Part 82

‘Why was that?’

‘Somebody came and told me that he would not appear.’

‘Who?’

‘A young man who has been acting as his clerk. His name is Dare. He informed me that Mr. Somerset could not keep the appointment.’

‘Why?’

‘He had gone on to San Remo.’

‘Has he been travelling with Mr. Somerset?’

‘He had been with him. They know each other very well. But as you commissioned me to deliver the money into no hands but Mr. Somerset’s, I adhered strictly to your instructions.’

‘But perhaps my instructions were not wise. Should it in your opinion have been sent by this young man? Was he commissioned to ask you for it?’

De Stancy murmured that Dare was not commissioned to ask for it; that upon the whole he deemed her instructions wise; and was still of opinion that the best thing had been done.

Although De Stancy was distracted between his desire to preserve Dare from the consequences of folly, and a gentlemanly wish to keep as close to the truth as was compatible with that condition, his answers had not appeared to Paula to be particularly evasive, the conjuncture being one in which a handsome heiress’s shrewdness was prone to overleap itself by setting down embarrassment on the part of the man she questioned to a mere lover’s difficulty in steering between honour and rivalry.

She put but one other question. ‘Did it appear as if he, Mr. Somerset, after telegraphing, had--had--regretted doing so, and evaded the result by not keeping the appointment?’

‘That’s just how it appears.’ The words, which saved Dare from ignominy, cost De Stancy a good deal. He was sorry for Somerset, sorry for himself, and very sorry for Paula. But Dare was to De Stancy what Somerset could never be: and ‘for his kin that is near unto him shall a man be defiled.’

After that interview Charlotte saw with warring impulses that Somerset slowly diminished in Paula’s estimate; slowly as the moon wanes, but as certainly. Charlotte’s own love was of a clinging, uncritical sort, and though the shadowy intelligence of Somerset’s doings weighed down her soul with regret, it seemed to make not the least difference in her affection for him.

In the afternoon the whole party, including De Stancy, drove about the streets. Here they looked at the house in which Goethe had lived, and afterwards entered the cathedral. Observing in the south transept a crowd of people waiting patiently, they were reminded that they unwittingly stood in the presence of the popular clock-work of Schwilgue.

Mr. Power and Mrs. Goodman decided that they would wait with the rest of the idlers and see the puppets perform at the striking. Charlotte also waited with them; but as it wanted eight minutes to the hour, and as Paula had seen the show before, she moved on into the nave.

Presently she found that De Stancy had followed. He did not come close till she, seeing him stand silent, said, ‘If it were not for this cathedral, I should not like the city at all; and I have even seen cathedrals I like better. Luckily we are going on to Baden to-morrow.’

‘Your uncle has just told me. He has asked me to keep you company.’

‘Are you intending to?’ said Paula, probing the base-moulding of a pier with her parasol.

‘I have nothing better to do, nor indeed half so good,’ said De Stancy. ‘I am abroad for my health, you know, and what’s like the Rhine and its neighbourhood in early summer, before the crowd comes? It is delightful to wander about there, or anywhere, like a child, influenced by no fixed motive more than that of keeping near some friend, or friends, including the one we most admire in the world.’

‘That sounds perilously like love-making.’

‘’Tis love indeed.’

‘Well, love is natural to men, I suppose,’ rejoined the young lady. ‘But you must love within bounds; or you will be enervated, and cease to be useful as a heavy arm of the service.’

‘My dear Miss Power, your didactic and respectable rules won’t do for me. If you expect straws to stop currents, you are sadly mistaken! But no--let matters be: I am a happy contented mortal at present, say what you will.... You don’t ask why? Perhaps you know. It is because all I care for in the world is near me, and that I shall never be more than a hundred yards from her as long as the present arrangement continues.’

‘We are in a cathedral, remember, Captain De Stancy, and should not keep up a secular conversation.’

‘If I had never said worse in a cathedral than what I have said here, I should be content to meet my eternal judge without absolution. Your uncle asked me this morning how I liked you.’

‘Well, there was no harm in that.’

‘How I like you! Harm, no; but you should have seen how silly I looked. Fancy the inadequacy of the expression when my whole sense is absorbed by you.’