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 indéclassés, 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 aprotégéof 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 wantMaster Raoul fetched out of Dartmoor to set us right. Come now—asCommissary, what'll you take to work it for us? Fifty pounds hasalready 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.
"You do not agree with my view?" he asked, tapping the table slowly.
"I disbelieve it. I have no right to believe it, even if I had the power. He is in prison. You must help me to set him free. If not—"
"He cannot, possibly return to Axcester."
"Oh, what is that to me?" she cried with sudden impatience. Then her tone fell back to its dull level. "I have not been pleading for myself."
"No, no: I understand." His brow cleared, as a man's who faces a bad business and resolves to go through with it. "Well, there is only one way to spare you and everyone. We must get him a cartel."
"A cartel?"
"Yes—get him exchanged, and sent home to his friends. The War Office owes me something, and will no doubt oblige me in a small affair like this without asking questions. Oh, certainly it can be managed. I will write at once."
Dorothea had the profoundest faith in her brother's ability. That he hit at once on this simple solution which had eluded her through many wakeful nights did not surprise her in the least. Nor did she doubt for a moment that he would manage it as he promised.
But she could not thank him. He had beaten her spirit sorely—so sorely, that for days her whole body ached with the bruise. She did not accuse him: her one flash of contempt had lasted for an instant only, and the old habit of reverence quickly effaced it. But he had exposed her weakness; had forced her to see it, naked and pitiful, with no chivalry—either manly or brotherly—covering it; and seeing it with nothing to depend upon, she learned for the first time in her life the high, stern lesson of independence.
She learned it unconsciously, but she never forgot it. And it is to Endymion's credit that he recognised the great alteration and allowed for it. He had driven her too far. She would never again be the same Dorothea. And never again by word or look did he remind her of that hour of abasement.
An exchange of prisoners was not to be managed in a day, and would take weeks, perhaps six weeks or a couple of months. He discussed this with her, quietly, as a matter of business entrusted to him, explained what steps he had taken, what letters he had written; when he expected definite news from the War Office. She met him on the same ground. "Yes, he could not have done better." She trusted him absolutely.
And in fact he had been better than his word. Ultimate success, to be sure, was certain. It were strange if Mr. Westcote, who had opened his purse to support a troop of Yeomanry, who held two parliamentary seats at the Government's service and two members at call to bully the War Office whenever he desired, who might at any time have had a baronetcy for the asking—it were strange indeed if Mr. Westcote could not obtain so trivial a favour as the exchange of a prisoner. He could do this, but he could not appreciably hurry the correspondence by which Pall Mall bargained a Frenchman in the forest of Dartmoor against an Englishman in the fortress of Briançon in the Hautes Alpes. Foreseeing delays, he had written privately to the Commandant at Dartmoor—a Major Sotheby, with whom he had some slight acquaintance—advising him of his efforts and requesting him to show the prisoner meanwhile all possible indulgence. The letter contained a draft, for ten pounds, to be spent upon small comforts at the Commandant's discretion; but M. Raoul was not to be informed of the donor, or of his approaching liberty.
In theory—such was the routine—Raoul remained one of the Axcester contingent of prisoners, and all reports concerning him must pass through the Commissary's hands. In the last week of October, when brother and sister daily expected the cartel, arrived a report that the prisoner was in hospital with a sharp attack of pleurisy. Major Sotheby added a private note:-
"I feared yesterday that the exchange would come too late for him; but to-day the Medical Officer, who has just left me, speaks hopefully. I have no doubt, however, that a winter in this climate would be fatal. The fellow's lungs are breaking down, and even if they could stand the fogs, the cold must finish him."
Dorothea stood by a window in the library when Endymion read this out to her; the very window through which she had been gazing that spring morning when Raoul first kissed her. To-day the first of the winter's snow fell gently, persistently, out of a leaden and windless sky.
She turned. "I must go to him," she said.
"But to what purpose—"
"Oh, you may trust me!"
"My dear girl, that was not in my mind." He spoke gently. "But until the warrant arrives—"
"We will give it until to-morrow; by every account it should reach us to-morrow. You shall take it with me. I must see him once more; only once—in your presence, if you wish."
Next morning they rode into the town together, an hour before the mail's arrival. Endymion alighted at the Town House to write a business letter or two before strolling down to the post office. Dorothea cantered on to the top of the hill, and then walked Mercury to and fro, while she watched the taller rise beyond. The snow had ceased falling; but a crisp north wind skimmed the drifts and powdered her dark habit.
Twice she pulled out her watch; but the coach was up to time in spite of the heavy roads; and as it topped the rise she reined Mercury to the right-about and cantered back to await it. Already the street had begun to fill as usual; and, as usual, there was General Rochambeau picking his way along the pavement to present himself for the Admiral's letter—the letter which never arrived.
Wouldherletter never arrive?
He halted on the kerb by her stirrup. She asked after the Admiral's health.
"Ah, Mademoiselle, if ever he leaves his bed again, it will be a miracle."
She was not listening. Age, age again!—it makes all the difference.Here came the coach—did it hold a letter for Raoul? Raoul was young.
The coach rolled by with less noise than usual, on the carpet of snow churned brown with traffic. As it passed, the guard lifted his horn and blew cheerily. She followed, telling herself it was a good omen. During the long wait outside the post office she rebuked herself more than once for building a hope upon it. Name after name was called, and at each call a prisoner pushed forward to the doorway for his letter. She caught sight of the General on the outskirts of the crowd. Her brother would not come out until every letter had been distributed.
But when he appeared in the doorway she read the good news in his face. He made his way briskly towards her, the prisoners falling back to give passage.
"Right; it has come," he said. "Trot away home and have the valises packed, while I run into 'The Dogs' and order the chaise."
Once clear of the town, she galloped. There was little need to hurry, for her own valise had been packed overnight.
Having sent Mudge to attend to her brother's, she ran to Narcissus' room—his scriptorium, as he called it.
Narcissus was at home to-day, busy with the cellar accounts. He took stock twice a year and composed a report in language worthy of a survey of the Roman Empire. Before he could look up, Dorothea had kissed him on the crown of his venerable head.
"Such news, dear! Endymion has ordered a chaise from 'The Dogs,' and is going to take me to Dartmoor!"
"Dartmoor—God bless my soul!" He rubbed his head, and added with a twinkle: "Why, what have you been doing?"
"Endymion has a cartel of exchange for M. Raoul, and we are to carry it."
"Ah, so that is what you two have been conspiring over? I smelt a rat somewhere. But, really, this is delightful of you—delightful of you both. Only, why on earth should you be carrying the release yourselves, in this weather."
"He is very ill," said Dorothea, seriously.
"Indeed? Poor fellow, poor fellow. Still, that scarcely explains—"
"And you will be good, and take your meals regularly when Mudge beats the gong? And you won't sit up late and set fire to the house? But I must run off and tell everyone to take care of you."
She kissed him again, and was half-way down the corridor before he called after her:
"Dorothea, Dorothea! the drawings!"
"Ah, to be sure; I forgot," she murmured, as he thrust the parcel into her hand.
"Forgot? Forgot the drawings? But, God bless my soul!—"
He passed his hand over his grey hairs and stared down the corridor after her.
The roads were heavy to start, with, and beyond Chard they grew heavier. At Honiton, which our travellers reached at midnight, it was snowing; and Dorothea, when the sleepy chamber-maid aroused her at dawn, looked out upon a forbidding world of white. The postboys were growling, and she half feared that Endymion would abandon the journey for the day. But if he lacked her zeal, he had the true Englishman's hatred of turning back. She, who had known him always for a master of men, learned a new awe of her splendid brother. He took command; he cross-examined landlord and postboys, pooh-poohed their objections, extracted from them in half-a-dozen curt questions more information than, five minutes before, they were conscious of possessing, to judge from the scratching of heads which produced it; finally, he handed Dorothea into the chaise, sprang in himself, and closed discussion with a slam of the door. They were driven off amid the salaams of ostler, boots, waiter, and two chambermaids, among whom he had scattered largess with the lordliest hand.
So the chaise ploughed through Exeter to Moreton Hampstead, where they supped and rested for another night. But before dawn they were off again. Snow lay in thick drifts on the skirts of the great moor, and snow whirled about them as they climbed, until day broke upon a howling desert, across which Dorothea peered but could discern no features. Not leagues but years divided Bayfield from this tableland, high over all the world, uninhabited, without tree or gate or hedge. Her eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, smarting with the bite of the north wind, which neither ceased nor eased until, towards ten o'clock, the carriage began to lumber downhill towards Two Bridges, under the lee of Crockern Tor. Beyond came a heavy piece of collar work, the horses dropping to a walk as they heaved through the drifts towards a depression between two tors closing the view ahead. Dorothea's eyes, avoiding the wind, were fixed on the tor to the left, when Endymion touched her hand and pointed towards the base of the other. There, grey—almost black—against the white hillside, a mass of masonry loomed up through the weather; the great circle of the War Prison.
The road did not lead them to it direct. They must halt first at the bare village of Prince Town, and drink coffee and warm themselves at the "Plume of Feathers Inn," before facing the last few hundred yards beneath the lee of North Hessary. But a little before noon, Dorothea— still with a sense of being lifted on a platform miles above the world she knew—alighted before a tremendous archway of piled granite set in a featureless wall, and closed with a sheeted gate of iron. A grey- coated sentry, pacing here in front of his snow-capped box, challenged and demanded their business.
"Visitors for the Commandant!" The sentry tugged at an iron bellpull, and a bell tolled twice within. Dorothea's feet were half-frozen in spite of her wraps—she stamped them in the snow while she studied the gateway and the enormous blocks which arched it, unhewn save for two words carved in Roman capitals—"PARCERE SUBJECTIS."
A key turned in the wicket. "Visitors for the Commandant!" They stepped through, and after pausing a moment while the porter shot the lock again behind them, followed him across the yard to the Commandant's quarters.
The outer wall of the great War Prison enclosed a circle of thirty acres; within it a second wall surrounded an acre in which stood the five rectangular blocks of the prison proper, with two slightly smaller buildings—the one a hospital, the other set apart for the petty officers; and between the inner and outer walls ran avia militaris, close on a mile in circumference, constantly paraded by the guard, and having raised platforms from which the sentinels could overlook the inner wall and the area. The area was not completely circular, since, where it faced the great gate, a segment had been cut out of it for the Commandant's quarters and outbuildings and the entrance yard, across which, our travellers now followed their guide.
The Commandant hurried out from his office to welcome them—a bustling little officer with sandy hair and the kindliest possible face; a trifle self-important, obviously proud of his prison, and, after a fashion, of his prisoners too; anxiously, elaborately polite in his manner, especially towards Dorothea.
"Major Westcote!"—he gave Endymion his full title—"My dear sir, this is indeed—And Miss Westcote?" he bowed as he was introduced, "Delighted—honoured! But what a journey! You must be famished, positively; you will be wanting luncheon at once—yes, really you must allow me. No? A glass of sherry, then, and a biscuit at least . . ." He ran to the door, called to his orderly to bring some glasses, and came back rubbing his hands. "It's an ill wind, as they say . . ."
"We have come with the order about which we have corresponded."
"For that poor fellow Raoul?" The Commandant nodded gaily and smiled; and Dorothea, who had been watching his face, felt the load dissolve and roll off her heart, as a pile of snow slides from a bough in the sunshine. "He is better, I am glad to report—out of bed and fairly convalescent indeed. But I hope my message did not alarm you needlessly. It was touch-and-go with him for twenty-four hours; still, he was bettering when I wrote. And to bring you all this way, and in such weather!"
"My sister and I," explained Endymion, "take a particular interest in his case."
But the voluble officer was not so easily silenced.
"So, to be sure, I gathered." He bowed gallantly to Dorothea. "'O woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please'—not, of course, that I attribute any such foibles to Miss Westcote, but for the sake of the conclusion."
"Can we see him?"
"Eh? Before luncheon? Oh, most assuredly, if you wish it. He has been transferred to the Convalescents' Ward. We will step across at once." He drew from his pocket a small master-key, attached by a steel chain to his belt, and blew into the wards thoughtfully while he studied the paper handed to him by Endymion. "Quite in order, of course. No doubt, you and Miss Westcote would prefer to break the good news to him in private? Yes, yes; I will have him sent up to the Consulting Room. The Doctor has finished his morning rounds, and you will be quite alone there."
He picked up his cap and escorted them out and across the court to the gate of the main prison. Beyond this Dorothea found herself in a vast snowy yard, along two sides of which ran covered ways or piazzas open to the air, but faced with iron bars, and behind these bars flitted the forms of the prisoners at exercise, stamping the flagged pavement to keep their starved blood in circulation. At a sight of the Commandant with his two visitors—so small a spectacle had power to divert them— all this movement, this stamping, was hushed suddenly. Voices broke into chatter; faces appeared between the bars and stared.
"Yes," said the Commandant, reading Dorothea's thought, "a large family to be responsible for! How many would you guess, now?"
"A thousand, at least," she murmured.
"Six thousand! Each of those blocks yonder will accommodate fifteen hundred men. And then there is the hospital—usually pretty full at this season, I regret to say. Come, I won't detain you; but really in passing you must have a look at one of our dormitories."
He threw open a door, and she gazed in upon a long-drawn avenue of iron pillars slung with double tiers of hammocks. The place seemed clean enough: at the far end of the vista a fatigue gang of prisoners was busy with pails and brushes; but either it had not been thoroughly ventilated, or the dense numbers packed in it for so many hours a day had given the building an atmosphere of its own, warm and unpleasant, if not precisely foetid, after the pure, stinging air of the moorland.
"We can sleep seven hundred here," said the Commandant; "and another dormitory of the same size runs overhead. The top story they use as a promenade and for indoor recreation." He pointed to a number of grilles set in the wall at the back, at equal distances. "For air," he explained, "and also for keeping watch onmessieurs. Yes, we find that necessary. Behind each is a small chamber, hollowed most scientifically, quite a little temple of acoustics. If Miss Westcote, now, would care to step into one and listen, while I stand below with the Major and converse in ordinary tones—"
"No, no," Dorothea declined, hurriedly, and with a shiver.
It hurt her to think of Raoul herded among seven hundred miserables in this endless barrack, his every movement overlooked, his smallest speech overheard, by an eaves-dropping sentry.
"I think, Endymion chimed in, my sister feels her long journey, and would be glad to get our business over."
"Ah, to be sure—a thousand pardons!"
The Commandant shut the door and piloted them across to the hospital block. Here on the threshold the same warm, acrid atmosphere assailed Dorothea's nostrils, and almost choked her breathing. Their guide led the way up a flight of stone steps to the first floor, and down a whitewashed corridor, lit along one side with narrow barred casements. A little more than half-way down the corridor the blank wall facing these casements was pierced by a low arched passage. Into this burrow the Commandant dived; and, standing outside, they heard a key turned in a lock. He reappeared and beckoned to them.
"From the gallery here," he whispered, "you look right down into theConvalescent Ward."
Through the iron bars of the gallery Dorothea caught a glimpse of a long bare room, with twenty or thirty dejected figures in suits and caps of greyish-blue flannel, huddled about a stove. Some were playing at cards, others at dominoes. The murmur of their voices ascended and hummed in the little passage.
"Hist! Your friend is below there, if you care to have a peep at him."
But Dorothea had already drawn back. All this spying and listening revolted her. The polite Commandant noted the movement.
"You prefer that he should be fetched at once?" He stepped past them into the corridor. "Smithers!" he called. "Smithers!"
A hospital orderly appeared at a door almost opposite the passage, and saluted.
"Run down to the Convalescent Ward and fetch up Number Two-six-seven- two.—I know the number of each of my children. I never make a mistake," he confided in Dorothea's ear. "As quick as you can, please! Stay; you may add that some visitors have called and wish to speak with him."
The orderly saluted again, and hurried off.
"You wish, of course, to see him alone together?"
"I think," answered Endymion, slowly, "my sister would prefer a word or two with him alone."
"Certainly. Will you step into the surgery, Miss Westcote?" He indicated the door at which the orderly had appeared. "Smithers will not take two minutes in fetching the prisoner; and perhaps, if you will excuse us, a visit to the hospital itself will repay your brother. We are rather proud of our sanitation here: a glance over our arrangements—five minutes only—"
Endymion, at a nod from Dorothea, permitted himself to be led away by the inexorable man.
She watched them to the end of the corridor, and had her hand on the surgery door to push it open, when a voice from below smote her ears.
"Number Two-six-seven-two to come to the surgery at once, to see visitors!"
The voice rang up through the little passage behind her. She turned; the door at the end of it stood half-open; beyond it she saw the bars of the gallery, and through these a space of whitewashed wall at the end of the ward.
She was turning again, when a babble of voices answered the orderly's announcement. "Raoul! Raoul!" half-a-dozen were calling, and then one spoke up sharp and distinct:
"Tenez, mon bonhomme, ce sera votregilet, à coup sur!"
A burst of laughter followed.
"C'est songilet—his little Waistcoat—à chauffer la poitrine—"
"Des visiteurs, dit il? Voyons, coquin, n'y-a-t-il pas par hasard une visiteuse de la partie."
"Une 'Waistcoat' par example?—de quarante ans environ, le drap un peu râpé . . ."
"Qui se nomme Dorothée—ce que veut dire le gilet dieudonné . . ."
"Easy now!" the Orderly's voice remonstrated. "Easy, I tell you, ye born mill-clappers! There's a lady in the party, if that's what you're asking."
Dorothea put out a hand against the jamb of the surgery door, to steady herself She heard the smack of a palm below and some one uttered a serio-comic groan.
"Enfoncé! Il m'a parié dix sous qu'elle viendrait avant le jour de Pan, et aussi du tabac avec tout le Numero Six. Nous en ferons la dot de Mademoiselle!" The fellow burst out singing—
"J'ai du bon tabacDans ma tabatière."
"Dites donc, mon petit,"—but the cheerful epithet he bestowed on Raoul is unquotable here—"Elle ne fume pas, votre Anglaise? Elle n'est pas Créole, c'est entendu."
Dorothea had stepped into the surgery. A small round table stood in the middle of the room; she caught at the edge of it and rested so for a moment, for the walls seemed to be swaying and she durst not lift her hands to shut out the roars of laughter. They rang in her ears and shouted and stunned her. Her whole body writhed.
The hubbub below sank to a confused murmur. She heard footsteps in the corridor—the firm tramp of the orderly followed by the shuffle of list slippers.
"Number Two-six-seven-two is outside, ma'am. Am I to show him in?"
She bent her head and moved towards the fireplace. She heard him shuffle in, and the door shut behind him. Still she did not turn.
"Dorothea!"—his voice shook with joy, with passion. How well she knew that deep Provençal tremolo. She could have laughed aloud in her bitterness.
"Dorothea!"
She faced him at length. He stood there, stretching out both hands to her. He was handsome as ever, but pale and sadly pinched. Beyond all doubt he had suffered. His grey-blue hospital suit hung about him in folds.
In her eyes he read at once that something was wrong—but without comprehending. "You sent for me," he stammered; "you have come—"
She found her voice and, to her surprise, it was quite firm.
"Yes, we have brought your release," she said; and, watching his eyes, saw the joy leap up in them, saw it quenched the next instant as he composed his features to a fond solicitude for her.
"But you?" he murmured. "What has happened? Tell me—no, do not draw away! Your hand, at least."
Contempt, for herself or for him, gave her a moment's strength, but it broke down again.
"It is horrible!" was all she answered and looked about her with a shiver.
"Ah, the place frightens you! Well," he laughed, reassuringly, "it frightened me at first. But for the thought of you, dearest, to comfort—"
She stepped past him and opened the door. For a moment a wild notion seized him that she was escaping, and he put out an imploring hand; but he saw that, with her hand on the jamb, she was listening, and he, too, listened. The voices in the Convalescent Ward came up to them, scarcely muffled, through the low passage, and with them a cackling laugh. Then he understood.
Their eyes met. He bowed his head.
"Nevertheless, I have suffered."
He said it humbly, after many seconds, and in a voice so low that it seemed a second or two before she heard. For the first time she put out a hand and touched his sleeve.
"Yes, you have suffered, and for me. Let me go on believing that. You did a noble thing, and I shall try to remember you by it—to remember that you were capable of it. 'It was for my sake,' I shall say, and then I shall be proud. Oh, yes, sometimes I shall be very proud! But in love—"
Her voice faltered, and he looked up sharply.
"In love"—she smiled, but passing faintly—"it's the little things, is it not? It's the little things that count."
She touched his sleeve again, and passed into the room, leaving him there at a standstill, as Endymion and the Commandant came round the corner at the far end of the corridor.
"Excuse me," said Endymion, and, stepping past Raoul without a glance, looked into the surgery. After a moment he shut the door quietly, and, standing with his back to it, addressed the prisoner: "I perceive, sir, that my sister has told you the news. We have effected an exchange for you, and the Commandant tells me that to-morrow, if the roads permit, you will be sent down to Plymouth and released. It is unnecessary for you to thank me; it would, indeed, be offensive. I wish you a safe passage home, and pray heaven to spare me the annoyance of seeing your face again."
As Raoul bowed and moved away, dragging his feet weakly in their list slippers, Mr. Westcote turned to the Commandant, who during this address had kept a discreet distance.
"With your leave, we will continue our stroll, and return for my sister in a few minutes."
The Commandant jumped at the suggestion.
Dorothea heard their footsteps retreating, and knew that her brother's thoughtfulness had found her this short respite. She had dropped into the orderly's chair, and now bowed her head upon the prison doctor's ledger, which lay open on the table before it.
"Oh, my love! How could you do it? How could you? How could you?"
Two hours later they set out on their homeward journey.
The Commandant, still voluble, escorted them to the gate. As Dorothea climbed into the chaise and Endymion shook up the rugs and cushions, a large brown-paper parcel rolled out upon the snow. She gave a little cry of dismay:
"The drawings!"
"Eh?"
"We forgot to deliver them."
"Oh, confound the things!"
Endymion was for pitching them back into the chaise.
"But no!" she entreated. "Why, Narcissus believes it was to deliver them that we came!"
So the Commandant amiably charged himself to hand the parcel toM. Raoul, and waved his adieux with it as the chaise rolled away.
Of what had passed between Dorothea and Raoul at the surgery door Endymion knew nothing; but he had guessed at once, and now was assured by the tone in which she had spoken of the drawings, that the chapter was closed, the danger past. Coming, brother and sister had scarcely exchanged a word for miles together. Now they found themselves chatting without effort about the landscape, the horses' pace, the Commandant and his hospitality, the arrangements of the prison, and the prospects of a cosy dinner at Moreton Hampstead. It was all the smallest of small talk, and just what might be expected of two reputable middle-aged persons returning in a post-chaise from a mild jaunt; yet beneath it ran a current of feeling. In their different ways, each had been moved; each had relied upon the other for a degree of help which could not be asked in words, and had not been disappointed.
Now that Dorothea's infatuation had escaped all risk of public laughter, Endymion could find leisure to admire her courage in confessing, in persisting until the wrong was righted, and, now at the last, in shutting the door upon the whole episode.
And, now at the last, having shut the door upon it, Dorothea could reflect that her brother, too, had suffered. She knew his pride, his sensitiveness, his mortal dread of ridicule. In the smart of his wound he had turned and rent her cruelly, but had recovered himself and defended her loyally from worse rendings. She remembered, too, that he had distrusted Raoul from the first.
He had been right. But had she been wholly wrong?
In the dusk of the fifth evening after their departure the chaise rolled briskly in through Bayfield great gates and up the snowy drive. Almost noiselessly though it came, Mudge had the door thrown wide and stood ready to welcome them, with Narcissus behind in the comfortable glow of the hall.
Dorothea's limbs were stiff, and on alighting she steadied herself for a moment by the chaise-door before stepping in to kiss her brother. In that moment her eyes took one backward glance across the park and rested on the lights of Axcester glimmering between the naked elms.
"Well," demanded Narcissus, after exchange of greetings, "and what did he say about the drawings?"
Dorothea had not expected the question in this form, and parried it with a laugh:
"You and your drawings! I declare"—she turned to Endymion—"he has been thinking of them all the time, and affects no concern in our adventures!"
"Which, nevertheless, have been romantic to the last degree," he added, playing up to her.
"My dear Dorothea—" Narcissus expostulated.
"But you are not going to evade me by any such tricks," she interrupted, sternly; "for that is what it comes to. I left you with the strictest orders to take care of yourself, and you ought to know that I shall answer nothing until you have been catechised. What have you been eating?"
"MydearDorothea!"
Narcissus gazed helplessly at Mudge; but Mudge had been seized with a flurry of his own, and misinterpreted the look as well as the stern question.
"I—I reckon 'tisme, Miss," he confessed. "Being partial to onions, and taking that liberty in Mr. Endymion's absence, knowing his dislike of the effluvium—"
Such are the pitfalls of a guilty conscience on the one hand, and, on the other, of being unexpectedly clever.
An hour later, at dinner, Narcissus was informed that the drawings had been conveyed to M. Raoul, who, doubtless, would return them with hints for correction.
"But had he nothing to say at the time?"
"For my part," said Endymion, sipping his wine, "I addressed but one sentence to him; and Dorothea, I daresay, exchanged but half a dozen. Considering the shortness of the interview, and that our mission—at least, our ostensible mission"—Endymion glanced at Dorothea, with a smile at his ownfinesse—"was to carry him news of his release, you will admit—"
"Oh—ah!—to be sure; I had forgotten the release," mutteredNarcissus, and was resigned.
"By the way," Dorothea asked, after a short pause, "what is happening at 'The Dogs' tonight? All the windows are lit up in the Orange Room. I saw it as I stepped out of the chaise."
"Yes; I have to tell you"—Narcissus turned towards his brother— "that during your absence another of the prisoners has found his discharge—the old Admiral."
"Dead?"
"He died this morning: but you knew, of course, it was only a question of days. Rochambeau was with him at the last. He has shown great devotion."
"You have made all arrangements, of course?" For Narcissus was ActingCommissary in his brother's absence.
"I rode in at once on hearing the news, which Zeally brought before daylight; and found the Lodge"—this was a Masonic Lodge formed among the prisoners, and named by themLa Paix Desiree—"anxious to pay him something more than the full rites. With my leave they have hired the Orange Room, and turned it into achapelle ardente; and there, I believe, he is reposing now, poor old fellow."
"He has no kith nor kin, I understand."
"None. He was never married, and his relatives went in the Terror— the most of them (so Rochambeau tells me) in a single week."
Dorothea had heard the same story from the General and from Raoul. To this old warrior his Emperor had been friends, kindred, wife, and children—nay, almost God. He had enjoyed Napoleon's favour, and followed his star from the days of the Directory: in that favour and the future of France beneath that star his hopes had begun and ended. His private ambitions he had resigned without a word on the day when he put to sea out of Brest, under order from Paris, to perform a feat he knew to be impossible, with ships ill-found, under-manned, and half- victualled by cheating contractors: and he sailed cheerfully, believing himself sacrificed to some high purpose of his master's. When, the sacrifice made, he learned that the contractors slandered him to cover their own villainy, and that Napoleon either believed them or was indifferent, his heart broke. Too proud at first, he had ended by drawing up a statement and forwarding it from his captivity, with a demand for an enquiry. The answer to this was—the letter which never came.
Dorothea thought of the room where she had danced and been happy: the many lights, the pagan figures merrymaking on the panels, the goddess on the ceiling with her cupids and scattered roses, and, in the centre of it all, that dead face, incongruous and calm.
How small had been her tribulation beside his! And it was all over for him now—wages taken, account sealed up for judgment,paroleended, and no heir to trouble over him or his good name.
Next morning she rode into Axcester, as well to do some light shopping as because it seemed an age since her last visit, which, to be sure, was absurd, and she knew it. Happening to meet General Rochambeau, she drew rein and very gently offered her condolence on the loss of his old friend.
The General pressed her hand gratefully.
"Ah, never pity him, Mademoiselle. He carries a good pass for theElysian Fields."
"And that is—?"
"The Emperor'stabatière: and, my faith! Miss Dorothea, there will be sneezings in certain quarters when he opens it there.
"Il a du bon tabacDans sa tabatière
"has the Admiral. He had for you (if I may say it) a quite extraordinary respect and affection. The saints rest his brave soul!"
The General lifted his tricorne. He never understood the tide of red which surged over Dorothea's face; but she conquered it, and went on to surprise him further:
"I heard of this only last night. We have been visiting Dartmoor, my brother and I, with a release for—for that M. Raoul."
"So I understood." He noted that her confusion had gone as suddenly as it came.
"But since I am back in time, and it appears I was so fortunate as to win his regard, I would ask to see him—if it be permitted, and I may have your escort."
"Certainly, Mademoiselle. You will, perhaps, wish to consult your brother though?"
"I see no necessity," she answered.
* * * * * * * * *
The General was not the only one to discover a new and firmer note in Dorothea's voice. Life at Bayfield slipped back into its old comfortable groove, but the brothers fell—and one of them consciously—into a habit of including her in their conversations and even of asking her advice. One day there arrived a bulky parcel for Narcissus; so bulky indeed and so suspiciously heavy, that it bore signs of several agitated official inspections, and nothing short of official deference to Endymion (under cover of whom it was addressed) could account for its having come through at all. For it came from France. It contained a set of the Bayfield drawings exquisitely cut in stone; and within the cover was wrapped a lighter parcel addressed to Miss Dorothea Westcote—a rose-tree, with a packet of seeds tied about its root.
No letter accompanied the gift, at the sentimentality of which she found herself able to smile. But she soaked the root carefully in warm water, and smiled again at herself, as she planted it at the foot of the glacis beneath her boudoir window—the very spot where Raoul had fallen. Against expectation—for the journey had sorely withered it— the plant throve. She lived to see it grown into a fine Provence rose, draping the whole south-east corner of Bayfield with its yellow bloom.
"After all," she said one afternoon, stepping back in the act of pruning it, "provided one sees things in their right light and is not a fool—"
But this was long after the time of which we are telling.
Folks no longer smile at sentiment. They laugh it down: by which, perhaps, no great harm would be done if their laughter came through the mind; but it comes through the passions, and at the best chastises one excess by another—a weakness by a rage, which is weakness at its worst. I fear Dorothea may be injured in the opinion of many by the truth—which, nevertheless, has to be told—that her recovery was helped not a little by sentiment. What? Is a poor lady's heart to be in combustion for a while and then—pf!—the flame expelled at a blast, with all that fed it? That is the heroic cure, no doubt: but either it kills or leaves a room swept and garnished, inviting devils. In short it is the way of tragedy, and for tragedy Dorothea had no aptitude at all. She did what she could—tidied up.
For an instance.—She owned a small book which had once belonged to a namesake of hers—a Dorothea Westcote who had lived at the close of the seventeenth and opening of the eighteenth centuries, a grand- daughter of the first Westcote of Bayfield, married (so said the family history) in 1704 to a squire from across the Devonshire border. The book was a slender one, bound in calf, gilt-edged, and stamped with a gold wreath in the centre of each cover. Dorothea called it an album; but the original owner had simply written in, "Dorothea Westcote, her book," on the first page, with the date 1687 below, and filled four-and- twenty of its blank pages with poetry (presumably her favourite pieces), copied in a highly ornate hand. Presumably also she had wearied of the work, let the book lie, and coming to it later, turned it upside down and started with a more useful purpose: for three pages at the end contained several household recipes in the same writing grown severer, including "Garland Wine (Mrs. Massiter's Way)" and "A good Cottage Pie for a Pore Person."
Now the family history left no doubt that in 1687 this Dorothy had been a bare fifteen years old; and although some of the entries must have been made later (for at least two of them had not been composed at the time), the bulk of the poems proved her a sprightly young lady whenever she transcribed them. Indeed, some were so very free in calling a spade a spade, that our Dorothea, having annexed the book, years ago, on the strength of her name, and dipped within, had closed it in sudden virgin terror and thrust it away at the back of her wardrobe.
There it had lain until disinterred in the hurried search for linen for Mr. Raoul's wound. Next morning Dorothea was on the point of hiding it again, when, as she opened the covers idly, her eyes fell on these lines
"But at my back I alwaies hearTime's winged chariot hurrying near;And yonder all before me lieDesarts of vast Eternitie . . ."
She read on. The poem, after all, turned out to be but a lover's appeal to his mistress to give over coyness and use time while she might; but Dorothea wondered why its solemn language should have hit her namesake's fancy, and, turning a few more pages, discovered that this merry dead girl had chosen and copied out other verses which were more than solemn. How had she dug these gloomy gems out of Donne, Ford, Webster, and set them here among loose songs and loose epigrams fromWit's Remembrancerand the like? for gems they were, though Dorothea did not know it nor whence they came. Dorothea had small sense of poetry: it was the personal interest which led her on. To be sure the little animal (she had already begun to construct a picture of her) might have secreted these things for no more reason than their beauty, as a squirrel will pick up a ruby ring and hide it among his nuts. But why were they, all so darkly terrible? Had she, being young, been afraid to die? Rather it seemed as if now and then, in the midst of her mirth, she had paused and been afraid to live.
And in the end she had married a Devonshire squire, which on the face of it is no darkly romantic thing to do. But it was over the maiden that our Dorothea pondered, until by and by the small shade took features and a place in her leisure time: a very companionable shade, though tantalising; and innocent, though given to mischievously sportive hints. Dorothea sometimes wondered what her own fate would have been, with this naughtiness in her young blood—and this seriousness.
It was sentiment, of course; but it is also a fact that this ghost of a kinswoman brought help to her. For such a hurt as hers the specific is to get away from self and look into such human thought as is kindly yet judicial. Some find this help in philosophy, many more in wise Dorothea had no philosophy, and no human being to consult; for admirably as Endymion had behaved, he remained a person with obvious limits. The General held aloof: she had no reason to fear that he suspected her secret. And soNatura inventrix, casting about for a cure, found and brought her this companion of her own sex from between the covers of a book.
I set down the fact merely and its share in Dorothea's recovery.