As she spoke Falloden’s attention was diverted. He had raised his head and was looking across the lawn, towards the garden entrance. There was the sound of a clicking latch. Constance turned, and saw Radowitz entering.
The young musician paused and wavered at the sight of the two under the lime. It seemed as though he would have taken to flight. But, instead, he came on with hesitating step. He had taken off his hat, as he often did when walking; and his red-gold hair en brosse was as conspicuous as ever. But otherwise what a change from the youth of three months before! Falloden, now that the immediate pressure of his own tragedy was relaxed, perceived the change even more sharply than he had done at the inquest; perceived it, at first with horror, and then with a wild sense of recoil and denial, as though some hovering Erinnys advanced with Radowitz over the leaf-strewn grass.
Radowitz grew paler still as he reached Connie. He gave Falloden a short, embarrassed greeting, and then subsided into the chair that Constance offered him. The thought crossed Falloden’s mind—‘Did she arrange this?’
Her face gave little clue—though she could not restrain one quick, hesitating glance at Falloden. She pressed tea on Radowitz, who accepted it to please her, and then, schooled as she was in all the minor social arts, she had soon succeeded in establishing a sort of small-talk between the three. Falloden, self-conscious and on the rack, could not imagine why he stayed. But this languid boy had ministered to his dying father! And to what, and to whom, were the languor, the tragic physical change, due? He stayed—in purgatory—looking out for any chance to escape.
‘Did you walk all the way?’
The note in Connie’s voice was softly reproachful.
‘Why, it’s only three miles!’ said Radowitz, as though defending himself, but he spoke with an accent of depression. And Connie remembered how, in the early days of his recovery from his injury, he had spent hours rambling over the moors, by himself or with Sorell. Her heart yearned to him. She would have liked to take his poor hands in hers, and talk to him, tenderly, like a sister. But there was that other dark face and those other eyes opposite—watching. And to them too her young sympathy went out—how differently!—how passionately! A kind of rending and widening process seemed to be going on within her own nature. Veils were falling between her and life; and feelings, deeper and stronger than any she had ever known, were fast developing the woman in the girl. How to heal Radowitz!—how to comfort Falloden! Her mind ached under the feelings that filled it—feelings wholly disinterested and pure.
‘You really are taking the Boar’s Hill cottage?’ she asked, addressing Radowitz.
‘I think so. It is nearly settled. But I am trying to find some companion. Sorell can only come occasionally.’
As he spoke, a wild idea flashed into Falloden’s brain. It seemed to have entered without—or against—his will; as though suggested by some imperious agency outside himself. His intelligence laughed at it. Something else in him entertained it—breathlessly.