The Westcotes Part 14

"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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sage.

"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--G.o.d 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, G.o.d bless my soul!--"

He pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.s 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 a _via militaris_, close on a mile in circ.u.mference, 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 t.i.tle--"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 gla.s.s of sherry, then, and a biscuit at least . . ."

He ran to the door, called to his orderly to bring some gla.s.ses, 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 a.s.suredly, 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 pa.s.sing 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 on _messieurs_. 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 a.s.sailed 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 cas.e.m.e.nts.

A little more than half-way down the corridor the blank wall facing these cas.e.m.e.nts was pierced by a low arched pa.s.sage. Into this burrow the Commandant dived; and, standing outside, they heard a key turned in a lock. He reappeared and beckoned to them.