They next deviated to Amiens, intending to stay there only one night;
but their schemes were deranged by the sudden illness of Charlotte. She
had been looking unwell for a fortnight past, though, with her usual
self-abnegation, she had made light of her ailment. Even now she
declared she could go on; but this was said over-night, and in
the morning it was abundantly evident that to move her was highly
unadvisable. Still she was not in serious danger, and having called in a
physician, who pronounced rest indispensable, they prepared to remain in
the old Picard capital two or three additional days. Mr. Power thought
he would take advantage of the halt to run up to Paris, leaving De
Stancy in charge of the ladies.
In more ways than in the illness of Charlotte this day was the harbinger
of a crisis.
It was a summer evening without a cloud. Charlotte had fallen asleep
in her bed, and Paula, who had been sitting by her, looked out into the
Place St. Denis, which the hotel commanded. The lawn of the square was
all ablaze with red and yellow clumps of flowers, the acacia trees were
brightly green, the sun was soft and low. Tempted by the prospect Paula
went and put on her hat; and arousing her aunt, who was nodding in the
next room, to request her to keep an ear on Charlotte’s bedroom, Paula
descended into the Rue de Noyon alone, and entered the green enclosure.
While she walked round, two or three little children in charge of a
nurse trundled a large variegated ball along the grass, and it rolled
to Paula’s feet. She smiled at them, and endeavoured to return it by a
slight kick. The ball rose in the air, and passing over the back of
a seat which stood under one of the trees, alighted in the lap of a
gentleman hitherto screened by its boughs. The back and shoulders proved
to be those of De Stancy. He turned his head, jumped up, and was at her
side in an instant, a nettled flush having meanwhile crossed Paula’s
face.
‘I thought you had gone to the Hotoie Promenade,’ she said hastily. ‘I
am going to the cathedral;’ (obviously uttered lest it should seem that
she had seen him from the hotel windows, and entered the square for his
company).
‘Of course: there is nothing else to go to here--even for Roundheads.’
‘If you mean ME by that, you are very much mistaken,’ said she testily.
‘The Roundheads were your ancestors, and they knocked down my ancestors’
castle, and broke the stained glass and statuary of the cathedral,’
said De Stancy slily; ‘and now you go not only to a cathedral, but to a
service of the unreformed Church in it.’
‘In a foreign country it is different from home,’ said Paula
in extenuation; ‘and you of all men should not reproach me for
tergiversation--when it has been brought about by--by my sympathies
with--’
‘With the troubles of the De Stancys.’
‘Well, you know what I mean,’ she answered, with considerable anxiety
not to be misunderstood; ‘my liking for the old castle, and what it
contains, and what it suggests. I declare I will not explain to you
further--why should I? I am not answerable to you!’
Paula’s show of petulance was perhaps not wholly because she had
appeared to seek him, but also from being reminded by his criticism that
Mr. Woodwell’s prophecy on her weakly succumbing to surroundings was
slowly working out its fulfilment.
She moved forward towards the gate at the further end of the square,
beyond which the cathedral lay at a very short distance. Paula did not
turn her head, and De Stancy strolled slowly after her down the Rue du
College. The day happened to be one of the church festivals, and people
were a second time flocking into the lofty monument of Catholicism at
its meridian. Paula vanished into the porch with the rest; and, almost
catching the wicket as it flew back from her hand, he too entered
the high-shouldered edifice--an edifice doomed to labour under the
melancholy misfortune of seeming only half as vast as it really is, and
as truly as whimsically described by Heine as a monument built with the
strength of Titans, and decorated with the patience of dwarfs.
De Stancy walked up the nave, so close beside her as to touch her dress;
but she would not recognize his presence; the darkness that evening had
thrown over the interior, which was scarcely broken by the few candles
dotted about, being a sufficient excuse if she required one.
‘Miss Power,’ De Stancy said at last, ‘I am coming to the service with
you.’
She received the intelligence without surprise, and he knew she had been
conscious of him all the way.
Paula went no further than the middle of the nave, where there was
hardly a soul, and took a chair beside a solitary rushlight which looked
amid the vague gloom of the inaccessible architecture like a lighthouse
at the foot of tall cliffs.
He put his hand on the next chair, saying, ‘Do you object?’
‘Not at all,’ she replied; and he sat down.
‘Suppose we go into the choir,’ said De Stancy presently. ‘Nobody sits
out here in the shadows.’
‘This is sufficiently near, and we have a candle,’ Paula murmured.
Before another minute had passed the candle flame began to drown in its
own grease, slowly dwindled, and went out.
‘I suppose that means I am to go into the choir in spite of myself.
Heaven is on your side,’ said Paula. And rising they left their now
totally dark corner, and joined the noiseless shadowy figures who in
twos and threes kept passing up the nave.
Within the choir there was a blaze of light, partly from the altar, and
more particularly from the image of the saint whom they had assembled
to honour, which stood, surrounded by candles and a thicket of flowering
plants, some way in advance of the foot-pace. A secondary radiance from
the same source was reflected upward into their faces by the polished
marble pavement, except when interrupted by the shady forms of the
officiating priests.
When it was over and the people were moving off, De Stancy and his
companion went towards the saint, now besieged by numbers of women
anxious to claim the respective flower-pots they had lent for the
decoration. As each struggled for her own, seized and marched off with
it, Paula remarked--‘This rather spoils the solemn effect of what has
gone before.’
‘I perceive you are a harsh Puritan.’
‘No, Captain De Stancy! Why will you speak so? I am far too much
otherwise. I have grown to be so much of your way of thinking, that
I accuse myself, and am accused by others, of being worldly, and
half-and-half, and other dreadful things--though it isn’t that at all.’
They were now walking down the nave, preceded by the sombre figures with
the pot flowers, who were just visible in the rays that reached them
through the distant choir screen at their back; while above the grey
night sky and stars looked in upon them through the high clerestory
windows.
‘Do be a little MORE of my way of thinking!’ rejoined De Stancy
passionately.
‘Don’t, don’t speak,’ she said rapidly. ‘There are Milly and Champreau!’
Milly was one of the maids, and Champreau the courier and valet who had
been engaged by Abner Power. They had been sitting behind the other pair
throughout the service, and indeed knew rather more of the relations
between Paula and De Stancy than Paula knew herself.
Hastening on the two latter went out, and walked together silently up
the short street. The Place St. Denis was now lit up, lights shone
from the hotel windows, and the world without the cathedral had so far
advanced in nocturnal change that it seemed as if they had been gone
from it for hours. Within the hotel they found the change even greater
than without. Mrs. Goodman met them half-way on the stairs.
‘Poor Charlotte is worse,’ she said. ‘Quite feverish, and almost
delirious.’
Paula reproached herself with ‘Why did I go away!’
The common interest of De Stancy and Paula in the sufferer at once
reproduced an ease between them as nothing else could have done. The
physician was again called in, who prescribed certain draughts, and
recommended that some one should sit up with her that night. If Paula
allowed demonstrations of love to escape her towards anybody it
was towards Charlotte, and her instinct was at once to watch by the
invalid’s couch herself, at least for some hours, it being deemed
unnecessary to call in a regular nurse unless she should sicken further.
‘But I will sit with her,’ said De Stancy. ‘Surely you had better go to
bed?’ Paula would not be persuaded; and thereupon De Stancy, saying he
was going into the town for a short time before retiring, left the room.
The last omnibus returned from the last train, and the inmates of the
hotel retired to rest. Meanwhile a telegram had arrived for Captain De
Stancy; but as he had not yet returned it was put in his bedroom, with
directions to the night-porter to remind him of its arrival.
Paula sat on with the sleeping Charlotte. Presently she retired into the
adjacent sitting-room with a book, and flung herself on a couch, leaving
the door open between her and her charge, in case the latter should
awake. While she sat a new breathing seemed to mingle with the regular
sound of Charlotte’s that reached her through the doorway: she turned
quickly, and saw her uncle standing behind her.
‘O--I thought you were in Paris!’ said Paula.
‘I have just come from there--I could not stay. Something has occurred
to my mind about this affair.’ His strangely marked visage, now more
noticeable from being worn with fatigue, had a spectral effect by the
night-light.
‘What affair?’
‘This marriage.... Paula, De Stancy is a good fellow enough, but you
must not accept him just yet.’
Paula did not answer.
‘Do you hear? You must not accept him,’ repeated her uncle, ‘till I have
been to England and examined into matters. I start in an hour’s time--by
the ten-minutes-past-two train.’
‘This is something very new!’
‘Yes--‘tis new,’ he murmured, relapsing into his Dutch manner. ‘You must
not accept him till something is made clear to me--something about a
queer relationship. I have come from Paris to say so.’
‘Uncle, I don’t understand this. I am my own mistress in all matters,
and though I don’t mind telling you I have by no means resolved to
accept him, the question of her marriage is especially a woman’s own
affair.’
Her uncle stood irresolute for a moment, as if his convictions were
more than his proofs. ‘I say no more at present,’ he murmured. ‘Can I do
anything for you about a new architect?’
‘Appoint Havill.’
‘Very well. Good night.’ And then he left her. In a short time she heard
him go down and out of the house to cross to England by the morning
steamboat.
With a little shrug, as if she resented his interference in so delicate
a point, she settled herself down anew to her book.
One, two, three hours passed, when Charlotte awoke, but soon slumbered
sweetly again. Milly had stayed up for some time lest her mistress
should require anything; but the girl being sleepy Paula sent her to
bed.
It was a lovely night of early summer, and drawing aside the window
curtains she looked out upon the flowers and trees of the Place, now
quite visible, for it was nearly three o’clock, and the morning light
was growing strong. She turned her face upwards. Except in the case of
one bedroom all the windows on that side of the hotel were in darkness.
The room being rather close she left the casement ajar, and opening the
door walked out upon the staircase landing. A number of caged canaries
were kept here, and she observed in the dim light of the landing
lamp how snugly their heads were all tucked in. On returning to the
sitting-room again she could hear that Charlotte was still slumbering,
and this encouraging circumstance disposed her to go to bed herself.
Before, however, she had made a move a gentle tap came to the door.
Paula opened it. There, in the faint light by the sleeping canaries,
stood Charlotte’s brother.
‘How is she now?’ he whispered.
‘Sleeping soundly,’ said Paula.
‘That’s a blessing. I have not been to bed. I came in late, and have now
come down to know if I had not better take your place?’
‘Nobody is required, I think. But you can judge for yourself.’
Up to this point they had conversed in the doorway of the sitting-room,
which De Stancy now entered, crossing it to Charlotte’s apartment. He
came out from the latter at a pensive pace.
‘She is doing well,’ he said gently. ‘You have been very good to her.
Was the chair I saw by her bed the one you have been sitting in all
night?’
‘I sometimes sat there; sometimes here.’
‘I wish I could have sat beside you, and held your hand--I speak
frankly.’
‘To excess.’
‘And why not? I do not wish to hide from you any corner of my breast,
futile as candour may be. Just Heaven! for what reason is it ordered
that courtship, in which soldiers are usually so successful, should be a
failure with me?’
‘Your lack of foresight chiefly in indulging feelings that were not
encouraged. That, and my uncle’s indiscreet permission to you to travel
with us, have precipitated our relations in a way that I could neither
foresee nor avoid, though of late I have had apprehensions that it might
come to this. You vex and disturb me by such words of regret.’
‘Not more than you vex and disturb me. But you cannot hate the man who
loves you so devotedly?’
‘I have said before I don’t hate you. I repeat that I am interested in
your family and its associations because of its complete contrast with
my own.’ She might have added, ‘And I am additionally interested just
now because my uncle has forbidden me to be.’
‘But you don’t care enough for me personally to save my happiness.’
Paula hesitated; from the moment De Stancy confronted her she had
felt that this nocturnal conversation was to be a grave business. The
cathedral clock struck three. ‘I have thought once or twice,’ she said
with a naivete unusual in her, ‘that if I could be sure of giving peace
and joy to your mind by becoming your wife, I ought to endeavour to
do so and make the best of it--merely as a charity. But I believe that
feeling is a mistake: your discontent is constitutional, and would go on
just the same whether I accepted you or no. My refusal of you is purely
an imaginary grievance.’
‘Not if I think otherwise.’
‘O no,’ she murmured, with a sense that the place was very lonely and
silent. ‘If you think it otherwise, I suppose it is otherwise.’
‘My darling; my Paula!’ he said, seizing her hand. ‘Do promise me
something. You must indeed!’
‘Captain De Stancy!’ she said, trembling and turning away. ‘Captain De
Stancy!’ She tried to withdraw her fingers, then faced him, exclaiming
in a firm voice a third time, ‘Captain De Stancy! let go my hand; for I
tell you I will not marry you!’
‘Good God!’ he cried, dropping her hand. ‘What have I driven you to say
in your anger! Retract it--O, retract it!’
‘Don’t urge me further, as you value my good opinion!’
‘To lose you now, is to lose you for ever. Come, please answer!’
‘I won’t be compelled!’ she interrupted with vehemence. ‘I am resolved
not to be yours--not to give you an answer to-night! Never, never will I
be reasoned out of my intention; and I say I won’t answer you to-night!
I should never have let you be so much with me but for pity of you; and
now it is come to this!’
She had sunk into a chair, and now leaned upon her hand, and buried her
face in her handkerchief. He had never caused her any such agitation as
this before.
‘You stab me with your words,’ continued De Stancy. ‘The experience
I have had with you is without parallel, Paula. It seems like a
distracting dream.’
‘I won’t be hurried by anybody!’
‘That may mean anything,’ he said, with a perplexed, passionate air.
‘Well, mine is a fallen family, and we must abide caprices. Would to
Heaven it were extinguished!’
‘What was extinguished?’ she murmured.
‘The De Stancys. Here am I, a homeless wanderer, living on my pay;
in the next room lies she, my sister, a poor little fragile feverish
invalid with no social position--and hardly a friend. We two represent
the De Stancy line; and I wish we were behind the iron door of our
old vault at Sleeping-Green. It can be seen by looking at us and our
circumstances that we cry for the earth and oblivion!’
‘Captain De Stancy, it is not like that, I assure you,’ sympathized
Paula with damp eyelashes. ‘I love Charlotte too dearly for you to talk
like that, indeed. I don’t want to marry you exactly: and yet I cannot
bring myself to say I permanently reject you, because I remember you
are Charlotte’s brother, and do not wish to be the cause of any morbid
feelings in you which would ruin your future prospects.’
‘My dear life, what is it you doubt in me? Your earnestness not to do me
harm makes it all the harder for me to think of never being more than a
friend.’
‘Well, I have not positively refused!’ she exclaimed, in mixed tones
of pity and distress. ‘Let me think it over a little while. It is not
generous to urge so strongly before I can collect my thoughts, and at
this midnight time!’
‘Darling, forgive it!--There, I’ll say no more.’
He then offered to sit up in her place for the remainder of the night;
but Paula declined, assuring him that she meant to stay only another
half-hour, after which nobody would be necessary.
He had already crossed the landing to ascend to his room, when she
stepped after him, and asked if he had received his telegram.
‘No,’ said De Stancy. ‘Nor have I heard of one.’
Paula explained that it was put in his room, that he might see it the
moment he came in.
‘It matters very little,’ he replied, ‘since I shall see it now.
Good-night, dearest: good-night!’ he added tenderly.
She gravely shook her head. ‘It is not for you to express yourself like
that,’ she answered. ‘Good-night, Captain De Stancy.’
He went up the stairs to the second floor, and Paula returned to the
sitting-room. Having left a light burning De Stancy proceeded to look
for the telegram, and found it on the carpet, where it had been
swept from the table. When he had opened the sheet a sudden solemnity
overspread his face. He sat down, rested his elbow on the table, and his
forehead on his hands.
Captain De Stancy did not remain thus long. Rising he went softly
downstairs. The grey morning had by this time crept into the hotel,
rendering a light no longer necessary. The old clock on the landing was
within a few minutes of four, and the birds were hopping up and down
their cages, and whetting their bills. He tapped at the sitting-room,
and she came instantly.
‘But I told you it was not necessary--’ she began.
‘Yes, but the telegram,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I wanted to let you know
first that--it is very serious. Paula--my father is dead! He died
suddenly yesterday, and I must go at once... . About Charlotte--and how
to let her know--’
‘She must not be told yet,’ said Paula.... ‘Sir William dead!’
‘You think we had better not tell her just yet?’ said De Stancy
anxiously. ‘That’s what I want to consult you about, if you--don’t mind
my intruding.’
‘Certainly I don’t,’ she said.
They continued the discussion for some time; and it was decided that
Charlotte should not be informed of what had happened till the doctor
had been consulted, Paula promising to account for her brother’s
departure.
De Stancy then prepared to leave for England by the first morning train,
and roused the night-porter, which functionary, having packed off Abner
Power, was discovered asleep on the sofa of the landlord’s parlour. At
half-past five Paula, who in the interim had been pensively sitting with
her hand to her chin, quite forgetting that she had meant to go to bed,
heard wheels without, and looked from the window. A fly had been brought
round, and one of the hotel servants was in the act of putting up a
portmanteau with De Stancy’s initials upon it. A minute afterwards the
captain came to her door.
‘I thought you had not gone to bed, after all.’
‘I was anxious to see you off,’ said she, ‘since neither of the others
is awake; and you wished me not to rouse them.’
‘Quite right, you are very good;’ and lowering his voice: ‘Paula, it is
a sad and solemn time with me. Will you grant me one word--not on our
last sad subject, but on the previous one--before I part with you to go
and bury my father?’
‘Certainly,’ she said, in gentle accents.
‘Then have you thought over my position? Will you at last have pity upon
my loneliness by becoming my wife?’
Paula sighed deeply; and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Your hand upon it.’
She gave him her hand: he held it a few moments, then raised it to his
lips, and was gone.
When Mrs. Goodman rose she was informed of Sir William’s death, and of
his son’s departure.
‘Then the captain is now Sir William De Stancy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Really,
Paula, since you would be Lady De Stancy by marrying him, I almost
think--’
‘Hush, aunt!’
‘Well; what are you writing there?’
‘Only entering in my diary that I accepted him this morning for pity’s
sake, in spite of Uncle Abner. They’ll say it was for the title, but
knowing it was not I don’t care.’