The Westcotes Part 11

The Corporal eyed his sweetheart without forgiveness. His mouth was open, but upon the word "sergeant," he shut it again and began to digest the idea.

"You know, of course, sir," Endymion Westcote addressed the prisoner coldly, "to what such a confession commits you? I do not see what other construction the facts admit, but it is so serious in itself and in its consequences that I warn you--"

"I have broken my _parole_, sir," said Raoul, simply. "Of the temptations you cannot judge. Of the shame I am as profoundly sensible as you can be. The consequences I am ready to suffer."

He sank back in his chair as Dr. Ibbetson entered.

An hour later Dorothea said goodnight to her brother in the great hall.

He had lit his candle and was mixing himself a gla.s.s 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 a.s.sures me he could not have tied the bandage better himself.

I felt proud of my sister." He kissed her gallantly and pulled out his watch. "Past twelve o'clock!--time they were round with the barouche.

The sooner we get Master Raoul down to the Infirmary and pack him in bed, the better."

As Dorothea went up the stairs she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel.

She could not accept his sacrifice. No; a way must be found to save him, and in her prayers that night she began to seek it. But while she prayed, her heart was bowed over a great joy. She had a hero for a lover!

CHAPTER IX

DOROTHEA CONFESSES

She saw no more of him, and heard very little, before the Court Martial met. No one acquainted with the code of that age--so strait-laced in its proprieties, so full-blooded in its vices--will need to be told that she never dreamed of asking her brother's permission to visit the Prisoners' Infirmary. He reported--once a day, perhaps, and casually-- that the patient was doing well. Dorothea ventured once to sound General Rochambeau, but the old aristocrat answered stiffly that he took no interest in _decla.s.ses_, and plainly hinted that, in his judgment, M. Raoul had sinned past pardon; which but added to her remorse. From time to time she obtained some hearsay news through Polly; but Polly's chief interest now lay in her approaching marriage.

For the Commissary, while accepting Raoul's version of his capture, had an intuitive gift which saved him from wholly believing in it. Indeed, his conduct of the affair, if we consider the extent of his knowledge, was nothing less than masterly. Corporal Zeally found himself a sergeant within forty-eight hours, and within an hour of the announcement he and Polly were given an audience in the Bayfield library, with the result that Parson Milliton cried their banns in Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that the reason for her short retention--to instruct her successor in Miss Dorothea's ways--was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he declined to meddle. "Here," he said in effect, "is my report, including the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But the young man was captured in my grounds; he was known to be a _protege_ of my brother's. Finding him wounded and faint with loss of blood, we naturally did our best for him, and this again renders me perhaps too sympathetic. The law is the law, however, and must take its course."

No att.i.tude 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s.

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 a.s.sented.

"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 a.s.sert 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?"