Part 27

‘Will you make amends by coming to our garden party? I ask you the very first.’

‘I will,’ replied Somerset. To add that it would give him great pleasure, etc., seemed an absurdly weak way of expressing his feelings, and he said no more.

‘It is on the nineteenth. Don’t forget the day.’

He met her eyes in such a way that, if she were woman, she must have seen it to mean as plainly as words: ‘Do I look as if I could forget anything you say?’

She must, indeed, have understood much more by this time--the whole of his open secret. But he did not understand her. History has revealed that a supernumerary lover or two is rarely considered a disadvantage by a woman, from queen to cottage-girl; and the thought made him pause.

XIV.

When she was gone he went on with the drawing, not calling in Dare, who remained in the room adjoining. Presently a servant came and laid a paper on his table, which Miss Power had sent. It was one of the morning newspapers, and was folded so that his eye fell immediately on a letter headed ‘Restoration or Demolition.’

The letter was professedly written by a dispassionate person solely in the interests of art. It drew attention to the circumstance that the ancient and interesting castle of the De Stancys had unhappily passed into the hands of an iconoclast by blood, who, without respect for the tradition of the county, or any feeling whatever for history in stone, was about to demolish much, if not all, that was interesting in that ancient pile, and insert in its midst a monstrous travesty of some Greek temple. In the name of all lovers of mediaeval art, conjured the simple-minded writer, let something be done to save a building which, injured and battered in the Civil Wars, was now to be made a complete ruin by the freaks of an irresponsible owner. Her sending him the paper seemed to imply that she required his opinion on the case; and in the afternoon, leaving Dare to measure up a wing according to directions, he went out in the hope of meeting her, having learnt that she had gone to the village. On reaching the church he saw her crossing the churchyard path with her aunt and Miss De Stancy. Somerset entered the enclosure, and as soon as she saw him she came across.

‘What is to be done?’ she asked.

‘You need not be concerned about such a letter as that.’

‘I am concerned.’

‘I think it dreadful impertinence,’ spoke up Charlotte, who had joined them. ‘Can you think who wrote it, Mr. Somerset?’

Somerset could not.

‘Well, what am I to do?’ repeated Paula.

‘Just as you would have done before.’

‘That’s what I say,’ observed Mrs. Goodman emphatically.

‘But I have already altered--I have given up the Greek court.’

‘O--you had seen the paper this morning before you looked at my drawing?’

‘I had,’ she answered.

Somerset thought it a forcible illustration of her natural reticence that she should have abandoned the design without telling him the reason; but he was glad she had not done it from mere caprice.

She turned to him and said quietly, ‘I wish YOU would answer that letter.’

‘It would be ill-advised,’ said Somerset. ‘Still, if, after consideration, you wish it much, I will. Meanwhile let me impress upon you again the expediency of calling in Mr. Havill--to whom, as your father’s architect, expecting this commission, something perhaps is owed--and getting him to furnish an alternative plan to mine, and submitting the choice of designs to some members of the Royal Institute of British Architects. This letter makes it still more advisable than before.’

‘Very well,’ said Paula reluctantly.

‘Let him have all the particulars you have been good enough to explain to me--so that we start fair in the competition.’

She looked negligently on the grass. ‘I will tell the building steward to write them out for him,’ she said.

The party separated and entered the church by different doors. Somerset went to a nook of the building that he had often intended to visit. It was called the Stancy aisle; and in it stood the tombs of that family. Somerset examined them: they were unusually rich and numerous, beginning with cross-legged knights in hauberks of chain-mail, their ladies beside them in wimple and cover-chief, all more or less coated with the green mould and dirt of ages: and continuing with others of later date, in fine alabaster, gilded and coloured, some of them wearing round their necks the Yorkist collar of suns and roses, the livery of Edward the Fourth. In scrutinizing the tallest canopy over these he beheld Paula behind it, as if in contemplation of the same objects.

‘You came to the church to sketch these monuments, I suppose, Mr. Somerset?’ she asked, as soon as she saw him.

‘No. I came to speak to you about the letter.’