The Westcotes Part 17

Dorothea thought of the room where she had danced and been happy: the many lights, the pagan figures merrymaking on the panels, the G.o.ddess 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, _parole_ ended, 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 pa.s.s for the Elysian Fields."

"And that is--?"

"The Emperor's _tabatiere_: and, my faith! Miss Dorothea, there will be sneezings in certain quarters when he opens it there.

"Il a du bon tabac Dans sa tabatiere

"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 pa.s.sions, 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 apt.i.tude 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 alb.u.m; 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. Ma.s.siter'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 hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before me lie Desarts 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 from _Wit's Remembrancer_ and 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 so _Natura inventrix_, casting about for a cure, found and brought her this companion of her own s.e.x from between the covers of a book.

I set down the fact merely and its share in Dorothea's recovery.

CHAPTER XII

GENERAL ROCHAMBEAU TELLS A STORY; AND THE TING-TANG RINGS FOR THE LAST TIME

More than a year had pa.s.sed when, one February morning, as he left the breakfast table, Endymion handed Dorothea a slip of paper.

"Do you think we can entertain at dinner next Wednesday? If you can manage it, I wish these invitations written out and despatched before noon."

"Next Wednesday?" Dorothea's eyebrows went up. Invitations to dine at Bayfield had always, as we know, been issued just three weeks ahead.

"If it will not inconvenience you," he answered; and his manner added, as plainly as words, "I beg that you will not press for my reasons."

He was booted already for his ride into Axcester.

Dorothea ran her eye down the list: The Vicomte de Tocqueville, General Rochambeau. . . . All the prisoners of distinction were included as well as the chief notables of the neighbourhood, which made it a long one, even without a full balance of ladies.

She went off to her room at once and penned the letters--twenty-five in all.

Naturally, this break in the Bayfield custom set speculation going among the invited; but it is doubtful if Narcissus, any more than Dorothea, knew the reason of it. And on Wednesday, when the guests a.s.sembled, the only one who might be suspected of sharing Endymion's secret was (oddly enough) General Rochambeau. The old fellow seemed ten years younger, and wore an air of sportiveness, almost of raillery, as he caught his host's eye. The compliments he paid Lady Bateson across the table were prodigious, and gave that good soul a hazy sensation of being wafted back to the court of Louis XV, and behaving brilliantly under the circ.u.mstances.

"Really, my dear Mr. Westcote," she protested at length, being a chartered utterer of indiscretions which (as she delighted to prove) Endymion would not tolerate in others, but took from her and allowed, with a magisterial smile, to pa.s.s,--"really, I trust you have not taken off the General's parole, or to-morrow I shall have to lock my gates for fear of a chaise-and-pair."

"Ah, to-morrow!" the General echoed, turning to Endymion, with a twinkle of malice in his eye. "But when Mr. Westcote releases us, it will be en ma.s.se; and then, believe me, I shall come with an army, since I underrate neither the strength of the fortress nor the feeling of the country."

"That reminds me," put in a Mr. Saxby, of Yeovil, or near by, "we have heard of no escape or attempts at escape from Axcester this winter. I congratulate you, Westcote--if the General will not think it offensive."

"Rea.s.sure yourself, my dear sir." General Rochambeau bowed. "No," he continued, lifting his eyes for a moment towards Dorothea, "in one way or another we are rid of our fence-breakers, and the rest must share the credit with our Commissary."

"And yet the temptation--," began Lady Bateson.

"Is great, Madame, for some temperaments. But the Vicomte, here, and I have tried to teach our poor compatriots that in resisting it they fight for France as surely as if they stormed a breach. And, by the way, I heard a story this morning--if the company would care to hear--"

They begged him to tell it.

"But not if the ladies leave us to our wine." He turned to Dorothea.