Books: A Laodicean

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Somerset looked down on the mouth of the tunnel. The popular
commonplace that science, steam, and travel must always be
unromantic and hideous, was not proven at this spot. On
either slope of the deep cutting, green with long grass, grew
drooping young trees of ash, beech, and other flexible
varieties, their foliage almost concealing the actual railway
which ran along the bottom, its thin steel rails gleaming like
silver threads in the depths. The vertical front of the
tunnel, faced with brick that had once been red, was now
weather-stained, lichened, and mossed over in harmonious
rusty-browns, pearly greys, and neutral greens, at the very
base appearing a little blue-black spot like a mouse-hole--the
tunnel's mouth.

The carriage was drawn up quite close to the wood railing, and
Paula was looking down at the same time with him; but he made
no remark to her.

Mrs. Goodman broke the silence by saying, 'If it were not a
railway we should call it a lovely dell.'

Somerset agreed with her, adding that it was so charming that
he felt inclined to go down.

'If you do, perhaps Miss Power will order you up again, as a
trespasser,' said Charlotte De Stancy. 'You are one of the
largest shareholders in the railway, are you not, Paula?'

Miss Power did not reply.

'I suppose as the road is partly yours you might walk all the
way to London along the rails, if you wished, might you not,
dear?' Charlotte continued.

Paula smiled, and said, 'No, of course not.'

Somerset, feeling himself superfluous, raised his hat to his
companions as if he meant not to see them again for a while,
and began to descend by some steps cut in the earth; Miss De
Stancy asked Mrs. Goodman to accompany her to a barrow over
the top of the tunnel; and they left the carriage, Paula
remaining alone.

Down Somerset plunged through the long grass, bushes, late
summer flowers, moths, and caterpillars, vexed with himself
that he had come there, since Paula was so inscrutable, and
humming the notes of some song he did not know. The tunnel
that had seemed so small from the surface was a vast archway
when he reached its mouth, which emitted, as a contrast to the
sultry heat on the slopes of the cutting, a cool breeze, that
had travelled a mile underground from the other end. Far away
in the darkness of this silent subterranean corridor he could
see that other end as a mere speck of light.

When he had conscientiously admired the construction of the
massive archivault, and the majesty of its nude ungarnished
walls, he looked up the slope at the carriage; it was so small
to the eye that it might have been made for a performance by
canaries; Paula's face being still smaller, as she leaned back
in her seat, idly looking down at him. There seemed something
roguish in her attitude of criticism, and to be no longer the
subject of her contemplation he entered the tunnel out of her
sight.

In the middle of the speck of light before him appeared a
speck of black; and then a shrill whistle, dulled by millions
of tons of earth, reached his ears from thence. It was what
he had been on his guard against all the time,--a passing
train; and instead of taking the trouble to come out of the
tunnel he stepped into a recess, till the train had rattled
past and vanished onward round a curve.

Somerset still remained where he had placed himself, mentally
balancing science against art, the grandeur of this fine piece
of construction against that of the castle, and thinking
whether Paula's father had not, after all, the best of it,
when all at once he saw Paula's form confronting him at the
entrance of the tunnel. He instantly went forward into the
light; to his surprise she was as pale as a lily.

'O, Mr. Somerset!' she exclaimed. 'You ought not to frighten
me so--indeed you ought not! The train came out almost as
soon as you had gone in, and as you did not return--an
accident was possible!'

Somerset at once perceived that he had been to blame in not
thinking of this.

'Please do forgive my thoughtlessness in not reflecting how it
would strike you!' he pleaded. 'I--I see I have alarmed you.'

Her alarm was, indeed, much greater than he had at first
thought: she trembled so much that she was obliged to sit
down, at which he went up to her full of solicitousness.

'You ought not to have done it!' she said. 'I naturally
thought--any person would--'

Somerset, perhaps wisely, said nothing at this outburst; the
cause of her vexation was, plainly enough, his perception of
her discomposure. He stood looking in another direction, till
in a few moments she had risen to her feet again, quite calm.

'It would have been dreadful,' she said with faint gaiety, as
the colour returned to her face; 'if I had lost my architect,
and been obliged to engage Mr. Havill without an alternative.'

'I was really in no danger; but of course I ought to have
considered,' he said.

'I forgive you,' she returned good-naturedly. 'I knew there
was no GREAT danger to a person exercising ordinary
discretion; but artists and thinkers like you are indiscreet
for a moment sometimes. I am now going up again. What do you
think of the tunnel?'

They were crossing the railway to ascend by the opposite path,
Somerset keeping his eye on the interior of the tunnel for
safety, when suddenly there arose a noise and shriek from the
contrary direction behind the trees. Both knew in a moment
what it meant, and each seized the other as they rushed off
the permanent way. The ideas of both had been so centred on
the tunnel as the source of danger, that the probability of a
train from the opposite quarter had been forgotten. It rushed
past them, causing Paula's dress, hair, and ribbons to flutter
violently, and blowing up the fallen leaves in a shower over
their shoulders.

Neither spoke, and they went up several steps, holding each
other by the hand, till, becoming conscious of the fact, she
withdrew hers; whereupon Somerset stopped and looked earnestly
at her; but her eyes were averted towards the tunnel wall.

'What an escape!' he said.

'We were not so very near, I think, were we?' she asked
quickly. 'If we were, I think you were--very good to take my
hand.'

They reached the top at last, and the new level and open air
seemed to give her a new mind. 'I don't see the carriage
anywhere,' she said, in the common tones of civilization.

He thought it had gone over the crest of the hill; he would
accompany her till they reached it.

'No--please--I would rather not--I can find it very well.'
Before he could say more she had inclined her head and smiled
and was on her way alone.

The tunnel-cutting appeared a dreary gulf enough now to the
young man, as he stood leaning over the rails above it,
beating the herbage with his stick. For some minutes he could
not criticize or weigh her conduct; the warmth of her presence
still encircled him. He recalled her face as it had looked
out at him from under the white silk puffing of her black hat,
and the speaking power of her eyes at the moment of danger.
The breadth of that clear-complexioned forehead--almost
concealed by the masses of brown hair bundled up around it--
signified that if her disposition were oblique and insincere
enough for trifling, coquetting, or in any way making a fool
of him, she had the intellect to do it cruelly well.

But it was ungenerous to ruminate so suspiciously. A girl not
an actress by profession could hardly turn pale artificially
as she had done, though perhaps mere fright meant nothing, and
would have arisen in her just as readily had he been one of
the labourers on her estate.

The reflection that such feeling as she had exhibited could
have no tender meaning returned upon him with masterful force
when he thought of her wealth and the social position into
which she had drifted. Somerset, being of a solitary and
studious nature, was not quite competent to estimate precisely
the disqualifying effect, if any, of her nonconformity, her
newness of blood, and other things, among the old county
families established round her; but the toughest prejudices,
he thought, were not likely to be long invulnerable to such
cheerful beauty and brightness of intellect as Paula's. When
she emerged, as she was plainly about to do, from the
seclusion in which she had been living since her father's
death, she would inevitably win her way among her neighbours.
She would become the local topic. Fortune-hunters would learn
of her existence and draw near in shoals. What chance would
there then be for him?

The points in his favour were indeed few, but they were just
enough to keep a tantalizing hope alive. Modestly leaving out
of count his personal and intellectual qualifications, he
thought of his family. It was an old stock enough, though not
a rich one. His great-uncle had been the well-known Vice-
admiral Sir Armstrong Somerset, who served his country well in
the Baltic, the Indies, China, and the Caribbean Sea. His
grandfather had been a notable metaphysician. His father, the
Royal Academician, was popular. But perhaps this was not the
sort of reasoning likely to occupy the mind of a young woman;
the personal aspect of the situation was in such circumstances
of far more import. He had come as a wandering stranger--that
possibly lent some interest to him in her eyes. He was
installed in an office which would necessitate free communion
with her for some time to come; that was another advantage,
and would be a still greater one if she showed, as Paula
seemed disposed to do, such artistic sympathy with his work as
to follow up with interest the details of its progress.

The carriage did not reappear, and he went on towards Markton,
disinclined to return again that day to the studio which had
been prepared for him at the castle. He heard feet brushing
the grass behind him, and, looking round, saw the Baptist
minister.

'I have just come from the village,' said Mr. Woodwell, who
looked worn and weary, his boots being covered with dust; 'and
I have learnt that which confirms my fears for her.'

'For Miss Power?'

'Most assuredly.'

'What danger is there?' said Somerset.

'The temptations of her position have become too much for her!
She is going out of mourning next week, and will give a large
dinner-party on the occasion; for though the invitations are
partly in the name of her relative Mrs. Goodman, they must
come from her. The guests are to include people of old
cavalier families who would have treated her grandfather, sir,
and even her father, with scorn for their religion and
connections; also the parson and curate--yes, actually people
who believe in the Apostolic Succession; and what's more,
they're coming. My opinion is, that it has all arisen from
her friendship with Miss De Stancy.'

'Well,' cried Somerset warmly, 'this only shows liberality of
feeling on both sides! I suppose she has invited you as
well?'

'She has not invited me!. . . Mr. Somerset, not withstanding
your erroneous opinions on important matters, I speak to you
as a friend, and I tell you that she has never in her secret
heart forgiven that sermon of mine, in which I likened her to
the church at Laodicea. I admit the words were harsh, but I
was doing my duty, and if the case arose to-morrow I would do
it again. Her displeasure is a deep grief to me; but I serve
One greater than she. . . . You, of course, are invited to
this dinner?'

'I have heard nothing of it,' murmured the young man.

Their paths diverged; and when Somerset reached the hotel he
was informed that somebody was waiting to see him.

'Man or woman?' he asked.

The landlady, who always liked to reply in person to
Somerset's inquiries, apparently thinking him, by virtue of
his drawing implements and liberality of payment, a possible
lord of Burleigh, came forward and said it was certainly not a
woman, but whether man or boy she could not say. 'His name is
Mr. Dare,' she added.

'O--that youth,' he said.

Somerset went upstairs, along the passage, down two steps,
round the angle, and so on to the rooms reserved for him in
this rambling edifice of stage-coach memories, where he found
Dare waiting. Dare came forward, pulling out the cutting of
an advertisement.

'Mr. Somerset, this is yours, I believe, from the
Architectural World?'

Somerset said that he had inserted it.

'I think I should suit your purpose as assistant very well.'

'Are you an architect's draughtsman?'

'Not specially. I have some knowledge of the same, and want
to increase it.'

'I thought you were a photographer.'

'Also of photography,' said Dare with a bow. 'Though but an
amateur in that art I can challenge comparison with Regent
Street or Broadway.'

Somerset looked upon his table. Two letters only, addressed
in initials, were lying there as answers to his advertisement.
He asked Dare to wait, and looked them over. Neither was
satisfactory. On this account he overcame his slight feeling
against Mr. Dare, and put a question to test that gentleman's
capacities. 'How would you measure the front of a building,
including windows, doors, mouldings, and every other feature,
for a ground plan, so as to combine the greatest accuracy with
the greatest despatch?'

'In running dimensions,' said Dare.

As this was the particular kind of work he wanted done,
Somerset thought the answer promising. Coming to terms with
Dare, he requested the would-be student of architecture to
wait at the castle the next day, and dismissed him.

A quarter of an hour later, when Dare was taking a walk in the
country, he drew from his pocket eight other letters addressed
to Somerset in initials, which, to judge by their style and
stationery, were from men far superior to those two whose
communications alone Somerset had seen. Dare looked them over
for a few seconds as he strolled on, then tore them into
minute fragments, and, burying them under the leaves in the
ditch, went on his way again.

XIII.

Though exhibiting indifference, Somerset had felt a pang of
disappointment when he heard the news of Paula's approaching
dinner-party. It seemed a little unkind of her to pass him
over, seeing how much they were thrown together just now.
That dinner meant more than it sounded. Notwithstanding the
roominess of her castle, she was at present living somewhat
incommodiously, owing partly to the stagnation caused by her
recent bereavement, and partly to the necessity for
overhauling the De Stancy lumber piled in those vast and
gloomy chambers before they could be made tolerable to
nineteenth-century fastidiousness.

To give dinners on any large scale before Somerset had at
least set a few of these rooms in order for her, showed, to
his thinking, an overpowering desire for society.

During the week he saw less of her than usual, her time being
to all appearance much taken up with driving out to make calls
on her neighbours and receiving return visits. All this he
observed from the windows of his studio overlooking the castle
ward, in which room he now spent a great deal of his time,
bending over drawing-boards and instructing Dare, who worked
as well as could be expected of a youth of such varied
attainments.

Nearer came the Wednesday of the party, and no hint of that
event reached Somerset, but such as had been communicated by
the Baptist minister. At last, on the very afternoon, an
invitation was handed into his studio--not a kind note in
Paula's handwriting, but a formal printed card in the joint
names of Mrs. Goodman and Miss Power. It reached him just
four hours before the dinner-time. He was plainly to be used
as a stop-gap at the last moment because somebody could not
come.

Having previously arranged to pass a quiet evening in his
rooms at the Lord Quantock Arms, in reading up chronicles of
the castle from the county history, with the view of gathering
some ideas as to the distribution of rooms therein before the
demolition of a portion of the structure, he decided off-hand
that Paula's dinner was not of sufficient importance to him as
a professional man and student of art to justify a waste of
the evening by going. He accordingly declined Mrs. Goodman's
and Miss Power's invitation; and at five o'clock left the
castle and walked across the fields to the little town.

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.

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