V.
The cheering message from Paula to Somerset sped through the loopholeof Stancy Castle keep, over the trees, along the railway, under bridges,across four counties--from extreme antiquity of environment to sheermodernism--and finally landed itself on a table in Somerset's chambersin the midst of a cloud of fog. He read it and, in the moment ofreaction from the depression of his past days, clapped his hands like achild.
Then he considered the date at which she wanted to see him. Had sheso worded her despatch he would have gone that very day; but there wasnothing to complain of in her giving him a week's notice. Pure maidenmodesty might have checked her indulgence in a too ardent recall.
Time, however, dragged somewhat heavily along in the interim, and on thesecond day he thought he would call on his father and tell him of hissuccess in obtaining the appointment.
The elder Mr. Somerset lived in a detached house in the north-west partof fashionable London; and ascending the chief staircase the youngman branched off from the first landing and entered his father'spainting-room. It was an hour when he was pretty sure of finding thewell-known painter at work, and on lifting the tapestry he was notdisappointed, Mr. Somerset being busily engaged with his back towardsthe door.
Art and vitiated nature were struggling like wrestlers in thatapartment, and art was getting the worst of it. The overpowering gloompervading the clammy air, rendered still more intense by the height ofthe window from the floor, reduced all the pictures that were standingaround to the wizened feebleness of corpses on end. The shadowy partsof the room behind the different easels were veiled in a brown vapour,precluding all estimate of the extent of the studio, and only subduedin the foreground by the ruddy glare from an open stove of Dutch tiles.Somerset's footsteps had been so noiseless over the carpeting of thestairs and landing, that his father was unaware of his presence; hecontinued at his work as before, which he performed by the help of acomplicated apparatus of lamps, candles, and reflectors, so arranged asto eke out the miserable daylight, to a power apparently sufficient forthe neutral touches on which he was at that moment engaged.
The first thought of an unsophisticated stranger on entering that roomcould 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 towhich light is denied at noonday for weeks in succession.
'O! it's you, George, is it?' said the Academician, turning from thelamps, which shone over his bald crown at such a slant as to revealevery cranial irregularity. 'How are you this morning? Still a deadsilence about your grand castle competition?'
Somerset told the news. His father duly congratulated him, and addedgenially, 'It is well to be you, George. One large commission to attendto, and nothing to distract you from it. I am bothered by having a dozenirons in the fire at once. And people are so unreasonable.--Only thismorning, among other things, when you got your order to go on with yoursingle study, I received a letter from a woman, an old friend whom Ican scarcely refuse, begging me as a great favour to design her a set oftheatrical costumes, in which she and her friends can perform for somecharity. It would occupy me a good week to go into the subject and dothe 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 ispositively impossible for me to do it with all this work in hand, andthese 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,' hesaid, 'and do the best you can.'
During the morning Somerset junior found time to refresh his memory ofthe play, and afterwards went and hunted up materials for designs tosuit the same, which occupied his spare hours for the next three days.As these occupations made no great demands upon his reasoning facultieshe mostly found his mind wandering off to imaginary scenes at StancyCastle: particularly did he dwell at this time upon Paula's livelyinterest in the history, relics, tombs, architecture,--nay, the veryChristian names of the De Stancy line, and her 'artistic' preferencefor Charlotte's ancestors instead of her own. Yet what more naturalthan that a clever meditative girl, encased in the feudal lumber ofthat family, should imbibe at least an antiquarian interest in it?Human nature at bottom is romantic rather than ascetic, and the localhabitation which accident had provided for Paula was perhaps acting asa solvent of the hard, morbidly introspective views thrust upon her inearly life.
Somerset wondered if his own possession of a substantial genealogylike Captain De Stancy's would have had any appreciable effect upon herregard for him. His suggestion to Paula of her belonging to a worthystrain of engineers had been based on his content with his ownintellectual line of descent through Pheidias, Ictinus and Callicrates,Chersiphron, Vitruvius, Wilars of Cambray, William of Wykeham, andthe rest of that long and illustrious roll; but Miss Power's markedpreference for an animal pedigree led him to muse on what he could showfor himself in that kind.
These thoughts so far occupied him that when he took the sketches tohis father, on the morning of the fifth, he was led to ask: 'Has any oneever sifted out our family pedigree?'
'Family pedigree?'
'Yes. Have we any pedigree worthy to be compared with that ofprofessedly old families? I never remember hearing of any ancestorfurther back than my great-grandfather.'
Somerset the elder reflected and said that he believed there was agenealogical tree about the house somewhere, reaching back to a veryrespectable distance. 'Not that I ever took much interest in it,' hecontinued, without looking up from his canvas; 'but your great uncleJohn was a man with a taste for those subjects, and he drew up such asheet: he made several copies on parchment, and gave one to each ofhis brothers and sisters. The one he gave to my father is still in mypossession, I think.'
Somerset said that he should like to see it; but half-an-hour's searchabout the house failed to discover the document; and the Academicianthen remembered that it was in an iron box at his banker's. He had usedit as a wrapper for some title-deeds and other valuable writings whichwere deposited there for safety. 'Why do you want it?' he inquired.
The young man confessed his whim to know if his own antiquity would bearcomparison 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 hemeant to pursue the subject further. Somerset, however, did nothing inthe matter that day, but the next morning, having to call at the bank onother business, he remembered his new fancy.
It was about eleven o'clock. The fog, though not so brown as it had beenon previous days, was still dense enough to necessitate lights in theshops and offices. When Somerset had finished his business in theouter office of the bank he went to the manager's room. The hour beingsomewhat early the only persons present in that sanctuary of balances,besides the manager who welcomed him, were two gentlemen, apparentlylawyers, who sat talking earnestly over a box of papers. The manager,on learning what Somerset wanted, unlocked a door from which a flightof stone steps led to the vaults, and sent down a clerk and a porter forthe 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 infurs to her very nose.
The manager seemed to recognize her, for he went across the room ina moment, and set her a chair at the middle table, replying to someobservation of hers with the words, 'O yes, certainly,' in a deferentialtone.
'I should like it brought up at once,' said the lady.
Somerset, who had seated himself at a table in a somewhat obscurecorner, screened by the lawyers, started at the words. The voicewas Miss Power's, and so plainly enough was the figure as soon as heexamined it. Her back was towards him, and either because the roomwas only lighted in two places, or because she was a
bsorbed in her ownconcerns, she seemed to be unconscious of any one's presence on thescene except the banker and herself. The former called back the clerk,and two other porters having been summoned they disappeared to getwhatever she required.
Somerset, somewhat excited, sat wondering what could have brought Paulato London at this juncture, and was in some doubt if the occasion werea suitable one for revealing himself, her errand to her banker beingpossibly of a very private nature. Nothing helped him to a decision.Paula never once turned her head, and the progress of time was markedonly by the murmurs of the two lawyers, and the ceaseless clash ofgold and rattle of scales from the outer room, where the busy headsof cashiers could be seen through the partition moving about under theglobes of the gas-lamps.
Footsteps were heard upon the cellar-steps, and the three men previouslysent below staggered from the doorway, bearing a huge safe which nearlybroke them down. Somerset knew that his father's box, or boxes, couldboast of no such dimensions, and he was not surprised to see the chestdeposited in front of Miss Power. When the immense accumulation of dusthad been cleared off the lid, and the chest conveniently placed for her,Somerset was attended to, his modest box being brought up by one manunassisted, and without much expenditure of breath.
His interest in Paula was of so emotional a cast that his attentionto his own errand was of the most perfunctory kind. She was close toa gas-standard, and the lawyers, whose seats had intervened, havingfinished their business and gone away, all her actions were visible tohim. While he was opening his father's box the manager assisted Paula tounseal 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 shetook a dazzling object that fell like a cascade over her fingers. Itwas a necklace of diamonds and pearls, apparently of large size and manystrands, though he was not near enough to see distinctly. When satisfiedby her examination that she had got the right article she shut it intoits case.
The manager closed the chest for her; and when it was again securedPaula arose, tossed the necklace into her hand-bag, bowed to themanager, and was about to bid him good morning. Thereupon he said withsome hesitation: 'Pardon one question, Miss Power. Do you intend to takethose 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 fasteningthem 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 getsoverturned: you would let it go then.'
'Perhaps so.'
'Or if you saw a child under the wheels just as you were stepping in; orif you accidentally stumbled in getting out; or if there was a collisionon 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, pinningit and otherwise making it absolutely secure.
'That's it,' said the grey-haired man of caution, with evidentsatisfaction. 'There is not much danger now: you are not travellingalone?'
Paula replied that she was not alone, and went to the door. Therewas one moment during which Somerset might have conveniently made hispresence known; but the juxtaposition of the bank-manager, and his owndisarranged box of securities, embarrassed him: the moment slipped by,and she was gone.
In the meantime he had mechanically unearthed the pedigree, and, lockingup his father's chest, Somerset also took his departure at the heels ofPaula. He walked along the misty street, so deeply musing as to be quiteunconscious of the direction of his walk. What, he inquired of himself,could she want that necklace for so suddenly? He recollected a remarkof Dare's to the effect that her appearance on a particular occasionat Stancy Castle had been magnificent by reason of the jewels shewore; which proved that she had retained a sufficient quantity of thosevaluables at the castle for ordinary requirements. What exceptionaloccasion, then, was impending on which she wished to glorify herselfbeyond all previous experience? He could not guess. He was interruptedin these conjectures by a carriage nearly passing over his toes at acrossing in Bond Street: looking up he saw between the two windows ofthe vehicle the profile of a thickly mantled bosom, on which a camelliarose and fell. All the remainder part of the lady's person was hidden;but he remembered that flower of convenient season as one which hadfigured in the bank parlour half-an-hour earlier to-day.
Somerset hastened after the carriage, and in a minute saw it stopopposite a jeweller's shop. Out came Paula, and then another woman, inwhom 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.