Next day they went on to Baden. De Stancy was beginning to cultivate the
passion of love even more as an escape from the gloomy relations of
his life than as matrimonial strategy. Paula’s juxtaposition had the
attribute of making him forget everything in his own history. She was a
magic alterative; and the most foolish boyish shape into which he could
throw his feelings for her was in this respect to be aimed at as the act
of highest wisdom.
He supplemented the natural warmth of feeling that she had wrought in
him by every artificial means in his power, to make the distraction the
more complete. He had not known anything like this self-obscuration for
a dozen years, and when he conjectured that she might really learn to
love him he felt exalted in his own eyes and purified from the dross of
his former life. Such uneasiness of conscience as arose when he suddenly
remembered Dare, and the possibility that Somerset was getting ousted
unfairly, had its weight in depressing him; but he was inclined to
accept his fortune without much question.
The journey to Baden, though short, was not without incidents on which
he could work out this curious hobby of cultivating to superlative power
an already positive passion. Handing her in and out of the carriage,
accidentally getting brushed by her clothes, of all such as this he made
available fuel. Paula, though she might have guessed the general nature
of what was going on, seemed unconscious of the refinements he was
trying to throw into it, and sometimes, when in stepping into or from a
railway carriage she unavoidably put her hand upon his arm, the obvious
insignificance she attached to the action struck him with misgiving.
One of the first things they did at Baden was to stroll into the
Trink-halle, where Paula sipped the water. She was about to put down the
glass, when De Stancy quickly took it from her hands as though to make
use of it himself.
‘O, if that is what you mean,’ she said mischievously, ‘you should
have noticed the exact spot. It was there.’ She put her finger on a
particular portion of its edge.
‘You ought not to act like that, unless you mean something, Miss Power,’
he replied gravely.
‘Tell me more plainly.’
‘I mean, you should not do things which excite in me the hope that you
care something for me, unless you really do.’
‘I put my finger on the edge and said it was there.’
‘Meaning, “It was there my lips touched; let yours do the same.”’
‘The latter part I wholly deny,’ she answered, with disregard, after
which she went away, and kept between Charlotte and her aunt for the
rest of the afternoon.
Since the receipt of the telegram Paula had been frequently silent; she
frequently stayed in alone, and sometimes she became quite gloomy--an
altogether unprecedented phase for her. This was the case on the morning
after the incident in the Trink-halle. Not to intrude on her, Charlotte
walked about the landings of the sunny white hotel in which they had
taken up their quarters, went down into the court, and petted the
tortoises that were creeping about there among the flowers and plants;
till at last, on going to her friend, she caught her reading some old
letters of Somerset’s.
Paula made no secret of them, and Miss De Stancy could see that more
than half were written on blue paper, with diagrams amid the writing:
they were, in fact, simply those sheets of his letters which related to
the rebuilding. Nevertheless, Charlotte fancied she had caught Paula in
a sentimental mood; and doubtless could Somerset have walked in at
this moment instead of Charlotte it might have fared well with him,
so insidiously do tender memories reassert themselves in the face of
outward mishaps.
They took a drive down the Lichtenthal road and then into the forest, De
Stancy and Abner Power riding on horseback alongside. The sun streamed
yellow behind their backs as they wound up the long inclines, lighting
the red trunks, and even the blue-black foliage itself. The summer had
already made impression upon that mass of uniform colour by tipping
every twig with a tiny sprout of virescent yellow; while the minute
sounds which issued from the forest revealed that the apparently still
place was becoming a perfect reservoir of insect life.
Abner Power was quite sentimental that day. ‘In such places as these,’
he said, as he rode alongside Mrs. Goodman, ‘nature’s powers in the
multiplication of one type strike me as much as the grandeur of the
mass.’
Mrs. Goodman agreed with him, and Paula said, ‘The foliage forms the
roof of an interminable green crypt, the pillars being the trunks, and
the vault the interlacing boughs.’
‘It is a fine place in a thunderstorm,’ said De Stancy. ‘I am not an
enthusiast, but to see the lightning spring hither and thither,
like lazy-tongs, bristling, and striking, and vanishing, is rather
impressive.’
‘It must be indeed,’ said Paula.
‘And in the winter winds these pines sigh like ten thousand spirits in
trouble.’
‘Indeed they must,’ said Paula.
‘At the same time I know a little fir-plantation about a mile square
not far from Markton,’ said De Stancy, ‘which is precisely like this
in miniature,--stems, colours, slopes, winds, and all. If we were to go
there any time with a highly magnifying pair of spectacles it would look
as fine as this--and save a deal of travelling.’
‘I know the place, and I agree with you,’ said Paula.
‘You agree with me on all subjects but one,’ he presently observed, in a
voice not intended to reach the others.
Paula looked at him, but was silent.
Onward and upward they went, the same pattern and colour of tree
repeating themselves endlessly, till in a couple of hours they reached
the castle hill which was to be the end of their journey, and beheld
stretched beneath them the valley of the Murg. They alighted and entered
the fortress.
‘What did you mean by that look of kindness you bestowed upon me just
now, when I said you agreed with me on all subjects but one?’ asked
De Stancy half humorously, as he held open a little door for her, the
others having gone ahead.
‘I meant, I suppose, that I was much obliged to you for not requiring
agreement on that one subject,’ she said, passing on.
‘Not more than that?’ said De Stancy, as he followed her. ‘But whenever
I involuntarily express towards you sentiments that there can be no
mistaking, you seem truly compassionate.’
‘If I seem so, I feel so.’
‘If you mean no more than mere compassion, I wish you would show nothing
at all, for your mistaken kindness is only preparing more misery for me
than I should have if let alone to suffer without mercy.’
‘I implore you to be quiet, Captain De Stancy! Leave me, and look out
of the window at the view here, or at the pictures, or at the armour, or
whatever it is we are come to see.’
‘Very well. But pray don’t extract amusement from my harmless remarks.
Such as they are I mean them.’
She stopped him by changing the subject, for they had entered an
octagonal chamber on the first floor, presumably full of pictures and
curiosities; but the shutters were closed, and only stray beams of light
gleamed in to suggest what was there.
‘Can’t somebody open the windows?’ said Paula.
‘The attendant is about to do it,’ said her uncle; and as he spoke the
shutters to the east were flung back, and one of the loveliest views in
the forest disclosed itself outside.
Some of them stepped out upon the balcony. The river lay along the
bottom of the valley, irradiated with a silver shine. Little rafts of
pinewood floated on its surface like tiny splinters, the men who steered
them not appearing larger than ants.
Paula stood on the balcony, looking for a few minutes upon the sight,
and then came into the shadowy room, where De Stancy had remained. While
the rest were still outside she resumed: ‘You must not suppose that I
shrink from the subject you so persistently bring before me. I respect
deep affection--you know I do; but for me to say that I have any such
for you, of the particular sort you only will be satisfied with, would
be absurd. I don’t feel it, and therefore there can be nothing between
us. One would think it would be better to feel kindly towards you than
to feel nothing at all. But if you object to that I’ll try to feel
nothing.’
‘I don’t really object to your sympathy,’ said De Stancy, rather struck
by her seriousness. ‘But it is very saddening to think you can feel
nothing more.’
‘It must be so, since I CAN feel no more,’ she decisively replied,
adding, as she stopped her seriousness: ‘You must pray for strength to
get over it.’
‘One thing I shall never pray for; to see you give yourself to another
man. But I suppose I shall witness that some day.’
‘You may,’ she gravely returned.
‘You have no doubt chosen him already,’ cried the captain bitterly.
‘No, Captain De Stancy,’ she said shortly, a faint involuntary blush
coming into her face as she guessed his allusion.
This, and a few glances round at the pictures and curiosities, completed
their survey of the castle. De Stancy knew better than to trouble her
further that day with special remarks. During the return journey he rode
ahead with Mr. Power and she saw no more of him.
She would have been astonished had she heard the conversation of the two
gentlemen as they wound gently downwards through the trees.
‘As far as I am concerned,’ Captain De Stancy’s companion was saying,
‘nothing would give me more unfeigned delight than that you should
persevere and win her. But you must understand that I have no authority
over her--nothing more than the natural influence that arises from my
being her father’s brother.’
‘And for exercising that much, whatever it may be, in my favour I thank
you heartily,’ said De Stancy. ‘But I am coming to the conclusion that
it is useless to press her further. She is right! I am not the man for
her. I am too old, and too poor; and I must put up as well as I can with
her loss--drown her image in old Falernian till I embark in Charon’s
boat for good!--Really, if I had the industry I could write some good
Horatian verses on my inauspicious situation!... Ah, well;--in this way
I affect levity over my troubles; but in plain truth my life will not be
the brightest without her.’
‘Don’t be down-hearted! you are too--too gentlemanly, De Stancy, in
this matter--you are too soon put off--you should have a touch of the
canvasser about you in approaching her; and not stick at things. You
have my hearty invitation to travel with us all the way till we cross to
England, and there will be heaps of opportunities as we wander on. I’ll
keep a slow pace to give you time.’
‘You are very good, my friend! Well, I will try again. I am full of
doubt and indecision, mind, but at present I feel that I will try again.
There is, I suppose, a slight possibility of something or other turning
up in my favour, if it is true that the unexpected always happens--for
I foresee no chance whatever.... Which way do we go when we leave here
to-morrow?’
‘To Carlsruhe, she says, if the rest of us have no objection.’
‘Carlsruhe, then, let it be, with all my heart; or anywhere.’
To Carlsruhe they went next day, after a night of soft rain which
brought up a warm steam from the Schwarzwald valleys, and caused the
young tufts and grasses to swell visibly in a few hours. After the
Baden slopes the flat thoroughfares of ‘Charles’s Rest’ seemed somewhat
uninteresting, though a busy fair which was proceeding in the
streets created a quaint and unexpected liveliness. On reaching the
old-fashioned inn in the Lange-Strasse that they had fixed on, the
women of the party betook themselves to their rooms and showed little
inclination to see more of the world that day than could be gleaned from
the hotel windows.