It was the day of the garden-party. The weather was too cloudy to be
called perfect, but it was as sultry as the most thinly-clad young lady
could desire. Great trouble had been taken by Paula to bring the lawn
to a fit condition after the neglect of recent years, and Somerset had
suggested the design for the tents. As he approached the precincts of
the castle he discerned a flag of newest fabric floating over the keep,
and soon his fly fell in with the stream of carriages that were passing
over the bridge into the outer ward.
Mrs. Goodman and Paula were receiving the people in the drawing-room.
Somerset came forward in his turn; but as he was immediately followed by
others there was not much opportunity, even had she felt the wish, for
any special mark of feeling in the younger lady’s greeting of him.
He went on through a canvas passage, lined on each side with flowering
plants, till he reached the tents; thence, after nodding to one or two
guests slightly known to him, he proceeded to the grounds, with a sense
of being rather lonely. Few visitors had as yet got so far in, and as
he walked up and down a shady alley his mind dwelt upon the new
aspect under which Paula had greeted his eyes that afternoon. Her
black-and-white costume had finally disappeared, and in its place she
had adopted a picturesque dress of ivory white, with satin enrichments
of the same hue; while upon her bosom she wore a blue flower. Her days
of infestivity were plainly ended, and her days of gladness were to
begin.
His reverie was interrupted by the sound of his name, and looking round
he beheld Havill, who appeared to be as much alone as himself.
Somerset already knew that Havill had been appointed to compete with
him, according to his recommendation. In measuring a dark corner a day
or two before, he had stumbled upon Havill engaged in the same pursuit
with a view to the rival design. Afterwards he had seen him receiving
Paula’s instructions precisely as he had done himself. It was as he had
wished, for fairness’ sake: and yet he felt a regret, for he was less
Paula’s own architect now.
‘Well, Mr. Somerset,’ said Havill, ‘since we first met an unexpected
rivalry has arisen between us! But I dare say we shall survive the
contest, as it is not one arising out of love. Ha-ha-ha!’ He spoke in a
level voice of fierce pleasantry, and uncovered his regular white teeth.
Somerset supposed him to allude to the castle competition?
‘Yes,’ said Havill. ‘Her proposed undertaking brought out some adverse
criticism till it was known that she intended to have more than one
architectural opinion. An excellent stroke of hers to disarm criticism.
You saw the second letter in the morning papers?’
‘No,’ said the other.
‘The writer states that he has discovered that the competent advice of
two architects is to be taken, and withdraws his accusations.’
Somerset said nothing for a minute. ‘Have you been supplied with the
necessary data for your drawings?’ he asked, showing by the question the
track his thoughts had taken.
Havill said that he had. ‘But possibly not so completely as you have,’
he added, again smiling fiercely. Somerset did not quite like the
insinuation, and the two speakers parted, the younger going towards the
musicians, who had now begun to fill the air with their strains from the
embowered enclosure of a drooping ash. When he got back to the marquees
they were quite crowded, and the guests began to pour out upon the
grass, the toilets of the ladies presenting a brilliant spectacle--here
being coloured dresses with white devices, there white dresses with
coloured devices, and yonder transparent dresses with no device at all.
A lavender haze hung in the air, the trees were as still as those of a
submarine forest; while the sun, in colour like a brass plaque, had a
hairy outline in the livid sky.
After watching awhile some young people who were so madly devoted to
lawn-tennis that they set about it like day-labourers at the moment
of their arrival, he turned and saw approaching a graceful figure in
cream-coloured hues, whose gloves lost themselves beneath her lace
ruffles, even when she lifted her hand to make firm the blue flower at
her breast, and whose hair hung under her hat in great knots so well
compacted that the sun gilded the convexity of each knot like a ball.
‘You seem to be alone,’ said Paula, who had at last escaped from the
duty of receiving guests.
‘I don’t know many people.’
‘Yes: I thought of that while I was in the drawing-room. But I could not
get out before. I am now no longer a responsible being: Mrs. Goodman
is mistress for the remainder of the day. Will you be introduced to
anybody? Whom would you like to know?’
‘I am not particularly unhappy in my solitude.’
‘But you must be made to know a few.’
‘Very well--I submit readily.’
She looked away from him, and while he was observing upon her cheek the
moving shadow of leaves cast by the declining sun, she said, ‘O, there
is my aunt,’ and beckoned with her parasol to that lady, who approached
in the comparatively youthful guise of a grey silk dress that whistled
at every touch.
Paula left them together, and Mrs. Goodman then made him acquainted with
a few of the best people, describing what they were in a whisper before
they came up, among them being the Radical member for Markton, who had
succeeded to the seat rendered vacant by the death of Paula’s father.
While talking to this gentleman on the proposed enlargement of the
castle, Somerset raised his eyes and hand towards the walls, the better
to point out his meaning; in so doing he saw a face in the square of
darkness formed by one of the open windows, the effect being that of a
highlight portrait by Vandyck or Rembrandt.
It was his assistant Dare, leaning on the window-sill of the studio, as
he smoked his cigarette and surveyed the gay groups promenading beneath.
After holding a chattering conversation with some ladies from a
neighbouring country seat who had known his father in bygone years, and
handing them ices and strawberries till they were satisfied, he found an
opportunity of leaving the grounds, wishing to learn what progress Dare
had made in the survey of the castle.
Dare was still in the studio when he entered. Somerset informed the
youth that there was no necessity for his working later that day, unless
to please himself, and proceeded to inspect Dare’s achievements thus
far. To his vexation Dare had not plotted three dimensions during the
previous two days. This was not the first time that Dare, either from
incompetence or indolence, had shown his inutility as a house-surveyor
and draughtsman.
‘Mr. Dare,’ said Somerset, ‘I fear you don’t suit me well enough to make
it necessary that you should stay after this week.’
Dare removed the cigarette from his lips and bowed. ‘If I don’t suit,
the sooner I go the better; why wait the week?’ he said.
‘Well, that’s as you like.’
Somerset drew the inkstand towards him, wrote out a cheque for Dare’s
services, and handed it across the table.
‘I’ll not trouble you to-morrow,’ said Dare, seeing that the payment
included the week in advance.
‘Very well,’ replied Somerset. ‘Please lock the door when you leave.’
Shaking hands with Dare and wishing him well, he left the room and
descended to the lawn below.
There he contrived to get near Miss Power again, and inquired of her for
Miss De Stancy.
‘O! did you not know?’ said Paula; ‘her father is unwell, and she
preferred staying with him this afternoon.’
‘I hoped he might have been here.’
‘O no; he never comes out of his house to any party of this sort; it
excites him, and he must not be excited.’
‘Poor Sir William!’ muttered Somerset.
‘No,’ said Paula, ‘he is grand and historical.’
‘That is hardly an orthodox notion for a Puritan,’ said Somerset
mischievously.
‘I am not a Puritan,’ insisted Paula.
The day turned to dusk, and the guests began going in relays to the
dining-hall. When Somerset had taken in two or three ladies to whom
he had been presented, and attended to their wants, which occupied him
three-quarters of an hour, he returned again to the large tent, with
a view to finding Paula and taking his leave. It was now brilliantly
lighted up, and the musicians, who during daylight had been invisible
behind the ash-tree, were ensconced at one end with their harps and
violins. It reminded him that there was to be dancing. The tent had in
the meantime half filled with a new set of young people who had come
expressly for that pastime. Behind the girls gathered numbers of newly
arrived young men with low shoulders and diminutive moustaches, who were
evidently prepared for once to sacrifice themselves as partners.
Somerset felt something of a thrill at the sight. He was an infrequent
dancer, and particularly unprepared for dancing at present; but to dance
once with Paula Power he would give a year of his life. He looked round;
but she was nowhere to be seen. The first set began; old and middle-aged
people gathered from the different rooms to look on at the gyrations of
their children, but Paula did not appear. When another dance or two had
progressed, and an increase in the average age of the dancers was making
itself perceptible, especially on the masculine side, Somerset was
aroused by a whisper at his elbow--
‘You dance, I think? Miss Deverell is disengaged. She has not been asked
once this evening.’ The speaker was Paula.
Somerset looked at Miss Deverell--a sallow lady with black twinkling
eyes, yellow costume, and gay laugh, who had been there all the
afternoon--and said something about having thought of going home.
‘Is that because I asked you to dance?’ she murmured. ‘There--she is
appropriated.’ A young gentleman had at that moment approached the
uninviting Miss Deverell, claimed her hand and led her off.
‘That’s right,’ said Somerset. ‘I ought to leave room for younger men.’
‘You need not say so. That bald-headed gentleman is forty-five. He does
not think of younger men.’
‘Have YOU a dance to spare for me?’
Her face grew stealthily redder in the candle-light. ‘O!--I have no
engagement at all--I have refused. I hardly feel at liberty to dance; it
would be as well to leave that to my visitors.’
‘Why?’
‘My father, though he allowed me to be taught, never liked the idea of
my dancing.’
‘Did he make you promise anything on the point?’
‘He said he was not in favour of such amusements--no more.’
‘I think you are not bound by that, on an informal occasion like the
present.’
She was silent.
‘You will just once?’ said he.
Another silence. ‘If you like,’ she venturesomely answered at last.
Somerset closed the hand which was hanging by his side, and somehow hers
was in it. The dance was nearly formed, and he led her forward. Several
persons looked at them significantly, but he did not notice it then, and
plunged into the maze.
Never had Mr. Somerset passed through such an experience before. Had he
not felt her actual weight and warmth, he might have fancied the whole
episode a figment of the imagination. It seemed as if those musicians
had thrown a double sweetness into their notes on seeing the mistress of
the castle in the dance, that a perfumed southern atmosphere had begun
to pervade the marquee, and that human beings were shaking themselves
free of all inconvenient gravitation.
Somerset’s feelings burst from his lips. ‘This is the happiest moment I
have ever known,’ he said. ‘Do you know why?’
‘I think I saw a flash of lightning through the opening of the tent,’
said Paula, with roguish abruptness.
He did not press for an answer. Within a few minutes a long growl of
thunder was heard. It was as if Jove could not refrain from
testifying his jealousy of Somerset for taking this covetable woman so
presumptuously in his arms.
The dance was over, and he had retired with Paula to the back of the
tent, when another faint flash of lightning was visible through an
opening. She lifted the canvas, and looked out, Somerset looking out
behind her. Another dance was begun, and being on this account left out
of notice, Somerset did not hasten to leave Paula’s side.
‘I think they begin to feel the heat,’ she said.
‘A little ventilation would do no harm.’ He flung back the tent door
where he stood, and the light shone out upon the grass.
‘I must go to the drawing-room soon,’ she added. ‘They will begin to
leave shortly.’
‘It is not late. The thunder-cloud has made it seem dark--see there;
a line of pale yellow stretches along the horizon from west to north.
That’s evening--not gone yet. Shall we go into the fresh air for a
minute?’
She seemed to signify assent, and he stepped off the tent-floor upon the
ground. She stepped off also.
The air out-of-doors had not cooled, and without definitely choosing a
direction they found themselves approaching a little wooden tea-house
that stood on the lawn a few yards off. Arrived here, they turned, and
regarded the tent they had just left, and listened to the strains that
came from within it.
‘I feel more at ease now,’ said Paula.
‘So do I,’ said Somerset.
‘I mean,’ she added in an undeceiving tone, ‘because I saw Mrs. Goodman
enter the tent again just as we came out here; so I have no further
responsibility.’
‘I meant something quite different. Try to guess what.’
She teasingly demurred, finally breaking the silence by saying, ‘The
rain is come at last,’ as great drops began to fall upon the ground with
a smack, like pellets of clay.
In a moment the storm poured down with sudden violence, and they drew
further back into the summer-house. The side of the tent from which they
had emerged still remained open, the rain streaming down between their
eyes and the lighted interior of the marquee like a tissue of glass
threads, the brilliant forms of the dancers passing and repassing behind
the watery screen, as if they were people in an enchanted submarine
palace.
‘How happy they are!’ said Paula. ‘They don’t even know that it is
raining. I am so glad that my aunt had the tent lined; otherwise such a
downpour would have gone clean through it.’
The thunder-storm showed no symptoms of abatement, and the music and
dancing went on more merrily than ever.
‘We cannot go in,’ said Somerset. ‘And we cannot shout for umbrellas. We
will stay till it is over, will we not?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if you care to. Ah!’
‘What is it?’
‘Only a big drop came upon my head.’
‘Let us stand further in.’
Her hand was hanging by her side, and Somerset’s was close by. He took
it, and she did not draw it away. Thus they stood a long while, the rain
hissing down upon the grass-plot, and not a soul being visible outside
the dancing-tent save themselves.
‘May I call you Paula?’ asked he.
There was no answer.
‘May I?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, occasionally,’ she murmured.
‘Dear Paula!--may I call you that?’
‘O no--not yet.’
‘But you know I love you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘And shall I love you always?’
‘If you wish to.’
‘And will you love me?’
Paula did not reply.
‘Will you, Paula?’ he repeated.
‘You may love me.’
‘But don’t you love me in return?’
‘I love you to love me.’
‘Won’t you say anything more explicit?’
‘I would rather not.’
Somerset emitted half a sigh: he wished she had been more demonstrative,
yet felt that this passive way of assenting was as much as he could hope
for. Had there been anything cold in her passivity he might have
felt repressed; but her stillness suggested the stillness of motion
imperceptible from its intensity.
‘We must go in,’ said she. ‘The rain is almost over, and there is no
longer any excuse for this.’
Somerset bent his lips toward hers. ‘No,’ said the fair Puritan
decisively.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘Nobody ever has.’
‘But!--’ expostulated Somerset.
‘To everything there is a season, and the season for this is not just
now,’ she answered, walking away.
They crossed the wet and glistening lawn, stepped under the tent and
parted. She vanished, he did not know whither; and, standing with his
gaze fixed on the dancers, the young man waited, till, being in no mood
to join them, he went slowly through the artificial passage lined with
flowers, and entered the drawing room. Mrs. Goodman was there, bidding
good-night to the early goers, and Paula was just behind her, apparently
in her usual mood. His parting with her was quite formal, but that he
did not mind, for her colour rose decidedly higher as he approached, and
the light in her eyes was like the ray of a diamond.
When he reached the door he found that his brougham from the Quantock
Arms, which had been waiting more than an hour, could not be heard of.
That vagrancy of spirit which love induces would not permit him to wait;
and, leaving word that the man was to follow him when he returned, he
went past the glare of carriage-lamps ranked in the ward, and under the
outer arch. The night was now clear and beautiful, and he strolled along
his way full of mysterious elation till the vehicle overtook him, and he
got in.
Up to this point Somerset’s progress in his suit had been, though
incomplete, so uninterrupted, that he almost feared the good chance he
enjoyed. How should it be in a mortal of his calibre to command success
with such a sweet woman for long? He might, indeed, turn out to be
one of the singular exceptions which are said to prove rules; but when
fortune means to men most good, observes the bard, she looks upon them
with a threatening eye. Somerset would even have been content that a
little disapproval of his course should have occurred in some quarter,
so as to make his wooing more like ordinary life. But Paula was not
clearly won, and that was drawback sufficient. In these pleasing agonies
and painful delights he passed the journey to Markton.