Falloden

“ Connie’s mind was steeped in passionate feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses, then her pity. Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his to adjust himself to Otto’s weakness and irritability, he was stirring sympathies and enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul in Connie which was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the more, perhaps, because in Falloden’s manner towards her there was nothing left of the lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it so. Life was all doubt, expectation, thrill—its colour heightened, its meanings underlined. ”

“ But what use was anything, if after all, as Radowitz vowed, she was in love with Douglas Falloden? The antagonism between the man of Sorell’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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About five thousand pounds had been saved for himself out of the wreck; of which he would certainly spend a thousand, before all was done, on the Orpheus. The rest would just suffice to launch him as a barrister. His mother would provide for the younger children. Her best jewels indeed had been already sold and invested as a dowry for Nelly, who showed signs of engaging herself to a Scotch laird. But Falloden was joint guardian of Trix and Roger, and must keep a watchful eye on them, now that his mother’s soft incompetence had been more plainly revealed than ever by her widow-hood. ”

“ But Falloden was blind to it. His pulses were full of riot. She had been so near to him, and yet so far away; so sweet, yet so defensive. His whole nature cried out fiercely for her. ‘I want her!—I want her! And I believe she wants me. She’s not afraid of me now—she turns to me. What keeps us apart? Nothing that ought to weigh for a moment against our double happiness!’
He turned and walked stormily homewards. Then, as he saw the roof and white walls of the cottage through the trees, his mood wavered—and fell. There was a life there which he had injured—a life that now depended on him. ”

“ But the divergences between them were great; the possibilities of friction many. Falloden was astonished to find that he disliked Otto’s little fopperies and eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done in college days; his finicking dress, his foreign ways in eating, his tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing to Radowitz ”

“ We are certain to disagree about heaps of things.’
‘Of course we are. Quite certain!’
‘I tell you again,’ said Falloden, speaking with a strong simplicity and sincerity that were all the time undoing the impression he honestly desired to make—‘It’s a big risk for you—a temperament like mine—and you ought to think it over seriously. And then’—he paused abruptly in front of her, his hands in his pockets—‘Why should you—you’re so young!—start life with any burden on you? Why should you? It’s preposterous! I must look after Otto all his life.’
‘So must I!’ said Connie quickly. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ But strangely amenable and even humble as he might appear in these affairs to those who remembered his haughty days in college, for both Constance and Mrs. Mulholland quite another fact emerged from their experience of the cottage household during these weeks:—simply this—that whatever other people might do or be, Falloden was steadily, and perhaps unconsciously, [489] becoming master of the situation, the indispensable and protecting power of Otto’s life. ”

“ After hall, the quadrangle was filled with strolling men, hatless and smoking, discussing the chances of the Eights, the last debate at the Union, and the prospects of individual men in the schools.
Presently the sound of a piano was heard from the open windows of a room on the first floor.
“Great Scott!” said Falloden irritably to Meyrick, with whom he was walking arm in arm, “what a noise that fellow Radowitz makes! Why should we have to listen to him? He behaves as though the whole college belonged to him. We can’t hear ourselves speak.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The men in college got hold of it last night. A man who does that kind of thing runs risks.”
“He was only defending himself!” cried Constance. “He has been ragged, and bullied, and ill-treated—again and again—just because he is a foreigner and unlike the rest of you. And you have been the worst of any—you know you have! And I have begged you to let him alone! And if—if you had really been my friend—you would have done it—only to please me!”
“I happened to be more than your friend!”—said Falloden passionately. ”

“ And Fallon, of course, having had his attention diverted into so many foreign channels, no longer cared so singularly for his studies, but was willing to receive Waters and such as Waters with an ever-increasing cordiality.
The inevitable happened. Fallon, exhibiting his latest development—a full-sized, roistering swagger—came into my room one evening and [Pg 143] told me jubilantly that he was pledged to join Waters' fraternity.
"It's not the best in college," he admitted loftily, "but it'll tone up a bit when I get the track captaincy and Waters gets elected to a managership." ”

“ The poor man, to be deserted by his own wife, and the breath hardly gone out yet from his body that is lying bloody in the field!
(Enter Mrs. Fallon.)
[Pg 15] Mrs. Fallon: What is it the whole of the town is talking about? And what is it you yourselves are talking about? Is it about my man Bartley Fallon you are talking? Is it lies about him you are telling, saying that he went killing Jack Smith? My grief that ever he came into this place at all!
James Ryan: Be easy now, Mrs. Fallon. Sure there is no one at all in the whole fair but is sorry for you! ”

“ You to bring such a disgrace into the parish. A thing that was never heard of before!
Bartley: Will you shut your mouth and hear me speaking?
Mrs. Fallon: And if it was for any sort of a fine handsome woman, but for a little fistful of a [Pg 26] woman like Kitty Keary, that’s not four feet high hardly, and not three teeth in her head unless she got new ones! May God reward you, Bartley Fallon, for the black treachery in your heart and the wickedness in your mind, and the red blood of poor Jack Smith that is wet upon your hand! ”

“ Bartley Fallon: I will not give in to going to demons or druids or freemasons! Wasn't there enough of misfortune set before my path through every day of my lifetime without it to be linked with me after my death? Is it that you would force me to lose the comforts of heaven and to get the poverty of hell? I tell you I will have no trade with witches! I would sooner go face the featherbeds.
Hyacinth Halvey: Say out, girl, do you see any craziness here or anything of the sort?
Cracked Mary: Every day in the year there comes some malice into the world, and where it comes from is no good place. ”

“ Kashimo was a fool, too, but he was a gambler. But we, Fallon, you and I—we were the bigger fools."
"The kind of fools," said Fallon doggedly, "that men have always been. And damn it, I think I'd rather be the fool I am than the smart guy I was!"
Bjarnsson's laughter echoed in his helmet. Fallon had a moment's eerie feeling that he heard with his brain instead of his ears.
"Wonderful, Fallon, wonderful! You see how circumstance makes us traitors to ourselves? But there is no need for heroics. You can turn back, Fallon." ”

“ It is dangerous business to venture to change the current of other lives; no one knew it better than Fallows. But he considered Morning. Morning, as it were, had been left on his door-step. Morning would be alone now—alone to listen and receive his powers.... Fallows looked up from the black water to the far-apart pickets of the wintry night. He was going home.
The cabin was lit. Fallows climbed the hill wearily. There was a certain sharpness as of treachery from his [Pg 197] night’s work, but to that larger region of mind, open to selfishness and the passion to serve men, peace had come. ”

“ All through the War, Fallaray had been a thorn in the side of his chief. His honesty and his continual “why” were a source of irritation and sometimes of anger. He had no patience whatever with shiftiness, intrigue and favoritism, the appointment of mere duffers to positions of high responsibility. He made no bones whatever about expressing his opinion as to the frivolity that prevailed in certain quarters, together with the habit of dodging every grave issue. ”

“ Completely overwhelmed by the inexorability of his environment, young Falder seeks and finds peace, greater than human justice, by throwing himself down to death, as the detectives are taking him back to prison. ”

“ A tall, primly dressed elderly man, who had apparently been waiting, sprang forward, a glint of great anger in his eyes and two spots of color on his pale cheeks. He said, “Mr. Fallaray, a word with you, Sir.”
And Fallaray turned with his usual courtesy and consideration. “What can I do?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you what you can do. You can stop showing sympathy for the Irish murderers and assassins. You can stop pussyfooting. You can withdraw all your remarks about reprisals. That’s what you can do. ”

“ He held in utter contempt the old adage that having made your bed it is necessary to lie upon it. What bosh that was. Wasn’t the town full of beds of every size and price? Sometimes, when he thought of the way in which Fallaray permitted himself to be run and worked and milked and used by his so-called wife and her family, by the Government, by all sorts of societies and even by himself, a huge impatience swept over him and he wanted to cry out, “Fallaray, for God’s sake, kick somebody. ”

“ Now, kiss your Esther.—I say, you will give that poor Val-Noble all the furniture in the Rue Taitbout? And to-morrow I wish you would give her fifty thousand francs—it would look handsome, my duck. You see, you killed Falleix; people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this liberality will look Babylonian—all the women will talk about it! Oh! there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and as the world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. ”

“ Folsom was a "sour-dough." He had seen the pranks that Alaskan winters play with men and women, he had watched the alteration in minds and morals made by the Arctic isolation, and he had considered himself proof against the malice that rides the north wind—the mischief that comes with the winter nights. He had dared to put faith in his perfect happiness, thinking himself different from other men and Lois superior to other wives, wherefore he now called himself a fool! ”

“ Fallows seemed impassioned with the figure.
“I understand him,” he said.
“He was afraid of women. Sometimes he seems to hate women,” Morning remarked. Certain lines of Paul’s on the subject had broken the perfection of the message for him.
[Pg 173]
A strange look came to Fallows. The finger that was turning a page drew in with the others, and the hand that rested upon the book was clenched.... “Paul knew women,” he muttered. ”

“ You are a malignant, and the blood of Christian men has been shed by those who were with you. Your life is forfeit, and there is but one way by which to save it."
"What is that?" asked Falgate. "Life is not like a bad groat, only fit to be cast into the kennel; and I will save mine if I can."
"That is wise," answered the soldier. "You can save it if you will. You have but to tell truly and honestly who they are who were with you, and what was their errand in these parts. You know it right well; therefore deny it not."
"Nay, I do not know, right worshipful sir," replied the painter. ”