The Westcotes | Page 5

head towards the house, and Dorothea shook hers.
"I am going to 'The Dogs,' General."
"Eh?" He scented the jest and chuckled. "As you say, 'to the dogs' hein?
Messieurs, I beg you to observe and take warning that your sister and I
are going to the dogs together."
He offered his arm to Dorothea. Her brothers had dismounted and
handed their horses over to the ostler who waited by the porch daily to
lead them to the inn stables.
"I will stable Mercury myself," said she, addressing Endymion. She
submitted her smallest plans to him for approval.
"Do so," he answered. "After running through my letters, I will step
down to the Orange Room and join you. I entrust her to you, General--

the more confidently because you cannot take her far."
He laughed and followed Narcissus through the porch. Dorothea saw
the old General wince. She slipped an arm through Mercury's
bridle-rein and picked up her skirt; the other arm she laid in her
companion's.
"You have not seen the Orange Room, Miss Dorothea?"
"Not since the decorations began." She paused and uttered the thought
uppermost in her mind. "You must forgive my brother; I am sorry he
spoke as he did just now."
"Then he is more than forgiven."
"He did not consider."
"Dear Mademoiselle, your brother is an excellent fellow, and not a bit
more popular than he deserves to be. Of his kindness to us prisoners-- I
speak not of us privileged ones, but of our poorer brothers--I could
name a thousand acts; and acts say more than words."
Dorothea pursed her lips. "I am not sure. I think a woman would ask for
words too."
"Yes, that is so," he caught her up. "But don't you see that we prisoners
are--forgive me--just like women? I mean, we have learned that we are
weak. For a man that is no easy lesson, Mademoiselle. I myself learned
it hardly. And seeing your brother admired by all, so strong and
prosperous and confident, can I ask that he should feel as we who have
forfeited these things?"
Before she could find a reply he had harked back to the Orange Room.
"You have not seen it since the decorations began? Then I have a mind
to run and ask your brother to forbid your coming--to command you to
wait until Wednesday. We are in a horrible mess, I warn you, and smell
of turpentine most potently. But we shall be ready for the ball, and

then--! It will be prodigious. You do not know that we have a genius at
work on the painting?"
"My brother tells me the designs are extraordinarily clever."
"They are more than clever, you will allow. The artist I discovered
myself--a young man named Charles Raoul. He comes from the South,
a little below Avignon, and of good family--in some respects." The
General paused and took snuff. "He enlisted at eighteen and has seen
service; he tells me he was wounded at Austerlitz. Unhappily he was
shipped, about two years ago, on board the _Thétis_ frigate, with a
detachment and stores for Martinique. The _Thétis_ had scarcely left
L'Orient before she fell in with one of your frigates, whose name
escapes me; and here he is in Axcester. He has rich relatives, but for
some reason or other they decline to support him; and yet he seems a
gentleman. He picks up a few shillings by painting portraits; but you
English are shy of sitting--I wonder why? And we--well, I suppose we
prefer to wait till our faces grow happier."
Dorothea had it on the tip of her tongue to ask how the General had
discovered this genius; but the ring in his voice gave her pause. Twice
in the course of their short walk he had shown feeling; and she
wondered at it, having hitherto regarded him as a cynical old fellow
with a wit which cracked himself and the world like two dry nuts for
the jest of their shrivelled kernels. She did not, know that a kind word
of hers had unlocked his heart; and before she could recall her question
they had reached the stable-yard of "The Dogs." And after stabling
Mercury it was but a step across to the inn.
The "Dogs Inn" took its name from two stone greyhounds beside its
porch-- supporters of the arms of that old family from which the
Westcotes had purchased Bayfield; and the Orange Room from a
tradition that William of Orange had spent a night there on his march
from Torbay. There may have been truth in the tradition; the room at
any rate preserved in it window-hangings of orange-yellow, and a deep
fringe of the same hue festooning the musicians' gallery. While serving
Axcester for ball, rout, and general assembly-room,