Part 37

The latter offered no objection, and all three went into the drawing-office.

‘It will certainly be a magnificent structure,’ said the creditor, after regarding the elevations through his spectacles. ‘Stancy Castle: I had no idea of it! and when do you begin to build, Mr. Havill?’ he inquired in mollified tones.

‘In three months, I think?’ said Dare, looking to Havill.

Havill assented.

‘Five thousand pounds commission,’ murmured the creditor. ‘Paid down, I suppose?’

Havill nodded.

‘And the works will not linger for lack of money to carry them out, I imagine,’ said Dare. ‘Two hundred thousand will probably be spent before the work is finished.’

‘There is not much doubt of it,’ said Havill.

‘You said nothing to me about this?’ whispered the creditor to Havill, taking him aside, with a look of regret.

‘You would not listen!’

‘It alters the case greatly.’ The creditor retired with Havill to the door, and after a subdued colloquy in the passage he went away, Havill returning to the office.

‘What the devil do you mean by hoaxing him like this, when the job is no more mine than Inigo Jones’s?’

‘Don’t be too curious,’ said Dare, laughing. ‘Rather thank me for getting rid of him.’

‘But it is all a vision!’ said Havill, ruefully regarding the pencilled towers of Stancy Castle. ‘If the competition were really the commission that you have represented it to be there might be something to laugh at.’

‘It must be made a commission, somehow,’ returned Dare carelessly. ‘I am come to lend you a little assistance. I must stay in the neighbourhood, and I have nothing else to do.’

A carriage slowly passed the window, and Havill recognized the Power liveries. ‘Hullo--she’s coming here!’ he said under his breath, as the carriage stopped by the kerb. ‘What does she want, I wonder? Dare, does she know you?’

‘I would just as soon be out of the way.’

‘Then go into the garden.’

Dare went out through the back office as Paula was shown in at the front. She wore a grey travelling costume, and seemed to be in some haste.

‘I am on my way to the railway-station,’ she said to Havill. ‘I shall be absent from home for several weeks, and since you requested it, I have called to inquire how you are getting on with the design.’

‘Please look it over,’ said Havill, placing a seat for her.

‘No,’ said Paula. ‘I think it would be unfair. I have not looked at Mr.--the other architect’s plans since he has begun to design seriously, and I will not look at yours. Are you getting on quite well, and do you want to know anything more? If so, go to the castle, and get anybody to assist you. Why would you not make use of the room at your disposal in the castle, as the other architect has done?’

In asking the question her face was towards the window, and suddenly her cheeks became a rosy red. She instantly looked another way.

‘Having my own office so near, it was not necessary, thank you,’ replied Havill, as, noting her countenance, he allowed his glance to stray into the street. Somerset was walking past on the opposite side.

‘The time is--the time fixed for sending in the drawings is the first of November, I believe,’ she said confusedly; ‘and the decision will be come to by three gentlemen who are prominent members of the Institute of Architects.’

Havill then accompanied her to the carriage, and she drove away.

Havill went to the back window to tell Dare that he need not stay in the garden; but the garden was empty. The architect remained alone in his office for some time; at the end of a quarter of an hour, when the scream of a railway whistle had echoed down the still street, he beheld Somerset repassing the window in a direction from the railway, with somewhat of a sad gait. In another minute Dare entered, humming the latest air of Offenbach.

‘’Tis a mere piece of duplicity!’ said Havill.