Lady Connie Part 35

"As to Mr. Falloden, I don't believe he will ever be anything but hard and tyrannical. I don't believe in conversion and change of heart, and that kind of thing. I don't--I don't! You are not to be taken in, Connie! You are not to fall in love with him again out of pity. If he does lose all his money, and have to work like anybody else, what does it matter? He was as proud as Lucifer--let him fall like Lucifer. You may be sure he won't fall so very far. That kind never does. No, I want him put down. I want him punished. He won't repent--he can't repent--and there was never any one less like a lost sheep in the world.

"After which I think I will say good-night!"

A few days later, Connie, returning from a ramble with one of Lady Winifred's stray dogs along the banks of the Scarfe, found her two aunts at tea in the garden.

"Sit down, my dear Connie," said Lady Marcia, with a preoccupied look.

"We have just heard distressing news. The clergy are such gossips!"

The elevation of Aunt Winifred's sharp nose showed her annoyance.

"And you, Marcia, are always so dreadfully unfair to them. You were simply dying for Mr. Latimer to tell you all he knew, and then you abuse him."

"Perfectly true," said Lady Marcia provokingly, "but if he had snubbed me, I should have respected him more."

Whereupon it was explained to Connie that a Mr. Latimer, rector of the Fallodens' family living of Flood Magna, had just been paying a long visit to the two ladies. He was a distant cousin and old crony of theirs, and it was not long before they had persuaded him to pour out all he knew about the Falloden affairs. "They must sell everything!"

said Lady Marcia, raising her hands and eyes in protest--"the estates, the house, the pictures--my dear, think of the pictures! The nation of course ought to buy them, but the nation never has a penny. And however much they sell, it will only just clear them. There'll be nothing left but Lady Laura's settlement--and that's only two thousand a year."

"Well, they won't starve," said Aunt Winifred, with a sniff, applying for another piece of tea-cake. "It's no good, Marcia, your trying to stir us up. The Fallodens are not beloved. n.o.body will break their hearts--except of course we shall all be sorry for Lady Laura and the children. And it will be horrid to have new people at Flood."

"My dear Connie, it is a pity we haven't been able to take you to Flood," said Lady Marcia to her niece, handing a cup of tea. "You know Douglas, so of course you would have been shown everything. Such pictures! Such lovely old rooms! And then the grounds--the cedars--the old gardens! It really is a glorious place. I can't think why Winifred is so hard-hearted about it!"

Lady Winifred pressed her thin lips together.

"Marcia, excuse me--but you really do talk like a sn.o.b. Before I cry over people who have lost their property, I ask myself how they have lost it, and also how they have used it." The little lady drew herself up fiercely.

"We have all got beams in our own eyes," cried Aunt Marcia. "And of course we all know, Winifred, that Sir Arthur never would give you anything for your curates."

"That has nothing to do with it," said Lady Winifred angrily. "I gave Sir Arthur a sacred opportunity--which he refused. That's his affair.

But when a man gambles away his estates, neglects his duties and his poor people, wastes his money in riotous living, and teaches his children to think themselves too good for this common world, and then comes to grief--I am not going to whine and whimper about it. Let him take it like a man!"

"So he does," said her sister warmly. "You know Mr. Latimer said so, and also that Douglas was behaving very well."

"What else can he do? I never said he wasn't fond of his father. Well, now let him look after his father."

The two maiden ladies, rather flushed and agitated, faced each other nervously. They had forgotten the presence of their niece. Constance sat in the shade, her beautiful eyes pa.s.sing intently from one sister to the other, her lips parted. Aunt Marcia, by way of proving to her sister Winifred that she was a callous and unkind creature, began to rake up inconsequently a number of incidents throwing light on the relations of father and son; which Lady Winifred scornfully capped by another series of recollections intended to ill.u.s.trate the family arrogance, and Douglas Falloden's full share in it. For instance:

_Marcia_--"I shall never forget that charming scene when Douglas made a hundred, not out, the first day of the Flood cricket week, when he was sixteen. Sir Arthur's face! And don't you remember how he went about half the evening with his arm round the boy's shoulders?"

_Winifred_--"Yes, and how Douglas hated it! I can see him wriggling now.

Do you remember that just a week after that, Douglas broke his hunting-whip beating a labourer's boy, whom he found trespa.s.sing in one of the coverts, and how Sir Arthur paid fifty pounds to get him out of the sc.r.a.pe?"

_Marcia_, indignantly--"Of course that was just a lad's high spirits! I have no doubt the labourer's boy richly deserved it."

_Winifred_--"Really, Marcia, your tone towards the lower orders! You don't allow a labourer's boy any high spirits!--not you! And I suppose you've quite forgotten that horrid quarrel between the hunt and the farmers which was entirely brought about by Douglas's airs. 'Pay them!--pay them!' he used to say--'what else do the beggars want?' As if money could settle everything! And I remember a farmer's wife telling me how she had complained to Douglas about the damage done by the Flood pheasants in their fields. And he just mocked at her. 'Why don't you send in a bigger bill?' 'But it's not only money, my lady,' she said to me. 'The fields are like your children, and you hate to see them wasted by them great birds--money or no money. But what's the good of talking?

Fallodens always best it!'"

_Marcia_--with the air of one defending the inst.i.tutions of her country--"Shooting and hunting have to be kept up, Winifred, for the sake of the physique of our cla.s.s; and it's the physique of our cla.s.s that maintains the Empire. What do a few fields of corn matter compared with that! And what young man could have done a more touching--a more heroic thing--than--"

_Winifred_, contemptuously--"What?--Sir Arthur's accident? You always did lose your head about that, Marcia. Nothing much, I consider, in the story. However, we shan't agree, so I'd better go to my choir practice."

When she was out of sight, and Marcia, who was always much agitated by an encounter with her sister, was still angrily fanning herself, Connie laid a hand on her aunt's knee. "What was the story, Aunt Marcia?"

Lady Marcia composed herself. Connie, in a thin black frock, with a shady hat and a tea-rose at her waist, was looking up at the elder lady with a quiet eagerness. Marcia patted the girl's hand.

"Winifred never asked your opinion, my dear!--and I expect you know him a great deal better than either of us."

"I never knew him before this year. That's a very little while. I--I'm sure he's difficult to know. Perhaps he's one of the people--who"--she laughed--"who want keeping."

"That's it!" cried Lady Marcia, delighted. "Of course that's it. It's like a rough fruit that mellows. Anyway I'm not going to d.a.m.n him for good at twenty-three, like Winifred. Well, Sir Arthur was very badly thrown, coming home from hunting, six years ago now and more, when Douglas was seventeen. It was in the Christmas holidays. They had had a run over Leman Moor and Sir Arthur and Douglas got separated from the rest, and were coming home in the dark through some very lonely roads--or tracks--on the edge of the moor. They came to a place where the track went suddenly into a wood, and a pheasant was startled by the horses, and flew right across Sir Arthur, almost in his face. The horse--it was always said no one but Sir Arthur Falloden could ride it--took fright, bolted, dashed in among the trees, threw Sir Arthur, and made off. When Douglas came up he found his father on the ground, covered with blood, and insensible. There was no one anywhere near. The boy shouted--no one came. It was getting dark and pouring with rain--an awful January night--I remember it well! Douglas tried to lift his father on his own horse, but the horse got restive, and it couldn't be done. If he had ridden back to a farm about a mile away he could have got help. But he thought his father was dying, and he couldn't make up his mind, you see, to leave him. Then--imagine!--he somehow was able--of course he was even then a splendid young fellow, immensely tall and strong for his age--to get Sir Arthur on his back, and to carry him through two fields to a place where he thought there was a cottage. But when he got there, the cottage was empty--no lights--and the door padlocked. He laid his father down under the shelter of the cottage, and called and shouted. Not a sign of help! It was awfully cold--a bitter north wind--blowing great gusts of rain. n.o.body knows quite how long they were there, but at last they were found by the vicar of the village near, who was coming home on his bicycle from visiting a sick woman at the farm. He told me that Douglas had taken off his own coat and a knitted waistcoat he wore, and had wrapped his father in them. He was sitting on the ground with his back to the cottage wall, holding Sir Arthur in his arms. The boy himself was weak with cold and misery. The vicar said he should never forget his white face, when he found them with his lamp, and the light shone on them. Douglas was bending over his father, imploring him to speak to him--in the tenderest, sweetest way.

Then, of course, when the vicar, Mr. Burton, had got a cart and taken them to the farm, and a carriage had come from Flood with two doctors, and Sir Arthur had begun to recover his senses, Douglas--looking like a ghost--was very soon ordering everybody about in his usual lordly manner. 'He slanged the farmer,' said Mr. Burton, 'for being slow with the cart; he sent me off on errands as though I'd been his groom; and when the doctors came, you'd have thought he was more in charge of the case than they were. They thought him intolerable; so he was. But I made allowances, because I couldn't forget how I had seen them first--the boy's face, and his chattering teeth, and how he spoke to his father.

He's spoilt, that lad! He's as proud as Satan. If his father and mother don't look out, he'll give them sore hearts some day. But he can feel!--and--if he could have given his life for his father's that night, he would have done it with joy.'--Well, there it is, Connie!--it's a true story anyway, and why shouldn't we remember the nice things about a young man, as well as the horrid ones?"

"Why not, indeed?" said Connie, her chin on her hands, her eyes bent on the ground.

Lady Marcia was silent a moment, then she said with a tremulous accent that belied her height, her stateliness and her black satin gown:

"You see, Connie, I know more about men than Winifred does. We have had different experiences."

"She's thinking about the General," thought Connie. "Poor old dear!" And she gently touched her aunt's long thin hand.

Lady Marcia sighed.

"One must make allowances for men," she said slowly.

Connie offered no reply, and they sat together a few more minutes in silence. Then Connie rose.

"I told the coachman, Aunt Marcia, I should ride for an hour or so after tea. If I take the Lawley road, does that go anywhere near Flood?"

"It takes you to the top of the moor, and you have a glorious view of the castle and all its woods. Yes, do go that way. You'll see what the poor things have lost. You did like Douglas, didn't you?"

"'Like' is not exactly the word, is it?" said Constance with a little laugh, vexed to feel that she could not keep the colour out of her cheeks. "And he doesn't care whether you like him or not!"

She went away, and her elderly aunt watched her cross the lawn. Lady Marcia looked puzzled. After a few moments' meditation a half light broke on her wrinkled face. "Is it possible? Oh, no!"

It was a rich August evening. In the fields near the broad river the harvest had begun, and the stubbles with their ranged stocks alternated with golden stretches still untouched. The air was full of voices--the primal sounds of earth, and man's food-gathering; calling reapers, clattering carts, playing children. And on the moors that closed the valley there were splashes and streaks of rose colour, where the heather spread under the flecked evening sky.

Constance rode in a pa.s.sion of thought. "On the other side of that moor--five miles away--there he is! What is he doing now--at this moment? What is he thinking of?"

Presently the road bent upward, and she followed it, soothed by the quiet movement of her horse and by the evening air. She climbed and climbed, till the upland farms fell behind, and the road came out upon the open moor. The distance beyond began to show--purple woods in the evening shadow, dim valleys among them, and wide gra.s.sy stretches. A little more, and she was on the crest. The road ran before her--westward--a broad bare whiteness through the sun-steeped heather.

And, to the north, a wide valley, where wood and farm and pasture had been all fas.h.i.+oned by the labour of generations into one proud setting for the building in its midst. Flood Castle rose on the green bottom of the valley, a ma.s.s of mellowed wall and roof and tower, surrounded by its stately lawns and terraces, and girdled by its wide "chase," of alternating wood and glade--as though wrought into the landscape by the care of generations, and breathing history. A stream, fired with the sunset, ran in loops and windings through the park, and all around the hills rose and fell, clothed with dark hanging woods.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Lady Connie held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon Flood Castle and its woods_]

Constance held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon the castle and its woods. Her mind, as she looked, was one riot of excuse for Douglas Falloden. She knew very well--her own father had been an instance of it--that a man can be rich and well-born, and still remain modest and kind. But--but--"How hardly shall they that have riches--!"

She moved slowly on, thinking and gazing, till she had gone much further than she intended, and the light had begun to fail. She would certainly be late for dinner. Looking round her for her bearings, she saw on the Scarfedale side of the hill, about three miles away, what she took to be her aunts' house. Surely there must be a short cut to it. Yes! there was a narrow road to be seen, winding down the hill, and across the valley, which must certainly shorten the distance. And almost immediately she found herself at the entrance to it, where it ab.u.t.ted on the moor; and a signpost showed the name of Hilkley, her aunts' village. She took the road at once, and trotted briskly along, as the twilight deepened.