100,000.
It was more than he had expected; and for a young man just beginning practice, the opportunity of playing with another person’s money to that extent would afford an exceptionally handsome opening, not so much from the commission it represented, as from the attention that would be bestowed by the art-world on such an undertaking.
Paula had sunk into a reverie. ‘I was intending to intrust the work to Mr. Havill, a local architect,’ she said. ‘But I gathered from his conversation with you to-day that his ignorance of styles might compromise me very seriously. In short, though my father employed him in one or two little matters, it would not be right—even a morally culpable thing—to place such an historically valuable building in his hands.’
‘Has Mr. Havill ever been led to expect the commission?’ he asked.
‘He may have guessed that he would have it. I have spoken of my intention to him more than once.’
Somerset thought over his conversation with Havill. Well, he did not like Havill personally; and he had strong reasons for suspecting that in the matter of architecture Havill was a quack. But was it quite generous to step in thus, and take away what would be a golden opportunity to such a man of making both ends meet comfortably for some years to come, without giving him at least one chance? He reflected a little longer, and then spoke out his feeling.
‘I venture to propose a slightly modified arrangement,’ he said. ‘Instead of committing the whole undertaking to my hands without better proof of my ability to carry it out than you have at present, let there be a competition between Mr. Havill and myself—let our rival plans for the restoration and enlargement be submitted to a committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects—and let the choice rest with them, subject of course to your approval.’
‘It is indeed generous of you to suggest it.’ She looked thoughtfully at him; he appeared to strike her in a new light. ‘You really recommend it?’ The fairness which had prompted his words seemed to incline her still more than before to resign herself entirely to him in the matter.
‘I do,’ said Somerset deliberately.
‘I will think of it, since you wish it. And now, what general idea have you of the plan to adopt? I do not positively agree to your suggestion as yet, so I may perhaps ask the question.’
Somerset, being by this time familiar with the general plan of the castle, took out his pencil and made a rough sketch. While he was doing it she rose, and coming to the back of his chair, bent over him in silence.
‘Ah, I begin to see your conception,’ she murmured; and the breath of her words fanned his ear. He finished the sketch, and held it up to her, saying—
‘I would suggest that you walk over the building with Mr. Havill and myself, and detail your ideas to us on each portion.’
‘Is it necessary?’
‘Clients mostly do it.’
‘I will, then. But it is too late for me this evening. Please meet me to-morrow at ten.’
X.
At ten o’clock they met in the same room, Paula appearing in a straw hat having a bent-up brim lined with plaited silk, so that it surrounded her forehead like a nimbus; and Somerset armed with sketch-book, measuring-rod, and other apparatus of his craft.
‘And Mr. Havill?’ said the young man.
‘I have not decided to employ him: if I do he shall go round with me independently of you,’ she replied rather brusquely.
Somerset was by no means sorry to hear this. His duty to Havill was done.
‘And now,’ she said, as they walked on together through the passages, ‘I must tell you that I am not a mediaevalist myself; and perhaps that’s a pity.’
‘What are you?’
‘I am Greek—that’s why I don’t wish to influence your design.’
Somerset, as they proceeded, pointed out where roofs had been and should be again, where gables had been pulled down, and where floors had vanished, showing her how to reconstruct their details from marks in the walls, much as a comparative anatomist reconstructs an antediluvian from fragmentary bones and teeth. She appeared to be interested, listened attentively, but said little in reply. They were ultimately in a long narrow passage, indifferently lighted, when Somerset, treading on a loose stone, felt a twinge of weakness in one knee, and knew in a moment that it was the result of the twist given by his yesterday’s fall. He paused, leaning against the wall.
‘What is it?’ said Paula, with a sudden timidity in her voice.
‘I slipped down yesterday,’ he said. ‘It will be right in a moment.’
‘I—can I help you?’ said Paula. But she did not come near him; indeed, she withdrew a little. She looked up the passage, and down the passage, and became conscious that it was long and gloomy, and that nobody was near. A curious coy uneasiness seemed to take possession of her. Whether she thought, for the first time, that she had made a mistake—that to wander about the castle alone with him was compromising, or whether it was the mere shy instinct of maidenhood, nobody knows; but she said suddenly, ‘I will get something for you, and return in a few minutes.’
‘Pray don’t—it has quite passed!’ he said, stepping out again.
But Paula had vanished. When she came back it was in the rear of Charlotte De Stancy. Miss De Stancy had a tumbler in one hand, half full of wine, which she offered him; Paula remaining in the background.
He took the glass, and, to satisfy his companions, drank a mouthful or two, though there was really nothing whatever the matter with him beyond the slight ache above mentioned. Charlotte was going to retire, but Paula said, quite anxiously, ‘You will stay with me, Charlotte, won’t you? Surely you are interested in what I am doing?’
‘What is it?’ said Miss De Stancy.
‘Planning how to mend and enlarge the castle. Tell Mr. Somerset what I want done in the quadrangle—you know quite well—and I will walk on.’
She walked on; but instead of talking on the subject as directed, Charlotte and Somerset followed chatting on indifferent matters. They came to an inner court and found Paula standing there.
She met Miss De Stancy with a smile. ‘Did you explain?’ she asked.
‘I have not explained yet.’ Paula seated herself on a stone bench, and Charlotte went on: ‘Miss Power thought of making a Greek court of this. But she will not tell you so herself, because it seems such dreadful anachronism.
‘I said I would not tell any architect myself,’ interposed Paula correctingly. ‘I did not then know that he would be Mr. Somerset.’
‘It is rather startling,’ said Somerset.
‘A Greek colonnade all round, you said, Paula,’ continued her less reticent companion. ‘A peristyle you called it—you saw it in a book, don’t you remember?—and then you were going to have a fountain in the middle, and statues like those in the British Museum.’
‘I did say so,’ remarked Paula, pulling the leaves from a young sycamore-tree that had sprung up between the joints of the paving.
From the spot where they sat they could see over the roofs the upper part of the great tower wherein Somerset had met with his misadventure. The tower stood boldly up in the sun, and from one of the slits in the corner something white waved in the breeze.
‘What can that be?’ said Charlotte. ‘Is it the fluff of owls, or a handkerchief?’
‘It is my handkerchief,’ Somerset answered. ‘I fixed it there with a stone to attract attention, and forgot to take it away.’
All three looked up at the handkerchief with interest. ‘Why did you want to attract attention?’ said Paula.
‘O, I fell into the turret; but I got out very easily.’
‘O Paula,’ said Charlotte, turning to her friend, ‘that must be the place where the man fell in, years ago, and was starved to death!’
‘Starved to death?’ said Paula.
‘They say so. O Mr. Somerset, what an escape!’ And Charlotte De Stancy walked away to a point from which she could get a better view of the treacherous turret.
‘Whom did you think to attract?’ asked Paula, after a pause.
‘I thought you might see it.’
‘Me personally?’ And, blushing faintly, her eyes rested upon him.
‘I hoped for anybody. I thought of you,’ said Somerset.
She did not continue. In a moment she arose and went across to Miss De Stancy. ‘Don’t YOU go falling down and becoming a skeleton,’ she said—Somerset overheard the words, though Paula was unaware of it—after which she clasped her fingers behind Charlotte’s neck, and smiled tenderly in her face.
It seemed to be quite unconsciously done, and Somerset thought it a very beautiful action. Presently Paula returned to him and said, ‘Mr. Somerset, I think we have had enough architecture for to-day.’
The two women then wished him good-morning and went away. Somerset, feeling that he had now every reason for prowling about the castle, remained near the spot, endeavouring to evolve some plan of procedure for the project entertained by the beautiful owner of those weather-scathed walls. But for a long time the mental perspective of his new position so excited the emotional side of his nature that he could not concentrate it on feet and inches. As Paula’s architect (supposing Havill not to be admitted as a competitor), he must of necessity be in constant communication with her for a space of two or three years to come; and particularly during the next few months. She, doubtless, cherished far too ambitious views of her career to feel any personal interest in this enforced relationship with him; but he would be at liberty to feel what he chose: and to be the victim of an unrequited passion, while afforded such splendid opportunities of communion with the one beloved, deprived that passion of its most deplorable features. Accessibility is a great point in matters of love, and perhaps of the two there is less misery in loving without return a goddess who is to be seen and spoken to every day, than in having an affection tenderly reciprocated by one always hopelessly removed.
With this view of having to spend a considerable time in the neighbourhood Somerset shifted his quarters that afternoon from the little inn at Sleeping-Green to a larger one at Markton. He required more rooms in which to carry out Paula’s instructions than the former place afforded, and a more central position. Having reached and dined at Markton he found the evening tedious, and again strolled out in the direction of the castle.
When he reached it the light was declining, and a solemn stillness overspread the pile. The great tower was in full view. That spot of white which looked like a pigeon fluttering from the loophole was his handkerchief, still hanging in the place where he had left it. His eyes yet lingered on the walls when he noticed, with surprise, that the handkerchief suddenly vanished.
Believing that the breezes, though weak below, might have been strong enough at that height to blow it into the turret, and in no hurry to get off the premises, he leisurely climbed up to find it, ascending by the second staircase, crossing the roof, and going to the top of the treacherous turret. The ladder by which he had escaped still stood within it, and beside the ladder he beheld the dim outline of a woman, in a meditative attitude, holding his handkerchief in her hand.
Somerset softly withdrew. When he had reached the ground he looked up. A girlish form was standing at the top of the tower looking over the parapet upon him—possibly not seeing him, for it was dark on the lawn. It was either Miss De Stancy or Paula; one of them had gone there alone for his handkerchief and had remained awhile, pondering on his escape. But which? ‘If I were not a faint-heart I should run all risk and wave my hat or kiss my hand to her, whoever she is,’ he thought. But he did not do either.
So he lingered about silently in the shades, and then thought of strolling to his rooms at Markton. Just at leaving, as he passed under the inhabited wing, whence one or two lights now blinked, he heard a piano, and a voice singing ‘The Mistletoe Bough.’ The song had probably been suggested to the romantic fancy of the singer by her visit to the scene of his captivity.
XI.
The identity of the lady whom he had seen on the tower and afterwards heard singing was established the next day.
‘I have been thinking,’ said Miss Power, on meeting him, ‘that you may require a studio on the premises. If so, the room I showed you yesterday is at your service. If I employ Mr. Havill to compete with you I will offer him a similar one.’
Somerset did not decline; and she added, ‘In the same room you will find the handkerchief that was left on the tower.’
‘Ah, I saw that it was gone. Somebody brought it down?’
‘I did,’ she shyly remarked, looking up for a second under her shady hat-brim.
‘I am much obliged to you.’
‘O no. I went up last night to see where the accident happened, and there I found it. When you came up were you in search of it, or did you want me?’
‘Then she saw me,’ he thought. ‘I went for the handkerchief only; I was not aware that you were there,’ he answered simply. And he involuntarily sighed.
It was very soft, but she might have heard him, for there was interest in her voice as she continued, ‘Did you see me before you went back?’
‘I did not know it was you; I saw that some lady was there, and I would not disturb her. I wondered all the evening if it were you.’
Paula hastened to explain: ‘We understood that you would stay to dinner, and as you did not come in we wondered where you were. That made me think of your accident, and after dinner I went up to the place where it happened.’
Somerset almost wished she had not explained so lucidly.
And now followed the piquant days to which his position as her architect, or, at worst, as one of her two architects, naturally led. His anticipations were for once surpassed by the reality. Perhaps Somerset’s inherent unfitness for a professional life under ordinary circumstances was only proved by his great zest for it now. Had he been in regular practice, with numerous other clients, instead of having merely made a start with this one, he would have totally neglected their business in his exclusive attention to Paula’s.
The idea of a competition between Somerset and Havill had been highly approved by Paula’s solicitor, but she would not assent to it as yet, seeming quite vexed that Somerset should not have taken the good the gods provided without questioning her justice to Havill. The room she had offered him was prepared as a studio. Drawing-boards and Whatman’s paper were sent for, and in a few days Somerset began serious labour. His first requirement was a clerk or two, to do the drudgery of measuring and figuring; but for the present he preferred to sketch alone. Sometimes, in measuring the outworks of the castle, he ran against Havill strolling about with no apparent object, who bestowed on him an envious nod, and passed by.
‘I hope you will not make your sketches,’ she said, looking in upon him one day, ‘and then go away to your studio in London and think of your other buildings and forget mine. I am in haste to begin, and wish you not to neglect me.’
‘I have no other building to think of,’ said Somerset, rising and placing a chair for her. ‘I had not begun practice, as you may know. I have nothing else in hand but your castle.’
‘I suppose I ought not to say I am glad of it; but it is an advantage to have an architect all to one’s self. The architect whom I at first thought of told me before I knew you that if I placed the castle in his hands he would undertake no other commission till its completion.’
‘I agree to the same,’ said Somerset.
‘I don’t wish to bind you. But I hinder you now—do pray go on without reference to me. When will there be some drawing for me to see?’
‘I will take care that it shall be soon.’
He had a metallic tape in his hand, and went out of the room to take some dimension in the corridor. The assistant for whom he had advertised had not arrived, and he attempted to fix the end of the tape by sticking his penknife through the ring into the wall. Paula looked on at a distance.
‘I will hold it,’ she said.
She went to the required corner and held the end in its place. She had taken it the wrong way, and Somerset went over and placed it properly in her fingers, carefully avoiding to touch them. She obediently raised her hand to the corner again, and stood till he had finished, when she asked, ‘Is that all?’
‘That is all,’ said Somerset. ‘Thank you.’ Without further speech she looked at his sketch-book, while he marked down the lines just acquired.
‘You said the other day,’ she observed, ‘that early Gothic work might be known by the under-cutting, or something to that effect. I have looked in Rickman and the Oxford Glossary, but I cannot quite understand what you meant.’
It was only too probable to her lover, from the way in which she turned to him, that she HAD looked in Rickman and the Glossary, and was thinking of nothing in the world but of the subject of her inquiry.
‘I can show you, by actual example, if you will come to the chapel?’ he returned hesitatingly.
‘Don’t go on purpose to show me—when you are there on your own account I will come in.’
‘I shall be there in half-an-hour.’
‘Very well,’ said Paula. She looked out of a window, and, seeing Miss De Stancy on the terrace, left him.
Somerset stood thinking of what he had said. He had no occasion whatever to go into the chapel of the castle that day. He had been tempted by her words to say he would be there, and ‘half-an-hour’ had come to his lips almost without his knowledge. This community of interest—if it were not anything more tender—was growing serious. What had passed between them amounted to an appointment; they were going to meet in the most solitary chamber of the whole solitary pile. Could it be that Paula had well considered this in replying with her friendly ‘Very well?’ Probably not.
Somerset proceeded to the chapel and waited. With the progress of the seconds towards the half-hour he began to discover that a dangerous admiration for this girl had risen within him. Yet so imaginative was his passion that he hardly knew a single feature of her countenance well enough to remember it in her absence. The meditative judgment of things and men which had been his habit up to the moment of seeing her in the Baptist chapel seemed to have left him—nothing remained but a distracting wish to be always near her, and it was quite with dismay that he recognized what immense importance he was attaching to the question whether she would keep the trifling engagement or not.
The chapel of Stancy Castle was a silent place, heaped up in corners with a lumber of old panels, framework, and broken coloured glass. Here no clock could be heard beating out the hours of the day—here no voice of priest or deacon had for generations uttered the daily service denoting how the year rolls on. The stagnation of the spot was sufficient to draw Somerset’s mind for a moment from the subject which absorbed it, and he thought, ‘So, too, will time triumph over all this fervour within me.’
Lifting his eyes from the floor on which his foot had been tapping nervously, he saw Paula standing at the other end. It was not so pleasant when he also saw that Mrs. Goodman accompanied her. The latter lady, however, obligingly remained where she was resting, while Paula came forward, and, as usual, paused without speaking.
‘It is in this little arcade that the example occurs,’ said Somerset.
‘O yes,’ she answered, turning to look at it.
‘Early piers, capitals, and mouldings, generally alternated with deep hollows, so as to form strong shadows. Now look under the abacus of this capital; you will find the stone hollowed out wonderfully; and also in this arch-mould. It is often difficult to understand how it could be done without cracking off the stone. The difference between this and late work can be felt by the hand even better than it can be seen.’ He suited the action to the word and placed his hand in the hollow.
She listened attentively, then stretched up her own hand to test the cutting as he had done; she was not quite tall enough; she would step upon this piece of wood. Having done so she tried again, and succeeded in putting her finger on the spot. No; she could not understand it through her glove even now. She pulled off her glove, and, her hand resting in the stone channel, her eyes became abstracted in the effort of realization, the ideas derived through her hand passing into her face.
‘No, I am not sure now,’ she said.
Somerset placed his own hand in the cavity. Now their two hands were close together again. They had been close together half-an-hour earlier, and he had sedulously avoided touching hers. He dared not let such an accident happen now. And yet—surely she saw the situation! Was the inscrutable seriousness with which she applied herself to his lesson a mockery? There was such a bottomless depth in her eyes that it was impossible to guess truly. Let it be that destiny alone had ruled that their hands should be together a second time.
All rumination was cut short by an impulse. He seized her forefinger between his own finger and thumb, and drew it along the hollow, saying, ‘That is the curve I mean.’
Somerset’s hand was hot and trembling; Paula’s, on the contrary, was cool and soft as an infant’s.
‘Now the arch-mould,’ continued he. ‘There—the depth of that cavity is tremendous, and it is not geometrical, as in later work.’ He drew her unresisting fingers from the capital to the arch, and laid them in the little trench as before.
She allowed them to rest quietly there till he relinquished them. ‘Thank you,’ she then said, withdrawing her hand, brushing the dust from her finger-tips, and putting on her glove.
Her imperception of his feeling was the very sublimity of maiden innocence if it were real; if not, well, the coquetry was no great sin.
‘Mr. Somerset, will you allow me to have the Greek court I mentioned?’ she asked tentatively, after a long break in their discourse, as she scanned the green stones along the base of the arcade, with a conjectural countenance as to his reply.
‘Will your own feeling for the genius of the place allow you?’
‘I am not a mediaevalist: I am an eclectic.’
‘You don’t dislike your own house on that account.’
‘I did at first—I don’t so much now.... I should love it, and adore every stone, and think feudalism the only true romance of life, if—’
‘What?’
‘If I were a De Stancy, and the castle the long home of my forefathers.’
Somerset was a little surprised at the avowal: the minister’s words on the effects of her new environment recurred to his mind. ‘Miss De Stancy doesn’t think so,’ he said. ‘She cares nothing about those things.’
Paula now turned to him: hitherto her remarks had been sparingly spoken, her eyes being directed elsewhere: ‘Yes, that is very strange, is it not?’ she said. ‘But it is owing to the joyous freshness of her nature which precludes her from dwelling on the past—indeed, the past is no more to her than it is to a sparrow or robin. She is scarcely an instance of the wearing out of old families, for a younger mental constitution than hers I never knew.’
‘Unless that very simplicity represents the second childhood of her line, rather than her own exclusive character.’
Paula shook her head. ‘In spite of the Greek court, she is more Greek than I.’
‘You represent science rather than art, perhaps.’
‘How?’ she asked, glancing up under her hat.
‘I mean,’ replied Somerset, ‘that you represent the march of mind—the steamship, and the railway, and the thoughts that shake mankind.’
She weighed his words, and said: ‘Ah, yes: you allude to my father. My father was a great man; but I am more and more forgetting his greatness: that kind of greatness is what a woman can never truly enter into. I am less and less his daughter every day that goes by.’
She walked away a few steps to rejoin the excellent Mrs. Goodman, who, as Somerset still perceived, was waiting for Paula at the discreetest of distances in the shadows at the farther end of the building. Surely Paula’s voice had faltered, and she had turned to hide a tear?
She came back again. ‘Did you know that my father made half the railways in Europe, including that one over there?’ she said, waving her little gloved hand in the direction whence low rumbles were occasionally heard during the day.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Miss De Stancy told me a little; and I then found his name and doings were quite familiar to me.’
Curiously enough, with his words there came through the broken windows the murmur of a train in the distance, sounding clearer and more clear. It was nothing to listen to, yet they both listened; till the increasing noise suddenly broke off into dead silence.
‘It has gone into the tunnel,’ said Paula. ‘Have you seen the tunnel my father made? the curves are said to be a triumph of science. There is nothing else like it in this part of England.’
‘There is not: I have heard so. But I have not seen it.’
‘Do you think it a thing more to be proud of that one’s father should have made a great tunnel and railway like that, than that one’s remote ancestor should have built a great castle like this?’
What could Somerset say? It would have required a casuist to decide whether his answer should depend upon his conviction, or upon the family ties of such a questioner. ‘From a modern point of view, railways are, no doubt, things more to be proud of than castles,’ he said; ‘though perhaps I myself, from mere association, should decide in favour of the ancestor who built the castle.’ The serious anxiety to be truthful that Somerset threw into his observation, was more than the circumstance required. ‘To design great engineering works,’ he added musingly, and without the least eye to the disparagement of her parent, ‘requires no doubt a leading mind. But to execute them, as he did, requires, of course, only a following mind.’
His reply had not altogether pleased her; and there was a distinct reproach conveyed by her slight movement towards Mrs. Goodman. He saw it, and was grieved that he should have spoken so. ‘I am going to walk over and inspect that famous tunnel of your father’s,’ he added gently. ‘It will be a pleasant study for this afternoon.’
She went away. ‘I am no man of the world,’ he thought. ‘I ought to have praised that father of hers straight off. I shall not win her respect; much less her love!’
XII.
Somerset did not forget what he had planned, and when lunch was over he walked away through the trees. The tunnel was more difficult of discovery than he had anticipated, and it was only after considerable winding among green lanes, whose deep ruts were like canyons of Colorado in miniature, that he reached the slope in the distant upland where the tunnel began. A road stretched over its crest, and thence along one side of the railway-cutting.
He there unexpectedly saw standing Miss Power’s carriage; and on drawing nearer he found it to contain Paula herself, Miss De Stancy, and Mrs. Goodman.
‘How singular!’ exclaimed Miss De Stancy gaily.
‘It is most natural,’ said Paula instantly. ‘In the morning two people discuss a feature in the landscape, and in the afternoon each has a desire to see it from what the other has said of it. Therefore they accidentally meet.’
Now Paula had distinctly heard Somerset declare that he was going to walk there; how then could she say this so coolly? It was with a pang at his heart that he returned to his old thought of her being possibly a finished coquette and dissembler. Whatever she might be, she was not a creature starched very stiffly by Puritanism.
Somerset looked down on the mouth of the tunnel. The popular commonplace that science, steam, and travel must always be unromantic and hideous, was not proven at this spot. On either slope of the deep cutting, green with long grass, grew drooping young trees of ash, beech, and other flexible varieties, their foliage almost concealing the actual railway which ran along the bottom, its thin steel rails gleaming like silver threads in the depths. The vertical front of the tunnel, faced with brick that had once been red, was now weather-stained, lichened, and mossed over in harmonious rusty-browns, pearly greys, and neutral greens, at the very base appearing a little blue-black spot like a mouse-hole—the tunnel’s mouth.
The carriage was drawn up quite close to the wood railing, and Paula was looking down at the same time with him; but he made no remark to her.
Mrs. Goodman broke the silence by saying, ‘If it were not a railway we should call it a lovely dell.’
Somerset agreed with her, adding that it was so charming that he felt inclined to go down.
‘If you do, perhaps Miss Power will order you up again, as a trespasser,’ said Charlotte De Stancy. ‘You are one of the largest shareholders in the railway, are you not, Paula?’
Miss Power did not reply.
‘I suppose as the road is partly yours you might walk all the way to London along the rails, if you wished, might you not, dear?’ Charlotte continued.
Paula smiled, and said, ‘No, of course not.’
Somerset, feeling himself superfluous, raised his hat to his companions as if he meant not to see them again for a while, and began to descend by some steps cut in the earth; Miss De Stancy asked Mrs. Goodman to accompany her to a barrow over the top of the tunnel; and they left the carriage, Paula remaining alone.
Down Somerset plunged through the long grass, bushes, late summer flowers, moths, and caterpillars, vexed with himself that he had come there, since Paula was so inscrutable, and humming the notes of some song he did not know. The tunnel that had seemed so small from the surface was a vast archway when he reached its mouth, which emitted, as a contrast to the sultry heat on the slopes of the cutting, a cool breeze, that had travelled a mile underground from the other end. Far away in the darkness of this silent subterranean corridor he could see that other end as a mere speck of light.
When he had conscientiously admired the construction of the massive archivault, and the majesty of its nude ungarnished walls, he looked up the slope at the carriage; it was so small to the eye that it might have been made for a performance by canaries; Paula’s face being still smaller, as she leaned back in her seat, idly looking down at him. There seemed something roguish in her attitude of criticism, and to be no longer the subject of her contemplation he entered the tunnel out of her sight.
In the middle of the speck of light before him appeared a speck of black; and then a shrill whistle, dulled by millions of tons of earth, reached his ears from thence. It was what he had been on his guard against all the time,—a passing train; and instead of taking the trouble to come out of the tunnel he stepped into a recess, till the train had rattled past and vanished onward round a curve.
Somerset still remained where he had placed himself, mentally balancing science against art, the grandeur of this fine piece of construction against that of the castle, and thinking whether Paula’s father had not, after all, the best of it, when all at once he saw Paula’s form confronting him at the entrance of the tunnel. He instantly went forward into the light; to his surprise she was as pale as a lily.
‘O, Mr. Somerset!’ she exclaimed. ‘You ought not to frighten me so—indeed you ought not! The train came out almost as soon as you had gone in, and as you did not return—an accident was possible!’
Somerset at once perceived that he had been to blame in not thinking of this.
‘Please do forgive my thoughtlessness in not reflecting how it would strike you!’ he pleaded. ‘I—I see I have alarmed you.’
Her alarm was, indeed, much greater than he had at first thought: she trembled so much that she was obliged to sit down, at which he went up to her full of solicitousness.
‘You ought not to have done it!’ she said. ‘I naturally thought—any person would—’
Somerset, perhaps wisely, said nothing at this outburst; the cause of her vexation was, plainly enough, his perception of her discomposure. He stood looking in another direction, till in a few moments she had risen to her feet again, quite calm.
‘It would have been dreadful,’ she said with faint gaiety, as the colour returned to her face; ‘if I had lost my architect, and been obliged to engage Mr. Havill without an alternative.’
‘I was really in no danger; but of course I ought to have considered,’ he said.
‘I forgive you,’ she returned good-naturedly. ‘I knew there was no GREAT danger to a person exercising ordinary discretion; but artists and thinkers like you are indiscreet for a moment sometimes. I am now going up again. What do you think of the tunnel?’
They were crossing the railway to ascend by the opposite path, Somerset keeping his eye on the interior of the tunnel for safety, when suddenly there arose a noise and shriek from the contrary direction behind the trees. Both knew in a moment what it meant, and each seized the other as they rushed off the permanent way. The ideas of both had been so centred on the tunnel as the source of danger, that the probability of a train from the opposite quarter had been forgotten. It rushed past them, causing Paula’s dress, hair, and ribbons to flutter violently, and blowing up the fallen leaves in a shower over their shoulders.
Neither spoke, and they went up several steps, holding each other by the hand, till, becoming conscious of the fact, she withdrew hers; whereupon Somerset stopped and looked earnestly at her; but her eyes were averted towards the tunnel wall.
‘What an escape!’ he said.
‘We were not so very near, I think, were we?’ she asked quickly. ‘If we were, I think you were—very good to take my hand.’
They reached the top at last, and the new level and open air seemed to give her a new mind. ‘I don’t see the carriage anywhere,’ she said, in the common tones of civilization.
He thought it had gone over the crest of the hill; he would accompany her till they reached it.
‘No—please—I would rather not—I can find it very well.’ Before he could say more she had inclined her head and smiled and was on her way alone.
The tunnel-cutting appeared a dreary gulf enough now to the young man, as he stood leaning over the rails above it, beating the herbage with his stick. For some minutes he could not criticize or weigh her conduct; the warmth of her presence still encircled him. He recalled her face as it had looked out at him from under the white silk puffing of her black hat, and the speaking power of her eyes at the moment of danger. The breadth of that clear-complexioned forehead—almost concealed by the masses of brown hair bundled up around it—signified that if her disposition were oblique and insincere enough for trifling, coquetting, or in any way making a fool of him, she had the intellect to do it cruelly well.
But it was ungenerous to ruminate so suspiciously. A girl not an actress by profession could hardly turn pale artificially as she had done, though perhaps mere fright meant nothing, and would have arisen in her just as readily had he been one of the labourers on her estate.
The reflection that such feeling as she had exhibited could have no tender meaning returned upon him with masterful force when he thought of her wealth and the social position into which she had drifted. Somerset, being of a solitary and studious nature, was not quite competent to estimate precisely the disqualifying effect, if any, of her nonconformity, her newness of blood, and other things, among the old county families established round her; but the toughest prejudices, he thought, were not likely to be long invulnerable to such cheerful beauty and brightness of intellect as Paula’s. When she emerged, as she was plainly about to do, from the seclusion in which she had been living since her father’s death, she would inevitably win her way among her neighbours. She would become the local topic. Fortune-hunters would learn of her existence and draw near in shoals. What chance would there then be for him?
The points in his favour were indeed few, but they were just enough to keep a tantalizing hope alive. Modestly leaving out of count his personal and intellectual qualifications, he thought of his family. It was an old stock enough, though not a rich one. His great-uncle had been the well-known Vice-admiral Sir Armstrong Somerset, who served his country well in the Baltic, the Indies, China, and the Caribbean Sea. His grandfather had been a notable metaphysician. His father, the Royal Academician, was popular. But perhaps this was not the sort of reasoning likely to occupy the mind of a young woman; the personal aspect of the situation was in such circumstances of far more import. He had come as a wandering stranger—that possibly lent some interest to him in her eyes. He was installed in an office which would necessitate free communion with her for some time to come; that was another advantage, and would be a still greater one if she showed, as Paula seemed disposed to do, such artistic sympathy with his work as to follow up with interest the details of its progress.
The carriage did not reappear, and he went on towards Markton, disinclined to return again that day to the studio which had been prepared for him at the castle. He heard feet brushing the grass behind him, and, looking round, saw the Baptist minister.
‘I have just come from the village,’ said Mr. Woodwell, who looked worn and weary, his boots being covered with dust; ‘and I have learnt that which confirms my fears for her.’
‘For Miss Power?’
‘Most assuredly.’
‘What danger is there?’ said Somerset.
‘The temptations of her position have become too much for her! She is going out of mourning next week, and will give a large dinner-party on the occasion; for though the invitations are partly in the name of her relative Mrs. Goodman, they must come from her. The guests are to include people of old cavalier families who would have treated her grandfather, sir, and even her father, with scorn for their religion and connections; also the parson and curate—yes, actually people who believe in the Apostolic Succession; and what’s more, they’re coming. My opinion is, that it has all arisen from her friendship with Miss De Stancy.’
‘Well,’ cried Somerset warmly, ‘this only shows liberality of feeling on both sides! I suppose she has invited you as well?’
‘She has not invited me!... Mr. Somerset, not withstanding your erroneous opinions on important matters, I speak to you as a friend, and I tell you that she has never in her secret heart forgiven that sermon of mine, in which I likened her to the church at Laodicea. I admit the words were harsh, but I was doing my duty, and if the case arose to-morrow I would do it again. Her displeasure is a deep grief to me; but I serve One greater than she.... You, of course, are invited to this dinner?’
‘I have heard nothing of it,’ murmured the young man.
Their paths diverged; and when Somerset reached the hotel he was informed that somebody was waiting to see him.
‘Man or woman?’ he asked.
The landlady, who always liked to reply in person to Somerset’s inquiries, apparently thinking him, by virtue of his drawing implements and liberality of payment, a possible lord of Burleigh, came forward and said it was certainly not a woman, but whether man or boy she could not say. ‘His name is Mr. Dare,’ she added.
‘O—that youth,’ he said.
Somerset went upstairs, along the passage, down two steps, round the angle, and so on to the rooms reserved for him in this rambling edifice of stage-coach memories, where he found Dare waiting. Dare came forward, pulling out the cutting of an advertisement.
‘Mr. Somerset, this is yours, I believe, from the Architectural World?’
Somerset said that he had inserted it.
‘I think I should suit your purpose as assistant very well.’
‘Are you an architect’s draughtsman?’
‘Not specially. I have some knowledge of the same, and want to increase it.’
‘I thought you were a photographer.’
‘Also of photography,’ said Dare with a bow. ‘Though but an amateur in that art I can challenge comparison with Regent Street or Broadway.’
Somerset looked upon his table. Two letters only, addressed in initials, were lying there as answers to his advertisement. He asked Dare to wait, and looked them over. Neither was satisfactory. On this account he overcame his slight feeling against Mr. Dare, and put a question to test that gentleman’s capacities. ‘How would you measure the front of a building, including windows, doors, mouldings, and every other feature, for a ground plan, so as to combine the greatest accuracy with the greatest despatch?’
‘In running dimensions,’ said Dare.
As this was the particular kind of work he wanted done, Somerset thought the answer promising. Coming to terms with Dare, he requested the would-be student of architecture to wait at the castle the next day, and dismissed him.
A quarter of an hour later, when Dare was taking a walk in the country, he drew from his pocket eight other letters addressed to Somerset in initials, which, to judge by their style and stationery, were from men far superior to those two whose communications alone Somerset had seen. Dare looked them over for a few seconds as he strolled on, then tore them into minute fragments, and, burying them under the leaves in the ditch, went on his way again.
XIII.
Though exhibiting indifference, Somerset had felt a pang of disappointment when he heard the news of Paula’s approaching dinner-party. It seemed a little unkind of her to pass him over, seeing how much they were thrown together just now. That dinner meant more than it sounded. Notwithstanding the roominess of her castle, she was at present living somewhat incommodiously, owing partly to the stagnation caused by her recent bereavement, and partly to the necessity for overhauling the De Stancy lumber piled in those vast and gloomy chambers before they could be made tolerable to nineteenth-century fastidiousness.
To give dinners on any large scale before Somerset had at least set a few of these rooms in order for her, showed, to his thinking, an overpowering desire for society.
During the week he saw less of her than usual, her time being to all appearance much taken up with driving out to make calls on her neighbours and receiving return visits. All this he observed from the windows of his studio overlooking the castle ward, in which room he now spent a great deal of his time, bending over drawing-boards and instructing Dare, who worked as well as could be expected of a youth of such varied attainments.
Nearer came the Wednesday of the party, and no hint of that event reached Somerset, but such as had been communicated by the Baptist minister. At last, on the very afternoon, an invitation was handed into his studio—not a kind note in Paula’s handwriting, but a formal printed card in the joint names of Mrs. Goodman and Miss Power. It reached him just four hours before the dinner-time. He was plainly to be used as a stop-gap at the last moment because somebody could not come.
Having previously arranged to pass a quiet evening in his rooms at the Lord Quantock Arms, in reading up chronicles of the castle from the county history, with the view of gathering some ideas as to the distribution of rooms therein before the demolition of a portion of the structure, he decided off-hand that Paula’s dinner was not of sufficient importance to him as a professional man and student of art to justify a waste of the evening by going. He accordingly declined Mrs. Goodman’s and Miss Power’s invitation; and at five o’clock left the castle and walked across the fields to the little town.
He dined early, and, clearing away heaviness with a cup of coffee, applied himself to that volume of the county history which contained the record of Stancy Castle.
Here he read that ‘when this picturesque and ancient structure was founded, or by whom, is extremely uncertain. But that a castle stood on the site in very early times appears from many old books of charters. In its prime it was such a masterpiece of fortification as to be the wonder of the world, and it was thought, before the invention of gunpowder, that it never could be taken by any force less than divine.’
He read on to the times when it first passed into the hands of ‘De Stancy, Chivaler,’ and received the family name, and so on from De Stancy to De Stancy till he was lost in the reflection whether Paula would or would not have thought more highly of him if he had accepted the invitation to dinner. Applying himself again to the tome, he learned that in the year 1504 Stephen the carpenter was ‘paid eleven pence for necessarye repayrs,’ and William the mastermason eight shillings ‘for whyt lyming of the kitchen, and the lyme to do it with,’ including ‘a new rope for the fyer bell;’ also the sundry charges for ‘vij crockes, xiij lytyll pans, a pare of pot hookes, a fyer pane, a lanterne, a chafynge dyshe, and xij candyll stychs.’
Bang went eight strokes of the clock: it was the dinner-hour.
‘There, now I can’t go, anyhow!’ he said bitterly, jumping up, and picturing her receiving her company. How would she look; what would she wear? Profoundly indifferent to the early history of the noble fabric, he felt a violent reaction towards modernism, eclecticism, new aristocracies, everything, in short, that Paula represented. He even gave himself up to consider the Greek court that she had wished for, and passed the remainder of the evening in making a perspective view of the same.
The next morning he awoke early, and, resolving to be at work betimes, started promptly. It was a fine calm hour of day; the grass slopes were silvery with excess of dew, and the blue mists hung in the depths of each tree for want of wind to blow them out. Somerset entered the drive on foot, and when near the castle he observed in the gravel the wheel-marks of the carriages that had conveyed the guests thither the night before. There seemed to have been a large number, for the road where newly repaired was quite cut up. Before going indoors he was tempted to walk round to the wing in which Paula slept.
Rooks were cawing, sparrows were chattering there; but the blind of her window was as closely drawn as if it were midnight. Probably she was sound asleep, dreaming of the compliments which had been paid her by her guests, and of the future triumphant pleasures that would follow in their train. Reaching the outer stone stairs leading to the great hall he found them shadowed by an awning brilliantly striped with red and blue, within which rows of flowering plants in pots bordered the pathway. She could not have made more preparation had the gathering been a ball. He passed along the gallery in which his studio was situated, entered the room, and seized a drawing-board to put into correct drawing the sketch for the Greek court that he had struck out the night before, thereby abandoning his art principles to please the whim of a girl. Dare had not yet arrived, and after a time Somerset threw down his pencil and leant back.
His eye fell upon something that moved. It was white, and lay in the folding chair on the opposite side of the room. On near approach he found it to be a fragment of swan’s-down fanned into motion by his own movements, and partially squeezed into the chink of the chair as though by some person sitting on it.
None but a woman would have worn or brought that swan’s-down into his studio, and it made him reflect on the possible one. Nothing interrupted his conjectures till ten o’clock, when Dare came. Then one of the servants tapped at the door to know if Mr. Somerset had arrived. Somerset asked if Miss Power wished to see him, and was informed that she had only wished to know if he had come. Somerset sent a return message that he had a design on the board which he should soon be glad to submit to her, and the messenger departed.
‘Fine doings here last night, sir,’ said Dare, as he dusted his T-square.
‘O indeed!’
‘A dinner-party, I hear; eighteen guests.’
‘Ah,’ said Somerset.
‘The young lady was magnificent—sapphires and opals—she carried as much as a thousand pounds upon her head and shoulders during that three or four hour. Of course they call her charming; Compuesta no hay muger fea, as they say at Madrid.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a moment,’ said Somerset, with reserve.
Dare said no more, and presently the door opened, and there stood Paula.
Somerset nodded to Dare to withdraw into an adjoining room, and offered her a chair.
‘You wish to show me the design you have prepared?’ she asked, without taking the seat.
‘Yes; I have come round to your opinion. I have made a plan for the Greek court you were anxious to build.’ And he elevated the drawing-board against the wall.
She regarded it attentively for some moments, her finger resting lightly against her chin, and said, ‘I have given up the idea of a Greek court.’
He showed his astonishment, and was almost disappointed. He had been grinding up Greek architecture entirely on her account; had wrenched his mind round to this strange arrangement, all for nothing.
‘Yes,’ she continued; ‘on reconsideration I perceive the want of harmony that would result from inserting such a piece of marble-work in a mediaeval fortress; so in future we will limit ourselves strictly to synchronism of style—that is to say, make good the Norman work by Norman, the Perpendicular by Perpendicular, and so on. I have informed Mr. Havill of the same thing.’
Somerset pulled the Greek drawing off the board, and tore it in two pieces.
She involuntarily turned to look in his face, but stopped before she had quite lifted her eyes high enough. ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked with suave curiosity.
‘It is of no further use,’ said Somerset, tearing the drawing in the other direction, and throwing the pieces into the fireplace. ‘You have been reading up orders and styles to some purpose, I perceive.’ He regarded her with a faint smile.
‘I have had a few books down from town. It is desirable to know a little about the architecture of one’s own house.’
She remained looking at the torn drawing, when Somerset, observing on the table the particle of swan’s-down he had found in the chair, gently blew it so that it skimmed across the table under her eyes.
‘It looks as if it came off a lady’s dress,’ he said idly.
‘Off a lady’s fan,’ she replied.
‘O, off a fan?’
‘Yes; off mine.’
At her reply Somerset stretched out his hand for the swan’s-down, and put it carefully in his pocket-book; whereupon Paula, moulding her cherry-red lower lip beneath her upper one in arch self-consciousness at his act, turned away to the window, and after a pause said softly as she looked out, ‘Why did you not accept our invitation to dinner?’
It was impossible to explain why. He impulsively drew near and confronted her, and said, ‘I hope you pardon me?’
‘I don’t know that I can quite do that,’ answered she, with ever so little reproach. ‘I know why you did not come—you were mortified at not being asked sooner! But it was purely by an accident that you received your invitation so late. My aunt sent the others by post, but as yours was to be delivered by hand it was left on her table, and was overlooked.’
Surely he could not doubt her words; those nice friendly accents were the embodiment of truth itself.
‘I don’t mean to make a serious complaint,’ she added, in injured tones, showing that she did. ‘Only we had asked nearly all of them to meet you, as the son of your illustrious father, whom many of my friends know personally; and—they were disappointed.’
It was now time for Somerset to be genuinely grieved at what he had done. Paula seemed so good and honourable at that moment that he could have laid down his life for her.
‘When I was dressed, I came in here to ask you to reconsider your decision,’ she continued; ‘or to meet us in the drawing-room if you could not possibly be ready for dinner. But you were gone.’
‘And you sat down in that chair, didn’t you, darling, and remained there a long time musing!’ he thought. But that he did not say.
‘I am very sorry,’ he murmured.
‘Will you make amends by coming to our garden party? I ask you the very first.’
‘I will,’ replied Somerset. To add that it would give him great pleasure, etc., seemed an absurdly weak way of expressing his feelings, and he said no more.
‘It is on the nineteenth. Don’t forget the day.’
He met her eyes in such a way that, if she were woman, she must have seen it to mean as plainly as words: ‘Do I look as if I could forget anything you say?’
She must, indeed, have understood much more by this time—the whole of his open secret. But he did not understand her. History has revealed that a supernumerary lover or two is rarely considered a disadvantage by a woman, from queen to cottage-girl; and the thought made him pause.
XIV.
When she was gone he went on with the drawing, not calling in Dare, who remained in the room adjoining. Presently a servant came and laid a paper on his table, which Miss Power had sent. It was one of the morning newspapers, and was folded so that his eye fell immediately on a letter headed ‘Restoration or Demolition.’
The letter was professedly written by a dispassionate person solely in the interests of art. It drew attention to the circumstance that the ancient and interesting castle of the De Stancys had unhappily passed into the hands of an iconoclast by blood, who, without respect for the tradition of the county, or any feeling whatever for history in stone, was about to demolish much, if not all, that was interesting in that ancient pile, and insert in its midst a monstrous travesty of some Greek temple. In the name of all lovers of mediaeval art, conjured the simple-minded writer, let something be done to save a building which, injured and battered in the Civil Wars, was now to be made a complete ruin by the freaks of an irresponsible owner. Her sending him the paper seemed to imply that she required his opinion on the case; and in the afternoon, leaving Dare to measure up a wing according to directions, he went out in the hope of meeting her, having learnt that she had gone to the village. On reaching the church he saw her crossing the churchyard path with her aunt and Miss De Stancy. Somerset entered the enclosure, and as soon as she saw him she came across.
‘What is to be done?’ she asked.
‘You need not be concerned about such a letter as that.’
‘I am concerned.’
‘I think it dreadful impertinence,’ spoke up Charlotte, who had joined them. ‘Can you think who wrote it, Mr. Somerset?’
Somerset could not.
‘Well, what am I to do?’ repeated Paula.
‘Just as you would have done before.’
‘That’s whatIsay,’ observed Mrs. Goodman emphatically.
‘But I have already altered—I have given up the Greek court.’
‘O—you had seen the paper this morning before you looked at my drawing?’
‘I had,’ she answered.
Somerset thought it a forcible illustration of her natural reticence that she should have abandoned the design without telling him the reason; but he was glad she had not done it from mere caprice.
She turned to him and said quietly, ‘I wish YOU would answer that letter.’
‘It would be ill-advised,’ said Somerset. ‘Still, if, after consideration, you wish it much, I will. Meanwhile let me impress upon you again the expediency of calling in Mr. Havill—to whom, as your father’s architect, expecting this commission, something perhaps is owed—and getting him to furnish an alternative plan to mine, and submitting the choice of designs to some members of the Royal Institute of British Architects. This letter makes it still more advisable than before.’
‘Very well,’ said Paula reluctantly.
‘Let him have all the particulars you have been good enough to explain to me—so that we start fair in the competition.’
She looked negligently on the grass. ‘I will tell the building steward to write them out for him,’ she said.
The party separated and entered the church by different doors. Somerset went to a nook of the building that he had often intended to visit. It was called the Stancy aisle; and in it stood the tombs of that family. Somerset examined them: they were unusually rich and numerous, beginning with cross-legged knights in hauberks of chain-mail, their ladies beside them in wimple and cover-chief, all more or less coated with the green mould and dirt of ages: and continuing with others of later date, in fine alabaster, gilded and coloured, some of them wearing round their necks the Yorkist collar of suns and roses, the livery of Edward the Fourth. In scrutinizing the tallest canopy over these he beheld Paula behind it, as if in contemplation of the same objects.
‘You came to the church to sketch these monuments, I suppose, Mr. Somerset?’ she asked, as soon as she saw him.
‘No. I came to speak to you about the letter.’
She sighed. ‘Yes: that letter,’ she said. ‘I am persecuted! If I had been one of these it would never have been written.’ She tapped the alabaster effigy of a recumbent lady with her parasol.
‘They are interesting, are they not?’ he said. ‘She is beautifully preserved. The gilding is nearly gone, but beyond that she is perfect.’
‘She is like Charlotte,’ said Paula. And what was much like another sigh escaped her lips.
Somerset admitted that there was a resemblance, while Paula drew her forefinger across the marble face of the effigy, and at length took out her handkerchief, and began wiping the dust from the hollows of the features. He looked on, wondering what her sigh had meant, but guessing that it had been somehow caused by the sight of these sculptures in connection with the newspaper writer’s denunciation of her as an irresponsible outsider.
The secret was out when in answer to his question, idly put, if she wished she were like one of these, she said, with exceptional vehemence for one of her demeanour—
‘I don’t wish I was like one of them: I wish I WAS one of them.’
‘What—you wish you were a De Stancy?’
‘Yes. It is very dreadful to be denounced as a barbarian. I want to be romantic and historical.’
‘Miss De Stancy seems not to value the privilege,’ he said, looking round at another part of the church where Charlotte was innocently prattling to Mrs. Goodman, quite heedless of the tombs of her forefathers.
‘If I were one,’ she continued, ‘I should come here when I feel alone in the world, as I do to-day; and I would defy people, and say, “You cannot spoil what has been!”’
They walked on till they reached the old black pew attached to the castle—a vast square enclosure of oak panelling occupying half the aisle, and surmounted with a little balustrade above the framework. Within, the baize lining that had once been green, now faded to the colour of a common in August, was torn, kicked and scraped to rags by the feet and hands of the ploughboys who had appropriated the pew as their own special place of worship since it had ceased to be used by any resident at the castle, because its height afforded convenient shelter for playing at marbles and pricking with pins.
Charlotte and Mrs. Goodman had by this time left the building, and could be seen looking at the headstones outside.
‘If you were a De Stancy,’ said Somerset, who had pondered more deeply upon that new wish of hers than he had seemed to do, ‘you would be a churchwoman, and sit here.’
‘And I should have the pew done up,’ she said readily, as she rested her pretty chin on the top rail and looked at the interior, her cheeks pressed into deep dimples. Her quick reply told him that the idea was no new one with her, and he thought of poor Mr. Woodwell’s shrewd prophecy as he perceived that her days as a separatist were numbered.
‘Well, why can’t you have it done up, and sit here?’ he said warily.
Paula shook her head.
‘You are not at enmity with Anglicanism, I am sure?’
‘I want not to be. I want to be—what—’
‘What the De Stancys were, and are,’ he said insidiously; and her silenced bearing told him that he had hit the nail.
It was a strange idea to get possession of such a nature as hers, and for a minute he felt himself on the side of the minister. So strong was Somerset’s feeling of wishing her to show the quality of fidelity to paternal dogma and party, that he could not help adding—