Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (393 page)

‘Chide me if you will; I don’t care!’

She looked steadfastly at him with a little mischief in her eyes. ‘You DO care,’ she said.

‘Then why don’t you listen to me? I would not persevere for a moment longer if it were against the wishes of your family. Your uncle says it would give him pleasure to see you accept me.’

‘Does he say why?’ she asked thoughtfully.

‘Yes; he takes, of course, a practical view of the matter; he thinks it commends itself so to reason and common sense that the owner of Stancy Castle should become a member of the De Stancy family.’

‘Yes, that’s the horrid plague of it,’ she said, with a nonchalance which seemed to contradict her words. ‘It is so dreadfully reasonable that we should marry. I wish it wasn’t!’

‘Well, you are younger than I, and perhaps that’s a natural wish. But to me it seems a felicitous combination not often met with. I confess that your interest in our family before you knew me lent a stability to my hopes that otherwise they would not have had.’

‘My interest in the De Stancys has not been a personal interest except in the case of your sister,’ she returned. ‘It has been an historical interest only; and is not at all increased by your existence.’

‘And perhaps it is not diminished?’

‘No, I am not aware that it is diminished,’ she murmured, as she observed the gliding shore.

‘Well, you will allow me to say this, since I say it without reference to your personality or to mine — that the Power and De Stancy families are the complements to each other; and that, abstractedly, they call earnestly to one another: “How neat and fit a thing for us to join hands!”‘

Paula, who was not prudish when a direct appeal was made to her common sense, answered with ready candour: ‘Yes, from the point of view of domestic politics, that undoubtedly is the case. But I hope I am not so calculating as to risk happiness in order to round off a social idea.’

‘I hope not; or that I am either. Still the social idea exists, and my increased years make its excellence more obvious to me than to you.’

The ice once broken on this aspect of the question, the subject seemed further to engross her, and she spoke on as if daringly inclined to venture where she had never anticipated going, deriving pleasure from the very strangeness of her temerity: ‘You mean that in the fitness of things I ought to become a De Stancy to strengthen my social position?’

‘And that I ought to strengthen mine by alliance with the heiress of a name so dear to engineering science as Power.’

‘Well, we are talking with unexpected frankness.’

‘But you are not seriously displeased with me for saying what, after all, one can’t help feeling and thinking?’

‘No. Only be so good as to leave off going further for the present. Indeed, of the two, I would rather have the other sort of address. I mean,’ she hastily added, ‘that what you urge as the result of a real affection, however unsuitable, I have some remote satisfaction in listening to — not the least from any reciprocal love on my side, but from a woman’s gratification at being the object of anybody’s devotion; for that feeling towards her is always regarded as a merit in a woman’s eye, and taken as a kindness by her, even when it is at the expense of her convenience.’

She had said, voluntarily or involuntarily, better things than he expected, and perhaps too much in her own opinion, for she hardly gave him an opportunity of replying.

They passed St. Goar and Boppard, and when steering round the sharp bend of the river just beyond the latter place De Stancy met her again, exclaiming, ‘You left me very suddenly.’

‘You must make allowances, please,’ she said; ‘I have always stood in need of them.’

‘Then you shall always have them.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said quickly; but Paula was not to be caught again, and kept close to the side of her aunt while they glided past Brauback and Oberlahnstein. Approaching Coblenz her aunt said, ‘Paula, let me suggest that you be not so much alone with Captain De Stancy.’

‘And why?’ said Paula quietly.

‘You’ll have plenty of offers if you want them, without taking trouble,’ said the direct Mrs. Goodman. ‘Your existence is hardly known to the world yet, and Captain De Stancy is too near middle-age for a girl like you.’ Paula did not reply to either of these remarks, being seemingly so interested in Ehrenbreitstein’s heights as not to hear them.

CHAPTER IX.

It was midnight at Coblenz, and the travellers had retired to rest in their respective apartments, overlooking the river. Finding that there was a moon shining, Paula leant out of her window. The tall rock of Ehrenbreitstein on the opposite shore was flooded with light, and a belated steamer was drawing up to the landing-stage, where it presently deposited its passengers.

‘We should have come by the last boat, so as to have been touched into romance by the rays of this moon, like those happy people,’ said a voice.

She looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, which was a window quite near at hand. De Stancy was smoking outside it, and she became aware that the words were addressed to her.

‘You left me very abruptly,’ he continued.

Paula’s instinct of caution impelled her to speak.

‘The windows are all open,’ she murmured. ‘Please be careful.’

‘There are no English in this hotel except ourselves. I thank you for what you said to-day.’

‘Please be careful,’ she repeated.

‘My dear Miss P —  — ’

‘Don’t mention names, and don’t continue the subject!’

‘Life and death perhaps depend upon my renewing it soon!’

She shut the window decisively, possibly wondering if De Stancy had drunk a glass or two of Steinberg more than was good for him, and saw no more of moonlit Ehrenbreitstein that night, and heard no more of De Stancy. But it was some time before he closed his window, and previous to doing so saw a dark form at an adjoining one on the other side.

It was Mr. Power, also taking the air. ‘Well, what luck to-day?’ said Power.

‘A decided advance,’ said De Stancy.

None of the speakers knew that a little person in the room above heard all this out-of-window talk. Charlotte, though not looking out, had left her casement open; and what reached her ears set her wondering as to the result.

It is not necessary to detail in full De Stancy’s imperceptible advances with Paula during that northward journey — so slowly performed that it seemed as if she must perceive there was a special reason for delaying her return to England. At Cologne one day he conveniently overtook her when she was ascending the hotel staircase. Seeing him, she went to the window of the entresol landing, which commanded a view of the Rhine, meaning that he should pass by to his room.

‘I have been very uneasy,’ began the captain, drawing up to her side; ‘and I am obliged to trouble you sooner than I meant to do.’

Paula turned her eyes upon him with some curiosity as to what was coming of this respectful demeanour. ‘Indeed!’ she said.

He then informed her that he had been overhauling himself since they last talked, and had some reason to blame himself for bluntness and general want of euphemism; which, although he had meant nothing by it, must have been very disagreeable to her. But he had always aimed at sincerity, particularly as he had to deal with a lady who despised hypocrisy and was above flattery. However, he feared he might have carried his disregard for conventionality too far. But from that time he would promise that she should find an alteration by which he hoped he might return the friendship at least of a young lady he honoured more than any other in the world.

This retrograde movement was evidently unexpected by the honoured young lady herself. After being so long accustomed to rebuke him for his persistence there was novelty in finding him do the work for her. The guess might even have been hazarded that there was also disappointment.

Still looking across the river at the bridge of boats which stretched to the opposite suburb of Deutz: ‘You need not blame yourself,’ she said, with the mildest conceivable manner, ‘I can make allowances. All I wish is that you should remain under no misapprehension.’

‘I comprehend,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But since, by a perverse fate, I have been thrown into your company, you could hardly expect me to feel and act otherwise.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Since I have so much reason to be dissatisfied with myself,’ he added, ‘I cannot refrain from criticizing elsewhere to a slight extent, and thinking I have to do with an ungenerous person.’

‘Why ungenerous?’

‘In this way; that since you cannot love me, you see no reason at all for trying to do so in the fact that I so deeply love you; hence I say that you are rather to be distinguished by your wisdom than by your humanity.’

‘It comes to this, that if your words are all seriously meant it is much to be regretted we ever met,’ she murmured. ‘Now will you go on to where you were going, and leave me here?’

Without a remonstrance he went on, saying with dejected whimsicality as he smiled back upon her, ‘You show a wisdom which for so young a lady is perfectly surprising.’

It was resolved to prolong the journey by a circuit through Holland and Belgium; but nothing changed in the attitudes of Paula and Captain De Stancy till one afternoon during their stay at the Hague, when they had gone for a drive down to Scheveningen by the long straight avenue of chestnuts and limes, under whose boughs tufts of wild parsley waved their flowers, except where the buitenplaatsen of retired merchants blazed forth with new paint of every hue. On mounting the dune which kept out the sea behind the village a brisk breeze greeted their faces, and a fine sand blew up into their eyes. De Stancy screened Paula with his umbrella as they stood with their backs to the wind, looking down on the red roofs of the village within the sea wall, and pulling at the long grass which by some means found nourishment in the powdery soil of the dune.

When they had discussed the scene he continued, ‘It always seems to me that this place reflects the average mood of human life. I mean, if we strike the balance between our best moods and our worst we shall find our average condition to stand at about the same pitch in emotional colour as these sandy dunes and this grey scene do in landscape.’

Paula contended that he ought not to measure everybody by himself.

‘I have no other standard,’ said De Stancy; ‘and if my own is wrong, it is you who have made it so. Have you thought any more of what I said at Cologne?’

‘I don’t quite remember what you did say at Cologne?’

‘My dearest life!’ Paula’s eyes rounding somewhat, he corrected the exclamation. ‘My dear Miss Power, I will, without reserve, tell it to you all over again.’

‘Pray spare yourself the effort,’ she said drily. ‘What has that one fatal step betrayed me into!... Do you seriously mean to say that I am the cause of your life being coloured like this scene of grass and sand? If so, I have committed a very great fault!’

‘It can be nullified by a word.’

‘Such a word!’

‘It is a very short one.’

‘There’s a still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you — that you think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now, it is raining; what shall we do? I thought this wind meant rain.’

‘Do? Stand on here, as we are standing now.’

‘Your sister and my aunt are gone under the wall. I think we will walk towards them.’

‘You had made me hope,’ he continued (his thoughts apparently far away from the rain and the wind and the possibility of shelter), ‘that you might change your mind, and give to your original promise a liberal meaning in renewing it. In brief I mean this, that you would allow it to merge into an engagement. Don’t think it presumptuous,’ he went on, as he held the umbrella over her; ‘I am sure any man would speak as I do. A distinct permission to be with you on probation — that was what you gave me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, what does that mean?’

‘That I am artistically interested in your family history.’ And she went out from the umbrella to the shelter of the hotel where she found her aunt and friend.

De Stancy could not but feel that his persistence had made some impression. It was hardly possible that a woman of independent nature would have tolerated his dangling at her side so long, if his presence were wholly distasteful to her. That evening when driving back to the Hague by a devious route through the dense avenues of the Bosch he conversed with her again; also the next day when standing by the Vijver looking at the swans; and in each case she seemed to have at least got over her objection to being seen talking to him, apart from the remainder of the travelling party.

Scenes very similar to those at Scheveningen and on the Rhine were enacted at later stages of their desultory journey. Mr. Power had proposed to cross from Rotterdam; but a stiff north-westerly breeze prevailing Paula herself became reluctant to hasten back to Stancy Castle. Turning abruptly they made for Brussels.