‘What enormous sacrileges are committed by the builders every day, I
observe! I was driving yesterday to Toneborough where I am erecting a
town-hall, and passing through a village on my way I saw the workmen
pulling down a chancel-wall in which they found imbedded a unique
specimen of Perpendicular work--a capital from some old arcade--the
mouldings wonderfully undercut. They were smashing it up as filling-in
for the new wall.’
‘It must have been unique,’ said Somerset, in the too-readily
controversial tone of the educated young man who has yet to learn
diplomacy. ‘I have never seen much undercutting in Perpendicular
stone-work; nor anybody else, I think.’
‘O yes--lots of it!’ said Mr. Havill, nettled.
Paula looked from one to the other. ‘Which am I to take as guide?’ she
asked. ‘Are Perpendicular capitals undercut, as you call it, Mr. Havill,
or no?’
‘It depends upon circumstances,’ said Mr. Havill.
But Somerset had answered at the same time: ‘There is seldom or never
any marked undercutting in moulded work later than the middle of the
fourteenth century.’
Havill looked keenly at Somerset for a time: then he turned to Paula:
‘As regards that fine Saxon vaulting you did me the honour to consult me
about the other day, I should advise taking out some of the old stones
and reinstating new ones exactly like them.’
‘But the new ones won’t be Saxon,’ said Paula. ‘And then in time to
come, when I have passed away, and those stones have become stained like
the rest, people will be deceived. I should prefer an honest patch to
any such make-believe of Saxon relics.’
As she concluded she let her eyes rest on Somerset for a moment, as if
to ask him to side with her. Much as he liked talking to Paula, he
would have preferred not to enter into this discussion with another
professional man, even though that man were a spurious article; but he
was led on to enthusiasm by a sudden pang of regret at finding that the
masterly workmanship in this fine castle was likely to be tinkered and
spoilt by such a man as Havill.
‘You will deceive nobody into believing that anything is Saxon here,’ he
said warmly. ‘There is not a square inch of Saxon work, as it is called,
in the whole castle.’
Paula, in doubt, looked to Mr. Havill.
‘O yes, sir; you are quite mistaken,’ said that gentleman slowly. ‘Every
stone of those lower vaults was reared in Saxon times.’
‘I can assure you,’ said Somerset deferentially, but firmly, ‘that there
is not an arch or wall in this castle of a date anterior to the year
1100; no one whose attention has ever been given to the study of
architectural details of that age can be of a different opinion.’
‘I have studied architecture, and I am of a different opinion. I have
the best reason in the world for the difference, for I have history
herself on my side. What will you say when I tell you that it is a
recorded fact that this was used as a castle by the Romans, and that it
is mentioned in Domesday as a building of long standing?’
‘I shall say that has nothing to do with it,’ replied the young man.
‘I don’t deny that there may have been a castle here in the time of
the Romans: what I say is, that none of the architecture we now see was
standing at that date.’
There was a silence of a minute, disturbed only by a murmured dialogue
between Mrs. Goodman and the minister, during which Paula was looking
thoughtfully on the table as if framing a question.
‘Can it be,’ she said to Somerset, ‘that such certainty has been reached
in the study of architectural dates? Now, would you really risk anything
on your belief? Would you agree to be shut up in the vaults and fed upon
bread and water for a week if I could prove you wrong?’
‘Willingly,’ said Somerset. ‘The date of those towers and arches is
matter of absolute certainty from the details. That they should have
been built before the Conquest is as unlikely as, say, that the
rustiest old gun with a percussion lock should be older than the date of
Waterloo.’
‘How I wish I knew something precise of an art which makes one so
independent of written history!’
Mr. Havill had lapsed into a mannerly silence that was only sullenness
disguised. Paula turned her conversation to Miss De Stancy, who had
simply looked from one to the other during the discussion, though she
might have been supposed to have a prescriptive right to a few remarks
on the matter. A commonplace talk ensued, till Havill, who had not
joined in it, privately began at Somerset again with a mixed manner of
cordiality, contempt, and misgiving.
‘You have a practice, I suppose, sir?’
‘I am not in practice just yet.’
‘Just beginning?’
‘I am about to begin.’
‘In London, or near here?’
‘In London probably.’
‘H’m.... I am practising in Markton.’
‘Indeed. Have you been at it long?’
‘Not particularly. I designed the chapel built by this lady’s late
father; it was my first undertaking--I owe my start, in fact, to Mr.
Power. Ever build a chapel?’
‘Never. I have sketched a good many churches.’
‘Ah--there we differ. I didn’t do much sketching in my youth, nor have I
time for it now. Sketching and building are two different things, to my
mind. I was not brought up to the profession--got into it through sheer
love of it. I began as a landscape gardener, then I became a builder,
then I was a road contractor. Every architect might do worse than have
some such experience. But nowadays ‘tis the men who can draw pretty
pictures who get recommended, not the practical men. Young prigs win
Institute medals for a pretty design or two which, if anybody tried
to build them, would fall down like a house of cards; then they get
travelling studentships and what not, and then they start as architects
of some new school or other, and think they are the masters of us
experienced ones.’
While Somerset was reflecting how far this statement was true, he heard
the voice of Paula inquiring, ‘Who can he be?’
Her eyes were bent on the window. Looking out, Somerset saw in the mead
beyond the dry ditch, Dare, with his photographic apparatus.
‘He is the young gentleman who called about taking views of the castle,’
said Charlotte.
‘O yes--I remember; it is quite right. He met me in the village and
asked me to suggest him some views. I thought him a respectable young
fellow.’
‘I think he is a Canadian,’ said Somerset.
‘No,’ said Paula, ‘he is from the East--at least he implied so to me.’
‘There is Italian blood in him,’ said Charlotte brightly. ‘For he spoke
to me with an Italian accent. But I can’t think whether he is a boy or a
man.’
‘It is to be earnestly hoped that the gentleman does not prevaricate,’
said the minister, for the first time attracted by the subject. ‘I
accidentally met him in the lane, and he said something to me about
having lived in Malta. I think it was Malta, or Gibraltar--even if he
did not say that he was born there.’
‘His manners are no credit to his nationality,’ observed Mrs. Goodman,
also speaking publicly for the first time. ‘He asked me this morning to
send him out a pail of water for his process, and before I had turned
away he began whistling. I don’t like whistlers.’
‘Then it appears,’ said Somerset, ‘that he is a being of no age, no
nationality, and no behaviour.’
‘A complete negative,’ added Havill, brightening into a civil sneer.
‘That is, he would be, if he were not a maker of negatives well known in
Markton.’
‘Not well known, Mr. Havill,’ answered Mrs. Goodman firmly. ‘For I lived
in Markton for thirty years ending three months ago, and he was never
heard of in my time.’
‘He is something like you, Charlotte,’ said Paula, smiling playfully on
her companion.
All the men looked at Charlotte, on whose face a delicate nervous blush
thereupon made its appearance.
‘’Pon my word there is a likeness, now I think of it,’ said Havill.
Paula bent down to Charlotte and whispered: ‘Forgive my rudeness, dear.
He is not a nice enough person to be like you. He is really more like
one or other of the old pictures about the house. I forget which, and
really it does not matter.’
‘People’s features fall naturally into groups and classes,’ remarked
Somerset. ‘To an observant person they often repeat themselves; though
to a careless eye they seem infinite in their differences.’
The conversation flagged, and they idly observed the figure of the
cosmopolite Dare as he walked round his instrument in the mead and
busied himself with an arrangement of curtains and lenses, occasionally
withdrawing a few steps, and looking contemplatively at the towers and
walls.