The Westcotes - Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Words which may seem to be transcriber's typos, or otherwise
suspect, but which are reproduced faithfully (archaic spellings,
printer's typos--sometimes I couldn't tell):
Ch. I: befel, undigged
Ch. III: chaperon
Ch. IV: babby, mun, valtz
Ch. V: zounded, dimpsey, after'n, ax'n, ax
Ch. VI: picquet, damitol
Ch. XI: alwaies, Desarts, Eternitie
2. Diphthongs, given as single characters in the printed copy, are
transcribed as two separate characters.
THE WESTCOTES
by
ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH
DEDICATION
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,
A spinster, having borrowed a man's hat to decorate her front hall,
excused herself on the ground that the house 'wanted a something.'
By inscribing your name above this little story I please myself at
the risk of helping the reader to discover not only that it wants a
something, but precisely what that something is. It wants--to confess
and have done with it--all the penetrating subtleties of insight, all
the delicacies of interpretation, you would have brought to Dorothea's
aid, if for a moment I may suppose her worth your championing. So I
invoke your name to stand before my endeavour like a figure outside
the brackets in an algebraical sum, to make all the difference by
multiplying the meaning contained.
But your consent gives me another opportunity even more warmly desired.
And I think that you, too, will take less pleasure in discovering how
excellent your genius appears to one who nevertheless finds it a
mystery in operation, than in learning that he has not missed to
admire, at least, and with a sense almost of personal loyalty, the
sustained and sustaining pride in good workmanship by which you have
set a common example to all who practise, however diversely, the art
in which we acknowledge you a master.
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
October 25th, 1901
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I THE WESTCOTES OF BAYFIELD
CHAPTER II THE ORANGE ROOM
CHAPTER III A BALL, A SNOWSTORM, AND A SNOWBALL
CHAPTER IV ENCOUNTER BETWEEN A HIGH HORSE AND A HOBBY
CHAPTER V BEGINS WITH ANCIENT HISTORY AND ENDS WITH AN OLD STORY
CHAPTER VI FATE IN A LAURELLED POST-CHAISE
CHAPTER VII LOVE AND AN OLD MAID
CHAPTER VIII CORPORAL ZEALLY INTERVENES
CHAPTER IX DOROTHEA CONFESSES
CHAPTER X DARTMOOR
CHAPTER XI THE NEW DOROTHEA
CHAPTER XII GENERAL ROCHAMBEAU TELLS A STORY; AND THE TING-TANG RINGS
FOR THE LAST TIME
CHAPTER I
THE WESTCOTES OF BAYFIELD
A mural tablet in Axcester Parish Church describes Endymion Westcote as
"a conspicuous example of that noblest work of God, the English Country
Gentleman." Certainly he was a typical one.
In almost every district of England you will find a family which,
without distinguishing itself in any particular way, has held fast to
the comforts of life and the respect of its neighbours for generation
after generation. Its men have never shone in court, camp, or senate;
they prefer tenacity to enterprise, look askance upon wit (as a
dangerous gift), and are even a little suspicious of eminence. On the
other hand they make excellent magistrates, maintain a code of manners
most salutary for the poor in whose midst they live and are looked up
to; are as a rule satisfied, like the old Athenian, if they leave to
their heirs not less but a little more than they themselves inherited,
and deserve, as they claim, to be called the backbone of Great Britain.
Many of the women have beauty, still more have an elegance which may
pass for it, and almost all are pure in thought, truthful, assiduous in
deeds of charity, and marry for love of those manly qualities which
they have already esteemed in their brothers.
Such a family were the Westcotes of Bayfield, or Bagvil, in 1810. Their
"founder" had settled in Axcester towards the middle of the seventeenth
century, and prospered--mainly, it was said, by usury. A little before
his death, which befel in 1668, he purchased Bayfield House from a
decayed Royalist who had lost his only son in the Civil Wars; and to
Bayfield and the ancestral business (exalted now into Banking) his
descendants continued faithful. One or both of the two brothers who,
with their half-sister, represented the family in 1810, rode in on
every week-day to their Bank-office in Axcester High Street,--a
Georgian house of brick, adorned with a porch of plaster fluted to the
shape of a sea-shell, out of which a. Cupid smiled down upon a brass
plate and the inscription "WESTCOTE AND WESTCOTE," and on the first
floor, with windows as tall as the rooms, so that from the street you
could see through one the shapely legs of Mr. Endymion Westcote at his
knee-hole table, and through another the legs of Mr. Narcissus. The
third and midmost window was a dummy, having been bricked up to avoid
the window-tax imposed by Mr. Pitt--in whose statesmanship, however,
the brothers had firmly believed. Their somewhat fantastic names were
traditional in the Westcote pedigree and dated from, the seventeenth
century.
Endymion, the elder, (who took the lead of Narcissus in all, things),
was the fine flower of the Westcote stocks, and, out of question, the
most influential man in Axcester and for many a mile round justice of
the Peace for the county of Somerset and Major of its Yeomanry, he
served "our town," (so he called it) as Overseer of the Poor, Governor
of the Grammar School, Chairman of Feoffees, Churchwarden, everything
in short but Mayor--an office which he left to the tradesmen, while
taking care to speak of it always with respect, and indeed to see it
properly filled. The part of County Magistrate--to which he had been
born--he played to perfection, and with a full sense of its dignified
amenity. (It was whispered that the Lord Lieutenant himself stood in
some awe of him.) His favourite character, however, was that of plain
citizen of his native town. "I'm an Axcester man," he would declare in
his public speeches, and in his own way he loved and served the little
borough. For its good he held its Parliamentary representation in the
hollow of his hand; and, as Overseer of the Poor, had dared public
displeasure by revising the Voters' List and defying a mandamus of the
Court of King's Bench rather than allow Axcester to fail in its duty
of returning two members to support Mr. Percevall's Ministry. In 1800,
when the price of wheat rose to 184s a quarter, a poor woman dropped
dead in the market place of starvation. At once a mob collected,
hoisted a quartern-loaf on a pole with the label--"We will have Bread
or Blood," and started to pillage the shop's in High Street. It was
Endymion Westcote who rode up single-handed, (they, were carrying the
only constable on their shoulders) and faced and dispersed the rioters.
It was he who headed the subscription list, prevailed on the purchase a
wagon-load of potatoes and persuaded the people to plant them--for
even the seed potatoes had been eaten, and the gardens lay undigged.
It was he who met the immediate famine by importing large quantities of
rice. Finally, it was he, through his influence with the county, who
brought back prosperity by getting the French prisoners sent to Axcester.
We shall talk of these French prisoners by and by. To conclude this
portrait of Endymion Westcote. He was a handsome, fresh-complexioned
man, over six feet in height, and past his forty-fifth year; a bachelor
and a Protestant. In his youth he had been noted for gallantry, and
preserved some traces of it in his address. His grandfather had
married a French lady, and although this union had not sensibly diluted
the Westcote blood, Endymion would refer to it to palliate a youthful
taste for playing the fiddle. He spoke French fluently, with a British
accent which, when appointed Commissary, he took pains to improve by
conversation with the prisoners, and was fond of discussing heredity
with the two most distinguished of them--the Vicomte de Tocqueville
and General Rochambeau.
Narcissus, the younger brother, had neither the height nor the good
looks nor the masterful carriage of Endymion, and made no pretence to
rival him as a man of affairs. He professed to be known as the student
of the family, dabbled in archaeology, and managed two or three local
societies and field clubs, which met ostensibly to listen to his
papers, but really to picnic. An accident had decided this bent of his
--the discovery, during some repairs, of a fine Roman pavement beneath
the floor of Bayfield House, At the age of eighteen, during a Cambridge
vacation, Narcissus had written and privately printed a description of
this pavement, proving not only that its tessellae represented scenes
in the mythological story of Bacchus, but that the name "Bayfield," in
some old deeds and documents written "Bagvil" or "Baggevil," was
neither more nor less than a corruption of _Bacchi Villa_. Axcester and
its neighbourhood are rich in Roman remains--the town stands, indeed,
on the old Fosse Way--and, tempted by early success, Narcissus rode
his hobby further and further afield. Now, at the age of forty-two, he
could claim to be an authority on the Roman occupation of Britain, and
especially on the conquests of Vespasian. The circle of--the
Westcotes' acquaintance gathered in the fine hall of Bayfield--or, as
Narcissus preferred to call it, the atrium--drank tea, admired the
pavement, listened to the alleged exploits of Vespasian, and wondered
when the brothers would marry. Time went on, repeating these
assemblies; and the question became, Will they ever marry? Apparently
they had no thought of it, no idea that it was expected of them; and
since they had both passed forty, the question might be taken as
answered. But that so personable a man as Endymion Westcote would let
the family perish was monstrous to suppose. He kept his good looks and
his fresh complexion; even now some maiden would easily be found to
answer his Olympian nod; and a vein of recklessness sometimes cropped
up through his habitual caution, and kept his friends alert for
surprises. In the hunting-field, for instance,--and he rode to hounds
twice a week,--he made a rule of avoiding fences; but the world quite
rightly set this down to a proper care for his person rather than to
timidity, since on one famous occasion, riding up to find the whole
field hesitating before a "rasper" (they were hunting a strange country
that day), he put his horse at it and sailed over with a nonchalance
relieved only by his ringing laugh on the farther side. It was odds he
would clear the fence of matrimony, some day, with the same casual
heartiness; and, in any case, he was masterful enough to insist on
Narcissus marrying, should it occur to him to wish it.
Oddly enough, the gossips who still arranged marriages for the brothers
had given over speculating upon their hostess, Miss Dorothea. She could
not, of course, perpetuate the name; but this by no means accounted for
all the difference in their concern. Dorothea Westcote was now thirty-
seven, or five years younger than Narcissus, whose mother had died soon
after his birth. The widower had created one of the few scandals in the
Westcote history by espousing, some four years later, a young woman of
quite inferior class, the daughter of a wholesale glover in Axcester.
The new wife had good looks, but they did not procure her pardon; and
she made the amplest and speediest amends by dying within twelve
months, and leaving a daughter who in no way resembled her. The husband
survived her just a dozen years.
Dorothea, the daughter, was a plain girl; her brothers, though kind and
fond of her after a fashion, did not teach her to forget it. She loved
them, but her love partook of awe: they were so much cleverer, as well
as handsomer, than she. Having no mother or friend of her own sex to
imitate, she grow into an awkward woman, sensitive to charm in others
and responding to it without jealousy, but ignorant of what it meant or
how it could be acquired. She picked up some French from her brother
Endymion, and masters were hired who taught her to dance, to paint in
water colours, and to play with moderate skill upon the harp. But few
partners had ever sought her in the ballroom; her only drawings which
anyone ever asked to see were half-a-dozen of the Bayfield pavement,
executed for Narcissus' monograph; and her harp she played in her own
room. Now and then Endymion would enquire how she progressed with her
music, would listen to her report and observe: "Ah, I used to do a
little fiddling myself." But he never put her proficiency to the test.
Somehow, and long before the world came to the same conclusion, she had
resolved that marriage was not for her. She adored babies, though they
usually screamed at the sight of her, and she thought it would be
delightful to have one of her own who would not scream; but apart from
this vague sentiment, she accepted her fate without sensible regret.
By watching and copying the mistresses of the few houses she visited
she learned to play the hostess at Bayfield, and, as time brought
confidence, played it with credit. She knew that people laughed at her,
and that yet they liked her; their liking and their laughter puzzled
her about equally. For the rest, she was proud of Bayfield and content,
though one day much resembled another, to live all her life there,
devoted to God and her garden. Visitors always praised her garden.
Axcester lies on the western side and mostly at the foot of a low hill
set accurately in the centre of a ring of hills slightly higher-the
raised bottom of a saucer would be no bad simile. The old Roman road
cuts straight across this rise, descends between the shops of the High
Street, passes the church, crosses the Axe by a narrow bridge, and
climbing again passes the iron gates of Bayfield House, a mile above
the river. So straight is it that Dorothea could keep her brothers in
view from the gates until they dismounted before their office door,
losing sight of them for a minute or two only among the elms by the
bridge. Her boudoir window commanded the same prospect; and every day
as the London coach topped the hill, her maid Polly would run with
news of it. The two would be watching, often before the guard's horn
awoke the street and fetched the ostlers out in a hurry from the "Dogs
Inn" stables with their relay of four horses. Miss Dorothea possessed
a telescope, too; and if the coach were dressed with laurels and flags
announcing a victory, mistress and maid would run to the gates and wave
their handkerchiefs as it passed.
Sometimes, too, Polly would announce a post-chaise, and the telescope
decide whether the postboys wore the blue or the buff. Nor were these
their only causes of excitement; for the great Bayfield elm, a rood
below the gates and in full view of them, marked the westward boundary
of the French prisoners on parole. Some of these were quite regular in
their walks for instance, Rear-Admiral de Wailly-Duchemin and General
Rochambeau, who came at three o'clock or thereabouts on Wednesdays and
Saturdays, summer and winter. At six paces on the far side of the elm--
such was their punctilio--they halted, took snuff, linked arms again
and turned back. (Dorothea had entertained them both at Bayfield, and
met them at dinner in one or two neighbouring houses.) On the same
days, and on Mondays as well, old Jean Pierre Pichou, ex-boatswain of
the _Didon_ frigate, would come along arm-in-arm with Julien Carales,
alias Frap d'Abord, ex-_marechal des logis_--Pichou, with his wooden
leg, and Frap d'Abord twisting a grey moustache and uttering a steady
torrent of imprecation--or so it sounded. These could be counted on;
but scores of others stopped and turned at the Bayfield elm, and Polly
had names for them all. Moreover, on one memorable day Dorothea had
watched one who did not halt precisely at the elm. A few paces beyond
it, and on the side of the road facing the grounds, straggled an old
orchard, out of which her brother Endymion had been missing, of late,
a quantity of his favourite pippins--by name (but it may have been a
local one) Somerset Warriors. The month was October, the time about
half-past four, the light dusky. Yet Miss Dorothea, lingering by the
gate, saw a young man pass the Bayfield elm and climb the hedge; and
saw and heard him nail against an apple-tree overhanging the road, a
board with white letters on a black ground. When it was fixed, the
artist descended to the road and gazed up admiringly at his work. In
the act of departing he turned, and suddenly stood still again. His
face was toward the Bayfield gate. Dorothea could not tell if he saw
her, but he remained thus, motionless, for almost a minute. Then he
seemed to recollect himself and marched off briskly down the road.
Early next morning she descended and read the inscription, which ran:
"Restaurant pour les Aspirants."
She said nothing about it, and soon after breakfast the board was
removed.
CHAPTER II
THE ORANGE ROOM
Some weeks later, on a bright and frosty morning in December, Dorothea
rode into Axcester with her brothers. She was a good horsewoman and
showed to advantage on horseback, when her slight figure took a grace
of movement which made amends for her face. To-day the brisk air and a
canter across the bridge at the foot of the hill had brought roses to
her cheeks, and she looked almost pretty. General Rochambeau happened
to pass down the street as the three drew rein before the Town House
(so the Westcotes always called the Bank-office), and, pausing to help
her dismount, paid her a very handsome compliment.
Dorothea knew, of course, that Frenchmen were lavish of compliments,
and had heard General Rochambeau pay them where she felt sure they were
not deserved. Nevertheless she found this one pleasant--she had
received so few--and laughed happily. It may have come from the
freshness of the morning, but to-day her spirit sat light within her and
expectant she could not say of what, yet it seemed that something good
was going to happen.
"I have a guess," said the old General, "that Miss Westcote and I are
bound on the same errand. Her's cannot be to inspect dull bonds and
ledgers, bills of exchange or rates of interest."
He jerked his head towards the house, and Dorothea shook hers.
"I am going to 'The Dogs,' General."
"Eh?" He scented the jest and chuckled. "As you say, 'to the dogs'
hein? Messieurs, I beg you to observe and take warning that your sister
and I are going to the dogs together."
He offered his arm to Dorothea. Her brothers had dismounted and handed
their horses over to the ostler who waited by the porch daily to lead
them to the inn stables.
"I will stable Mercury myself," said she, addressing Endymion. She
submitted her smallest plans to him for approval.
"Do so," he answered. "After running through my letters, I will step
down to the Orange Room and join you. I entrust her to you, General--
the more confidently because you cannot take her far."
He laughed and followed Narcissus through the porch. Dorothea saw the
old General wince. She slipped an arm through Mercury's bridle-rein
and picked up her skirt; the other arm she laid in her companion's.
"You have not seen the Orange Room, Miss Dorothea?"
"Not since the decorations began." She paused and uttered the thought
uppermost in her mind. "You must forgive my brother; I am sorry he
spoke as he did just now."
"Then he is more than forgiven."
"He did not consider."
"Dear Mademoiselle, your brother is an excellent fellow, and not a bit
more popular than he deserves to be. Of his kindness to us prisoners--
I speak not of us privileged ones, but of our poorer brothers--I
could name a thousand acts; and acts say more than words."
Dorothea pursed her lips. "I am not sure. I think a woman would ask for
words too."
"Yes, that is so," he caught her up. "But don't you see that we
prisoners are--forgive me--just like women? I mean, we have learned
that we are weak. For a man that is no easy lesson, Mademoiselle. I
myself learned it hardly. And seeing your brother admired by all, so
strong and prosperous and confident, can I ask that he should feel as
we who have forfeited these things?"
Before she could find a reply he had harked back to the Orange Room.
"You have not seen it since the decorations began? Then I have a mind
to run and ask your brother to forbid your coming--to command you to
wait until Wednesday. We are in a horrible mess, I warn you, and smell
of turpentine most potently. But we shall be ready for the ball, and
then--! It will be prodigious. You do not know that we have a genius
at work on the painting?"
"My brother tells me the designs are extraordinarily clever."
"They are more than clever, you will allow. The artist I discovered
myself--a young man named Charles Raoul. He comes from the South, a
little below Avignon, and of good family--in some respects." The
General paused and took snuff. "He enlisted at eighteen and has seen
service; he tells me he was wounded at Austerlitz. Unhappily he was
shipped, about two years ago, on board the _Thetis_ frigate, with a
detachment and stores for Martinique. The _Thetis_ had scarcely left
L'Orient before she fell in with one of your frigates, whose name
escapes me; and here he is in Axcester. He has rich relatives, but for
some reason or other they decline to support him; and yet he seems a
gentleman. He picks up a few shillings by painting portraits; but you
English are shy of sitting--I wonder why? And we--well, I suppose we
prefer to wait till our faces grow happier."
Dorothea had it on the tip of her tongue to ask how the General had
discovered this genius; but the ring in his voice gave her pause.
Twice in the course of their short walk he had shown feeling; and she
wondered at it, having hitherto regarded him as a cynical old fellow
with a wit which cracked himself and the world like two dry nuts for
the jest of their shrivelled kernels. She did not, know that a kind
word of hers had unlocked his heart; and before she could recall her
question they had reached the stable-yard of "The Dogs." And after
stabling Mercury it was but a step across to the inn.
The "Dogs Inn" took its name from two stone greyhounds beside its porch--
supporters of the arms of that old family from which the Westcotes had
purchased Bayfield; and the Orange Room from a tradition that William
of Orange had spent a night there on his march from Torbay. There may
have been truth in the tradition; the room at any rate preserved in it
window-hangings of orange-yellow, and a deep fringe of the same hue
festooning the musicians' gallery. While serving Axcester for ball,
rout, and general assembly-room, it had been admittedly dismal--its
slate-coloured walls scarred and patched with new plaster, and relieved
only by a gigantic painting of the Royal Arms on panel in a blackened
frame; its ceiling garnished with four pendants in plaster, like bride-
cake ornaments inverted.
To-day, as she stepped across the threshold, Dorothea hesitated between
stopping her ears and rubbing her eyes. The place was a Babel.
Frenchmen in white paper caps and stained linen blouses were laughing,
plying their brushes, mixing paints, shifting ladders, and jabbering
all the while at the pitch of their voices. For a moment the din
bewildered her; the ferment had no more meaning, no more method, than
a schoolboy's game. But her eyes, passing over the chaos of paint-pots,
brushes, and step-ladders, told her the place had been transformed.
The ceiling between the four pendants had become a blue heaven with
filmy clouds, and Cupids scattering roses before a train of doves and
a recumbent goddess, whom a little Italian, perched on a scaffolding
and whistling shrilly, was varnishing for dear life. Around the walls--
sky-blue also--trellises of vines and pink roses clambered around the
old panels. The energy of the workmen had passed into their paintings,
or perhaps Dorothea's head swam; at any rate, the cupids and doves
seemed to be whirling across the ceiling, the vines, and roses mounting
towards it, and pushing out shoots and tendrils while they climbed.
But the panels themselves! They were nine in all: three down the long
black wall, two narrower ones at the far end, four between the orange-
curtained windows looking on the street. (The fourth wall had no panel,
being covered, by the musicians' gallery and the pillars supporting
it.) In each, framed by the vines and roses, glowed a scene of
classical or pseudo-classical splendour; golden sunsets, pale yellow
skies, landscapes cleverly imitated from recollections of Claude
Lorraine, dotted with temples and small figures in flowing drapery,
with here and there a glimpse of naked limbs. Here were Bacchus and
Ariadne, with a company of dancing revellers; Apollo and Marsyas; the
Rape of Helen; Dido welcoming Aeneas. . . . Dorothea (albeit she had
often glanced into the copy of M. Lempriere's Classical Dictionary in
her brother's library, and, besides, had picked up something of Greek
and Roman mythology in helping Narcissus) did not at once discriminate
the subjects of these panels, but her eyes rested on them with a
pleasant sense of recognition, and were still resting on them when she
heard General Rochambeau say: