Resolving to persevere in the heretofore satisfactory paths of art while life and faculties were left, though every instinct must proclaim that there would be no longer any collateral attraction in that pursuit, he went along under the trees of the Anlage and reached the castle vaults, in whose cool shades he spent the afternoon, working out his intentions with fair result. When he had strolled back to his hotel in the evening the time was approaching for the table-d’hote. Having seated himself rather early, he spent the few minutes of waiting in looking over his pocket-book, and putting a few finishing touches to the afternoon performance whilst the objects were fresh in his memory. Thus occupied he was but dimly conscious of the customary rustle of dresses and pulling up of chairs by the crowd of other diners as they gathered around him. Serving began, and he put away his book and prepared for the meal. He had hardly done this when he became conscious that the person on his left hand was not the typical cosmopolite with boundless hotel knowledge and irrelevant experiences that he was accustomed to find next him, but a face he recognized as that of a young man whom he had met and talked to at Stancy Castle garden-party, whose name he had now forgotten. This young fellow was conversing with somebody on his left hand—no other personage than Paula herself. Next to Paula he beheld De Stancy, and De Stancy’s sister beyond him. It was one of those gratuitous encounters which only happen to discarded lovers who have shown commendable stoicism under disappointment, as if on purpose to reopen and aggravate their wounds.
It seemed as if the intervening traveller had met the other party by accident there and then. In a minute he turned and recognized Somerset, and by degrees the young men’s cursory remarks to each other developed into a pretty regular conversation, interrupted only when he turned to speak to Paula on his left hand.
‘Your architectural adviser travels in your party: how very convenient,’ said the young tourist to her. ‘Far pleasanter than having a medical attendant in one’s train!’
Somerset, who had no distractions on the other side of him, could hear every word of this. He glanced at Paula. She had not known of his presence in the room till now. Their eyes met for a second, and she bowed sedately. Somerset returned her bow, and her eyes were quickly withdrawn with scarcely visible confusion.
‘Mr. Somerset is not travelling with us,’ she said. ‘We have met by accident. Mr. Somerset came to me on business a little while ago.’
‘I must congratulate you on having put the castle into good hands,’ continued the enthusiastic young man.
‘I believe Mr. Somerset is quite competent,’ said Paula stiffly.
To include Somerset in the conversation the young man turned to him and added: ‘You carry on your work at the castle con amore, no doubt?’
‘There is work I should like better,’ said Somerset.
‘Indeed?’
The frigidity of his manner seemed to set her at ease by dispersing all fear of a scene; and alternate dialogues of this sort with the gentleman in their midst were more or less continued by both Paula and Somerset till they rose from table.
In the bustle of moving out the two latter for one moment stood side by side.
‘Miss Power,’ said Somerset, in a low voice that was obscured by the rustle, ‘you have nothing more to say to me?’
‘I think there is nothing more?’ said Paula, lifting her eyes with longing reticence.
‘Then I take leave of you; and tender my best wishes that you may have a pleasant time before you!.... I set out for England to-night.’
‘With a special photographer, no doubt?’
It was the first time that she had addressed Somerset with a meaning distinctly bitter; and her remark, which had reference to the forged photograph, fell of course without its intended effect.
‘No, Miss Power,’ said Somerset gravely. ‘But with a deeper sense of woman’s thoughtless trifling than time will ever eradicate.’
‘Is not that a mistake?’ she asked in a voice that distinctly trembled.
‘A mistake? How?’
‘I mean, do you not forget many things?’ (throwing on him a troubled glance). ‘A woman may feel herself justified in her conduct, although it admits of no explanation.’
‘I don’t contest the point for a moment.... Goodbye.’
‘Good-bye.’
They parted amid the flowering shrubs and caged birds in the hall, and he saw her no more. De Stancy came up, and spoke a few commonplace words, his sister having gone out, either without perceiving Somerset, or with intention to avoid him.
That night, as he had said, he was on his way to England.
VII.
The De Stancys and Powers remained in Heidelberg for some days. All remarked that after Somerset’s departure Paula was frequently irritable, though at other times as serene as ever. Yet even when in a blithe and saucy mood there was at bottom a tinge of melancholy. Something did not lie easy in her undemonstrative heart, and all her friends excused the inequalities of a humour whose source, though not positively known, could be fairly well guessed.
De Stancy had long since discovered that his chance lay chiefly in her recently acquired and fanciful predilection d’artiste for hoary mediaeval families with ancestors in alabaster and primogenitive renown. Seeing this he dwelt on those topics which brought out that aspect of himself more clearly, talking feudalism and chivalry with a zest that he had never hitherto shown. Yet it was not altogether factitious. For, discovering how much this quondam Puritan was interested in the attributes of long-chronicled houses, a reflected interest in himself arose in his own soul, and he began to wonder why he had not prized these things before. Till now disgusted by the failure of his family to hold its own in the turmoil between ancient and modern, he had grown to undervalue its past prestige; and it was with corrective ardour that he adopted while he ministered to her views.
Henceforward the wooing of De Stancy took the form of an intermittent address, the incidents of their travel furnishing pegs whereon to hang his subject; sometimes hindering it, but seldom failing to produce in her a greater tolerance of his presence. His next opportunity was the day after Somerset’s departure from Heidelberg. They stood on the great terrace of the Schloss-Garten, looking across the intervening ravine to the north-east front of the castle which rose before them in all its customary warm tints and battered magnificence.
‘This is a spot, if any, which should bring matters to a crisis between you and me,’ he asserted good-humouredly. ‘But you have been so silent to-day that I lose the spirit to take advantage of my privilege.’
She inquired what privilege he spoke of, as if quite another subject had been in her mind than De Stancy.
‘The privilege of winning your heart if I can, which you gave me at Carlsruhe.’
‘O,’ she said. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking of that. But I do not feel myself absolutely bound by the statement I made in that room; and I shall expect, if I withdraw it, not to be called to account by you.’
De Stancy looked rather blank.
‘If you recede from your promise you will doubtless have good reason. But I must solemnly beg you, after raising my hopes, to keep as near as you can to your word, so as not to throw me into utter despair.’
Paula dropped her glance into the Thier-Garten below them, where gay promenaders were clambering up between the bushes and flowers. At length she said, with evident embarrassment, but with much distinctness: ‘I deserve much more blame for what I have done than you can express to me. I will confess to you the whole truth. All that I told you in the hotel at Carlsruhe was said in a moment of pique at what had happened just before you came in. It was supposed I was much involved with another man, and circumstances made the supposition particularly objectionable. To escape it I jumped at the alternative of yourself.’
‘That’s bad for me!’ he murmured.
‘If after this avowal you bind me to my words I shall say no more: I do not wish to recede from them without your full permission.’
‘What a caprice! But I release you unconditionally,’ he said. ‘And I beg your pardon if I seemed to show too much assurance. Please put it down to my gratified excitement. I entirely acquiesce in your wish. I will go away to whatever place you please, and not come near you but by your own permission, and till you are quite satisfied that my presence and what it may lead to is not undesirable. I entirely give way before you, and will endeavour to make my future devotedness, if ever we meet again, a new ground for expecting your favour.’
Paula seemed struck by the generous and cheerful fairness of his remarks, and said gently, ‘Perhaps your departure is not absolutely necessary for my happiness; and I do not wish from what you call caprice—’
‘I retract that word.’
‘Well, whatever it is, I don’t wish you to do anything which should cause you real pain, or trouble, or humiliation.’
‘That’s very good of you.’
‘But I reserve to myself the right to accept or refuse your addresses—just as if those rash words of mine had never been spoken.’
‘I must bear it all as best I can, I suppose,’ said De Stancy, with melancholy humorousness.
‘And I shall treat you as your behaviour shall seem to deserve,’ she said playfully.
‘Then I may stay?’
‘Yes; I am willing to give you that pleasure, if it is one, in return for the attentions you have shown, and the trouble you have taken to make my journey pleasant.’
She walked on and discovered Mrs. Goodman near, and presently the whole party met together. De Stancy did not find himself again at her side till later in the afternoon, when they had left the immediate precincts of the castle and decided on a drive to the Konigsstuhl.
The carriage, containing only Mrs. Goodman, was driven a short way up the winding incline, Paula, her uncle, and Miss De Stancy walking behind under the shadow of the trees. Then Mrs. Goodman called to them and asked when they were going to join her.
‘We are going to walk up,’ said Mr. Power.
Paula seemed seized with a spirit of boisterousness quite unlike her usual behaviour. ‘My aunt may drive up, and you may walk up; but I shall run up,’ she said. ‘See, here’s a way.’ She tripped towards a path through the bushes which, instead of winding like the regular track, made straight for the summit.
Paula had not the remotest conception of the actual distance to the top, imagining it to be but a couple of hundred yards at the outside, whereas it was really nearer a mile, the ascent being uniformly steep all the way. When her uncle and De Stancy had seen her vanish they stood still, the former evidently reluctant to forsake the easy ascent for a difficult one, though he said, ‘We can’t let her go alone that way, I suppose.’
‘No, of course not,’ said De Stancy.
They then followed in the direction taken by Paula, Charlotte entering the carriage. When Power and De Stancy had ascended about fifty yards the former looked back, and dropped off from the pursuit, to return to the easy route, giving his companion a parting hint concerning Paula. Whereupon De Stancy went on alone. He soon saw Paula above him in the path, which ascended skyward straight as Jacob’s Ladder, but was so overhung by the brushwood as to be quite shut out from the sun. When he reached her side she was moving easily upward, apparently enjoying the seclusion which the place afforded.
‘Is not my uncle with you?’ she said, on turning and seeing him.
‘He went back,’ said De Stancy.
She replied that it was of no consequence; that she should meet him at the top, she supposed.
Paula looked up amid the green light which filtered through the leafage as far as her eyes could stretch. But the top did not appear, and she allowed De Stancy to get in front. ‘It did not seem such a long way as this, to look at,’ she presently said.
He explained that the trees had deceived her as to the real height, by reason of her seeing the slope foreshortened when she looked up from the castle. ‘Allow me to help you,’ he added.
‘No, thank you,’ said Paula lightly; ‘we must be near the top.’
They went on again; but no Konigsstuhl. When next De Stancy turned he found that she was sitting down; immediately going back he offered his arm. She took it in silence, declaring that it was no wonder her uncle did not come that wearisome way, if he had ever been there before.
De Stancy did not explain that Mr. Power had said to him at parting, ‘There’s a chance for you, if you want one,’ but at once went on with the subject begun on the terrace. ‘If my behaviour is good, you will reaffirm the statement made at Carlsruhe?’
‘It is not fair to begin that now!’ expostulated Paula; ‘I can only think of getting to the top.’
Her colour deepening by the exertion, he suggested that she should sit down again on one of the mossy boulders by the wayside. Nothing loth she did, De Stancy standing by, and with his cane scratching the moss from the stone.
‘This is rather awkward,’ said Paula, in her usual circumspect way. ‘My relatives and your sister will be sure to suspect me of having arranged this scramble with you.’
‘But I know better,’ sighed De Stancy. ‘I wish to Heaven you had arranged it!’
She was not at the top, but she took advantage of the halt to answer his previous question. ‘There are many points on which I must be satisfied before I can reaffirm anything. Do you not see that you are mistaken in clinging to this idea?—that you are laying up mortification and disappointment for yourself?’
‘A negative reply from you would be disappointment, early or late.’
‘And you prefer having it late to accepting it now? If I were a man, I should like to abandon a false scent as soon as possible.’
‘I suppose all that has but one meaning: that I am to go.’
‘O no,’ she magnanimously assured him, bounding up from her seat; ‘I adhere to my statement that you may stay; though it is true something may possibly happen to make me alter my mind.’
He again offered his arm, and from sheer necessity she leant upon it as before.
‘Grant me but a moment’s patience,’ he began.
‘Captain De Stancy! Is this fair? I am physically obliged to hold your arm, so that I MUST listen to what you say!’
‘No, it is not fair; ‘pon my soul it is not!’ said De Stancy. ‘I won’t say another word.’
He did not; and they clambered on through the boughs, nothing disturbing the solitude but the rustle of their own footsteps and the singing of birds overhead. They occasionally got a peep at the sky; and whenever a twig hung out in a position to strike Paula’s face the gallant captain bent it aside with his stick. But she did not thank him. Perhaps he was just as well satisfied as if she had done so.
Paula, panting, broke the silence: ‘Will you go on, and discover if the top is near?’
He went on. This time the top was near. When he returned she was sitting where he had left her among the leaves. ‘It is quite near now,’ he told her tenderly, and she took his arm again without a word. Soon the path changed its nature from a steep and rugged watercourse to a level green promenade.
‘Thank you, Captain De Stancy,’ she said, letting go his arm as if relieved.
Before them rose the tower, and at the base they beheld two of their friends, Mr. Power being seen above, looking over the parapet through his glass.
‘You will go to the top now?’ said De Stancy.
‘No, I take no interest in it. My interest has turned to fatigue. I only want to go home.’
He took her on to where the carriage stood at the foot of the tower, and leaving her with his sister ascended the turret to the top. The landscape had quite changed from its afternoon appearance, and had become rather marvellous than beautiful. The air was charged with a lurid exhalation that blurred the extensive view. He could see the distant Rhine at its junction with the Neckar, shining like a thread of blood through the mist which was gradually wrapping up the declining sun. The scene had in it something that was more than melancholy, and not much less than tragic; but for De Stancy such evening effects possessed little meaning. He was engaged in an enterprise that taxed all his resources, and had no sentiments to spare for air, earth, or skies.
‘Remarkable scene,’ said Power, mildly, at his elbow.
‘Yes; I dare say it is,’ said De Stancy. ‘Time has been when I should have held forth upon such a prospect, and wondered if its livid colours shadowed out my own life, et caetera, et caetera. But, begad, I have almost forgotten there’s such a thing as Nature, and I care for nothing but a comfortable life, and a certain woman who does not care for me!... Now shall we go down?’
VIII.
It was quite true that De Stancy at the present period of his existence wished only to escape from the hurly-burly of active life, and to win the affection of Paula Power. There were, however, occasions when a recollection of his old renunciatory vows would obtrude itself upon him, and tinge his present with wayward bitterness. So much was this the case that a day or two after they had arrived at Mainz he could not refrain from making remarks almost prejudicial to his cause, saying to her, ‘I am unfortunate in my situation. There are, unhappily, worldly reasons why I should pretend to love you, even if I do not: they are so strong that, though really loving you, perhaps they enter into my thoughts of you.’
‘I don’t want to know what such reasons are,’ said Paula, with promptness, for it required but little astuteness to discover that he alluded to the alienated Wessex home and estates. ‘You lack tone,’ she gently added: ‘that’s why the situation of affairs seems distasteful to you.’
‘Yes, I suppose I am ill. And yet I am well enough.’
These remarks passed under a tree in the public gardens during an odd minute of waiting for Charlotte and Mrs. Goodman; and he said no more to her in private that day. Few as her words had been he liked them better than any he had lately received. The conversation was not resumed till they were gliding ‘between the banks that bear the vine,’ on board one of the Rhine steamboats, which, like the hotels in this early summer time, were comparatively free from other English travellers; so that everywhere Paula and her party were received with open arms and cheerful countenances, as among the first swallows of the season.
The saloon of the steamboat was quite empty, the few passengers being outside; and this paucity of voyagers afforded De Stancy a roomy opportunity.
Paula saw him approach her, and there appearing in his face signs that he would begin again on the eternal subject, she seemed to be struck with a sense of the ludicrous.
De Stancy reddened. ‘Something seems to amuse you,’ he said.
‘It is over,’ she replied, becoming serious.
‘Was it about me, and this unhappy fever in me?’
‘If I speak the truth I must say it was.’
‘You thought, “Here’s that absurd man again, going to begin his daily supplication.”’
‘Not “absurd,”’ she said, with emphasis; ‘because I don’t think it is absurd.’
She continued looking through the windows at the Lurlei Heights under which they were now passing, and he remained with his eyes on her.
‘May I stay here with you?’ he said at last. ‘I have not had a word with you alone for four-and-twenty hours.’
‘You must be cheerful, then.’
‘You have said such as that before. I wish you would say “loving” instead of “cheerful.”’
‘Yes, I know, I know,’ she responded, with impatient perplexity. ‘But why must you think of me—me only? Is there no other woman in the world who has the power to make you happy? I am sure there must be.’
‘Perhaps there is; but I have never seen her.’
‘Then look for her; and believe me when I say that you will certainly find her.’
He shook his head.
‘Captain De Stancy, I have long felt for you,’ she continued, with a frank glance into his face. ‘You have deprived yourself too long of other women’s company. Why not go away for a little time? and when you have found somebody else likely to make you happy, you can meet me again. I will see you at your father’s house, and we will enjoy all the pleasure of easy friendship.’
‘Very correct; and very cold, O best of women!’
‘You are too full of exclamations and transports, I think!’
They stood in silence, Paula apparently much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. ‘Dear Miss Power,’ he resumed, ‘before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than you have been?’
‘You put me out of all patience!’
‘But why did you raise my hopes? You should at least pity me after doing that.’
‘Yes; it’s that again! I unfortunately raised your hopes because I was a fool—was not myself that moment. Now question me no more. As it is I think you presume too much upon my becoming yours as the consequence of my having dismissed another.’
‘Not on becoming mine, but on listening to me.’
‘Your argument would be reasonable enough had I led you to believe I would listen to you—and ultimately accept you; but that I have not done. I see now that a woman who gives a man an answer one shade less peremptory than a harsh negative may be carried beyond her intentions, and out of her own power before she knows it.’
‘Chide me if you will; I don’t care!’
She looked steadfastly at him with a little mischief in her eyes. ‘You DO care,’ she said.
‘Then why don’t you listen to me? I would not persevere for a moment longer if it were against the wishes of your family. Your uncle says it would give him pleasure to see you accept me.’
‘Does he say why?’ she asked thoughtfully.
‘Yes; he takes, of course, a practical view of the matter; he thinks it commends itself so to reason and common sense that the owner of Stancy Castle should become a member of the De Stancy family.’
‘Yes, that’s the horrid plague of it,’ she said, with a nonchalance which seemed to contradict her words. ‘It is so dreadfully reasonable that we should marry. I wish it wasn’t!’
‘Well, you are younger than I, and perhaps that’s a natural wish. But to me it seems a felicitous combination not often met with. I confess that your interest in our family before you knew me lent a stability to my hopes that otherwise they would not have had.’
‘My interest in the De Stancys has not been a personal interest except in the case of your sister,’ she returned. ‘It has been an historical interest only; and is not at all increased by your existence.’
‘And perhaps it is not diminished?’
‘No, I am not aware that it is diminished,’ she murmured, as she observed the gliding shore.
‘Well, you will allow me to say this, since I say it without reference to your personality or to mine—that the Power and De Stancy families are the complements to each other; and that, abstractedly, they call earnestly to one another: “How neat and fit a thing for us to join hands!”’
Paula, who was not prudish when a direct appeal was made to her common sense, answered with ready candour: ‘Yes, from the point of view of domestic politics, that undoubtedly is the case. But I hope I am not so calculating as to risk happiness in order to round off a social idea.’
‘I hope not; or that I am either. Still the social idea exists, and my increased years make its excellence more obvious to me than to you.’
The ice once broken on this aspect of the question, the subject seemed further to engross her, and she spoke on as if daringly inclined to venture where she had never anticipated going, deriving pleasure from the very strangeness of her temerity: ‘You mean that in the fitness of things I ought to become a De Stancy to strengthen my social position?’
‘And that I ought to strengthen mine by alliance with the heiress of a name so dear to engineering science as Power.’
‘Well, we are talking with unexpected frankness.’
‘But you are not seriously displeased with me for saying what, after all, one can’t help feeling and thinking?’
‘No. Only be so good as to leave off going further for the present. Indeed, of the two, I would rather have the other sort of address. I mean,’ she hastily added, ‘that what you urge as the result of a real affection, however unsuitable, I have some remote satisfaction in listening to—not the least from any reciprocal love on my side, but from a woman’s gratification at being the object of anybody’s devotion; for that feeling towards her is always regarded as a merit in a woman’s eye, and taken as a kindness by her, even when it is at the expense of her convenience.’
She had said, voluntarily or involuntarily, better things than he expected, and perhaps too much in her own opinion, for she hardly gave him an opportunity of replying.
They passed St. Goar and Boppard, and when steering round the sharp bend of the river just beyond the latter place De Stancy met her again, exclaiming, ‘You left me very suddenly.’
‘You must make allowances, please,’ she said; ‘I have always stood in need of them.’
‘Then you shall always have them.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said quickly; but Paula was not to be caught again, and kept close to the side of her aunt while they glided past Brauback and Oberlahnstein. Approaching Coblenz her aunt said, ‘Paula, let me suggest that you be not so much alone with Captain De Stancy.’
‘And why?’ said Paula quietly.
‘You’ll have plenty of offers if you want them, without taking trouble,’ said the direct Mrs. Goodman. ‘Your existence is hardly known to the world yet, and Captain De Stancy is too near middle-age for a girl like you.’ Paula did not reply to either of these remarks, being seemingly so interested in Ehrenbreitstein’s heights as not to hear them.
IX.
It was midnight at Coblenz, and the travellers had retired to rest in their respective apartments, overlooking the river. Finding that there was a moon shining, Paula leant out of her window. The tall rock of Ehrenbreitstein on the opposite shore was flooded with light, and a belated steamer was drawing up to the landing-stage, where it presently deposited its passengers.
‘We should have come by the last boat, so as to have been touched into romance by the rays of this moon, like those happy people,’ said a voice.
She looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, which was a window quite near at hand. De Stancy was smoking outside it, and she became aware that the words were addressed to her.
‘You left me very abruptly,’ he continued.
Paula’s instinct of caution impelled her to speak.
‘The windows are all open,’ she murmured. ‘Please be careful.’
‘There are no English in this hotel except ourselves. I thank you for what you said to-day.’
‘Please be careful,’ she repeated.
‘My dear Miss P——’
‘Don’t mention names, and don’t continue the subject!’
‘Life and death perhaps depend upon my renewing it soon!’
She shut the window decisively, possibly wondering if De Stancy had drunk a glass or two of Steinberg more than was good for him, and saw no more of moonlit Ehrenbreitstein that night, and heard no more of De Stancy. But it was some time before he closed his window, and previous to doing so saw a dark form at an adjoining one on the other side.
It was Mr. Power, also taking the air. ‘Well, what luck to-day?’ said Power.
‘A decided advance,’ said De Stancy.
None of the speakers knew that a little person in the room above heard all this out-of-window talk. Charlotte, though not looking out, had left her casement open; and what reached her ears set her wondering as to the result.
It is not necessary to detail in full De Stancy’s imperceptible advances with Paula during that northward journey—so slowly performed that it seemed as if she must perceive there was a special reason for delaying her return to England. At Cologne one day he conveniently overtook her when she was ascending the hotel staircase. Seeing him, she went to the window of the entresol landing, which commanded a view of the Rhine, meaning that he should pass by to his room.
‘I have been very uneasy,’ began the captain, drawing up to her side; ‘and I am obliged to trouble you sooner than I meant to do.’
Paula turned her eyes upon him with some curiosity as to what was coming of this respectful demeanour. ‘Indeed!’ she said.
He then informed her that he had been overhauling himself since they last talked, and had some reason to blame himself for bluntness and general want of euphemism; which, although he had meant nothing by it, must have been very disagreeable to her. But he had always aimed at sincerity, particularly as he had to deal with a lady who despised hypocrisy and was above flattery. However, he feared he might have carried his disregard for conventionality too far. But from that time he would promise that she should find an alteration by which he hoped he might return the friendship at least of a young lady he honoured more than any other in the world.
This retrograde movement was evidently unexpected by the honoured young lady herself. After being so long accustomed to rebuke him for his persistence there was novelty in finding him do the work for her. The guess might even have been hazarded that there was also disappointment.
Still looking across the river at the bridge of boats which stretched to the opposite suburb of Deutz: ‘You need not blame yourself,’ she said, with the mildest conceivable manner, ‘I can make allowances. All I wish is that you should remain under no misapprehension.’
‘I comprehend,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But since, by a perverse fate, I have been thrown into your company, you could hardly expect me to feel and act otherwise.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Since I have so much reason to be dissatisfied with myself,’ he added, ‘I cannot refrain from criticizing elsewhere to a slight extent, and thinking I have to do with an ungenerous person.’
‘Why ungenerous?’
‘In this way; that since you cannot love me, you see no reason at all for trying to do so in the fact that I so deeply love you; hence I say that you are rather to be distinguished by your wisdom than by your humanity.’
‘It comes to this, that if your words are all seriously meant it is much to be regretted we ever met,’ she murmured. ‘Now will you go on to where you were going, and leave me here?’
Without a remonstrance he went on, saying with dejected whimsicality as he smiled back upon her, ‘You show a wisdom which for so young a lady is perfectly surprising.’
It was resolved to prolong the journey by a circuit through Holland and Belgium; but nothing changed in the attitudes of Paula and Captain De Stancy till one afternoon during their stay at the Hague, when they had gone for a drive down to Scheveningen by the long straight avenue of chestnuts and limes, under whose boughs tufts of wild parsley waved their flowers, except where the buitenplaatsen of retired merchants blazed forth with new paint of every hue. On mounting the dune which kept out the sea behind the village a brisk breeze greeted their faces, and a fine sand blew up into their eyes. De Stancy screened Paula with his umbrella as they stood with their backs to the wind, looking down on the red roofs of the village within the sea wall, and pulling at the long grass which by some means found nourishment in the powdery soil of the dune.
When they had discussed the scene he continued, ‘It always seems to me that this place reflects the average mood of human life. I mean, if we strike the balance between our best moods and our worst we shall find our average condition to stand at about the same pitch in emotional colour as these sandy dunes and this grey scene do in landscape.’
Paula contended that he ought not to measure everybody by himself.
‘I have no other standard,’ said De Stancy; ‘and if my own is wrong, it is you who have made it so. Have you thought any more of what I said at Cologne?’
‘I don’t quite remember what you did say at Cologne?’
‘My dearest life!’ Paula’s eyes rounding somewhat, he corrected the exclamation. ‘My dear Miss Power, I will, without reserve, tell it to you all over again.’
‘Pray spare yourself the effort,’ she said drily. ‘What has that one fatal step betrayed me into!... Do you seriously mean to say that I am the cause of your life being coloured like this scene of grass and sand? If so, I have committed a very great fault!’
‘It can be nullified by a word.’
‘Such a word!’
‘It is a very short one.’
‘There’s a still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you—that you think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now, it is raining; what shall we do? I thought this wind meant rain.’
‘Do? Stand on here, as we are standing now.’
‘Your sister and my aunt are gone under the wall. I think we will walk towards them.’
‘You had made me hope,’ he continued (his thoughts apparently far away from the rain and the wind and the possibility of shelter), ‘that you might change your mind, and give to your original promise a liberal meaning in renewing it. In brief I mean this, that you would allow it to merge into an engagement. Don’t think it presumptuous,’ he went on, as he held the umbrella over her; ‘I am sure any man would speak as I do. A distinct permission to be with you on probation—that was what you gave me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, what does that mean?’
‘That I am artistically interested in your family history.’ And she went out from the umbrella to the shelter of the hotel where she found her aunt and friend.
De Stancy could not but feel that his persistence had made some impression. It was hardly possible that a woman of independent nature would have tolerated his dangling at her side so long, if his presence were wholly distasteful to her. That evening when driving back to the Hague by a devious route through the dense avenues of the Bosch he conversed with her again; also the next day when standing by the Vijver looking at the swans; and in each case she seemed to have at least got over her objection to being seen talking to him, apart from the remainder of the travelling party.
Scenes very similar to those at Scheveningen and on the Rhine were enacted at later stages of their desultory journey. Mr. Power had proposed to cross from Rotterdam; but a stiff north-westerly breeze prevailing Paula herself became reluctant to hasten back to Stancy Castle. Turning abruptly they made for Brussels.
It was here, while walking homeward from the Park one morning, that her uncle for the first time alluded to the situation of affairs between herself and her admirer. The captain had gone up the Rue Royale with his sister and Mrs. Goodman, either to show them the house in which the ball took place on the eve of Quatre Bras or some other site of interest, and the two Powers were thus left to themselves. To reach their hotel they passed into a little street sloping steeply down from the Rue Royale to the Place Ste. Gudule, where, at the moment of nearing the cathedral, a wedding party emerged from the porch and crossed in front of uncle and niece.
‘I hope,’ said the former, in his passionless way, ‘we shall see a performance of this sort between you and Captain De Stancy, not so very long after our return to England.’
‘Why?’ asked Paula, following the bride with her eyes.
‘It is diplomatically, as I may say, such a highly correct thing—such an expedient thing—such an obvious thing to all eyes.’
‘Not altogether to mine, uncle,’ she returned.
‘’Twould be a thousand pities to let slip such a neat offer of adjusting difficulties as accident makes you in this. You could marry more tin, that’s true; but you don’t want it, Paula. You want a name, and historic what-do-they-call-it. Now by coming to terms with the captain you’ll be Lady De Stancy in a few years: and a title which is useless to him, and a fortune and castle which are in some degree useless to you, will make a splendid whole useful to you both.’
‘I’ve thought it over—quite,’ she answered. ‘And I quite see what the advantages are. But how if I don’t care one atom for artistic completeness and a splendid whole; and do care very much to do what my fancy inclines me to do?’
‘Then I should say that, taking a comprehensive view of human nature of all colours, your fancy is about the silliest fancy existing on this earthly ball.’
Paula laughed indifferently, and her uncle felt that, persistent as was his nature, he was the wrong man to influence her by argument. Paula’s blindness to the advantages of the match, if she were blind, was that of a woman who wouldn’t see, and the best argument was silence.
This was in some measure proved the next morning. When Paula made her appearance Mrs. Goodman said, holding up an envelope: ‘Here’s a letter from Mr. Somerset.’
‘Dear me,’ said she blandly, though a quick little flush ascended her cheek. ‘I had nearly forgotten him!’
The letter on being read contained a request as brief as it was unexpected. Having prepared all the drawings necessary for the rebuilding, Somerset begged leave to resign the superintendence of the work into other hands.
‘His letter caps your remarks very aptly,’ said Mrs. Goodman, with secret triumph. ‘You are nearly forgetting him, and he is quite forgetting you.’
‘Yes,’ said Paula, affecting carelessness. ‘Well, I must get somebody else, I suppose.’
X.
They next deviated to Amiens, intending to stay there only one night; but their schemes were deranged by the sudden illness of Charlotte. She had been looking unwell for a fortnight past, though, with her usual self-abnegation, she had made light of her ailment. Even now she declared she could go on; but this was said over-night, and in the morning it was abundantly evident that to move her was highly unadvisable. Still she was not in serious danger, and having called in a physician, who pronounced rest indispensable, they prepared to remain in the old Picard capital two or three additional days. Mr. Power thought he would take advantage of the halt to run up to Paris, leaving De Stancy in charge of the ladies.
In more ways than in the illness of Charlotte this day was the harbinger of a crisis.
It was a summer evening without a cloud. Charlotte had fallen asleep in her bed, and Paula, who had been sitting by her, looked out into the Place St. Denis, which the hotel commanded. The lawn of the square was all ablaze with red and yellow clumps of flowers, the acacia trees were brightly green, the sun was soft and low. Tempted by the prospect Paula went and put on her hat; and arousing her aunt, who was nodding in the next room, to request her to keep an ear on Charlotte’s bedroom, Paula descended into the Rue de Noyon alone, and entered the green enclosure.
While she walked round, two or three little children in charge of a nurse trundled a large variegated ball along the grass, and it rolled to Paula’s feet. She smiled at them, and endeavoured to return it by a slight kick. The ball rose in the air, and passing over the back of a seat which stood under one of the trees, alighted in the lap of a gentleman hitherto screened by its boughs. The back and shoulders proved to be those of De Stancy. He turned his head, jumped up, and was at her side in an instant, a nettled flush having meanwhile crossed Paula’s face.
‘I thought you had gone to the Hotoie Promenade,’ she said hastily. ‘I am going to the cathedral;’ (obviously uttered lest it should seem that she had seen him from the hotel windows, and entered the square for his company).
‘Of course: there is nothing else to go to here—even for Roundheads.’
‘If you mean ME by that, you are very much mistaken,’ said she testily.
‘The Roundheads were your ancestors, and they knocked down my ancestors’ castle, and broke the stained glass and statuary of the cathedral,’ said De Stancy slily; ‘and now you go not only to a cathedral, but to a service of the unreformed Church in it.’
‘In a foreign country it is different from home,’ said Paula in extenuation; ‘and you of all men should not reproach me for tergiversation—when it has been brought about by—by my sympathies with—’
‘With the troubles of the De Stancys.’
‘Well, you know what I mean,’ she answered, with considerable anxiety not to be misunderstood; ‘my liking for the old castle, and what it contains, and what it suggests. I declare I will not explain to you further—why should I? I am not answerable to you!’
Paula’s show of petulance was perhaps not wholly because she had appeared to seek him, but also from being reminded by his criticism that Mr. Woodwell’s prophecy on her weakly succumbing to surroundings was slowly working out its fulfilment.
She moved forward towards the gate at the further end of the square, beyond which the cathedral lay at a very short distance. Paula did not turn her head, and De Stancy strolled slowly after her down the Rue du College. The day happened to be one of the church festivals, and people were a second time flocking into the lofty monument of Catholicism at its meridian. Paula vanished into the porch with the rest; and, almost catching the wicket as it flew back from her hand, he too entered the high-shouldered edifice—an edifice doomed to labour under the melancholy misfortune of seeming only half as vast as it really is, and as truly as whimsically described by Heine as a monument built with the strength of Titans, and decorated with the patience of dwarfs.
De Stancy walked up the nave, so close beside her as to touch her dress; but she would not recognize his presence; the darkness that evening had thrown over the interior, which was scarcely broken by the few candles dotted about, being a sufficient excuse if she required one.
‘Miss Power,’ De Stancy said at last, ‘I am coming to the service with you.’
She received the intelligence without surprise, and he knew she had been conscious of him all the way.
Paula went no further than the middle of the nave, where there was hardly a soul, and took a chair beside a solitary rushlight which looked amid the vague gloom of the inaccessible architecture like a lighthouse at the foot of tall cliffs.
He put his hand on the next chair, saying, ‘Do you object?’
‘Not at all,’ she replied; and he sat down.
‘Suppose we go into the choir,’ said De Stancy presently. ‘Nobody sits out here in the shadows.’
‘This is sufficiently near, and we have a candle,’ Paula murmured.
Before another minute had passed the candle flame began to drown in its own grease, slowly dwindled, and went out.
‘I suppose that means I am to go into the choir in spite of myself. Heaven is on your side,’ said Paula. And rising they left their now totally dark corner, and joined the noiseless shadowy figures who in twos and threes kept passing up the nave.
Within the choir there was a blaze of light, partly from the altar, and more particularly from the image of the saint whom they had assembled to honour, which stood, surrounded by candles and a thicket of flowering plants, some way in advance of the foot-pace. A secondary radiance from the same source was reflected upward into their faces by the polished marble pavement, except when interrupted by the shady forms of the officiating priests.
When it was over and the people were moving off, De Stancy and his companion went towards the saint, now besieged by numbers of women anxious to claim the respective flower-pots they had lent for the decoration. As each struggled for her own, seized and marched off with it, Paula remarked—‘This rather spoils the solemn effect of what has gone before.’
‘I perceive you are a harsh Puritan.’
‘No, Captain De Stancy! Why will you speak so? I am far too much otherwise. I have grown to be so much of your way of thinking, that I accuse myself, and am accused by others, of being worldly, and half-and-half, and other dreadful things—though it isn’t that at all.’
They were now walking down the nave, preceded by the sombre figures with the pot flowers, who were just visible in the rays that reached them through the distant choir screen at their back; while above the grey night sky and stars looked in upon them through the high clerestory windows.
‘Do be a little MORE of my way of thinking!’ rejoined De Stancy passionately.
‘Don’t, don’t speak,’ she said rapidly. ‘There are Milly and Champreau!’
Milly was one of the maids, and Champreau the courier and valet who had been engaged by Abner Power. They had been sitting behind the other pair throughout the service, and indeed knew rather more of the relations between Paula and De Stancy than Paula knew herself.
Hastening on the two latter went out, and walked together silently up the short street. The Place St. Denis was now lit up, lights shone from the hotel windows, and the world without the cathedral had so far advanced in nocturnal change that it seemed as if they had been gone from it for hours. Within the hotel they found the change even greater than without. Mrs. Goodman met them half-way on the stairs.
‘Poor Charlotte is worse,’ she said. ‘Quite feverish, and almost delirious.’
Paula reproached herself with ‘Why did I go away!’
The common interest of De Stancy and Paula in the sufferer at once reproduced an ease between them as nothing else could have done. The physician was again called in, who prescribed certain draughts, and recommended that some one should sit up with her that night. If Paula allowed demonstrations of love to escape her towards anybody it was towards Charlotte, and her instinct was at once to watch by the invalid’s couch herself, at least for some hours, it being deemed unnecessary to call in a regular nurse unless she should sicken further.
‘But I will sit with her,’ said De Stancy. ‘Surely you had better go to bed?’ Paula would not be persuaded; and thereupon De Stancy, saying he was going into the town for a short time before retiring, left the room.
The last omnibus returned from the last train, and the inmates of the hotel retired to rest. Meanwhile a telegram had arrived for Captain De Stancy; but as he had not yet returned it was put in his bedroom, with directions to the night-porter to remind him of its arrival.
Paula sat on with the sleeping Charlotte. Presently she retired into the adjacent sitting-room with a book, and flung herself on a couch, leaving the door open between her and her charge, in case the latter should awake. While she sat a new breathing seemed to mingle with the regular sound of Charlotte’s that reached her through the doorway: she turned quickly, and saw her uncle standing behind her.
‘O—I thought you were in Paris!’ said Paula.
‘I have just come from there—I could not stay. Something has occurred to my mind about this affair.’ His strangely marked visage, now more noticeable from being worn with fatigue, had a spectral effect by the night-light.
‘What affair?’
‘This marriage.... Paula, De Stancy is a good fellow enough, but you must not accept him just yet.’
Paula did not answer.
‘Do you hear? You must not accept him,’ repeated her uncle, ‘till I have been to England and examined into matters. I start in an hour’s time—by the ten-minutes-past-two train.’
‘This is something very new!’
‘Yes—‘tis new,’ he murmured, relapsing into his Dutch manner. ‘You must not accept him till something is made clear to me—something about a queer relationship. I have come from Paris to say so.’
‘Uncle, I don’t understand this. I am my own mistress in all matters, and though I don’t mind telling you I have by no means resolved to accept him, the question of her marriage is especially a woman’s own affair.’
Her uncle stood irresolute for a moment, as if his convictions were more than his proofs. ‘I say no more at present,’ he murmured. ‘Can I do anything for you about a new architect?’
‘Appoint Havill.’
‘Very well. Good night.’ And then he left her. In a short time she heard him go down and out of the house to cross to England by the morning steamboat.
With a little shrug, as if she resented his interference in so delicate a point, she settled herself down anew to her book.
One, two, three hours passed, when Charlotte awoke, but soon slumbered sweetly again. Milly had stayed up for some time lest her mistress should require anything; but the girl being sleepy Paula sent her to bed.
It was a lovely night of early summer, and drawing aside the window curtains she looked out upon the flowers and trees of the Place, now quite visible, for it was nearly three o’clock, and the morning light was growing strong. She turned her face upwards. Except in the case of one bedroom all the windows on that side of the hotel were in darkness. The room being rather close she left the casement ajar, and opening the door walked out upon the staircase landing. A number of caged canaries were kept here, and she observed in the dim light of the landing lamp how snugly their heads were all tucked in. On returning to the sitting-room again she could hear that Charlotte was still slumbering, and this encouraging circumstance disposed her to go to bed herself. Before, however, she had made a move a gentle tap came to the door.
Paula opened it. There, in the faint light by the sleeping canaries, stood Charlotte’s brother.
‘How is she now?’ he whispered.
‘Sleeping soundly,’ said Paula.
‘That’s a blessing. I have not been to bed. I came in late, and have now come down to know if I had not better take your place?’
‘Nobody is required, I think. But you can judge for yourself.’
Up to this point they had conversed in the doorway of the sitting-room, which De Stancy now entered, crossing it to Charlotte’s apartment. He came out from the latter at a pensive pace.
‘She is doing well,’ he said gently. ‘You have been very good to her. Was the chair I saw by her bed the one you have been sitting in all night?’
‘I sometimes sat there; sometimes here.’
‘I wish I could have sat beside you, and held your hand—I speak frankly.’
‘To excess.’
‘And why not? I do not wish to hide from you any corner of my breast, futile as candour may be. Just Heaven! for what reason is it ordered that courtship, in which soldiers are usually so successful, should be a failure with me?’
‘Your lack of foresight chiefly in indulging feelings that were not encouraged. That, and my uncle’s indiscreet permission to you to travel with us, have precipitated our relations in a way that I could neither foresee nor avoid, though of late I have had apprehensions that it might come to this. You vex and disturb me by such words of regret.’
‘Not more than you vex and disturb me. But you cannot hate the man who loves you so devotedly?’
‘I have said before I don’t hate you. I repeat that I am interested in your family and its associations because of its complete contrast with my own.’ She might have added, ‘And I am additionally interested just now because my uncle has forbidden me to be.’
‘But you don’t care enough for me personally to save my happiness.’
Paula hesitated; from the moment De Stancy confronted her she had felt that this nocturnal conversation was to be a grave business. The cathedral clock struck three. ‘I have thought once or twice,’ she said with a naivete unusual in her, ‘that if I could be sure of giving peace and joy to your mind by becoming your wife, I ought to endeavour to do so and make the best of it—merely as a charity. But I believe that feeling is a mistake: your discontent is constitutional, and would go on just the same whether I accepted you or no. My refusal of you is purely an imaginary grievance.’
‘Not if I think otherwise.’
‘O no,’ she murmured, with a sense that the place was very lonely and silent. ‘If you think it otherwise, I suppose it is otherwise.’
‘My darling; my Paula!’ he said, seizing her hand. ‘Do promise me something. You must indeed!’
‘Captain De Stancy!’ she said, trembling and turning away. ‘Captain De Stancy!’ She tried to withdraw her fingers, then faced him, exclaiming in a firm voice a third time, ‘Captain De Stancy! let go my hand; for I tell you I will not marry you!’
‘Good God!’ he cried, dropping her hand. ‘What have I driven you to say in your anger! Retract it—O, retract it!’
‘Don’t urge me further, as you value my good opinion!’
‘To lose you now, is to lose you for ever. Come, please answer!’
‘I won’t be compelled!’ she interrupted with vehemence. ‘I am resolved not to be yours—not to give you an answer to-night! Never, never will I be reasoned out of my intention; and I say I won’t answer you to-night! I should never have let you be so much with me but for pity of you; and now it is come to this!’
She had sunk into a chair, and now leaned upon her hand, and buried her face in her handkerchief. He had never caused her any such agitation as this before.
‘You stab me with your words,’ continued De Stancy. ‘The experience I have had with you is without parallel, Paula. It seems like a distracting dream.’
‘I won’t be hurried by anybody!’
‘That may mean anything,’ he said, with a perplexed, passionate air. ‘Well, mine is a fallen family, and we must abide caprices. Would to Heaven it were extinguished!’
‘What was extinguished?’ she murmured.
‘The De Stancys. Here am I, a homeless wanderer, living on my pay; in the next room lies she, my sister, a poor little fragile feverish invalid with no social position—and hardly a friend. We two represent the De Stancy line; and I wish we were behind the iron door of our old vault at Sleeping-Green. It can be seen by looking at us and our circumstances that we cry for the earth and oblivion!’
‘Captain De Stancy, it is not like that, I assure you,’ sympathized Paula with damp eyelashes. ‘I love Charlotte too dearly for you to talk like that, indeed. I don’t want to marry you exactly: and yet I cannot bring myself to say I permanently reject you, because I remember you are Charlotte’s brother, and do not wish to be the cause of any morbid feelings in you which would ruin your future prospects.’
‘My dear life, what is it you doubt in me? Your earnestness not to do me harm makes it all the harder for me to think of never being more than a friend.’
‘Well, I have not positively refused!’ she exclaimed, in mixed tones of pity and distress. ‘Let me think it over a little while. It is not generous to urge so strongly before I can collect my thoughts, and at this midnight time!’
‘Darling, forgive it!—There, I’ll say no more.’
He then offered to sit up in her place for the remainder of the night; but Paula declined, assuring him that she meant to stay only another half-hour, after which nobody would be necessary.
He had already crossed the landing to ascend to his room, when she stepped after him, and asked if he had received his telegram.
‘No,’ said De Stancy. ‘Nor have I heard of one.’
Paula explained that it was put in his room, that he might see it the moment he came in.
‘It matters very little,’ he replied, ‘since I shall see it now. Good-night, dearest: good-night!’ he added tenderly.
She gravely shook her head. ‘It is not for you to express yourself like that,’ she answered. ‘Good-night, Captain De Stancy.’
He went up the stairs to the second floor, and Paula returned to the sitting-room. Having left a light burning De Stancy proceeded to look for the telegram, and found it on the carpet, where it had been swept from the table. When he had opened the sheet a sudden solemnity overspread his face. He sat down, rested his elbow on the table, and his forehead on his hands.
Captain De Stancy did not remain thus long. Rising he went softly downstairs. The grey morning had by this time crept into the hotel, rendering a light no longer necessary. The old clock on the landing was within a few minutes of four, and the birds were hopping up and down their cages, and whetting their bills. He tapped at the sitting-room, and she came instantly.
‘But I told you it was not necessary—’ she began.
‘Yes, but the telegram,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I wanted to let you know first that—it is very serious. Paula—my father is dead! He died suddenly yesterday, and I must go at once... . About Charlotte—and how to let her know—’
‘She must not be told yet,’ said Paula.... ‘Sir William dead!’
‘You think we had better not tell her just yet?’ said De Stancy anxiously. ‘That’s what I want to consult you about, if you—don’t mind my intruding.’
‘Certainly I don’t,’ she said.
They continued the discussion for some time; and it was decided that Charlotte should not be informed of what had happened till the doctor had been consulted, Paula promising to account for her brother’s departure.
De Stancy then prepared to leave for England by the first morning train, and roused the night-porter, which functionary, having packed off Abner Power, was discovered asleep on the sofa of the landlord’s parlour. At half-past five Paula, who in the interim had been pensively sitting with her hand to her chin, quite forgetting that she had meant to go to bed, heard wheels without, and looked from the window. A fly had been brought round, and one of the hotel servants was in the act of putting up a portmanteau with De Stancy’s initials upon it. A minute afterwards the captain came to her door.
‘I thought you had not gone to bed, after all.’
‘I was anxious to see you off,’ said she, ‘since neither of the others is awake; and you wished me not to rouse them.’
‘Quite right, you are very good;’ and lowering his voice: ‘Paula, it is a sad and solemn time with me. Will you grant me one word—not on our last sad subject, but on the previous one—before I part with you to go and bury my father?’
‘Certainly,’ she said, in gentle accents.
‘Then have you thought over my position? Will you at last have pity upon my loneliness by becoming my wife?’
Paula sighed deeply; and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Your hand upon it.’
She gave him her hand: he held it a few moments, then raised it to his lips, and was gone.
When Mrs. Goodman rose she was informed of Sir William’s death, and of his son’s departure.
‘Then the captain is now Sir William De Stancy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Really, Paula, since you would be Lady De Stancy by marrying him, I almost think—’
‘Hush, aunt!’
‘Well; what are you writing there?’
‘Only entering in my diary that I accepted him this morning for pity’s sake, in spite of Uncle Abner. They’ll say it was for the title, but knowing it was not I don’t care.’
XI.
On the evening of the fourth day after the parting between Paula and De Stancy at Amiens, when it was quite dark in the Markton highway, except in so far as the shades were broken by the faint lights from the adjacent town, a young man knocked softly at the door of Myrtle Villa, and asked if Captain De Stancy had arrived from abroad. He was answered in the affirmative, and in a few moments the captain himself came from an adjoining room.