Mrs. Humphry Ward

“ 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? ”

“ And now she was going to do this reckless thing, out of sheer wilfulness, sheer thirst for adventure. She had always been a spoilt child, brought up with boundless indulgence, and accustomed to all the excitements of life. It looked as though Douglas Falloden were to be her excitement in Oxford. Girls like the two Miss Mansons might take possession of him in public, so long as she commanded those undiscovered rides and talks which revealed the real man. At the same time, he should never be able to feel secure that she would do his bidding, or keep appointments. ”

“ If she loved a man she would stand by him. No, it was something known only to her and himself in all those crowded rooms. As soon as he set eyes on her, the vision of Radowitz’s bleeding hand and prostrate form had emerged in consciousness—a haunting presence, blurring the many-coloured movements of the ballroom.
And yet it was not that maimed hand, either, which stood between himself and Constance. It was rather the spiritual fact behind the visible—that instinct of fierce, tyrannical cruelty which he had felt as he laid his hands on Radowitz in the Oxford dawn a month ago. ”

“ It alone nourishes amid the wilderness of brick; and one can imagine it as feeling a positive satisfaction, a quiet triumph, in the absence of its stronger rivals, oak and beech and ash, like some gentle human life escaped from the tyrannies of competition. These two great trees were the guardian genii of poor Otto’s afternoons. They brought him shade and coolness, even in the hottest hours of a burning June.
Connie sat down beside him, and they looked at each other in silence. Sorell, after a few gay words, had left them together. Radowitz held her hand in his own left. ”

“ The dance they watched was the very embodiment of youth, and youth’s delight in itself. Constance knew, besides, that Falloden was looking on, and the knowledge gave a deeper colour to her cheek, a touch of wildness to her perfect grace of limb and movement. Radowitz danced the Polish dance with a number of steps and gestures unknown to an English ballroom, as he had learnt them in his childhood from a Polish dancing-mistress; Constance, with the instinct of her foreign training, adapted herself to him, and the result was enchanting. ”

“ Whenever the revolution comes, their heads will be the first to go! At the same time they know—the clever ones—that they can’t keep their place except by borrowing the weapons of the class they really fear—the professional class—the writers and thinkers—the lawyers and journalists. And so they take some trouble to sharpen their own brains. And the cleverer they are, the more tyrannous they are. And that, if you please, is Mr. Douglas Falloden!”
“I wonder why you are so angry with him, my dear Sarah,” said Miss Wenlock mildly.
“Because he has been bullying my nice boy, Radowitz!” ”

“ She approached Nora, timidly.
“Nora!”
Nora rose. Her face was stained with tears.
“It’s all wrong,” she said heavily—“it’s all wrong. But—I give in. What I said was a lie. There is nothing else in the world that we could possibly do.”
And she rushed out of the room without another word. Connie looked wistfully after her. Nora’s pain in receiving had stirred in her the shame-faced distress in giving that lives in generous souls. “Why should I have more than they?”
She stole out after Nora. Ewen Hooper was left staring at the letter from his bankers, and trying to collect his thoughts. ”

“ Meanwhile—what was not so evident to this large-hearted observer—Otto was more than willing—he burned—to play his part. All that is mystical and passionate in the soul of a Polish Catholic, had been stirred in him by his accident, his growing premonition of short life, the bitterness of his calamity, the suddenness of his change of heart towards Falloden.
“My future is wrecked. I shall never live to be old. I shall never be a great musician. But I mean to live long enough to make Constance happy! She shall talk of me to her children. ”

“ You know our Polish blood runs hotter than yours. I didn’t want the college to punish him. Not at all. It was my affair. After I saw you in town, it grew worse—it was an obsession. When we first got to Yorkshire, Sorell and I, and I knew that Falloden was only a few miles away, I never could get quit of it—of the thought that some day—somewhere—I should kill him. I never, if I could help it, crossed a certain boundary line that I had made for myself, between our side of the moor, and the side which belonged to the Fallodens. ”

“ He suffered, and could not endure to suffer. That life, which had grown up with him as a flattering and obsequious friend, obeying all his whims, yielding to all his desires, should now have turned upon him in this traitorous way, inflicting such monstrous reprisals and rebuffs, roused in him the astonishment and resentment natural to such a temperament.
He, too, drew rein for a moment at the spot where Connie had looked out over Flood Castle and its valley. The beautiful familiar sight produced in him now only a mingling of pain and irritation. The horrid thing was settled, decided. ”

“ As soon as she was alone, Connie locked her door, and walked restlessly up and down her room, till by sheer movement she had tamed a certain wild spirit within her let loose by Nora’s question. And as she walked, the grey Oxford walls, the Oxford lilacs and laburnums, vanished from perception. She was in another scene. Hot sun—gleaming orange-gardens and blue sea—bare-footed, black-eyed children—and a man beside her, on whom she has been showering epithets that would have shamed—surely!—any other human being in the world. Tears of excitement are in her eyes ”

“ Constance, hard-pressed, conscience-struck, utterly miserable, did not know what to reply. Falloden went on impetuously:
“And now at least don’t decide against me without thinking—without considering what I have been saying. Of course the whole thing may blow over. Radowitz may be all right in a fortnight. But if he is not—if between us, we’ve done something sad and terrible, let’s stand together, for God’s sake!—let’s help each other. Neither of us meant it. Don’t let’s make everything worse by separating and stabbing each other. ”

“ 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 impassioned 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? ”

“ But the head of the college, who had been in the same class-list and rowed in the same boat with the politician, was now Vice-Chancellor of the University; and the greater luminary had come to shine upon the lesser, by way of heightening the dignity of both. For the man who has outsoared his fellows likes to remind himself by contrast of his callow days, before the hungry and fighting impulses had driven him down—a young eaglet—upon the sheepfolds of law and politics; while to the majority of mankind, even to-day, hero-worship, when it is not too exacting, is agreeable. ”

“ The white in the women’s dresses; the short black gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the children’s frocks; the overhanging masses of hawthorn and lilac that here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through and over college walls:—everything shimmered and shone in the May sunlight. The air too was tonic and gay, a rare thing for Oxford; and Connie, refreshed by sleep, walked with such a buoyant and swinging step that her stout maid could hardly keep up with her. ”

“ And in front a tall, long-limbed cavalry officer in the Queen’s household, bowing to Constance Bledlow, as he comes back, breathless and radiant from the race he has just won, his hand tight upon the reins, his athlete’s body swaying to each motion of his horse, his black eyes laughing into hers. Why, she had imagined herself in love with him for a whole week!
Then, suddenly, she perceived that in her absence of mind she was running straight into a trio of undergraduates who were hurriedly stepping off the path to avoid her. They looked at her, and she at them. ”

“ They were years in Rome, and of course we knew them awfully well. Mamma adored her!”
And leaning back with her hands behind her head, Connie’s sparkling look subsided for a moment into a dreamy sweetness.
“I suppose you think Oxford a duck-pond after all that!” said Nora pugnaciously.
Constance laughed.
“Why, it’s new. It’s experience. It’s all to the good.”
“Oh, you needn’t suppose I am apologising for Oxford!” cried Nora. “I think, of course, it’s the most interesting place in the world. It’s ideas that matter, and ideas come from the universities!” ”

“ On such soil does male arrogance grow!
Soon they were in the stream of people crossing Christ Church river on their way to the boats. The May sunshine lay broad on the buttercup meadows, on the Christ Church elms, on the severe and blackened front of Corpus, on the long gabled line of Merton. The river glittered in the distance, and towards it the crowd of its worshippers—young girls in white, young men in flannels, elderly fathers and mothers from a distance, and young fathers and mothers from the rising tutorial homes of Oxford—made their merry way. ”

“ The colour and sparkle of them was a physical delight; and with occasional lingering tufts of primroses among them and the young oak scrub pushing up through the blue in every shade of gold and bronze, they made an enchanted garden of the glade.
Falloden dismounted, tied up his horse, and gathered a bunch for his companion.
“I don’t know—ought we?” she said regretfully. “They are not so beautiful when they are torn away. And in a week they will be gone—withered!” ”

“ Whereas Falloden’s features seemed to lie, so to speak, on the surface, the mouth and eyes scarcely disturbing the general level of the face mask—no indentation in the chin, and no perceptible hollow tinder the brow,—this man’s eyes were deeply sunk, and every outline of the face—cheeks, chin and temples—chiselled and fined away into an almost classical perfection. The man’s aspect indeed was Greek, and ought only to have expressed the Greek blitheness, the Greek joy in life. But, in truth, it was a very modern and complex soul that breathed from both face and form. ”

“ Hooper felt that she had perhaps gone too far. Never had she forgotten, never had she ceased to resent her own sense of inferiority and disadvantage, beside her brilliant sister-in-law on the occasion of that long past visit. She could still see Ella Risborough at the All Souls’ luncheon given to the newly made D.C.Ls, sitting on the right of the Vice-Chancellor, and holding a kind of court afterwards in the library; a hat that was little more than a wreath of forget-me-nots on her dark hair, and a long, lace cloak draping the still young and graceful figure. ”

“ As they neared the gate, Constance, whose face showed agitation and distress, said abruptly—
“Of course I know I must seem very ungrateful—”
A sound, half bitter, half scornful from Falloden stopped her. She threw her head back defiantly.
“All the same I could be grateful enough, in my own way, if you would let me. But what you don’t understand is that men can’t lord it over women now as they used to do. You say—you”—she stammered a little—“you love me. I don’t know yet—what I feel. I feel many different things. ”

“ When he returned, Radowitz was sitting over the fire with sheets of scribbled music-paper on a small table before him. His eyes shone, his cheeks were feverishly bright. He turned with forced gaiety at the sight of Falloden—
“Well, did you meet them on the road?”
“Lady Constance, and her friend? Yes. I had a few words with them. How are you now? What did the doctor say to you?”
“What on earth does it matter!” said Radowitz impatiently. “He is just a fool—a young one—the worst sort—I can put up with the old ones. I know my own case a great deal better than he does.” ”

“ He will hear in them the cry of the White Eagle—the White Eagle of Poland—as she soars wounded and bleeding over the southern plains, or sinks dying into the marshes and forests of Lithuania. It is in these songs that we Poles listen to the very heart-beats of our outraged country. Our songs—our music—our poets—our memories:—as a nation that is all we have—except the faith in us that never dies. Hinc surrectura! Yes, she shall rise again, our Poland! Our hope is in God, and in the human heart, the human conscience, that He has made. ”

“ Mulholland looked amused.
“Ah, but you see I know something about this young man at home. His mother doesn’t count. She has her younger children, and they make her happy. And of course she is absurdly proud of Douglas. But the father and this son Douglas are of the same stuff. They have a deal more brains and education than their forbears ever wanted; but still, in soul, they remain our feudal lords and superiors, who have a right to the services of those beneath them. And everybody is beneath them—especially women; and foreigners—and artists—and people who don’t shoot or hunt. ”

“ Douglas’s quick and proud intelligence was amazed to find his father so weak and so incompetent under misfortune. All his boyish life he had looked up to the slender, handsome man, whom he himself so much resembled, on a solider, more substantial scale, as the most indulgent of fathers, the princeliest of hosts, the best of shots and riders, chief indeed of the Falloden clan and all its glories, who, like other monarchs, could do no wrong. ”

“ Pryce was rapidly making a great name for himself as a mathematician. “And is a second-rate fellow, all the same,” thought the Master, contemptuously, being like Uncle Ewen a classic of the classics. But the face of little Alice Hooper, which he caught from time to time, watching—with a strained and furtive attention—the conversation between Pryce and her cousin, was really a tragedy; at least a tragi-comedy. Some girls are born to be supplanted!
But who was it Sorell was, introducing to her now?—to the evident annoyance of Mr. Pryce, who must needs vacate the field. ”

“ She passed through, made a signal to Joseph, and was soon trotting fast towards Oxford.
On that return ride, Constance could not conceal from herself that she was unhappy. Her lips quivered, her eyes had much ado to keep back the onset of tears—now that there was no Falloden to see her, or provoke her. How brightly their ride had begun!—how miserably it had ended! She thought of that first exhilaration; the early sun upon the wood; the dewy scents of moss and tree; Falloden’s face of greeting—“How can you look so fresh! You can’t have slept more than four hours—and here you are! Wonderful! ”

“ For play and interplay of everything that delights the eye—light and distance, transparent water, and hovering clouds, the lustrous brown of fishing boats, the beauty of patched sails and fluttering flags—for both literary and historic suggestion, Dutch art had never done better. Impressionists and post-impressionists came down occasionally to stay at Flood—for Sir Arthur liked to play Mæcenas—and were allowed to deal quite frankly with the pictures, as they wandered round the room at dessert, cigarette in hand, pointing out the absurdities of the Cuyp and the Titian. ”

“ Tea had been daintily spread for them under a birch-tree near the keeper’s lodge. The keeper’s wife served them with smiles and curtsies, and then discreetly disappeared. Falloden waited on Constance as a squire on his princess; and all round them lay the green encircling rampart of the wood. In the man’s every action, there was the homage of one who only keeps silence because the woman he loves imposes it. But Constance again felt that recurrent fear creeping over her. ”

“ And suddenly, as if he could repress it no longer, there ran through Sorell’s mind—his half melancholy mind, unaccustomed to the claims of personal happiness—the vision that Connie had so sharply evoked; of a girl’s brown eyes, and honest look—the look of a child to be cherished, of a woman to be loved. ”

“ Constance turned a little white.
“Why should anybody talk?” she said coldly. “But really, Nora, I must turn you out. I shall ring for Annette.” She raised herself in bed.
“No, no!” Nora caught her hand as it stretched out towards the bell. “Oh, Connie, you shall not fall in love with Mr. Falloden! I should go mad if you did.”
“You are mad already,” said Constance, half laughing, half furious. “I tell you Mr. Falloden is a friend of mine—as other people are. He is very good company, and I won’t have him abused—for nothing. His manners are abominable. I have told him so dozens of times. ”

“ Music is my life. But if I took it for a profession, she made me promise to see some other kinds of life first. She often said she would like me to go to Oxford. She had some old engravings of the colleges she used to show me. I am not a pauper, you see,—not at all. My family was once a very great family; and I have some money—not very much, but enough. So then Mr. Sorell and I began to talk. And I had suddenly the feeling—‘If this man will tell me what to do, I will do it.’ And then he found I was thinking of Oxford, and he said, if I came, he would be my friend, and look after me. ”