Laurent was in crazy spirits during the meal which followed at Mme Leblanc's. Particularly did the good M. Perrelet appreciate his sallies; and even de Fresne, who made the fourth, relaxed into amusement. "I shall no longer be a 'guest' at that disgusting convent; to-night we shall both be M. d'Andigné's 'prisoners.'—Do you imagine, Aymar, that old de Noirlieu will be there—a 'prisoner,' too? I wish Guitton cadet could be . . . as a footman! I shall go and serenade him with the news this afternoon; and I shall write to Rigault, and he can tell them all at Arbelles. Oh, I forgot, Arbelles is evacuated."
"And in any case," observed Aymar, "they would only say that Saint Sebastian——"
Laurent dropped his knife and fork. His jaw dropped also. "Where on earth . . . I always hoped that you never knew. . . ."
"My dear Laurent," replied L'Oiseleur, smiling, "your walks on the terrace did not give you the monopoly of the bons mots of Arbelles. I also had the privilege of hearing them during my one visit to the library."
"Of course," said Laurent, when he had got over this, "it was really M. Perrelet who turned the scale, not M. d'Andigné at all. Imagine being able to hurl about missiles like 'ecchymosis' and 'haemorrhage'! I am considering adopting the first as an oath."
"I think," observed M. Perrelet, wiping his eyes (for his was not an exacting sense of humour), "that you had better go and work this off outside, my boy. I cannot allow you to remain in the house, because Aymar" (he made no bones about the Christian name) "is going to bed this afternoon so as to be in trim for the evening."
So a little later Aymar, lying on his bed, looked up at the young man and the old and remarked that they were both of them nothing but tyrants at bottom, and that when they got together one was simply crushed. "Not," he added, shutting his eyes, "that the process is altogether repugnant."
"I wish, my poor boy," said M. Perrelet softly, "that I had been there to tyrannize over this!" And he gently drew his hand down his right arm. Before Aymar could answer he had left the little room.
Laurent stood a moment longer. Then he suddenly dropped on his knees and hid his face against the bed.
"Oh, Aymar, at last . . . at last!"
Aymar gave a long, deep, tired sigh. "It was wonderful. . . . Andhiscoming like that—a miracle. . . ."
"Youwere wonderful!" said Laurent unsteadily.
Perhaps that evening was the most wonderful of all. No more efficacious method of rehabilitation could probably have been devised than that supper with General d'Andigné and his staff, where L'Oiseleur was plainly the guest of the evening, and where yet the host, with exquisite tact, so arranged matters that it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be there, and not a festivity with an object. And, in Laurent's eyes, the unanswering patience, courage, and dignity which Aymar had displayed throughout the enquiry, against perpetual odds both of bodily weakness and of circumstance, found here something of their fitting recognition. In the seventh heaven himself, he thought that, despite the marks of strain, of illness, and of fatigue, there was no one in the room (except possibly M. d'Andigné himself) who could hold a candle to him for distinction. And there were moments when he looked as he had done before the catastrophe, when he might indeed have been the Aymar of the Paris reception. But he would never be quite the same again. To Laurent, at least, he was even more admirable.
Yes, he had come through the sombre forest at last, he had everything back again now . . . all but one thing, probably, to him, the most precious of all.
Very late that night, after the guests had dispersed, Laurent went into the room near his which had been assigned to his friend. It was a room so large that two candles had little effect on it, but the moon was streaming in also through the uncurtained window. And across the majestic fourposter he perceived, by the gleam of his shirt in the moonlight, that Aymar was sitting on the window-seat, partially undressed. But his head was down upon his arms on the sill.
Laurent hesitated. He had not meant to intrude on this. Perhaps, however, he was asleep. Not liking to turn back, either, he went slowly on past the column of the bed, and by the time he had got round the foot L'Oiseleur had lifted his head and was looking at him with a little smile.
"Not in bed, Laurent?" he asked lightly.
"And you?" retorted Laurent. "Think of what M. Perrelet would say after such a day! It must be about two in the morning, I fancy."
"It has been an evening, certainly. Did you enjoy it?"
"What do you suppose?" inquired Laurent. "—But, Aymar, it was indescribably mean of you to tell them about that silly dungeon and my going back for M. Perrelet. You must have known that I was trying to stop you!"
Aymar made no reply. His smile, however, was sufficient commentary.
"Oh, confound you!" cried Laurent, laughing.
"Well, now you know what it feels like! AndIgot it over quickly!"
"Really, Aymar, I had no idea you were so vindictive!"
"I am a mine of evil qualities," announced Aymar. "You ought to know that from Arbelles. How long ago that seems, now. . . . You remind me, standing there with your candle, Laurent, of further back still, of the night I spent under your roof in Devonshire, centuries ago, when you were so polite. You hoped I would sleep well—which I did."
"And I could not believe I was not dreaming, to have you there. It was then I saw the swan and the motto on your watch. And, Aymar," his voice shook a trifle and he sat down suddenly on the window-seat, "your motto is true. You are'sans tache'—you always have been!"
Aymar shook his head, smiling a little sadly. But he looked at him with great affection.
Now, if ever, was the chance to say something about Mme de Villecresne. "How pleased they will be at Sessignes," remarked the diplomatist, looking carefully out of the window. The observation sounded inane to him directly he had uttered it, particularly as Aymar made no reply. It was no use trying to work round tactfully to the subject, and there was always the picture of Mme de Villecresne eating her heart out there now that she was enlightened. Besides, what of Aymar's own tell-tale attitude when he came in? . . . So he next said boldly, "I suppose you will go home now?"
"No, I am not going home," replied Aymar; and he also looked out of the window.
After a moment he turned his head. His pallor was accentuated almost to ghastliness in the moonlight. "I cannot very well do so. I told my cousin when I wrote about the enquiry that whether I were cleared or no I should not come back, and that I hoped she would continue to make Sessignes her home. I should not trouble her."
Laurent was now terribly bothered. What was the right thing to do? "Oh, but don't you think——" he began, and then floundered desperately. "Aymar, I think I ought to tell you . . . yet I don't know whether I had better . . . I . . . I really wish you would advise me whether to tell you . . ." and unconscious of the absurdity he was uttering, he caught hold of Aymar's coat, which lay on the window-seat, and began to wring a button round and round.
A little smile dawned on Aymar's mouth as he looked at his occupation. "Better tell me . . . before you have them all off!"
"I . . . I talked to Mme de Villecresne after you left. I . . . I had no choice—I had to make things clear. She . . . she had not understood, Aymar—she really had not."
"Sometimes," said Aymar very slowly, and dropping out each word separately, "I have hoped that, since."
"Yes," responded Laurent eagerly. "You see, when you explained to her there was so little time—it was so sudden . . . all so horrible and you never do yourself justice. . . . So I—she asked me, you know, and I could not go away like that, before she did understand—I explained."
"So you explained," repeated his friend. "That was . . . like you, Laurent." He put his hand abruptly to his throat, got up with equal abruptness, and walked away out of the wash of moonlight.
He had told him! Now that Aymar knew that she knew the truth—now, surely. . . .
Aymar reappeared with startling suddenness, like a ghost.
"Hadn't we better go to bed?" he said in a dry voice.
Laurent jumped up and held out his hands to the ghost.
"Aymar, if you blame me——"
"Blame you? how could you think such a thing! Don't I know that you would make out a case for me a thousand times better than I could myself, and that you would do it so that it must be believed—if any truth in this world is to be believed! And that is just why . . . Never mind. Why talk of it to-night? Let us go to bed."
But Laurent had laid hold of him. "Aymar—I'm so stupid—for pity's sake tell me what you mean!"
"Why," answered Aymar, very quietly standing still in his grip, "just this: she understandsnow. . . and it has made no difference."
Laurent loosed him, aghast. By telling him what he had done he had taken away his friend's last hope. He dropped back on to the window-seat.
Aymar sat down there, too, and leant his head against a mullion. "You see," he said evenly, "that this is a just inference, for she has had plenty of time to write to me, even if it were only to wish me good success . . . and I have not had a word. She cannot be ill, or my grandmother would have mentioned it. So it is not my ineradicable pride as you call it, Laurent. I am certain that you put things better for me than I could ever have done myself. Another debt—the deepest, it might have been, of all I owe you. But it only shows that she has washed her hands of me. I dare say she has cause."
The moonlight enshrined the two silent figures. Aymar had his chin cupped on his hand as he looked out of the window into the warm night. But before Laurent's eyes was the rose-garden at Sessignes, the little white-clad figure, the misty eyes, the trembling voice. . . . Yet nothing had come of that emotion, after all.
Aymar turned at last and put a hand on his. "My dear Laurent, one cannot have everything. Don't, don't look like that! It is not for me to show myself ungrateful for this wonderful day. I don't think that I quite realize myself yet that I am no longer an outcast, and that must be my excuse."
Laurent gripped the hand very hard. "I knew the luck would turn," he observed rather huskily. "No one could go on having such appalling bad fortune as you since you lost thejartier."
"I suppose," said Aymar softly, "that it has never occurred to you in your imaginative moments—no, I'm certain it has not—that all the time I had something a thousand times better than thejartier. . . a piece of such transcendent good fortune that I might well spend the rest of my life thanking God for it!"
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Laurent. "No, certainly it has not. . . . Still, of course you were very lucky in having an opponent of the type of Colonel Richard, and again in coming across him as you did at——"
He stopped, because Aymar was gently shaking him.
"Is it nature or art, Laurent, that has made you so thick-headed? You don't know what I mean? Well, go and stand in front of your looking-glass, and perhaps it will dawn upon you!"
But it dawned then and there, for as he stared at him Laurent slowly began to turn crimson.