A Laodicean Part 50

'If you mean no more than mere compa.s.sion, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 canva.s.ser 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 gra.s.ses 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-Stra.s.se 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.

III.

While the malignant tongues had been playing havoc with Somerset's fame in the ears of Paula and her companion, the young man himself was proceeding partly by rail, partly on foot, below and amid the olive-clad hills, vineyards, carob groves, and lemon gardens of the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es. Arrived at San Remo he wrote to Nice to inquire for letters, and such as had come were duly forwarded; but not one of them was from Paula. This broke down his resolution to hold off, and he hastened directly to Genoa, regretting that he had not taken this step when he first heard that she was there.

Something in the very aspect of the marble halls of that city, which at any other time he would have liked to linger over, whispered to him that the bird had flown; and inquiry confirmed the fancy. Nevertheless, the architectural beauties of the palace-bordered street, looking as if mountains of marble must have been levelled to supply the materials for constructing it, detained him there two days: or rather a feat of resolution, by which he set himself to withstand the drag-chain of Paula's influence, was operative for that s.p.a.ce of time.

At the end of it he moved onward. There was no difficulty in discovering their track northwards; and feeling that he might as well return to England by the Rhine route as by any other, he followed in the course they had chosen, getting scent of them in Stra.s.sburg, missing them at Baden by a day, and finally overtaking them at Carlsruhe, which town he reached on the morning after the Power and De Stancy party had taken up their quarters at the ancient inn above mentioned. When Somerset was about to get out of the train at this place, little dreaming what a meaning the word Carlsruhe would have for him in subsequent years, he was disagreeably surprised to see no other than Dare stepping out of the adjoining carriage. A new brown leather valise in one of his hands, a new umbrella in the other, and a new suit of fashionable clothes on his back, seemed to denote considerable improvement in the young man's fortunes. Somerset was so struck by the circ.u.mstance of his being on this spot that he almost missed his opportunity for alighting.

Dare meanwhile had moved on without seeing his former employer, and Somerset resolved to take the chance that offered, and let him go. There was something so mysterious in their common presence simultaneously at one place, five hundred miles from where they had last met, that he exhausted conjecture on whether Dare's errand this way could have anything to do with his own, or whether their juxtaposition a second time was the result of pure accident. Greatly as he would have liked to get this answered by a direct question to Dare himself, he did not counteract his first instinct, and remained unseen.

They went out in different directions, when Somerset for the first time remembered that, in learning at Baden that the party had flitted towards Carlsruhe, he had taken no care to ascertain the name of the hotel they were bound for. Carlsruhe was not a large place and the point was immaterial, but the omission would necessitate a little inquiry. To follow Dare on the chance of his having fixed upon the same quarters was a course which did not commend itself. He resolved to get some lunch before proceeding with his business--or fatuity--of discovering the elusive lady, and drove off to a neighbouring tavern, which did not happen to be, as he hoped it might, the one chosen by those who had preceded him.

Meanwhile Dare, previously master of their plans, went straight to the house which sheltered them, and on entering under the archway from the Lange-Stra.s.se was saved the trouble of inquiring for Captain De Stancy by seeing him drinking bitters at a little table in the court. Had Somerset chosen this inn for his quarters instead of the one in the Market-Place which he actually did choose, the three must inevitably have met here at this moment, with some possibly striking dramatic results; though what they would have been remains for ever hidden in the darkness of the unfulfilled.

De Stancy jumped up from his chair, and went forward to the new-comer.

'You are not long behind us, then,' he said, with laconic disquietude.

'I thought you were going straight home?'

'I was,' said Dare, 'but I have been blessed with what I may call a small competency since I saw you last. Of the two hundred francs you gave me I risked fifty at the tables, and I have multiplied them, how many times do you think? More than four hundred times.'

De Stancy immediately looked grave. 'I wish you had lost them,' he said, with as much feeling as could be shown in a place where strangers were hovering near.

'Nonsense, captain! I have proceeded purely on a calculation of chances; and my calculations proved as true as I expected, notwithstanding a little in-and-out luck at first. Witness this as the result.' He smacked his bag with his umbrella, and the c.h.i.n.k of money resounded from within.

'Just feel the weight of it!'

'It is not necessary. I take your word.'

'Shall I lend you five pounds?'

'G.o.d forbid! As if that would repay me for what you have cost me! But come, let's get out of this place to where we can talk more freely.' He put his hand through the young man's arm, and led him round the corner of the hotel towards the Schloss-Platz.

'These runs of luck will be your ruin, as I have told you before,'

continued Captain De Stancy. 'You will be for repeating and repeating your experiments, and will end by blowing your brains out, as wiser heads than yours have done. I am glad you have come away, at any rate.

Why did you travel this way?'

'Simply because I could afford it, of course.--But come, captain, something has ruffled you to-day. I thought you did not look in the best temper the moment I saw you. Every sip you took of your pick-up as you sat there showed me something was wrong. Tell your worry!'

'Pooh--I can tell you in two words,' said the captain satirically. 'Your arrangement for my wealth and happiness--for I suppose you still claim it to be yours--has fallen through. The lady has announced to-day that she means to send for Somerset instantly. She is coming to a personal explanation with him. So woe to me--and in another sense, woe to you, as I have reason to fear.'

'Send for him!' said Dare, with the stillness of complete abstraction.

'Then he'll come.'

'Well,' said De Stancy, looking him in the face. 'And does it make you feel you had better be off? How about that telegram? Did he ask you to send it, or did he not?'

'One minute, or I shall be up such a tree as n.o.body ever saw the like of.'

'Then what did you come here for?' burst out De Stancy. ''Tis my belief you are no more than a--But I won't call you names; I'll tell you quite plainly that if there is anything wrong in that message to her--which I believe there is--no, I can't believe, though I fear it--you have the chance of appearing in drab clothes at the expense of the Government before the year is out, and I of being eternally disgraced!'

'No, captain, you won't be disgraced. I am bad to beat, I can tell you.

And come the worst luck, I don't say a word.'