She now and then crossed to one of the deep embrasures of the windows, to decipher some sentence from a letter she held in her hand. The daylight would have been more than sufficient for any bystander to discern that the capitals in that letter were of the peculiar semi-gothic type affected at the time by Somerset and other young architects of his school in their epistolary correspondence. She was very possibly thinking of him, even when not reading his letter, for the expression of softness with which she perused the page was more or less with her when she appeared to examine other things.
She walked about for a little time longer, then put away the letter, looked at the clock, and thence returned to the windows, straining her eyes over the landscape without, as she murmured, ‘I wish Charlotte was not so long coming!’
As Charlotte continued to keep away, Paula became less reasonable in her desires, and proceeded to wish that Somerset would arrive; then that anybody would come; then, walking towards the portraits on the wall, she flippantly asked one of those cavaliers to oblige her fancy for company by stepping down from his frame. The temerity of the request led her to prudently withdraw it almost as soon as conceived: old paintings had been said to play queer tricks in extreme cases, and the shadows this afternoon were funereal enough for anything in the shape of revenge on an intruder who embodied the antagonistic modern spirit to such an extent as she. However, Paula still stood before the picture which had attracted her; and this, by a coincidence common enough in fact, though scarcely credited in chronicles, happened to be that one of the seventeenth-century portraits of which De Stancy had studied the engraved copy at Myrtle Villa the same morning.
Whilst she remained before the picture, wondering her favourite wonder, how would she feel if this and its accompanying canvases were pictures of her own ancestors, she was surprised by a light footstep upon the carpet which covered part of the room, and turning quickly she beheld the smiling little figure of Charlotte De Stancy.
‘What has made you so late?’ said Paula. ‘You are come to stay, of course?’
Charlotte said she had come to stay. ‘But I have brought somebody with me!’
‘Ah – whom?’
‘My brother happened to be at home, and I have brought him.’
Miss De Stancy’s brother had been so continuously absent from home in India, or elsewhere, so little spoken of, and, when spoken of, so truly though unconsciously represented as one whose interests lay wholly outside this antiquated neighbourhood, that to Paula he had been a mere nebulosity whom she had never distinctly outlined. To have him thus cohere into substance at a moment’s notice lent him the novelty of a new creation.
‘Is he in the drawing-room?’ said Paula in a low voice.
‘No, he is here. He would follow me. I hope you will forgive him.’
And then Paula saw emerge into the red beams of the dancing fire, from behind a half-drawn hanging which screened the door, the military gentleman whose acquaintance the reader has already made.
‘You know the house, doubtless, Captain De Stancy?’ said Paula, somewhat shyly, when he had been presented to her.
‘I have never seen the inside since I was three weeks old,’ replied the artillery officer gracefully; ‘and hence my recollections of it are not remarkably distinct. A year or two before I was born the entail was cut off by my father and grandfather; so that I saw the venerable place only to lose it; at least, I believe that’s the truth of the case. But my knowledge of the transaction is not profound, and it is a delicate point on which to question one’s father.’
Paula assented, and looked at the interesting and noble figure of the man whose parents had seemingly righted themselves at the expense of wronging him.
‘The pictures and furniture were sold about the same time, I think?’ said Charlotte.
‘Yes,’ murmured De Stancy. ‘They went in a mad bargain of my father with his visitor, as they sat over their wine. My father sat down as host on that occasion, and arose as guest.’
He seemed to speak with such a courteous absence of regret for the alienation, that Paula, who was always fearing that the recollection would rise as a painful shadow between herself and the De Stancys, felt reassured by his magnanimity.
De Stancy looked with interest round the gallery; seeing which Paula said she would have lights brought in a moment.
‘No, please not,’ said De Stancy. ‘The room and ourselves are of so much more interesting a colour by this light!’
As they moved hither and thither, the various expressions of De Stancy’s face made themselves picturesquely visible in the unsteady shine of the blaze. In a short time he had drawn near to the painting of the ancestor whom he so greatly resembled. When her quick eye noted the speck on the face, indicative of inherited traits strongly pronounced, a new and romantic feeling that the De Stancys had stretched out a tentacle from their genealogical tree to seize her by the hand and draw her in to their mass took possession of Paula. As has been said, the De Stancys were a family on whom the hall-mark of membership was deeply stamped, and by the present light the representative under the portrait and the representative in the portrait seemed beings not far removed. Paula was continually starting from a reverie and speaking irrelevantly, as if such reflections as those seized hold of her in spite of her natural unconcern.
When candles were brought in Captain De Stancy ardently contrived to make the pictures the theme of conversation. From the nearest they went to the next, whereupon Paula as hostess took up one of the candlesticks and held it aloft to light up the painting. The candlestick being tall and heavy, De Stancy relieved her of it, and taking another candle in the other hand, he imperceptibly slid into the position of exhibitor rather than spectator. Thus he walked in advance holding the two candles on high, his shadow forming a gigantic figure on the neighbouring wall, while he recited the particulars of family history pertaining to each portrait, that he had learnt up with such eager persistence during the previous four-and-twenty-hours. ‘I have often wondered what could have been the history of this lady, but nobody has ever been able to tell me,’ Paula observed, pointing to a Vandyck which represented a beautiful woman wearing curls across her forehead, a square-cut bodice, and a heavy pearl necklace upon the smooth expanse of her neck.
‘I don’t think anybody knows,’ Charlotte said.
‘O yes,’ replied her brother promptly, seeing with enthusiasm that it was yet another opportunity for making capital of his acquired knowledge, with which he felt himself as inconveniently crammed as a candidate for a government examination. ‘That lady has been largely celebrated under a fancy name, though she is comparatively little known by her own. Her parents were the chief ornaments of the almost irreproachable court of Charles the First, and were not more distinguished by their politeness and honour than by the affections and virtues which constitute the great charm of private life.’
The stock verbiage of the family memoir was somewhat apparent in this effusion; but it much impressed his listeners; and he went on to point out that from the lady’s necklace was suspended a heart-shaped portrait – that of the man who broke his heart by her persistent refusal to encourage his suit. De Stancy then led them a little further, where hung a portrait of the lover, one of his own family, who appeared in full panoply of plate mail, the pommel of his sword standing up under his elbow. The gallant captain then related how this personage of his line wooed the lady fruitlessly; how, after her marriage with another, she and her husband visited the parents of the disappointed lover, the then occupiers of the castle; how, in a fit of desperation at the sight of her, he retired to his room, where he composed some passionate verses, which he wrote with his blood, and after directing them to her ran himself through the body with his sword. Too late the lady’s heart was touched by his devotion; she was ever after a melancholy woman, and wore his portrait despite her husband’s prohibition. ‘This,’ continued De Stancy, leading them through the doorway into the hall where the coats of mail were arranged along the wall, and stopping opposite a suit which bore some resemblance to that of the portrait, ‘this is his armour, as you will perceive by comparing it with the picture, and this is the sword with which he did the rash deed.’
‘What unreasonable devotion!’ said Paula practically. ‘It was too romantic of him. She was not worthy of such a sacrifice.’
‘He also is one whom they say you resemble a little in feature, I think,’ said Charlotte.
‘Do they?’ replied De Stancy. ‘I wonder if it’s true.’ He set down the candles, and asking the girls to withdraw for a moment, was inside the upper part of the suit of armour in incredibly quick time. Going then and placing himself in front of a low-hanging painting near the original, so as to be enclosed by the frame while covering the figure, arranging the sword as in the one above, and setting the light that it might fall in the right direction, he recalled them; when he put the question, ‘Is the resemblance strong?’
He looked so much like a man of bygone times that neither of them replied, but remained curiously gazing at him. His modern and comparatively sallow complexion, as seen through the open visor, lent an ethereal ideality to his appearance which the time-stained countenance of the original warrior totally lacked.
At last Paula spoke, so stilly that she seemed a statue enunciating: ‘Are the verses known that he wrote with his blood?’
‘O yes, they have been carefully preserved.’ Captain De Stancy, with true wooer’s instinct, had committed some of them to memory that morning from the printed copy to be found in every well-ordered library. ‘I fear I don’t remember them all,’ he said, ‘but they begin in this way: —
“From one that dyeth in his discontent,
Dear Faire, receive this greeting to thee sent;
And still as oft as it is read by thee,
Then with some deep sad sigh remember mee!
O ‘twas my fortune’s error to vow dutie,
To one that bears defiance in her beautie!
Sweete poyson, pretious wooe, infectious jewell —
Such is a Ladie that is faire and cruell.
How well could I with ayre, camelion-like,
Live happie, and still gazeing on thy cheeke,
In which, forsaken man, methink I see
How goodlie love doth threaten cares to mee.
Why dost thou frowne thus on a kneelinge soule,
Whose faults in love thou may’st as well controule? —
In love – but O, that word; that word I feare
Is hateful still both to thy hart and eare!
…
Ladie, in breefe, my fate doth now intend
The period of my daies to have an end:
Waste not on me thy pittie, pretious Faire:
Rest you in much content; I, in despaire!”’
A solemn silence followed the close of the recital, which De Stancy improved by turning the point of the sword to his breast, resting the pommel upon the floor, and saying: —
‘After writing that we may picture him turning this same sword in this same way, and falling on it thus.’ He inclined his body forward as he spoke.
‘Don’t, Captain De Stancy, please don’t!’ cried Paula involuntarily.
‘No, don’t show us any further, William!’ said his sister. ‘It is too tragic.’
De Stancy put away the sword, himself rather excited – not, however, by his own recital, but by the direct gaze of Paula at him.
This Protean quality of De Stancy’s, by means of which he could assume the shape and situation of almost any ancestor at will, had impressed her, and he perceived it with a throb of fervour. But it had done no more than impress her; for though in delivering the lines he had so fixed his look upon her as to suggest, to any maiden practised in the game of the eyes, a present significance in the words, the idea of any such arriere-pensee had by no means commended itself to her soul.
At this time a messenger from Markton barracks arrived at the castle and wished to speak to Captain De Stancy in the hall. Begging the two ladies to excuse him for a moment, he went out.
While De Stancy was talking in the twilight to the messenger at one end of the apartment, some other arrival was shown in by the side door, and in making his way after the conference across the hall to the room he had previously quitted, De Stancy encountered the new-comer. There was just enough light to reveal the countenance to be Dare’s; he bore a portfolio under his arm, and had begun to wear a moustache, in case the chief constable should meet him anywhere in his rambles, and be struck by his resemblance to the man in the studio.
‘What the devil are you doing here?’ said Captain De Stancy, in tones he had never used before to the young man.
Dare started back in surprise, and naturally so. De Stancy, having adopted a new system of living, and relinquished the meagre diet and enervating waters of his past years, was rapidly recovering tone. His voice was firmer, his cheeks were less pallid; and above all he was authoritative towards his present companion, whose ingenuity in vamping up a being for his ambitious experiments seemed about to be rewarded, like Frankenstein’s, by his discomfiture at the hands of his own creature.
‘What the devil are you doing here, I say?’ repeated De Stancy.
‘You can talk to me like that, after my working so hard to get you on in life, and make a rising man of you!’ expostulated Dare, as one who felt himself no longer the leader in this enterprise.
‘But,’ said the captain less harshly, ‘if you let them discover any relations between us here, you will ruin the fairest prospects man ever had!’
‘O, I like that, captain – when you owe all of it to me!’
‘That’s too cool, Will.’
‘No; what I say is true. However, let that go. So now you are here on a call; but how are you going to get here often enough to win her before the other man comes back? If you don’t see her every day – twice, three times a day – you will not capture her in the time.’
‘I must think of that,’ said De Stancy.
‘There is only one way of being constantly here: you must come to copy the pictures or furniture, something in the way he did.’
‘I’ll think of it,’ muttered De Stancy hastily, as he heard the voices of the ladies, whom he hastened to join as they were appearing at the other end of the room. His countenance was gloomy as he recrossed the hall, for Dare’s words on the shortness of his opportunities had impressed him. Almost at once he uttered a hope to Paula that he might have further chance of studying, and if possible of copying, some of the ancestral faces with which the building abounded.
Meanwhile Dare had come forward with his portfolio, which proved to be full of photographs. While Paula and Charlotte were examining them he said to De Stancy, as a stranger: ‘Excuse my interruption, sir, but if you should think of copying any of the portraits, as you were stating just now to the ladies, my patent photographic process is at your service, and is, I believe, the only one which would be effectual in the dim indoor lights.’
‘It is just what I was thinking of,’ said De Stancy, now so far cooled down from his irritation as to be quite ready to accept Dare’s adroitly suggested scheme.
On application to Paula she immediately gave De Stancy permission to photograph to any extent, and told Dare he might bring his instruments as soon as Captain De Stancy required them.
‘Don’t stare at her in such a brazen way!’ whispered the latter to the young man, when Paula had withdrawn a few steps. ‘Say, “I shall highly value the privilege of assisting Captain De Stancy in such a work.”’
Dare obeyed, and before leaving De Stancy arranged to begin performing on his venerated forefathers the next morning, the youth so accidentally engaged agreeing to be there at the same time to assist in the technical operations.
III
As he had promised, De Stancy made use the next day of the coveted permission that had been brought about by the ingenious Dare. Dare’s timely suggestion of tendering assistance had the practical result of relieving the other of all necessity for occupying his time with the proceeding, further than to bestow a perfunctory superintendence now and then, to give a colour to his regular presence in the fortress, the actual work of taking copies being carried on by the younger man.
The weather was frequently wet during these operations, and Paula, Miss De Stancy, and her brother, were often in the house whole mornings together. By constant urging and coaxing the latter would induce his gentle sister, much against her conscience, to leave him opportunities for speaking to Paula alone. It was mostly before some print or painting that these conversations occurred, while De Stancy was ostensibly occupied with its merits, or in giving directions to his photographer how to proceed. As soon as the dialogue began, the latter would withdraw out of earshot, leaving Paula to imagine him the most deferential young artist in the world.
‘You will soon possess duplicates of the whole gallery,’ she said on one of these occasions, examining some curled sheets which Dare had printed off from the negatives.
‘No,’ said the soldier. ‘I shall not have patience to go on. I get ill-humoured and indifferent, and then leave off.’
‘Why ill-humoured?’
‘I scarcely know – more than that I acquire a general sense of my own family’s want of merit through seeing how meritorious the people are around me. I see them happy and thriving without any necessity for me at all; and then I regard these canvas grandfathers and grandmothers, and ask, “Why was a line so antiquated and out of date prolonged till now?”’
She chid him good-naturedly for such views. ‘They will do you an injury,’ she declared. ‘Do spare yourself, Captain De Stancy!’
De Stancy shook his head as he turned the painting before him a little further to the light.
‘But, do you know,’ said Paula, ‘that notion of yours of being a family out of date is delightful to some people. I talk to Charlotte about it often. I am never weary of examining those canopied effigies in the church, and almost wish they were those of my relations.’
‘I will try to see things in the same light for your sake,’ said De Stancy fervently.
‘Not for my sake; for your own was what I meant, of course,’ she replied with a repressive air.
Captain De Stancy bowed.
‘What are you going to do with your photographs when you have them?’ she asked, as if still anxious to obliterate the previous sentimental lapse.
‘I shall put them into a large album, and carry them with me in my campaigns; and may I ask, now I have an opportunity, that you would extend your permission to copy a little further, and let me photograph one other painting that hangs in the castle, to fittingly complete my set?’
‘Which?’
‘That half-length of a lady which hangs in the morning-room. I remember seeing it in the Academy last year.’
Paula involuntarily closed herself up. The picture was her own portrait. ‘It does not belong to your series,’ she said somewhat coldly.
De Stancy’s secret thought was, I hope from my soul it will belong some day! He answered with mildness: ‘There is a sort of connection – you are my sister’s friend.’
Paula assented.
‘And hence, might not your friend’s brother photograph your picture?’
Paula demurred.
A gentle sigh rose from the bosom of De Stancy. ‘What is to become of me?’ he said, with a light distressed laugh. ‘I am always inconsiderate and inclined to ask too much. Forgive me! What was in my mind when I asked I dare not say.’
‘I quite understand your interest in your family pictures – and all of it,’ she remarked more gently, willing not to hurt the sensitive feelings of a man so full of romance.
‘And in that ONE!’ he said, looking devotedly at her. ‘If I had only been fortunate enough to include it with the rest, my album would indeed have been a treasure to pore over by the bivouac fire!’
‘O, Captain De Stancy, this is provoking perseverance!’ cried Paula, laughing half crossly. ‘I expected that after expressing my decision so plainly the first time I should not have been further urged upon the subject.’ Saying which she turned and moved decisively away.
It had not been a productive meeting, thus far. ‘One word!’ said De Stancy, following and almost clasping her hand. ‘I have given offence, I know: but do let it all fall on my own head – don’t tell my sister of my misbehaviour! She loves you deeply, and it would wound her to the heart.’
‘You deserve to be told upon,’ said Paula as she withdrew, with just enough playfulness to show that her anger was not too serious.
Charlotte looked at Paula uneasily when the latter joined her in the drawing-room. She wanted to say, ‘What is the matter?’ but guessing that her brother had something to do with it, forbore to speak at first. She could not contain her anxiety long. ‘Were you talking with my brother?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ returned Paula, with reservation. However, she soon added, ‘He not only wants to photograph his ancestors, but MY portrait too. They are a dreadfully encroaching sex, and perhaps being in the army makes them worse!’
‘I’ll give him a hint, and tell him to be careful.’
‘Don’t say I have definitely complained of him; it is not worth while to do that; the matter is too trifling for repetition. Upon the whole, Charlotte, I would rather you said nothing at all.’
De Stancy’s hobby of photographing his ancestors seemed to become a perfect mania with him. Almost every morning discovered him in the larger apartments of the castle, taking down and rehanging the dilapidated pictures, with the assistance of the indispensable Dare; his fingers stained black with dust, and his face expressing a busy attention to the work in hand, though always reserving a look askance for the presence of Paula.
Though there was something of subterfuge, there was no deep and double subterfuge in all this. De Stancy took no particular interest in his ancestral portraits; but he was enamoured of Paula to weakness. Perhaps the composition of his love would hardly bear looking into, but it was recklessly frank and not quite mercenary. His photographic scheme was nothing worse than a lover’s not too scrupulous contrivance. After the refusal of his request to copy her picture he fumed and fretted at the prospect of Somerset’s return before any impression had been made on her heart by himself; he swore at Dare, and asked him hotly why he had dragged him into such a hopeless dilemma as this.
‘Hopeless? Somerset must still be kept away, so that it is not hopeless. I will consider how to prolong his stay.’
Thereupon Dare considered.
The time was coming – had indeed come – when it was necessary for Paula to make up her mind about her architect, if she meant to begin building in the spring. The two sets of plans, Somerset’s and Havill’s, were hanging on the walls of the room that had been used by Somerset as his studio, and were accessible by anybody. Dare took occasion to go and study both sets, with a view to finding a flaw in Somerset’s which might have been passed over unnoticed by the committee of architects, owing to their absence from the actual site. But not a blunder could he find.
He next went to Havill; and here he was met by an amazing state of affairs. Havill’s creditors, at last suspecting something mythical in Havill’s assurance that the grand commission was his, had lost all patience; his house was turned upside-down, and a poster gleamed on the front wall, stating that the excellent modern household furniture was to be sold by auction on Friday next. Troubles had apparently come in battalions, for Dare was informed by a bystander that Havill’s wife was seriously ill also.
Without staying for a moment to enter his friend’s house, back went Mr. Dare to the castle, and told Captain De Stancy of the architect’s desperate circumstances, begging him to convey the news in some way to Miss Power. De Stancy promised to make representations in the proper quarter without perceiving that he was doing the best possible deed for himself thereby.
He told Paula of Havill’s misfortunes in the presence of his sister, who turned pale. She discerned how this misfortune would bear upon the undecided competition.
‘Poor man,’ murmured Paula. ‘He was my father’s architect, and somehow expected, though I did not promise it, the work of rebuilding the castle.’
Then De Stancy saw Dare’s aim in sending him to Miss Power with the news; and, seeing it, concurred: Somerset was his rival, and all was fair. ‘And is he not to have the work of the castle after expecting it?’ he asked.
Paula was lost in reflection. ‘The other architect’s design and Mr. Havill’s are exactly equal in merit, and we cannot decide how to give it to either,’ explained Charlotte.
‘That is our difficulty,’ Paula murmured. ‘A bankrupt, and his wife ill – dear me! I wonder what’s the cause.’
‘He has borrowed on the expectation of having to execute the castle works, and now he is unable to meet his liabilities.’
‘It is very sad,’ said Paula.
‘Let me suggest a remedy for this dead-lock,’ said De Stancy.
‘Do,’ said Paula.
‘Do the work of building in two halves or sections. Give Havill the first half, since he is in need; when that is finished the second half can be given to your London architect. If, as I understand, the plans are identical, except in ornamental details, there will be no difficulty about it at all.’
Paula sighed – just a little one; and yet the suggestion seemed to satisfy her by its reasonableness. She turned sad, wayward, but was impressed by De Stancy’s manner and words. She appeared indeed to have a smouldering desire to please him. In the afternoon she said to Charlotte, ‘I mean to do as your brother says.’
A note was despatched to Havill that very day, and in an hour the crestfallen architect presented himself at the castle. Paula instantly gave him audience, commiserated him, and commissioned him to carry out a first section of the buildings, comprising work to the extent of about twenty thousand pounds expenditure; and then, with a prematureness quite amazing among architects’ clients, she handed him over a cheque for five hundred pounds on account.
When he had gone, Paula’s bearing showed some sign of being disquieted at what she had done; but she covered her mood under a cloak of saucy serenity. Perhaps a tender remembrance of a certain thunderstorm in the foregoing August when she stood with Somerset in the arbour, and did not own that she loved him, was pressing on her memory and bewildering her. She had not seen quite clearly, in adopting De Stancy’s suggestion, that Somerset would now have no professional reason for being at the castle for the next twelve months.
But the captain had, and when Havill entered the castle he rejoiced with great joy. Dare, too, rejoiced in his cold way, and went on with his photography, saying, ‘The game progresses, captain.’
‘Game? Call it Divine Comedy, rather!’ said the soldier exultingly.
‘He is practically banished for a year or more. What can’t you do in a year, captain!’
Havill, in the meantime, having respectfully withdrawn from the presence of Paula, passed by Dare and De Stancy in the gallery as he had done in entering. He spoke a few words to Dare, who congratulated him. While they were talking somebody was heard in the hall, inquiring hastily for Mr. Havill.
‘What shall I tell him?’ demanded the porter.
‘His wife is dead,’ said the messenger.
Havill overheard the words, and hastened away.
‘An unlucky man!’ said Dare.
‘That, happily for us, will not affect his installation here,’ said De Stancy. ‘Now hold your tongue and keep at a distance. She may come this way.’
Surely enough in a few minutes she came. De Stancy, to make conversation, told her of the new misfortune which had just befallen Mr. Havill.
Paula was very sorry to hear it, and remarked that it gave her great satisfaction to have appointed him as architect of the first wing before he learnt the bad news. ‘I owe you best thanks, Captain De Stancy, for showing me such an expedient.’
‘Do I really deserve thanks?’ asked De Stancy. ‘I wish I deserved a reward; but I must bear in mind the fable of the priest and the jester.’
‘I never heard it.’
‘The jester implored the priest for alms, but the smallest sum was refused, though the holy man readily agreed to give him his blessing. Query, its value?’
‘How does it apply?’
‘You give me unlimited thanks, but deny me the tiniest substantial trifle I desire.’
‘What persistence!’ exclaimed Paula, colouring. ‘Very well, if you WILL photograph my picture you must. It is really not worthy further pleading. Take it when you like.’
When Paula was alone she seemed vexed with herself for having given way; and rising from her seat she went quietly to the door of the room containing the picture, intending to lock it up till further consideration, whatever he might think of her. But on casting her eyes round the apartment the painting was gone. The captain, wisely taking the current when it served, already had it in the gallery, where he was to be seen bending attentively over it, arranging the lights and directing Dare with the instruments. On leaving he thanked her, and said that he had obtained a splendid copy. Would she look at it?
Paula was severe and icy. ‘Thank you – I don’t wish to see it,’ she said.
De Stancy bowed and departed in a glow of triumph; satisfied, notwithstanding her frigidity, that he had compassed his immediate aim, which was that she might not be able to dismiss from her thoughts him and his persevering desire for the shadow of her face during the next four-and-twenty-hours. And his confidence was well founded: she could not.
‘I fear this Divine Comedy will be slow business for us, captain,’ said Dare, who had heard her cold words.
‘O no!’ said De Stancy, flushing a little: he had not been perceiving that the lad had the measure of his mind so entirely as to gauge his position at any moment. But he would show no shamefacedness. ‘Even if it is, my boy,’ he answered, ‘there’s plenty of time before the other can come.’