Part 44 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstances 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 fellows.h.i.+p in December on which his hopes were set, and the first part of his bar examination to read for, whether he got a fellows.h.i.+p or no.

”And Parliament?” she asked him.

”Yes--that's my aim,” he said quietly. ”Of course it's the fas.h.i.+on 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 gra.s.s, 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.”