Part 28 (1/2)
And as for this puppy!--
A sudden gust of pa.s.sion, of hot and murderous wrath, different from anything he had ever felt before, blew fiercely through the man's soul.
He wanted to crush--to punish--to humiliate. For a moment he saw red.
Then he heard Meyrick say excitedly: ”This is our last chance! Let's cool his head for him--in Neptune.”
Neptune was the Graeco-Roman fountain in the inner quad, which a former warden had presented to the college. The sea G.o.d with his trident, surrounded by a group of rather dilapidated nymphs, presided over a broad basin, filled with running water and a mult.i.tude of goldfish.
There was a shout of laughing a.s.sent, and a rush across the gra.s.s to Radowitz's staircase. College was nearly empty; the Senior Tutor had gone to Switzerland that morning; and those few inmates who still remained, tired out with the ball of the night before, were fast asleep.
The night porter, having let everybody in and closed the gate, was dozing in his lodge.
There was a short silence in the quadrangle. Then the rioters who had been for a few minutes swallowed up in a distant staircase on the western side of the quadrangle reemerged, with m.u.f.fled shouts and laughter, bringing their prey with them--a pale, excited figure.
”Let me alone, you cowardly bullies!--ten of you against one!”
But they hurried him along, Radowitz fighting all the way, and too proud to call for help. The intention of his captors--of all save one--was mere rowdy mischief. To duck the offender and his immaculate white flannels in Neptune, and then scatter to their beds before any one could recognise or report them, was all they meant to do.
But when they reached the fountain, Radowitz, whose pa.s.sion gave him considerable physical strength, disengaged himself, by a sudden effort, from his two keepers, and leaping into the basin of the fountain, he wrenched a rickety leaden sh.e.l.l from the hand of one of Neptune's attendant nymphs and began to fling the water in the faces of his tormentors. Falloden was quickly drenched, and Meyrick and others momentarily blinded by the sudden deluge in their eyes. Robertson, the Winchester Blue, was heavily struck. In a wild rage he jumped into the fountain and closed with Radowitz. The Pole had no chance against him, and after a short struggle, Radowitz fell heavily, catching in his fall at a piece of rusty piping, part of some disused machinery of the fountain.
There was a cry. In a moment it sobered the excited group of men.
Falloden, who had acted as leader throughout, called peremptorily to Robertson. ”Is he hurt? Let him up at once.”
Robertson in dismay stooped over the prostrate form of Radowitz, and carried him to the edge of the fountain. There it was seen that the lad had fainted, and that blood was streaming from his right hand.
”He's cut it on that beastly piping--it's all jagged,” gasped Robertson.
”I say, can anybody stop the bleeding?”
One Desmond, an Etonian who had seen one or two football accidents, knelt down, deadly pale, by Radowitz and rendered a rough first-aid. By a tourniquet of handkerchiefs he succeeded in checking the bleeding. But it was evident that an artery was injured.
”Go for a doctor,” said Falloden to Meyrick, pointing to the lodge.
”Tell the porter that somebody's been hurt in a lark. You'll probably find a cab outside. We'll carry him up.”
In a few minutes they had laid the blood-stained and unconscious Radowitz on his bed, and were trying in hideous anxiety to bring him round. The moment when he first opened his eyes was one of unspeakable relief to the men who in every phase of terror and remorse were gathered round him. But the eyelids soon fell again.
”You'd better go, you fellows,” said Falloden, looking round him.
”Robertson and I and Desmond will see the doctor.”
The others stole away. And the three men kept their vigil. The broad-shouldered Wykehamist, utterly unnerved, sat by the bed trembling from head to foot. Desmond kept watch over the tourniquet.
Falloden stood a little apart, in a dead silence, his eyes wandering occasionally from the figure on the bed to the open window, through which could be seen the summer sky, and a mounting sun, just touching the college roofs. The college clock struck half past four. Not two hours since Radowitz and Constance Bledlow had held the eyes of Oxford in the Magdalen ballroom.
CHAPTER X
Radowitz woke up the following morning, after the effects of the dose of morphia administered by the surgeon who had dressed his hand had worn off, in a state of complete bewilderment. What had happened to him? Why was he lying in this strange, stiff position, propped up with pillows?
He moved a little. A sharp pain wrung a groan from him. Then he perceived his bandaged hand and arm; and the occurrences of the preceding night began to rush back upon him. He had soon reconstructed them all; up to the moment of his jumping into the fountain. After that he remembered nothing.