Poor Dorothea glanced towards the panel.
"Ah, you remember it! But he must have painted in the face after showing it to us the other day, or I should have recognised it at the time. You must come and see it; really an excellent portrait!"
He led her towards it. The orange curtain no longer hid the third nymph. But the blood which had left Dorothea's face rushed back as she saw that the trinket had been roughly erased.
"It was quite acoup, but M. Raoul loves an audience."
Shortly before noon the road by the bridge was reported to be clear. Carriages were announced, and the guests shook hands and were rolled away—the elder glum, their juniors in boisterous spirits. As each carriage passed the bridge, where M. Raoul stood among the workmen, handkerchiefs fluttered out, and he lifted his hat gaily in response.
"Ubicunque vicit Romanus habitat,—Where the Roman conquered he settled—and it is from his settlements that to-day we deduce his conquests. Of Vespasian and his second legion the jejune page of Suetonius records neither where they landed nor at what limit their victorious eagles were stayed. Yet will the patient investigator trace their footprints across many a familiar landscape of rural England, led by the blurred imperishable impress he has learned to recognise. The invading host sweeps forward, and is gone; but behind it the homestead arises and smiles upon the devastated fields, arms yield to the implements and habiliments of peace, and the colonist, who supersedes the legionary, in time furnishes the sole evidence of his feverish and ensanguined transit . . ."
Narcissus was enjoying himself amazingly. His audience endured him because the experience was new, and their ears caught the rattle of tea-cups in the adjoining library.
Dorothea sat counting her guests, and assuring herself that the number of teacups would suffice. She had heard the lecture many times before, and with repetition its sonorous periods had lost hold upon her, although her brother had been at pains to model them upon Gibbon.
But the scene impressed her sharply, and she carried away a very lively picture of it. The old Roman villa had been built about a hollow square open to the sky, and this square now formed the great hall of Bayfield. Deep galleries of two stories surrounded it, in place of the old colonnaded walk. Out of these opened the principal rooms of the house, and above them, upon a circular lantern of clear glass, was arched a painted dome. Sheathed on the outside with green weather-tinted copper, and surmounted by a gilt ball, this dome (which could be seen from the Axcester High Street when winter stripped the Bayfield elms) gave the building something of the appearance of an observatory.
On the north side of the hall a broad staircase descended from the gallery to the tiled floor, in the midst of which a fountain played beneath a cupola supported by slender columns. On the west the recess beneath the gallery had been deepened to admit a truly ample fireplace, with a flat hearthstone and andirons. Here were screens and rich Turkey rugs, and here the Bayfield household ordinarily had the lamps set after dinner and gathered before the fire, talking little, enjoying the long pauses filled with the hiss of logs and the monotonous drip and trickle of water in the penumbra.
To-day the prisoners—two hundred in all—crowded the floor, the stairs, even the deep gallery above; but on the south side, facing the staircase, two heavy curtains had been looped back from the atrium, and there a ray of wintry sunshine fell through the glass roof upon the famous Bayfield pavement and the figure of Narcissus gravely expounding it.
He had reached his peroration, and Dorothea, who knew every word of it by heart, was on the alert. At its close the audience held their breath for a second or two and then—satisfied, as their hostess rose, that he had really come to an end—tendered their applause, and, breaking into promiscuous chatter, trooped towards the tea-room. Narcissus lingered, with bent head, oblivious, silently repeating the last well- worn sentences while he conned his beloved tessellae.
A voice aroused him from his brown study; he looked up, to find the hall deserted and M. Raoul standing at his elbow.
"Will you remember your promise, Monsieur, and allow me to examine a little more closely? Ah, but it is wonderful! That Pentheus! And the Maenad there, carrying the torn limb! Also the border of vine-leaves and crossed thyrsi; though that, to be sure, is usual enough. And this next? Ah, I remember—'Tu cum parentis regna per arduum'; but what a devil of a design! And, above all, what mellowness! You will, I know, pardon the enthusiasm of one who comes from the Provence, a few miles out of Arles, and whose mother's family boasts itself to be descended from Roman colonists."
Narcissus beamed.
"To you then, M. Raoul, after your Forum and famous Amphitheatre, our pavement must seem a poor trifle—though it by no means exhausts our list of interesting remains. The praefurnium, for instance; I must show you our praefurnium."
"The house would be remarkable anywhere—even in my own Provence—so closely has it kept the original lines. In half-an-hour one could reconstruct—"
"Ay!" chimed in the delighted Narcissus. "You shall try, M. Raoul, you shall try! I promise to catch you tripping."
"Yonder runs the Fosse Way, west by south. The villa stands about two hundred yards back from it, facing the south-east—"
"A little east of south. The outer walls did not run exactly true with the enclosed quadrangle."
"You say that the front measured two hundred feet, perhaps a little over. Clearly, then, it was a domain of much importance, and the granaries, mills, stables, slaves' dwellings would occupy much space about it—an acre and a half, at least."
"Portions of a brick foundation were unearthed no less than three hundred yards away. A hypocaust lay embedded among them, much broken but recognisable."
"What puzzles me," mused M. Raoul, is how these southern settlers managed to endure the climate."
"But that is explicable." Narcissus was off now, in full cry. "The trees, my dear sir, the trees! I have not the slightest doubt that our Bayfield elms are the ragged survivors of an immense forest—a forest which covered the whole primaeval face of Somerset on this side of the fens, and through which Vespasian's road-makers literally hewed their way. Given these forests—which, by the way, extended over the greater part of England—we must infer a climate totally unlike ours of this present day, damper perhaps, but milder. Within his belt of trees the colonist, secure from the prevailing winds, would plant a garden to rival your gardens of the South—'primus vere rosam atque autumno carpere Poma.'"
"Yes," added M. Raoul, taking fire; "and, perhaps, a plant of helichryse or a rose-cutting from Paestum, to twine about the house- pillars and comfort his exile."
"M. Raoul?" Dorothea's voice interrupted them. She stood by the looped curtain, and reproached Narcissus with a look. "He has had no tea yet; it was cruel of you to detain him. My brother, sir," she turned to Raoul, "has no conscience when once set going on his hobby; for, of course, you were discussing the pavement?"
"We were talking, Mademoiselle, at that moment of the things which brighten and comfort exile."
She lowered her eyes, conscious of a blush, and half angry that it would not be restrained.
"And I was talking of tea, if that happens to be one of them," she replied, forcing a laugh.
"Well, well," said Narcissus, "take M. Raoul away and give him his tea; but he must come with me afterwards, while there is light, and we will go over the site together. I must fetch my map."
He hurried across the hall.
"Come, M. Raoul," said Dorothea, stepping past her guest and leading the way, "by a small detour we can reach that end of the library which is least crowded."
He followed without lifting his eyes, apparently lost in thought. The atrium on this side opened on a corridor which crossed the front door, and was closed by a door at either end—the one admitting to the service rooms, the other to the library. Flat columns relieved the blank wall of this passage, with monstrous copies of Raphael's cartoons filling the interspaces; on the other hand four tall windows, two on either side of the door, looked out upon theporte cochère, the avenue, and the rolling hills beyond Axcester. By one of these windows M. Raoul halted—and Dorothea halted too, slightly puzzled.
"Ah, Mademoiselle, but there is one thing your brother forgets! What became of his happy colonists in the end? He told us that early in the fifth century the Emperor Honorius—was it not?—withdrew his legions, and wrote that Britain must henceforth look after itself. I listened for the end of the story, but your brother did not supply it. Yet sooner or later one and the same dreadful fate must have overtaken all these pleasant scattered homes—sack and fire and slaughter— slaughter for all the men, for the women slavery and worse. Does one hear of any surviving? Out of this warm life into silence—" He paused and shivered. "Very likely they did not guess for a long while. Look, Mademoiselle, at the Fosse Way, stretching yonder across the hills: figure yourself a daughter of the old Roman homestead standing here and watching the little cloud of dust that meant the retreating column, the last of your protection. You would not guess what it meant—you, to whom each day has brought its restful round; who have lived only to be good and reflect the sunshine upon all near you. And I—your slave, suppose me, standing beside you—might guess as little."
He took a step and touched her hand. His face was still turned to the window.
"Time! time!" he went on in a low voice, charged with passion. "It eats us all! Brr—how I hate it! How I hate the grave! There lies the sting, Mademoiselle—the torture to be a captive: to feel one's best days slipping away, and fate still denying to us poor devils the chance which even the luckiest—God knows—find little enough." He laughed, and to Dorothea the laugh sounded passing bitter. "You will not understand how a man feels; how even so unimportant a creature as I must bear a sort of personal grudge against his fate."
"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 thetricliniumfirst, 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."
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 towardsSunday 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'stabatière, 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 anémeute," 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 hoarsecrescendo. 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'sprotégé, 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.
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 thetessellaewas 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.
When the time came, and she entered the library, she did not indeed dare to lift her eyes. But Narcissus, already immersed in calculations, scarcely looked up from his paper. "Ah, there you are! Have you brought the India-ink?" he asked, and after a minute she marvelled at her own self-possession. Even when he left them to work out the measurements together (and it flashed upon her that henceforth they would often be left together, her immunity being taken for granted), she kept her head bowed over the papers and managed to control her voice to put one or two ordinary questions—until the pencil dropped from her fingers and she felt her hand imprisoned.
"Dorothea!"
"Oh, please, no!" she entreated hoarsely. "M. Raoul—!"
"Charles—" She attempted to draw her hand away; but, failing, lifted her eyes for mercy. They were sick and troubled. "Charles," he insisted.
"Charles, then." She relented and he kissed her gaily. It was as if she drank in the kiss and, the next moment, recoiled from it. He released her hand and waited, watching her. She stood upright by the table, her shoulder turned to him, her eyes gazing through the long window upon the green stretch of lawn. She was trembling slightly.
"It—it hurts like a wound," she murmured, and her hand went up to her breast. "But you must listen, please. You know—better than I—that this is the end. Oh, yes"—as he would have interrupted—"it is beautiful—for me. But I am old and you are a boy, and it is all quite silly. Please listen: even apart from this, it would be quite silly and could end nowhere."
He caught at her hand again, and she let it lie in his.
"Nowhere," she repeated, and, lifting her head, nodded twice. Her eyes were brimming.
"But if you love me?" he began.
She waited a moment, but he did not finish. "Ah! there it is, you see: you cannot finish. I was afraid to meet you to-day; but now I am glad, because we can talk about it once and for all. Charles"—she hesitated over the name—"dear, I have been thinking. Since we see this so clearly, it can be no treachery to my brothers to let our love stand where it does. At my age"—and Dorothea laughed nervously—"one is more easily contented than at yours."
"I cannot bear your talking in this way."
"Oh yes, you can," she assured him with a practical little nod. "I don't like it myself, but it has to be done. Now in the first place, when we meet like this there must be no kissing." She blushed, while her voice wavered again over the word; then, as again his hand closed upon hers, she laughed. "Well—yes, you may kiss my hand. But I must not have it on my conscience that I am hiding from Endymion and Narcissus what they have a right to know. Of course they would be angry if they knew that I—that I was fond of you at all; but they would have no right, for they could not have forbidden or prevented it. Now if our prospects were what folks would call happier, why then in earnest of them you might kiss me, but then you would be bound to go to my brothers and tell them. But since it can all come to nothing—" A ghost of a smile finished the sentence.
"This war cannot last for ever."
"It seems to have lasted ever since I can remember. But what difference could its ending make? Ah, yes, then I should lose you!" she cried in dismay, but added with as sudden remorse: "Forgive my selfishness!"
"You are adorable," said he, and they laughed and picked up their pencils.
Dorothea's casuistry might prove her ignorant of love and its perils, as a child is of fire; but having, as she deemed, discovered the limits of her duty and set up her terms with Raoul upon them, she soon developed a wonderful cunning in the art of being loved. Her plainness and the difference in their ages she took for granted, and subtly persuaded Raoul to take for granted; she had no affectations, nominauderies; by instinct she avoided setting up any illusion which he could not share; unconsciously and naturally she rested her strength on the maternal, protective side of love. Raoul came to her with his woes, his difficulties, his quarrel against fate; and she talked them over with him, and advised him almost as might a wise elder sister. She had read theConfessions; and, in spite of the missing pages, with less of fascination than disgust; yet had absorbed more than she knew. In Raoul she recognised certain points of likeness to his great countryman—points which had puzzled, her in the book. Now the book helped her to treat them, though she was unaware of its help. Still less aware was she of any likeness between her and Madame de Warens, of whom (again in spite of the missing pages) she had a poor opinion.
The business of the drawings brought Raoul to Bayfield almost daily, and, as she had foreseen, they were much alone.
After all, since it could end in nothing, the situation had its advantages; no one in the household gave it a thought, apparently. Dorothea was not altogether sure about Polly; once or twice she had caught Polly eying her with an odd expression—once especially, when she had looked up as the girl was plaiting her hair, and their eyes met in the glass. And once again Dorothea had sent her to the library with a note of instructions left that morning by Narcissus, and, following a few minutes later, had found her standing and talking with M. Raoul in an attitude which, without being familiar, was not quite respectful.
"What was she saying?" her mistress asked, a moment or two later.
"Oh, nothing," he answered negligently. "I suppose that class of person cannot be troubled to show respect to prisoners."
That evening Dorothea rated the girl soundly for her pertness. "And I shall speak to Zeally," she threatened, "if anything of the kind happens again. If Mr. Endymion is to let you two have a house when you marry, and take in the Frenchmen as lodgers, he will want to know that you treat them respectfully."
Polly wept, and was forgiven.
April, May, June, went by, and still Dorothea lived in her dream, troubled only by dread of the day which must bring her lover's task to an end, and, with it, his almost daily visits. Bit by bit she learned his story. He told her of Arles, his birthplace, with its Roman masonry and amphitheatre; of a turreted terraced chateau and a family of aristocrats lording it among the vineyards; conspiring a little later with other noble families, entertaining them at secret meetings of theChiffonne, where oaths were taken; later again, defending itself behind barricades of paving-stones; last of all, marched or carried in batches to the guillotine or the fusillade. He told of Avignon and its Papal Castle overhanging the Rhone, the city where he had spent his school days, and at the age of nine had seen Patriot L'Escuyer stabbed to death in the Cordeliers' Church with women's scissors; had seen Jourdan, the avenger, otherwise Coupe-tête, march flaming by at the head of his bravebrigands d'Avignon. He told of the sequel, the hundred and thirty men, women and babes slaughtered in the dungeon of theGlacière; of Choisi's Dragoons and Grenadiers at the gates, and how, with roses scattered before them, they marched through the streets to the Castle, entered the gateway and paused, brought to a stand by the stench of putrefying flesh. He and his school mates had taken a holiday—their master being in hiding—to see the bodies lifted out. Also he had seen the search party ride out through the gates and return again, bringing Jourdan, with feet strapped beneath his horse's belly. He told of his journey to, Paris—his purpose to learn to paint (at such a time!); of the great David, fat and wheezy, back at his easel, panting from civil blood-shed; of the call to arms, his enlistment, his first campaign of 1805; of the foggy morning of Austerlitz, his wound, and he long hours he lay in the rear of a battery on the height of Pratzen, writhing, watching the artillerymen at work and so on, with stories of marching and fighting, nights slept out by him at full length on the sodden turf beside his arms.
She had no history to tell him in exchange; she asked only to listen and to comfort. Yet so cleverly he addressed his story that the longest monologue became, by aid of a look or pressure of the hand, a conversation in which she, his guardian angel, bore her part. Did he talk of Avignon, for instance? It was the land of Laura and Petrarch, and she, seated with half-closed eyes beneath the Bayfield elms, saw the pair beside the waters of Vaucluse, saw the roses and orange-trees and arid plains of Provence, and wondered at the trouble in their spiritual love. She was not troubled; love as "a dureless content and a trustless joy" lay outside of her knowledge, and she had no desire to prove it. In this only she forgot the difference between Raoul's age and hers.
The day came when his work was ended. They spent a great part of that afternoon in the garden, now in the height of its midsummer glory. Raoul was very silent.
"But this must not end. It cannot end so!" he groaned once or twice.
He never forgot for long his old spite against Time.
"It will never end for me," she murmured.
"Of what are you made, then, that you look forward to living on shadows?—one would say, almost cheerfully! I believe you could be happy if you never saw me again!"
"Even if that had to be," she answered gravely, "while I knew you loved me I should never be quite unhappy. But you must find a way, while you can, to come sometimes; yes, you must come."
Dorothea sat in the great hall of Bayfield, between the lamplight and the moonlight, listening to the drip of the fountain beneath its tiny cupola. A midsummer moon-ray fell through the uncurtained lantern beneath the dome and spread in a small pool of silver at her feet. Beneath one of the two shaded lamps Endymion lounged in his armchair and read the Sherborne Mercury. Narcissus had carried off the other to a table across the hall by the long bookcase, and above the pot-plants banked about the fountain she saw it shining on his shapely grey head as he bent over a copy of the Antonine Itinerary and patiently worked out a new theory of its distances. Her own face rested in deep shadow, and she felt grateful for it as she leaned back thinking her own thoughts. It was a whole week now since Charles had visited Bayfield, but she had encountered him that morning in Axcester High Street as she passed up it on horseback with her brothers. Narcissus had reined up to put some question or other about the drawings, but Endymion (who did not share his brother's liking for M. Raoul) had ridden on, and she had ridden on too, though reluctantly. She recalled his salute, his glance at her, and down-dropped eyes; she wondered what point Narcissus and he had discussed, and blamed herself for not having found courage to ask. . . .
The stable clock struck ten. She arose and kissed her brothers good- night. By Narcissus she paused.
"Be careful of your eyes, dear. And if you are going to be busy with that great book these next few evenings I will have the table brought across to the other side where you will be cosier."
Narcissus came out of his calculations and looked up at her gently. "Please do not disarrange the furniture for me; a change always fidgets me, even before I take in precisely what has happened." He smiled. "In that I resemble my old friend Vespasian, who would have no alterations made when he visited his home—manente villa qualis fuerat olim, ne quid scilicet oculorum consuetudini deperiret. A pleasant trait, I have always thought."
He lit her candle and kissed her, and Dorothea went up the broad staircase to her own room. Half-way along the corridor she stayed a moment to look down upon the hall. Endymion had dropped his newspaper and was yawning; a sure sign that Narcissus, already reabsorbed in the Itinerary, would in a few moments be hurried from it to bed.
She reached the door of her room and opened it, then checked an exclamation of annoyance. For some mysterious reason Polly had forgotten to light her candle. This was her rule, never broken before.
She stepped to the bellpull. Her hand was on it, when she heard the girl's voice muttering in the next room—the boudoir. At least, it sounded like Polly's voice, though its tone was strangely subdued and level. "Talking to herself," Dorothea decided, and smiled, in spite of her annoyance, as everyone smiles who catches another in this trick. She dropped the bellpull and opened the boudoir door.
Polly was not talking to herself. She was leaning far out of the open window, and at the sound of the door started back into the room with a gasp and a short cry.
"To whom were you talking?"
Dorothea had set the candle down in the bedroom. Outside the window the park lay spread to the soft moonshine, but the moon did not look directly into the boudoir. In the half-light mistress and maid sought each other's eyes.
"To whom were you talking?" Dorothea demanded, sternly.
Polly was silent for a second or two, then her chin went up defiantly.
"To Mr. Raoul," she muttered.
"To M. Raoul!—to M. Raoul? I don't understand. Is M. Raoul—Oh, for goodness sake speak, girl! What is that? I see a piece of paper in your hand."
Polly twisted it in her fingers, and made a movement to hide it in her pocket; but with the movement she seemed to reflect.
"He gave it to me; I don't understand anything about it. I was shutting the window, when he whistled to me; he gave me this. I—I think he meant it for you."
Polly's tone suddenly became saucy, but her voice shook.
Dorothea was shaking too, as her fingers closed on the note. She vainly sought to read the girl's eyes. Her own cheeks were burning; she felt the blood rushing into them and singing in her ears. Yet in her abasement she kept her dignity, and, motioning Polly to follow, stepped into the bedroom, unfolded the letter slowly, and read it by the candle there.
_"My Angel,
"I have hungered now for a week. Be at your window this evening and let me, at least, be fed with a word. See what I risk for you.
"Yours devotedly and for ever."_
There was no signature, but well enough Dorothea knew the handwriting. A wave of anger swelled in her heart—the first she had ever felt towards him. He had behaved selfishly. "See what I risk for you!"— but to what risk was he exposing her! He was breaking their covenant too; demanding that which he must know her conscience abhorred. She had not believed he could understand her so poorly, held her so cheap. Cheap indeed, since he had risked her secret in Polly's hand!
She turned the paper over, noting its creases. Suddenly—"You have opened and read this!" she said.
Polly admitted it with downcast eyes. The girl, after the first surprise, had demeaned herself admirably, and now stood in the attitude proper to a confidential servant; solicitous, respectful, prepared to blink the peccadillo, even to sympathise discreetly at a hint given.
"I'm sorry, Miss, that I opened it; I ought to have told you, but you took me by surprise. You know, Miss, that you gave me leave to run down to my aunt's this evening; and on my way back—just as I was letting myself in by the nursery gate, Mr. Raoul comes tearing up the hill after me and slips this into my hand. To tell you the truth, it rather frightened me being run after like that. And he said something and ran back—for nine was just striking, and in a moment the Ting-tang would be ringing and he must be back to answer his name. So in my fluster I didn't catch what he meant. When I got home and opened it, I saw my mistake. But you were downstairs at dinner—I couldn't get to speak with you alone—I waited to tell you; and just now, when I was drawing the blinds, I heard a whistle—"
"M. Raoul had no right to send me such a message, Polly. I cannot think what he means by it. Nothing that I have ever said to him—"
"No, Miss," Polly assented readily. After a pause she added: "I suppose you'd like me to go now? You won't be wanting your hair done to-night?"
"Certainly I wish you to stay. Is he—is M. Raoul outside?"
"I think so, Miss. Oh, yes—for certain he is."
"Then I must insist on your staying with me while I dismiss him."
"Very good, Miss. Would you wish me to stay here, or to come with you?"
Dorothea felt herself blushing, and her temper rose again. "For the moment, stay here. I will leave the door open and call you when you are wanted."
She passed into the boudoir and bent to the open window. At this corner the foundations of the house stood some feet lower than the slope out of which they had been levelled, and she looked down upon a glacis of smooth turf, capped by a glimmering parapet of Bath stone. Beyond stretched the moonlit park.
"M. Raoul!" she called, but scarcely above a whisper.
A figure crept out from the dark angle below and climbed to the parapet.
"Dorothea! Forgive me! Another night and no word with you—I could not bear it."
"You are mad. You are breaking your parole and risking shame for me.Nay, you have shamed me already. Polly is here."
"Polly is a good girl; she understands. A word, then, if you must drive me away."
"Yourparole!"
"I can pass the sentries. No fear of the patrol hereabouts. Your hand— let down your hand to me. I can reach it from the parapet here—with my fingers only, not with my lips, though even that you never forbade!"
Weakly, she lowered her arm over the sill. He reached to touch it, and she leaned her face towards his—hers in shadow, his pale in the moonlight.
Before their fingers met, a yellow flame leapt from the angle to the left; a loud report banged in her ears and echoed across the park; and Raoul, after swaying a second, pitched forward with a sharp cry and rolled to the foot of the glacis.
Dorothea forced herself back in the room, and stood there upright and shook, with Polly beside her holding her two hands.
"They have shot him!"
The two women listened for a moment. All was still now. Polly stepped to the window and, closed it softly.
"But why? What are you doing?" Dorothea asked, in a hoarse whisper.
"They will find quite enough without that," said the practical girl, but her voice quavered.
"Yet if they had seen—Ah, how selfish to think of that now! Hush— that was a groan! He is alive still."
She moved towards the window, but Polly dragged her back by main force.
"Listen, Miss!"
Below they heard the sudden unbarring of doors, and Endymion's voice calling for Mudge, the butler. A bell pealed in the servants' hall, stopped, and began ringing again in short and violent jerks.
"Let me go," commanded Dorothea. "They will never find him, under the slope there. He may be bleeding to death. I must tell—"
But Polly clung to her. "They'll find him safe enough, Miss Dorothea.There's Sam, now—hark!—at the backdoor bell: he'll tell them."
"Sam!"
"Sam Zeally, Miss."
"But I don't understand," Dorothea stammered; with a sharp suspicion of treachery, she pushed the girl from her. "Was Zeally mounting guard tonight? If I thought—don't tell me it was a trap! Oh, you wicked girl!"
"No; it wasn't," answered Polly, sulkily. "I don't know nothing of Sam's movements. But he might be hanging about the house; and if he saw a man talking to me, he's just as jealous as fire."
She broke off at the sound of voices below the window. The ray of a lantern, as the search-party jolted it, flashed and danced on wall and ceiling of the dim boudoir. A sharp exclamation announced that Raoul was discovered. A confused muttering followed; and then Dorothea heard Endymion's voice calling up to Mudge from the bottom of the trench.
"Run to Miss Westcote's room and tell her we shall require lint and bandages. There is no cause for alarm, assure her; say there has been an accident—a Frenchman overtaken out of bounds and wounded—I think, not seriously. If she be gone to bed, get the medicine chest and the key and bring them into the kitchen."
Dorothea had charge of the Bayfield medicine chest, and kept it in a cupboard of the boudoir. She groped for it, pulled open drawer after drawer, rifled them for lint and linen, and by the time Mudge tapped on the door, stood ready with the chest under one arm and a heap of bandages in the other.
"In the kitchen, Mr. Endymion said. I am coming at once; take the chest, run, and have as many candles lit as possible."
Mudge ran; Dorothea followed—with Polly behind her, trembling like a leaf.
The two women reached the kitchen as the party entered with Raoul, and supported him to a chair beside the dying fire. His face was colourless, and he lay back and closed his eyes weakly as Endymion stooped to examine the wounded leg, with Narcissus in close attendance, and the others standing respectfully apart—Mudge, the two footmen (in their shirt sleeves), an under-gardener named Best, one of the housemaids, and Corporal Zeally by the door in regimentals, with his japanned shako askew and his Brown Bess still in his hand. Behind his shoulder, three or four of the women servants hung about the doorway and peered in, between curiosity and terror.
It was a part of Endymion's fastidiousness that the sight of blood— that is, of human blood—turned his stomach. In her distress Dorothea could not help admiring how he conquered this aversion; how he knelt in his spick-and-span evening dress, and, after turning back his ruffles, unlaced the prisoner's soaked shoe and rolled down the stocking.
He looked up gratefully as she entered. In such emergencies Narcissus was worse than useless; but Dorothea had the nursing instinct, and her brothers recognised it. The sight of a wound or a hurt steadied her wits, and she became practical and helpful at once.
"A flesh wound only, I think; just above the ankle—the tendon cut, but the bone apparently not broken."
"It may be splintered, though," said Dorothea. "Has anyone thought of sending for Doctor Ibbetson? He must be fetched at once. A towel, please—three or four—from the dresser there." A footman brought the towels. She knelt, folded two on her lap, and, resting Raoul's foot there, drew the stocking gently from the wound. "A basin and warm water, not too hot. Polly, you will find a small sponge in the, second drawer . . ." She nodded towards the medicine chest. "One of you, make up a better fire and set on a fresh kettle . . ."
She gave her orders in a low firm voice, and continued to direct everyone thus, while she sponged the wound and drew off the stocking. Neither towards them nor towards Raoul did she lift her eyes. The bare foot of her beloved rested in her lap. She heard him groan twice, but with no pain inflicted by her fingers; if their slightest pressure had hurt him she would have known. She went on bathing the wound—she, who could have bathed it with her tears. As time passed, and still the doctor did not come, she began to bandage it. She called on Polly for the bandages; then, still without looking up, she divined that Polly was useless—was engaged in trying to catch Zeally's eye, and warn him or get a word with him.
"He's pale as a ghost yet," said Endymion. "Another dose of brandy might set him up. I gave him some from my flask before bringing him in."
"He is not going to faint," she answered.
"Well, I won't bother him with questions until he comes round a bit. You, Zeally, had better step into my room though, and give me your version of the affair."
But as the Corporal saluted and took a step forward, the prisoner opened his eyes.
"Before you examine Zeally, sir, let me save you what trouble I can." He spoke faintly, but with deliberation. "I wish to deny nothing. I was escaping, and he tracked me. He came on me as I cut across the park, and challenged. I did not answer, but ran around a corner of the house and jumped the parapet, thinking to double along the trench there and put him off the scent—at least to dodge the bullet, if he fired. But as I jumped for it, he winged me. A very pretty shot, too. With your leave, sir, I 'd like to shake hands with him on it. Shake hands, Corporal!" Raoul stretched out a hand, sideways. "You're a smart fellow, and no malice between soldiers."
Dorothea heard Polly's gasp: it seemed to her that all the room must hear it. Her own hand trembled on the bandage. She had forgotten her danger—the all but inevitable scandal—until Raoul brought it back to her, and in the same breath saved her by his heroic lie. She could not profit by it, though. Her lips parted to refute it, and for the first time she gazed up at him, her eyes brimming with sudden love, gratitude, pride, even while they entreated against the sacrifice. He was smiling down with an air of faint amusement; yet beneath the lashes she read a command which mastered her will, imposed silence. He had taken on a new manliness, and for the first time in the story of their loves she felt herself dominated by something stronger than passion. He had swept her off her feet, before now, by boyish ardour: her humility, the marvel of being loved, had aided him; but hitherto in her heart she had always felt her own character to be the stronger. Now he challenged her on woman's own ground—that of self-abnegation; he commanded her to his own hurt, he towered above her. She had never dreamed of a love like this. Beaten, despairing for him, yet proud as she had never been in her life, she held her breath.
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 myparole, 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!