A Laodicean

Chapter 11

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!'