Part 12 (1/2)
Dorothea, however, was too desperately dejected to feel the p.r.i.c.k of this shaft. ”You will not help me, then?” was all her reply to it.
”Why, no, Miss! if you put it in that point-blank way. A married woman's got to think of her reputation first of all.”
Polly's att.i.tude might be selfish, unfeeling; but the fundamental incapacity for grat.i.tude in girls of Polly's cla.s.s will probably surprise and pain their mistresses until the end of the world. After all, Polly was right. An attempt to clear Raoul by telling the superficial truth must involve terrible risks, and might at any turn enforce a choice between full confession and falsehood.
Dorothea could not bring herself to lie, even heroically; and there would be no heroism in lying to save herself. On the other hand, the thought of a forced confession--it might he before a tribunal--was too hideous. No, the suggestion had been a mad one, and Polly had rightly thrown cold water on it. Also, it had demanded too much of Polly, who could not be expected to jeopardise her matrimonial prospects to right a wrong for which she was not in truth responsible.
Dorothea loved a hero, but knew she was no heroine. She called herself a pitiful coward--unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a cla.s.s most sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What!
Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night!
that he had been shot and captured beneath her window!
Unjustly, too, she accused herself, because it is the decision, not the terror felt in deciding, which distinguishes the brave from the cowardly. If you doubt the event with Dorothea, the fault, must be mine. She was timid, but she came of a race which will endure anything rather than the conscious anguish of doing wrong.
Nor, had her conscience needed them, did it lack reminders. Narcissus had been persuaded to send the drawings to London to be treated by lithography, a process of which he knew nothing, but to which M. Raoul, during his studies in Paris, had given much attention, and apparently not without making some discoveries--unimportant perhaps, and such as might easily reward an experimenter in an art not well past its infancy. At any rate, he had drawn up elaborate instructions for the London firm of printers, and when the proofs arrived with about a third of these instructions neglected and another third misunderstood, Narcissus was at his wits' end, aghast at the poorness of the impressions, yet not knowing in the least how to correct them.
He gave Dorothea no peace with them. Evening after evening she was invited to pore upon the drawings over which she and her lover had bent together; to criticise here and offer a suggestion there; while every line revived a memory, inflicted a pang. What suggestion could she find save the one which must not be spoken?--to send, fetch the artist back from Dartmoor, and remedy all this, with so much beside!
”But,” urged Narcissus, ”you and he spent hours together. I quite understood that he had explained the process to you, and on the strength of this I gave it too little attention. Of course, if one could have foreseen--” He broke off, and added with some testiness: ”I'd give fifty pounds to have the fellow back, if only for ten minutes' talk.”
”But why couldn't we?” Dorothea asked suddenly, breathlessly.
They were alone by the table under the bookcase. On the far side of the hall, before the fire, Endymion dozed after a long day with the partridges. Narcissus's words awoke a wild hope.
”But why couldn't we?” she repeated, her voice scarcely louder than a whisper.
”Well, that's an idea!” he chuckled. ”Confound the fellow, he imposed on all of us! If we had only guessed what he intended, we might have signed a pet.i.tion telling him how necessary he had made himself, and imploring him, for our sakes, to behave like a gentleman.”
”But supposing--supposing he was innocent--that he had never meant--”
She put out a hand to lay it on her brother's. ”Hus.h.!.+” she could have cried; but it was too late.
”Endymion!” Narcissus called across the room, jocosely.
”Eh! What is it?” Endymion came out of his doze.
”We're in a mess with these drawings, a complete mess; and we want Master Raoul fetched out of Dartmoor to set us right. Come now--as Commissary, what'll you take to work it for us? Fifty pounds has already been offered.”
Dorothea turned from the table with a sigh for her lost chance.
”He'd like it,” answered Endymion, grimly. ”But, my dear fellow,”-- he slewed himself in his chair for a look around the hall,--”pray moderate your tones. I particularly deprecate levity on such matters within possible hearing of the servants; that cla.s.s of person never understands a joke.”
Narcissus rubbed the top of his head--a trick of his in perplexity.
”But, seriously: it has only this moment occurred to me. Couldn't the drawings be conveyed to him, in due form, through the Commandant of the Prison? The poor fellow owes us no grudge. I believe he would be eager to do us this small service. And, really, they have made such a mess of the stones--”
”Impossible! Out of the question! And I may say now, and once for all, that the mention of that unhappy youth is repugnant to me. By good fortune, we escaped being compromised by him; and I have refrained from reminding you that your patronage of him was, to say the least, indiscreet.”
”G.o.d bless me! You don't suggest, I hope, that I encouraged him to escape!”
”I suggest nothing. But I am honestly glad to be quit of him, and take some satisfaction in remembering that I detested the fellow from the first. He had too much cleverness with his bad style, or, if you prefer it, was sufficiently like a gentleman to be dangerous. Pah! For his particular offence, I would have had the old hulks maintained in the Hamoaze, with all their severities; as it is, the posturer may find Dartmoor pretty stiff, but will yet have the consolation of herding with his betters.”