a Greek book and translates to me.

Sometimes I listen to the sea, instead of to him, and go to sleep. But he doesn't mind. He is looking better, but work is loading up for him again as soon as we get back to Oxford about a week from now. If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the things he loves.

n.o.body knows what a mind he has. He is not only a scholar--he is a poet.

He could write things as beautiful as Mr. Pater's, but his life is ground out of him.

"I won't go on writing this--it's no good.

"Herbert Pryce came down yesterday, and has taken mother and Alice out boating to-day. If he doesn't mean to propose to Alice, it is very odd he should take the trouble to come here. But he doesn't say anything definite; he doesn't propose; and her face often makes me furious. His manner to mamma--and to me--is often brusque and disagreeable. It is as though he felt that in marrying Alice--if he is going to marry her--he is rather unfairly burdened with the rest of us. And it is no good shirking the fact that you count for a good deal in the matter. He was delighted with your message, and if you can help him he will propose to Alice. Goodness, fancy marrying such a man!