The Westcotes Part 5

"But I do not see M. Raoul."

"Oh, he's down by the bridge, helping the relief party. One would guess him worn out. He ran from lodging to lodging, turning the occupants out of their beds and routing about for fresh linen. They say he even carried old Mrs. Kekewich pick-a-back through the snow."

"And tucked her in bed," added the schoolboy. "And then he came back, wet almost to the waist, and danced."

He looked roguishly at Lady Bateson's niece, and the pair exploded in laughter.

They ran off as General Rochambeau, jaded and unshaven, approached and saluted Dorothea.

"Until Miss Westcote appeared, we held our own against the face of day.

Now, alas, the conspiracy can no longer be kept up."

"You had no compliment for me last night, General."

"Forgive me, Mademoiselle." He lowered his voice and spoke earnestly.

"I have a genuine one for you to-day--I compliment your heart. M. Raoul has told me of your interest in our poor compatriots, and what you intend--"

"I fear I can do little," Dorothea interrupted, mindful of her late encounter and (as she believed) defeat. "By all accounts, M. Raoul appears to have made himself agreeable to all," she added.

The old gentleman chuckled and took snuff.

"He loves an audience. At about four in the morning, when all the elders were in bed--(pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I claim to reckon myself among _les jeunes_; my poor back tells me at what cost)--at about four in the morning the young lady who has just left you spoke of a new dance she had seen performed this season at Bath. Well, it appears that M. Raoul had also seen it a--valtz they called it, or some such name. Whereupon nothing would do but they must dance it together. Such a dance, Mademoiselle! Roll, roll--round and round-- roll, roll--but _perpendicularly_, you understand. By-and-by the others began to copy them, and someone asked M. Raoul where he had found this accomplishment. 'Oh, in my travels,' says he, and points to one of the panels; and there, if you will believe me, the fellow had actually painted himself as Perseus in the Garden of the Hesperides."

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 a _coup_, 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 pa.s.sed the bridge, where M. Raoul stood among the workmen, handkerchiefs fluttered out, and he lifted his hat gaily in response.

CHAPTER V

BEGINS WITH ANCIENT HISTORY AND ENDS WITH AN OLD STORY

"_Ubicunque vicit Roma.n.u.s 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 a.s.suring herself that the number of teacups would suffice. She had heard the lecture many times before, and with repet.i.tion 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 princ.i.p.al rooms of the house, and above them, upon a circular lantern of clear gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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 c.u.m 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sage, with monstrous copies of Raphael's cartoons filling the inters.p.a.ces; on the other hand four tall windows, two on either side of the door, looked out upon the _porte cochere_, the avenue, and the rolling hills beyond Axcester. By one of these windows M. Raoul halted--and Dorothea halted too, slightly puzzled.