Part 53 (1/2)
The two ladies drove silently on, and were soon among the movement and traffic of the Oxford streets. Connie's mind was steeped in pa.s.sionate 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. And in her complete uncertainty as to what turn it would take, and how the doubt would end, lay the spell--the potent tormenting charm--of the situation.
She was sorry, bitterly sorry for Radowitz--the victim. But she loved Falloden--the offender! It was the perennial injustice of pa.s.sion, the eternal injustice of human things.
When Falloden was half-way up the hill, he left the road, and took a short cut through fields, by a path which led him to the back of the cottage, where its sitting-room window opened on the garden and the view. As he approached the house, he saw that the sitting-room blinds had not been drawn, and some of the windows were still open. The whole room was brilliantly lit by fire and lamp. Otto was there alone, sitting at the piano, with his back to the approaching spectator and the moonlit night outside. He was playing something with his left hand; Falloden could see him plainly. Suddenly, he saw the boy's figure collapse. He was still sitting, but his face was buried in his arm which was lying on the piano; and through the open window, Falloden heard a sound which, m.u.f.fled as it was, produced upon him a strange and horrible impression.
It was a low cry, or groan--the voice of despair itself.
Falloden stood motionless. All he knew was that he would have given anything in the world to recall the past; to undo the events of that June evening in the Marmion quadrangle.
Then, before Otto could discover his presence, he went noiselessly round the corner of the house, and entered it by the front door. In the hall, he called loudly to the ex-scout, as he went upstairs, so that Radowitz might know he had come back. 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.”
”Does he want you to stop working?” Falloden stood on the hearth, looking down on the huddled figure in the chair; himself broad and tall and curly-haired, like the divine Odysseus, when Athene had breathed ambrosial youth upon him. But he was pale, and his eyes frowned perpetually under his splendid brows.
”Some nonsense of that sort!” said Radowitz. ”Don't let's talk about it.”
They went into dinner, and Radowitz sent for champagne.
”That's the only sensible thing the idiot said--that I might have that stuff whenever I liked.”
His spirits rose with the wine; and presently Falloden could have thought what he had seen from the dark had been a mere illusion. A review in _The Times_ of a book of Polish memoirs served to let loose a flood of boastful talk, which jarred abominably on the Englishman. Under the Oxford code, to boast in plain language of your ancestors, or your own performances, meant simply that you were an outsider, not sure of your footing. If a man really had ancestors, or more brains than other people, his neighbours saved him the trouble of talking about them. Only the fools and the _parvenus_ trumpeted themselves; a process in any case not worth while, since it defeated its own ends. You might of course be as insolent or arrogant as you pleased; but only an idiot tried to explain why.
In Otto, however, there was the characteristic Slav mingling of quick wits with streaks of childish vanity. He wanted pa.s.sionately to make this tough Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he hit against an answering stubbornness--or coolness--in Falloden, the more he held forth. So that it was an uncomfortable dinner. And again Falloden said to himself--”Why did I do it? I am only in his way. I shall bore and chill him; and I don't seem to be able to help it.”
But after dinner, as the night frost grew sharper, and as Otto sat over the fire, piling on the coal, Falloden suddenly went and fetched a warm Scotch plaid of his own. When he offered it, Radowitz received it with surprise, and a little annoyance.
”I am not the least cold--thank you!”
But, presently, he had wrapped it round his knees; and some restraint had broken down in Falloden.
”Isn't there a splendid church in Cracow?” he asked casually, stretching himself, with his pipe, in a long chair on the opposite side of the fire.
”One!--five or six!” cried Otto indignantly. ”But I expect you're thinking of Panna Marya. Panna means Lady. I tell you, you English haven't got anything to touch it!”
”What's it like?--what date?” said Falloden, laughing.
”I don't know--I don't know anything about architecture. But it's glorious. It's all colour and stained gla.s.s--and magnificent tombs--like the gate of heaven,” said the boy with ardour. ”It's the church that every Pole loves. Some of my ancestors are buried there. And it's the church where, instead of a clock striking, the hours are given out by a watchman who plays a horn. He plays an old air--ever so old--we call it the 'Heynal,' on the top of one of the towers. The only time I was ever in Cracow I heard a man at a concert--a magnificent player--improvise on it. And it comes into one of Chopin's sonatas.”
He began to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching a ba.s.s here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other flashed over the piano, while the boy's blue eyes shone beneath his vivid frieze of hair. Falloden, lying back in his chair, noticed the emaciation of the face, the hollow eyes, the contracted shoulders; and as he did so, he thought of the scene in the Magdalen ballroom--the slender girl, wreathed in pearls, and the brilliant foreign youth--dancing, dancing, with all the eyes of the room upon them.
Presently, with a sound of impatience, Radowitz left the piano. He could do nothing that he wanted to do. He stood at the window for some minutes looking out at the autumn moon, with his back to Falloden.
Falloden took up one of the books he was at work on for his fellows.h.i.+p exam. When Radowitz came back to the fire, however, white and s.h.i.+vering, he laid it down again, and once more made conversation. Radowitz was at first unwilling to respond. But he was by nature _bavard_, and Falloden played him with some skill.