Chapter III · - IN THE DUST (continued 2)

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. "He dared to 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!

(10)

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, they were a 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 he would deny 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.

(11)

The terrace at Arbelles was wide, bounded at each end by a wall. It had the house itself for frontier on one side; on the other it fell sharply to a long bowling green, which in its turn gave way to meadow. Only one flight of steps led down from it, and at the top of these paced an armed sentry. But after eight days' confinement in one room, and that a sick-room, merely to be in the open again gave Laurent an illusory sense of freedom which was slightly intoxicating. And his mind was full of a deep content—the barrier between him and L'Oiseleur was down . . . at last!

Presently there sauntered out the tall young officer of chasseurs à cheval whom he had seen on the day of his arrival. They saluted each other with much punctiliousness, and the young man, naming himself as Lieutenant Rigault, asked if he might join him. So they walked up and down together, commenting at first on nothing more significant than the fine weather. Laurent yawned once or twice.

"I suppose I ought not to tell you," said the chasseur, flicking at the gravel with his switch, "but we have just received bad news this morning. Your party has had a thumping success."

"Ah!" said Laurent, brightening.

"Yes; du Tremblay has captured Chalais and effected his junction with some other leaders; the far side of the Aven will be very uncomfortable for us now unless we can dislodge them. I expect there's some language flying about in our poor Colonel's vicinity to-day—especially as he has got a nasty wound in the leg. He was so set on getting the better of du Tremblay."

"He was indeed," answered Laurent meaningly. "And M. du Tremblay has got the better of him! I am delighted!"

Opponent though he was, the young officer could not help smiling. "Yes, your . . . your not very reputable room-mate upstairs played him a fine trick when he refused to give him a hint of du Tremblay's plans! The Colonel had been absolutely counting on his . . . cooperation. He is rather a dark horse, that gentleman! By the way, since he is, I hear, out of danger, you will be parting company, I suppose. As it is, I——"

"Shall we break off this conversation?" interposed Laurent very coldly. "If you cannot speak in less offensive terms of my friend the Vicomte de la Rocheterie——"

The most naked astonishment looked out at him from Lieutenant Rigault's countenance. "What!" he exclaimed, "you call him friend—the man who betrayed his own followers!"

"If he had done that I certainly should not call him friend," retorted Laurent. "But that is, of course, the most outrageous slander. And there he lies, helpless! . . . Would you mind telling me the exact form in which this calumny reached you here? or did your commanding officer first put it about?"

"Certainly not," responded the young chasseur rather stiffly. "What happened was that Colonel Richard, over at Saint-Goazec, sent an officer here last Saturday week to say that he had disposed of the bulk of L'Oiseleur's force by an ambush at Pont-aux-Rochers. (It was important for us to know this, because they had been a menace to us, lying where they did.) The officer told us how it had occurred—in fact, he was full of it. L'Oiseleur himself had sent the information!"

"How patently absurd!" said Laurent contemptuously. "As if a man would run his own head into the lion's mouth in that manner!"

"But M. de la Rocheterie's head was quite safe," observed Rigault drily. "He was not present at the affair of the bridge—you did not know that? I assure you that it is true. . . And it is certain that Colonel Richard did not invent the story about the information, for his officer said he was rather distressed about it.—And indeed, if it was false, why did La Rocheterie's men shoot him?"

"Why? Because the lie had already been well circulated," retorted Laurent, who could not meet this thrust by the indignant denial of the fact which he would have given yesterday.—"Now I will ask you a question in my turn, Monsieur. Granting for a moment the possibility of L'Oiseleur's ever doing such an incredible thing, what do you suppose he did it for? He must have had some motive!"

Rigault shook his head. "Ah, there you have me. Nobody knows that—except, presumably, Colonel Richard."

"And again," said Laurent eagerly, "do you think that a man who had sunk to such a depth as that would be likely to resist, at the risk of his life, the abominable inquisition about M. du Tremblay's plans to which your Colonel subjected him last Friday, when he was scarcely able to speak? Do you know that the proceeding all but killed him, and that by a few words—one word—he could have saved himself? If, as you pretend to believe, he betrayed his own men, why should he go to the last extremity not to betray du Tremblay's?"

The Imperialist shrugged his shoulders. "Possibly because the necessary inducement, whatever it was, was lacking in this case."

"What the devil do you mean by that, Monsieur?" asked Laurent, firing up.

"I don't mean anything in particular," replied the young officer. "How could I? But I think the Colonel was fully justified in expecting La Rocheterie to make no difficulty about deciphering those notes, and though perhaps he went rather far, you must remember that the knowledge of their contents, could we have had it, might have——"

"Tell me," interrupted Laurent ruthlessly, "was it purely for the sake of those cursed notes that your Colonel wanted M. de la Rocheterie kept alive?"

Lieutenant Rigault looked uncomfortable. "Naturally the Colonel was anxious for the information, and du Tremblay's name was at the top, and as La Rocheterie had——"

"You admit it! Permit me to tell you then——"

"No, I can't permit it!" exclaimed Rigault, interrupting in his turn, and somewhat heated. "I can't stand here and listen to abuse of my commanding officer, and I can't call you to account for it because you are a prisoner. I think, Monsieur, that you are rather taking advantage of your immunity!"

This view did silence the critic, who made some kind of apology, on which his companion observed that they had better not discuss L'Oiseleur any more. So for the rest of the time they spoke of other matters.

Nevertheless, Laurent reentered his place of captivity tingling with exultation, for there was no doubt that the Royalists had scored heavily. Also, it was heaven to know that Guitton was baffled—and damaged.

"I hope you have enjoyed your walk, Monsieur de Courtomer," observed the phantom of L'Oiseleur, who was not asleep, but lying just as he had left him.

"Immensely, thank you. And I have brought you some very good news."

"Good news—for me!" The tone gave Laurent pause, but only for a moment. With much enthusiasm he repeated the tidings.

For the first time the drawn face lit up. "Chalais! He has captured Chalais! It is authentic, the news?"

"Evidently. And he has you to thank for his success!"

"Me to thank for his success!" La Rocheterie was obviously startled. "He might have had me to thank for his failure.—But that, at least, has been spared me," he added, as if to himself.

"But, La Rocheterie," exclaimed the herald, somewhat carried off his feet, "do you not realize that you almost gave your life to keep his secret inviolate? Perhaps I ought not to tell you, but it was touch and go with you afterwards, you know! If M. Perrelet——"

But such a change had come over Aymar's face that Laurent was brought to a standstill. The visible relief—the more than relief—was wiped out in an instant, and without a word he put the back of his bandaged right wrist across his eyes. Laurent had laid too rash a hand upon Friday's bitter wound.

Yet, out of his abhorrence of its author, a thing came to his lips which carried, in its unconscious boyishness and simplicity, a sort of balm of its own. For when, standing there embarrassed and hesitating, he suddenly blurted out, "That scoundrel has got a bullet or something in his leg, thank God!" L'Oiseleur removed his screening arm and looked at him. And, to Laurent's surprise, the mouth which seemed to have forgotten how to smile relaxed after a moment into a semblance of amusement.

"Monsieur de Courtomer," he said slowly, "I think you must have the gift of . . . of partisanship in excelsis!"

And, whether he or the young man standing above him made the first movement, their fingers certainly met.