A Laodicean

Chapter 5

The cheering message from Paula to Somerset sped through the

loophole of Stancy Castle keep, over the trees, along the

railway, under bridges, across four counties--from extreme

antiquity of environment to sheer modernism--and finally

landed itself on a table in Somerset's chambers in the midst

of a cloud of fog. He read it and, in the moment of reaction

from the depression of his past days, clapped his hands like a

child.

Then he considered the date at which she wanted to see him.

Had she so worded her despatch he would have gone that very

day; but there was nothing to complain of in her giving him a

week's notice. Pure maiden modesty might have checked her

indulgence in a too ardent recall.

Time, however, dragged somewhat heavily along in the interim,

and on the second day he thought he would call on his father

and tell him of his success in obtaining the appointment.

The elder Mr. Somerset lived in a detached house in the north-

west part of fashionable London; and ascending the chief

staircase the young man branched off from the first landing

and entered his father's painting-room. It was an hour when

he was pretty sure of finding the well-known painter at work,

and on lifting the tapestry he was not disappointed, Mr.

Somerset being busily engaged with his back towards the door.

Art and vitiated nature were struggling like wrestlers in that

apartment, and art was getting the worst of it. The

overpowering gloom pervading the clammy air, rendered still

more intense by the height of the window from the floor,

reduced all the pictures that were standing around to the

wizened feebleness of corpses on end. The shadowy parts of

the room behind the different easels were veiled in a brown

vapour, precluding all estimate of the extent of the studio,

and only subdued in the foreground by the ruddy glare from an

open stove of Dutch tiles. Somerset's footsteps had been so

noiseless over the carpeting of the stairs and landing, that

his father was unaware of his presence; he continued at his

work as before, which he performed by the help of a

complicated apparatus of lamps, candles, and reflectors, so

arranged as to eke out the miserable daylight, to a power

apparently sufficient for the neutral touches on which he was

at that moment engaged.

The first thought of an unsophisticated stranger on entering

that room could only be the amazed inquiry why a professor of

the art of colour, which beyond all other arts requires pure

daylight for its exercise, should fix himself on the single

square league in habitable Europe to which light is denied at

noonday for weeks in succession.

'O! it's you, George, is it?' said the Academician, turning

from the lamps, which shone over his bald crown at such a

slant as to reveal every cranial irregularity. 'How are you

this morning? Still a dead silence about your grand castle

competition?'

Somerset told the news. His father duly congratulated him,

and added genially, 'It is well to be you, George. One large

commission to attend to, and nothing to distract you from it.

I am bothered by having a dozen irons in the fire at once.

And people are so unreasonable.--Only this morning, among

other things, when you got your order to go on with your

single study, I received a letter from a woman, an old friend

whom I can scarcely refuse, begging me as a great favour to

design her a set of theatrical costumes, in which she and her

friends can perform for some charity. It would occupy me a

good week to go into the subject and do the thing properly.

Such are the sort of letters I get. I wish, George, you could

knock out something for her before you leave town. It is

positively impossible for me to do it with all this work in

hand, and these eternal fogs to contend against.'

'I fear costumes are rather out of my line,' said the son.

'However, I'll do what I can. What period and country are

they to represent?'

His father didn't know. He had never looked at the play of

late years. It was 'Love's Labour's Lost.' 'You had better

read it for yourself,' he said, 'and do the best you can.'

During the morning Somerset junior found time to refresh his

memory of the play, and afterwards went and hunted up

materials for designs to suit the same, which occupied his

spare hours for the next three days. As these occupations

made no great demands upon his reasoning faculties he mostly

found his mind wandering off to imaginary scenes at Stancy

Castle: particularly did he dwell at this time upon Paula's

lively interest in the history, relics, tombs, architecture,--

nay, the very Christian names of the De Stancy line, and her

'artistic' preference for Charlotte's ancestors instead of her

own. Yet what more natural than that a clever meditative

girl, encased in the feudal lumber of that family, should

imbibe at least an antiquarian interest in it? Human nature

at bottom is romantic rather than ascetic, and the local

habitation which accident had provided for Paula was perhaps

acting as a solvent of the hard, morbidly introspective views

thrust upon her in early life.

Somerset wondered if his own possession of a substantial

genealogy like Captain De Stancy's would have had any

appreciable effect upon her regard for him. His suggestion to

Paula of her belonging to a worthy strain of engineers had

been based on his content with his own intellectual line of

descent through Pheidias, Ictinus and Callicrates,

Chersiphron, Vitruvius, Wilars of Cambray, William of Wykeham,

and the rest of that long and illustrious roll; but Miss

Power's marked preference for an animal pedigree led him to

muse on what he could show for himself in that kind.

These thoughts so far occupied him that when he took the

sketches to his father, on the morning of the fifth, he was

led to ask: 'Has any one ever sifted out our family

pedigree?'

'Family pedigree?'

'Yes. Have we any pedigree worthy to be compared with that of

professedly old families? I never remember hearing of any

ancestor further back than my great-grandfather.'

Somerset the elder reflected and said that he believed there

was a genealogical tree about the house somewhere, reaching

back to a very respectable distance. 'Not that I ever took

much interest in it,' he continued, without looking up from

his canvas; 'but your great uncle John was a man with a taste

for those subjects, and he drew up such a sheet: he made

several copies on parchment, and gave one to each of his

brothers and sisters. The one he gave to my father is still

in my possession, I think.'

Somerset said that he should like to see it; but half-an-

hour's search about the house failed to discover the document;

and the Academician then remembered that it was in an iron box

at his banker's. He had used it as a wrapper for some title-

deeds and other valuable writings which were deposited there

for safety. 'Why do you want it?' he inquired.

The young man confessed his whim to know if his own antiquity

would bear comparison with that of another person, whose name

he did not mention; whereupon his father gave him a key that

would fit the said chest, if he meant to pursue the subject

further. Somerset, however, did nothing in the matter that

day, but the next morning, having to call at the bank on other

business, he remembered his new fancy.

It was about eleven o'clock. The fog, though not so brown as

it had been on previous days, was still dense enough to

necessitate lights in the shops and offices. When Somerset

had finished his business in the outer office of the bank he

went to the manager's room. The hour being somewhat early the

only persons present in that sanctuary of balances, besides

the manager who welcomed him, were two gentlemen, apparently

lawyers, who sat talking earnestly over a box of papers. The

manager, on learning what Somerset wanted, unlocked a door

from which a flight of stone steps led to the vaults, and sent

down a clerk and a porter for the safe.

Before, however, they had descended far a gentle tap came to

the door, and in response to an invitation to enter a lady

appeared, wrapped up in furs to her very nose.

The manager seemed to recognize her, for he went across the

room in a moment, and set her a chair at the middle table,

replying to some observation of hers with the words, 'O yes,

certainly,' in a deferential tone.

'I should like it brought up at once,' said the lady.

Somerset, who had seated himself at a table in a somewhat

obscure corner, screened by the lawyers, started at the words.

The voice was Miss Power's, and so plainly enough was the

figure as soon as he examined it. Her back was towards him,

and either because the room was only lighted in two places, or

because she was absorbed in her own concerns, she seemed to be

unconscious of any one's presence on the scene except the

banker and herself. The former called back the clerk, and two

other porters having been summoned they disappeared to get

whatever she required.

Somerset, somewhat excited, sat wondering what could have

brought Paula to London at this juncture, and was in some

doubt if the occasion were a suitable one for revealing

himself, her errand to her banker being possibly of a very

private nature. Nothing helped him to a decision. Paula

never once turned her head, and the progress of time was

marked only by the murmurs of the two lawyers, and the

ceaseless clash of gold and rattle of scales from the outer

room, where the busy heads of cashiers could be seen through

the partition moving about under the globes of the gas-lamps.

Footsteps were heard upon the cellar-steps, and the three men

previously sent below staggered from the doorway, bearing a

huge safe which nearly broke them down. Somerset knew that

his father's box, or boxes, could boast of no such dimensions,

and he was not surprised to see the chest deposited in front

of Miss Power. When the immense accumulation of dust had been

cleared off the lid, and the chest conveniently placed for

her, Somerset was attended to, his modest box being brought up

by one man unassisted, and without much expenditure of breath.

His interest in Paula was of so emotional a cast that his

attention to his own errand was of the most perfunctory kind.

She was close to a gas-standard, and the lawyers, whose seats

had intervened, having finished their business and gone away,

all her actions were visible to him. While he was opening his

father's box the manager assisted Paula to unseal and unlock

hers, and he now saw her lift from it a morocco case, which

she placed on the table before her, and unfastened. Out of it

she took a dazzling object that fell like a cascade over her

fingers. It was a necklace of diamonds and pearls, apparently

of large size and many strands, though he was not near enough

to see distinctly. When satisfied by her examination that she

had got the right article she shut it into its case.

The manager closed the chest for her; and when it was again

secured Paula arose, tossed the necklace into her hand-bag,

bowed to the manager, and was about to bid him good morning.

Thereupon he said with some hesitation: 'Pardon one question,

Miss Power. Do you intend to take those jewels far?'

'Yes,' she said simply, 'to Stancy Castle.'

'You are going straight there?'

'I have one or two places to call at first.'

'I would suggest that you carry them in some other way--by

fastening them into the pocket of your dress, for instance.'

'But I am going to hold the bag in my hand and never once let

it go.'

The banker slightly shook his head. 'Suppose your carriage

gets overturned: you would let it go then.'

'Perhaps so.'

'Or if you saw a child under the wheels just as you were

stepping in; or if you accidentally stumbled in getting out;

or if there was a collision on the railway--you might let it

go.'

'Yes; I see I was too careless. I thank you.'

Paula removed the necklace from the bag, turned her back to

the manager, and spent several minutes in placing her treasure

in her bosom, pinning it and otherwise making it absolutely

secure.

'That's it,' said the grey-haired man of caution, with evident

satisfaction. 'There is not much danger now: you are not

travelling alone?'

Paula replied that she was not alone, and went to the door.

There was one moment during which Somerset might have

conveniently made his presence known; but the juxtaposition of

the bank-manager, and his own disarranged box of securities,

embarrassed him: the moment slipped by, and she was gone.

In the meantime he had mechanically unearthed the pedigree,

and, locking up his father's chest, Somerset also took his

departure at the heels of Paula. He walked along the misty

street, so deeply musing as to be quite unconscious of the

direction of his walk. What, he inquired of himself, could

she want that necklace for so suddenly? He recollected a

remark of Dare's to the effect that her appearance on a

particular occasion at Stancy Castle had been magnificent by

reason of the jewels she wore; which proved that she had

retained a sufficient quantity of those valuables at the

castle for ordinary requirements. What exceptional occasion,

then, was impending on which she wished to glorify herself

beyond all previous experience? He could not guess. He was

interrupted in these conjectures by a carriage nearly passing

over his toes at a crossing in Bond Street: looking up he saw

between the two windows of the vehicle the profile of a

thickly mantled bosom, on which a camellia rose and fell. All

the remainder part of the lady's person was hidden; but he

remembered that flower of convenient season as one which had

figured in the bank parlour half-an-hour earlier to-day.

Somerset hastened after the carriage, and in a minute saw it

stop opposite a jeweller's shop. Out came Paula, and then

another woman, in whom he recognized Mrs. Birch, one of the

lady's maids at Stancy Castle. The young man was at Paula's

side before she had crossed the pavement.