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. "Hush!" 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."
Strangely enough this speech did more to fix Dorothea"s resolve than all she had read or heard of the rigours of the war-prison. Gently reared though she was, physical suffering seemed to her less intolerable than to be unjustly held in this extreme of scorn..
This was the deeper wrong; and putting herself in her lover"s place, feeling with his feelings, she knew it to be by far the deeper. In Dartmoor he shared the sufferings of men unfortunate but not despicable, punished for fighting in their country"s cause. But here was a moral punishment, deserved by none but the vilest; and she had helped to bring it--was allowing it to rest--upon a hero!
In the long watches of that night it never occurred to her that the brutality of her brother"s contempt was over-done. And Endymion, not given to self-questioning at any time, was probably unconscious of a dull wrath revenging itself for many pin-p.r.i.c.ks of Master Raoul"s clever tongue. Endymion Westcote, like many pompous men, usually hurt somebody when he indulged in a joke, and for this cause, perhaps, had a nervous dislike of wit in others. Dull in taking a jest, but almost preternaturally clever in suspecting one, he had disliked Raoul"s sallies in proportion as they puzzled him. The remembrance of them rankled, and this had been his bull-roar of revenge.
He spent the next morning in his office; and returning at three in the afternoon, retired to the library to draw up the usual monthly report required of him as Commissary. He had been writing tor an hour or more, when Dorothea tapped at the door and entered.
Endymion did not observe her pallor; indeed, he scarcely looked up.
"Ah! You have come for a book? Make as little noise, then, as possible, that"s a good soul. You interrupted me in a column of figures."
He began to add them up afresh, tapping the table with the fingers of his left hand, as his custom was when counting. Dorothea waited. The addition made, he entered it, resting three shapely finger-tips on the table"s edge for the number to be carried over.
"I wish to speak with you particularly."
He laid down his pen resignedly. Her voice was urgent, and he knew well enough that the occasion must be urgent when Dorothea interrupted his work.
"Anything wrong?"
"It--it"s about M. Raoul."
His eyebrows went up, but only to contract again upon a magisterial frown.
"Really, after the request I was obliged to make to Narcissus last night--you were present, I believe? Is it possible that I failed to make plain my distaste?"
"Ah, but listen! It is no question of distaste, but of a great wrong.
He was not trying to escape; he told you an untruth, to--to save--"
Endymion had picked up a paper-knife, and leaned back, tapping his teeth with it.
"Do you know?" he said, "I suspected something of this kind from the first, though I had no idea you shared the knowledge. Zeally"s cleverness struck me as a trifle too--ah--phenomenal for belief.
I scented some low intrigue; and Polly"s dismissal may indicate my pretty shrewd guess at the culprit."
"But it was not Polly!"
"Eh?"
Endymion sat bolt upright.
"You must not blame Polly. It was I whom M. Raoul came to see that night."
He stared at her, incredulous.
"My dear Dorothea, are you quite insane?"
"He wished to see me--to speak with me; he gave the girl a note for me. I knew nothing about it until I went upstairs that night, and found her at the boudoir window. M. Raoul was outside. He had arrived before she could deliver the message."
"Quite so!" with a nasally derisive laugh. "And you really need me to point out how prettily those turtles were befooling you?"