The Westcotes | Page 7

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 _Th��tis_ 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 _rago?ts_. 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 Frenchwoman, and that gives me a kind of--sympathy, shall we say? Moreover, I know what I like."
Dorothea, accustomed to regard her brother as a demigod, caught herself blushing for him. She was angry with herself. She caught M. Raoul's murmur, "Heaven distributes to us our talents, Monsieur," and was angry with him, understanding and deprecating the raillery beneath his perfectly correct attitude. He kept this attitude to the end. When the time came for parting, he bent over her hand and whispered again:
"But it was kind of Mademoiselle not to report me."
She heard. It set up a secret understanding between them, which she resented. There was nothing to say, again; yet she had found no way