Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (395 page)

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.’

CHAPTER XI.

On the evening of the fourth day after the parting between Paula and De Stancy at Amiens, when it was quite dark in the Markton highway, except in so far as the shades were broken by the faint lights from the adjacent town, a young man knocked softly at the door of Myrtle Villa, and asked if Captain De Stancy had arrived from abroad. He was answered in the affirmative, and in a few moments the captain himself came from an adjoining room.

Seeing that his visitor was Dare, from whom, as will be remembered, he had parted at Carlsruhe in no very satisfied mood, De Stancy did not ask him into the house, but putting on his hat went out with the youth into the public road. Here they conversed as they walked up and down, Dare beginning by alluding to the death of Sir William, the suddenness of which he feared would delay Captain De Stancy’s overtures for the hand of Miss Power.

‘No,’ said De Stancy moodily. ‘On the contrary, it has precipitated matters.’

‘She has accepted you, captain?’

‘We are engaged to be married.’

‘Well done. I congratulate you.’ The speaker was about to proceed to further triumphant notes on the intelligence, when casting his eye upon the upper windows of the neighbouring villa, he appeared to reflect on what was within them, and checking himself, ‘When is the funeral to be?’

‘To-morrow,’ De Stancy replied. ‘It would be advisable for you not to come near me during the day.’

‘I will not. I will be a mere spectator. The old vault of our ancestors will be opened, I presume, captain?’

‘It is opened.’

‘I must see it — and ruminate on what we once were: it is a thing I like doing. The ghosts of our dead — Ah, what was that?’

‘I heard nothing.’

‘I thought I heard a footstep behind us.’

They stood still; but the road appeared to be quite deserted, and likely to continue so for the remainder of that evening. They walked on again, speaking in somewhat lower tones than before.

‘Will the late Sir William’s death delay the wedding much?’ asked the younger man curiously.

De Stancy languidly answered that he did not see why it should do so. Some little time would of course intervene, but, since there were several reasons for despatch, he should urge Miss Power and her relatives to consent to a virtually private wedding which might take place at a very early date; and he thought there would be a general consent on that point.

‘There are indeed reasons for despatch. Your title, Sir William, is a new safeguard over her heart, certainly; but there is many a slip, and you must not lose her now.’

‘I don’t mean to lose her!’ said De Stancy. ‘She is too good to be lost. And yet — since she gave her promise I have felt more than once that I would not engage in such a struggle again. It was not a thing of my beginning, though I was easily enough inflamed to follow. But I will not lose her now. — For God’s sake, keep that secret you have so foolishly pricked on your breast. It fills me with remorse to think what she with her scrupulous notions will feel, should she ever know of you and your history, and your relation to me!’

Dare made no reply till after a silence, when he said, ‘Of course mum’s the word till the wedding is over.’

‘And afterwards — promise that for her sake?’

‘And probably afterwards.’

Sir William De Stancy drew a dejected breath at the tone of the answer. They conversed but a little while longer, the captain hinting to Dare that it was time for them to part; not, however, before he had uttered a hope that the young man would turn over a new leaf and engage in some regular pursuit. Promising to call upon him at his lodgings De Stancy went indoors, and Dare briskly retraced his steps to Markton.

When his footfall had died away, and the door of the house opposite had been closed, another man appeared upon the scene. He came gently out of the hedge opposite Myrtle Villa, which he paused to regard for a moment. But instead of going townward, he turned his back upon the distant sprinkle of lights, and did not check his walk till he reached the lodge of Stancy Castle.

Here he pulled the wooden acorn beside the arch, and when the porter appeared his light revealed the pedestrian’s countenance to be scathed, as by lightning.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Power,’ said the porter with sudden deference as he opened the wicket. ‘But we wasn’t expecting anybody to-night, as there is nobody at home, and the servants on board wages; and that’s why I was so long a-coming.’

‘No matter, no matter,’ said Abner Power. ‘I have returned on sudden business, and have not come to stay longer than to-night. Your mistress is not with me. I meant to sleep in Markton, but have changed my mind.’

Mr. Power had brought no luggage with him beyond a small hand-bag, and as soon as a room could be got ready he retired to bed.