Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (363 page)

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.

CHAPTER 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 what
I
say,’ 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 —