England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Love stories; Oxford (England) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“I shan’t disturb the dressing unless it pains you. If it does, your
scout can send a message to the surgery. You must stay in bed—you’ve
got a little fever. Take light food—I’ll tell your scout all about
that—and I’ll come in again to-night.”
He departed. The scout brought warm water and a clean sheet. Radowitz
was soon washed and straightened as well as masculine fingers could
achieve it.
“You seem to have lost a lot of blood, sir, last night!” said the man
involuntarily, as he became aware in some dismay of the white flannels
and other clothes that Radowitz had been wearing when the invaders
broke into his room, which were now lying in a corner, where the doctor
had thrown them.
“That’s why I feel so limp!” said Radowitz, shutting his eyes again.
“Please get me some tea, and send a message round to St. Cyprian’s—to
Mr. Sorell—that I want to see him as soon as he can come.”
The door closed on the scout.
Left alone Radowitz plunged into a tumult of feverish thought. He
seemed to be standing again, just freshly dressed, beside his bed—to
hear the noise on the stairs, the rush into his sitting-room. Falloden,
of course, was the leader—insolent brute! The lad, quivering once more
with rage and humiliation, seemed to feel again Falloden’s iron grip
upon his shoulders—to remember the indignity of his forced descent into
the quad—the laughter of his captors. Then he recollected throwing the
water—and Robertson’s spring upon him—
If _she_ had seen it! Whereupon, a new set of images displaced the
first. He was in the ballroom again, he had her hand in his; her
charming face with its small features and its beautiful eyes was turned
to him. How they danced, and how deliriously the music ran! And there
was Falloden in the doorway, with his dark face,—looking on. The rag on
his part, had been mere revenge; not for the speech, but for the ball.
Was she in love with him? Impossible! How could such a hard, proud
being attract her? If she did marry him he would crush and wither her.
Yet of course girls did do—every day—such idiotic things. And he
thought uncomfortably of a look he had surprised in her face, as he and
she were sitting in the New Quad under the trees and Falloden passed
with a handsome dark lady—one of the London visitors. It had been
something involuntary—a flash from the girl’s inmost self. It had
chilled and checked him as he sat by her. Yet the next dance had driven
all recollection of it away.
“She can’t ever care for me,” he thought despairingly. “I know that.
I’m not her equal. I should be a fool to dream of it. But if she’s
going to throw herself away—to break her heart for that
fellow—it’s—it’s devilish! Why aren’t we in Paris—or Warsaw—where I
could call him out?”
He tossed about in pain and fever, irritably deciding that his bandage
hurt him, and he must recall the doctor, when he heard Sorell’s voice
at the door. It quieted him at once.
“Come in!”
Sorell came in with a scared face.
“My dear boy—what’s the matter?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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