"Nous n'irons plus aux bois,Les lauriers sont coupés,"
"Nous n'irons plus aux bois,Les lauriers sont coupés,"
"Nous n'irons plus aux bois,
Les lauriers sont coupés,"
—that most haunting couplet came into his head meanwhile, to stay there all the rest of the morning.
"That will be much better, thank you, Monsieur de Courtomer," said M. Perrelet, settling the shorn head back again.
Was it only Laurent's fancy that a slight change passed over Aymar de la Rocheterie's half-conscious face at the name?
And, waking that afternoon from a short doze himself, Laurent found his charge's conscious gaze fixed full on him. As Laurent's glance met his the very faintest tinge of colour mounted to his face—he was too bloodless to show more. But he looked away, saying nothing.
Laurent felt certain, however, that he had recognized him. In his present great prostration this was probably a shock; he must give him time to get over it. He would obviously have to wait a little for the story of the doings in the wood; La Rocheterie would not have the strength to tell him yet.
Nor, perhaps, the inclination, it occurred to him later, when, having asked the wounded man whether there was anything he could do to make him more comfortable, he replied in the negative in a voice that seemed to the enquirer, for all its weakness, to be so extremely glacial that he felt a chill at the heart. Had La Rocheterie not recognized him, after all? Should he recall himself to his memory? Better not: M. Perrelet would probably disapprove.
But during the night he was faced with a new idea. Was it possible that L'Oiseleur, even though he had recognized him (for the more Laurent thought about that the more he felt sure that he had), did not want to admit the fact? And if so, in Heaven's name why not? Was it possible that—after all, hedidknow something of the terrible imputation under which he lay? But even then—Laurent was at a loss, and no amount of studying his face, at moments during the vigil when La Rocheterie was asleep, helped him to a solution. All he gained was a completer impression of the extraordinary effect of candour, innocence, and helplessness given to it in repose by the motionless lashes, as long and curving as those of a boy.
Another morning brought a repetition of the morning before. M. Perrelet seemed pleased, and, presumably of set purpose, he talked a little as he did the dressings. But his patient did not respond to his encouragement, and Laurent could not disguise from himself that he himself was beginning to be a trifle . . . yes, disappointed in him. La Rocheterie was very likely in pain from the wound in his chest with every breath he drew, and, worse, was so drained of vitality that he could not move or lift a hand to help himself, but somehow one would have thought that, by this time, a man of his fibre would have rallied a little in spirit, if not in body. On the contrary, in these last two days Laurent had once or twice surprised on his increasingly haggard face such an expression of utter hopelessness as to be shocked by it. Yet it was puzzling how, despite his silence and inertia, La Rocheterie would now and then turn on M. Perrelet a gaze that seemed pregnant with some unspoken question.
Possibly the doctor himself had noticed this, or it was for some other reason that he gave Laurent a warning before he left.
"In spite of the improvement, he must be kept absolutely quiet," he said. "Whatever you do, don't go talking to him about Pont-aux-Rochers or the wood. I would not answer for the consequences if he is agitated in any way."
"To talk is the last thing he seems to want to do," observed his nurse.
"I am not so sure of that," returned M. Perrelet.
There seemed to be a great deal of movement going on at Arbelles that afternoon, and Laurent, sitting sleepily by the open window, remembered how M. Perrelet had said that a considerable part of the troops there had been ordered off against the small Royalist bodies in the Plesguen district who, under the leadership of a certain M. du Tremblay, were understood to be meditating a coup, but in what direction was uncertain. Colonel Guitton was going in command of the force from the château, a piece of news which delighted M. de Courtomer. The name of du Tremblay seemed familiar to him, but he was too lazy, or too tired, to recover the connection.
La Rocheterie was asleep. Though the screen hid his body from Laurent, it had not been drawn completely up to the head of the bed, and through the gap the young man could see his face turned sideways on the pillow, still and colourless as alabaster, and all the more colourless for the lock of ruddy hair lying on the brow. He was tranquil enough now. But when he was awake . . . Oh, that cursèd, cursèd wood!
Quick spurred steps were audible at this juncture outside, and in a moment more, to Laurent's surprise, and by no means pleasure, there entered Colonel Guitton, with the Major. The former was evidently ready for the field, booted, sword-girt and polished, his tall brass helmet with the horse-hair plume and the strip of leopard-skin giving him additional height and truculence. Into the yellow plastron of his uniform was stuck a folded paper. He took no notice of Laurent beyond returning his salute, and, followed by the other officer, clanked across the room to L'Oiseleur's bed and disappeared behind the screen.
This irruption had of course roused the sleeper, for Laurent saw him stir and open his eyes.
"Ah, I am glad to see—as well as to hear—that you are better, Monsieur," came Colonel Guitton's voice, quick and incisive, "because I want a little conversation with you."
Laurent promptly walked to the farther edge of the screen. "If you will excuse me, sir, M. Perrelet left particular orders that M. de la Rocheterie was to be kept absolutely quiet."
The helmeted head turned. "I can't help that," said its owner, none too agreeably. "This business is far too urgent to wait on M. Perrelet's permission. Moreover, we shall not keep M. de la Rocheterie long."
He drew the chair by the bed still nearer and sat down, the Major standing behind him, while Laurent, after a second or two's hesitation, returned to his former place by the window. He was perturbed, but he felt that if Colonel Guitton had the sense of a fly he would see that L'Oiseleur was in no fit state for conversation.
"I want to ask you a question or two," he heard the Colonel reiterate, in a much lower voice—but one which, whether he knew it or no, was perfectly audible. "To go straight to the point, the district of St. Pierre de Plesguen is moving." He waited a moment, and then added, "I expect I am right in concluding that M. du Tremblay's real plans are known to you?"
L'Oiseleur also waited a moment before replying. "If it interests you . . . they are." His voice was slow and weak, but the reply had all the effect of curtness.
"It does interest me, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," said the dragoon. "I am going out now in the hope of countering those plans . . . when I know a little more definitely what they are."
And there was another pause, which Laurent dimly felt to be charged with something uncomfortable and threatening, though he could not as yet divine the goal of this conversation. But it had suddenly come to him where he had heard the name of du Tremblay before, where he had seen the man who bore it—that officer at the Duc de Saint-Séverin's reception who knew so much about La Rocheterie and had spoken of him so warmly. They had probably concerted measures.
"Do you expect me to wish you success?" asked the faint voice at last.
"No, I expect something a little more concrete than good wishes," retorted Colonel Guitton. He gave a half-laugh and lowered his voice still more, but not sufficiently. "Come, La Rocheterie, let us get this business over as quickly as possible. I am sure that you understand me!"
The faint, fugitive colour dyed L'Oiseleur's pallor to the roots of his hair. "God! For what do you take me!"
"Well," sniggered the Imperialist, "I had really no intention of pronouncing the word to your face, but if you want it . . . No, I take you for a man who, like M. de Labédoyère, has seen the error of his ways, a man who is aware, now that the Emperor is back, how things are likely to go, and has acted accordingly . . . and wisely, in my view. Only you cannot stop halfway, you know. So——"
Little shoots of incredulity and horror had been running up and down the witness as he stood there rigid by the window, unseen and perhaps already forgotten. Was it conceivable that they were expecting L'Oiseleur,L'Oiseleur, to reveal the plans which he and du Tremblay had no doubt made together, now that du Tremblay was on the verge of carrying them out? It was so infamous that it could not be true; he must be wronging the two officers. He restrained himself and listened. As for L'Oiseleur himself, pinned there under their gaze, he had turned his head away, his teeth set in his lip.
"Come, La Rocheterie, don't prolong this!" went on the Imperialist, and his tone held a certain repellent bonhomie. "I am in a great hurry, and you are ill. And, hang it all, you made Colonel Richard a present of your own plans; all I'm asking for is a little light on du Tremblay's!"
Yes, they did expect it! And it was repeated to his very face, that vile and terrible lie! Laurent took an instinctive step forward—and then checked himself. La Rocheterie had turned his head back again on the pillow; he was going at least to have the satisfaction of denying the charge. But was it any wonder that he looked ghastly? "You can . . . insult me . . ." he got out, struggling a little for breath, "but you can never . . . make me do that!"
"Makeyou, you fool!" snarled Colonel Guitton, all the false geniality gone, "there's no question of 'making,' if you have any regard for your own skin! Don't you realize that you stand to find a Royalist triumph a cursed bad lookout for yourself after what you've done, if they get hold of you!"
L'Oiseleur's lip curled. "I had rather their justice . . . than your mercy."
The charge was beneath his contempt then; he had not even troubled to deny it. But how long was this to go on? Was it of any use making another appeal to them? No; a fellow-captive had no power to stop them, and if he intervened again, La Rocheterie would inevitably realize his presence, and he was beginning most devoutly to hope that he had forgotten it.
The Colonel cleared his throat. From his now quite unmodulated voice it was plain that he, at all events, had forgotten him. "Now, look here, La Rocheterie, you are behaving insanely. I can't think what has come to you! Your own side knows, or will soon know, what you have done, while on the other hand ours is already in your debt—though I don't doubt you got yourquid pro quofrom Richard. Now here is a still greater opportunity of putting us—I might almost say the Emperor—under an obligation to you, and yet, after having so thoroughly burned your boats, you hesitate to take it!"
"Hesitate!"
The Colonel swore softly. Then he smote himself on the leg. "Parbleu, I am stupid! I . . . I apologize, La Rocheterie. But you were unlucky, and you need have no fear of consequences this time, for, most fortunately, I have a document here which will make the business quite safe for you. I brought it to ask you about it." Something rustled. "I assume that this paper which was found on you contains notes or what not of du Tremblay's plans, since it is headed with his name. So if ever you were accused of having communicated them you could safely say—and I would support you—that the cipher notes were taken from you and read." His voice was eager, explanatory, almost coaxing. "Do you see? It is quite safe. I perfectly understand that in the event of recapture you do not want to face a firing-party for the second time. But no one could possibly prove that we did not contrive to decipher these notes for ourselves."
A sound resembling a laugh came from the bed. "Try then!" said its occupant.
"Aubert!" said the Colonel, and he and the Major whispered together. Nevertheless, Laurent overheard the words "extraordinary obstinacy . . . never anticipated . . . cannot understand. . . ." It seemed clear now—only too clear—why they had been so anxious to keep L'Oiseleur alive. . . . And meanwhile he lay, not looking at them, his mouth set hard, and breathing rather fast, the disastrous effect of this insulting interrogatory quite plain. And when Laurent saw the sweat on his brow he hoped with a desperate hope that, as his inquisitors were in a hurry and could, surely, see that they would elicit nothing, they would desist. . . . But then, to his dismay, he heard the murmured words, "going to have it out of him at whatever cost!"
And Colonel Guitton's chair scraped along the floor as he drew it nearer. Laurent could now see part of his green sleeve and his strong, blunt-fingered hand, in which was a piece of stained and crumpled paper.
"Now, La Rocheterie," he said, in quite a different tone, "you'll answer my questions, please! It's no good shamming faintness. You can have brandy if you need it. Are these"—he tapped the paper—"your notes or du Tremblay's?"
From his low pillow L'Oiseleur looked up at his interrogator steadily. Laurent felt sure that the taunt about shamming had stung him, and that he was going, to his own cost, to show that it was not that he could not speak, but that he would not. He now said quietly, "They are my own."
"Good! It is your private cipher then?"
"Yes."
"And the notes are concerned with this plan of du Tremblay's?"
"I shall not answer that."
"That shows they are. You have answered. Now I suppose you will pretend that you cannot read your cipher without the key?"
"I can read it perfectly," said the weak, disdainful voice.
"The deuce you can! Well, that's honest, at all events. As I hold the paper in front of you, you could read it off, then?"
"If I pleased."
"As a matter of fact," observed the Colonel over his shoulder to the Major, "he probably knows by heart what is there—there is not very much." He turned once more to his prisoner. "Now I daresay you think that is what I am going to ask you to do, eh?—and that is why you are so ready to admit that you can read it. Well, you are wrong. I am not quite such a fool. What you are going to do, Monsieur L'Oiseleur, is to give us the key of your cipher, and then, deciphering these notes ourselves, we can be sure that we are not being tricked! Otherwise I might just as well have asked you straight out for verbal information, which I see now I could not rely on when I had it . . . though God knows what game you are playing! You follow me?"
"Perfectly." But the sweat was running down his forehead.
"Well now! You are not strong enough to write, I fancy. The Major will take it down for you. Is it a complicated cipher?"
There was a pause which seemed to Laurent endless. He stood there biting his clenched hands, only keeping himself in with the greatest difficulty. Surely, surely they could see what they were doing, and would refrain! The pulsations of La Rocheterie's enfeebled and overdriven heart seemed to be shaking him as he lay there with his eyes half closed, and the silence was filled with the sound of his rapid, sobbing breathing. But at last he said, with a supreme effort to speak clearly,
"Do you really imagine . . . I am going . . . to give it to you?"
"I know you are," retorted Guitton coolly, "because I am going to sit beside you and ask you for it till you do!"
"Then you are likely . . . to stay here till . . ." But, game as he was, he could not finish the sentence. He made instead a slight convulsive movement.
"Give me the pencil and paper, Aubert," said the Colonel, undisturbed. "Now, La Rocheterie, we have had enough of this heroic pose. The Moulin Brûlé is very much past history. The sooner you give in the better for yourself. Do you think I am going to move against du Tremblay ignorant of his plans when you, with your penchant for passing on information, are aware of them? I don't enjoy sacrificing my men! . . . This is mainly a number cipher, I see; but I fancy one or two of the words are really cipher, too, eh?"
"I shall not . . ."
"Oh, yes, you will. Suppose you begin by telling me what this number which occurs so frequently represents. You see the one I mean. Don't shut your eyes like that! Two hundred and eighteen—what does two hundred and eighteen represent?"
There was no answer. The face on the pillow was no longer alabaster; it was ashen.
"What does two hundred and eighteen represent, La Rocheterie? I have plenty of time yet; you'll have to tell me in the end. Is it 'river'—'Aven'?"
L'Oiseleur suddenly moved his head as if he could not bear much more, and said sharply to himself, "O God!"
"Ah," commented Guitton in a tone of satisfaction. "You see! in a few minutes you will find yourself telling me all I want to know, and then I will go away and leave you in peace. Perhaps indeed you are already prepared to . . . No? Very well, we will return to our friend two hundred and eighteen. Once more, what does two hundred and eighteen stand for?"
His victim looked up at him desperately and defiantly and shook his head. It made no difference; the query was merely repeated: "What does two hundred and eighteen stand for?"
L'Oiseleur made a last effort to speak, but no sound was audible. His eyes closed. Something in his appearance caused Colonel Guitton to jump up with an exclamation. "Look here, then, I will be contented with just this—Does du Tremblay intend to cross the Aven or no? But, mind you, the truth, or it will be the worse for you! Now, yes or no? Do you hear me? . . .Doyou hear me? . . . What's that?"
"I think he means, sir," said the Major, who had slipped up to the other side of the bed, and was also bending over its occupant, "that he hears you, but that he will not tell you. I'm afraid it's no use; he's collapsing."
"I was afraid so, damn him!" said Colonel Guitton with passionate disgust. "Find some brandy then, Aubert. There must be some way to get it out of him!"
But Laurent, like Aymar de la Rocheterie, had had more than he could stand. Only those two considerations, his knowledge of his own helplessness, and regard for L'Oiseleur's feelings, had kept him in leash so long. Now it was not a question of L'Oiseleur's feelings but of his very life—for Laurent had just had a full view of him as the Colonel shifted his position. He snatched up the brandy, and sprang to the other entrance of the screen just as Major Aubert came round it.
"Stop, stop, for God's sake!" he cried, seizing him by the arm. "You are murdering him—can't you see it!—and he'll never tell! Here's the brandy, but for pity's sake don't go on . . . it's quite useless!"
"What's this?" cut in Colonel Guitton's voice through the screen—or rather, over it, for, turning suddenly and catching the end, he toppled the whole structure over with a crash. "Is the other still there?—Damnation, I had forgotten!"
"So I should imagine," retorted Laurent, facing him over the fallen screen. "I can very well fancy that you did forget you had a witness of your detestable proceedings! Let me go to him!" And he frantically tried to push past the Colonel, but that officer as furiously pushed him back. "Major Aubert, put this young meddler outside the door in charge of the sentry! I was a damned fool ever to let him stay in the room. Of course La Rocheterie won't speak while he is here! Out with him!"
"I refuse!" began Laurent—and then saw that he had better go. If he objected it would only lead to his being dragged out, and prolonging this dreadful scene. Besides, La Rocheterie, lying there like death itself, without any struggle for breath now, without the flicker of an eyelid—La Rocheterie was palpably beyond hearing any more insults or questions.
"You have killed him, you devil!" he cried with a passionate gesture. But the executioner was more than deaf. Even as Laurent was pushed to the door by the Major he heard the angry voice saying, "Perhaps the initial mistake I made was in not offering this fellow here a price first. How much, I wonder, did he get from——"
Then the door slammed and was locked behind him, and he found himself, seething with fury, in the corridor with the bewildered sentry.
His first impulse, now that he was out, was to batter on the door to be let in again; it was horrible to have to leave L'Oiseleur in the grip of those vultures. But they could not do any more now. The question was, had they finished him already? Tears of helpless rage were dimming his eyes when suddenly, some way down the corridor, he saw a rotund form making for the staircase—M. Perrelet. But he was not coming this way; he had paid his afternoon visit . . . they knew that, probably. Heshouldcome, though . . . Despite his somewhat sturdy build, Laurent was very quick and light on his feet, and was down the passage like a flash, the sentry, when he had grasped his intention, pounding after him.
"Hallo!" said M. Perrelet, turning round. "Here, young man, if you are escaping, I——"
Laurent seized him by the arm. "For Heaven's sake, come! They are killing him in there, the Colonel and——" Further revelations were cut short by the sentry's throwing himself on their maker from behind and putting an arm around his neck.
"It's all right," gasped Laurent, "I'm not escaping. Hurry, Monsieur Perrelet—they've been questioning him till . . . I don't know if he's breathing now!"
M. Perrelet let fly as full-blooded an oath as any soldier and trotted down the corridor. "Come on!" said Laurent to the sentry, who still held him. And the cortège arrived just as the door opened once more and the two officers came out. The Colonel was in a towering rage.
"Ah, Doctor, you'd better go in to your patient. He needs you, I fancy—not that it matters now. By the time I got this young meddler out it was too late. . . . And to have the very notes in my hand!" He crumpled the sheet of cipher into a ball, threw it violently down and strode off down the corridor followed by the Major. M. Perrelet had already shot in through the open door.
And in a moment or two Laurent, with a failing heart for what he should find, said to the now dazed sentry, "I suppose I had better go back," and went.
"Is that you?" called out M. Perrelet. "Put the kettle on the fire, quick!—and come and rub his hands and feet!"
He had L'Oiseleur, quite inanimate, in his arms; the bandages were already severed, and he was rubbing him over the region of the heart with brandy.
"He's gone!" exclaimed Laurent, terrified, when he saw the fixed, half-open eyes and the head fallen aside.
"Not quite," replied M. Perrelet grimly. "But you must work harder than that!"
It was nearly two o'clock in the morning—but not of the next morning, the morning after that. Laurent rose from replenishing the little fire which was always burning. In a few moments M. Perrelet would relieve him and he could sleep.
Thanks to the old surgeon, L'Oiseleur had been saved—for the second time—but it had been touch and go for some hours. Before nightfall on Friday they had succeeded in pulling him back to a kind of consciousness, and all yesterday he had lain quiescent, so exhausted that it had been difficult to rouse him to take nourishment, but at least in outward peace, as Laurent kept assuring himself, for the brutality which had been practised on La Rocheterie in this room haunted him, waking or sleeping. M. Perrelet indeed was amazed at the rally, considering that the victim's heart was, and would long remain, so much impaired.
Laurent stood now for a moment at the foot of the bed—and had a sudden feeling that he should like to hang a laurel wreath there. Then M. Perrelet entered in a dressing-gown, and waved him to his own couch.
He woke about five o'clock to find, to his surprise, a low-voiced conversation going on behind the screen. Since his collapse La Rocheterie had not uttered a word.
". . . kept me alive for that!" he caught the end of a sentence, in his broken, trailing voice, suffused nevertheless with bitterness.
"Now, my boy," he heard M. Perrelet reply gently, "you cannot honestly think that was my purpose, can you? If I could have Colonel Guitton tried for attempted murder, I would willingly do so. But you must not think of it any more; it is over now."
The voice said, "Till they try again!"
"No, no!" The old surgeon sounded genuinely shocked. "The Colonel has left Arbelles. It shall never happen again, I swear it. And you did not tell him anything; you know that, don't you?"
"Yes . . . but . . . heaskedme . . . hedaredto ask me!" gasped L'Oiseleur ". . . and before M. de Courtomer!"
(Yes, he had recognized him—he had realized that he was there!)
"Come, come, my child, you must be quiet!" said the doctor. "I know that you went through a dreadful time, but you kept your mouth shut—that's really all you care about, isn't it? Now see if you cannot get to sleep again—to please me!"
And to Laurent's relief there was silence for a little; then the ghost of a voice began again. The question itself was inaudible.
"M. de Courtomer is here," answered M. Perrelet. "He is asleep just now. He helps me to look after you, you know."
"He is here—in the room? Always?"
"Certainly. You cannot be left."
"But, my God," came desperately from the bed, "that is the one thing I want . . . to be left alone. And instead of that he . . . who knew me once . . . was in the room . . . and heard . . .everything!Can't he be put somewhere else . . . can't I be alone?" The voice was almost sobbing in its entreaty.
Poor Laurent, in his bed, covered his face with his hand. So much for his dreams of a grateful recognition! Yes, that was it, as he had felt at the time—the intolerable humiliation, to a very proud and sensitive spirit, of having had an acquaintance a witness of Friday's proceedings.
There was a movement behind the screen. "Chut! mon enfant!" said the doctor. "You must not agitate yourself like this! M. de Courtomer is here of his own free will to nurse you, and he is so much your champion that he has twice already fought your battle with the Colonel. And if he had not fetched me in after that business on Friday——"
"I wish he had not!" broke in the faint, bitter voice. "You are kind, Doctor . . . but if you would only let me die . . ."
This was becoming unbearable. Never had Laurent conceived of the La Rocheterie he had known before, though he was young enough, than as a man—even, by reason of his quiet self-possession and his prestige, than as a man older, perhaps, than he really was. He sounded now like a broken-hearted boy. The listener put his hands over his ears.
He kept them there till he was sure that the voices had ceased. A little afterwards he heard M. Perrelet emerge very cautiously and tiptoe over to his bed. The young man's instant pretence of being asleep did not deceive the doctor. He bent over him till his mouth was almost at his ear and whispered, "Did you by any chance hear what was said just now?"
"Yes," breathed Laurent with his eyes shut.
"You won't take any notice of it, my dear boy, will you?" pleaded the surgeon in the same almost inaudible tone. "He's nearly crazy after that damnable strain."
"That's obvious. And therefore—after what he said—I had better be moved elsewhere."
"No, no, I can't spare you. He will get over this morbid feeling about you as the effects of that scene wear off."
"But shall I get over his having had it?" thought Laurent. He said nothing, but suddenly buried his face in the pillow.
"You will stay—and take no notice?" queried the voice in his ear; and after a moment Laurent gave a smothered assent.
The grasp on his shoulder tightened. "Good boy!" whispered M. Perrelet, and went away.
But it was not easy to carry out that promise. Already, by the time that the hour for dressings arrived, L'Oiseleur had contrived, without the aid of speech, to make his feelings about the unwilling witness so clear that Laurent was constrained to help himself through that ordeal by pretending that the set and frozen face below him belonged to someone whom he had never seen before. And indeed it could not have shown less sign of recognition had this really been the case.
At the conclusion M. Perrelet suddenly laid hold of his patient's arm.
"Time I had a look at these wrists again," he murmured, and began to unfasten the little bandage.
The wrist jerked weakly in his hold. "No!" ejaculated the Vicomte de la Rocheterie with a catch of the breath. "Leave them alone, please!"
Low as it was, the tone was a command, which the frown emphasized. M. Perrelet just glanced at the speaker. "My dear boy," he said, almost equally low, "it is necessary," and went on unwinding. But Laurent, averting his face, slipped away from the bed, lest he should see the marks of those accursed ropes, and L'Oiseleur have him again as an unwilling witness of his humiliation.
He was not so to avoid it. "Will you please bring that fresh lint I left on the table," came the surgeon's voice a moment later. For an instant Laurent had the idea of saying that he could not find it—the next, he snatched it angrily up and went round the barrier. La Rocheterie's head was turned stiffly away, but Laurent had the impression that he was grinding his teeth. And on the unbandaged wrist in M. Perrelet's hold he saw just what he had guessed and feared. . . . Yes, he must have struggled, indeed! Perhaps, still worse, he had been dragged about. . . . Laurent silently put the lint on the bed and went away again.
And there was more than one moment during that day—it was the Sunday—when, despite his promise to M. Perrelet, Laurent found himself saying, "I'll be hanged if I stay here!" For L'Oiseleur's demeanour towards him continued to be of a politeness so stony that his guardian would really much have preferred him to be rude. After that one approach to a breakdown to which, in his precarious state, insults and torture had brought him, La Rocheterie had evidently summoned up all his pride and his endurance. There was nothing of that heartrending boyishness about him now; he was a man again, and a desperately unapproachable one. It was extraordinary that a person who was so utterly helpless and dependent on another could contrive to keep that other so freezingly at arm's length. Yet, directly Laurent had come to the conclusion that next time M. Perrelet entered he must ask to be moved elsewhere, he had only to look at his charge lying there to feel that he could not bring himself to desert him. However much La Rocheterie might not want him, he needed him terribly.
And always at the back of Laurent's mind was the instinctive knowledge that, before he was brought to Arbelles, he must have been through some terrible experience to be so completely changed. The very attractive, courteous, self-contained young man of last year, with his modesty, his easy and quiet gaiety, his consideration for others, was entirely gone, and in his place was a phantom of that figure, sombre and tortured, too sore in spirit to accept the most willing sympathy and service. His very voice was changed. No; it was plain to Laurent that the slander was at the back of all that had happened to him even before he came to the château. And what exactly had happened? Every day, every hour, the situation seemed to blossom into fresh horrible possibilities; and before that agonized silence one was helpless. For that he would hear now from the victim's own lips the story of what he had undergone seemed so improbable that Laurent had given up considering it. The best he could hope for was that he could continue to nurse him without being asked point-blank to leave him. And though he would abstain from that request now, directly L'Oiseleur was well enough to be left he should ask to be moved—instantly.
It was a small but very wounding occurrence which fixed him in this resolve. He noticed during the afternoon that a lock of the hair which he had cut so badly, straggling over his forehead, was bothering the helpless man. Laurent could not think at first why he was feebly moving his head first to one side, then to the other, but when L'Oiseleur began slowly to try to disengage a hand from beneath the bedclothes to deal with the annoyance Laurent jumped up, murmuring, "Let me do that for you!" But as he gently put aside the recalcitrant lock he felt La Rocheterie shrink—most indubitably shrink—from his touch, flashing up at him as he did so an extraordinary glance of hostility—it could be nothing else. And Laurent had gone instantly away without a word.
He went to bed that night feeling almost desperate. His patient had intimated in the most icy tones that he did not wish for anything during the night, and that he would be extremely obliged if the light might not be kept burning as hitherto. Laurent knew that he was doing very wrong in acceding to these requests (which partook more of the nature of commands), but he simply had not the courage to contravene them.
At the end of his visit next morning M. Perrelet managed to whisper to Laurent, under cover of washing his hands, "Is he being very difficult?"
"A little," answered M. de Courtomer, colouring.
"I thought so! But you know, in some way or other he's going through hell, that young man! I should know that as a doctor, if I had not heard that dark story about him. So hold on, there's a good lad, and one day he will realize what you are doing for him and thank you for it."
"Going through hell." The phrase recurred to Laurent as he sat by the window that afternoon. Yes, he looked as if he were. And the strain, whatever it was, was not lessening but increasing. All the hours, reflected Laurent, that he lies there motionless, he is thinking, thinking . . . and of what? Why will he not tell me—tell me at least something . . . tell me that he is in a great strait? For whatever he is going through cannot be caused by his own misdoing; yet in this horrible tale there is misdoing—someone else's, of which the blame has fallen on him.
Then it came to him like a flash of lightning.No, he has taken it on himself!
An immense cloud whose existence he had hardly acknowledged rolled away from Laurent's mind. Of course that was it! How could he have been so dense? That would fully account for La Rocheterie's not having denied the imputation when the Colonel made it so brutally to his face. Some other man had committed the traitorous act which had brought about Pont-aux-Rochers, and L'Oiseleur, for some reason, had shouldered the blame. He was enduring all this vicarious shame for someone else . . . and suffering bitterly under it.
His mind full of this illumination, Laurent looked thoughtfully across the room at the rococo clock on the mantelpiece, for at three o'clock he was to take La Rocheterie's pulse, a task entrusted to him in M. Perrelet's absence. As the timepiece had marked half-past two when last he looked at it, it must have stopped. He went over to it to make sure, and thus came into full view of the bed, and was aware that its occupant was awake, and watching him as he put his ear to the glass. It was unlikely that he would address him, for he hardly ever spoke. Nothing could have surprised him more than to hear what he did.
"The clock stopped quite half an hour ago, Monsieur de Courtomer.—It is Monsieur de Courtomer, is it not?"
Laurent turned round, hoping that he was not showing his amazement, aware as he was that the real recognition had been made four days ago.
"Yes, Monsieur, I was taken prisoner a week since."
"And wounded, too, I see," observed M. de la Rocheterie gravely.
"Wounded?" queried Laurent, quite forgetting the plaster on his forehead.
"Your head."
"Oh, that!" exclaimed the young man, putting up a hand to his adornment. "That is nothing—a scratch from a hedge."
"But a scratch honourably come by."
Laurent winced at the tone, and hurriedly said, "If you will permit me, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," he could bring out the name now, "I will take your pulse—M. Perrelet's orders."
A tiny frown appeared between the slender eyebrows, and Laurent felt instantly that he did not want one of his bandaged wrists exposed to the light of day—for both his hands were under the bedclothes. "Do not move your arm, pray," he remarked quickly. "I can get at your pulse quite well as you are." And, watch in hand, he knelt down by the bed and slipped his hand in at the side. His fingers nevertheless fumbled about the wrappings as they sought for the artery.
"It will be more convenient for you when those bandages are off," observed the chilling voice.
Laurent was saved any reply to this remark by the fact that, his eyes glued to his watch, he was counting, as he had recently been instructed. Then he got up and went to the table to write down the result of his computations.
"You saw yesterday why I have to have my wrists bandaged?" said L'Oiseleur abruptly.
Laurent had his back to him. "I did not look particularly," he very truthfully replied.
"Then I advise you to do so next time," said Aymar de la Rocheterie. "You may not, then, perhaps, care to . . . continue your ministrations."
Laurent was momentarily tempted to retort, "Would that please you?" but he was too much afraid of the answer to risk it. Oh, why would he, with the scrap of strength he had gained, use it in torturing himself and his fellow-captive? Inspired by sheer desperation the guardian turned round with an air of authority and said, "Monsieur de la Rocheterie, I am under strict orders not to let you talk. If you will allow me, I will try to arrange you more comfortably, and perhaps you could sleep a little."
The bloodless lips almost twitched into a smile as the wounded man looked up at him. "When last we met, Monsieur de Courtomer, under very different circumstances——"
"Excuse me, but would you not like your pillow turned?"
"No, thank you. As I was saying——"
"If only you would not talk!" interjected Laurent.
"When last I had the pleasure of seeing you . . . at M. de Saint-Séverin's reception . . . I little guessed that at our next meeting you would be what you are . . . and I—" he drew a long breath "—and I . . . what I am!"
"—Surgeon's assistant and patient," struck in Laurent gallantly. "No, I little thought that myself!"
"It was not purely in that role . . . that I was considering myself," commented L'Oiseleur. He did smile this time, a rather terrible smile. And then, spent by his unwonted effort at conversation—and such a conversation, thought the unhappy Laurent—he shut his eyes, and relapsed once more into complete silence and immobility.
M. Perrelet was not pleased with his patient that evening. He explained to Laurent that what he had rather anticipated was happening—the bullet in his shoulder was poisoning him. He thought that M. de la Rocheterie could stand the extraction now; indeed there was no choice in the matter. He would perform it next day; his victim need not know of his intention till the morning.
Poor Laurent wished that the same reticence had been exercised with regard to himself; he fancied that he needed it far more. He spent an apprehensive and L'Oiseleur a restless night.
"Well, I am glad that is satisfactorily over," remarked M. Perrelet next morning as he washed his instruments at the table in the middle of the room. "All the same, as I told you, I have put him to sleep because that shoulder will hurt for some time like the devil, and I am very anxious to avoid unnecessary heroism—it's bad for his heart. We have had quite enough of necessary this morning as it is."
For though it was out of his power to drug his patient for the operation itself, he had given him a strong opiate immediately afterwards, and to this La Rocheterie had very quickly succumbed.
"Yes, it has been worrying me," went on the old surgeon, "how to get that ball out without too much shock. . . .Youlook a bit white, my boy. Are you all right?"
"I am very much all right, thank you, sir," returned Laurent, pallid but smiling. For he, at any rate, had derived from the detestable business something which made what he had gone through worth while.
"And in the process of becoming quite a useful assistant to me you have not lost your zeal as a champion, eh?"
"Not a bit," said Laurent. "Though I admit that I would give a very great deal to get to the bottom of the business."
M. Perrelet flashed a shrewd glance at him. "You still don't think you would be sorry when you got there?"
Laurent drew himself up. "Not in the sense you mean, Monsieur. And surely you yourself, who have saved his life——"
"That's my job, Monsieur de Courtomer. It's nothing to me that the bullet I have just fished out of that young man's shoulder came from some old Chouan musket of the year one—look at it—nor that that young man was found lashed to a beech tree outside his own headquarters, nor that he has, undoubtedly, something very grave on his mind—my business is to set him on his legs again, if I can."
"Monsieur Perrelet," said Laurent earnestly, "I believe I can account for everything. He is shielding someone else. I am positive of it. It cannot be an agreeable thing to do; it has cost him terribly in the past, it is costing him terribly now, and as for the future——" He broke off rather abruptly.
M. Perrelet gave a little shake of the head; his smile was half amused, but half touched, too. "My dear boy, excuse my saying so, but you are very young! It is only in romances that men do that sort of thing. In real life, when they see what it may lead to, they are not so quixotic. And, in my opinion, M. de la Rocheterie's demeanour is not consistent with innocence. He is in too much personal agony of mind—can you deny it? Why, otherwise, when I warned him just now that I was going to hurt him, should he have said to himself,'So much the better?'If he were merely playing the scapegoat a young man as sensitively organized as he would hardly have welcomed my probe and scalpel because they gave him something else to think about! No, I am afraid your theory won't hold water." He put away his instruments, then suddenly walked back to the bed and stood for some time with his hands behind him, studying the unconscious face, with its strong, delicate features, much less as a doctor studies a patient than as one man scrutinizes another to see what of his character he can read on his visage. Then he bent over the drugged sleeper, satisfied himself as to his condition, and came back again.
"The best argument for your view of the case, my young friend," he admitted, "lies, of course, on the pillow there. One can't, after all, look at that face and believe him capable of anything infamous—it was my thought when I first saw him, all blood and dust, on the floor in the hall more than a week ago. . . . Yet, if he is innocent, he has no right to my thinking, to have deprived his party of his services to cover another man's misdoing. . . . Well, keep an eye on him. I will look in again about the hour he should wake."
Slowly the sunlight moved down the bed from the side window as Laurent sat by it, a book on his knee which he made no attempt to read. From time to time he took out and fingered at leisure his own private gain—the fall of the barrier which L'Oiseleur maintained between them . . . for how could he interpret the episode otherwise when Aymar's clenched right hand, suddenly and blindly putting itself forth, had encountered his wrist where he bent over the bed ready for emergencies, and had closed on it, gripping it hard. Moved by that significant act, Laurent had grasped the bandaged wrist in return. So when, under contracted brows, the red-brown eyes, unclosing, looked up desperately for a moment into his, though they were alight with pain and he was torn with concern, his heart had leapt to greet the moment. . . . Then M. Perrelet's hand made a movement, the bullet tinkled into the basin, and, the second after, with a deep sigh, Aymar's grip on the friendly wrist relaxed and his head rolled sideways. . . . Yes, how could he interpret otherwise that appeal in the hour of need?
As for M. Perrelet's arguments, Laurent was entirely unmoved by them. So far from considering La Rocheterie's demeanour incompatible with innocence, he thought it a marked proof of it. Would a man capable of betraying his own troops be so bitter and sensitive about his own subsequent position? Surely he would expect some measure of contumely for his deed! But in Aymar's desolation of soul there was a fierce resentment. "Hedaredto ask me!" he had said. No, that theory of his shielding another, once enunciated, gained immensely in probability. A man like the Aymar de la Rocheterie he had known last year would have done a thing like that without counting the terrible cost to himself, even as he had jumped without hesitation into the flooded river. If this Aymar, who had been so near death after paying part of it, found what remained almost more than he could endure, who could wonder? For whom had he done it—a friend, a comrade? He must love him extraordinarily. But how could any one accept such a sacrifice, greater than that of life itself? Perhaps the unknown was not aware of it. Perhaps he was dead. It was to be hoped so, for then this immolation could, surely, cease.
Not for the first time in his vigil, Laurent bent forward and felt L'Oiseleur's pulse. This time the fingers of the sleeper suddenly twined themselves round his wrist again. Laurent let his hand stay in the unconscious clasp, and it was because it was there that he found the hot words of protest forming on his lips, though they went unuttered—Why did you do it? It is killing you, L'Oiseleur. You are of too fine stuff to stand the strain, the obloquy, the contempt of the contemptible!
The drugged sleep, however seemed to be breaking, for Laurent had not long sat so, his hand a prisoner, when Aymar began to stir. A contraction passed over his face. Another moment, and his eyes slowly unclosed, and he was looking at the watcher, half dreamily.
"It is over," said Laurent gently.
"Over? What is over?"
"The extraction—your shoulder. You fainted at the end, then the doctor gave you an opiate. You have slept for nearly four hours."
"I remember. Yes." His eyes fell on his own hand, and he immediately loosed his clasp and moved the hand away. Laurent reddened; but the next instant L'Oiseleur's lashes dropped again and he relapsed into slumber.
A little later M. Perrelet came in, expressed himself satisfied, and said that Laurent need not sit by him like a sentry unless he pleased. So the young man went over to his own side of the room and threw himself on his bed. Why had La Rocheterie moved his hand away like that? Was he, after giving that glimpse of his necessity, going on as before? Laurent was sore, disappointed, and beginning to realize that the combined strain of anxiety, want of sleep, and his charge's attitude was making him curiously tired.
He lay there some time till, hearing Aymar move, he jumped up and went round the screen and found him fully sensible, staring up at the ceiling with a rather set mouth.
"I did not know you were awake," said Laurent somewhat timidly. "Is the pillow all right for your shoulder? Is there anything I can do?"
"If it is not troubling you too much, I should like a drink," was the frigid reply.
Laurent lifted his head and gave him some water. To judge from the way he drank it, he must have come out from under the opiate parched with thirst. Why could he not have called for such a simple thing? Laurent suppressed a desire to ask, and when he had finished merely enquired if his shoulder were paining him much.
"Nothing out of the way, thank you." So Laurent, with an inward sigh, went round the bed to replace the glass. He suspected that the reply was far from the truth. When he got to the bottom of the bed Aymar de la Rocheterie spoke again.
"I am quite at a loss to know why you should do all this for me, Monsieur de Courtomer."
Laurent was goaded into replying, "All this! You do not give me much chance of doing anything!"
But Aymar, disregarding him, went on in his weak, uneven voice, "You put me under a very heavy obligation to you."
Laurent flushed. "I had much rather you did not look at it in that light. To do anything for you—although I know I am clumsy and inexperienced . . . I mean . . . you need not feel . . ." He stumbled; the set, unsmiling visage disconcerted him.
"It is very good of you," repeated L'Oiseleur in the same unmoved tones. "And you must not think that because I took advantage of your charity this morning I do not realize, equally with yourself . . . especially since Colonel Guitton's visit——"
But even he could get no further for the moment. Laurent removed his eyes from his face; it was suddenly tortured.
"—that you are dealing with an outcast, a leper," finished the voice inexorably.
"How can you talk like that!" broke out Laurent, half choking. "I—charity—you think I—" But adequate expression of his feelings was beyond him; besides, L'Oiseleur would not listen—merely overrode him. What could it be that made him behave like this? Was it possible that his brain was becoming affected by what he had been through, or that the pain which he would not now acknowledge, or the drug, or both, had flung him into a sort of delirium? But it was such a cold purposeful delirium. . . . Laurent plucked feverishly at the coverlet, and at last lifted his eyes for an instant. "I do not believe a word of what that blackguard said. . . . I should have liked to kill him!" he added between his teeth. "Of course," he went on after a second or two, studying the floor again, "it is obvious that you have been shot. I realize that it must have been done. . . ." But no reference, after all, to trees and tying up was possible.
"Exactly," said L'Oiseleur with a horrible calm. "You realize how—do you realize by whom it was done? . . . Yes, evidently you have been told that it was my own men, though perhaps you did not believe it. But . . . it is quite true!"
Laurent had the sensation that about five squares of the parquet flooring flew up and hit him on the head. He could feel the blood rushing to his face.It was not true!
He looked up, dazed, and saw Aymar de la Rocheterie scanning him in a way he could not interpret. "I see, indeed, that you had not believed it," came his voice, cool and faint. "Well, now I have convinced you. But in justice to my . . . my executioners, I should like you to know that they were not directly responsible for the state of my wrists. I did that myself, trying to get free—afterwards. . . . Have you ever been tied to a tree, Monsieur de Courtomer, and left there? Hardly, I suppose."
This must be stopped somehow. "Monsieur de la Rocheterie," said Laurent firmly, "I refuse to hear another word. But I am going to say just one thing myself. Your men may have shot you—since you tell me so I suppose I must believe you—but even you cannot make me think that they did it otherwise than under a misapprehension. The sun must fall from heaven before I can believe that you did—what rumour accuses you of! Surely you know that!"
He spoke with passion. The Vicomte de la Rocheterie stared at him out of his great sunken eyes, words visibly smitten from him. Then he dragged up his right hand and covered them. "You are . . . very hard to convince," he said with a catch of the breath. And at that moment, to Laurent's intense relief, M. Perrelet came in.
He looked from one to the other. "You have been talking to him," he said sharply to Laurent.
"No, I have been talking to him," put in his patient quickly.
"Then you will kindly not do it any more," grumbled the little doctor, stooping over him. "A nice state you have got yourself into! M. de Courtomer should have stopped you!"
Laurent had turned blindly away to the window. So it was true—his own men!
For about the sixth time that night Laurent dragged himself out of his bed and went over to his charge. The dawn was beginning. He was so tired that he could hardly stand, his eyes kept closing from lack of sleep, but his brain seemed to him unusually clear. Peering at the clock he saw that there wanted twenty minutes yet before La Rocheterie's bouillon was due. He dropped into the chair by the bed; it was not worth returning to his own again. Even yet, after half a day and a night, he could scarcely realize it, though he had tried hard to face the reversal of what he had so stoutly upheld. That haggard young man who lay there asleep before him had really been through the horrors of execution at the hands of his own followers—and survived. His men, his own men who followed him with passion, who would, as he once said, have cut their hands off for him, had fastened him to a tree and deliberately shot him—L'Oiseleur, their brilliant and adored leader! Now he understood why he had said that he would never need his floating locks again; the laurels were indeed cut down! Now he understood why he was so sensitive about his lacerated wrists, so terribly bitter about the whole affair, so unapproachable! Why, it was enough to have sent him crazy—quite enough to make him beg to be allowed to die, as with his own ears Laurent had heard him!
Yet, since their painful conversation of yesterday afternoon, La Rocheterie's demeanour towards him had undergone a certain change. He had not said the things that hurt so much, and, in the earlier part of the night, when he had been restless and in pain after the operation, he had even asked, and almost naturally, for such alleviation as Laurent could give, and had not paid him in those frigid thanks to which the young man would infinitely have preferred no thanks at all. Somehow, then, theywerea little nearer to each other.
How thin he was getting to look—how increasingly transparent—worse than when Laurent had first seen him lying there like . . . what was it he had looked like? A Crusader. . . . Had a Crusader ever been shot by his men? If so, they would have used bows and arrows . . . or was it arquebuses? What exactly was an arquebus? . . . Arques. What had happened at Arques . . .
He woke, to his dismay, to find his head down on his arm across the foot of his patient's bed. The birds were singing, and the hour for bouillon well past, but the wounded man was fortunately still asleep.
His own stolen slumber, however, had not refreshed Laurent, and, by the time that M. Perrelet appeared, he was wondering how he should ever get through the dressings. He always hated the business, and, now that he knew for certain who had made those wounds. . . . Then he was ashamed of what he termed his womanish feelings. It was not he who had to bear the pain morning after morning—and without a murmur, as La Rocheterie always did . . . as he wished sometimes he would not. But then all along he had never uttered a syllable of complaint at any physical stress. "I'll be as quick as I can," he heard M. Perrelet whisper to his patient as he took up the forceps.
. . . At least Laurent supposed that he was whispering—or was it because there was suddenly such a loud buzzing in his own ears? The surgeon's figure swelled to a large size; then receded till it was about the measure of a doll. But, not realizing in the least what was happening to him, Laurent still stood at his post with a face, though he did not know it, very similar in hue to that on the pillow.
The next thing of which he was fully conscious was that he was seated in a chair right away from the bed, at the open window, and that M. Perrelet, now restored to his everyday dimensions, was undoing the collar of his uniform.
"What is the matter?" asked the young man in a dazed way. "Why am I here?"
"Because I didn't want you fainting and falling across the bed," responded M. Perrelet briskly. "Luckily my patient called my attention to you just in time. Drink this, and sit there quietly."
"But——" protested Laurent.
"Drink this!" repeated M. Perrelet firmly.
And so the brandy which was poured out ready for L'Oiseleur was drunk by his nurse.
"Fainting?" murmured Laurent. "Was that it? But the dressing . . . ?" And he tried to get up.
M. Perrelet pushed him back. "Sit there, I tell you. You are not indispensable. I will deal with you afterwards."
He disappeared behind the screen. Laurent, his head feeling like a ball of wool, sat there ashamed and confused, conscious that he had deserted his post, and still not quite understanding what had happened to him. Through the woolly mist he heard the murmur of Aymar's voice—it sounded like an interrogation—and the doctor's reply, quite clear: "It was a little too much for him this morning, I think. He was tired, I expect. I ought to have noticed sooner. . . . Now we will proceed with this shoulder of yours."
He proceeded, presumably, for there was no more conversation. Laurent gazed out of the window.
After a considerable interval M. Perrelet emerged, washed his hands, and came over to him.
"Now, young man, I want a few words with you. No, stay where you are. I have settled M. de la Rocheterie quite comfortably. But I don't want a second patient on my hands." He dropped his voice. "How much sleep did you have last night?—I thought so. And the night before? You are getting worn out. I am an old fool, but I never meant you to do without sleep like this—no one, of course, could stand it. Why have you been doing it?—it's not necessary now."
The answer was very simple—because his charge would not call him, so he must be on the alert the whole time. But Laurent was not going to give it.
M. Perrelet's little eyes scrutinized his downcast visage. "H'm, perhaps I can guess! . . . And yet I fancy you would really rather have this old butcher hurting you than him, eh?" (Laurent, aghast at his insight, turned crimson.) "Well, it is clear that I have been very inconsiderate of you. You are to lie down at once and have a nap; I will stay here with him for a little." And, to ensure his commands being obeyed, he stood over Laurent till he had stretched himself on the bed.
The young man himself was surprised to find how desirable that bed was. . . . He floated away into slumber . . . delicious! Then he came out of it again to find M. Perrelet almost in the same place, looking at him.
"I fell asleep for a moment," he said apologetically.
The surgeon smiled. "Mon enfant, you have slept for an hour and ten minutes. I should not wake you now but that your dinner is just coming up and that I have something to tell you. You need fresh air and a little change of scene, so I have arranged with Major Aubert that you are to go out for a walk every day on the terrace. No, there is no question of parole, and there is a sentry posted, so don't try to escape and get yourself shot. You can take your first promenade this afternoon."
Laurent gave Aymar his dinner and had his own. When the orderly had removed it he approached his charge to settle him for the sleep which he was supposed to have in the afternoon. No reference had yet been made to his own morning's performance, and he hoped that none would be. But he had been conscious for the last five minutes that L'Oiseleur's eyes were following him very intently, and, as he now came round the bed to pull the curtain over the window beside it, La Rocheterie suddenly said, in a very different voice from any in which he had yet addressed him—at Arbelles:
"Do you think, Monsieur de Courtomer, that you can ever forgive me?"
It was really less the words than the tone which surprised Laurent. He half turned, his hand on the curtain.
"On the contrary, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," he said with an embarrassed little laugh, "it is I who ought to make the most humble apologies to you!"
"For what?" asked Aymar, looking up at him. "For having worn yourself out with looking after me night and day? For having robbed yourself of your sleep, endangered your health perhaps—at any rate, brought yourself to this pass of fatigue . . . and all for a man who . . ." He did not finished the sentence. "On my soul, I cannot think why you should have done it, nor why I should have been possessed by such a demon of ingratitude. . . . Monsieur de Courtomer, it was not wholly ingratitude! Do you know what it is to resent pity? Yet I ought to be on my knees in thankfulness that any one in the world should do anything for me—now; and that any one should really care what happens to me . . ."
His voice broke and he turned his head away; his hand on the coverlet clenched and unclenched itself.
And Laurent, to his great comfort, was deserted at this crisis by his British heritage. He abandoned the curtain, his rather constrained attitude, everything. "Oh, La Rocheterie, how could you ever doubt it! Don't you know that I would give a great deal more than a few nights' rest to see you well again? Why, I came by way of Locmélar in the hopes of meeting with you, and when, after I was captured, by an extraordinary coincidence I saw you being brought here, unconscious, I tried to get sent back with you—only I tried too late.Pity—no! You surely do not think that I have looked after you for any other reason than because I . . . wanted to!"
He had gripped the transparent, tell-tale hand. For the first time it stayed in his grasp. And L'Oiseleur turned his head back again, and looked at him, tears in his eyes.
"I suppose I must believe it! You have proved it, God knows! Do you know I had a dream—at first I thought it was a dream—of your having fallen asleep, tired out, against the foot of my bed early this morning? But it was true! And you nearly collapsed just now. . . . It is I who ought to be adjuring you not to talk! . . ." He gave a weak little laugh, and his fingers moved in Laurent's. "And M. Perrelet tells me that you choose to be in here when you might have had a room to yourself elsewhere! I thought you were obliged to be here, and though you . . .though they had told you. . . you were humane—and you had met me before, and felt perhaps that here was a means of repaying what you insisted on calling a debt, and so——"
Laurent, inspired to rather a bold course, broke in: "If you will forgive me for saying so, was not our having met before just why you disliked my being here? Could you not either forget that fact, or—what I should prefer—try to realize that to me you are, and always will be, exactly what you were in England, or in Paris last year?"
"Oh, my God!" said Aymar to himself, and tried to take his hand away.
But Laurent would not let it go. He knelt down by the bed. "Yes, I know that you feel there is a difference. But I knew—I knew about the slur on you before I entered the room. Nothing that these people say has any effect on me—if you would only believe that! Does not that make it possible for you to take . . . anything I may have the good fortune to do for you, as you would from any other . . . friend?"
He brought out the word rather low, for he felt that it was a little presumptuous, after all.
"Friend!" Aymar caught him up unsteadily. "No, you must not call yourself my friend, de Courtomer! You will not find me desirable, even as an acquaintance, now. Do you forget that I have lost my good name . . . and not only with the enemy?"
"I do not forget it," replied Laurent gravely. "But I know that you can recover it when you wish."
A bitter astonishment dawned in the face on the pillow.
"After what happened to me in the Bois des Fauvettes? No; my reputation is as much damaged by those bullets as my body."
He made himself say it, evidently, but he said it.
"But you cannot deny," urged Laurent, "that that horrible business was a misapprehension. You must pardon my conjecture, but I fancy I know of what kind it was."
Aymar de la Rocheterie shut his eyes and slightly shook his head. "Impossible!" He lay so a moment without moving, his hand still in Laurent's, and then, reopening his eyes, said in a rather exhausted voice, "Some day, perhaps, I will tell you the story. But . . . just now . . . there are things which I cannot tell any one. I have to ask your forbearance for that, just as I most sincerely ask your pardon for my behaviour, my want of consideration. I daresay unhappiness makes one blind, and I have not been . . . very happy."
His hand stiffened. Laurent put his other over it. "There is nothing to forgive. And I shall never ask you for an explanation. For I can guess your secret, La Rocheterie You have taken someone else's guilt upon your shoulders. How long you intend to shield this other person at such a heavy cost to yourself is not my affair—but I hope it will not be for long," he added ingenuously. "I am not going to ask you if my theory is true, for to be quite consistent you would have to say that it was not. . . . I shall leave you to sleep now."
"Monsieur de Courtomer, I assure you——" began L'Oiseleur in a very low voice as his hand was loosed.
Laurent smiled as he got up and drew the curtain over the window. Of course hewoulddeny it! But his smile died to concern as he looked at the bed again.
"I have been tiring you," he said remorsefully. "It is a good thing that I hear the guard coming to remove me. Just let me turn the pillow over, and if there is nothing you want I will leave you in peace."
But peace was not the predominant expression on Aymar de la Rocheterie's face as Laurent took a last look at it before leaving the room.