It was midnight at Coblenz, and the travellers had retired to rest in
their respective apartments, overlooking the river. Finding that there
was a moon shining, Paula leant out of her window. The tall rock of
Ehrenbreitstein on the opposite shore was flooded with light, and a
belated steamer was drawing up to the landing-stage, where it presently
deposited its passengers.
‘We should have come by the last boat, so as to have been touched into
romance by the rays of this moon, like those happy people,’ said a
voice.
She looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, which was a
window quite near at hand. De Stancy was smoking outside it, and she
became aware that the words were addressed to her.
‘You left me very abruptly,’ he continued.
Paula’s instinct of caution impelled her to speak.
‘The windows are all open,’ she murmured. ‘Please be careful.’
‘There are no English in this hotel except ourselves. I thank you for
what you said to-day.’
‘Please be careful,’ she repeated.
‘My dear Miss P----’
‘Don’t mention names, and don’t continue the subject!’
‘Life and death perhaps depend upon my renewing it soon!’
She shut the window decisively, possibly wondering if De Stancy had
drunk a glass or two of Steinberg more than was good for him, and saw
no more of moonlit Ehrenbreitstein that night, and heard no more of De
Stancy. But it was some time before he closed his window, and previous
to doing so saw a dark form at an adjoining one on the other side.
It was Mr. Power, also taking the air. ‘Well, what luck to-day?’ said
Power.
‘A decided advance,’ said De Stancy.
None of the speakers knew that a little person in the room above heard
all this out-of-window talk. Charlotte, though not looking out, had left
her casement open; and what reached her ears set her wondering as to the
result.
It is not necessary to detail in full De Stancy’s imperceptible advances
with Paula during that northward journey--so slowly performed that it
seemed as if she must perceive there was a special reason for delaying
her return to England. At Cologne one day he conveniently overtook her
when she was ascending the hotel staircase. Seeing him, she went to the
window of the entresol landing, which commanded a view of the Rhine,
meaning that he should pass by to his room.
‘I have been very uneasy,’ began the captain, drawing up to her side;
‘and I am obliged to trouble you sooner than I meant to do.’
Paula turned her eyes upon him with some curiosity as to what was coming
of this respectful demeanour. ‘Indeed!’ she said.
He then informed her that he had been overhauling himself since they
last talked, and had some reason to blame himself for bluntness and
general want of euphemism; which, although he had meant nothing by it,
must have been very disagreeable to her. But he had always aimed at
sincerity, particularly as he had to deal with a lady who despised
hypocrisy and was above flattery. However, he feared he might have
carried his disregard for conventionality too far. But from that time
he would promise that she should find an alteration by which he hoped
he might return the friendship at least of a young lady he honoured more
than any other in the world.
This retrograde movement was evidently unexpected by the honoured young
lady herself. After being so long accustomed to rebuke him for his
persistence there was novelty in finding him do the work for her. The
guess might even have been hazarded that there was also disappointment.
Still looking across the river at the bridge of boats which stretched to
the opposite suburb of Deutz: ‘You need not blame yourself,’ she said,
with the mildest conceivable manner, ‘I can make allowances. All I wish
is that you should remain under no misapprehension.’
‘I comprehend,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But since, by a perverse fate, I
have been thrown into your company, you could hardly expect me to feel
and act otherwise.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Since I have so much reason to be dissatisfied with myself,’ he added,
‘I cannot refrain from criticizing elsewhere to a slight extent, and
thinking I have to do with an ungenerous person.’
‘Why ungenerous?’
‘In this way; that since you cannot love me, you see no reason at all
for trying to do so in the fact that I so deeply love you; hence I say
that you are rather to be distinguished by your wisdom than by your
humanity.’
‘It comes to this, that if your words are all seriously meant it is much
to be regretted we ever met,’ she murmured. ‘Now will you go on to where
you were going, and leave me here?’
Without a remonstrance he went on, saying with dejected whimsicality as
he smiled back upon her, ‘You show a wisdom which for so young a lady is
perfectly surprising.’
It was resolved to prolong the journey by a circuit through Holland and
Belgium; but nothing changed in the attitudes of Paula and Captain De
Stancy till one afternoon during their stay at the Hague, when they had
gone for a drive down to Scheveningen by the long straight avenue of
chestnuts and limes, under whose boughs tufts of wild parsley waved
their flowers, except where the buitenplaatsen of retired merchants
blazed forth with new paint of every hue. On mounting the dune which
kept out the sea behind the village a brisk breeze greeted their faces,
and a fine sand blew up into their eyes. De Stancy screened Paula with
his umbrella as they stood with their backs to the wind, looking down
on the red roofs of the village within the sea wall, and pulling at the
long grass which by some means found nourishment in the powdery soil of
the dune.
When they had discussed the scene he continued, ‘It always seems to me
that this place reflects the average mood of human life. I mean, if we
strike the balance between our best moods and our worst we shall find
our average condition to stand at about the same pitch in emotional
colour as these sandy dunes and this grey scene do in landscape.’
Paula contended that he ought not to measure everybody by himself.
‘I have no other standard,’ said De Stancy; ‘and if my own is wrong, it
is you who have made it so. Have you thought any more of what I said at
Cologne?’
‘I don’t quite remember what you did say at Cologne?’
‘My dearest life!’ Paula’s eyes rounding somewhat, he corrected the
exclamation. ‘My dear Miss Power, I will, without reserve, tell it to
you all over again.’
‘Pray spare yourself the effort,’ she said drily. ‘What has that one
fatal step betrayed me into!... Do you seriously mean to say that I am
the cause of your life being coloured like this scene of grass and sand?
If so, I have committed a very great fault!’
‘It can be nullified by a word.’
‘Such a word!’
‘It is a very short one.’
‘There’s a still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you
suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you--that you
think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now,
it is raining; what shall we do? I thought this wind meant rain.’
‘Do? Stand on here, as we are standing now.’
‘Your sister and my aunt are gone under the wall. I think we will walk
towards them.’
‘You had made me hope,’ he continued (his thoughts apparently far away
from the rain and the wind and the possibility of shelter), ‘that you
might change your mind, and give to your original promise a liberal
meaning in renewing it. In brief I mean this, that you would allow it to
merge into an engagement. Don’t think it presumptuous,’ he went on, as
he held the umbrella over her; ‘I am sure any man would speak as I do. A
distinct permission to be with you on probation--that was what you gave
me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, what does that
mean?’
‘That I am artistically interested in your family history.’ And she went
out from the umbrella to the shelter of the hotel where she found her
aunt and friend.
De Stancy could not but feel that his persistence had made some
impression. It was hardly possible that a woman of independent nature
would have tolerated his dangling at her side so long, if his presence
were wholly distasteful to her. That evening when driving back to the
Hague by a devious route through the dense avenues of the Bosch he
conversed with her again; also the next day when standing by the Vijver
looking at the swans; and in each case she seemed to have at least
got over her objection to being seen talking to him, apart from the
remainder of the travelling party.
Scenes very similar to those at Scheveningen and on the Rhine were
enacted at later stages of their desultory journey. Mr. Power had
proposed to cross from Rotterdam; but a stiff north-westerly breeze
prevailing Paula herself became reluctant to hasten back to Stancy
Castle. Turning abruptly they made for Brussels.
It was here, while walking homeward from the Park one morning, that her
uncle for the first time alluded to the situation of affairs between
herself and her admirer. The captain had gone up the Rue Royale with his
sister and Mrs. Goodman, either to show them the house in which the ball
took place on the eve of Quatre Bras or some other site of interest, and
the two Powers were thus left to themselves. To reach their hotel they
passed into a little street sloping steeply down from the Rue Royale to
the Place Ste. Gudule, where, at the moment of nearing the cathedral, a
wedding party emerged from the porch and crossed in front of uncle and
niece.
‘I hope,’ said the former, in his passionless way, ‘we shall see a
performance of this sort between you and Captain De Stancy, not so very
long after our return to England.’
‘Why?’ asked Paula, following the bride with her eyes.
‘It is diplomatically, as I may say, such a highly correct thing--such
an expedient thing--such an obvious thing to all eyes.’
‘Not altogether to mine, uncle,’ she returned.
‘’Twould be a thousand pities to let slip such a neat offer of adjusting
difficulties as accident makes you in this. You could marry more tin,
that’s true; but you don’t want it, Paula. You want a name, and historic
what-do-they-call-it. Now by coming to terms with the captain you’ll be
Lady De Stancy in a few years: and a title which is useless to him, and
a fortune and castle which are in some degree useless to you, will make
a splendid whole useful to you both.’
‘I’ve thought it over--quite,’ she answered. ‘And I quite see what
the advantages are. But how if I don’t care one atom for artistic
completeness and a splendid whole; and do care very much to do what my
fancy inclines me to do?’
‘Then I should say that, taking a comprehensive view of human nature
of all colours, your fancy is about the silliest fancy existing on this
earthly ball.’
Paula laughed indifferently, and her uncle felt that, persistent as was
his nature, he was the wrong man to influence her by argument. Paula’s
blindness to the advantages of the match, if she were blind, was that of
a woman who wouldn’t see, and the best argument was silence.
This was in some measure proved the next morning. When Paula made her
appearance Mrs. Goodman said, holding up an envelope: ‘Here’s a letter
from Mr. Somerset.’
‘Dear me,’ said she blandly, though a quick little flush ascended her
cheek. ‘I had nearly forgotten him!’
The letter on being read contained a request as brief as it was
unexpected. Having prepared all the drawings necessary for the
rebuilding, Somerset begged leave to resign the superintendence of the
work into other hands.
‘His letter caps your remarks very aptly,’ said Mrs. Goodman, with
secret triumph. ‘You are nearly forgetting him, and he is quite
forgetting you.’
‘Yes,’ said Paula, affecting carelessness. ‘Well, I must get somebody
else, I suppose.’