Abner Power nodded again, his complexion being peculiar – which might partly have been accounted for by the reflection of window-light from the green-baize table-cloth.
‘He agreed, though no politician whatever himself, to exercise his wits on their account, and brought his machine to such a pitch of perfection, that it was the identical one used in the memorable attempt – ’ (Dare whispered the remainder of the sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) ‘Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally been wanted ever since by all the heads of police in Europe. But the most curious – or perhaps the most natural part of my story is, that our hero, after the catastrophe, grew disgusted with himself and his comrades, acquired, in a fit of revulsion, quite a conservative taste in politics, which was strengthened greatly by the news he indirectly received of the great wealth and respectability of his brother, who had had no communion with him for years, and supposed him dead. He abjured his employers and resolved to abandon them; but before coming to England he decided to destroy all trace of his combustible inventions by dropping them into the neighbouring lake at night from a boat. You feel the room close, Mr. Power?’
‘No, I suffer from attacks of perspiration whenever I sit in a consecrated edifice – that’s all. Pray go on.’
‘In carrying out this project, an explosion occurred, just as he was throwing the stock overboard – it blew up into his face, wounding him severely, and nearly depriving him of sight. The boat was upset, but he swam ashore in the darkness, and remained hidden till he recovered, though the scars produced by the burns had been set on him for ever. This accident, which was such a misfortune to him as a man, was an advantage to him as a conspirators’ engineer retiring from practice, and afforded him a disguise both from his own brotherhood and from the police, which he has considered impenetrable, but which is getting seen through by one or two keen eyes as time goes on. Instead of coming to England just then, he went to Peru, connected himself with the guano trade, I believe, and after his brother’s death revisited England, his old life obliterated as far as practicable by his new principles. He is known only as a great traveller to his surviving relatives, though he seldom says where he has travelled. Unluckily for himself, he is WANTED by certain European governments as badly as ever.’
Dare raised his eyes as he concluded his narration. As has been remarked, he was sitting at one end of the vestry-table, Power at the other, the green cloth stretching between them. On the edge of the table adjoining Mr. Power a shining nozzle of metal was quietly resting, like a dog’s nose. It was directed point-blank at the young man.
Dare started. ‘Ah – a revolver?’ he said.
Mr. Power nodded placidly, his hand still grasping the pistol behind the edge of the table. ‘As a traveller I always carry one of ‘em,’ he returned; ‘and for the last five minutes I have been closely considering whether your numerous brains are worth blowing out or no. The vault yonder has suggested itself as convenient and snug for one of the same family; but the mental problem that stays my hand is, how am I to despatch and bury you there without the workmen seeing?’
‘’Tis a strange problem, certainly,’ replied Dare, ‘and one on which I fear I could not give disinterested advice. Moreover, while you, as a traveller, always carry a weapon of defence, as a traveller so do I. And for the last three-quarters of an hour I have been thinking concerning you, an intensified form of what you have been thinking of me, but without any concern as to your interment. See here for a proof of it.’ And a second steel nose rested on the edge of the table opposite to the first, steadied by Dare’s right hand.
They remained for some time motionless, the tick of the tower clock distinctly audible.
Mr. Power spoke first.
‘Well, ‘twould be a pity to make a mess here under such dubious circumstances. Mr. Dare, I perceive that a mean vagabond can be as sharp as a political regenerator. I cry quits, if you care to do the same?’
Dare assented, and the pistols were put away.
‘Then we do nothing at all, either side; but let the course of true love run on to marriage – that’s the understanding, I think?’ said Dare as he rose.
‘It is,’ said Power; and turning on his heel, he left the vestry.
Dare retired to the church and thence to the outside, where he idled away a few minutes in looking at the workmen, who were now lowering into its place a large stone slab, bearing the words ‘DE STANCY,’ which covered the entrance to the vault. When the footway of the churchyard was restored to its normal condition Dare pursued his way to Markton.
Abner Power walked back to the castle at a slow and equal pace, as though he carried an over-brimming vessel on his head. He silently let himself in, entered the long gallery, and sat down. The length of time that he sat there was so remarkable as to raise that interval of inanition to the rank of a feat.
Power’s eyes glanced through one of the window-casements: from a hole without he saw the head of a tomtit protruding. He listlessly watched the bird during the successive epochs of his thought, till night came, without any perceptible change occurring in him. Such fixity would have meant nothing else than sudden death in any other man, but in Mr. Power it merely signified that he was engaged in ruminations which necessitated a more extensive survey than usual. At last, at half-past eight, after having sat for five hours with his eyes on the residence of the tomtits, to whom night had brought cessation of thought, if not to him who had observed them, he rose amid the shades of the furniture, and rang the bell. There were only a servant or two in the castle, one of whom presently came with a light in her hand and a startled look upon her face, which was not reduced when she recognized him; for in the opinion of that household there was something ghoul-like in Mr. Power, which made him no desirable guest.
He ate a late meal, and retired to bed, where he seemed to sleep not unsoundly. The next morning he received a letter which afforded him infinite satisfaction and gave his stagnant impulses a new momentum. He entered the library, and amid objects swathed in brown holland sat down and wrote a note to his niece at Amiens. Therein he stated that, finding that the Anglo-South-American house with which he had recently connected himself required his presence in Peru, it obliged him to leave without waiting for her return. He felt the less uneasy at going, since he had learnt that Captain De Stancy would return at once to Amiens to his sick sister, and see them safely home when she improved. He afterwards left the castle, disappearing towards a railway station some miles above Markton, the road to which lay across an unfrequented down.
XII
It was a fine afternoon of late summer, nearly three months subsequent to the death of Sir William De Stancy and Paula’s engagement to marry his successor in the title. George Somerset had started on a professional journey that took him through the charming district which lay around Stancy Castle. Having resigned his appointment as architect to that important structure – a resignation which had been accepted by Paula through her solicitor – he had bidden farewell to the locality after putting matters in such order that his successor, whoever he might be, should have no difficulty in obtaining the particulars necessary to the completion of the work in hand. Hardly to his surprise this successor was Havill.
Somerset’s resignation had been tendered in no hasty mood. On returning to England, and in due course to the castle, everything bore in upon his mind the exceeding sorrowfulness – he would not say humiliation – of continuing to act in his former capacity for a woman who, from seeming more than a dear friend, had become less than an acquaintance.
So he resigned; but now, as the train drew on into that once beloved tract of country, the images which met his eye threw him back in point of emotion to very near where he had been before making himself a stranger here. The train entered the cutting on whose brink he had walked when the carriage containing Paula and her friends surprised him the previous summer. He looked out of the window: they were passing the well-known curve that led up to the tunnel constructed by her father, into which he had gone when the train came by and Paula had been alarmed for his life. There was the path they had both climbed afterwards, involuntarily seizing each other’s hand; the bushes, the grass, the flowers, everything just the same:
‘ – Here was the pleasant place,
And nothing wanting was, save She, alas!’
When they came out of the tunnel at the other end he caught a glimpse of the distant castle-keep, and the well-remembered walls beneath it. The experience so far transcended the intensity of what is called mournful pleasure as to make him wonder how he could have miscalculated himself to the extent of supposing that he might pass the spot with controllable emotion.
On entering Markton station he withdrew into a remote corner of the carriage, and closed his eyes with a resolve not to open them till the embittering scenes should be passed by. He had not long to wait for this event. When again in motion his eye fell upon the skirt of a lady’s dress opposite, the owner of which had entered and seated herself so softly as not to attract his attention.
‘Ah indeed!’ he exclaimed as he looked up to her face. ‘I had not a notion that it was you!’ He went over and shook hands with Charlotte De Stancy.
‘I am not going far,’ she said; ‘only to the next station. We often run down in summer time. Are you going far?’
‘I am going to a building further on; thence to Normandy by way of Cherbourg, to finish out my holiday.’
Miss De Stancy thought that would be very nice.
‘Well, I hope so. But I fear it won’t.’
After saying that Somerset asked himself why he should mince matters with so genuine and sympathetic a girl as Charlotte De Stancy? She could tell him particulars which he burned to know. He might never again have an opportunity of knowing them, since she and he would probably not meet for years to come, if at all.
‘Have the castle works progressed pretty rapidly under the new architect?’ he accordingly asked.
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte in her haste – then adding that she was not quite sure if they had progressed so rapidly as before; blushingly correcting herself at this point and that, in the tinkering manner of a nervous organization aiming at nicety where it was not required.
‘Well, I should have liked to carry out the undertaking to its end,’ said Somerset. ‘But I felt I could not consistently do so. Miss Power – ’ (here a lump came into Somerset’s throat – so responsive was he yet to her image) – ‘seemed to have lost confidence in me, and – it was best that the connection should be severed.’
There was a long pause. ‘She was very sorry about it,’ said Charlotte gently.
‘What made her alter so? – I never can think!’
Charlotte waited again as if to accumulate the necessary force for honest speaking at the expense of pleasantness. ‘It was the telegram that began it of course,’ she answered.
‘Telegram?’
She looked up at him in quite a frightened way – little as there was to be frightened at in a quiet fellow like him in this sad time of his life – and said, ‘Yes: some telegram – I think – when you were in trouble? Forgive my alluding to it; but you asked me the question.’
Somerset began reflecting on what messages he had sent Paula, troublous or otherwise. All he had sent had been sent from the castle, and were as gentle and mellifluous as sentences well could be which had neither articles nor pronouns. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Will you explain a little more – as plainly as you like – without minding my feelings?’
‘A telegram from Nice, I think?’
‘I never sent one.’
‘O! The one I meant was about money.’
Somerset shook his head. ‘No,’ he murmured, with the composure of a man who, knowing he had done nothing of the sort himself, was blinded by his own honesty to the possibility that another might have done it for him. ‘That must be some other affair with which I had nothing to do. O no, it was nothing like that; the reason for her change of manner was quite different!’
So timid was Charlotte in Somerset’s presence, that her timidity at this juncture amounted to blameworthiness. The distressing scene which must have followed a clearing up there and then of any possible misunderstanding, terrified her imagination; and quite confounded by contradictions that she could not reconcile, she held her tongue, and nervously looked out of the window.
‘I have heard that Miss Power is soon to be married,’ continued Somerset.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte murmured. ‘It is sooner than it ought to be by rights, considering how recently my dear father died; but there are reasons in connection with my brother’s position against putting it off: and it is to be absolutely simple and private.’
There was another interval. ‘May I ask when it is to be?’ he said.
‘Almost at once – this week.’
Somerset started back as if some stone had hit his face.
Still there was nothing wonderful in such promptitude: engagements broken in upon by the death of a near relative of one of the parties had been often carried out in a subdued form with no longer delay.
Charlotte’s station was now at hand. She bade him farewell; and he rattled on to the building he had come to inspect, and next to Budmouth, whence he intended to cross the Channel by steamboat that night.
He hardly knew how the evening passed away. He had taken up his quarters at an inn near the quay, and as the night drew on he stood gazing from the coffee-room window at the steamer outside, which nearly thrust its spars through the bedroom casements, and at the goods that were being tumbled on board as only shippers can tumble them. All the goods were laden, a lamp was put on each side the gangway, the engines broke into a crackling roar, and people began to enter. They were only waiting for the last train: then they would be off. Still Somerset did not move; he was thinking of that curious half-told story of Charlotte’s, about a telegram to Paula for money from Nice. Not once till within the last half-hour had it recurred to his mind that he had met Dare both at Nice and at Monte Carlo; that at the latter place he had been absolutely out of money and wished to borrow, showing considerable sinister feeling when Somerset declined to lend: that on one or two previous occasions he had reasons for doubting Dare’s probity; and that in spite of the young man’s impoverishment at Monte Carlo he had, a few days later, beheld him in shining raiment at Carlsruhe. Somerset, though misty in his conjectures, was seized with a growing conviction that there was something in Miss De Stancy’s allusion to the telegram which ought to be explained.
He felt an insurmountable objection to cross the water that night, or till he had been able to see Charlotte again, and learn more of her meaning. He countermanded the order to put his luggage on board, watched the steamer out of the harbour, and went to bed. He might as well have gone to battle, for any rest that he got. On rising the next morning he felt rather blank, though none the less convinced that a matter required investigation. He left Budmouth by a morning train, and about eleven o’clock found himself in Markton.
The momentum of a practical inquiry took him through that ancient borough without leaving him much leisure for those reveries which had yesterday lent an unutterable sadness to every object there. It was just before noon that he started for the castle, intending to arrive at a time of the morning when, as he knew from experience, he could speak to Charlotte without difficulty. The rising ground soon revealed the old towers to him, and, jutting out behind them, the scaffoldings for the new wing.
While halting here on the knoll in some doubt about his movements he beheld a man coming along the road, and was soon confronted by his former competitor, Havill. The first instinct of each was to pass with a nod, but a second instinct for intercourse was sufficient to bring them to a halt. After a few superficial words had been spoken Somerset said, ‘You have succeeded me.’
‘I have,’ said Havill; ‘but little to my advantage. I have just heard that my commission is to extend no further than roofing in the wing that you began, and had I known that before, I would have seen the castle fall flat as Jericho before I would have accepted the superintendence. But I know who I have to thank for that – De Stancy.’
Somerset still looked towards the distant battlements. On the scaffolding, among the white-jacketed workmen, he could discern one figure in a dark suit.
‘You have a clerk of the works, I see,’ he observed.
‘Nominally I have, but practically I haven’t.’
‘Then why do you keep him?’
‘I can’t help myself. He is Mr. Dare; and having been recommended by a higher power than I, there he must stay in spite of me.’
‘Who recommended him?’
‘The same – De Stancy.’
‘It is very odd,’ murmured Somerset, ‘but that young man is the object of my visit.’
‘You had better leave him alone,’ said Havill drily.
Somerset asked why.
‘Since I call no man master over that way I will inform you.’ Havill then related in splenetic tones, to which Somerset did not care to listen till the story began to advance itself, how he had passed the night with Dare at the inn, and the incidents of that night, relating how he had seen some letters on the young man’s breast which long had puzzled him. ‘They were an E, a T, an N, and a C. I thought over them long, till it eventually occurred to me that the word when filled out was “De Stancy,” and that kinship explains the offensive and defensive alliance between them.’
‘But, good heavens, man!’ said Somerset, more and more disturbed. ‘Does she know of it?’
‘You may depend she does not yet; but she will soon enough. Hark – there it is!’ The notes of the castle clock were heard striking noon. ‘Then it is all over.’
‘What? – not their marriage!’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know it was the wedding day? They were to be at the church at half-past eleven. I should have waited to see her go, but it was no sight to hinder business for, as she was only going to drive over in her brougham with Miss De Stancy.’
‘My errand has failed!’ said Somerset, turning on his heel. ‘I’ll walk back to the town with you.’
However he did not walk far with Havill; society was too much at that moment. As soon as opportunity offered he branched from the road by a path, and avoiding the town went by railway to Budmouth, whence he resumed, by the night steamer, his journey to Normandy.
XIII
To return to Charlotte De Stancy. When the train had borne Somerset from her side, and she had regained her self-possession, she became conscious of the true proportions of the fact he had asserted. And, further, if the telegram had not been his, why should the photographic distortion be trusted as a phase of his existence? But after a while it seemed so improbable to her that God’s sun should bear false witness, that instead of doubting both evidences she was inclined to readmit the first. Still, upon the whole, she could not question for long the honesty of Somerset’s denial and if that message had indeed been sent by him, it must have been done while he was in another such an unhappy state as that exemplified by the portrait. The supposition reconciled all differences; and yet she could not but fight against it with all the strength of a generous affection.
All the afternoon her poor little head was busy on this perturbing question, till she inquired of herself whether after all it might not be possible for photographs to represent people as they had never been. Before rejecting the hypothesis she determined to have the word of a professor on the point, which would be better than all her surmises. Returning to Markton early, she told the coachman whom Paula had sent, to drive her to the shop of Mr. Ray, an obscure photographic artist in that town, instead of straight home.
Ray’s establishment consisted of two divisions, the respectable and the shabby. If, on entering the door, the visitor turned to the left, he found himself in a magazine of old clothes, old furniture, china, umbrellas, guns, fishing-rods, dirty fiddles, and split flutes. Entering the right-hand room, which had originally been that of an independent house, he was in an ordinary photographer’s and print-collector’s depository, to which a certain artistic solidity was imparted by a few oil paintings in the background. Charlotte made for the latter department, and when she was inside Mr. Ray appeared in person from the lumber-shop adjoining, which, despite its manginess, contributed by far the greater share to his income.
Charlotte put her question simply enough. The man did not answer her directly, but soon found that she meant no harm to him. He told her that such misrepresentations were quite possible, and that they embodied a form of humour which was getting more and more into vogue among certain facetious persons of society.
Charlotte was coming away when she asked, as on second thoughts, if he had any specimens of such work to show her.
‘None of my own preparation,’ said Mr. Ray, with unimpeachable probity of tone. ‘I consider them libellous myself. Still, I have one or two samples by me, which I keep merely as curiosities. – There’s one,’ he said, throwing out a portrait card from a drawer. ‘That represents the German Emperor in a violent passion: this one shows the Prime Minister out of his mind; this the Pope of Rome the worse for liquor.’
She inquired if he had any local specimens.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I prefer not to exhibit them unless you really ask for a particular one that you mean to buy.’
‘I don’t want any.’
‘O, I beg pardon, miss. Well, I shouldn’t myself own such things were produced, if there had not been a young man here at one time who was very ingenious in these matters – a Mr. Dare. He was quite a gent, and only did it as an amusement, and not for the sake of getting a living.’
Charlotte had no wish to hear more. On her way home she burst into tears: the entanglement was altogether too much for her to tear asunder, even had not her own instincts been urging her two ways, as they were.
To immediately right Somerset’s wrong was her impetuous desire as an honest woman who loved him; but such rectification would be the jeopardizing of all else that gratified her – the marriage of her brother with her dearest friend – now on the very point of accomplishment. It was a marriage which seemed to promise happiness, or at least comfort, if the old flutter that had transiently disturbed Paula’s bosom could be kept from reviving, to which end it became imperative to hide from her the discovery of injustice to Somerset. It involved the advantage of leaving Somerset free; and though her own tender interest in him had been too well schooled by habitual self-denial to run ahead on vain personal hopes, there was nothing more than human in her feeling pleasure in prolonging Somerset’s singleness. Paula might even be allowed to discover his wrongs when her marriage had put him out of her power. But to let her discover his ill-treatment now might upset the impending union of the families, and wring her own heart with the sight of Somerset married in her brother’s place.
Why Dare, or any other person, should have set himself to advance her brother’s cause by such unscrupulous blackening of Somerset’s character was more than her sagacity could fathom. Her brother was, as far as she could see, the only man who could directly profit by the machination, and was therefore the natural one to suspect of having set it going. But she would not be so disloyal as to entertain the thought long; and who or what had instigated Dare, who was undoubtedly the proximate cause of the mischief, remained to her an inscrutable mystery.
The contention of interests and desires with honour in her heart shook Charlotte all that night; but good principle prevailed. The wedding was to be solemnized the very next morning, though for before-mentioned reasons this was hardly known outside the two houses interested; and there were no visible preparations either at villa or castle. De Stancy and his groomsman – a brother officer – slept at the former residence.
De Stancy was a sorry specimen of a bridegroom when he met his sister in the morning. Thick-coming fancies, for which there was more than good reason, had disturbed him only too successfully, and he was as full of apprehension as one who has a league with Mephistopheles. Charlotte told him nothing of what made her likewise so wan and anxious, but drove off to the castle, as had been planned, about nine o’clock, leaving her brother and his friend at the breakfast-table.
That clearing Somerset’s reputation from the stain which had been thrown on it would cause a sufficient reaction in Paula’s mind to dislocate present arrangements she did not so seriously anticipate, now that morning had a little calmed her. Since the rupture with her former architect Paula had sedulously kept her own counsel, but Charlotte assumed from the ease with which she seemed to do it that her feelings towards him had never been inconveniently warm; and she hoped that Paula would learn of Somerset’s purity with merely the generous pleasure of a friend, coupled with a friend’s indignation against his traducer.
Still, the possibility existed of stronger emotions, and it was only too evident to poor Charlotte that, knowing this, she had still less excuse for delaying the intelligence till the strongest emotion would be purposeless.
On approaching the castle the first object that caught her eye was Dare, standing beside Havill on the scaffolding of the new wing. He was looking down upon the drive and court, as if in anticipation of the event. His contiguity flurried her, and instead of going straight to Paula she sought out Mrs. Goodman.
‘You are come early; that’s right!’ said the latter. ‘You might as well have slept here last night. We have only Mr. Wardlaw, the London lawyer you have heard of, in the house. Your brother’s solicitor was here yesterday; but he returned to Markton for the night. We miss Mr. Power so much – it is so unfortunate that he should have been obliged to go abroad, and leave us unprotected women with so much responsibility.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Charlotte quickly, having a shy distaste for the details of what troubled her so much in the gross.
‘Paula has inquired for you.’
‘What is she doing?’
‘She is in her room: she has not begun to dress yet. Will you go to her?’
Charlotte assented. ‘I have to tell her something,’ she said, ‘which will make no difference, but which I should like her to know this morning – at once. I have discovered that we have been entirely mistaken about Mr. Somerset.’ She nerved herself to relate succinctly what had come to her knowledge the day before.
Mrs. Goodman was much impressed. She had never clearly heard before what circumstances had attended the resignation of Paula’s architect. ‘We had better not tell her till the wedding is over,’ she presently said; ‘it would only disturb her, and do no good.’
‘But will it be right?’ asked Miss De Stancy.
‘Yes, it will be right if we tell her afterwards. O yes – it must be right,’ she repeated in a tone which showed that her opinion was unstable enough to require a little fortification by the voice. ‘She loves your brother; she must, since she is going to marry him; and it can make little difference whether we rehabilitate the character of a friend now, or some few hours hence. The author of those wicked tricks on Mr. Somerset ought not to go a moment unpunished.’
‘That’s what I think; and what right have we to hold our tongues even for a few hours?’
Charlotte found that by telling Mrs. Goodman she had simply made two irresolute people out of one, and as Paula was now inquiring for her, she went upstairs without having come to any decision.
XIV
Paula was in her boudoir, writing down some notes previous to beginning her wedding toilet, which was designed to harmonize with the simplicity that characterized the other arrangements. She owned that it was depriving the neighbourhood of a pageant which it had a right to expect of her; but the circumstance was inexorable.
Mrs. Goodman entered Paula’s room immediately behind Charlotte. Perhaps the only difference between the Paula of to-day and the Paula of last year was an accession of thoughtfulness, natural to the circumstances in any case, and more particularly when, as now, the bride’s isolation made self-dependence a necessity. She was sitting in a light dressing-gown, and her face, which was rather pale, flushed at the entrance of Charlotte and her aunt.
‘I knew you were come,’ she said, when Charlotte stooped and kissed her. ‘I heard you. I have done nothing this morning, and feel dreadfully unsettled. Is all well?’
The question was put without thought, but its aptness seemed almost to imply an intuitive knowledge of their previous conversation. ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte tardily.
‘Well, now, Clementine shall dress you, and I can do with Milly,’ continued Paula. ‘Come along. Well, aunt – what’s the matter? – and you, Charlotte? You look harassed.’
‘I have not slept well,’ said Charlotte.
‘And have not you slept well either, aunt? You said nothing about it at breakfast.’
‘O, it is nothing,’ said Mrs. Goodman quickly. ‘I have been disturbed by learning of somebody’s villainy. I am going to tell you all some time to-day, but it is not important enough to disturb you with now.’
‘No mystery!’ argued Paula. ‘Come! it is not fair.’
‘I don’t think it is quite fair,’ said Miss De Stancy, looking from one to the other in some distress. ‘Mrs. Goodman – I must tell her! Paula, Mr. Som – ’