Part 23

His reply had not altogether pleased her; and there was a distinct reproach conveyed by her slight movement towards Mrs. Goodman. He saw it, and was grieved that he should have spoken so. ‘I am going to walk over and inspect that famous tunnel of your father’s,’ he added gently. ‘It will be a pleasant study for this afternoon.’

She went away. ‘I am no man of the world,’ he thought. ‘I ought to have praised that father of hers straight off. I shall not win her respect; much less her love!’

XII.

Somerset did not forget what he had planned, and when lunch was over he walked away through the trees. The tunnel was more difficult of discovery than he had anticipated, and it was only after considerable winding among green lanes, whose deep ruts were like canyons of Colorado in miniature, that he reached the slope in the distant upland where the tunnel began. A road stretched over its crest, and thence along one side of the railway-cutting.

He there unexpectedly saw standing Miss Power’s carriage; and on drawing nearer he found it to contain Paula herself, Miss De Stancy, and Mrs. Goodman.

‘How singular!’ exclaimed Miss De Stancy gaily.

‘It is most natural,’ said Paula instantly. ‘In the morning two people discuss a feature in the landscape, and in the afternoon each has a desire to see it from what the other has said of it. Therefore they accidentally meet.’

Now Paula had distinctly heard Somerset declare that he was going to walk there; how then could she say this so coolly? It was with a pang at his heart that he returned to his old thought of her being possibly a finished coquette and dissembler. Whatever she might be, she was not a creature starched very stiffly by Puritanism.

Somerset looked down on the mouth of the tunnel. The popular commonplace that science, steam, and travel must always be unromantic and hideous, was not proven at this spot. On either slope of the deep cutting, green with long grass, grew drooping young trees of ash, beech, and other flexible varieties, their foliage almost concealing the actual railway which ran along the bottom, its thin steel rails gleaming like silver threads in the depths. The vertical front of the tunnel, faced with brick that had once been red, was now weather-stained, lichened, and mossed over in harmonious rusty-browns, pearly greys, and neutral greens, at the very base appearing a little blue-black spot like a mouse-hole--the tunnel’s mouth.

The carriage was drawn up quite close to the wood railing, and Paula was looking down at the same time with him; but he made no remark to her.

Mrs. Goodman broke the silence by saying, ‘If it were not a railway we should call it a lovely dell.’

Somerset agreed with her, adding that it was so charming that he felt inclined to go down.

‘If you do, perhaps Miss Power will order you up again, as a trespasser,’ said Charlotte De Stancy. ‘You are one of the largest shareholders in the railway, are you not, Paula?’

Miss Power did not reply.

‘I suppose as the road is partly yours you might walk all the way to London along the rails, if you wished, might you not, dear?’ Charlotte continued.

Paula smiled, and said, ‘No, of course not.’

Somerset, feeling himself superfluous, raised his hat to his companions as if he meant not to see them again for a while, and began to descend by some steps cut in the earth; Miss De Stancy asked Mrs. Goodman to accompany her to a barrow over the top of the tunnel; and they left the carriage, Paula remaining alone.

Down Somerset plunged through the long grass, bushes, late summer flowers, moths, and caterpillars, vexed with himself that he had come there, since Paula was so inscrutable, and humming the notes of some song he did not know. The tunnel that had seemed so small from the surface was a vast archway when he reached its mouth, which emitted, as a contrast to the sultry heat on the slopes of the cutting, a cool breeze, that had travelled a mile underground from the other end. Far away in the darkness of this silent subterranean corridor he could see that other end as a mere speck of light.

When he had conscientiously admired the construction of the massive archivault, and the majesty of its nude ungarnished walls, he looked up the slope at the carriage; it was so small to the eye that it might have been made for a performance by canaries; Paula’s face being still smaller, as she leaned back in her seat, idly looking down at him. There seemed something roguish in her attitude of criticism, and to be no longer the subject of her contemplation he entered the tunnel out of her sight.

In the middle of the speck of light before him appeared a speck of black; and then a shrill whistle, dulled by millions of tons of earth, reached his ears from thence. It was what he had been on his guard against all the time,--a passing train; and instead of taking the trouble to come out of the tunnel he stepped into a recess, till the train had rattled past and vanished onward round a curve.

Somerset still remained where he had placed himself, mentally balancing science against art, the grandeur of this fine piece of construction against that of the castle, and thinking whether Paula’s father had not, after all, the best of it, when all at once he saw Paula’s form confronting him at the entrance of the tunnel. He instantly went forward into the light; to his surprise she was as pale as a lily.

‘O, Mr. Somerset!’ she exclaimed. ‘You ought not to frighten me so--indeed you ought not! The train came out almost as soon as you had gone in, and as you did not return--an accident was possible!’

Somerset at once perceived that he had been to blame in not thinking of this.

‘Please do forgive my thoughtlessness in not reflecting how it would strike you!’ he pleaded. ‘I--I see I have alarmed you.’

Her alarm was, indeed, much greater than he had at first thought: she trembled so much that she was obliged to sit down, at which he went up to her full of solicitousness.

‘You ought not to have done it!’ she said. ‘I naturally thought--any person would--’

Somerset, perhaps wisely, said nothing at this outburst; the cause of her vexation was, plainly enough, his perception of her discomposure. He stood looking in another direction, till in a few moments she had risen to her feet again, quite calm.

‘It would have been dreadful,’ she said with faint gaiety, as the colour returned to her face; ‘if I had lost my architect, and been obliged to engage Mr. Havill without an alternative.’