The Westcotes - Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch
"I am trying to understand," said Dorothea, gently.
"But this you can understand, how a prisoner loves the sunshine: not
because, through his grating, it warms him; but because it is the
sunshine, and he sees it. Mademoiselle, I am not grateful; I see
merely, and adore. Some day you shall pause by this window and see a
cloud of dust on the Fosse Way--the last of us prisoners as they march
us from Axcester to the place of our release; and, seeing it, you shall
close the book upon a chapter, but not without remembering"--he
touched her hand again, but now his fingers closed on it, and he raised
it to his lips,--"not without remembering how and when one Frenchman
said, 'God bless you, Mademoiselle Dorothea!'"
Dorothea's eyes were wet when, a moment later, Narcissus came bustling
through the atrium with a roll of papers in his hand.
"Ah, this is luck!" he cried. "I was starting to search for you."
He either assumed that they had visited the tea-room or forgot all
about it; and M. Raoul's look implored Dorothea not to explain.
"Suppose we take the _triclinium_ first, on the north side of the
house. That, sir, will tell you whether I am right or wrong about the
climate of those days. A summer parlour facing north, and with no
trace of heating-flues! . . ."
He led off his captive, and Dorothea heard his expository tones gather
volume as the pair crossed the great hall beneath the dome. Then she
turned the handle of the library door, and was instantly deafened by
the babel within.
The guests took their departure a little before sunset. M. Raoul was
not among the long train which shook hands with her and filed down the
avenue at the heels of M. de Tocqueville and General Rochambeau.
Twenty minutes later, while the servants were setting the hall in
order, she heard her brother's voice beneath the window of her boudoir,
explaining the system on which the Romans warmed their houses.
She had picked up a religious book, but found herself unable to fix her
attention upon it or even to sit still. Her hand still burned where
M. Raoul's lips had touched it. She recalled Endymion's prophecy that
these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism--always more
delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays--completely oft its
pivot. She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private
appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they interfered. They
had responded loyally.
Still, this was the first experiment; she would go down to the hall
again and make sure that the couches were in position, the cushions
shaken up, the pot-plants placed around the fountain so accurately that
Endymion's nice eye for small comforts could detect no excuse for
saying, "I told you so."
As she passed along the gallery her eyes sought the pillar beside which
M. Raoul had stood during the lecture. By the foot of it a book lay
face downwards--a book cheaply bound between boards of mottled paper.
She picked it up and read the title; it was a volume of Rousseau's
Confessions--a book of which she remembered to have heard. On the
flyleaf was written the owner's name in full--"Charles Marie Fabien
de Raoul."
Dorothea hurried downstairs with it and past the servants tidying the
hall.
She looked to find M. Raoul still buttonholed and held captive by
Narcissus at the eastern angle of the house. But before she reached the
front door she happened--though perhaps it was not quite accidental--
to throw a glance through the window by which he had stood and talked
with her, and saw him striding away down the avenue in the dusk.
She returned to her room and summoned Polly.
"You know M. Raoul? He has left, forgetting this book, which belongs to
him. Run down to the small gate, that's a good girl--you will overtake
him easily, since he is walking round by the avenue--and return it,
with my compliments."
Polly picked up her skirts and ran. A narrow path slanted down across
the slope of the park to the nurseries--a sheltered corner in which
the Bayfield gardener grew his more delicate evergreens--and here a
small wicket-gate opened on the high road.
The gate stood many feet above the road, which descended the hill
between steep hedges. She heard M. Raoul's footstep as she reached it,
and, peering over, saw him before he caught sight of her; indeed, he
had almost passed with-out when she hailed him.
"Holloa!" He swung almost rightabout and smiled up pleasantly. "Is it
highway robbery? If so, I surrender."
Polly laughed, showing a fine set of teeth.
"I'm 'most out of breath," she answered. "You've left your book behind,
and my mistress sent it after you with her compliments." She held it
above the gate.
He sprang up the bank towards her. "And a pretty book, too, to be
found in your hands! You haven't been reading it, I hope."
"La, no! Is it wicked?"
"Much depends on where you happen to open it. Now if your sweetheart--"
"Who told you I had one?"
"Tut-tut-tut! What's his name?"
"Well, if you must know, I'm walking out with Corporal Zeally. But what
are you doing to the book?" For M. Raoul had taken out a penknife and
was slicing out page after page--in some places whole blocks of pages
together.
"When I've finished, I'm going to ask you to take it back to your
mistress; and then no doubt you'll be reading it on the sly. Here, I
must sit down: suppose you let me perch myself on the top bar of the
gate. Also, it would be kind of you to put up an arm and prevent my
overbalancing."
"I shouldn't think of it."
"Oh, very well!" He climbed up, laid the book on his knee and went on
slicing. "I particularly want her to read M. Rousseau's reflections on
the Pont du Gard; but I don't seem to have a book marker, unless you
lend me a lock of your hair."
"Were you the gentleman she danced with, at 'The Dogs,' the night of
the snowstorm?"
"The Pont du Gard, my dear, is a Roman antiquity, and has nothing to
do with dancing. If, as I suppose, you refer to the 'Pont de Lodi,'
that is a totally different work of art."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
"And I don't intend that you shall."
He cut a small strip of braid from his coat, inserted it for a
bookmarker, and began to fold away the excised pages. "That's why I am
keeping these back for my own perusal, and perhaps Corporal Zeally's."
"Do you know him?" She reached up to take the book he was holding out
in his left hand, and the next instant his right arm was round her neck
and he had kissed her full on the lips. "Oh, you wretch!" she cried,
breaking free; and laughed, next moment, as he nearly toppled off the
gate.
"Know him? Why of course I do." M. Raoul was reseating himself on his
perch, when he happened to throw a look down into the road, and at
once broke into immoderate laughter. "Talk of the wolf--"
Polly screamed and ran. Below, at a bend of the road, stood a stoutish
figure in the uniform of the Axcester Volunteers--scarlet, with white
facings. It was Corporal Zeally, very slowly taking in the scene.
M. Raoul skipped off the gate and stepped briskly past him. "Good-
evening, Corporal! We're both of us a little behind time, this
evening!" said he as he went by.
The Corporal pivoted on his heels and stared after him.
"Dang my living buttons!" he said, reflectively. "Couldn't even wait
till my back was turned, but must kiss the maid under my nose!" He
paused and rubbed his chin. "Her looked like Polly and her zounded
like Polly . . . Dang this dimpsey old light, I've got a good mind to
run after'n and ax'n who 'twas!" He took a step down the hill, but
thought better, of it. "No, I won't," he said; "I'll go and ax Polly."
CHAPTER VI
FATE IN A LAURELLED POST-CHAISE
All the tongues of Rumour agreed that the Bayfield entertainment had
been a success, and Endymion Westcote received many congratulations
upon it at the next meeting of magistrates.
"Nonsense, nonsense!" he protested lightly. "One must do something to
make life more tolerable to the poor devils, and 'pon my word 'twas
worth it to see their gratitude. They behaved admirably. You see, two-
thirds of them are gentlemen, after a fashion; not, perhaps, quite in
the sense in which we understand the word, but then the--ah--modicum
of French blood in my veins counteracts, I dare say, some little
insular prejudices."
"My dear fellow, about such men as de Tocqueville and Rochambeau there
can be no possible question."
"Ah! I'm extremely glad to hear you say so. I feared, perhaps, the way
they managed their table-napkins--"
"Not at all. I was thinking rather of your bold attitude towards
Sunday observance. What does Milliton say?"
Endymion's eyebrows went up. Mr. Milliton was the vicar of Axcester
and the living lay in the Westcotes' gift. I am not--ah--aware that
I consulted Milliton. On such questions I recognise no responsibility
save to my own conscience. He has not been complaining, I trust?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Ah!" Endymion looked as if Mr. Milliton had better not. "I take, you
must know, a somewhat broad view on such matters--may I, without
offence, term it a liberal one? As a matter of fact I intend going yet
farther in the direction and granting permission for a small reunion on
Sunday evenings at 'The Dogs,' when selections of purely sacred music
will be performed. I shall, of course, deprecate the name 'concert ';
and even 'performance' may seem to carry with it some--ah--
suggestions of a theatrical nature. But, as Shakespeare says, 'What's
in a name?' Perhaps you can suggest a more suitable one?"
"A broad-minded fellow," was the general verdict; and some admirers
added that ideas which in weaker men might seem to lean towards free
thought, and even towards Jacobinism, became Mr. Westcote handsomely
enough. He knew how to carry them off, to wear them lightly as
flourishes and ornaments of his robust common sense, and might be
trusted not to go too far. Endymion, who had an exquisite flair for the
approval of his own class, soon learned to take an honest pride in his
liberalism and to enjoy its discreet display. 'The entertainment at
Bayfield' was nothing--a private experiment only; the unfamiliar must
be handled gently; a good rule to try it on your own household before
tackling the world. As a matter of fact, old Narcissus had enjoyed it.
But if the neighbouring families were really curious, and would promise
not to be shocked, they must come to "The Dogs" some Sunday evening:
No, not next Sunday, but in a week or two's time when the prisoners,
as intelligent fellows, would have grasped his notions.'
Sure enough, on the third Sunday he brought a round dozen of guests;
and the entrance of the Bayfield party (punctually five minutes late),
and their solemn taking of seats in the two front rows, thereafter
became a feature of these entertainments. On the first occasion the
musicians stopped, out of respect, in the middle of a motet of
Scarlatti's; but Endymion gave orders that in future this was not
to be.
"I have been something of an amateur myself," he explained, "and know
what is due to Art."
It vexed Dorothea to note that after the first two or three
performances some of her best friends among the prisoners absented
themselves, General Rochambeau for one. Indeed, the General had taken
to declining all invitations, and rarely appeared abroad. One March
morning, meeting him in the High Street, she made bold to tax him with
the change and ask his reasons.
The hour was eleven in the forenoon, the busiest of the day. In twenty
minutes the London coach would be due with the mails, and this always
brought the prisoners out into the street. The largest crowd gathered
in front of "The Dogs," waiting to see the horses changed and the bags
unloaded. But a second hung around the Post Office, where the
Commissary received and distributed the prisoners' letters, while
lesser groups shifted and moved about at the tail of the butchers'
carts, and others laden with milk, eggs, and fresh vegetables from the
country; for Axcester had now a daily market, and in the few minutes
before the mail's arrival the salesmen drove their best trade.
General Rochambeau tapped his snuffbox meditatively, like a man in two
minds. But he kept a sidelong eye upon Dorothea, as she turned to
acknowledge a bow from the Vicomte de Tocqueville. The Vicomte, with
an air of amused contempt, was choosing a steak for his dinner, using
his gold-ferruled walking-stick to direct the butcher how to cut it
out, while his servant stood ready with a plate.
"To tell you the truth, Mademoiselle, I find a hand at picquet with
the Admiral less fatiguing for two old gentlemen than these public
gaieties."
"In other words, you are nursing him. They tell me he has never been
well since that night of the snowstorm."
"Your informants may now add that he is better; these few Spring days
have done wonders for his rheumatism, and, indeed, he is dressed and
abroad this morning."
"Which explains why you are willing to stop and chat with me, instead
of hurrying off to the Post Office to ask for his letter--that letter
which never comes."
"So M. Raoul has been telling you all about us?"
Dorothea blushed.
"He happened to speak of it, at one of my working parties--"
"He has a fine gift for the pathetic, that young man; oh, yes, and a
pretty humour too! I can fancy what he makes of us--poor old Damon
and Pythias--while he holds the skeins; with a smile for poor old
Pythias' pigtail, and a tremor of the voice for the Emperor's
_tabatiere_, and a tear, no doubt, for the letter which never comes.
M. Raoul is great with an audience."
"You do him injustice, General. An audience of half-a-dozen old women!"
General Rochambeau had an answer to this on his tongue, but repressed
it.
"Ah, here comes the Admiral!" he cried, as the gaunt old man came
shuffling down the street towards them, with his stoop, his cross-
grained features drawn awry with twinges of rheumatism, his hands
crossed above his tall cane. All Axcester laughed at his long blue
surtout, his pigtail and little round hat. But Dorothea always found
him formidable, and wanted to run away. "Admiral, I was just about to
tell Miss Westcote that the time is come to congratulate her. Here is
winter past--except that of two years ago, the hardest known in
Axcester; and, thanks to her subscription lists and working parties,
our countrymen have never gone so well fed and warmly clad."
"Which," growled the Admiral, "does not explain why no less than eight
of them have broken their parole. An incredible, a shameful number!"
"As time goes on, Admiral, they grow less patient. Hope deferred--"
_Ta-ra, tara-ra! Ta-ra, tara-ra-ra!_ The notes of the guard's horn
broke in upon Dorothea's excuse. Groups scattered, market carts were
hastily backed alongside the pavement, and down the mid-thoroughfare
came the mail at a gallop, with crack of whip and rushing chime of
bits and swingle-bars.
Dorothea watched the crowd closing round it as it drew up by "The
Dogs," and turned to note that the Admiral's face was pale and his
eyes sought those of his old friend.
"Better leave it to me to-day, if Miss Westcote will excuse me."
General Rochambeau lifted his hat and hurried after the crowd.
Then Dorothea understood. The old man beside her had lost courage to
pick up his old habit; at the last moment his friend must go for the
letter which never came. She cast about to say something; her last
words had been of hope deferred--it would not do to take up her
speech there . . .
The Admiral seemed to meet her eyes with an effort. He put out a hand.
"It is not good, Mademoiselle, that a man should pity himself. Beware
how you teach that; beware how you listen to him then."
He turned from her abruptly and tottered away. Glancing aside, she met
the Vicomte de Tocqueville's tired smile; he was using his cane to
prod the butcher and recall his attention to the half-cut steak. But
the butcher continued to stare down the street.
"Eh? But, dear me, it sounds like an _emeute_," said the Vicomte,
negligently; at the same time stepping to Dorothea's side.
The murmur of the crowd in front of "The Dogs" had been swelling, and
now broke into sharp, angry cries for a moment; then settled into a
dull roar, and rose in a hoarse _crescendo_. The mail coach was
evidently not the centre of disturbance, though Dorothea could see its
driver waving his arm and gesticulating from the box. The noise came
ahead of it, some twenty yards lower down the hill, where the street
had suddenly grown black with people pressing and swaying.
"There seems no danger here, whatever it is," said the Vicomte,
glancing up at the house-front above.
"Please go and see what is the matter. I am safe enough," Dorothea
assured him. "The folks in the house will give me shelter, if
necessary."
The Vicomte lifted his hat. "I will return and report promptly, if the
affair be serious."
But it was not serious. The tumult died down, and Dorothea with her
riding-switch was guarding the half-cut steak from a predatory dog
when the Vicomte and the butcher returned together.
"Reassure yourself, Miss Westcote," said M. de Tocqueville. "There has
been no bloodshed, though bloodshed was challenged. It appears that
almost as the coach drew up there arrived from the westward a post-
chaise conveying a young naval officer from Plymouth, with despatches
and (I regret to tell it) a flag. His Britannic Majesty has captured
another of our frigates; and the high spirited young gentleman was
making the most of it in all innocence, and without an idea that his
triumph could offend anyone in Axcester. Unfortunately, on his way up
the street, he waved the captured tricolor under the nose of your
brother's _protege_, M. Raoul--"
"M. Raoul!" Dorothea caught her breath on the name.
"And M. Raoul leapt into the chaise, then and there wrested the flag
from him--the more easily no doubt because he expected nothing so
little and holding it aloft, challenged him to mortal combat.
Theatrically, and apart from the taste of it (I report only from
hearsay), the coup must have been immensely successful. When I
arrived, your brother was restoring peace, the young Briton holding
out his hand--swearing he was sorry, begad! but how the deuce was he
to have known ?--and M. Raoul saving the situation, and still
demanding blood with a face as long as an Alexandrine:
"_'Ce drapeau glorieux auquel, en sanglotant,
Se prosternent affaises vos membres, veterans!'_
"'Vary sorry, damitol, shake hands, beg your pardon.'"
The Vicomte forgot his languor, and burlesqued the scene with real
talent.
Dorothea, however, was not amused.
"You say my brother is at 'The Dogs,' Monsieur? I think I will go
to him."
"You must allow me, then, to escort you."
"Oh, the street is quite safe. Your countrymen will not suspect me of
exulting over their misfortunes."
"Nevertheless--" he insisted, and walked beside her.
A mixed crowd of French and English still surrounded the chaise, to
which a couple of postboys were attaching the relay: the French no
longer furious, now that an apology had been offered and the flag
hidden, but silent and sulky yet; the English inclined to think the
young lieutenant hardly served, not to say churlishly. Frenchmen might
be thin-skinned; but war was war, and surely Britons had a right to
raise three cheers for a victory. Besides he had begged pardon at once,
and offered to shake hands like a gentleman--that is, as soon as he
discovered whose feelings were hurt; for naturally the fisticuffs had
come first, and in these Master Raoul had taken as good as he brought.
As the Vicomte cleared a path for her to the porch, where Endymion
stood shaking hands and bidding adieu, Dorothea caught her first and
last glimpse of this traveller, who--without knowing it, without
seeing her face to remember it, or even learning her name--was to
deflect the slow current of her life, and send it whirling down a
strange channel, giddy, precipitous, to an end unguessed.
She saw a fresh-complexioned lad, somewhat flushed and red in the face,
but of frank and pleasant features; dressed in a three-cornered cocked-
hat, blue coat piped with white and gilt-buttoned, white breeches and
waistcoat, and broad black sword-belt; a youngster of the sort that
loves a scrimmage or a jest, but is better in a scrimmage than in a
jest when the laugh goes against him. He was eying the chaise just now,
and obviously cursing the hour in which he had decorated it with laurel.
Yet on the whole in a trying situation he bore himself well.
"Ah, much obliged to you, Vicomte!" Endymion hailed the pair. "There
has been a small misunderstanding, my dear Dorothea; not the slightest
cause for alarm! Still, you had better pass through to the coffee-room
and wait for me."
Dorothea dismissed M. de Tocqueville with a bow, passed into the dark
passage and pushed open the coffee-room door.
Within sat a young man, his elbows on the table, and his face bowed
upon his arms. His fingers convulsively twisted a torn scrap of
bunting; his shoulders heaved. It was M. Raoul.
Dorothea paused in the doorway and spoke his name. He did not look up.
She stepped towards him.
"M. Raoul!"
A sob shook him. She laid a hand gently on his bowed head, on the dark
wave of hair above his strong, shapely neck. She was full of pity,
longing to comfort . . .
"M. Raoul!"
He started, gazed up at her, and seized her hand. His eyes swam with
tears, but behind the tears blazed a light which frightened her. Yet--
oh, surely!--she could not mistake it.
"Dorothea!"
He held both her hands now. He was drawing her towards him. She could
not speak. The room swam; outside the window she heard the noise of
starting hoofs, of wheels, of the English crowd hurrahing as the chaise
rolled away. Her head almost touched M. Raoul's breast. Then she broke
loose, as her brother's step sounded in the passage.
CHAPTER VII
LOVE AND AN OLD MAID
I pray you be gentle with Dorothea. Find, if you can, something
admirable in this plain spinster keeping, at the age of thirty-seven,
a room in her breast adorned and ready for first love; find it pitiful,
if you must, that the blind boy should mistake his lodging; only do
not laugh, or your laughter may accuse you in the sequel.
She had a most simple heart. Wonder filled it as she rode home to
Bayfield, and by the bridge she reined up Mercury as if to take her
bearings in an unfamiliar country. At her feet rushed the Axe, swollen
by spring freshets; a bullfinch, wet from his bath, bobbed on the sand-
stone parapet, shook himself, and piped a note or two; away up the
stream, among the alders, birds were chasing and courting; from above
the Bayfield elms, out of spaces of blue, the larks' song fell like a
din of innumerable silver hammers. Either new sense had been given her,
or the rains had washed the landscape and restored obliterated lines,
colours, meanings. The very leaves by the roadside were fragrant as
flowers.
For the moment it sufficed to know that she was loved, and that she
loved. She was no fool. At the back of all her wonder lay the certainty
that in the world's eyes such love as hers was absurd; that it must end
where it began; that Raoul could never be hers, nor she escape from a
captivity as real as his. But, perhaps because she knew all this so
certainly, she could put it aside. This thing had come to her: this
happiness to which, alone, in darkness, depressed by every look into
the mirror, by every casual proof that her brothers and intimates
accepted the verdict as final, her soul had been loyal--a forgotten
servant of a neglectful lord. In the silence of her own room, in her
garden, in the quiet stir of household duties, and again during the
long evenings while she sat knitting by the fire and her brothers
talked, she had pondered much upon love and puzzled herself with many
questions. She had watched girls and their lovers, wives and their
husbands. Can love (she had asked) draw near and pass and go its way
unrecognised? She had conned the signs. Now the hour had come, and she
had needed none of her learning--eyes, hands, and voice, she had
known the authentic god.
And she knew that it was not absurd; she knew herself worthy of love's
belated condescension--not Raoul's; for the moment she scarcely
thought of Raoul; for the moment Raoul's image grew faint and
indefinite in the glory of being loved. Instinct, too, thrust it into
the background; for as Raoul grew definite so must his youth, his
circumstances, the world's laughter, the barriers never to be overcome.
But merely to be loved, and to rest in that knowledge awhile--here
were no barriers. The thing had happened: it was: nothing could forbid
or efface it.
Yet when she reached home, after forcing the astonished Mercury to
canter up the entire length of Bayfield hill, she must walk straight
to her room, and study her face in the glass.
"It has happened to you--to you! Why has it not transfigured you?--
but then people would guess. Your teeth stand out--well, not so very
prominently--but they stand out, and that is why foreigners laugh at
Englishwomen. Yes, it has happened to you; but why? how?"
It so happened that she must meet him the next day. Narcissus had
engaged him to make drawings of the Bayfield pavement, a new series to
supersede hers in an enlarged edition of the treatise. Every one of
the _tessellae_ was to be drawn to scale, and she must meet him
to-morrow in the library with her brother and receive instructions, for
she had promised to help in taking measurements.