Lady Connie Part 25

"If you like to put it so."

"And we haven't had a good time, because--unfortunately--we've quarrelled!"

"I should describe it differently. There are certain proofs and tests of friends.h.i.+p that any friend may ask for. But when they are all refused--"

"Friends.h.i.+p itself is strained!" laughed Constance, looking round at her companion. She was breathing quickly. "In other words, we have been quarrelling--about Radowitz--and there seems no way of making it up."

"You have only to promise me the very little thing I asked," said Falloden stiffly.

"That I shouldn't dance with him to-night, or again this week? You call that a little thing?"

"I should have thought it a small thing, compared--"

He turned and faced her. His dark eyes were full of proud agitation--of things unspoken. But she met them undaunted.

"Compared to--friends.h.i.+p?"

He was silent, but his eyes held her.

"Well then"--said Constance--"let me repeat that--in my opinion, friends.h.i.+p which asks unreasonable things--is not friends.h.i.+p--but tyranny!"

She drew herself up pa.s.sionately, and gave a smart touch with her whip to the mare's flank, who bounded forward, and had to be checked by Falloden's hand on her bridle.

"Don't get run away with, while you are denouncing me!" he said, smiling, as they pulled up.

"I really didn't want any help!" said Constance, panting. "I could have stopped her quite easily."

"I doubt it. She is really not the lamb you think her!"

"Nor is her mistress: I return the remark."

"Which has no point. Because only a mad-man--"

"Could have dreamed of comparing me--to anything soft and docile?"

laughed Constance.

There was another silence. Before them at the end of a long green vista the gate opening on the main road could be seen.

Constance broke it. "Wounded pride, and stubborn will were hot within her.

"Well, it is a great pity we should have been sparring like this. I can't remember who began it. But now I suppose I may do what I like with the dances I promised you?"

"I keep no one to their word who means to break it," said Falloden coldly.

Constance grew suddenly white.

"That"--she said quietly--"was unpardonable!"

"It was. I retract it."

"No. You have said it--which means that you could think it. That decides it."

They rode on in silence. As they neared the gate, Constance, whose face showed agitation and distress, said abruptly--

"Of course I know I must seem very ungrateful--"

A sound, half bitter, half scornful from Falloden stopped her. She threw her head back defiantly.

"All the same I could be grateful enough, in my own way, if you would let me. But what you don't understand is that men can't lord it over women now as they used to do. You say--you"--she stammered a little--"you love me. I don't know yet--what I feel. I feel many different things. But I know this: A man who forbids me to do this and that--to talk to this person--or dance with some one else--a man who does not trust and believe in me--if I were ever so much in love with him, I would not marry him! I should feel myself a coward and a slave!"

"One is always told"--said Falloden hoa.r.s.ely--"that love makes it easy to grant even the most difficult things. And I have begged the merest trifle."

"'Begged'?" said Constance, raising her eyebrows. "You issued a decree.

I am not to dance with Radowitz--and I am not to see so much of Mr.

Sorell--if I am to keep your--friends.h.i.+p. I demurred. You repeated it--as though you were responsible for what I do, and had a right to command me. Well, that does not suit me. I am perfectly free, and I have given you no right to arrange my life for me. So now let us understand each other."

Falloden shrugged his shoulders.

"You have indeed made it perfectly plain!"

"I meant to," said Constance vehemently.

But they could not keep their eyes from each other. Both were pale. In both the impulse to throw away pride and hold out a hand of yielding was all but strong enough to end their quarrel. Both suffered, and if the truth were told, both were standing much deeper than before in the midstream of pa.s.sion.

But neither spoke another word--till the gate was reached.

Falloden opened it, and backed his horse out of Connie's way. In the road outside, at a little distance, the groom was waiting.

"Good-bye," said Falloden, with ceremonious politeness. "I wish I had not spoilt your ride. Please do not give up riding in the woods, because you might be burdened with my company. I shall never intrude upon you.

All the woodmen and keepers have been informed that you have full permission. The family will be all away till the autumn. But the woodmen will look after you, and give you no trouble."

"Thank you!" said Constance, lightly, staying the mare for a moment.

"But surely some of the rides will be wanted directly for the pheasants?

Anyway I think I shall try the other side of Oxford. They say Bagley is delightful. Good-bye!"

She pa.s.sed through, made a signal to Joseph, and was soon trotting fast towards Oxford.

On that return ride, Constance could not conceal from herself that she was unhappy. Her lips quivered, her eyes had much ado to keep back the onset of tears--now that there was no Falloden to see her, or provoke her. How brightly their ride had begun!--how miserably it had ended! She thought of that first exhilaration; the early sun upon the wood; the dewy scents of moss and tree; Falloden's face of greeting--"How can you look so fres.h.!.+ You can't have slept more than four hours--and here you are! Wonderful! 'Did ever Dian so become a grove'--"

An ominous quotation, if she had only remembered at the time where it came from! For really his ways were those of a modern Petruchio--ways that no girl of any decent spirit could endure.

Yet how frank and charming had been his talk as they rode into the wood!--talk of his immediate plans, which he seemed to lay at her feet, asking for her sympathy and counsel; of his father and his two sisters; of the Hoopers even. About them, his new tone was no doubt a trifle patronising, but still, quite tolerable. Ewen Hooper, he vowed, was "a magnificent scholar," and it was too bad that Oxford had found nothing better for him than "a scrubby readers.h.i.+p." But "some day, of course, he'll have the regius professors.h.i.+p." Nora was "a plucky little thing--though she hates me!" And he, Falloden, was not so sure after all that Miss Alice would not land her Pryce. "Can't we bring it about?"

And Falloden ran, laughing, through a catalogue of his own smart or powerful relations, speculating what could be done. It was true, wasn't it, that Pryce was anxious to turn his back on Oxford and the higher mathematics, and to try his luck in journalism, or politics? Well, Falloden happened to know that an attractive post in the Conservative Central Office would soon be vacant; an uncle of his was a very important person on the Council; that and other wires might be pulled.

Constance, eagerly, began to count up her own opportunities of the same kind; and between them, they had soon--in imagination--captured the post. Then, said Falloden, it would be for Constance to clinch the matter. No man could do such a thing decently. Pryce would have to be told--"'The world's your oyster--but before you open it, you will kindly go and propose to my cousin!--which of course you ought to have done months ago!'"

And so laughing and plotting like a couple of children they had gone rambling through the green rides and glades of the wood, occasionally putting their horses to the gallop, that the pulse of life might run still faster.