CHAPTER VII - THE ROAD BACK
"Il est tard, nous voici dans la forêt; vois-tu comme elle est noire?Nous aurons de la peine à nous en tirer."Le Mercure Galant.
"Il est tard, nous voici dans la forêt; vois-tu comme elle est noire?Nous aurons de la peine à nous en tirer."Le Mercure Galant.
"Il est tard, nous voici dans la forêt; vois-tu comme elle est noire?
Nous aurons de la peine à nous en tirer."
Le Mercure Galant.
. . . Was that the cuckoo? No, it must be a gull . . . and that other sound was the breaking waves. The voice had ceased.
So Laurent left the Bois des Fauvettes and woke, through the sense of hearing, to his actual surroundings. He shivered, and withdrew his hands from his face. Aymar, paler than he had yet seen him since he left his bed, his eyes sunk in their sockets, was staring past him at the wall of the cave. There could be no doubt that he also had been, in spirit, in that ill-omened wood—with this difference, that two months before he had likewise been there in the body. What could one say—what could one say?
And it was Aymar who broke the silence now. "The rest you know," he said. His voice was extremely quiet, but between his knees his hands were so tightly clasped together that it looked as if they must break each other.
The rest!Why, the first thing of which he was really fully conscious, after that dreadful finish in the wood, must have been Guitton's nightmare visit. . . . "Yes. The rest I——" Laurent got out huskily, and, for the life of him, could say no more. So, after a second or two's silence, he got up with a gesture of absolute desperation and went out of the cave.
His head was spinning with relief and horror and shame. Oh, howcouldhe have doubted him for an instant! Of course there was an explanation! But what a story—what a tangle! There was no real culprit, after all. L'Oiseleur's men had been betrayed by Fate; but Fate had used his hand in so cruel a manner that he would never be able to deny the fact, though the intention had been as remote as the farthest star. And, across the midst of a relief so intense that Laurent's body almost shook with it, cut the dismayed realization of how difficult it was going to be for Aymar to avoid the stigma, if any one chose to fasten it on him.
But what, for all his passion of sympathy, he never realized, was that while he stood in the open regaining his composure—not more than three or four minutes—Aymar himself was waiting for his verdict. In Laurent's mind was rather the consciousness of his own need of pardon, and, when the air had steadied him, he went in again with some idea of seeking that forgiveness immediately.
But Aymar was no longer sitting on the rough bed. He lay face downwards across the sailcloth and the seaweed, one arm crooked above his head, the other, the injured one, flung out straight and stiffly. The hands of both were tightly clenched. And his attitude held such an utter despair that it took Laurent by the throat; this was what even the telling of that story had cost him!
"Aymar," he began. There was no sign of movement in the prostrate figure, except that the hands clenched themselves a little tighter still. But a barely recognizable voice came from it. "If you are come to take farewell of me . . . you are excused. Go quickly!"
And at that Laurent saw what he had done. He threw himself on his knees and bent over him, seizing the rigid, outflung hand in a grip as tense as its own.
"Aymar! Aymar! forgive me! Howcouldyou think such a thing! I went out—imbecile that I was—because I was afraid of making a fool of myself . . . because I could not say what I felt. . . . Aymar, for God's sake! What have you to reproach yourself with—except the most damnable ill-luck? . . . Oh, mon ami, look at me, and you will see that I am speaking the naked truth!"
But Aymar did not look at him. His shoulders moved suddenly, he brought his bent left arm under his forehead as he lay there, and in a moment more Laurent de Courtomer had the dubious satisfaction of accomplishing what neither physical pain nor prolonged mental torture, neither the catastrophe of the Bois des Fauvettes nor the contempt and insults of the Château d'Arbelles had been able to bring about. L'Oiseleur had had just one turn of the screw too much, and that from the hand which would least have desired to hurt him. With its relaxation he broke down completely.
Occasional glimpses taken over his shoulder, as Michel Royer pulled into shore near the "Panier" that afternoon, conveyed to him the impression of two forms lying on the beach between the cave and the edge of the water; and when he had clambered out of his boat and pulled it up, he found that his impression was perfectly correct. One of the young men he had guided overnight—the fair-haired one who wore uniform—was half sitting, half lying, against a small rock; the other was lying at full length on the sand with his head propped against him. They seemed so engrossed in conversation that they did not hear his approach.
He cleared his throat as he got nearer, and on that the young man sitting against the rock did turn his head. The other made no movement.
"Here is our host—if that is the correct term," he heard the former say. "Good afternoon, Monsieur Royer. To what do we owe this pleasure?"
"I remembered that there was no wine," said the fisherman, holding up a piece of old fishing-net. "I have brought ye a bottle; and a rare good ham, and another loaf or two. And I weren't easy in my mind about your friend there—him that's hurt."
He that was hurt said quietly, "I am perfectly well this afternoon, thank you, Monsieur Royer." And Michel saw the other look down at him with a smile.
"I've come also, gentlemen," went on the old man, setting down his net, and mysteriously dropping his voice, "because I've something to tell ye which, if it's true—and mind ye, it mayn't be—will likely do ye both a power of good. They are saying in Sarzeau, so we hear this morning, that the Emperor's had a great defeat at some place I don't mind the name of, and his army's all to bits, and retreating."
"But the last we heard was of a victory won by him on the sixteenth!" cried the young officer. His friend had suddenly raised himself from his recumbent position. But for all their questions Mercury could tell them no more, and presently departed, as he came, by sea, himself only half believing that his information was correct, and not knowing that what he had just carried was the news of Waterloo.
"This may be true, or it may not," opined Laurent at length; "at any rate, I am going to have a swim on the strength of it. Take care of my clothes for me!"
He stripped them off hastily, ran down the beach, and plunged in. Aymar looked after him with a smile. When the swimmer came back, laughing and dripping, L'Oiseleur said thoughtfully, "There must be something in this news. If it is true, perhaps we need not stay here long."
"Yes," agreed Laurent, rubbing his face with his handkerchief, "but we can't move till we know something more definite. Meanwhile"—he hurried into his clothes—"let us go and eat. I am hungry. We will even drink to the news in the stuff Royer has brought."
Aymar's arm was over his shoulder as they went towards the cave. At the entrance he suddenly removed it, and said in a rather unsteady voice, ". . . I find it so hard to believe. . . . Oh, mon ami, are you merely trying to comfort me when you say you hold me justified, when you say you would have done the same in my place? Is it true, Laurent, or is it only your good heart?"
And, his face as pale as ivory against the darkness within, he looked at him with eyes that pierced and supplicated at the same time. Laurent threw down the net of provisions and seized his available hand in both his own.
"Aymar, on my honour as a gentleman! Have I not said so enough? You have brooded over this thing till you are morbid about it. I don't wonder. But, given what went before, the almost completed plan on the one hand and a woman's life at stake on the other, I should have done the same. So would any man. If you will not believe me, what am I to do? Call you out for it?"
Aymar freed his hand and put it on his shoulder. "Did I not say that no man ever had a friend like you?"
"But it isn't friendship, it's common sense!" retorted Laurent stoutly. ". . . Oh, saints and angels, I have broken the bottle of wine!"
There was a moon that night. She had the air of sailing fast out to sea like an enchanted ship, for light clouds were blowing inland at a great rate, giving her all the effect of nimble motion. And after her, in a lake of blue, swam Jupiter, following like a pinnace.
"What a night!" exclaimed Laurent, standing at the mouth of the cave. "Aymar, go to bed!"
"Why should I?" demanded his friend, who was sitting there also. "Why should I, too, not enjoy this spectacle? And I was thinking."
Laurent removed his gaze from the heavens.
"Thinking, for one thing," went on Aymar reflectively, "what a fool I was not to have told you all this earlier. It is always a mistake to be a coward, Laurent. But I could not bring myself to it. I could not tell the story in a word or two without producing a false impression either one way or the other, and . . . well, you see that in giving the necessary details I have told you things about myself that I never thought to tell any one in the world. . . . Yet I hated taking all you did for me at Arbelles, and accepting your championship, when you did not know the truth. Day after day I said to myself thatto-morrow—and then Guitton put an end to to-morrows."
"Not to speak of the fact," commented Laurent, "that at Arbelles you were never within a mile of being fit to embark on that story. Nor at La Baussaine either, if it comes to that."
"On the contrary, I nearly told you when we were sitting under the pear tree. But this was too recent," he looked down at his bandaged arm, "and you had taken it so ridiculously to heart. It would have given me an unfair advantage."
"Oh, Aymar, you really are——" "sans tache, like your motto," was on Laurent's lips, but he did not say it aloud.
"No," said L'Oiseleur, looking up with a smile, "in this case I was not really a fool, as I suppose you were going to call me. You were too émotionné that afternoon to be capable of judging anything dispassionately. You admitted as much this morning."
"Perhaps so," replied Laurent, who had in fact made a clean breast of everything. "But I was certainly not going to call you a fool just now. I should never dare! Have you any idea, L'Oiseleur, how unapproachable you can make yourself when you wish?"
"How intolerable, I suppose you mean? But I am not being that now, am I? Those first days at Arbelles, however——" He broke off, and looked up at him keenly. "Now, confess, Laurent, that I did not make your task easy for you!"
"It was, perhaps, a little like nursing a porcupine," acknowledged the nurse, smiling. "Youwouldnot let me show what I felt. But now that I know what you had just been through, I wonder you did not go out of your mind."
Aymar looked away. "I think I was pretty near it once or twice," he said after a moment, "or I could not have felt, as I did, that everyone in the world was against me—even you. Sometimes I used to dream that it was all a dream—a nightmare. Then I would wake up . . . still in the nightmare. So—I suppose I wanted to hurt someone, too!" He turned his eyes on Laurent again. "Yet you stayed, and put up with it—and with all my subsequent tiresomeness, too! For though I know you have forgiven me for those early days, what about yesterday evening?"
"Yesterday evening?" exclaimed Laurent. What had happened in that remote epoch, yesterday evening?
"Yes, yesterday evening, when I sat in a ditch and refused to stir, and you had to use . . . drastic measures! If I can be unapproachable as you call it, you can certainly be severe, mon ami!"
"Oh, do let's forget about yesterday evening!" cried Laurent, flushing in the moonlight.
"Agreed!" said Aymar, laughing. "As a matter of fact, I don't remember much about the latter part of it. Between trying to come to a decision about the future which I had not expected to have to take for days yet, and the jolting of that infernal cart, I really had such a headache that I could hardly see. You observe that I am not too proud to make excuses—toyou."
Laurent suddenly sat down by him. "And what excuses am I to make," he said, averting his face, "for my horrible blindness of this morning? When I saw what I had done, I could have beaten my head against the cave wall."
Aymar put his hand over his. "Never mind. It is the only time you have ever failed—and I daresay I should have made it clearer to you that I was absolutely on the rack till I knew what you thought . . . I don't mind telling you now—only do not let us talk of it again—that in those few minutes, or hours, or whatever they were, when I thought you had thrown me over, I saw a third and much simpler alternative to those of leaving France or staying to face the future. If you had deserted me I should have done what you did this afternoon, Laurent—I should have gone for a swim. . . . But I should not have come back again."
Laurent, hearing the sincerity of that intention in the quiet voice, turned rather pale. Had so much, then, hung onhisverdict? He was very far indeed from elation; he had never felt more humble in his life.
"But that would have seemed like a confession of guilt," he murmured, hardly knowing what he said.
"Yes, I know. But I am guilty—in fact, if not in intention."
"My dear Aymar, don't let us go over all that again now! I am sleepy, if you are not." He got up and held out his hand. "Do you think I had better look at your arm again before we turn in?"
Aymar got up, too, shaking his head. "It is quite comfortable."
"You are such a confounded liar about yourself," retorted Laurent, confronting him, "that I never know when to believe you! That worst burn, when I looked at it this morning . . . I wish M. Perrelet——" He stopped, seeing the swift pain on Aymar's face, and then plunged boldly into the subject. "Aymar, what is to be done about Père Perrelet?"
Aymar pushed at the sand with his foot. "Nothing can be done. For him I am condemned out of my own mouth." He sighed suddenly. "Let us go to bed."
As they were both dropping off to sleep Laurent said, "Aymar, I have an idea. Will you give me leave to write to M. Perrelet?"
"To write what?"
"To tell him that whatever he heard that night was not the whole truth. That I know it all now, and can assure him that it is not a dishonourable story, as he must have thought."
"And as he made you think," finished L'Oiseleur drily. Then, after a little silence, he added, "My dear fellow, he would only conclude, either that I had been telling you lies, or that you were very impressionable."
"Aymar, he may be impulsive, but you know that he was extraordinarily fond of you," said Laurent with reproach in his voice. "I think that was why he was so upset."
"Well, write me a certificate then," replied Aymar. Then he dropped his caustic tone, and said quite simply, "You can do whatever you think best, my dear Laurent. I owe him so much that if it would be any compensation to him to have a better opinion of me again I should be glad." And he added, with a deep sigh, as if to himself, "There is a letter thatIought to have written many days ago."
Laurent woke about an hour later, when the moon was shining straight into their refuge. He thought of last night, and gave a long sigh of relief and contentment; and the next moment, though he had believed Aymar asleep, a hand stole into his, and he gripped it in return. There was no need of words, and none were spoken; but when Laurent went to sleep again his friend's hand was still in his.
As even the most epoch-making news is not conveyed to the brain of man by a special sense, but through the medium of other men and their devices, the couple in the "Panier" remained for the next two days ignorant not only of Wellington's and Blucher's victory, but of Napoleon's brief visit to Paris, his abdication, the march of the English and Prussians towards the capital, and all the doings which were stirring their countrymen. For Royer had not visited them again.
In the meantime, however, they had plenty to occupy them—plenty of points to debate. Aymar had quite made up his mind to remain in France, and face whatever the future had to bring. For one thing, he felt that he must set himself to repair, as best he could, the calamity which he had brought on his men, by providing for the welfare of the maimed and assisting the families of the killed. Laurent, whom the very mention of the Eperviers roused to fury, soon realized, however, with relief, that his purpose applied only to those actually captured or killed at Pont-aux-Rochers or their kindred. Yet to supply their probable needs alone he began rather alarmedly to foresee Aymar's all but ruining himself—for he was not a rich man.
As for ruin in the other sense, Laurent contended that it was impossible to imagine that their own side could believe the story about him, L'Oiseleur, though the Bonapartists had naturally been only too glad to have a handle against a foe. To any Royalist who asked for an explanation Aymar could say, with perfect truth, that the scheme was a ruse which had miscarried; Laurent only wondered that he had never made this retort to his accusers at Arbelles. But Aymar had replied that on "that horrible Friday" he had not the breath, and that when Guitton sent for him he was not in the mood for justifying himself. ("No," thought Laurent, "you are rather too much inclined never to be in that mood, my friend!")
The fact that the explanation had not satisfied his own lieutenant was palpably because de Fresne knew that there was a bargain involved; so long as the bargain idea did not get about, Laurent contended that the explanation proposed ought to prove perfectly satisfactory. But, as Aymar pointed out, there was no guarantee whatever that it would not get about, that it had not already done so, in fact—and worse, that the real nature of the bargain might not come out. That, objected Laurent stoutly, did not make it, in his opinion, worse; it was not a disreputable compact; it was to save a woman. And on that he elicited from L'Oiseleur his deep desire to keep from Mme de Villecresne the knowledge that she had been, most unwittingly, the cause of the whole miserable business. That desire the young man could understand, but when his friend asserted that she would further dislike the ethics of the whole affair, and be horror-struck that he could take so great a risk for any woman's life—even though it were hers—M. de Courtomer privately disbelieved him.
But at any rate there could be no doubt that Aymar was willing to sacrifice almost anything to keep the secret from coming to his cousin's ears; what agitated him was the thought that she might already have learnt it. To comfort him, Laurent pointed out that even "that devil" at Arbelles had no idea of what the bargain was, and that he, Laurent, had been told in early days that Richard's own officers had not known it, which looked as if Richard had kept his mouth shut. But Aymar's fervent wish that he could ensure Richard's keeping his mouth shut in perpetuity he dismissed as a thing scarcely in the realm of the practicable. And there was always the danger of the Marquis de Vaubernier's letting out something. Although he had solemnly sworn secrecy he was, as Aymar acknowledged, really more dangerous than Richard, who had not. Over the possibility of Vaubernier's indiscretion he worked himself up into such a fever that Laurent agreed to their starting for Sessignes at the first possible moment. And they waited with growing impatience for news from Port-Marie which might enable them to leave the cave in safety, for if the tidings of the Emperor's defeat had been confirmed, it might possibly have rid the district of the Imperialists.
If this were so, it would make Laurent's contemplated journey to Sessignes less risky (especially if he discarded his uniform), for to accompany Aymar home he was determined. No arguments would move him from his resolve, and when Aymar spoke of his military obligations in Vendée, he shamelessly retorted, first, that they could not know, the other side of the Loire, but that he was still a prisoner; secondly, that d'Autichamp had prophesied he should never get back from Brittany, and had given him leave, in that event, to join a Breton leader; and thirdly, that in this respect he had obeyed d'Autichamp to the letter, and was now going to carry out the duties of his position. So when, on the afternoon of the second day, Royer brought them the authentic news of the great victory of the 18th of June, they resolved to start on the morrow, travelling by easy stages.
It was true that, though the period which they were afterwards to know as the Hundred Days was over, hostilities were not. In the west neither side had disbanded; they were watching each other; and in some districts of Brittany fighting was still going on. But in others the Imperialists were withdrawing, and Arbelles was said to have been evacuated already. Royer undertook to procure a vehicle of some kind in Port-Marie, but a change of attire such as M. de Courtomer would have consented to wear was not to be had. However, they proposed in any case not to start till the afternoon, and to travel only as far as the little town of Sarzeau, where they would sleep the night, and where Laurent could supply this want.
"So that we may hope you will be at Sessignes on Tuesday," he remarked to Aymar. "And then, at last, you can be properly looked after."
"And I can also begin my campaign of deception," returned Aymar. "I cannot tell them the whole truth, Laurent, so I shall have to lie . . . and they will believe me." He stared at the sea—they were just outside the cave—and added, "The person in the whole world whom I most abhor the idea of lying to is just the one person to whom I can never tell the real, the full truth."
Laurent said nothing, but he could not help wondering whether it would not really be better for his friend to follow his own instincts and conceal nothing from . . . that person. But in so delicate a matter he could hardly proffer unsought advice.
When Laurent first saw that afternoon the ramshackle conveyance in the similitude of a chaise which waited for them at the famous turning under the chestnuts he thought—and said—that it would never take them even as far as Sarzeau. And though the ancient postilion fixed Lyons or Marseilles as the goal of which it was, on the contrary, capable, Laurent was right. The wheel did not, it is true, actually leave the axle, but its intention of shortly doing so was clear enough. Hence the prophet of disaster found himself, towards dusk, a mile and a half out from Sarzeau, trying to help the postilion render the last services to the worn-out linch-pin, and to prevent Aymar from doing the same—Aymar who would probably now have to walk into Sarzeau before he could sup.
"When this happens in romances," observed the amateur wheelwright regretfully, "some kind Samaritan usually appears and offers hospitality."
But it was not till a good twenty minutes later, when the wheel was on the point of being pronounced good for the short distance, that an oldish gentleman came walking briskly round the turn of the road, and, to Laurent's surreptitiously manifested joy, did warmly press them to sup with him. It seemed that he had witnessed their plight from an upper window of his house, near by, and had issued forth with that design, so that, had they wished, it would have been difficult to reject his invitation.
So the postilion was despatched with the chaise to the inn at Sarzeau to order them a room, and, as they walked away together, the old gentleman made himself known to his guests—M. de Lanascol. Aymar and Laurent named themselves in response, and as his friend did so a slight spasm of apprehension shot across Laurent's mind: would not the name of La Rocheterie be known to their host—what might he not have heard? But either the name meant nothing or M. de Lanascol had heard nothing.
Some half-hour later, in a large room with faded rugs and old-fashioned furniture, they were awaiting a supper which already announced itself by an appetizing smell. M. de Lanascol had monarchical sympathies, as he soon divulged; indeed, having regard to Laurent's unmistakable uniform, he would hardly have bidden the travellers else. And very shortly, after due elation over the Allied victory and speculation as to its ultimate results (since, from what he said, it was by no means obvious yet what was going to happen in France) he was sounding that young man, in a well-bred manner, on the fighting he supposed him to have seen.
"But I have seen none, sir," avowed M. de Courtomer frankly. "I have been a prisoner since the first of May and have not very long escaped."
"Escaped!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "Ah, you must tell me about that, Monsieur! A prisoner in Vendée, I suppose, for I am not wrong, I think, in taking you for a Vendean officer?"
"No, you are quite right. But I was captured in Brittany, after carrying despatches."
"And on the first of May, I think you said," observed M. de Lanascol. "Then you had left Vendée before the arrival there of the lamented Marquis de la Rochejaquelein? Ah, what a loss! There are rumours also, that since Sunday the Vendeans have lost another fight and another general. Yes, Vendée has been unfortunate throughout," he finished regretfully. "Really we have done better here in Brittany. Of course there have been set-backs, as for instance Sol de Grisolles' defeat at Auray only five days ago—have you heard of that?—and just about the time that you were captured, that horrible affair at the bridge of Pont-aux-Rochers. (But that was due to treachery, as I expect you know.) Still, Brittany has gathered, I think I may justly say, more laurels than her sister."
At the mention of the fatal bridge Laurent felt the blood rushing to his face. He did not look at his companion, and yet he knew that Aymar, silent in his highbacked seventeenth-century chair, had suddenly gone rigid. He himself wished with all his heart that they had not accepted M. de Lanascol's hospitality. And the old gentleman had now transferred his attention to his other guest.
"And you, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, is it indiscreet. . . ?"
"I have taken part in the campaign, Monsieur," replied Aymar. Even in that uncomfortable moment Laurent noticed that he did not use the word "fought." "But, like my friend, I had the misfortune to be made prisoner near its commencement."
"Indeed!" said M. de Lanascol. "I condole with you. And . . . wounded, too, I think?" For under his coat Aymar was still wearing his arm in a sling.
"Yes," said his guest rather hesitatingly. And Laurent trusted that in his zeal for exactitude he would not think it necessary to explain further.
"Severely wounded, I am afraid," hazarded M. de Lanascol with sympathetic interest. "For indeed, Monsieur, if you will pardon the remark, you look like it. I regret that I did not offer you a glass of wine on arrival, especially as our supper delays somewhat unaccountably. May I ring for one now?"
"On no account, thank you, Monsieur. I am perfectly recovered."
His host had his eyes fixed on the clear, pale visage. The daylight outside had now faded sufficiently to allow full play to the candelabrum on the table at his elbow, whose radiance struck its own unmistakable colour out of Aymar's hair.
M. de Lanascol moved suddenly. "Pardon me, again, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, but if I might presume . . . pray do not take it amiss if I suggest, that, with your appearance, you should be a little cautious how you traverse the country round Locmélar. Feeling is very strong there about the disaster at Pont-aux-Rochers, and though that man L'Oiseleur was subsequently shot by his own troops for it, it is rumoured that he is still alive. I once had a glimpse of him, and you are so . . . you resemble him so strikingly—though, of course, with a great difference—that I feel a warning. . . . Please believe that I have no intention of being offensive."
In the arctic, aching silence which succeeded this speech Laurent knew not whether his own heart-beats or the ticking of the clock were the louder. Oh, that they were back on the high road, at the inn, anywhere!
Aymar was on his feet. He had not flushed; his colourless face was unbetraying. "Iam. . . L'Oiseleur. As you would evidently not wish to extend your hospitality to him, Monsieur, I will relieve you of the necessity."
He made the slightest, most formal inclination of the head, and walked towards the door. Laurent began hotly, "You are completely misinformed, Monsieur! There was no——"
But Aymar stopped him with a look, and after a second he turned and silently followed him out, leaving the old gentleman apparently petrified in the act of rising from his chair.
The door of the hall stood open, for it was a very warm evening. Without a word the two went through it, and down the steps and along the straight wide path to the gates. Venus hung in the west, lovely and indifferent to human hurts; an owl hooted in the distance. The silence between them was like heavy metal; what was there in all the world to say? Desperately Laurent cast about for the phrase that should break it, but they were walking down the avenue before he brought it out.
"We must go to the inn," he said in an almost unnaturally matter-of-fact manner. His companion did not reply for a moment. Then he said, still walking on,
"They may think me too much like 'that man L'Oiseleur' there also." His voice was curiously flat and toneless. Laurent braced himself to make his next suggestion.
"Then I will go in and order supper. Our room is ordered."
"Do," replied Aymar in the same expressionless voice. "Supper for yourself, I mean. I will follow a little later and order mine. You need not know me."
"Do you really imagine that I——" began Laurent, and then stopped with a great sigh, and, coming a little nearer as he walked, slid his arm into Aymar's and gripped it close.
They were late for the table d'hôte supper at the inn, and were served separately at the side of the room, attracting little notice. Laurent's head at least was spinning from the blow. His own side! His own side could believe a thing like that of L'Oiseleur, on hearsay, without investigation. It had not taken long to give the lie to his own arguments on that score a few days ago.
Once upstairs alone, in the room which had been reserved for them, Aymar turned on his companion.
"Laurent, this has got to end! We must say good-bye."
Laurent, already unfastening his uniform, shook his head with a smile. "I am not going to be dismissed like that!"
"You are not going to be exposed again to what happened this evening!"
"Probably not. It will not happen again. And at any rate I took no harm."
"Did you enjoy it, then?" asked Aymar, suddenly flaring up. "What do you thinkIfelt like, seeing you involved in my shame?"
Laurent ceased undressing and looked at him. "If you want me to leave you on account of your own feelings," he said gently, "I suppose I must consider it."
There was an oaken coffer standing at the foot of the fourposter bed. Aymar sat down on it without a word, and covered his eyes with his hand.
"Must I consider it, Aymar?" asked Laurent after a long pause. (He had thought he could control his voice better than that.)
"Not if you can . . . bear with me," replied Aymar, in a voice still less under his own management; and, turning, he hid his face for a moment against the end of the bed.
Nothing more was said about parting.
But neither of them woke next day with any very pleasurable anticipations. And Laurent, when he went out to buy himself some civilian clothes, ordered a post-chaise for the rest of the journey rather than face the diligence and the chance of L'Oiseleur's being recognized; since, as Aymar had already sardonically remarked, "This cursed red hair of mine makes me a little too conspicuous, does it not? And if I meet any Royalist officers, who knows whether they may not try to arrest me?"
The very idea turned Laurent cold. It was not, however, possible to avoid travellers altogether. And when they took their places at midday at the one long table in the inn at Piriac they were aware of more than travellers—Imperialist, not Royalist, officers, three of them, all in the blue with black facings of the engineers. But a moment's reflection convinced Laurent that he and Aymar, in their civilian garb, had nothing to fear from them. In any case, it was doubtful whether the Bonapartists would have the wish to arrest them—even if they had the means.
As the meal progressed Laurent found himself studying the face of the senior officer, a spare, stern-looking man of about forty-five, a face which, in spite of his thinking it at first somewhat dauntingly severe, ended by attracting him.
"Rather a different type over there from our cherished host at Arbelles," he whispered to Aymar. But Aymar did not reply, for as Laurent spoke there came the comfortable voice of the innkeeper from behind them, where he was carving at a buffet.
"Take this to Colonel Richard!" And, while Laurent gasped, a plate was borne down the table and placed before the object of their criticism.
He hardly dared to look at Aymar beside him; but he was aware that the latter had ceased any pretence at a meal. He sat for some time with his head bent, crumbling his bread, very pale; after a while he leant back in his chair, and looked at Colonel Richard with a scrutiny far more intense than Laurent had bestowed upon him. The Bonapartist, now finishing his wine, did not seem to notice it; yet Laurent had the impression that very little escaped those keen eyes.
"Shall we go?" he whispered at last. But Aymar shook his head. And they sat on, though many travellers had left the table.
Suddenly Aymar turned to him. "Will you wait for me here?" he whispered. "I shall ask Colonel Richard for a few minutes' conversation. He may refuse, of course, but if not——"
"Aymar, are you mad!" exclaimed Laurent. "He might do worse than refuse! For Heaven's sake don't expose yourself to such possibilities!"
"I must," answered Aymar; but his lips seemed dry as he spoke. "It is an opportunity such as I could not have dreamt of.—There he goes!"
And Laurent, scarcely believing his eyes, saw him get up and intercept the colonel of engineers before he got to the door, and say something to him. From the short but courteous assent which Colonel Richard appeared to give, it was plain that, in spite of the "cursed red hair," he had no idea of the identity of the young man asking for an interview. They left the room together.
How could Aymar do a thing like that in cold blood, even forher!—for of course he was going to try to ensure his enemy's silence. The sheer courage of it took Laurent's breath away. What might Colonel Richard not say to him when he learnt who he was! Laurent was certain that no woman, not even Mme de Villecresne, could grasp the depth of self-abnegation involved in such an act to a spirit as proud and sensitive as La Rocheterie's. But Aymar was like—what was that line in Shakespeare about the Toledo blade . . . about the "sword of Spain" that had "the ice-brook's temper" . . . ?
The adversaries who had never met went out together into the inn garden. There was in it a tunnel-like arbour, such as is not uncommon in French country hostelries; it was covered with a vine, and contained a rough table with a bench on either side. Colonel Richard threw a glance within, and saying, "We shall be undisturbed here, I think, Monsieur," led the way in.
The sun came greenly through the beautiful vine leaves behind the Imperialist's severe, upright head. Aymar looked him in the face and said, "I must tell you first who I am. You shall think it strange of me to seek you out like this, but I will not keep you long. My name is La Rocheterie."
The dry, rough-edged vine leaves seemed to twitter in the little breeze; there was no other sound for a few seconds. Aymar did not see Colonel Richard's face; it had vanished suddenly in a light green mist. But he heard his voice saying curtly, "We might as well sit down, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," and in a moment more he saw that the Imperialist had done so. But he himself remained on his feet.
"It is not worth it, Monsieur. I have only to say——"
He broke off short. A paralyzing idea had just occurred to him. He was going to ask a favour of this man, who must despise him from his heart, who might not improbably have him thrown out of the place altogether. And surely it would seem to the Bonapartist that he would never dare to do such a thing had he not believed himself to have a claim on his opponent . . . for the victory he had put within his grasp?
Even the clear vine leaves vanished this time. He felt some, however, in his left hand. . . . And once more he heard Colonel Richard's voice saying, "I think, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, that if we are to conduct this interview to any purpose, you had better sit down!"
And to this, lest the whole conversation should continue in this curious manner, with a person whom one heard but could not see, Aymar's brain assented. He found himself sitting on the opposite bench, the table between them, and in his left hand two vine leaves and a portion of a third. He did not know how they had come there.
"That is better," said the Bonapartist, looking at him very hard indeed. He had eyes like cold, clear water—eyes that would make short work of treachery. "Well, what is it that you were going to say?"
The voice, the eyes, steadied Aymar. He began again and his own voice was as cold as the other's.
"The letter addressed to me which was brought to you, Monsieur, at theCheval Blancnear Saint-Goazec on the night of the 27th of April——"
"—Excuse me!" broke in the Imperialist, leaning forward, "but if you have come to tell me that that letter never really came from you . . ." He paused for a second, and Aymar went on quickly, "That was not in the least my intention. If my messenger on that occasion tried to take on himself any responsibility he was quite unjustified. I alone was responsible for sending the letter."
There had been a light in the eyes looking at him. It died down now as Colonel Richard said, "I was going on to remark that I have been hoping, ever since Pont-aux-Rochers, that there had been some mistake, and that some day I should hear it. I should not be very hard to convince that there had been. . . . You say the responsibility for that act, Monsieur, was yours alone. One has sometimes to shoulder unmerited responsibility; any soldier knows that. I would so much rather think that that had been the case."
Aymar met his gaze full. It was not entirely cold, after all.
"I am sorry," he answered steadily. "You are very kind. But . . . I sent the letter—knowingly. I myself deciphered those passages." He had taken his arm out of the sling, and began to arrange his three vine leaves on the table, the broken fragment in the middle. "It is of my motive in sending it that I wish to speak to you, if you will allow it."
Colonel Richard had an elbow on the table now. Shading his eyes with his hand, he motioned to him to proceed.
And Aymar left his pattern for the moment, gripping the edge of the table instead. "Am I wrong in fancying, Monsieur, that you have kept silence on that point, my motive? I have been a prisoner, and scarcely know yet what reports are going about, but I was in the hands of those who would not have scrupled to take full advantage of the knowledge, if they had had it. They did not seem to have it. . . . Might I know that I have not been deluding myself?"
For a moment the whole of existence seemed to turn on the answer to that question. And instead of answering it his enemy might say, and with justification, "Why should I tell you that? Are you trying to drive another bargain with me?"
The almost unendurable tension ended at last. "No, you have not been deluding yourself," said Colonel Richard slowly. "I promised your emissary that the lady should know nothing. I kept that promise; but as it happens I have done more. I mean, that no one else knows for whose sake you made your disastrous venture—nor indeed that it was made for the sake of any single person. And, as I have kept silence till now, I shall continue to keep it."
"Thank you," said Aymar; and for the moment could say no more. The vine leaves were in shreds by now. But after a silence he went on, "That is almost more than I dared to hope. If that lady can be spared the knowledge, I shall be . . . I am . . . most profoundly grateful to you."
Under the shading hand he could see the older man's mouth contract. Colonel Richard probably wished to get rid of him as soon as possible, so Aymar took hold of the table to pull himself up.
The other instantly removed his hand. "Oblige me by staying a moment, Monsieur de la Rocheterie! There are one or two things I should like to say to you. Will you tell me what you had up your sleeve when you sent that letter?"
Aymar did stay—and very still. "Why should I have had anything up my sleeve, Monsieur?"
"Because it is quite incredible that you should have made me an unconditional present of your men's lives! I thought so at the time—I think so more than ever now. You had some counterplan connected with their presence at the bridge; I am sure of it."
"What does that matter now?" asked Aymar with a long breath, and swept the torn vine leaves into a heap.
Colonel Richard leant over the table. "But you would oblige me greatly if you would answer my question. To me it seems that we have gone too far to leave the business there." And, as Aymar still did not answer, he said, half impatiently, half gently, "Well, then, as you seem determined not to defend yourself, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, take a further step still, and assure me that you intended your men to be ambushed, that you did not do everything in your power to prevent it! Come, now, why did your plan fail?"
Aymar lifted his head and met the keen, half-compassionate eyes for a second. Then, very briefly, he told his story to his adversary.
There was a silence in which even the vine leaves did not stir.
"Monsieur de la Rocheterie," said the man on the other side of the table at last, "will you allow me, as an old soldier with, I suppose, twenty years the disadvantage of you, to give you a piece of advice?"
Aymar, who had put his head back against the trellis, nodded, a little bewildered. This was fantastic—and yet very real.
"Ask for a court-martial, or rather, a court of enquiry!"
But at that the young man moved and flushed. "Impossible, sir."
"Why? Not, I am sure, that you would not face it? You seem to me, if I may be allowed to judge from what you are doing now, to possess a very rare kind of courage. Why do you say that a court-martial is impossible?"
The flush was deeper this time. "You are much too generous," said Aymar with some difficulty. "For a moment, after the disaster, a court-martial did seem the only way out, and I gave up my sword for that purpose to my second-in-command. But since then the case has been . . . judged . . ." (his voice failed him entirely for a second) ". . . and besides, I have had time to reflect. A court-martial would involve telling the whole truth—my motive for sending you the information. It would be absurd and odious to invite an enquiry and then to conceal a vital fact. Yet if I tell the whole truth I do the thing I most want to avoid—bring that lady's name into the business, so that she cannot fail to learn just what I pray she may never learn. You see that, Colonel, surely?"
"Perfectly. But have you reflected that, by concealing your motive for doing what you did, you are laying yourself open to the imputation of its being a far more disgraceful one than it was?"
"I have reflected." His mouth set itself. "The imputation has already been made."
"And you are going on like that? What about other people's feelings? You have a right, perhaps, to immolate your own, but you have kindred, I expect?"
"I have not forgotten them," answered Aymar, and for a moment he looked out of the green-framed doorway into the sunshine beyond. "I should indeed be selfish if I refused any means, however nearly intolerable, if they would clear me. But it is just my . . . motive, which seems to me to render the case hopeless from the first. If I could go before a court-martial and relate a story of a plan that miscarried, I might hope to be believed and acquitted, even though . . . even though I have since been shot by my own men. But to admit that the scheme was directed to saving a woman's—a kinswoman's—life . . . how could I hope, after its disastrous failure, to obtain acquittal on those grounds?—Would you acquit me, Colonel Richard?"
The Imperialist was looking thoughtfully at the table, one thin sinewy hand supporting his head, the fingers of the other drumming lightly on the wood. "I don't know—I don't know. It is a difficult case. Dispassionately considered I suppose—but hardly any tribunal is really dispassionate. However, I do recognize that you are not condemning yourself to obloquy entirely for the sake of sparing someone else's feelings—which in the end would obviously be the last result you would achieve by such a course. . . . I have seen that done with such fatal results, Monsieur, that you must excuse my perhaps unwarrantable interference in your private affairs. I hope you will excuse it in any case?"
"Excuse it!" exclaimed Aymar rather hoarsely. "I have no words to thank you for your kindness! I shall never forget it. I . . ." For an instant he put a hand over his eyes, then, removing it, went on, "But I should like to ask you a question in my turn. How was it that in your first interview with my messenger, earlier on that evening, he gained from you the impression that the lady was in serious danger, an impression which was so much strengthened, immediately afterwards, by one of your subalterns . . . to my cost?"
Colonel Richard abruptly got up and began to walk up and down the narrow arbour.
"I would rather you asked me any question but that, Monsieur de la Rocheterie."
"But I want to know," said Aymar faintly. "It has been such an enigma to me, how the idea ever arose that you intended to shoot her."
"If you will be persuaded by me you will not insist on knowing now."
"It is my only chance of learning the truth," urged L'Oiseleur. He was getting quite dazed with strain and fatigue.
But when Colonel Richard had finished it was not fatigue of which he was conscious. His head was propped on his clenched fists, his face invisible, and the elder man was leaning against the table with his back to him.
"Now you know why I almost regretted Pont-aux-Rochers," said the latter, looking at the floor, "and why I wished I had not let my officers know from whom I had the information which led to it . . . and most of all did I regret that I had allowed your lieutenant to have that letter back again, when I heard——"
"What had happened to me in consequence," supplied Aymar in an almost extinguished voice. He raised a face that matched it. "Yes, I understand. But you are excessively punctilious, Colonel Richard. Others will not judge so mercifully."
"They cannot, if you refuse to defend yourself."
"I have already explained to you why I cannot. And what you have just told me will hardly render my defence more easy, will it?" He gave the ghost of a laugh. "My God! it makes me almost a figure in a farce! But I thank you—I thank you for everything." And this time he got successfully to his feet.
"There is no need to thank me," said Colonel Richard almost curtly. "Have I not to end with an apology? But of what use is it to be ashamed when what is done is done?" He seemed to be struggling a trifle for his own self-control; and then abruptly changed the subject. "You are not travelling unaccompanied, I hope?"
"By no means. I have a friend with me."
"You have just been released, I presume?"
"Not precisely. It was ten days ago . . . if you can call it release."
"So long ago as that? Then I should say it was somewhat premature. But for that very reason I must not keep you standing longer." He held out his hand. "Will you shake hands with me?" And, as Aymar coloured and hesitated, he added "—if you feel that you can do so, after the confession I have just made you. Apart from that, there is no reason, is there, why you should not take my hand?"
He had gone again—into that curious mist. But Aymar felt his grasp, returned it, and heard him say, "I have never been so sorry about anything in my life as about this business—I would offer you my arm to the inn, but it might not, in the future, do you any good if we seemed to be on terms of intimacy. But get your friend, I beg you, to give you a glass of wine at once . . . I wish you—your sword again!"
Then Aymar himself was walking carefully up the inn garden.
"It was worth it," he said a few minutes later to Laurent in the deserted dining-room, trying to smile. "He has told no one—will tell no one now. And he was kind—wonderfully—gave me advice . . . even shook hands with me. . . . Yes, incredibly kind."
Laurent drew a long breath of relief. "But after all, you are L'Oiseleur! And what was the Moulin Brûlé to this?"
Aymar stared at the wine-glass he had just emptied. "But I got more out of the interview than I bargained for; something that I think I would rather not have had, after all."
"Not Colonel Richard's handshake, surely?"
"No. Colonel Richard's avowal."
That evening, as they took their places for supper in the inn at their next stage, two gentlemen sitting at the neighbouring table finishing their wine suddenly broke off their conversation, stared, and then, after exchanging glances, got up and left the place altogether.
For a moment Aymar looked as though he had been struck in the face; the next, he was showing an almost uncanny self-control. "I knew that man quite well once," he observed quietly, and did not refer to the incident again during the meal.
But that he hardly slept that night Laurent was aware. As they were dressing next morning he suddenly remarked rather drily, "I imagine that yesterday evening, Laurent, must have finally convinced you of the baselessness of your optimistic views about Royalists. You see that what damns me—what you overlooked, perhaps—is my own men's having shot me." And as Laurent admitted that this rumour had, unfortunately, had two months in which to spread uncontradicted, Aymar retorted, "Rumour!It is fact! And how, therefore, can it ever be contradicted?"
So little answer could Laurent find to this observation that he resolved to go to no inn at all that day—the last of their journey—but procured instead a fowl and a bottle of wine to take with them. They halted, therefore, at midday on the outskirts of a wood, and, leaving their chaise, turned a little way up a grassy road which penetrated it. Laurent, bearing the provisions, selected a suitable spot for their consumption under a spreading tree. "You can lean your back against this very comfortably," he announced to his friend, who was following with bent head.
Aymar looked up—and advanced no more.
"Don't you like this place?" asked Laurent, surprised at his expression.
"It is . . . too much in the shade, don't you think?" replied L'Oiseleur indistinctly. "If you don't mind—there—more in the open." And, without waiting for consent, he turned and went back towards the grassy road.
They ate and drank, and did not hurry to regain their vehicle. Aymar indeed disposed himself on his face, his head on his bent left arm, and Laurent settled himself against a fallen tree trunk, and pulled his hat over his eyes. He was a little sleepy.
"I did that man who would not stay in the same room with me a service once," came Aymar's voice suddenly. "He said that he should never forget it. But I suppose the debt is liquidated by my death. For, as I say, Laurent, it was not Pont-aux-Rochers which put an end to me, but the Bois des Fauvettes. I shall erect a tombstone there one day to L'Oiseleur.—But who, I wonder, am I?"
His tone was quiet and reflective; he pulled at a blade of grass as he lay there. And Laurent, nearly as quietly, cursed in French and English the man to whom Aymar had once rendered a service.
"That does no good," observed Aymar. "And if you want to swear at any one . . . Tell me, Laurent, are you at all given to practical joking? If so, let me relate to you the story of a very successful effort of that kind; it is rather instructive."
"But I don't——" began Laurent. Aymar disregarded him.
"There was a young man the other day—a soldier, an officer, I don't know his name—who had a great turn for that sort of thing, and a tolerable gift of playing a part. Happening to be quartered with others one evening at an inn, he was witness of the arrival of a somewhat perturbed old gentleman, come to make enquiries about a lady of his acquaintance, who had been forbidden for a short time to proceed on her journey—as much for her own sake as for any other reason, since the road was required for troops——"
"Aymar!"
"Don't interrupt me, please! The old gentleman came out from his interview with the subaltern's major in a state of panic. He had mistaken the major for the colonel in command, the major had been short with him—bored by the old man's quite needless alarm about the lady, who meanwhile was peaceably sitting in her room upstairs. It occurred to this young officer that it would be excellent fooling to raise this simple old gentleman's fears to an even higher pitch, and utilizing the fact that a woman spy really had been shot by his own side a little before, and making a vague statement about the lady's past which happened to fit the case, he succeeded in so thoroughly terrifying his victim into the belief of her imminent execution that— . . . but perhaps I need not go on."
"Aymar," came at last from Laurent in a tone of horror, "you do not mean to say that this is the whole explanation of the mystery about Mme de Villecresne's danger—the whole cause of . . . everything?"
"Yes," responded L'Oiseleur unemotionally. "Nothing but that; a successful practical joke, helped out by circumstances, played in the first place on a timid and credulous nature, and then, through him, on one perhaps as credulous—too blind to hazards . . . too fond of them, it may be . . ."
Laurent felt frozen in the sunshine. "Was this detestable tale Colonel Richard's avowal of yesterday?"
"Yes. But of course he had no hand whatever in the imposture, and was horrified when he discovered it, which did not happen fully till after the fight. He was not at theCheval Blancat all, you see; he was quartered at the presbytère, where Vaubernier found him when he went back with the letter and asked for him by name. But, naturally, when information was offered him he was not going to refuse it. He could well assent to the 'bargain,' promise not to shoot the lady of whose detention at the inn he was not even aware! By sending any one as stupid and gullible as the old Marquis into this business the gods may have been looking for amusement. If so, I think they must have found it."
His voice ceased, and he lay without moving as before. The sun streamed down on the unprotected bronze head and Laurent saw the gleam of it all iridescent, for there were tears in his eyes. All that, those terrible and still unfinished consequences of ruin and suffering—and those not to Aymar alone—the fruit of nothing more than a moment's heartless jocularity . . . it was cruel, utterly and sickeningly cruel! If only he had that inhuman young scoundrel here to shoot—steel was too good for him! He would like to stand him up yonder against a tree, and began fiercely selecting one for the purpose, pitching without reflection on that which he had originally chosen for their own resting-place. . . . And then, as he looked at it, it came to him why Aymar could not bring himself to approach it. Blunderer that he had been . . . it was a beech tree!
He stared at it with hostility. Would the spring ever mean again to Aymar what the spring ought to mean, or would he never in his life see its green leaves except through a mist of blood and shame? He looked down at him again. His head was still pillowed on his arm, and he seemed to be asleep. . . . And he could do nothing for him; indeed it was now clear that, immediately he had got him safely to Sessignes, he would have to leave him. M. de Lanascol's news of further misfortunes in Vendée was confirmed—they had heard it this morning. And just because all there was in such disarray Laurent felt it obligatory on him to return, if he could, and Aymar concurred in this feeling. Yes, he must leave him—to what?
A step on the green track made him look up from his contemplation, and he saw that a man was coming out of the wood—a peasant with a bundle slung on his shoulder, leaning on a long stick. He walked wearily, and he was dusty; his face looked pinched and ill, and his left hand was muffled in a bandage. He seemed about thirty-five.
As he came abreast his pace slackened, and Laurent saw that his left hand was not bandaged—for he had no left hand at all. It was the stump that was wound about. He looked so tired and forlorn that Laurent held out the remains of the fowl and the loaf—without speaking, for he did not want to disturb his friend.
But the wayfarer took no notice whatever of this proffered charity. His eyes were fixed with an extraordinary eagerness on the prone form beside the giver and, exactly at the moment when Laurent recognized this, the man let his staff fall, and said hoarsely, pointing down at the russet hair, "Who is that—for the love of the Virgin, Monsieur, who is that?"
Into Laurent's mind leaped instantly M. de Lanascol's warning. He jumped up, and got between the enquirer and his quarry.
"What do you want with him?" he asked rather roughly. "No," as the man tried to move past him, "not till you tell me your business!" And he seized him by the shoulders.
But Aymar, behind him, was already on his feet. "Let him go, mon ami; it is a friend . . . and a friend I thought I had lost! Eveno!"
He held out his hand, his voice a little breathless. The peasant twisted himself free from Laurent's hold, and dropping at Aymar's feet, kissed them with a sob.
"I heard that you were wounded, L'Oiseleur, and a prisoner—and I was going to Sessignes to ask. You are wounded . . . but free . . . and alive . . . thank God, thank His Mother!"
The passionate devotion that throbbed through his words almost disconcerted Laurent, no half-hearted adherent himself, but he could see that Aymar accepted quite simply even this extreme manifestation. Only, looking down at his follower with evident relief and pleasure, his face suddenly changed. He touched him on the shoulder.
"Did you lose that hand at Pont-aux-Rochers, Eveno?" And there was the sharpest pain in his tone.
"Afterwards, Monsieur le Vicomte. They cut it off at Saint-Goazec. It was nothing; they were very kind to me. If we had won at the bridge—ifyouhad been there—I would not give a sou for it . . . Butyourarm . . . you are ill yet . . . have you not been very ill, Monsieur Aymar?"
His hand slid caressingly along his leader's sound arm. Aymar stepped back.
"Eveno, that hand of yours is my doing. I was responsible for Pont-aux-Rochers—nobody else. I planned it, and the plan——" He turned his head away.
The peasant's face lit up as he knelt there. "You planned it! We thought it was a mistake of M. de Fresne's. But if it was your plan, L'Oiseleur, there is nothing to regret. You could have had both my hands!"
So the carriage, when they started again, contained Jacques Eveno also, for in spite of his protests Aymar had insisted on conveying him to his home, a plan which necessitated only a slight detour, since he lived with his old father on the borders of a wood about seven miles from Sessignes.
In the vehicle, therefore, he sat, dusty and abashed, answering his leader's questions about his treatment and his comrades' fate, but gazing all the while at L'Oiseleur with the eyes of idolatry. And, mainly for his friend's sake, Laurent was relieved to gather from what he said that the actual death-roll of Pont-aux-Rochers was much lighter than might have been expected.
Just as Aymar was instructing Eveno to come to Sessignes in a day or two to help him make a list of casualties, the chaise stopped. Aymar got out as well as the Chouan, and Laurent followed their example. He saw the smoke ascending blue from a thatched cottage against fir trees, a path going into a wood, and two saddle-horses, one of them a beautiful bay mare, tied to an oak. Aymar, saying farewell to Eveno, did not appear to have noticed these; but suddenly the mare pricked her ears, threw up her head, and whinnied.
Aymar turned. "Hirondelle!" he exclaimed, and made at once for the oak tree, the mare, when she saw him coming, whinnying again and lifting up a suppliant forefoot. But before he got up to her her master stopped, perhaps only perceiving in that moment what Laurent had already noticed, that it was a lady's saddle she was carrying.
At the same moment a man—a groom or servant of some kind—ran round the chaise and gripped Eveno by the arm. "Jacques!" he exclaimed breathlessly, "is it M. le Vicomte? Thank God! We have been so anxious, and this very afternoon Mme la Comtesse has ridden over to see if by chance your father had any news, but he has gone to the village, so she is waiting . . . I beg your pardon, Monsieur; I did not see you!"
"Had you not better tell M. de la Rocheterie?" suggested Laurent.
But Hirondelle's saddle, evidently, had told Aymar already, or else he had overheard. Laurent just saw him stooping his head to enter at the low door.
It would be rather dark inside old Eveno's cottage; Aymar knew that. And she would be sitting on the settle by the hearth, waiting for the old man's arrival, and at the sound of the latch she would turn; and, not expecting him, would not perhaps recognize him at once, so that he must try not to startle her. And then . . . what came then? Not, at any rate, what would have happened in the orchard last April, before the lightning struck him down from the pinnacle of his happiness. Now there could only be such difficult greeting as a disgraced man could offer the woman he loved, who did not know the cloud upon him. . . . But perhaps she did? It might be easier then.
All these considerations swam through Aymar's mind between lifting the latch and pushing open the door.
Inside it was not quite as he had thought it would be. For Avoye was kneeling by the hearth in her long riding-habit, trying to revive old Eveno's dying fire for him, and in the creak and groan of the ancient bellows the lifting of the latch was lost. He had a second or two to contemplate that picture ere he stepped down the two uneven steps from the door.
"Avoye!" he said gently.
The bellows fell, breathing their soul out; and his cousin, still kneeling there, but with her head turned, made a little inarticulate sound and clasped her hands together.
"I am afraid I startled you," he said after a moment; for he must speak to steady his own composure. "I did not know that you were here till I saw Hirondelle. I came to bring back Jacques Eveno, whom I met on the road. He has been released, like . . . like me!"
And now she had got up, and was facing him, very pale. Still without speaking she held out both her hands. Aymar came nearer and took and kissed them.
"Tell me that I did not frighten you, my dear, coming in so suddenly?"
Two large tears brimmed slowly out of her wide eyes and slid down her cheeks. "You did not frighten me then . . . but now . . . you do. Oh, Aymar, to have you back, but . . . looking . . ." She put a hand to her throat. "You must have been terribly wounded."
He held her other hand still. He might do that, surely! "No. Only it was a long business, and needed nursing. I had that, unstintedly—from the friend whom I am bringing now to Sessignes with me, and whom I want you to know well, and like."
But whether she took this in he could not tell.
"To have you back, Aymar—to have you back!" But in her eyes the alarm outshone the joy.
"Is Bonne-maman well?" he asked, dropping her hand at last. "I am afraid that I have caused you both a great deal of anxiety . . . Will you drive back with us, Avoye? I have a chaise outside."
"Yes, of course I will return with you. And Eveno is there, too? How pleased the old man will be! But I thought that——" She broke off, looking puzzled.
"No, we were not imprisoned at the same place," said Aymar quickly. "I will explain about that afterwards. But I had better tell you now, before you see him, that Eveno has lost a hand."
"Oh, poor Jacques! Was that . . . because of Pont-aux-Rochers?" He nodded.
"Poor Jacques!" she said again, the tears in her eyes. "Still, he might have been killed." And then, moved to it perhaps by what she saw in his sad, changed face, she said, with some of Aymar's own occasional vehemence, "And, anyhow, it is a thousand times worse for you—a thousand times!"
He caught his breath. Yes, but for whom was it going to be worst of all in the end—whom, at least, was he going to hurt most? The way, the desolating way before him, over her tender and faithful heart.
She was gazing at him with eyes of such compassion that he could hardly bear it; she was speaking, too. "Dearest, will you sit down for a moment—only for a moment? There is something that I must ask you before we start for home (especially if you have a companion) and I cannot have you standing, looking as you do."
She indicated the settle. He sat down. God knew what she was going to ask him; there would be so many things! She sat beside him and was about to put her hand on his arm, saw that it was bandaged, touched it instead with the lightest, most impalpable gesture of caress, and said, "I only want you to tell me this, if you are free to tell it. We have heard rumours . . . almost more than rumours . . . that your defeat at Pont-aux-Rochers was due to treachery. Oh, Aymar, say that it is not true!"
Aymar put his head back in the corner of the highbacked settle and closed his eyes. But he answered firmly, "No, it is not true. There was no treachery. But you will hear it said everywhere, Avoye." Should he tell her more? She would have to know it—unless indeed she knew it already. . . . It became for an instant a question as to whether he could tell her. . . .
"What is the matter?" she asked, with alarm in her voice.
So then he had to go on. He opened his eyes. "And you will hear some say that the treachery was . . .mine!"
"Aymar!"
"You had not heard that yet? . . . I will tell you the reason directly I can. Only you will recognize, Avoye, that with this stain on my honour, I cannot regard myself at present as . . . as what I was at no time worthy to be. . . ."
His will uttered the words, because his will had always intended that they should be uttered, but as he said them it seemed to him as if all the blood left him was being drained out of his body.
Avoye had turned very pale, too. "But is not that rather a matter for me to decide? You know what I should think of so wicked a slander."
He shook his head, because he could hardly speak, and her proximity was getting more than his resolution could endure. So he slipped to one knee on the hearth and took up the abandoned bellows. "This fire is nearly out," he murmured. And as he blew the grey wood ashes stirred and eddied like ghosts; there was no glimmer underneath. The fire was out.
And on the settle Avoye de Villecresne, pressing her hands together, was saying to herself, "You a traitor . . .you!Theydareto say such a thing!"
Aymar abruptly threw down the bellows and got to his feet.
"We must not tell Grand'mère. Are you ready to go, dear, or do you still wish to see old Eveno?"
She rose. "I am ready to go with you, Aymar," she said, in the sweet voice which sometimes held an echo of childhood. And she added, very low, "Always." But the voice which pronounced that word was a woman's.
Aymar heard; he looked at her with eyes of agony and ardour, lit with the flame of whose intensity she had never been quite aware, so carefully had it been controlled. He said, "Yes . . . it might bealwaysnow—since April. . . . Oh, my God, that it could be April again!"
And with that cry he caught her fiercely in his arms.
But the kiss was not fierce; it was the kiss that should have been given and taken under the stars in the orchard, clean and passionate and unprofaned. There was only one. Then Avoye dropped her head upon his breast. "My heart!" she murmured to his heart. And Aymar said, in a voice she had never heard from him before, "Beloved, your mouth is like apple blossom." For he was conscious just then of nothing but what he held in his arms. It was April again—for a few instants. All the horror and the stain were swept away; he had his brief moment of rapture, as intense as if she had come to him that spring evening, and as pure.