"Could you drink this?" said a voice behind him. He opened his eyes and saw a young man, with a halo of red-gold hair, and a tremulous, pitying face, quite strange to him, bending over him.

There was some brandy at his lips. He drank with difficulty. What had happened to the light? How dark it was!

"Where am I?" he said, looking up blindly into the face above him.

"I found you here—on the moor—lying on the grass. Are you better? Shall I run down now—and fetch some one?"

"Don't go—"

The agony returned. When Sir Arthur spoke again, it was very feebly.

"I can't live—through—much more of that. I'm dying. Don't leave me. Where's my son? Where's my son—Douglas? Who are you?"

The glazing eyes tried to make out the features of the stranger. They were too dim to notice the sudden shiver that passed through them as he named his son.

"I can't get at any one. I've been calling for a long time. My name is Radowitz. I'm staying at Penfold Rectory. If I could only carry you! I tried to lift you—but I couldn't. I've only one hand." He pointed despairingly to the sling he was wearing.

"Tell my son—tell Douglas—"

But the faint voice ceased abruptly, and the eyes closed. Only there was a slight movement of the lips, which Radowitz, bending his ear to the mouth of the dying man, tried to interpret. He thought it said "pray," but he could not be sure.

Radowitz looked round him in an anguish. No one on the purple side of the moor, no one on the grassy tracks leading downwards to the park; only the wide gold of the evening—the rising of a light wind—the rustling of the fern—and the loud, laboured breathing below him.

He bent again over the helpless form, murmuring words in haste.

* * * * *

Meanwhile after Sir Arthur left the house, Douglas had been urgently summoned by his mother. He found her at tea with Trix in her own sitting-room. Roger was away, staying with a school friend, to the general relief of the household; Nelly, the girl of seventeen, was with relations in Scotland, but Trix had become her mother's little shadow and constant companion. The child was very conscious of the weight on her parents' minds. Her high spirits had all dropped. She had a wistful, shrinking look, which suited ill with her round face and her childishly parted lips over her small white teeth. The little face was made for laughter; but in these days only Douglas could bring back her smiles, because mamma was so unhappy and cried so much; and that mamma should cry seemed to bring her whole world tumbling about the child's ears. Only Douglas, for sheer impatience with the general gloom of the house, would sometimes tease her or chase her; and then the child's laugh would ring out—a ghostly echo from the days before Lady Laura "knew."

Poor Lady Laura! Up to the last moment before the crash, her husband had kept everything from her. She was not a person of profound or sensitive feeling; and yet it is probable that her resentment of her husband's long secrecy, and the implications of it, counted for a great deal in her distress and misery.

The sale of the pictures, as shortly reported by Douglas, had overwhelmed her. As soon as her son appeared in her room, she poured out upon him a stream of lamentation and complaint, while Trix was alternately playing with the kitten on her knee and drying furtive tears on a very grubby pocket-handkerchief.

Douglas was on the whole patient and explanatory, for he was really sorry for his mother; but as soon as he could he escaped from her on the plea of urgent letters and estate accounts.

The August evening wore on, and it was nearing sunset when his mother came hurriedly into the library.

"Douglas, where is your father?"

"He went out for a walk before tea. Hasn't he come in?"

"No. And it's more than two hours. I—I don't like it, Duggy. He hasn't been a bit well lately—and so awfully depressed. Please go and look for him, dear!"

Douglas suddenly perceived the terror in his mother's mind. It seemed to him absurd. He knew his father better than she did; but he took his hat and went out obediently.

He had happened to notice his father going towards the moor, and he took the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet evening air, in a passionate physical reaction against the family distress.

Five miles away, in this same evening glow, was Constance Bledlow walking or sitting in her aunts' garden? Or was she nearer still—at Penfold Rectory, just beyond the moor he was climbing, the old rectory-house where Sorell and Radowitz were staying? He had taken good care to give that side of the hills a wide berth since his return home. But a great deal of the long ridge was common ground, and in the private and enclosed parts there were several rights of way crossing the moor, besides the one lonely road traversing it from end to end on which he had met Constance Bledlow. If he had not been so tied at home, and so determined not to run any risks of a meeting, he might very well have come across Sorell at least, if not Radowitz, on the high ground dominating the valleys on either side. Sorell was a great walker. But probably they were as anxious to avoid a casual meeting as he was.

The evening was rapidly darkening, and as he climbed he searched the hillside with his quick eyes for any sign of his father. Once or twice he stopped to call:

"Father!"

The sound died away, echoing among the fields and hollows of the moor. But there was no answer. He climbed further. He was now near the stream which descended through the park, and its loud jubilant voice burst upon him, filling the silence.

Then, above the plashing of the stream and the rising of the wind, he heard suddenly a cry:

"Help!"

It came from a point above his head. A sudden horror came upon him. He dashed on. In another minute a man's figure appeared, higher up, dark against the reddened sky. The man put one hand to his mouth, and shouted through it again—"Help!"

Douglas came up with him. In speechless amazement he saw that it was Otto Radowitz, without a coat, bareheaded, pale and breathless.

"There's a man here, Falloden. I think it's your father. He's awfully ill. I believe he's dying. Come at once! I've been shouting for a long time."

Douglas said nothing. He rushed on, following Radowitz, who took a short cut bounding through the deep ling of the moor. Only a few yards till Douglas perceived a man, with a grey, drawn face, who was lying full length on a stretch of grass beside the stream, his head and shoulders propped against a low rock on which a folded coat had been placed as a pillow.

"Father!"

Sir Arthur opened his eyes. He was drawing deep, gasping breaths, the strong life in him wrestling still. But the helplessness, the ineffable surrender and defeat of man's last hour, was in his face.

Falloden knelt down.

"Father!—don't you know me? Well soon carry you home. It's Duggy!" No answer. Radowitz had gone a few yards away, and was also kneeling, his face buried in his hands, his back turned to the father and son.

Douglas made another agonised appeal, and the grey face quivered. A whisper passed the lips.

"It's best, Duggy—poor Duggy! Kiss me, old boy. Tell your mother—that young man—prayed for me. She'll like to—know that. My love—"

The last words were spoken with a great effort; and the breaths that followed grew slower and slower as the vital tide withdrew itself. Once more the eyes opened, and Douglas saw in them the old affectionate look. Then the lips shaped themselves again to words that made no sound; a shudder passed through the limbs—their last movement.

Douglas knelt on, looking closely into his father's face, listening for the breath that came no more. He felt rather than saw that Radowitz had moved still further away.

Two or three deep sobs escaped him—involuntary, almost unconscious. Then he pulled himself together. His mother? Who was to tell her?

He went to call Radowitz, who came eagerly.

"My father is dead," said Falloden, deadly pale, but composed. "How long have you been here?"

"About half an hour. When I arrived he was in agonies of pain. I gave him brandy, and he revived a little. Then I wanted to go for help, but he begged me not to leave him alone. So I could only shout and wave my handkerchief. The pains came back and back—and every time he grew weaker. Oh, it was angina. I have seen it before—twice. If I had only had some nitrite of amyl! But there was nothing—nothing I could do." He paused, and then added timidly, "I am a Catholic; I said some of our prayers."

He looked gravely into Falloden's face. Falloden's eyes met his, and both men remembered—momentarily—the scene in Marmion Quad.

"We must get him down," said Falloden abruptly. "And there is my mother."

"I would help you to carry him, of course; but—you see—I can't."



His delicate skin flushed deeply. Falloden realised for the first time the sling across his shoulder and the helpless hand lying in it. He turned away, searching with his eyes the shadows of the valley. At the moment, the spot where they stood was garishly illuminated by the rapidly receding light, which had already left the lower ground. The grass at their feet, the rocks, the stream, the stretches of heather were steeped and drenched in the last rays of sun which shot upon them in a fierce concentration from the lower edge of a great cloud. But the landmarks below were hard to make out—for a stranger's eyes.

"You see that cottage—where the smoke is?"

Radowitz assented.

"You will find a keeper there. Send him with three or four men."

"Yes—at once. Shall I take a message to the house?"

Radowitz spoke very gently. The red-gold of his hair, and his blue eyes, were all shining in the strange light. But he was again as pale as Falloden himself. Douglas drew out a pencil, and a letter from his pocket. He wrote some words on the envelope, and handed it to Radowitz.

"That's for my mother's maid. She will know what to do. She is an old servant. I must stay here."

Radowitz rushed away, leaping and running down the steep side of the hill, his white shirt, crossed by the black sling, conspicuous all the way, till he was at last lost to sight in the wood leading to the keeper's cottage.

Falloden went back to the dead man. He straightened his father's limbs and closed his eyes. Then he lay down beside him, throwing his arm tenderly across the body. And the recollection came back to him of that hunting accident years ago—the weight of his father on his shoulders—the bitter cold—the tears which not all his boyish scorn of tears could stop.

His poor mother! She must see Radowitz, for Radowitz alone could tell the story of that last half hour. He must give evidence, too, at the inquest.

Radowitz! Thoughts, ironic and perverse, ran swarming through Falloden's brain, as though driven through it from outside. What a nursery tale!—how simple!—how crude! Could not the gods have devised a subtler retribution?

Then these thoughts vanished again, like a cloud of gnats. The touch of his father's still warm body brought him back to the plain, tragic fact. He raised himself on his elbow to look again at the dead face.

The handsome head with its grizzled hair was resting on Radowitz's coat. Falloden could not bear it. He took off his own, and gently substituted it for the other. And as he laid the head down, he kissed the hair and the brow. He was alone with his father—more alone than he ever would be again. There was not a human step or voice upon the moor. Night was coming rapidly on. The stream rushed beside him. There were a few cries of birds—mostly owls from the woods below. The dead man's face beside him was very solemn and quiet. And overhead, the angry sunset clouds were fading into a dim and star-strewn heaven, above a world sinking to its rest.

* * * * *

The moon was up before Radowitz came back to the little rectory on the other side of the moor. Sorell, from whose mind he was seldom absent, had begun to worry about him, was in fact on the point of setting out in search of him. But about nine o'clock he heard the front gate open and jumping down from the low open window of the rectory drawing-room he went to meet the truant.

Radowitz staggered towards him, and clung to his arm.

"My dear fellow," cried Sorell, aghast at the bay's appearance and manner—"what have you been doing to yourself?"

"I went up the moor for a walk after tea—it was so gorgeous, the clouds and the view. I got drawn on a bit—on the castle side. I wasn't really thinking where I was going. Then I saw the park below me, and the house. And immediately afterwards, I heard a groaning sound, and there was a man lying on the ground. It was Sir Arthur Falloden—and he died—while I was there." The boy's golden head dropped suddenly against Sorell. "I say, can't I have some food, and go to bed?"

Sorell took him in and looked after him like a mother, helped by the kind apple-faced rector, who had heard the castle news from other sources also, and was greatly moved.

When Otto's exhaustion had been fed and he was lying in his bed with drawn brows, and no intention or prospect of going to sleep, Sorell let him tell his tale.

"When the bearers came, I went down with them to the castle, and I saw Lady Laura"—said the boy, turning his head restlessly from side to side. "I say, it's awful—how women cry! Then they told me about the inquest—I shall have to go to-morrow—and on the way home I went to see Lady Connie. I thought she ought to know."

Sorell started.

"And you found her?"

"Oh, yes. She was sitting in the garden."

There was a short silence. Then Otto flung up his left hand, caught a gnat that was buzzing round his head, and laughed—a dreary little sound.

"It's quite true—she's in love with him."

"With Douglas Falloden?"

Otto nodded.

"She was awfully cut up when I told her—just for him. She didn't cry of course. Our generation doesn't seem to cry—like Lady Laura. But you could see what she wanted."

"To go to him?"

"That's it. And of course she can't. My word, it is hard on women! They're hampered such a lot—by all their traditions. Why don't they kick 'em over?"

"I hope she will do nothing of the kind," said Sorell with energy. "The traditions may just save her."

Otto thought over it.

"You mean—save her from doing something for pity that she wouldn't do if she had time to think?"

Sorell assented.

"Why should that fellow be any more likely now to make her happy—"

"Because he's lost his money and his father? I don't know why he should. I dare say he'll begin bullying and slave-driving again—when he's forgotten all this. But—"

"But what?"

"Well—you see—I didn't think he could possibly care about anything but himself. I thought he was as hard as a millstone all through. Well, he isn't. That's so queer!"

The speaker's voice took a dreamy tone.

Sorell glanced in bitterness at the maimed hand lying on the bed. It was still bandaged, but he knew very well what sort of a shapeless, ruined thing it would emerge, when the bandages were thrown aside. It was strange and fascinating—to a student of psychology—that Otto should have been brought, so suddenly, so unforeseeably, into this pathetic and intimate relation with the man to whom, essentially, he owed his disaster. But what difference did it make in the quality of the Marmion outrage, or to any sane judgment of Douglas Falloden?

"Go to sleep, old boy," he said at last. "You'll have a hard time to-morrow."

"What, the inquest? Oh, I don't mind about that. If I could only understand that fellow!"

He threw his head back, staring at the ceiling.

Otto Radowitz, in spite of Sorell's admonitions, slept very little that night. His nights were apt to be feverish and disturbed. But on this occasion imagination and excitement made it impossible to stop the brain process, the ceaseless round of thought; and the hours of darkness were intolerably long. Memory went back behind the meeting with the dying man on the hillside, to an earlier experience—an hour of madness, of "possession." His whole spiritual being was still bruised and martyred from it, like that sufferer of old whom the evil spirit "tore" in departing. What had delivered him? The horror was still on him, still his master, when he became aware of that white face on the grass—

He drowsed off again. But in his half-dream, he seemed to be kneeling again and reciting Latin words, words he had heard last when his mother was approaching her end. He was more than half sceptical, so far as the upper mind was concerned; but the under-consciousness was steeped in ideas derived from his early home and training, ideas of sacrifice, forgiveness, atonement, judgment—the common and immortal stock of Christianity. He had been brought up in a house pervaded by the crucifix, and by a mother who was ardently devout.

But why had God—if there was a God—brought this wonderful thing to pass? Never had his heart been so full of hatred as in that hour of lonely wandering on the moor, before he perceived the huddled figure lying by the stream. And, all in a moment, he had become his enemy's proxy—his representative—in the last and tenderest service that man can render to man. He had played the part of son to Falloden's dying father—had prayed for him from the depths of his heart, tortured with pity. And when Falloden came, with what strange eyes they had looked at each other!—as though all veils had dropped—all barriers had, for the moment, dropped away.

"Shall I hate him again to-morrow?" thought Radowitz. "Or shall I be more sorry for him than for myself? Yes, that's what I felt!—so marvellously!"

So that when he went to Constance with his news, and under the emotion of it, saw the girl's heart unveiled—"I was not jealous," he thought. "I just wanted to give her everything!"

Yet, as the night passed on, and that dreary moment of the first awakening earth arrived, when all the griefs of mankind weigh heaviest, he was shaken anew by gusts of passion and despair; and this time for himself. Suppose—for in spite of all Sorell's evasions and concealments, he knew very well that Sorell was anxious about him, and the doctors had said ugly things—suppose he got really ill?—suppose he died, without having lived?

He thought of Constance in the moonlit garden, her sweetness, her gratefulness to him for coming, her small, white "flower-face," and the look in her eyes.

"If I might—only once—have kissed her—have held her in my arms!" he thought, with anguish. And rolling on his face, he lay prone, fighting his fight alone, till exhaustion conquered, and "he took the gift of sleep."



CHAPTER XV

Douglas Falloden was sitting alone in his father's library surrounded by paper and documents. He had just concluded a long interview with the family lawyer; and a tray containing the remains of their hasty luncheon was on a side-table. The room had a dusty, dishevelled air. Half of the house-servants had been already dismissed; the rest were disorganised. Lady Laura had left Flood the day before. To her son's infinite relief she had consented to take the younger children and go on a long visit to some Scotch relations. It had been left vague whether she returned to Flood or not; but Douglas hoped that the parting was already over—without her knowing it; and that he should be able to persuade her, after Scotland, to go straight to the London house—which was her own property—for the winter.

Meanwhile he himself had been doing his best to wind up affairs. The elaborate will of twenty years earlier, with its many legacies and bequests, had been cancelled by Sir Arthur only six weeks before his death. A very short document had been substituted for it, making Douglas and a certain Marmaduke Falloden, his uncle and an eminent K.C., joint executors, and appointing Douglas and Lady Laura guardians of the younger children. Whatever property might remain "after the payment of my just debts" was to be divided in certain proportions between Douglas and his brother and sisters.

The estates, with the exception of the lands immediately surrounding the castle, were to be sold to the tenants, and the dates of the auction were already fixed. For the castle itself, negotiations had been opened with an enormously successful soap-boiler from the north, but an American was also in the market, and the Falloden solicitors were skilfully playing the two big fish against each other. The sale of the pictures would come before the court early in October. Meanwhile the beautiful Romney—the lady in black—still looked down upon her stripped and impoverished descendant; and Falloden, whose sole companion she often was through dreary hours, imagined her sometimes as tragic or reproachful, but more commonly as mocking him with a malicious Irish glee.

There would be some few thousand pounds left for himself when all was settled. He was determined to go into Parliament, and his present intention was to stand for a Merton fellowship, and read for the bar. If other men could make three or four thousand a year within three years or so of being called, why not he? His character had steeled under the pressure of disaster. He realised with a clearer intelligence, day by day, all that had gone from him—his father—his inheritance—the careless ease and self-assurance that goes with the chief places at the feast of life. But if he must now drop to the lower rooms, it would not be "with shame" that he would do that, or anything else. He felt within himself a driving and boundless energy, an iron will to succeed. There was even a certain bitter satisfaction in measuring himself against the world without the props and privileges he had hitherto possessed. He was often sore and miserable to his heart's depths; haunted by black regrets and compunction he could not get rid of. All the same it was his fixed resolve to waste no thoughts on mere happiness. His business was to make a place for himself as an able man among able men, to ask of ambition, intelligence, hard work, and the sharpening of brain on brain, the satisfaction he had once hoped to get out of marriage with Constance Bledlow, and the easy, though masterly, use of great wealth.

He turned to look at the clock.

She had asked him for five. He had ordered his horse accordingly, the only beast still left in the Flood stables, and his chief means of escape during a dreary fortnight from his peevish co-executor, who was of little or no service, and had allowed himself already to say unpardonable things about his dead brother, even to that brother's son.

It was too soon to start, but he pushed his papers aside impatiently. The mere prospect of seeing Constance Bledlow provoked in him a dumb and troubled excitement. Under its impulse he left the library, and began to walk aimlessly through the dreary and deserted house, for the mere sake of movement. The pictures were still on the walls, for the sale of them had not yet been formally sanctioned by the court; but all Lady Laura's private and personal possessions had been removed to London, and dust-sheets covered the furniture. Some of it indeed had been already sold, and workmen were busy packing in the great hall, amid a dusty litter of paper and straw. All the signs of normal life, which make the character of a house, had gone; what remained was only the debris of a once animated whole. Houses have their fate no less than books; and in the ears of its last Falloden possessor, the whole of the great many-dated fabric, from its fourteenth century foundations beneath the central tower, to the pseudo-Gothic with which Wyatt had disfigured the garden front, had often, since his father's death, seemed to speak with an almost human voice of lamentation and distress.

But this afternoon Falloden took little notice of his surroundings. Why had she written to him?

Well, after all, death is death, and the merest strangers had written to him—letters that he was now wearily answering. But there had been nothing perfunctory in her letter. As he read it he had seemed to hear her very voice saying the soft, touching things in it—things that women say so easily and men can't hit upon; and to be looking into her changing face, and the eyes that could be so fierce, and then again so childishly sweet and sad—as he had seen them, at their last meeting on the moor, while she was giving him news of Radowitz. Yet there was not a word in the letter that might not have been read on the house-tops—not a trace in it of her old alluring, challenging self. Simplicity—deep feeling—sympathy—in halting words, and unfinished sentences—and yet something conspicuously absent and to all appearance so easily, unconsciously absent, that all the sweetness and pity brought him more smart than soothing. Yes, she had done with him—for all her wish to be kind to him. He saw it plainly; and he turned back thirstily to those past hours in Lathom Woods, when he had felt himself, if only for a moment, triumphant master of her thoughts, if not her heart; rebelled against, scolded, flouted, yet still tormentingly necessary and important. All that delicious friction, those disputes that are the forerunner of passion were gone—forever. She was sorry for him—and very kind. His touchy pride recoiled, reading into her letter what she had never dreamt of putting into it, just because of the absence of that something—that old tremor—those old signs of his influence over her, which, of course, she would never let him see again.

All the same he had replied at once, asking if he might come and say good-bye before she left Scarfedale. And she had sent him a telegram—"Delighted—to-morrow—five o'clock."

And he was going—out of a kind of recklessness—kind of obstinate recoil against the sorrowful or depressing circumstance of life. He had given up all thoughts of trying to win her back, even if there were any chance of it. His pride would not let him sue as a pauper; and of course the Langmoors to whom she was going—he understood—from Scarfedale, would take good care she did not throw herself away. Quite right too. Very likely the Tamworths would capture her; and Bletchley was quite a nice fellow.

When he did see her, what could they talk about? Radowitz?

He would like to send a message through her to Radowitz—to say something—

What could he say? He had seen Radowitz for a few minutes after the inquest—to thank him for his evidence—and for what he had done for Sir Arthur. Both had hurried through it. Falloden had seemed to himself stricken with aphasia. His mouth was dry, his tongue useless. And Radowitz had been all nerves, a nickering colour—good God, how deathly he looked!

Afterwards he had begun a letter to Radowitz, and had toiled at it, sometimes at dead of night and in a feverish heat of brain. But he had never finished or sent it. What was the use? Nothing was changed. That black sling and the damaged hand in it stood for one of those hard facts that no wishing, and no sentimentalising, and no remorse could get over.

"I wish to God I had let him alone!"

That now was the frequent and bitter cry of Falloden's inmost being. Trouble and the sight of trouble—sorrow—and death—had been to him, as to other men, sobering and astonishing facts. The most decisive effect of them had been to make him vulnerable, to break through the hard defences of pride and custom, so that he realised what he had done. And this realisation was fast becoming a more acute and haunting thing than anything else. It constantly drove out the poignant recollection of his father's death, or the dull sense of financial loss and catastrophe. Loss and catastrophe might be at some distant time made good. But what could ever give Radowitz back his art—his career—his natural object in life? The hatches of the present had just got to be closed over this ugly, irreparable thing. "I can't undo it—nothing can ever be undone. But I can't spend my life in repenting it; one must just go forward, and not let that, or anything else, hamstring a man who has got his fight to fight, and can't get out of it."

Undo it? No. But were no, even partial, amends possible?—nothing that could be offered, or done, or said?—nothing that would give Constance Bledlow pleasure, or change her opinion?—efface that shrinking in her, of which he hated to think?

He cudgelled his brains, but could think of nothing.

Money, of course, was of no use, even if he still possessed it. Radowitz, in all matters connected with money, was hypersensitive and touchy. It was well known that he had private means; and it was certainly probable that he was now the richer man of the two.

No—there was nothing to be done. He had maimed forever the vital, energising impulse in another human being, and it could never be repaired. "His poor music!—murdered"—the words from Constance Bledlow's horror-stricken letter were always in his mind. And the day after the inquest on Sir Arthur, he had had some conversation on the medical points of his father's case, and on the light thrown on them by Radowitz's evidence, with the doctor who was then attending Lady Laura, and had, it appeared, been several times called in by Sorell during the preceding weeks to see Radowitz and report on the progress of the hand. "A bad business!" said the young man, who had intelligence and was fresh from hospital—"and awful hard luck!—he might have hurt his hand in a score of ways and still have recovered the use of it, but with this particular injury"—he shook his head—"nothing to be done! And the worst of it is that a trouble like this, which cuts across a man's career, goes so deep. The thing I should be most afraid of is his general health. You can see that he's delicate—narrow-chested—a bundle of nerves. It might be phthisis—it might be"—he shrugged his shoulders—"well, depression, bad neurasthenia. And the poor lad seems to have no family—no mother or sisters—to look after him. But he'll want a lot of care, if he's to pull round again. An Oxford row, wasn't it? Abominable!"

But here the sudden incursion of Lady Laura's maid to ask a question for her mistress had diverted the doctor's thoughts and spared Falloden reply.

* * * * *

A little later, he was riding slowly up the side of the moor towards Scarfedale, looking down on a landscape which since his childhood had been so intimate and familiar a part of himself that the thought of being wrenched away from it, immediately and for good, seemed merely absurd.

September was nearly gone; and the trees had long passed out of their August monotony, and were already prophetic of the October blaze. The level afternoon light was searching out the different planes of distance, giving to each hedgerow, elm or oak, a separate force and kingship: and the golden or bronze shades, which were day by day stealing through the woods, made gorgeous marriage with the evening purple. The castle, as he gazed back upon it, had sunk into the shadows, a dim magnificent ghost, seen through mist, like the Rhine maidens through the blue water.

And there it would stand, perhaps for generations yet, long after he and his kindred knew it no more. What did the plight of its last owner matter to it, or to the woods and hills? He tried to think of that valley a hundred years hence—a thousand!—and felt himself the merest insect crawling on the face of this old world, which is yet so young. But only for a moment. Rushing back, came the proud, resisting sense of personality—of man's dominance over nature—of the Nietzschean "will to power." To be strong, to be sufficient to one's self; not to yield, but to be forever counterattacking circumstance, so as to be the master of circumstance, whatever blows it might choose to strike—that seemed to be the best, the only creed left to him.

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 circumstance 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 circumstances 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 grass, 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 grass.

Radowitz grew paler still as he reached Connie. He gave Falloden a short, embarrassed 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 passionately! 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 grass, 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.

Again the absurd idea emerged in Falloden's consciousness; and this time it seemed to find its own expression, and to be merely making use of his voice, which he heard as though it were some one else's.

He bent over towards Radowitz.

"Would you care to share the cottage with me?" he said abruptly. "I want to find a place to read in—out of Oxford."

Radowitz looked up, amazed—speechless! Falloden's eyes met Otto's steadily. The boy turned away. Suddenly he covered his face with his free hand.

"Why did you hate me so?" he said, breathing quickly. "What had I done to you?"

"I didn't hate you," said Falloden thickly. "I was mad."

"Because you were jealous? What a fool you were! She never cared a brass farthing for me—except as she, does now. She would like to nurse me—and give me back my music. But she can't—and you can't."

There was silence again. Otto's chest heaved. As far as he could with his one hand, he hid the tears in his eyes from his companion. And at last he shook off emotion—with a laugh in which there was no mirth.

"Well, at least, I shouldn't make such a row now as I used to do—practising."

Falloden understood his reference to the soda-water bottle fusillade, by which the "bloods," in their first attack upon him, had tried to silence his piano.

"Can't you play at all?" he said at last, choosing the easiest of several remarks that presented themselves.

"I get about somehow on the keys. It's better than nothing. And I'm writing something for my degree. It's rather good. If I could only keep well!" said the boy impatiently. "It's this damned health that gets in the way."

Then he threw himself back in his chair, all the melancholy of his face suddenly breaking up, the eyes sparkling.

"Suppose I set up one of those automatic pianos they're now talking about—could you stand that?"

"I would have a room where I didn't hear it. That would be all right."

"There's a wonderful idea I heard of from Paris a week or two ago," said Otto excitedly—"a marvellous electric invention a man's at work on, where you only turn a handle, or press a button, and you get Rubinstein—or Madame Schumann or my country-man, Paderewski, who's going to beat everybody. It isn't finished yet. But it won't be for the likes of me. It'll cost at least a thousand pounds."

"They'll get cheaper," said Falloden, his chin in his hands, elbows on knees, and eyes fixed on his companion. It seemed to him he was talking in a dream, so strange was this thing he had proposed; which apparently was going to come to pass. At any rate Radowitz had not refused. He sat with the dachshund on his knees, alternately pulling out and folding its long ears. He seemed to be, all in a moment, in high spirits, and when he saw Connie coming back through the garden gate, with a shy, hesitating step, he sprang up eagerly to greet her. But there was another figure behind her. It was Sorell; and at sight of him "something sealed" the boy's lips. He looked round at Falloden, and dropped back into his chair.

Falloden rose from his seat abruptly. A formal and scarcely perceptible greeting passed between him and Sorell. All Falloden's irritable self-consciousness rushed back upon him as he recognised the St. Cyprian tutor. He was not going to stay and cry peccavi any more in the presence of a bloodless prig, for whom Oxford was the world. But it was bitter to him all the same to leave him in possession of the garden and Connie Bledlow's company.

"Thank you—I must go," he said brusquely, as Connie tried to detain him. "There is so much to do nowadays. I shall be leaving Flood next week. The agent will be in charge."

"Leaving—for good?" she asked, in her appealing voice, as they stood apart.

"Probably—for good."

"I don't know how to say—how sorry I am!"

"Thank you. But I am glad it's over. When you get back to Oxford—I shall venture to come and call."

"That's a promise," she said, smiling at him. "Where will you be?"

"Ask Otto Radowitz! Good-bye!"

Her start of surprise pleased him. He approached Radowitz. "Shall I hear from you?" he said stiffly.

"Certainly!" The boy looked up. "I will write to-morrow."

* * * * *

The garden door had no sooner closed on Falloden than Radowitz threw himself back, and went into a fit of laughter, curious, hollow laughter.

Sorell looked at him anxiously.

"What's the meaning of that, Otto?"

"You'll laugh, when you hear! Falloden and I are going to set up house together, in the cottage on Boar's Hill. He's going to read—and I'm to be allowed a piano, and a piano-player. Queer, isn't it?"

"My dear Otto!" cried Sorell, in dismay. "What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, he offered it—said he'd come and look after me. I don't know what possessed him—nor me either. I didn't exactly accept, but I shall accept. Why shouldn't I?"

"Because Falloden's the last person in the world to look after anybody—least of all, you!" said Sorell with indignant energy. "But of course it's a joke! You mean it for a joke. If he proposed it, it was like his audacity. Nobody would, who had a shred of delicacy. I suppose he wants to disarm public opinion!"

Radowitz looked oddly at Sorell from under his finely marked eyebrows.

"I don't believe he cares a hang for public opinion," he said slowly. "Nor do I. If you could come, of course that would settle it. And if you won't come to see me, supposing Falloden and I do share diggings, that settles it too. But you will come, old man—you will come!"

And he nodded, smiling, at hid quasi-guardian. Neither of them noticed Connie. Yet she had hung absorbed on their conversation, the breath fluttering on her parted lips. And when their talk paused, she bent forward, and laid her hand on Sorell's arm:

"Let him!" she said pleadingly—"let him do it!"

Sorell looked at her in troubled perplexity. "Let Douglas Falloden make some amends to his victim; if he can, and will. Don't be so unkind as to prevent it!" That, he supposed, was what she meant. It seemed to him the mere sentimental unreason of the young girl, who will not believe that there is any irrevocableness in things at all, till life teaches her.

Radowitz too! What folly, what mistaken religiosity could make him dream of consenting to such a house-mate through this winter which might be his last!

Monstrous! What kind of qualities had Falloden to fit him for such a task? All very well, indeed, that he should feel remorse! Sorell hoped he might feel it a good deal more sharply yet. But that he should ease his remorse at Otto's expense, by offering what he could never fulfil, and by taking the place of some one on whom Otto could have really leaned—that seemed to Sorell all of a piece with the man's egotism, his epicurean impatience of anything that permanently made him uncomfortable or unhappy. He put something of this into impetuous words as well as he could. But Otto listened in silence. So did Constance. And Sorell presently felt that there was a secret bond between them.

* * * * *

Before the aunts returned, the rectory pony-carriage came for Radowitz, who was not strong enough to walk both ways. Sorell and Constance were left alone.

Sorell, observing her, was struck anew by the signs of change and development in her. It was as though her mother and her mother's soul showed through the girl's slighter temperament. The old satiric aloofness in Connie's brown eyes, an expression all her own, and not her mother's, seemed to have slipped away; Sorell missed it. Ella Risborough's sympathetic charm had replaced it, but with suggestions of hidden conflict and suffering, of which Lady Risborough's bright sweetness had known nothing. It was borne in upon him that, since her arrival in Oxford, Constance had gone through a great deal, and gone through it alone. For after all what had his efforts amounted to? What can a man friend do for a young girl in the fermenting years of her youth! And when the man friend knows very well that, but for an iron force upon himself, he himself would be among her lovers? Sorell felt himself powerless—in all the greater matters—and was inclined to think that he deserved to be powerless. Yet he had done his best; and through his Greek lessons he humbly knew that he had helped her spiritual growth, just as the Greek immortals had helped and chastened his own youth. They had been reading Homer together—parts both of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"; and through "that ageless mouth of all the world," what splendid things had spoken to her!—Hector's courage, and Andromache's tenderness, the bitter sorrow of Priam, the pity of Achilles, mother love and wife love, death and the scorn of death. He had felt her glow and tremble in the grip of that supreme poetry; for himself he had found her the dearest and most responsive of pupils.

But what use was anything, if after all, as Radowitz vowed, she was in love with Douglas Falloden? The antagonism between the man of Scroll's type—disinterested, pure-minded, poetic, and liable, often, in action to the scrupulosity which destroys action; and the men of Falloden's type—strong, claimant, self-centred, arrogant, determined—is perennial. Nor can a man of the one type ever understand the attraction for women of the other.

Sorell sat on impatiently in the darkening garden, hoping always that Connie would explain, would confess; for he was certain that she had somehow schemed for this preposterous reconciliation—if it was a reconciliation. She wanted no doubt to heal Falloden's conscience, and so to comfort her own. And she would sacrifice Otto, if need be, in the process! He vowed to himself that he would prevent it, if he could.

Connie eyed him wistfully. Confidences seemed to be on her very lips; and then stopped there. In the end she neither explained nor confessed. But when he was gone, she walked up and down the lawn under the evening sky, her hands behind her—passionately dreaming.

She had never thought of any such plan as had actually sprung to light. And she understood Sorell's opposition.

All the same, her heart sang over it. When she had asked Radowitz and Douglas to meet, each unbeknown to the other, when she had sent away the kind old aunts and prepared it all, she had reckoned on powers of feeling in Falloden, in which apparently only she and Aunt Marcia believed; and she had counted on the mystical and religious fervour she had long since discovered in Radowitz. That night—after Sir Arthur's death—she had looked tremblingly into the boy's very soul, had perceived his wondering sense of a special message to him through what had happened, from a God who suffered and forgives.

Yes, she had tried to make peace.

And she guessed—the tears blinding her as she walked—at the true meaning of Falloden's sudden impulse, and Otto's consent. Falloden's was an impulse of repentance; and Otto's had been an impulse of pardon, in the Christian sense. "If I am to die, I will die at peace with him." Was that the thought—the tragic and touching thought—in the boy's mind?

As to Falloden, could he do it?—could he rise to the height of what was offered him? She prayed he might; she believed he could.

Her whole being was aflame. Douglas was no longer in love with her; that was clear. What matter, if he made peace with his own soul? As for her, she loved him with her whole heart, and meant to go on loving him, whatever any one might say. And that being so, she would of course never marry.

Could she ever make Nora understand the situation? By letter, it was certainly useless to try!



PART III



CHAPTER XVI

Constance Bledlow stepped out of the Bletchley train into the crowded Oxford station. Annette was behind her. As they made their way towards the luggage van, Connie saw a beckoning hand and face. They belonged to Nora Hooper, and in another minute Connie found herself taken possession of by her cousin. Nora was deeply sunburnt. Her colour was more garishly red and brown, her manner more trenchant than ever. At sight of Connie her face flushed with a sudden smile, as though the owner of the face could not help it. Yet they had only been a few minutes together before Connie had discovered that, beneath the sunburn, there was a look of tension and distress, and that the young brown eyes, usually so bright and bold, were dulled with fatigue. But to notice such things in Nora was only to be scorned. Connie held her tongue.

"Can't you leave Annette to bring the luggage, and let us walk up?" said Nora.

Connie assented, and the two girls were soon in the long and generally crowded street leading to the Cornmarket. Nora gave rapidly a little necessary information. Term had just begun, and Oxford was "dreadfully full." She had got another job of copying work at the Bodleian, for which she was being paid by the University Press, and what with that and the work for her coming exam, she was "pretty driven." But that was what suited her. Alice and her mother were "all right."

"And Uncle Ewen?" said Connie.

Nora paused a moment.

"Well, you won't think he looks any the better for his holiday," she said at last, with an attempt at a laugh. "And of course he's doing ten times too much work. Hang work! I loathe work: I want to 'do nothing forever and ever.'"

"Why don't you set about it then?" laughed Connie.

"Because—" Nora began impetuously; and then shut her lips. She diverged to the subject of Mr. Pryce. They had not seen or heard anything of him for weeks, she said, till he had paid them an evening call, the night before, the first evening of the new term.

Connie interrupted.

"Oh, but that reminds me," she said eagerly, "I've got an awfully nice letter—to-day—from Lord Glaramara. Mr. Pryce is to go up and see him."

Nora whistled.

"You have! Well, that settles it. He'll now graciously allow himself to propose. And then we shall all pretend to be greatly astonished. Alice will cry, and mother will say she 'never expected to lose her daughter so soon.' What a humbug everybody is!" said the child, bitterly, with more emphasis than grammar.

"But suppose he doesn't get anything!" cried Connie, alarmed at such a sudden jump from the possible to the certain.

"Oh, but he will! He's the kind of person that gets things," said Nora contemptuously. "Well, we wanted a bit of good news!"

Connie jumped at the opening.

"Dear Nora!—have things been going wrong? You look awfully tired. Do tell me!"

Nora checked herself at once. "Oh, not much more than usual," she said repellently. "And what about you, Connie? Aren't you very bored to be coming back here, after all your grand times?"

They had emerged into the Corn. Before them, was the old Church of St. Mary Magdalen, and the modern pile of Balliol. In the distance stretched the Broad, over which the October evening was darkening fast; the Sheldonian in the far distance, with its statued railing; and the gates of Trinity on the left. The air was full of bells, and the streets of undergraduates; a stream of young men taking fresh possession, as it were, of the grey city, which was their own as soon as they chose to come back to it. The Oxford damp, the Oxford mist, was everywhere, pierced by lamps, and window-lights, and the last red of a stormy sunset.

Connie drew in her breath.

"No, I am not sorry, I am very glad to be back—though my aunts have been great dears to me."

"I'll bet anything Annette isn't glad to be back—after the Langmoors!" said Nora grimly.

Connie laughed.

"She'll soon settle in. What do you think?" She slipped her arm into her cousin's. "I'm coming down to breakfast!"

"You're not! I never heard such nonsense! Why should you?"

Connie sighed.

"I think I must begin to do something."

"Do something! For goodness' sake, don't!" Nora's voice was fierce. "I did think you might be trusted!"

"To carry out your ideals? So kind of you!"

"If you take to muddling about with books and lectures and wearing ugly clothes, I give you up," said Nora firmly.

"Nora, dear, I'm the most shocking ignoramus. Mayn't I learn something?"

"Mr. Sorell may teach you Greek. I don't mind that."

Connie sighed again, and Nora stole a look at the small pale face under the sailor hat. It seemed to her that her cousin had somehow grown beautiful in these months of absence. On her arrival in May, Connie's good looks had been a freakish and variable thing, which could be often and easily disputed. She could always make a certain brilliant or bizarre effect, by virtue of her mere slenderness and delicacy, combined with the startling beauty of her eyes and hair. But the touch of sarcasm, of a half-hostile remoteness, in her look and manner, were often enough to belie the otherwise delightful impression of first youth, to suggest something older and sharper than her twenty years had any right to be. It meant that she had been brought up in a world of elder people, sharing from her teens in its half-amused, half-sceptical judgments of men and things. Nothing was to be seen of it in her roused moments of pleasure or enthusiasm; at other times it jarred, as though one caught a glimpse of autumn in the spring.

But since she and Nora had last met, something had happened. Some heat of feeling or of sympathy had fused in her the elements of being; so that a more human richness and warmth, a deeper and tenderer charm breathed from her whole aspect. Nora, though so much the younger, had hitherto been the comforter and sustainer of Connie; now for the first time, the tired girl felt an impulse—firmly held back—to throw her arms round Connie's neck and tell her own troubles.

She did not betray it, however. There were so many things she wanted to know. First—how was it that Connie had come back so soon? Nora understood there were invitations to the Tamworths and others. Mr. Sorell had reported that the Langmoors wished to carry their niece with them on a round of country-house visits in the autumn, and that Connie had firmly stuck to it that she was due at Oxford for the beginning of term.

"Why didn't you go," said Nora, half scoffing—"with all those frocks wasting in the drawers?"

Connie retorted that, as for parties, Oxford, had seemed to her in the summer term the most gay and giddy place she had ever been in, and that she had always understood that in the October and Lent terms people dined out every night.

"But all the same—one can think a little here," she said slowly.

"You didn't care a bit about that when you first came!" cried Nora. "You despised us because we weren't soldiers, or diplomats, or politicians. You thought we were a little priggish, provincial world where nothing mattered. You were sorry for us because we had only books and ideas!"

"I wasn't!" said Connie indignantly. "Only I didn't think Oxford was everything—and it isn't! Nora!"—she looked round the Oxford street with a sudden ardour, her eyes running over the groups of undergraduates hurrying back to hall—"do you think these English boys could ever—well, fight—and die—for what you call ideas—for their country—as Otto Radowitz could die for Poland?"

"Try them!" The reply rang out defiantly. Connie laughed.

"They'll never have the chance. Who'll ever attack England? If we had only something—something splendid, and not too far away!—to look back upon, as the Italians look back on Garibaldi—or to long and to suffer for, as the Poles long and suffer for Poland!"

"We shall some day!" said Nora hopefully. "Mr. Sorell says every nation gets its turn to fight for its life. I suppose Otto Radowitz has been talking Poland to you?"

"He talks it—and he lives it," said Connie, with emphasis. "It's marvellous!—it shames one."

Nora shrugged her shoulders.

"But what can he do—with his poor hand! You know Mr. Sorell has taken a cottage for him at Boar's Hill—above Hinksey?"

Yes, Connie knew. She seemed suddenly on her guard.

"But he can't live alone?" said Nora. "Who on earth's going to look after him?"

Connie hesitated. Down a side street she perceived the stately front of Marmion, and at the same moment a tall man emerging from the dusk crossed the street and entered the Marmion gate. Her heart leapt. No! Absurd! He and Otto had not arrived yet. But already the Oxford dark, and the beautiful Oxford distances were peopled for her with visions and prophecies of hope. The old and famous city, that had seen so much youth bloom and pass, spoke magic things to her with its wise, friendly voice.

Aloud, she said—

"You haven't heard? Mr. Falloden's going to live with him."

Nora stopped in stupefaction.

"What?"

Connie repeated the information—adding—

"I dare say Mr. Sorell didn't speak of it to you, because—he hates it."

"I suppose it's just a theatrical coup," said Nora, passionately, as they walked on—"to impress the public."

"It isn't!—it isn't anything of the kind. And Otto had only to say no."

"It's ridiculous!—preposterous! They'll clash all day long."

Connie replied with difficulty, as though she had so pondered and discussed this matter with herself that every opinion about it seemed equally reasonable.

"I don't think so. Otto wishes it."

"But why—but why?" insisted Nora. "Oh, Connie!—as if Douglas Falloden could look after anybody but himself!"

Then she repented a little. Connie smiled, rather coldly.

"He looked after his father," she said quietly. "I told you all that in my letters. And you forget how it was—that he and Otto came across each other again."

Nora warmly declared that she had not forgotten it, but that it did not seem to her to have anything to do with the extraordinary proposal that the man more responsible than any one else for the maiming—possibly for the death—of Otto Radowitz, if all one heard about him were true, should be now installed as his companion and guardian during these critical months.

She talked with obvious and rather angry common sense, as one who had not passed her eighteenth birthday for nothing.

But Connie fell silent. She would not discuss it, and Nora was obliged to let the subject drop.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hooper, whose pinched face had grown visibly older, received her husband's niece with an evident wish to be kind. Alice, too, was almost affectionate, and Uncle Ewen came hurrying out of his study to greet her. But Connie had not been an hour in the house before she had perceived that everybody in it was preoccupied and unhappy; unless, indeed, it were Alice, who had evidently private thoughts of her own, which, to a certain extent, released her from the family worries.

What was the matter? She was determined to know.

It happened that she and Alice went up to bed together. Nora had been closeted with her father in the little schoolroom on the ground floor, since nine o'clock, and when Connie proposed to look in and wish them good night, Alice said uncomfortably—

"Better not. They're—they're very busy."

Connie ruminated. At the top of the stairs, she turned—

"Look here—do come in to me, and have a talk!"

Alice agreed, after a moment's hesitation. There had never been any beginnings of intimacy between her and Connie, and she took Connie's advance awkwardly.

The two girls were however soon seated in Connie's room, where a blazing fire defied the sudden cold of a raw and bleak October. The light danced on Alice's beady black eyes, and arched brows, on her thin but very red lips, on the bright patch of colour in each cheek. She was more than ever like a Watteau sketch in black chalk, heightened with red, and the dress she wore, cut after the pattern of an eighteenth-century sacque, according to an Oxford fashion of that day, fell in admirably with the natural effect. Connie had very soon taken off her tea-gown, loosened and shaken out her hair, and put on a white garment in which she felt at ease. Alice noticed, as Nora had done, that Connie was fast becoming a beauty; but whether the indisputable fact was to be welcomed or resented had still to be decided.

Connie had no sooner settled herself on the small sofa she had managed to fit into her room than she sprang up again.

"Stupid!—where are those letters!" She rummaged in various drawers and bags, hit upon what she wanted, after an impetuous hunt, and returned to the fire.

"Do you know I think Mr. Pryce has a good chance of that post? I got this to-day."

She held out a letter, smiling. Alice flushed and took it. It was from Lord Glaramara, and it concerned that same post in the Conservative Central Office on which Herbert Pryce had had his eyes for some time. The man holding it had been "going" for months, but was now, at last, gone. The post was vacant, and Connie, who had a pretty natural turn for wire-pulling, fostered by her Italian bringing up, had been trying her hand, both with the Chancellor and her Uncle Langmoor.

"You little intriguer!" wrote Lord Glaramara—"I will do what I can. Your man sounds very suitable. If he isn't, I can tell you plainly he won't get the post. Neither political party can afford to employ fools just now. But if he is what you say—well, we shall see! Send him up to see me, at the House of Lords, almost any evening next week. He'll have to take his chance, of course, of finding me free. If I cotton to him, I'll send him on to somebody else. And—don't talk about it! Your letter was just like your mother. She had an art of doing these things!"

Alice read and reread the note. When she looked up from it, it was with a rather flustered face.

"Awfully good of you, Connie! May I show it—to Mr. Pryce?"

"Yes—but get it back. Tell him to write to Lord Glaramara to-morrow. Well, now then"—Connie discovered and lit a cigarette, the sight of which stirred in Alice a kind of fascinated disapproval,—"now then, tell me what's the matter!—why Uncle Ewen looks as if he hadn't had a day's rest since last term, and Nora's so glum—and why he and she go sitting up at night together when they ought to be in their beds?"

Connie's little woman-of-the-world air—very evident in this speech—which had always provoked Alice in their earlier acquaintance, passed now unnoticed. Miss Hooper sat perplexed and hesitating, staring into the fire. But with that note in her pocket, Alice felt herself at once in a new and detached position towards her family.

"It's money, of course," she said at last, her white brow puckering. "It's not only bills—they're dreadfully worrying!—we seem never to get free from them, but it's something else—something quite new—which has only happened, lately. There is an old loan from the bank that has been going on for years. Father had almost forgotten it, and now they're pressing him. It's dreadful. They know we're so hard up."

Connie in her turn looked perplexed. It was always difficult for her to realise financial trouble on a small scale. Ruin on the Falloden scale was intelligible to one who had heard much talk of the bankruptcies of some of the great Roman families. But the carking care that may come from lack of a few hundred pounds, this the Risboroughs' daughter had to learn; and she put her mind to it eagerly.

She propped her small chin on her hands, while Alice told her tale. Apparently the improvement in the family finance, caused by Connie's three hundred, had been the merest temporary thing. The Reader's creditors had been held off for a few months; but the rain of tradesmen's letters had been lately incessant. And the situation had been greatly worsened by a blow which had fallen just before the opening of term.

In a former crisis, five years before this date, a compassionate cousin, one of the few well-to-do relations that Mrs. Hooper possessed, had come to the rescue, and had given his name to the Hoopers' bankers as guarantee for a loan of L500. The loan was to have been repaid by yearly instalments. But the instalments had not been paid, and the cousin had most unexpectedly died of apoplexy during September, after three days' illness. His heir would have nothing to say to the guarantee, and the bank was pressing for repayment, in terms made all the harsher by the existence of an overdraft, which the local manager knew in his financial conscience ought not to have been allowed. His letters were now so many sword-thrusts; and post-time was a time of terror.

"Father doesn't know what to do," said Alice despondently. "He and Nora spend all their time trying to think of some way out. Father got his salary the other day, and never put it into the bank at all. We must have something to live on. None"—she hesitated—"none of the tradesmen will give us any credit." She flushed deeply over the confession.

"Goodness!" said Connie, opening her eyes still wider.

"But if Nora knows that I've been telling you"—cried Alice—"she'll never forgive me. She made me promise I wouldn't tell you. But how can you help knowing? If father's made a bankrupt, it wouldn't be very nice for you! How could you go on living with us? Nora thinks she's going to earn money—that father can sell two wretched little books—and we can go and live in a tiny house on the Cowley Road—and—and—all sorts of absurd things!"

"But Why is it Nora that has to settle all these things?" asked Connie in bewilderment. "Why doesn't your mother—"

"Oh, because mother doesn't know anything about the bills," interrupted Alice. "She never can do a sum—or add up anything—and I'm no use at it either. Nora took it all over last year, and she won't let even me help her. She makes out the most wonderful statements—she made out a fresh one to-day—that's why she had a headache when she came to meet you. But what's the good of statements? They won't pay the bank."

"But why—why—" repeated Connie, and then stopped, lest she should hurt Alice's feelings.

"Why did we get into debt? I'm sure I don't know!" Alice shook her head helplessly. "We never seemed to have anything extravagant."

These things were beyond Connie's understanding. She gave it up. But her mind impetuously ran forward.

"How much is wanted altogether?"

Alice, reluctantly, named a sum not much short of a thousand pounds.

"Isn't it awful?"

She sighed deeply. Yet already she seemed to be talking of other people's affairs!

"We can't ever do it. It's hopeless. Papa's taken two little school-books to do. They'll kill him with work, and will hardly bring in anything. And he's full up with horrid exams and lectures. He'll break down, and it all makes him so miserable, because he can't really do the work the University pays him to do. And he's never been abroad—even to Rome. And as to Greece! It's dreadful!" she repeated mechanically.

Connie sprang up and began to pace the little room. The firelight played on her mop of brown hair, bringing out its golden shades, and on the charming pensiveness of her face. Alice watched her, thinking "She could do it all, if she chose!" But she didn't dare to say anything, for fear of Nora.

Presently Connie gave a great stretch.

"It's damnable!" she said, with energy.

Alice's instinct recoiled from the strong word. It wasn't the least necessary, she thought, to talk in that way.

Connie made a good many more enquiries—elicited a good many more facts. Then suddenly she brought her pacing to a stop.

"Look here—we must go to bed!—or Nora will be after us."

Alice went obediently. As soon as the door had shut upon her, Connie went to a drawer in her writing table, and took out her bank-book. It had returned that morning and she had not troubled to look at it. There was always enough for what she wanted.

Heavens!—what a balance. She had quite forgotten a wind-fall which had come lately—some complicated transaction relating to a great industrial company in which she had shares and which had lately been giving birth to other subsidiary companies, and somehow the original shareholders, of whom Lord Risborough had been one, or their heirs and representatives, had profited greatly by the business. It had all been managed for her by her father's lawyer, and of course by Uncle Ewen. The money had been paid temporarily in to her own account, till the lawyer could make some enquiries about a fresh investment.

But it was her own money. She was entitled to—under the terms of her father's letter to Uncle Ewen—to do what she liked with it. And even without it, there was enough in the bank. Enough for this—and for another purpose also, which lay even closer to her heart.

"I don't want any more new gowns for six months," she decided peremptorily. "It's disgusting to be so well off. Well, now,—I wonder—I wonder where Nora keeps those statements that Alice talks about?"

In the schoolroom of course. But not under lock and key. Nobody ever locked drawers in that house. It was part of the general happy-go-luckishness of the family.

Connie made up the fire, and sat over it, thinking hard. A new cheque-book, too, had arrived with the bank-book. That was useful.

She waited till she heard the schoolroom door open, and Nora come upstairs, followed soon by the slow and weary step of Uncle Ewen. Connie had already lowered her gas before Nora reached the top landing.

The house was very soon silent. Connie turned her light on again, and waited. By the time Big Ben had struck one o'clock, she thought it would be safe to venture.

She opened her door with trembling, careful fingers, slipped off her shoes, took a candle and stole downstairs. The schoolroom door creaked odiously. But soon she was inside and looking about her.

There was Nora's table, piled high with the books and note-books of her English literature work. Everything else had been put away. But the top drawer of the table was unlocked. There was a key in it, but it would not turn, being out of repair, like so much else in the house.

Connie, full of qualms, slowly opened the drawer. It was horrid—horrid—to do such things!—but what other way was there? Nora must be presented with the fait accompli, otherwise she would upset everything—poor old darling!

Some loose sheets lay on the top of the papers in the drawer. The first was covered with figures and calculations that told nothing. Connie lifted it, and there, beneath, lay Nora's latest "statement," at which she and her father had no doubt been working that very night. It was headed "List of Liabilities," and in it every debt, headed by the bank claim which had broken the family back, was accurately and clearly stated in Nora's best hand. The total at the foot evoked a low whistle from Connie. How had it come about? In spite of her luxurious bringing up, there was a shrewd element—an element of competence—in the girl's developing character, which was inclined to suggest that there need be no more difficulty in living on seven hundred a year than seven thousand, if you knew you had to do it. Then she rebuked herself fiercely for a prig—"You just try it!—you Pharisee, you!" And she thought of her own dressmakers' and milliners' bills, and became in the end quite pitiful over Aunt Ellen's moderation. After all it might have been two thousand instead of one! Of course it was all Aunt Ellen's muddling, and Uncle Ewen's absent-mindedness.

She shaded her candle, and in a guilty hurry copied down the total on a slip of paper lying on the table, and took the address of Uncle Ewen's bank from the outside of the pass-book lying beside the bills. Having done that, she Closed the drawer again, and crept upstairs like the criminal she felt herself. Her small feet in their thin stockings seemed to her excited ears to be making the most hideous and unnatural noise on every step. If Nora heard!

At last she was safe in her own room again. The door was locked, and the more agreeable part of the crime began. She drew out the new cheque-book lying in her own drawer, and very slowly and deliberately wrote a cheque. Then she put it up, with a few covering words—anxiously considered—and addressed the envelope to the Oxford branch of a well-known banking firm, her father's bankers, to which her own account had been transferred on her arrival at Oxford. Ewen Hooper had scrupulously refrained from recommending his own bank, lest he should profit indirectly by his niece's wealth.

"Annette shall take it," she thought, "first thing. Oh, what a row there'll be!"

And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed.

And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen's affairs. Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming inhabitants. And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say—"I oughtn't to be meddling with other people's lives like this. I don't know enough. I'm too young! I want somebody to show me—I do!"

* * * * *

The following day passed heavily in the Hooper household. Nora and her father were closeted together all the morning; and there was a sense of brooding calamity in the air. Alice and Connie avoided each other, and Connie asked no questions. After luncheon Sorell called. He found Connie in the drawing-room alone, and gave her the news she was pining for. As Nora had reported, a cottage on Boar's Hill had been taken. It belonged to the head of an Oxford college, who had spent the preceding winter there for his health, but had now been ordered abroad. It was very small, pleasantly furnished, and had a glorious view over Oxford in the hollow, the wooded lines of Garsington and Nuneham, and the distant ridges of the Chilterns. Radowitz was expected the following day, and his old college servant, with a woman to cook and do housework, had been found to look after him. He was working hard, at his symphony, and was on the whole much the same in health—very frail and often extremely irritable; with alternations of cheerfulness and depression.

"And Mr. Falloden?" Connie ventured.

"He's coming soon—I didn't ask," said Sorell shortly. "That arrangement won't last long."

Connie hesitated.

"But don't wish it to fail!" she said piteously.

"I think the sooner it is over the better," said Sorell, with rather stern decision. "Falloden ought never to have made the proposal, and it was mere caprice in Otto to accept it. But you know what I think. I shall watch the whole thing very anxiously; and try to have some one ready to put into Falloden's place—when it breaks down. Mrs. Mulholland and I have it in hand. She'll take Otto up to the cottage to-morrow, and means to mother Radowitz as much as he'll let her. Now then"—he changed the subject with a smile—"are you going to enjoy your winter term?"

His dark eyes, as she met them, were full of an anxious affection.

"I have forgotten all my Greek!"

"Oh no—not in a month. Prepare me a hundred lines of the 'Odyssey,' Book VI.! Next week I shall have some time. This first week is always a drive. Miss Nora says she'll go on again."

"Does she? She seems so—so busy."

"Ah, yes—she's got some work for the University Press. Plucky little thing! But she mustn't overdo it."

Connie dropped the subject. These conferences in the study, which had gone on all day, had nothing to do with Nora's work for the Press—that she was certain of. But she only said—holding out her hands, with the free gesture that was natural to her—

"I wish some one would give me the chance of 'overdoing it'! Do set me to work—hard work! The sun never shines here."

Her eyes wandered petulantly to the rainy sky outside, and the high-walled college opposite.

"Southerner! Wait till you see it shining on the Virginia creeper in our garden quad. Oxford is a dream in October!—just for a week or two, till the leaves fall. November is dreary, I admit. All the same—try and be happy!"

He looked at her gravely and tenderly. She coloured a little as she withdrew her hands.

"Happy? That doesn't matter—does it? But perhaps for a change—one might try—"

"Try what?"

"Well!"—she laughed, but he thought there were tears in her eyes—"to do something—for somebody—occasionally."

"Ask Mrs. Mulholland! She has a genius for that kind of thing. Teach some of her orphans!"

"I couldn't! They'd find me out."

Sorell, rather puzzled, suggested that she might become a Home Student like Nora, and go in for a Literature or Modern History Certificate. Connie, who was now sitting moodily over a grate with no fire in it, with her chin in her hands, only shook her head.

"I don't know anything—I never learnt anything. And everybody here's so appallingly clever!"

Then she declared that she would go and have tea with the Master of Beaumont, and ask his advice. "He told me to learn something"—the tone was one of depression, passing into rebellion—"but I don't want to learn anything!—I want to do something!"

Sorell laughed at her.

"Learning is doing!"

"That's what Oxford people think," she said defiantly. "I don't agree with them."

"What do you mean by 'doing'?"

Connie poked an imaginary fire.

"Making myself happy"—she said slowly, "and—and a few other people!"

Sorell laughed again. Then rising to take his leave, he stooped over her.

"Make me happy by undoing that stroke of yours at Boar's Hill!"

Connie raised herself, and looked at him steadily.

Then gravely and decisively she shook her head.

"Not at all! I shall keep an eye on it!—so must you!"

Then, suddenly, she smiled—the softest, most radiant smile, as though some hope within, far within, looked out. It was gone in a moment, and Sorell went his way; but as one who had been the spectator of an event.

* * * * *

After his departure Connie sat on in the cold room, thinking about Sorell. She was devoted to him—he was the noblest, dearest person. She wished dreadfully to please him. But she wasn't going to let him—well, what?—to let him interfere with that passionate purpose which seemed to be beating in her, and through her, like a living thing, though as yet she had but vaguely defined it even to herself.

* * * * *

After tea, which Mrs. Hooper dispensed with red eyes, and at which neither Nora nor Dr. Hooper appeared, Constance found a novel, and established herself in the deserted schoolroom. She couldn't go out. She was on the watch for a letter that might arrive. The two banks were only a stone's throw apart. The local post should deliver that letter about six.

Once Nora looked in to find a document, and was astonished to see Connie there. But she was evidently too harassed and miserable to talk. Connie listened uneasily to the opening and shutting of a drawer, with which she was already acquainted. Then Nora disappeared again. What were they trying to do, poor dears!—Nora, and Uncle Ewen? What could they do?

The autumn evening darkened slowly. At last!—a ring and a double knock. The study door opened, and Connie heard Nora's step, and the click of the letter-box. The study door closed again.

Connie put down her novel and listened. Her hands trembled. She was full indeed of qualms and compunctions. Would they be angry with her? She had meant it well.

Footsteps approaching—not Nora's.

Uncle Ewen stood in the doorway—looking very pale and strained.

"Connie, would you mind coming into my study? Something rather strange has happened."

Connie got up and slowly followed him across the hall. As she entered the study, she saw Nora, with blazing eyes and cheeks, standing by her father's writing-table, aglow with anger or excitement—or both. She looked at Connie as at an enemy, and Connie flushed a bright pink.

Uncle Ewen shut the door, and addressed his niece. "My dear Connie, I want you, if you can—to throw some light on a letter I have just received. Both Nora and I suspect your hand in it. If so, you have done something I—I can't permit."

He held out a letter, which Connie took like a culprit. It was a communication from his Oxford bankers to Professor Hooper, to the effect that, a sum of L1100 having been paid in to his credit by a person who desired to remain unknown, his debt to them was covered, and his account showed a balance of about six hundred pounds.

"My dear!"—his voice and hand shook—"is that your doing?"

"Of course it is!" interrupted Nora passionately. "Look at her, father! How dared you, Connie, do such a thing without a word to father! It's a shame—a disgrace! We could have found a way out—we could!"

And the poor child, worn out with anxiety and lack of sleep, and in her sensitive pride and misery ready to turn on Connie and rend her for having dared thus to play Lady Bountiful without warning or permission, sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and burst out sobbing.

Connie handed back the letter, and hung her head. "Won't you—won't you let the person—who—sent the money remain unknown, Uncle Ewen?—as they wished to be?"

Uncle Ewen sat down before his writing-table, and he also buried his face in his hands. Connie stood between them—as it were a prisoner at the bar—looking now very white and childish.

"Dear Uncle Ewen—"

"How did you guess?" said Nora vehemently, uncovering her face—"I never said a word to you!"

Connie gave a tremulous laugh.

"Do you think I couldn't see that you were all dreadfully unhappy about something? I—I made Alice tell me—"

"Alice is a sieve!" cried Nora. "I knew, father, we could never trust her."

"And then"—Connie went on—"I—I did an awful thing. I'd better tell you. I came and looked at Nora's papers—in the schoolroom drawer. I saw that." She pointed penitentially to a sheet of figures lying on the study table.

Both Nora and her uncle looked up in amazement, staring at her.

"It was at night," she said hurriedly—"last night. Oh, I put it all back!"—she turned, pleading, to Nora—"just as I found it. You shouldn't be angry with me—you shouldn't indeed!"

Then her own voice began to shake. She came and laid her hand on her uncle's shoulder.

"Dear Uncle Ewen—you know, I had that extra money! What did I want with it? Just think—if it had been mamma! Wouldn't you have let her help? You know you would! You couldn't have been so unkind. Well then, I knew it would be no good, if I came and asked you—you wouldn't have let me. So I—well, I just did it!"