Part 17 (1/2)
Dorothea thought of the room where she had danced and been happy: the many lights, the pagan figures merrymaking on the panels, the G.o.ddess 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 pa.s.s for the Elysian Fields.”
”And that is--?”
”The Emperor's _tabatiere_: and, my faith! Miss Dorothea, there will be sneezings in certain quarters when he opens it there.
”Il a du bon tabac Dans sa tabatiere
”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 pa.s.sions, 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 apt.i.tude 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 Devons.h.i.+re 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 alb.u.m; 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. Ma.s.siter'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 . . .”