Part 11 (1/2)
The Corporal eyed his sweetheart without forgiveness. His mouth was open, but upon the word ”sergeant,” he shut it again and began to digest the idea.
”You know, of course, sir,” Endymion Westcote addressed the prisoner coldly, ”to what such a confession commits you? I do not see what other construction the facts admit, but it is so serious in itself and in its consequences that I warn you--”
”I have broken my _parole_, sir,” said Raoul, simply. ”Of the temptations you cannot judge. Of the shame I am as profoundly sensible as you can be. The consequences I am ready to suffer.”
He sank back in his chair as Dr. Ibbetson entered.
An hour later Dorothea said goodnight to her brother in the great hall.
He had lit his candle and was mixing himself a gla.s.s of brandy and water.
”The sight of blood--” he excused himself. ”I am sorry for the fellow, though I never liked him. I suppose, now, there was nothing between him and that girl Polly? For a moment--from Zeally's manner--” He gulped down the drink. ”His confession was honest enough, anyhow. Poor fool!
he's safe in hospital for a week, and his friends, if he has any, and they know what it means, will pray for that week to be prolonged.”
”What does it mean?” Dorothea managed to ask.
”It means Dartmoor.”
Dorothea's candlestick shook in her hand, and the extinguisher fell on the floor. Her brother picked it up and restored it.
”Naturally,” he murmured with brotherly concern, ”your nerves! It has been a trying night, but you comported yourself admirably, Dorothea.
Ibbetson a.s.sures me he could not have tied the bandage better himself.
I felt proud of my sister.” He kissed her gallantly and pulled out his watch. ”Past twelve o'clock!--time they were round with the barouche.
The sooner we get Master Raoul down to the Infirmary and pack him in bed, the better.”
As Dorothea went up the stairs she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel.
She could not accept his sacrifice. No; a way must be found to save him, and in her prayers that night she began to seek it. But while she prayed, her heart was bowed over a great joy. She had a hero for a lover!
CHAPTER IX
DOROTHEA CONFESSES
She saw no more of him, and heard very little, before the Court Martial met. No one acquainted with the code of that age--so strait-laced in its proprieties, so full-blooded in its vices--will need to be told that she never dreamed of asking her brother's permission to visit the Prisoners' Infirmary. He reported--once a day, perhaps, and casually-- that the patient was doing well. Dorothea ventured once to sound General Rochambeau, but the old aristocrat answered stiffly that he took no interest in _decla.s.ses_, and plainly hinted that, in his judgment, M. Raoul had sinned past pardon; which but added to her remorse. From time to time she obtained some hearsay news through Polly; but Polly's chief interest now lay in her approaching marriage.
For the Commissary, while accepting Raoul's version of his capture, had an intuitive gift which saved him from wholly believing in it. Indeed, his conduct of the affair, if we consider the extent of his knowledge, was nothing less than masterly. Corporal Zeally found himself a sergeant within forty-eight hours, and within an hour of the announcement he and Polly were given an audience in the Bayfield library, with the result that Parson Milliton cried their banns in Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that the reason for her short retention--to instruct her successor in Miss Dorothea's ways--was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he declined to meddle. ”Here,” he said in effect, ”is my report, including the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But the young man was captured in my grounds; he was known to be a _protege_ of my brother's. Finding him wounded and faint with loss of blood, we naturally did our best for him, and this again renders me perhaps too sympathetic. The law is the law, however, and must take its course.”
No att.i.tude could have been more proper or have shown better feeling.
So Raoul, who made a rapid recovery--barring the limp which he carried to the end of his days--was tried, condemned, and sentenced in the s.p.a.ce of two hours. He stuck to his story, and the court had no alternative. Dartmoor or Stapleton inevitably awaited the prisoner who broke parole and was retaken. The night after his sentence Raoul was marched past the Bayfield gates under escort for Dartmoor. And Dorothea had not intervened.
This, of course, proves that she was of no heroical fibre. She knew it.
Night after night she had lain awake, vainly contriving plans for his deliverance; and either she lacked inventiveness or was too honest, for no method could she discover which avoided confession of the simple truth. As the days pa.s.sed without catastrophe and without news save that her lover was bettering in hospital, she staved off the truth, trusting that the next night would bring inspiration. Almost she hoped--being quite unwise in such matters--that his sufferings would be accepted as cancelling his offence. So she played the coward. The blow fell on the evening when Endymion announced, in casual tones, that the Court Martial was fixed for the day after next.
That night, indeed, brought something like an inspiration; and on the morrow she rode into Axcester and called upon Polly, now a bride of six days' standing and domiciled in one of the Westcote cottages in Church Street, a little beyond the bridge. For a call of state this was somewhat premature, but it might pa.s.s.