The Westcotes - Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch
Corporal Zeally was merely bewildered. His was a deliberate mind and
had hatched out the night's catastrophe after incubating it for weeks.
Unconvinced by Polly's explanation of her meeting with M. Raoul at the
Nursery gate, he had nursed a dull jealousy and set himself to watch,
and had dogged his man down at length with the slow cunning of a yokel
bred of a line of poachers. Raoul's tribute to his smartness perplexed
him and almost he scented a trap.
"Beg your pardon, Squire," he began heavily, forgetting military forms
of address, "but the gentleman don't put it right."
"Oh, hang your British modesty!" put in Raoul with a wry laugh. "If it
pleases you to represent that the whole thing was accidental and you
don't deserve to be promoted sergeant for tonight's work, at least you
might respect my vanity."
Polly saw her opportunity. She crossed boldly and made as if to lay
over the Corporal's mouth the hand that would fain have boxed his ears.
"Reckon this is my affair," she announced, with an effrontery at which
one of the footmen guffawed openly. "Be modest as you please, my lad,
when I've married 'ee; but I won't put up with modesty from anyone
under a sergeant, and that I warn 'ee!"
The Corporal eyed his sweetheart without forgiveness. His mouth was
open, but upon the word "sergeant," he shut it again and began to
digest the idea.
"You know, of course, sir," Endymion Westcote addressed the prisoner
coldly, "to what such a confession commits you? I do not see what other
construction the facts admit, but it is so serious in itself and in its
consequences that I warn you--"
"I have broken my _parole_, sir," said Raoul, simply. "Of the
temptations you cannot judge. Of the shame I am as profoundly sensible
as you can be. The consequences I am ready to suffer."
He sank back in his chair as Dr. Ibbetson entered.
An hour later Dorothea said goodnight to her brother in the great hall.
He had lit his candle and was mixing himself a glass of brandy and
water.
"The sight of blood--" he excused himself. "I am sorry for the fellow,
though I never liked him. I suppose, now, there was nothing between him
and that girl Polly? For a moment--from Zeally's manner--" He gulped
down the drink. "His confession was honest enough, anyhow. Poor fool!
he's safe in hospital for a week, and his friends, if he has any, and
they know what it means, will pray for that week to be prolonged."
"What does it mean?" Dorothea managed to ask.
"It means Dartmoor."
Dorothea's candlestick shook in her hand, and the extinguisher fell on
the floor. Her brother picked it up and restored it.
"Naturally," he murmured with brotherly concern, "your nerves! It has
been a trying night, but you comported yourself admirably, Dorothea.
Ibbetson assures me he could not have tied the bandage better himself.
I felt proud of my sister." He kissed her gallantly and pulled out his
watch. "Past twelve o'clock!--time they were round with the barouche.
The sooner we get Master Raoul down to the Infirmary and pack him in
bed, the better."
As Dorothea went up the stairs she heard the sound of wheels on the
gravel.
She could not accept his sacrifice. No; a way must be found to save
him, and in her prayers that night she began to seek it. But while
she prayed, her heart was bowed over a great joy. She had a hero for
a lover!
CHAPTER IX
DOROTHEA CONFESSES
She saw no more of him, and heard very little, before the Court Martial
met. No one acquainted with the code of that age--so strait-laced in
its proprieties, so full-blooded in its vices--will need to be told
that she never dreamed of asking her brother's permission to visit the
Prisoners' Infirmary. He reported--once a day, perhaps, and casually--
that the patient was doing well. Dorothea ventured once to sound
General Rochambeau, but the old aristocrat answered stiffly that he
took no interest in _declasses_, and plainly hinted that, in his
judgment, M. Raoul had sinned past pardon; which but added to her
remorse. From time to time she obtained some hearsay news through
Polly; but Polly's chief interest now lay in her approaching marriage.
For the Commissary, while accepting Raoul's version of his capture, had
an intuitive gift which saved him from wholly believing in it. Indeed,
his conduct of the affair, if we consider the extent of his knowledge,
was nothing less than masterly. Corporal Zeally found himself a
sergeant within forty-eight hours, and within an hour of the
announcement he and Polly were given an audience in the Bayfield
library, with the result that Parson Milliton cried their banns in
Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received
a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that
the reason for her short retention--to instruct her successor in Miss
Dorothea's ways--was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he
declined to meddle. "Here," he said in effect, "is my report, including
the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But
the young man was captured in my grounds; he was known to be a _protege_
of my brother's. Finding him wounded and faint with loss of blood, we
naturally did our best for him, and this again renders me perhaps too
sympathetic. The law is the law, however, and must take its course."
No attitude could have been more proper or have shown better feeling.
So Raoul, who made a rapid recovery--barring the limp which he carried
to the end of his days--was tried, condemned, and sentenced in the
space of two hours. He stuck to his story, and the court had no
alternative. Dartmoor or Stapleton inevitably awaited the prisoner who
broke parole and was retaken. The night after his sentence Raoul was
marched past the Bayfield gates under escort for Dartmoor. And Dorothea
had not intervened.
This, of course, proves that she was of no heroical fibre. She knew it.
Night after night she had lain awake, vainly contriving plans for his
deliverance; and either she lacked inventiveness or was too honest, for
no method could she discover which avoided confession of the simple
truth. As the days passed without catastrophe and without news save
that her lover was bettering in hospital, she staved off the truth,
trusting that the next night would bring inspiration. Almost she
hoped--being quite unwise in such matters--that his sufferings would
be accepted as cancelling his offence. So she played the coward. The
blow fell on the evening when Endymion announced, in casual tones,
that the Court Martial was fixed for the day after next.
That night, indeed, brought something like an inspiration; and on the
morrow she rode into Axcester and called upon Polly, now a bride of
six days' standing and domiciled in one of the Westcote cottages in
Church Street, a little beyond the bridge. For a call of state this
was somewhat premature, but it might pass.
Polly appeared to think it premature. Her furniture was topsy-turvy,
and her hair in curl-papers; she obviously did not expect visitors,
and resented this curtailment of the honeymoon. She showed it even
when Dorothea, after apologies, came straight to the point:
"Polly, I am very unhappy."
"Indeed, Miss?"
"You know that I must be, since M. Raoul is going to that horrible
war-prison rather than let the truth be known."
"But since you didn't encourage him, Miss--"
"Of course I didn't encourage him to come," said Dorothea, quickly.
"Why then it was his own fault, and he broke his word by breaking
bounds."
"Yes, strictly his parole was broken; but the meaning of parole is,
that a prisoner promises to make no attempt to escape. M. Raoul never
dreamed of escaping, yet that is the ground of his punishment."
"Well," said Polly, "if he chooses to say he was escaping, I don't see
how we--I mean, how you--can help."
"Why, by telling the truth; and that's what we ought to do, though it
was wrong of him to expose us to it."
"To be sure it was," Polly assented.
"But," urged Dorothea, "couldn't we tell the truth of what happened
without anyone's wanting to know more? He gave you a note, which you
took without guessing what it contained. He wished to have speech with
me. Before you could give me the note and I could refuse to see him--
as I should certainly have done--he had arrived. His folly deserves
punishment, but no such punishment as being sent to Dartmoor."
Polly eyed her ex-mistress shrewdly.
"Have you burnt the note?" she asked.
Dorothea, blushing to the roots of her hair, stammered:
"No; I kept it--it was evidence for him, you see. I wish, now--"
She broke off as Polly nodded her head.
"I guessed you'd have kept it. And now you'll never make up your mind
to burn it. You're too honest."
"But, surely the note itself would not be called for?"
"I don't know. Folks ask curious questions in courts of law, I've
always heard. Beggin' your pardon, Miss, but your face tells too many
tales, and anyone but a fool would ask for that note before he'd been
dealing with you three minutes. If he didn't, he'd ask you what was in
it. And then you'd be forced to tell lies--which you couldn't, to
save your soul!"
Dorothea knew this to be true. She reflected a moment. "I should
decline to show it, or to answer."
Mrs. Zeally thought it about time to assert herself. "Very good, Miss.
And now, how about me? They'd ask me questions, too; and I'd have you
consider, Miss Dorothea, that though not shaken down to it yet--not,
as you might say, in a state to expect callers or make them properly
welcome--I'm a respectable married woman. I don't mind confessing to
you, Zeally isn't a comfortable man. He's pleased enough to be
sergeant, though he don't quite know how it came about; and he's that
sullen with brooding over it, that for sixpence he'd give me the strap
to ease his feelings. I ain't complaining. Mr. Endymion chose to take
me on the hop and hurry up the banns, and I'm going to accommodate
myself to the man. He's three-parts of a fool, and you needn't fear
but I'll manage him. But I ain't for taking no risks, and that I tell
you fair."
Dorothea was stunned. "You don't mean to say that Zeally suspects you?"
"Why, of course he does!" said Polly. Prudence urged her to repeat
that Zeally was three-parts of a fool; but, being nettled, she spoke
the words uppermost: "Who d'ee think he'd suspect?"
Dorothea, however, was too desperately dejected to feel the prick of
this shaft. "You will not help me, then?" was all her reply to it.
"Why, no, Miss! if you put it in that point-blank way. A married
woman's got to think of her reputation first of all."
Polly's attitude might be selfish, unfeeling; but the fundamental
incapacity for gratitude in girls of Polly's class will probably
surprise and pain their mistresses until the end of the world. After
all, Polly was right. An attempt to clear Raoul by telling the
superficial truth must involve terrible risks, and might at any turn
enforce a choice between full confession and falsehood.
Dorothea could not bring herself to lie, even heroically; and there
would be no heroism in lying to save herself. On the other hand, the
thought of a forced confession--it might he before a tribunal--was
too hideous. No, the suggestion had been a mad one, and Polly had
rightly thrown cold water on it. Also, it had demanded too much of
Polly, who could not be expected to jeopardise her matrimonial
prospects to right a wrong for which she was not in truth responsible.
Dorothea loved a hero, but knew she was no heroine. She called herself
a pitiful coward--unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the
proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a class most
sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse
than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What!
Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost
young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night!
that he had been shot and captured beneath her window!
Unjustly, too, she accused herself, because it is the decision, not
the terror felt in deciding, which distinguishes the brave from the
cowardly. If you doubt the event with Dorothea, the fault, must be
mine. She was timid, but she came of a race which will endure anything
rather than the conscious anguish of doing wrong.
Nor, had her conscience needed them, did it lack reminders. Narcissus
had been persuaded to send the drawings to London to be treated by
lithography, a process of which he knew nothing, but to which M. Raoul,
during his studies in Paris, had given much attention, and apparently
not without making some discoveries--unimportant perhaps, and such as
might easily reward an experimenter in an art not well past its
infancy. At any rate, he had drawn up elaborate instructions for the
London firm of printers, and when the proofs arrived with about a third
of these instructions neglected and another third misunderstood,
Narcissus was at his wits' end, aghast at the poorness of the
impressions, yet not knowing in the least how to correct them.
He gave Dorothea no peace with them. Evening after evening she was
invited to pore upon the drawings over which she and her lover had bent
together; to criticise here and offer a suggestion there; while every
line revived a memory, inflicted a pang. What suggestion could she find
save the one which must not be spoken?--to send, fetch the artist back
from Dartmoor, and remedy all this, with so much beside!
"But," urged Narcissus, "you and he spent hours together. I quite
understood that he had explained the process to you, and on the
strength of this I gave it too little attention. Of course, if one
could have foreseen--" He broke off, and added with some testiness:
"I'd give fifty pounds to have the fellow back, if only for ten
minutes' talk."
"But why couldn't we?" Dorothea asked suddenly, breathlessly.
They were alone by the table under the bookcase. On the far side of
the hall, before the fire, Endymion dozed after a long day with the
partridges. Narcissus's words awoke a wild hope.
"But why couldn't we?" she repeated, her voice scarcely louder than a
whisper.
"Well, that's an idea!" he chuckled. "Confound the fellow, he imposed
on all of us! If we had only guessed what he intended, we might have
signed a petition telling him how necessary he had made himself, and
imploring him, for our sakes, to behave like a gentleman."
"But supposing--supposing he was innocent--that he had never meant--"
She put out a hand to lay it on her brother's. "Hush!" she could have
cried; but it was too late.
"Endymion!" Narcissus called across the room, jocosely.
"Eh! What is it?" Endymion came out of his doze.
"We're in a mess with these drawings, a complete mess; and we want
Master Raoul fetched out of Dartmoor to set us right. Come now--as
Commissary, what'll you take to work it for us? Fifty pounds has
already been offered."
Dorothea turned from the table with a sigh for her lost chance.
"He'd like it," answered Endymion, grimly. "But, my dear fellow,"--
he slewed himself in his chair for a look around the hall,--"pray
moderate your tones. I particularly deprecate levity on such matters
within possible hearing of the servants; that class of person never
understands a joke."
Narcissus rubbed the top of his head--a trick of his in perplexity.
"But, seriously: it has only this moment occurred to me. Couldn't the
drawings be conveyed to him, in due form, through the Commandant of the
Prison? The poor fellow owes us no grudge. I believe he would be eager
to do us this small service. And, really, they have made such a mess
of the stones--"
"Impossible! Out of the question! And I may say now, and once for all,
that the mention of that unhappy youth is repugnant to me. By good
fortune, we escaped being compromised by him; and I have refrained
from reminding you that your patronage of him was, to say the least,
indiscreet."
"God bless me! You don't suggest, I hope, that I encouraged him to
escape!"
"I suggest nothing. But I am honestly glad to be quit of him, and take
some satisfaction in remembering that I detested the fellow from the
first. He had too much cleverness with his bad style, or, if you prefer
it, was sufficiently like a gentleman to be dangerous. Pah! For his
particular offence, I would have had the old hulks maintained in the
Hamoaze, with all their severities; as it is, the posturer may find
Dartmoor pretty stiff, but will yet have the consolation of herding
with his betters."
Strangely enough this speech did more to fix Dorothea's resolve than
all she had read or heard of the rigours of the war-prison. Gently
reared though she was, physical suffering seemed to her less
intolerable than to be unjustly held in this extreme of scorn..
This was the deeper wrong; and putting herself in her lover's place,
feeling with his feelings, she knew it to be by far the deeper. In
Dartmoor he shared the sufferings of men unfortunate but not
despicable, punished for fighting in their country's cause. But here
was a moral punishment, deserved by none but the vilest; and she had
helped to bring it--was allowing it to rest--upon a hero!
In the long watches of that night it never occurred to her that the
brutality of her brother's contempt was over-done. And Endymion, not
given to self-questioning at any time, was probably unconscious of a
dull wrath revenging itself for many pin-pricks of Master Raoul's
clever tongue. Endymion Westcote, like many pompous men, usually hurt
somebody when he indulged in a joke, and for this cause, perhaps, had
a nervous dislike of wit in others. Dull in taking a jest, but almost
preternaturally clever in suspecting one, he had disliked Raoul's
sallies in proportion as they puzzled him. The remembrance of them
rankled, and this had been his bull-roar of revenge.
He spent the next morning in his office; and returning at three in the
afternoon, retired to the library to draw up the usual monthly report
required of him as Commissary. He had been writing tor an hour or more,
when Dorothea tapped at the door and entered.
Endymion did not observe her pallor; indeed, he scarcely looked up.
"Ah! You have come for a book? Make as little noise, then, as possible,
that's a good soul. You interrupted me in a column of figures."
He began to add them up afresh, tapping the table with the fingers of
his left hand, as his custom was when counting. Dorothea waited. The
addition made, he entered it, resting three shapely finger-tips on the
table's edge for the number to be carried over.
"I wish to speak with you particularly."
He laid down his pen resignedly. Her voice was urgent, and he knew
well enough that the occasion must be urgent when Dorothea interrupted
his work.
"Anything wrong?"
"It--it's about M. Raoul."
His eyebrows went up, but only to contract again upon a magisterial
frown.
"Really, after the request I was obliged to make to Narcissus last
night--you were present, I believe? Is it possible that I failed to
make plain my distaste?"
"Ah, but listen! It is no question of distaste, but of a great wrong.
He was not trying to escape; he told you an untruth, to--to save--"
Endymion had picked up a paper-knife, and leaned back, tapping his
teeth with it.
"Do you know?" he said, "I suspected something of this kind from the
first, though I had no idea you shared the knowledge. Zeally's
cleverness struck me as a trifle too--ah--phenomenal for belief.
I scented some low intrigue; and Polly's dismissal may indicate my
pretty shrewd guess at the culprit."
"But it was not Polly!"
"Eh?"
Endymion sat bolt upright.
"You must not blame Polly. It was I whom M. Raoul came to see that
night."
He stared at her, incredulous.
"My dear Dorothea, are you quite insane?"
"He wished to see me--to speak with me; he gave the girl a note for
me. I knew nothing about it until I went upstairs that night, and found
her at the boudoir window. M. Raoul was outside. He had arrived before
she could deliver the message."
"Quite so!" with a nasally derisive laugh. "And you really need me to
point out how prettily those turtles were befooling you?"
"Indeed, no; it was not that."
He struck the table impatiently with the paper-knife.
"My dear woman, do exert some common sense! What in the name of wonder
could the fellow have to discuss with you at that hour? Your pardon if,
finding no apparent limits to your innocence, I assume it to be
illimitable, and point out that he would scarcely break bounds and play
Romeo beneath the window of a middle-aged lady for the purpose of
discussing water-colours with her, or the exploits of Vespasian."
The taunt brought red to Dorothea's cheeks, and stung her into courage.
"He came to see me," she persisted. Her voice dropped a little. "I had
come to feel a regard for M. Raoul; and he--" She could not go on. Her
eyes met her brother's for a moment, then fell before them.
What she expected she could not tell. Certainly she did not expect what
happened, and his sudden laughter smote her like a whip. It broke in a
shout of high, incontrollable mirth, and he leaned back and shook in
his chair until the tears streamed down his cheeks.
"You!" he gasped. "You! Oh, oh, oh!"
She stood beneath the scourge, silent. She felt it curl across and bite
the very flesh, and thought it was killing her, Her bosom heaved.
It ceased. He sat upright again, wiping his eyes.
"But it's incredible!" he protested; "the scoundrel has fooled you all
along. Yes, of course," he pondered; "that explains the success of the
trick, which otherwise was clumsy beyond belief; in fact, its
clumsiness puzzled me. But how was I to guess?" He pulled himself up on
the edge of another guffaw. "Look here, Dorothea, be sensible. It's
clear as daylight the fellow was after Polly, and made you his cats-
paw. Face it, my dear; face it, and conquer your illusions. I
understand it must cost you some suffering, but, after all, you must
find some blame in yourself--in your heart, I mean, not in your
conduct. Doubtless your conduct showed weakness, or he would never have
dared--but, there, I can trust my sister. Face it; the thing's absurd!
You, a woman of thirty-eight (or is it thirty-nine?), and he, if I may
judge from appearances, young enough to be your son! Polly was his
game--the deceitful little slut! You must see it for yourself. And
after all, it's more natural. Immoral, I've no doubt--"
He paused in the middle of his harangue. A parliamentary candidate
(unsuccessful) for Axcester had once dared to poke fun at Endymion
Westcote for having asserted, in a public speech, that indecency was
worse than immorality. For the life of him Endymion could never see
where the joke came in; but the fellow had illustrated it with such a
wealth of humorous instances, and had kept his ignorant audience for
twenty minutes in such fits of laughter, that he never afterwards
approached the antithesis but he skirted it with a red face.
And Dorothea?
The scourge might cut into her heart; it could not reach the image of
Raoul she shielded there. She knew her lover too well, and that he was
incapable of this baseness. But the injurious charge, diverted from
him, fell upon her own defences, and, breaking them, let in the cruel
light at length on her passion, her folly. This was how the world
would see it. . . . Yes! Raoul was right--there is no enemy
comparable with Time. Looks, fortune, birth, breed, unequal hearts and
minds--all these Love may confound and play with; but Time which
divides the dead from the living, sets easily between youth and age a
gulf which not only forbids love but derides:
Age, I do abhor thee;
Youth, I do adore thee;
O, my Love, my Love is young!
She could give counsel, sympathy, care; could delight in his delights,
hope in his hopes, melt with his woes, and, having wept a little, find
comfort for them. She could thrill at his footsteps, blush at his
salutation, sit happily beside him and talk or be silent, reading his
moods. He might fill her waking day, haunt her dreams, in the end pass
into prison for her sake, having crowned love with martyrdom. And the
world would laugh as Endymion had laughed! Her hands went up to shut
out the roar of it. A coarse amour with Polly--that could be
understood. Polly was young. Polly . . .
"What will you do?" she heard herself asking, and could scarcely
believe the voice belonged to her.
"Do? Why, if my theory be right--and I hope I've convinced you--I see
no use in meddling. The girl is respectably married. It will cause her
quite unnecessary trouble if we rip this affair open again. Her husband
will have just ground for complaint, and it might--I need not point
out--be a little awkward, eh?"
For the first time in her life Dorothea regarded her brother with
something like contempt. But the flash gave way to a look of weary
resolve.
"Then I must tell the truth--to others," she said.
It confounded him for a moment. But although here was a new Dorothea,
belying all experience, his instinct for handling men and women told
him at once what had happened. He had driven her too far. He was even
clever enough to foresee that winning her back to obedience would be
a ticklish, almost desperate, business; and even sensitive enough to
redden at his blunder.