Part 56

While De Stancy was talking in the twilight to the messenger at one end of the apartment, some other arrival was shown in by the side door, and in making his way after the conference across the hall to the room he had previously quitted, De Stancy encountered the new-comer. There was just enough light to reveal the countenance to be Dare’s; he bore a portfolio under his arm, and had begun to wear a moustache, in case the chief constable should meet him anywhere in his rambles, and be struck by his resemblance to the man in the studio.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ said Captain De Stancy, in tones he had never used before to the young man.

Dare started back in surprise, and naturally so. De Stancy, having adopted a new system of living, and relinquished the meagre diet and enervating waters of his past years, was rapidly recovering tone. His voice was firmer, his cheeks were less pallid; and above all he was authoritative towards his present companion, whose ingenuity in vamping up a being for his ambitious experiments seemed about to be rewarded, like Frankenstein’s, by his discomfiture at the hands of his own creature.

‘What the devil are you doing here, I say?’ repeated De Stancy.

‘You can talk to me like that, after my working so hard to get you on in life, and make a rising man of you!’ expostulated Dare, as one who felt himself no longer the leader in this enterprise.

‘But,’ said the captain less harshly, ‘if you let them discover any relations between us here, you will ruin the fairest prospects man ever had!’

‘O, I like that, captain--when you owe all of it to me!’

‘That’s too cool, Will.’

‘No; what I say is true. However, let that go. So now you are here on a call; but how are you going to get here often enough to win her before the other man comes back? If you don’t see her every day--twice, three times a day--you will not capture her in the time.’

‘I must think of that,’ said De Stancy.

‘There is only one way of being constantly here: you must come to copy the pictures or furniture, something in the way he did.’

‘I’ll think of it,’ muttered De Stancy hastily, as he heard the voices of the ladies, whom he hastened to join as they were appearing at the other end of the room. His countenance was gloomy as he recrossed the hall, for Dare’s words on the shortness of his opportunities had impressed him. Almost at once he uttered a hope to Paula that he might have further chance of studying, and if possible of copying, some of the ancestral faces with which the building abounded.

Meanwhile Dare had come forward with his portfolio, which proved to be full of photographs. While Paula and Charlotte were examining them he said to De Stancy, as a stranger: ‘Excuse my interruption, sir, but if you should think of copying any of the portraits, as you were stating just now to the ladies, my patent photographic process is at your service, and is, I believe, the only one which would be effectual in the dim indoor lights.’

‘It is just what I was thinking of,’ said De Stancy, now so far cooled down from his irritation as to be quite ready to accept Dare’s adroitly suggested scheme.

On application to Paula she immediately gave De Stancy permission to photograph to any extent, and told Dare he might bring his instruments as soon as Captain De Stancy required them.

‘Don’t stare at her in such a brazen way!’ whispered the latter to the young man, when Paula had withdrawn a few steps. ‘Say, “I shall highly value the privilege of assisting Captain De Stancy in such a work.”’

Dare obeyed, and before leaving De Stancy arranged to begin performing on his venerated forefathers the next morning, the youth so accidentally engaged agreeing to be there at the same time to assist in the technical operations.

III.

As he had promised, De Stancy made use the next day of the coveted permission that had been brought about by the ingenious Dare. Dare’s timely suggestion of tendering assistance had the practical result of relieving the other of all necessity for occupying his time with the proceeding, further than to bestow a perfunctory superintendence now and then, to give a colour to his regular presence in the fortress, the actual work of taking copies being carried on by the younger man.

The weather was frequently wet during these operations, and Paula, Miss De Stancy, and her brother, were often in the house whole mornings together. By constant urging and coaxing the latter would induce his gentle sister, much against her conscience, to leave him opportunities for speaking to Paula alone. It was mostly before some print or painting that these conversations occurred, while De Stancy was ostensibly occupied with its merits, or in giving directions to his photographer how to proceed. As soon as the dialogue began, the latter would withdraw out of earshot, leaving Paula to imagine him the most deferential young artist in the world.

‘You will soon possess duplicates of the whole gallery,’ she said on one of these occasions, examining some curled sheets which Dare had printed off from the negatives.

‘No,’ said the soldier. ‘I shall not have patience to go on. I get ill-humoured and indifferent, and then leave off.’

‘Why ill-humoured?’

‘I scarcely know--more than that I acquire a general sense of my own family’s want of merit through seeing how meritorious the people are around me. I see them happy and thriving without any necessity for me at all; and then I regard these canvas grandfathers and grandmothers, and ask, “Why was a line so antiquated and out of date prolonged till now?”’

She chid him good-naturedly for such views. ‘They will do you an injury,’ she declared. ‘Do spare yourself, Captain De Stancy!’

De Stancy shook his head as he turned the painting before him a little further to the light.

‘But, do you know,’ said Paula, ‘that notion of yours of being a family out of date is delightful to some people. I talk to Charlotte about it often. I am never weary of examining those canopied effigies in the church, and almost wish they were those of my relations.’

‘I will try to see things in the same light for your sake,’ said De Stancy fervently.