A Laodicean : A Story of To-day

‘What then?’

‘I saw it.’

She blushed and looked down the river. ‘I cannot give my reasons,’ she said.

‘Of course not,’ said Somerset.

‘I would give a great deal to possess real logical dogmatism.’

‘So would I.’

There was a moment of embarrassment: she wanted to get away, but did not precisely know how. He would have withdrawn had she not said, as if rather oppressed by her conscience, and evidently still thinking him the curate: ‘I cannot but feel that Mr. Woodwell’s heart has been unnecessarily wounded.’

‘The minister’s?’

‘Yes. He is single-mindedness itself. He gives away nearly all he has to the poor. He works among the sick, carrying them necessaries with his own hands. He teaches the ignorant men and lads of the village when he ought to be resting at home, till he is absolutely prostrate from exhaustion, and then he sits up at night writing encouraging letters to those poor people who formerly belonged to his congregation in the village, and have now gone away. He always offends ladies, because he can’t help speaking the truth as he believes it; but he hasn’t offended me!’

Her feelings had risen towards the end, so that she finished quite warmly, and turned aside.

‘I was not in the least aware that he was such a man,’ murmured Somerset, looking wistfully after the minister… ‘Whatever you may have done, I fear that I have grievously wounded a worthy man’s heart from an idle wish to engage in a useless, unbecoming, dull, last-century argument.’

‘Not dull,’ she murmured, ‘for it interested me.’

Somerset accepted her correction willingly. ‘It was ill-considered of me, however,’ he said; ‘and in his distress he has forgotten his Bible.’ He went and picked up the worn volume from where it lay on the grass.

‘You can easily win him to forgive you, by just following, and returning the book to him,’ she observed.

‘I will,’ said the young man impulsively. And, bowing to her, he hastened along the river brink after the minister. He at length saw his friend before him, leaning over the gate which led from the private path into a lane, his cheek resting on the palm of his hand with every outward sign of abstraction. He was not conscious of Somerset’s presence till the latter touched him on the shoulder.

Never was a reconciliation effected more readily. When Somerset said that, fearing his motives might be misconstrued, he had followed to assure the minister of his goodwill and esteem, Mr. Woodwell held out his hand, and proved his friendliness in return by preparing to have the controversy on their religious differences over again from the beginning, with exhaustive detail. Somerset evaded this with alacrity, and once having won his companion to other subjects he found that the austere man had a smile as pleasant as an infant’s on the rare moments when he indulged in it; moreover, that he was warmly attached to Miss Power.

‘Though she gives me more trouble than all the rest of the Baptist church in this district,’ he said, ‘I love her as my own daughter. But I am sadly exercised to know what she is at heart. Heaven supply me with fortitude to contest her wild opinions, and intractability! But she has sweet virtues, and her conduct at times can be most endearing.’

‘I believe it!’ said Somerset, with more fervour than mere politeness required.

‘Sometimes I think those Stancy towers and lands will be a curse to her. The spirit of old papistical times still lingers in the nooks of those silent walls, like a bad odour in a still atmosphere, dulling the iconoclastic emotions of the true Puritan. It would be a pity indeed if she were to be tainted by the very situation that her father’s indomitable energy created for her.’

‘Do not be concerned about her,’ said Somerset gently. ‘She’s not a Paedobaptist at heart, although she seems so.’

Mr. Woodwell placed his finger on Somerset’s arm, saying, ‘If she’s not a Paedobaptist, or Episcopalian; if she is not vulnerable to the mediaeval influences of her mansion, lands, and new acquaintance, it is because she’s been vulnerable to what is worse: to doctrines beside which the errors of Paaedobaptists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, are but as air.’

‘How? You astonish me.’

‘Have you heard in your metropolitan experience of a curious body of New Lights, as they think themselves?’ The minister whispered a name to his listener, as if he were fearful of being overheard.

‘O no,’ said Somerset, shaking his head, and smiling at the minister’s horror. ‘She’s not that; at least, I think not… She’s a woman; nothing more. Don’t fear for her; all will be well.’

The poor old man sighed. ‘I love her as my own. I will say no more.’

Somerset was now in haste to go back to the lady, to ease her apparent anxiety as to the result of his mission, and also because time seemed heavy in the loss of her discreet voice and soft, buoyant look. Every moment of delay began to be as two. But the minister was too earnest in his converse to see his companion’s haste, and it was not till perception was forced upon him by the actual retreat of Somerset that he remembered time to be a limited commodity. He then expressed his wish to see Somerset at his house to tea any afternoon he could spare, and receiving the other’s promise to call as soon as he could, allowed the younger man to set out for the summer-house, which he did at a smart pace. When he reached it he looked around, and found she was gone.

Somerset was immediately struck by his own lack of social dexterity. Why did he act so readily on the whimsical suggestion of another person, and follow the minister, when he might have said that he would call on Mr. Woodwell to-morrow, and, making himself known to Miss Power as the visiting architect of whom she had heard from Miss De Stancy, have had the pleasure of attending her to the castle? ‘That’s what any other man would have had wit enough to do!’ he said.

There then arose the question whether her despatching him after the minister was such an admirable act of good-nature to a good man as it had at first seemed to be. Perhaps it was simply a manoeuvre for getting rid of himself; and he remembered his doubt whether a certain light in her eyes when she inquired concerning his sincerity were innocent earnestness or the reverse. As the possibility of levity crossed his brain, his face warmed; it pained him to think that a woman so interesting could condescend to a trick of even so mild a complexion as that. He wanted to think her the soul of all that was tender, and noble, and kind. The pleasure of setting himself to win a minister’s goodwill was a little tarnished now.

VIII

That evening Somerset was so preoccupied with these things that he left all his sketching implements out-of-doors in the castle grounds. The next morning he hastened thither to secure them from being stolen or spoiled. Meanwhile he was hoping to have an opportunity of rectifying Paula’s mistake about his personality, which, having served a very good purpose in introducing them to a mutual conversation, might possibly be made just as agreeable as a thing to be explained away.

He fetched his drawing instruments, rods, sketching-blocks and other articles from the field where they had lain, and was passing under the walls with them in his hands, when there emerged from the outer archway an open landau, drawn by a pair of black horses of fine action and obviously strong pedigree, in which Paula was seated, under the shade of a white parasol with black and white ribbons fluttering on the summit. The morning sun sparkled on the equipage, its newness being made all the more noticeable by the ragged old arch behind.

She bowed to Somerset in a way which might have been meant to express that she had discovered her mistake; but there was no embarrassment in her manner, and the carriage bore her away without her making any sign for checking it. He had not been walking towards the castle entrance, and she could not be supposed to know that it was his intention to enter that day.

She had looked such a bud of youth and promise that his disappointment at her departure showed itself in his face as he observed her. However, he went on his way, entered a turret, ascended to the leads of the great tower, and stepped out.

From this elevated position he could still see the carriage and the white surface of Paula’s parasol in the glowing sun. While he watched the landau stopped, and in a few moments the horses were turned, the wheels and the panels flashed, and the carriage came bowling along towards the castle again.

Somerset descended the stone stairs. Before he had quite got to the bottom he saw Miss De Stancy standing in the outer hall.

‘When did you come, Mr. Somerset?’ she gaily said, looking up surprised. ‘How industrious you are to be at work so regularly every day! We didn’t think you would be here to-day: Paula has gone to a vegetable show at Markton, and I am going to join her there soon.’

‘O! gone to a vegetable show. But I think she has altered her – ’

At this moment the noise of the carriage was heard in the ward, and after a few seconds Miss Power came in – Somerset being invisible from the door where she stood.

‘O Paula, what has brought you back?’ said Miss De Stancy.

‘I have forgotten something.’

‘Mr. Somerset is here. Will you not speak to him?’

Somerset came forward, and Miss De Stancy presented him to her friend. Mr. Somerset acknowledged the pleasure by a respectful inclination of his person, and said some words about the meeting yesterday.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Power, with a serene deliberateness quite noteworthy in a girl of her age; ‘I have seen it all since. I was mistaken about you, was I not? Mr. Somerset, I am glad to welcome you here, both as a friend of Miss De Stancy’s family, and as the son of your father – which is indeed quite a sufficient introduction anywhere.’

‘You have two pictures painted by Mr. Somerset’s father, have you not? I have already told him about them,’ said Miss De Stancy. ‘Perhaps Mr. Somerset would like to see them if they are unpacked?’

As Somerset had from his infancy suffered from a plethora of those productions, excellent as they were, he did not reply quite so eagerly as Miss De Stancy seemed to expect to her kind suggestion, and Paula remarked to him, ‘You will stay to lunch? Do order it at your own time, if our hour should not be convenient.’

Her voice was a voice of low note, in quality that of a flute at the grave end of its gamut. If she sang, she was a pure contralto unmistakably.

‘I am making use of the permission you have been good enough to grant me – of sketching what is valuable within these walls.’

‘Yes, of course, I am willing for anybody to come. People hold these places in trust for the nation, in one sense. You lift your hands, Charlotte; I see I have not convinced you on that point yet.’

Miss De Stancy laughed, and said something to no purpose.

Somehow Miss Power seemed not only more woman than Miss De Stancy, but more woman than Somerset was man; and yet in years she was inferior to both. Though becomingly girlish and modest, she appeared to possess a good deal of composure, which was well expressed by the shaded light of her eyes.