THE NEW DOROTHEA
Two hours later they set out on their homeward journey.
The Commandant, still voluble, escorted them to the gate. As Dorothea
climbed into the chaise and Endymion shook up the rugs and cushions, a
large brown-paper parcel rolled out upon the snow. She gave a little
cry of dismay:
"The drawings!"
"Eh?"
"We forgot to deliver them."
"Oh, confound the things!"
Endymion was for pitching them back into the chaise.
"But no!" she entreated. "Why, Narcissus believes it was to deliver
them that we came!"
So the Commandant amiably charged himself to hand the parcel to
M. Raoul, and waved his adieux with it as the chaise rolled away.
Of what had passed between Dorothea and Raoul at the surgery door
Endymion knew nothing; but he had guessed at once, and now was assured
by the tone in which she had spoken of the drawings, that the chapter
was closed, the danger past. Coming, brother and sister had scarcely
exchanged a word for miles together. Now they found themselves chatting
without effort about the landscape, the horses' pace, the Commandant
and his hospitality, the arrangements of the prison, and the prospects
of a cosy dinner at Moreton Hampstead. It was all the smallest of small
talk, and just what might be expected of two reputable middle-aged
persons returning in a post-chaise from a mild jaunt; yet beneath it
ran a current of feeling. In their different ways, each had been moved;
each had relied upon the other for a degree of help which could not be
asked in words, and had not been disappointed.
Now that Dorothea's infatuation had escaped all risk of public
laughter, Endymion could find leisure to admire her courage in
confessing, in persisting until the wrong was righted, and, now at the
last, in shutting the door upon the whole episode.
And, now at the last, having shut the door upon it, Dorothea could
reflect that her brother, too, had suffered. She knew his pride, his
sensitiveness, his mortal dread of ridicule. In the smart of his wound
he had turned and rent her cruelly, but had recovered himself and
defended her loyally from worse rendings. She remembered, too, that he
had distrusted Raoul from the first.
He had been right. But had she been wholly wrong?
In the dusk of the fifth evening after their departure the chaise
rolled briskly in through Bayfield great gates and up the snowy drive.
Almost noiselessly though it came, Mudge had the door thrown wide and
stood ready to welcome them, with Narcissus behind in the comfortable
glow of the hall.
Dorothea's limbs were stiff, and on alighting she steadied herself for
a moment by the chaise-door before stepping in to kiss her brother. In
that moment her eyes took one backward glance across the park and
rested on the lights of Axcester glimmering between the naked elms.
"Well," demanded Narcissus, after exchange of greetings, "and what did
he say about the drawings?"
Dorothea had not expected the question in this form, and parried it
with a laugh:
"You and your drawings! I declare"--she turned to Endymion--"he has
been thinking of them all the time, and affects no concern in our
adventures!"
"Which, nevertheless, have been romantic to the last degree," he added,
playing up to her.
"My dear Dorothea--" Narcissus expostulated.
"But you are not going to evade me by any such tricks," she
interrupted, sternly; "for that is what it comes to. I left you with
the strictest orders to take care of yourself, and you ought to know
that I shall answer nothing until you have been catechised. What have
you been eating?"
"My _dear_ Dorothea!"
Narcissus gazed helplessly at Mudge; but Mudge had been seized with a
flurry of his own, and misinterpreted the look as well as the stern
question.
"I--I reckon 'tis _me_, Miss," he confessed. "Being partial to onions,
and taking that liberty in Mr. Endymion's absence, knowing his dislike
of the effluvium--"
Such are the pitfalls of a guilty conscience on the one hand, and, on
the other, of being unexpectedly clever.
An hour later, at dinner, Narcissus was informed that the drawings had
been conveyed to M. Raoul, who, doubtless, would return them with
hints for correction.
"But had he nothing to say at the time?"
"For my part," said Endymion, sipping his wine, "I addressed but one
sentence to him; and Dorothea, I daresay, exchanged but half a dozen.
Considering the shortness of the interview, and that our mission--at
least, our ostensible mission"--Endymion glanced at Dorothea, with a
smile at his own _finesse_--"was to carry him news of his release,
you will admit--"
"Oh--ah!--to be sure; I had forgotten the release," muttered
Narcissus, and was resigned.
"By the way," Dorothea asked, after a short pause, "what is happening
at 'The Dogs' tonight? All the windows are lit up in the Orange Room.
I saw it as I stepped out of the chaise."
"Yes; I have to tell you"--Narcissus turned towards his brother--
"that during your absence another of the prisoners has found his
discharge--the old Admiral."
"Dead?"
"He died this morning: but you knew, of course, it was only a question
of days. Rochambeau was with him at the last. He has shown great
devotion."
"You have made all arrangements, of course?" For Narcissus was Acting
Commissary in his brother's absence.
"I rode in at once on hearing the news, which Zeally brought before
daylight; and found the Lodge"--this was a Masonic Lodge formed among
the prisoners, and named by them _La Paix Desiree_--"anxious to pay
him something more than the full rites. With my leave they have hired
the Orange Room, and turned it into a _chapelle ardente_; and there, I
believe, he is reposing now, poor old fellow."
"He has no kith nor kin, I understand."
"None. He was never married, and his relatives went in the Terror--
the most of them (so Rochambeau tells me) in a single week."
Dorothea had heard the same story from the General and from Raoul. To
this old warrior his Emperor had been friends, kindred, wife, and
children--nay, almost God. He had enjoyed Napoleon's favour, and
followed his star from the days of the Directory: in that favour and
the future of France beneath that star his hopes had begun and ended.
His private ambitions he had resigned without a word on the day when
he put to sea out of Brest, under order from Paris, to perform a feat
he knew to be impossible, with ships ill-found, under-manned, and half-
victualled by cheating contractors: and he sailed cheerfully, believing
himself sacrificed to some high purpose of his master's. When, the
sacrifice made, he learned that the contractors slandered him to cover
their own villainy, and that Napoleon either believed them or was
indifferent, his heart broke. Too proud at first, he had ended by
drawing up a statement and forwarding it from his captivity, with a
demand for an enquiry. The answer to this was--the letter which never
came.
Dorothea thought of the room where she had danced and been happy: the
many lights, the pagan figures merrymaking on the panels, the goddess
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 pass for the
Elysian Fields."
"And that is--?"
"The Emperor's _tabatière_: and, my faith! Miss Dorothea, there will be
sneezings in certain quarters when he opens it there.
"Il a du bon tabac
Dans sa tabatière
"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 passions, 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
aptitude 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 album;
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. Massiter'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 sex from
between the covers of a book.
I set down the fact merely and its share in Dorothea's recovery.