And as for this puppy!--

A sudden gust of pa.s.sion, of hot and murderous wrath, different from anything he had ever felt before, blew fiercely through the man's soul.

He wanted to crush--to punish--to humiliate. For a moment he saw red.

Then he heard Meyrick say excitedly: "This is our last chance! Let's cool his head for him--in Neptune."

Neptune was the Graeco-Roman fountain in the inner quad, which a former warden had presented to the college. The sea G.o.d with his trident, surrounded by a group of rather dilapidated nymphs, presided over a broad basin, filled with running water and a mult.i.tude of goldfish.

There was a shout of laughing a.s.sent, and a rush across the gra.s.s to Radowitz's staircase. College was nearly empty; the Senior Tutor had gone to Switzerland that morning; and those few inmates who still remained, tired out with the ball of the night before, were fast asleep.

The night porter, having let everybody in and closed the gate, was dozing in his lodge.

There was a short silence in the quadrangle. Then the rioters who had been for a few minutes swallowed up in a distant staircase on the western side of the quadrangle reemerged, with m.u.f.fled 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. The intention of his captors--of all save one--was mere rowdy mischief. To duck the offender and his immaculate white flannels in Neptune, and then scatter to their beds before any one could recognise or report them, was all they meant to do.

But when they reached the fountain, Radowitz, whose pa.s.sion gave him considerable physical strength, disengaged himself, by a sudden effort, from his two keepers, and leaping into the basin of the fountain, he wrenched a rickety leaden sh.e.l.l from the hand of one of Neptune's attendant nymphs and began to fling the water in the faces of his tormentors. Falloden was quickly drenched, and Meyrick and others momentarily blinded by the sudden deluge in their eyes. Robertson, the Winchester Blue, was heavily struck. In a wild rage he jumped into the fountain and closed with Radowitz. The Pole had no chance against him, and after a short struggle, Radowitz fell heavily, catching in his fall at a piece of rusty piping, part of some disused machinery of the fountain.

There was a cry. In a moment it sobered the excited group of men.

Falloden, who had acted as leader throughout, called peremptorily to Robertson. "Is he hurt? Let him up at once."

Robertson in dismay stooped over the prostrate form of Radowitz, and carried him to the edge of the fountain. There it was seen that the lad had fainted, and that blood was streaming from his right hand.

"He's cut it on that beastly piping--it's all jagged," gasped Robertson.

"I say, can anybody stop the bleeding?"

One Desmond, an Etonian who had seen one or two football accidents, knelt down, deadly pale, by Radowitz and rendered a rough first-aid. By a tourniquet of handkerchiefs he succeeded in checking the bleeding. But it was evident that an artery was injured.

"Go for a doctor," said Falloden to Meyrick, pointing to the lodge.

"Tell the porter that somebody's been hurt in a lark. You'll probably find a cab outside. We'll carry him up."

In a few minutes they had laid the blood-stained and unconscious Radowitz on his bed, and were trying in hideous anxiety to bring him round. The moment when he first opened his eyes was one of unspeakable relief to the men who in every phase of terror and remorse were gathered round him. But the eyelids soon fell again.

"You'd better go, you fellows," said Falloden, looking round him.

"Robertson and I and Desmond will see the doctor."

The others stole away. And the three men kept their vigil. The broad-shouldered Wykehamist, utterly unnerved, sat by the bed trembling from head to foot. Desmond kept watch over the tourniquet.

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.

CHAPTER X

Radowitz woke up the following morning, after the effects of the dose of morphia administered by the surgeon who had dressed his hand had worn off, in a state of complete bewilderment. What had happened to him? Why was he lying in this strange, stiff position, propped up with pillows?

He moved a little. A sharp pain wrung a groan from him. Then he perceived his bandaged hand and arm; and the occurrences of the preceding night began to rush back upon him. He had soon reconstructed them all; up to the moment of his jumping into the fountain. After that he remembered nothing.

He had hurt himself somehow in the row, that was clear. A sudden terror ran through him. "It's my right hand!--Good G.o.d! if I lost my hand!--if I couldn't play again!" He opened his eyes, trembling, and saw his little college room; his clothes hanging on the door, the photographs of his father and mother, of Chopin and Wagner on the chest of drawers. The familiar sight rea.s.sured him at once, and his natural buoyancy of spirit began to a.s.sert itself.

"I suppose they got a doctor. I seem to remember somebody coming. Bah, it'll be all right directly. I heal like a baby. I wonder who else was hurt. Who's that? Come in!"

The door opened, and his scout looked in cautiously. "Thought I heard you moving, sir. May the doctor come in?"

The young surgeon appeared who had been violently rung up by Meyrick some five hours earlier. He had a trim, confident air, and pleasant eyes. His name was Fanning.

"Well, how are you? Had some sleep? You gave yourself an uncommonly nasty wound. I had to set a small bone, and put in two or three st.i.tches. But I don't think you knew much about it."

"I don't now," said Radowitz vaguely. "How did I do it?"

"There seems to have been a 'rag' and you struck your hand against some broken tubing. But n.o.body was able to give a clear account." The doctor eyed him discreetly, having no mind to be more mixed up in the affair than was necessary.

"Who sent for you?"

"Lord Meyrick rang me up, and when I got here I found Mr. Falloden and Mr. Robertson. They had done what they could."

The colour rushed back into the boy's pale cheeks.

"I remember now," he said fiercely. "d.a.m.n them!"

The surgeon made no reply. He looked carefully at the bandage, asked if he could ease it at all--took pulse and temperature, and sat some time in silence, apparently thinking, by the bed. Then rising, he said:

"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 pa.s.sed 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.