The Westcotes | Page 7

guess, even if I possessed--"
"A board, for example?"
"A board?"
She was completely puzzled.
He glanced at her sideways, turned to the panel, and with his
forefingers traced the outline of a square upon it, against the tree.
"Restaurant pour les Aspirants," he announced.
He said it quietly, over his shoulder. The sudden challenge, her sudden
discovery that he knew, made Dorothea gasp. She had not the smallest
notion how to answer him, or even what kind of answer he expected,
and stood dumb, gazing at his back. A workman, passing, apologised
for having brushed her skirt with the step-ladder he carried. She
stammered some words of pardon. And just then, to her relief, her
brother Endymion's voice rang out from the doorway:
"Ah, there you are. Well, I declare!" He looked around him. "A
Paradise, a perfect Paradise! Indeed, General, your nation has its
revenge of us in the arts. You build a temple for us, and on Wednesday

I hear you are to provide the music. Tum-tum, ta-ta-ta . . ." He hummed
a few bars of Gluck's "Paride ed Elenna," and paused, with the gesture
of one holding a fiddle, on the verge of a reminiscence. "There was a
time--but I no longer compete. And to whom, General, are we indebted
for this--ah--treat?"
General Rochambeau indicated young Raoul, who stepped forward
from the wall and answered, with a respectful inclination:
"Well, M. le Commissaire, in the first place to Captain Seymour."
The General bit his moustache; Endymion frowned. The answer merely
puzzled Dorothea, who did not know that Seymour was the name of the
British officer to whom the _Thétis_ had struck her colours.
"Moreover," the young man went on imperturbably, "we but repay our
debt to M. le Commissaire--for the entertainment he affords us."
Dorothea looked up sharply now, even anxiously; but her brother took
the shot, if shot it were, for a compliment. He put the awkward idiom
aside with a gracious wave of the hand. His brow cleared.
"But we must do something for these poor fellows," he announced,--
sweeping all the work-men in a gaze; "in mere gratitude we must. A
stall, now, at the end of the room under the gallery, with one or two
salesmen whom you must recommend to me, General. We might
dispose of quite a number of their small carvings and articles de Paris,
with which the market among the townspeople is decidedly
overstocked. The company on Wednesday will be less familiar with
them: they will serve as mementoes, and the prices, I daresay, will not
be too closely considered."
"Sir, I beg of you--" General Rochambeau expostulated.
"Eh?"
"They have given their labour--such as it is--in pure gratitude for the
kindness shown to them by all in Axcester. That has been the whole

meaning of our small enterprise," the old gentleman persisted.
"Still, I don't suppose they'll object if it brings a little beef to their
_ragoûts_. Say no more, say no more. What have we here? Eh?
'Bacchus and Ariadne'? I am rusty in my classics, but Bacchus,
Dorothea! This will please Narcissus. We have in our house, sir,"-- here
he addressed Raoul,--"a Roman pavement entirely--ah--concerned with
that personage. It is, I believe, unique. One of these days I must give
you a permit to visit Bayfield and inspect it, with my brother for
cicerone. It will repay you--"
"It will more than repay me," the young man interposed, with his gaze
demurely bent on the wall.
"I should have said, it will repay your inspection. You must jog my
memory."
It was clear Raoul had a reply on his tongue. But he glanced at
Dorothea, read her expression, and, turning to her brother, bowed again.
Her first feeling was of gratitude. A moment later she blamed herself
for having asked his forbearance by a look, and him for his confidence
in seeking that look. His eyes, during the moment they encountered
hers, had said, "We under-stand one another." He had no right to
assume so much, and yet she had not denied it.
Endymion Westcote meanwhile had picked up a small book which lay
face downward on one of the step-ladders.
"So here is the source of your inspiration? said he. An _Ovid_? How it
brings up old school-days At Winchester--old swishings, too, General,
hey?" He held the book open and studied the Ariadne on the wall.
"The source of my inspiration indeed, M. le Commissaire! But you will
not find Ariadne in that text, which contains only the Tristia."
"Ah, but, I told you my classics were a bit rusty," replied the
Commissary. He made the round of the walls and commended, in his
breezy way, each separate panel. "You must take my criticisms for

what they are worth, M. Raoul. But my grandmother was a