Lady Connie Part 44

When he reached the Scarfedale house, and a gardener had taken his horse, the maid who opened the door told him he would find Lady Constance on the lawn. The old ladies were out driving.

Very decent of the old ladies, he thought, as he followed the path into the garden.

There she was!--her light form lost, almost, in a deep chair, under a lime-tree. The garden was a tangle of late blooming flowers; everything growing rank and fast, as though to get as much out of the soil and the sun as possible, before the first frost made execution. It was surrounded by old red walls that held the dropping sun, and it was full of droning bees, and wagtails stepping daintily over the lawns.

Connie rose and came towards him. She was in black with pale pink roses in her hat. In spite of her height, she seemed to him the slightest, gracefullest thing, and as she neared him, she lifted her deep brown eyes, and it was as though he had never seen before how beautiful they were.

"It was kind of you to come!" she said shyly.

He made no reply, till she had placed him beside her under the lime.

Then he looked round him, a smile twitching his lip.

"Your aunts are not at home?"

"No. They have gone for their drive. Did you wish to see them?"

"I am in terror of your Aunt Winifred. She and I had many ructions when I was small. She thought our keepers used to shoot her cats."

"They probably did!"

"Of course. But a keeper who told the truth about it would have no moral sense."

They both laughed, looking into each other's faces with a sudden sense of relief from tension. After all the tragedy and the pain, there they were, still young, still in the same world together. And the sun was still shining and flowers blooming. Yet, all the same, there was no thought of any renewal of their old relation on either side. Something unexpressed, yet apparently final, seemed to stand between them; differing very much in his mind from the something in hers, yet equally potent. She, who had gone through agonies of far too tender pity for him, felt now a touch of something chill and stern in the circ.u.mstance surrounding him that seemed to put her aside. "This is not your business," it seemed to say; so that she saw herself as an inexperienced child playing with that incalculable thing--the male. Attempts at sympathy or advice died away--she rebelled, and submitted.

Still there are things--experiments--that even an inexperienced child, a child "of good will" may venture. All the time that she was talking to Falloden, a secret expectation, a secret excitement ran through her inner mind. There was a garden door to her left, across a lawn. Her eyes were often on it, and her ear listened for the click of the latch.

Meanwhile Falloden talked very frankly of the family circ.u.mstances and his own plans. How changed the tone was since they had discussed the same things, riding through the Lathom Woods in June! There was little less self-confidence, perhaps; but the quality of it was not the same.

Instead of alienating, it began to touch and thrill her. And her heart could not help its sudden tremor when he spoke of wintering "in or near Oxford." There was apparently a Merton prize fellowship in December on which his hopes were set, and the first part of his bar examination to read for, whether he got a fellowship or no.

"And Parliament?" she asked him.

"Yes--that's my aim," he said quietly. "Of course it's the fashion just now, especially in Oxford, to scoff at politics and the House of Commons. It's like the 'art-for-arters' in town. As if you could solve anything by words--or paints!"

"Your father was in the House for some time?"

She bent towards him, as she mentioned his father, with a lovely unconscious gesture that sent a tremor through him. He seemed to perceive all that shaken feeling in her mind to which she found it so impossible to give expression; on which his own action had placed so strong a curb.

He replied that his father had been in Parliament for some twelve years, and had been a Tory Whip part of the time. Then he paused, his eyes on the gra.s.s, till he raised them to say abruptly:

"You heard about it all--from Radowitz?"

She nodded.

"He came here that same night." And then suddenly, in the golden light, he saw her flush vividly. Had she realised that what she had said implied a good deal?--or might be thought to imply it? Why should Radowitz take the trouble, after his long and exhausting experience, to come round by the Scarfedale manor-house?

"It was an awful time for him," he said, his eyes on hers. "It was very strange that he should be there."

She hesitated. Her lips trembled.

"He was very glad to be there. Only he was sorry--for you."

"You mean he was sorry that I wasn't there sooner--with my father?"

"I think that was what he felt--that there was only a stranger."

"I was just in time," said Falloden slowly. "And I wonder--whether anything matters, to the dying?"

There was a pause, after which he added, with sudden energy--

"I thought--at the inquest--he himself looked pretty bad."

"Otto Radowitz?" Constance covered her eyes with her hands a moment--a gesture of pain. "Mr. Sorell doesn't know what to do for him. He has been losing ground lately. The doctors say he ought to live in the open-air. He and Mr. Sorell talk of a cottage near Oxford, where Mr.

Sorell can go often and see him. But he can't live alone."

As she spoke Falloden's attention was diverted. He had raised his head and was looking across the lawn towards the garden entrance. There was the sound of a clicking latch. Constance turned, and saw Radowitz entering.

The young musician paused and wavered, at the sight of the two under the lime. It seemed as though he would have taken to flight. But, instead, he came on with hesitating step. He had taken off his hat, as he often did when walking; and his red-gold hair _en brosse_ was as conspicuous as ever. But otherwise what a change from the youth of three months before! Falloden, now that the immediate pressure of his own tragedy was relaxed, perceived the change even more sharply than he had done at the inquest; perceived it, at first with horror, and then with a wild sense of recoil and denial, as though some hovering Erinys advanced with Radowitz over the leaf-strewn gra.s.s.

Radowitz grew paler still as he reached Connie. He gave Falloden a short, embarra.s.sed greeting, and then subsided into the chair that Constance offered him. The thought crossed Falloden's mind--"Did she arrange this?"

Her face gave little clue--though she could not restrain one quick, hesitating glance at Falloden. She pressed tea on Radowitz, who accepted it to please her, and then, schooled as she was in all the minor social arts, she had soon succeeded in establishing a sort of small talk among the three. Falloden, self-conscious, and on the rack, could not imagine why he stayed. But this languid boy had ministered to his dying father!

And to what, and to whom, were the languor, the tragic physical change due? He stayed--in purgatory--looking out for any chance to escape.

"Did you walk all the way?"

The note in Connie's voice was softly reproachful.

"Why, it's only three miles!" said Radowitz, as though defending himself, but he spoke with an accent of depression. And Connie remembered how, in the early days of his recovery from his injury, he had spent hours rambling over the moors by himself, or with Sorell. Her heart yearned to him. She would have liked to take his poor hands in hers, and talk to him tenderly like a sister. But there was that other dark face, and those other eyes opposite--watching. And to them too, her young sympathy went out--how differently!--how pa.s.sionately! A kind of rending and widening process seemed to be going on within her own nature. Veils were falling between her and life; and feelings, deeper and stronger than any she had ever known, were fast developing the woman in the girl. How to heal Radowitz!--how to comfort Falloden! Her mind ached under the feelings that filled it--feelings wholly disinterested and pure.

"You really are taking the Boar's Hill cottage?" she asked, addressing Radowitz.

"I think so. It is nearly settled. But I am trying to find some companion. Sorell can only come occasionally."

As he spoke, a wild idea flashed into Falloden's brain. It seemed to have entered without--or against--his will; as though suggested by some imperious agency outside himself. His intelligence laughed at it.

Something else in him entertained it--breathlessly.

Radowitz stooped down to try and tempt Lady Marcia's dachshund with a piece of cake.

"I must anyhow have a dog," he said, as the pampered Max accepted the cake, and laid his head gratefully on the donor's knee; "they're always company."

He looked wistfully into the dog's large, friendly eyes.

Connie rose.

"Please don't move!" she said, flushing. "I shall be back directly. But I must put up a letter. I hear the postman!" She ran over the gra.s.s, leaving the two men in acute discomfort. Falloden thought again, with rising excitement: "She planned it! She wants me to do something--to take some step--but what?"

An awkward pause followed. Radowitz was still playing with the dog, caressing its beautiful head with his uninjured hand, and talking to it in a half whisper. As Constance departed, a bright and feverish red had rushed into his cheeks; but it had only made his aspect more ghostly, more unreal.