A Laodicean : A Story of To-day

‘No, I did not.’

‘What, not explain after all?’ said her amazed relative.

‘I decided to put it off.’

‘Then I think you decided very wrongly. Poor young man, he looked so ill!’

‘Did you, too, think he looked ill? But he danced last night. Why did he dance?’ She turned and gazed regretfully at the corner round which the Somersets had disappeared.

‘I don’t know why he danced; but if I had known you were going to be so silent, I would have explained the mistake myself.’

‘I wish you had. But no; I have said I would; and I must.’

Paula’s avoidance of tables d’hote did not extend to the present one. It was quite with alacrity that she went down; and with her entry the antecedent hotel beauty who had reigned for the last five days at that meal, was unceremoniously deposed by the guests. Mr. Somerset the elder came in, but nobody with him. His seat was on Paula’s left hand, Mrs. Goodman being on Paula’s right, so that all the conversation was between the Academician and the younger lady. When the latter had again retired upstairs with her aunt, Mrs. Goodman expressed regret that young Mr. Somerset was absent from the table. ‘Why has he kept away?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know – I didn’t ask,’ said Paula sadly. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t care to meet us again.’

‘That’s because you didn’t explain.’

‘Well – why didn’t the old man give me an opportunity?’ exclaimed the niece with suppressed excitement. ‘He would scarcely say anything but yes and no, and gave me no chance at all of introducing the subject. I wanted to explain – I came all the way on purpose – I would have begged George’s pardon on my two knees if there had been any way of beginning; but there was not, and I could not do it!’

Though she slept badly that night, Paula promptly appeared in the public room to breakfast, and that not from motives of vanity; for, while not unconscious of her accession to the unstable throne of queen-beauty in the establishment, she seemed too preoccupied to care for the honour just then, and would readily have changed places with her unhappy predecessor, who lingered on in the background like a candle after sunrise.

Mrs. Goodman was determined to trust no longer to Paula for putting an end to what made her so restless and self-reproachful. Seeing old Mr. Somerset enter to a little side-table behind for lack of room at the crowded centre tables, again without his son, she turned her head and asked point-blank where the young man was.

Mr. Somerset’s face became a shade graver than before. ‘My son is unwell,’ he replied; ‘so unwell that he has been advised to stay indoors and take perfect rest.’

‘I do hope it is nothing serious.’

‘I hope so too. The fact is, he has overdone himself a little. He was not well when he came here; and to make himself worse he must needs go dancing at the Casino with this lady and that – among others with a young American lady who is here with her family, and whom he met in London last year. I advised him against it, but he seemed desperately determined to shake off lethargy by any rash means, and wouldn’t listen to me. Luckily he is not in the hotel, but in a quiet cottage a hundred yards up the hill.’

Paula, who had heard all, did not show or say what she felt at the news: but after breakfast, on meeting the landlady in a passage alone, she asked with some anxiety if there were a really skilful medical man in Etretat; and on being told that there was, and his name, she went back to look for Mr. Somerset; but he had gone.

They heard nothing more of young Somerset all that morning, but towards evening, while Paula sat at her window, looking over the heads of fuchsias upon the promenade beyond, she saw the painter walk by. She immediately went to her aunt and begged her to go out and ask Mr. Somerset if his son had improved.

‘I will send Milly or Clementine,’ said Mrs. Goodman.

‘I wish you would see him yourself.’

‘He has gone on. I shall never find him.’

‘He has only gone round to the front,’ persisted Paula. ‘Do walk that way, auntie, and ask him.’

Thus pressed, Mrs. Goodman acquiesced, and brought back intelligence to Miss Power, who had watched them through the window, that his son did not positively improve, but that his American friends were very kind to him.

Having made use of her aunt, Paula seemed particularly anxious to get rid of her again, and when that lady sat down to write letters, Paula went to her own room, hastily dressed herself without assistance, asked privately the way to the cottage, and went off thitherward unobserved.

At the upper end of the lane she saw a little house answering to the description, whose front garden, window-sills, palings, and doorstep were literally ablaze with nasturtiums in bloom.

She entered this inhabited nosegay, quietly asked for the invalid, and if he were well enough to see Miss Power. The woman of the house soon returned, and she was conducted up a crooked staircase to Somerset’s modest apartments. It appeared that some rooms in this dwelling had been furnished by the landlady of the inn, who hired them of the tenant during the summer season to use as an annexe to the hotel.

Admitted to the outer room she beheld her architect looking as unarchitectural as possible; lying on a small couch which was drawn up to the open casement, whence he had a back view of the window flowers, and enjoyed a green transparency through the undersides of the same nasturtium leaves that presented their faces to the passers without.

When the latch had again clicked into the catch of the closed door Paula went up to the invalid, upon whose pale and interesting face a flush had arisen simultaneously with the announcement of her name. He would have sprung up to receive her, but she pressed him down, and throwing all reserve on one side for the first time in their intercourse, she crouched beside the sofa, whispering with roguish solicitude, her face not too far from his own: ‘How foolish you are, George, to get ill just now when I have been wanting so much to see you again! – I am so sorry to see you like this – what I said to you when we met on the shore was not what I had come to say!’

Somerset took her by the hand. ‘Then what did you come to say, Paula?’ he asked.

‘I wanted to tell you that the mere wanton wandering of a capricious mind was not the cause of my estrangement from you. There has been a great deception practised – the exact nature of it I cannot tell you plainly just at present; it is too painful – but it is all over, and I can assure you of my sorrow at having behaved as I did, and of my sincere friendship now as ever.’

‘There is nothing I shall value so much as that. It will make my work at the castle very pleasant to feel that I can consult you about it without fear of intruding on you against your wishes.’

‘Yes, perhaps it will. But – you do not comprehend me.’

‘You have been an enigma always.’

‘And you have been provoking; but never so provoking as now. I wouldn’t for the world tell you the whole of my fancies as I came hither this evening: but I should think your natural intuition would suggest what they were.’

‘It does, Paula. But there are motives of delicacy which prevent my acting on what is suggested to me.’

‘Delicacy is a gift, and you should thank God for it; but in some cases it is not so precious as we would persuade ourselves.’

‘Not when the woman is rich, and the man is poor?’

‘O, George Somerset – be cold, or angry, or anything, but don’t be like this! It is never worth a woman’s while to show regret for her injustice; for all she gets by it is an accusation of want of delicacy.’

‘Indeed I don’t accuse you of that – I warmly, tenderly thank you for your kindness in coming here to see me.’

‘Well, perhaps you do. But I am now in I cannot tell what mood – I will not tell what mood, for it would be confessing more than I ought. This finding you out is a piece of weakness that I shall not repeat; and I have only one thing more to say. I have served you badly, George, I know that; but it is never too late to mend; and I have come back to you. However, I shall never run after you again, trust me for that, for it is not the woman’s part. Still, before I go, that there may be no mistake as to my meaning, and misery entailed on us for want of a word, I’ll add this: that if you want to marry me, as you once did, you must say so; for I am here to be asked.’

It would be superfluous to transcribe Somerset’s reply, and the remainder of the scene between the pair. Let it suffice that half-an-hour afterwards, when the sun had almost gone down, Paula walked briskly into the hotel, troubled herself nothing about dinner, but went upstairs to their sitting-room, where her aunt presently found her upon the couch looking up at the ceiling through her fingers. They talked on different subjects for some time till the old lady said ‘Mr. Somerset’s cottage is the one covered with flowers up the lane, I hear.’

‘Yes,’ said Paula.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been there… We are going to be married, aunt.’

‘Indeed!’ replied Mrs. Goodman. ‘Well, I thought this might be the end of it: you were determined on the point; and I am not much surprised at your news. Your father was very wise after all in entailing everything so strictly upon your offspring; for if he had not I should have been driven wild with the responsibility!’

‘And now that the murder is out,’ continued Paula, passing over that view of the case, ‘I don’t mind telling you that somehow or other I have got to like George Somerset as desperately as a woman can care for any man. I thought I should have died when I saw him dancing, and feared I had lost him! He seemed ten times nicer than ever then! So silly we women are, that I wouldn’t marry a duke in preference to him. There, that’s my honest feeling, and you must make what you can of it; my conscience is clear, thank Heaven!’

‘Have you fixed the day?’

‘No,’ continued the young lady, still watching the sleeping flies on the ceiling. ‘It is left unsettled between us, while I come and ask you if there would be any harm – if it could conveniently be before we return to England?’

‘Paula, this is too precipitate!’

‘On the contrary, aunt. In matrimony, as in some other things, you should be slow to decide, but quick to execute. Nothing on earth would make me marry another man; I know every fibre of his character; and he knows a good many fibres of mine; so as there is nothing more to be learnt, why shouldn’t we marry at once? On one point I am firm: I will never return to that castle as Miss Power. A nameless dread comes over me when I think of it – a fear that some uncanny influence of the dead De Stancys would drive me again from him. O, if it were to do that,’ she murmured, burying her face in her hands, ‘I really think it would be more than I could bear!’

‘Very well,’ said Mrs. Goodman; ‘we will see what can be done. I will write to Mr. Wardlaw.’

IV

On a windy afternoon in November, when more than two months had closed over the incidents previously recorded, a number of farmers were sitting in a room of the Lord-Quantock-Arms Inn, Markton, that was used for the weekly ordinary. It was a long, low apartment, formed by the union of two or three smaller rooms, with a bow-window looking upon the street, and at the present moment was pervaded by a blue fog from tobacco-pipes, and a temperature like that of a kiln. The body of farmers who still sat on there was greater than usual, owing to the cold air without, the tables having been cleared of dinner for some time and their surface stamped with liquid circles by the feet of the numerous glasses.

Besides the farmers there were present several professional men of the town, who found it desirable to dine here on market-days for the opportunity it afforded them of increasing their practice among the agriculturists, many of whom were men of large balances, even luxurious livers, who drove to market in elegant phaetons drawn by horses of supreme blood, bone, and action, in a style never anticipated by their fathers when jogging thither in light carts, or afoot with a butter basket on each arm.

The buzz of groggy conversation was suddenly impinged on by the notes of a peal of bells from the tower hard by. Almost at the same instant the door of the room opened, and there entered the landlord of the little inn at Sleeping-Green. Drawing his supply of cordials from this superior house, to which he was subject, he came here at stated times like a prebendary to the cathedral of his diocesan, afterwards retailing to his own humbler audience the sentiments which he had learnt of this. But curiosity being awakened by the church bells the usual position was for the moment reversed, and one of the farmers, saluting him by name, asked him the reason of their striking up at that time of day.

‘My mis’ess out yonder,’ replied the rural landlord, nodding sideways, ‘is coming home with her fancy-man. They have been a-gaying together this turk of a while in foreign parts – Here, maid! – what with the wind, and standing about, my blood’s as low as water – bring us a thimbleful of that that isn’t gin and not far from it.’

‘It is true, then, that she’s become Mrs. Somerset?’ indifferently asked a farmer in broadcloth, tenant of an estate in quite another direction than hers, as he contemplated the grain of the table immediately surrounding the foot of his glass.

‘True – of course it is,’ said Havill, who was also present, in the tone of one who, though sitting in this rubicund company, was not of it. ‘I could have told you the truth of it any day these last five weeks.’

Among those who had lent an ear was Dairyman Jinks, an old gnarled character who wore a white fustian coat and yellow leggings; the only man in the room who never dressed up in dark clothes for marketing. He now asked, ‘Married abroad, was they? And how long will a wedding abroad stand good for in this country?’

‘As long as a wedding at home.’

‘Will it? Faith; I didn’t know: how should I? I thought it might be some new plan o’ folks for leasing women now they be so plentiful, so as to get rid o’ ‘em when the men be tired o’ ‘em, and hev spent all their money.’

‘He won’t be able to spend her money,’ said the landlord of Sleeping-Green. ‘’Tis her very own person’s – settled upon the hairs of her head for ever.’

‘O nation! Then if I were the man I shouldn’t care for such a one-eyed benefit as that,’ said Dairyman Jinks, turning away to listen to the talk on his other hand.

‘Is that true?’ asked the gentleman-farmer in broadcloth.

‘It is sufficiently near the truth,’ said Havill. ‘There is nothing at all unusual in the arrangement; it was only settled so to prevent any schemer making a beggar of her. If Somerset and she have any children, which probably they will, it will be theirs; and what can a man want more? Besides, there is a large portion of property left to her personal use – quite as much as they can want. Oddly enough, the curiosities and pictures of the castle which belonged to the De Stancys are not restricted from sale; they are hers to do what she likes with. Old Power didn’t care for articles that reminded him so much of his predecessors.’

‘Hey?’ said Dairyman Jinks, turning back again, having decided that the conversation on his right hand was, after all, the more interesting. ‘Well – why can’t ‘em hire a travelling chap to touch up the picters into her own gaffers and gammers? Then they’d be worth sommat to her.’

‘Ah, here they are? I thought so,’ said Havill, who had been standing up at the window for the last few moments. ‘The ringers were told to begin as soon as the train signalled.’

As he spoke a carriage drew up to the hotel-door, followed by another with the maid and luggage. The inmates crowded to the bow-window, except Dairyman Jinks, who had become absorbed in his own reflections.

‘What be they stopping here for?’ asked one of the previous speakers.

‘They are going to stay here to-night,’ said Havill. ‘They have come quite unexpectedly, and the castle is in such a state of turmoil that there is not a single carpet down, or room for them to use. We shall get two or three in order by next week.’

‘Two little people like them will be lost in the chammers of that wandering place!’ satirized Dairyman Jinks. ‘They will be bound to have a randy every fortnight to keep the moth out of the furniture!’

By this time Somerset was handing out the wife of his bosom, and Dairyman Jinks went on: ‘That’s no more Miss Power that was, than my niece’s daughter Kezia is Miss Power – in short it is a different woman altogether!’

‘There is no mistake about the woman,’ said the landlord; ‘it is her fur clothes that make her look so like a caterpillar on end. Well, she is not a bad bargain! As for Captain De Stancy, he’ll fret his gizzard green.’

‘He’s the man she ought to ha’ married,’ declared the farmer in broadcloth. ‘As the world goes she ought to have been Lady De Stancy. She gave up her chapel-going, and you might have thought she would have given up her first young man: but she stuck to him, though by all accounts he would soon have been interested in another party.’

‘’Tis woman’s nature to be false except to a man, and man’s nature to be true except to a woman,’ said the landlord of Sleeping-Green. ‘However, all’s well that ends well, and I have something else to think of than new-married couples;’ saying which the speaker moved off, and the others returned to their seats, the young pair who had been their theme vanishing through the hotel into some private paradise to rest and dine.

By this time their arrival had become known, and a crowd soon gathered outside, acquiring audacity with continuance there. Raising a hurrah, the group would not leave till Somerset had showed himself on the balcony above; and then declined to go away till Paula also had appeared; when, remarking that her husband seemed a quiet young man enough, and would make a very good borough member when their present one misbehaved himself, the assemblage good-humouredly dispersed.

Among those whose ears had been reached by the hurrahs of these idlers was a man in silence and solitude, far out of the town. He was leaning over a gate that divided two meads in a watery level between Stancy Castle and Markton. He turned his head for a few seconds, then continued his contemplative gaze towards the towers of the castle, visible over the trees as far as was possible in the leaden gloom of the November eve. The military form of the solitary lounger was recognizable as that of Sir William De Stancy, notwithstanding the failing light and his attitude of so resting his elbows on the gate that his hands enclosed the greater part of his face.

The scene was inexpressibly cheerless. No other human creature was apparent, and the only sounds audible above the wind were those of the trickling streams which distributed the water over the meadow. A heron had been standing in one of these rivulets about twenty yards from the officer, and they vied with each other in stillness till the bird suddenly rose and flew off to the plantation in which it was his custom to pass the night with others of his tribe. De Stancy saw the heron rise, and seemed to imagine the creature’s departure without a supper to be owing to the increasing darkness; but in another minute he became conscious that the heron had been disturbed by sounds too distant to reach his own ears at the time. They were nearer now, and there came along under the hedge a young man known to De Stancy exceedingly well.

‘Ah,’ he said listlessly, ‘you have ventured back.’

‘Yes, captain. Why do you walk out here?’

‘The bells began ringing because she and he were expected, and my thoughts naturally dragged me this way. Thank Heaven the battery leaves Markton in a few days, and then the precious place will know me no more!’

‘I have heard of it.’ Turning to where the dim lines of the castle rose he continued: ‘Well, there it stands.’

‘And I am not in it.’

‘They are not in it yet either.’

‘They soon will be.’

‘Well – what tune is that you were humming, captain?’

‘ALL IS LOST NOW,’ replied the captain grimly.

‘O no; you have got me, and I am a treasure to any man. I have another match in my eye for you, and shall get you well settled yet, if you keep yourself respectable. So thank God, and take courage!’

‘Ah, Will – you are a flippant young fool – wise in your own conceit; I say it to my sorrow! ‘Twas your dishonesty spoilt all. That lady would have been my wife by fair dealing – time was all I required. But base attacks on a man’s character never deserve to win, and if I had once been certain that you had made them, my course would have been very different, both towards you and others. But why should I talk to you about this? If I cared an atom what becomes of you I would take you in hand severely enough; not caring, I leave you alone, to go to the devil your own way.’

‘Thank you kindly, captain. Well, since you have spoken plainly, I will do the same. We De Stancys are a worn-out old party – that’s the long and the short of it. We represent conditions of life that have had their day – especially me. Our one remaining chance was an alliance with new aristocrats; and we have failed. We are past and done for. Our line has had five hundred years of glory, and we ought to be content. Enfin les renards se trouvent chez le pelletier.’

‘Speak for yourself, young Consequence, and leave the destinies of old families to respectable philosophers. This fiasco is the direct result of evil conduct, and of nothing else at all. I have managed badly; I countenanced you too far. When I saw your impish tendencies I should have forsworn the alliance.’

‘Don’t sting me, captain. What I have told you is true. As for my conduct, cat will after kind, you know. You should have held your tongue on the wedding morning, and have let me take my chance.’

‘Is that all I get for saving you from jail? Gad – I alone am the sufferer, and feel I am alone the fool!.. Come, off with you – I never want to see you any more.’

‘Part we will, then – till we meet again. It will be a light night hereabouts, I think, this evening.’

‘A very dark one for me.’

‘Nevertheless, I think it will be a light night. Au revoir!’

Dare went his way, and after a while De Stancy went his. Both were soon lost in the shades.

V

The castle to-night was as gloomy as the meads. As Havill had explained, the habitable rooms were just now undergoing a scour, and the main block of buildings was empty even of the few servants who had been retained, they having for comfort’s sake taken up their quarters in the detached rooms adjoining the entrance archway. Hence not a single light shone from the lonely windows, at which ivy leaves tapped like woodpeckers, moved by gusts that were numerous and contrary rather than violent. Within the walls all was silence, chaos, and obscurity, till towards eleven o’clock, when the thick immovable cloud that had dulled the daytime broke into a scudding fleece, through which the moon forded her way as a nebulous spot of watery white, sending light enough, though of a rayless kind, into the castle chambers to show the confusion that reigned there.

At this time an eye might have noticed a figure flitting in and about those draughty apartments, and making no more noise in so doing than a puff of wind. Its motion hither and thither was rapid, but methodical, its bearing absorbed, yet cautious. Though it ran more or less through all the principal rooms, the chief scene of its operations was the Long Gallery overlooking the Pleasance, which was covered by an ornamental wood-and-plaster roof, and contained a whole throng of family portraits, besides heavy old cabinets and the like. The portraits which were of value as works of art were smaller than these, and hung in adjoining rooms.

The manifest occupation of the figure was that of removing these small and valuable pictures from other chambers to the gallery in which the rest were hung, and piling them in a heap in the midst. Included in the group were nine by Sir Peter Lely, five by Vandyck, four by Cornelius Jansen, one by Salvator Rosa (remarkable as being among the few English portraits ever painted by that master), many by Kneller, and two by Romney. Apparently by accident, the light being insufficient to distinguish them from portraits, the figure also brought a Raffaelle Virgin-and-Child, a magnificent Tintoretto, a Titian, and a Giorgione.