Part 5 (1/2)
”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.