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It seemed to her often that Radowitz was living in a constant state of half-subdued excitement, produced by the strange realisation that he and his life had become so important to Falloden that the differences of training and temperament between them, and all the little daily rubs, no longer counted; that he existed, so to speak, that Falloden might through him escape the burden of his own remorse.
Falloden argued with energy that a man who has never been to a public school has got to be "disciplined" at the university; that Otto Radowitz, being an artist, was specially in need of discipline; that no harm had been done him, or would be done him. But he must be made to understand that certain liberties and impertinences would not be tolerated by the older men.
Then the rioters who had been for a few minutes swallowed up in a distant staircase on the western side of the quadrangle reëmerged, with muffled shouts and laughter, bringing their prey with them a pale, excited figure. "Let me alone, you cowardly bullies! ten of you against one!" But they hurried him along, Radowitz fighting all the way, and too proud to call for help.
His pride would not let him sue as a pauper; and of course the Langmoors to whom she was going he understood from Scarfedale, would take good care she did not throw herself away. Quite right too. Very likely the Tamworths would capture her; and Bletchley was quite a nice fellow. When he did see her, what could they talk about? Radowitz?
He must give evidence, too, at the inquest. Radowitz! Thoughts, ironic and perverse, ran swarming through Falloden's brain, as though driven through it from outside. What a nursery tale! how simple! how crude! Could not the gods have devised a subtler retribution? Then these thoughts vanished again, like a cloud of gnats.
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.
His mind was set upon a man's interests and aims marriage, travel, Parliament; they were still boys, without a mind among them. None the less, there was an underplot running through his consciousness all the time as to how best to punish Radowitz both for his throw, and his impertinence in monopolising a certain lady for at least a quarter of an hour on the preceding evening.
"You'll have a hard time to-morrow." "What, the inquest? Oh, I don't mind about that. If I could only understand that fellow!" He threw his head back, staring at the ceiling. Otto Radowitz, in spite of Sorell's admonitions, slept very little that night. His nights were apt to be feverish and disturbed.
Falloden stood a little apart, in a dead silence, his eyes wandering occasionally from the figure on the bed to the open window, through which could be seen the summer sky, and a mounting sun, just touching the college roofs. The college clock struck half past four. Not two hours since Radowitz and Constance Bledlow had held the eyes of Oxford in the Magdalen ballroom.
He was already nervously jealous of Sorell and contemptuously jealous of Radowitz. And if they could torment him so, what would it be when Constance passed into that larger world of society to which sooner or later she was bound? No, she was to be wooed and married now. The Falloden custom was to marry early and a good custom too.
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