Lady Connie Part 57

Before they parted, Falloden told his companion that the Orpheus would arrive from Paris the following day with a trio of French workmen to set it up. The electric installation was already in place. Everything would be ready by the evening. The instrument was to be placed behind a screen in the built-out room, once a studio, which Falloden had turned into a library. Otto rarely or never went there. The room looked north, and he, whose well-being hung upon sunshine, disliked it. But there was no other place for the Orpheus in the little cottage, and Falloden who had been getting new and thick curtains for the windows, improving the fire-place, and adding some armchairs, was eagerly hopeful that he could turn it into a comfortable music-room for Otto in the winter evenings, while he--if necessary--read his law elsewhere.

"Will you come for a rehearsal to-morrow?" he asked her. "Otto comes back the day after."

"No, no! I won't hear anything, not a note--till he comes! But is he strong enough?" she added wistfully. Strong enough, she meant, to bear agitation and surprise. But Falloden reported that Sorell knew everything that was intended, and approved. Otto had been very listless and depressed in town; a reaction no doubt from his spurt of work before the musical exam. Sorell thought the pleasure of the gift might rouse him, and gild the return to Oxford.

CHAPTER XIX

"Have some tea, old man, and warm up," said Falloden, on his knees before a fire already magnificent, which he was endeavouring to improve.

"What do you keep such a climate for?" growled Radowitz, as he hung shivering over the grate.

Sorell, who had come with the boy from the station, eyed him anxiously.

The bright red patches on the boy's cheeks, and his dry, fevered look, his weakness and his depression, had revived the most sinister fears in the mind of the man who had originally lured him to Oxford, and felt himself horribly responsible for what had happened there. Yet the London doctors on the whole had been rea.s.suring. The slight hemorrhage of the summer had had no successor; there were no further signs of active mischief; and for his general condition it was thought that the nervous shock of his accident, and the obstinate blood-poisoning which had followed it, might sufficiently account. The doctors, however, had pressed hard for sunshine and open-air--the Riviera, Sicily, or Algiers.

But the boy had said vehemently that he couldn't and wouldn't go alone, and who could go with him? A question that for the moment stopped the way. Falloden's first bar examination was immediately ahead; Sorell was tied to St. Cyprian's; and every other companion so far proposed had been rejected with irritation.

Unluckily, on this day of his return, the Oxford skies had put on again their characteristic winter gloom. The wonderful fortnight of frost and sun was over; tempests of wind and deluges of rain were drowning it fast in flood and thaw. The wind shrieked round the little cottage, and though it was little more than three o'clock, darkness was coming fast.

Falloden could not keep still. Having made up the fire, he brought in a lamp himself; he drew the curtains, then undrew them again, apparently that he might examine a stretch of the Oxford road just visible through the growing dark; or he wandered in and out of the room, his hands in his pockets whistling. Otto watched him with a vague annoyance. He himself was horribly tired, and Falloden's restlessness got on his nerves.

At last Falloden said abruptly, pausing in front of him--

"You'll have some visitors directly!"

Otto looked up. The gaiety in Falloden's eyes informed him, and at the same time, wounded him.

"Lady Constance?" he said, affecting indifference.

"And Mrs. Mulholland. I believe I see their carriage."

And Falloden, peering into the stormy twilight, opened the garden door and pa.s.sed out into the rain.

Otto remained motionless, bent over the fire. Sorell was talking with the ex-scout in the dining-room, impressing on him certain medical directions. Radowitz suddenly felt himself singularly forlorn, and deserted. Of course, Falloden and Constance would marry. He always knew it. He would have served to keep them together, and give them opportunities of meeting, when they might have easily drifted entirely apart. He laughed to himself as he thought of Connie's impa.s.sioned cry--"I shall never, never, marry him!" Such are the vows of women. She would marry him; and then what would he, Otto, matter to her or to Falloden any longer? He would have been no doubt a useful peg and pretext; but he was not going to intrude on their future bliss. He thought he would go back to Paris. One might as well die there as anywhere.

There were murmurs of talk and laughter in the hall. He sat still, hugging his melancholy. But when the door opened, he rose quickly, instinctively; and, at the sight of the girl coming in so timidly behind Mrs. Mulholland, her eyes searching the half-lit room, and the smile, in them and on her lips, held back till she knew whether her poor friend could bear with smiles, Otto's black hour began to lift. He let himself, at least, be welcomed and petted; and when fresh tea had been brought in, and the room was full of talk, he lay back in his chair, listening, the deep lines in his forehead gradually relaxing. He was better, he declared, a great deal better; in fact there was very little at all the matter with him. His symphony was to be given at the Royal College of Music early in the year. Everybody had been awfully decent about it. And he had begun a nocturne that amused him. As for the doctors, he repeated petulantly that they were all fools--it was only a question of degree.

He intended to manage his life as he pleased in spite of them.

Connie sat on a high stool near him while he talked. She seemed to be listening, but he once or twice thought, resentfully, that it was a perfunctory listening. He wondered what else she was thinking about.

The tea was cleared away. And presently the three others had disappeared. Otto and Constance were left alone.

"I have been reading so much about Poland lately," said Constance suddenly. "Oh, Otto, some day you must show me Cracow!"

His face darkened.

"I shall never see Cracow again. I shall never see it with you."

"Why not? Let's dream!"

The smiling tenderness in her eyes angered him. She was treating him like a child; she was so sure he never could--or never would--make love to her!

"I shall never go to Cracow," he said, with energy, "not even with you.

I was to have gone--a year from now. It was all arranged. We have relations there--and I have friends there--musicians. The _chef d'orchestre_--at the Opera House--he was one of my teachers in Paris.

Before next year, I was to have written a concerto on some of our Polish songs--there are scores of them that Liszt and Chopin never discovered.

Not only love-songs, mind you!--songs of revolution--battle-songs."

His eyes lit up and he began to hum an air--to Polish words--that even as given out in his small tenor voice stirred like a trumpet.

"Fine!" said Constance.

"Ah, but you can't judge--you don't know the words. The words are splendid. It's 'Ujejski's Hymn'--the Galician Hymn of '46." And he fell to intoning.

"Amid the smoke of our homes that burn, From the dust where our brothers lie bleeding-- Our cry goes up to Thee, oh G.o.d!

"There!--that's something like it."

And he ran on with a breathless translation of the famous dirge for the Galician rebels of '46, in which a devastated land wails like Rachel for her children.

Suddenly a sound rose--a sound reedy and clear, like a beautiful voice in the distance.

"Constance!"

The lad sprang to his feet. Constance laid hold on him.

"Listen, dear Otto--listen a moment!"

She held him fast, and breathing deep, he listened. The very melody he had just been humming rang out, from the same distant point; now pealing through the little house in a rich plenitude of sound, now delicate and plaintive as the chant of nuns in a quiet church, and finally crashing to a defiant and glorious close.

"What is it?" he Said, very pale, looking at her almost threateningly.

"What have you been doing!"

"It's our gift--our surprise--dear Otto!"

"Where is it? Let me go."

"No!--sit down, and listen! Let me listen with you. I've not heard it before! Mr. Falloden and I have been preparing it for months. Isn't it wonderful? Oh, dear Otto!--if you only like it!" He sat down trembling, and hand in hand they listened.

The "Fantasia" ran on, dealing with song after song, now simply, now with rich embroidery and caprice.

"Who is it playing?" said Otto, in a whisper.

"It _was_ Paderewski!" said Constance between laughing and crying. "Oh, Otto, everybody's been at work for it!--everybody was so marvellously keen!"

"In Paris?"

"Yes--all your old friends--your teachers--and many others."