Chapter XX: A Knife with Two Edges

“I must not think of thee. . . .
. . . . . . . .
But when sleep comes to close the difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”
—ALICE MEYNELL, _Renouncement_.

Here, indeed, was a pretty problem. Louis’ head lay with alarming inertness against the Marquis’ shoulder, and Gilbert soon became aware that it was only the tightness of his own grip which kept the Vicomte in an upright position at all, for he had quite lost consciousness. After holding him thus for a moment, Château-Foix lowered his cousin to the ground until his head rested on his knee, and, peering into his face, felt hastily for his heart. Then he as hastily laid him down and stood up, listening, for he thought that he heard the pursuit.

The fancied sound brought him to his senses. Louis was at least alive, and whatever were his injury it was madness to stay to examine it on the high-road. He looked round. Not five yards from the dark figure at his feet there was a coppice running straight inland from the road, and bordering a field. And . . . yes, thank Heaven! . . . there was a gate in the field; Heaven send also that it were not fastened! Château-Foix sprang to it. It was not secured, but swung easily open when the latch was lifted. He came back and dragged at his cousin. Louis was slightly built, and he himself muscular, but it was no very easy task to lift such a dead weight from the ground. With the Vicomte at last in his arms, staggering a little beneath the weight, he hurried through the gate, shutting it with his foot.

The field stretched away in front and on the right with no sign of cover. The coppice which marched with it was plainly their best chance of safety, and Château-Foix plodded on beside it, looking for a gap in its strong boundary hedge of thorn, over which the trees leaned with little rustlings in the night wind, mocking him with the shelter he could not attain. For himself he might have forced a way, but it was out of the question to drag Louis through. A couple of sheep tumbled up almost under his feet, and cantered off, bleating. “Enough to give the alarm,” thought the Marquis. How heavy Louis was, and how still; it was like carrying a dead man. With an effort he shifted him higher over his shoulder; as he did so his cousin’s sleeve brushed against his cheek, and the sleeve was wet. He was now thirty yards or so from the road, and was beginning to despair of finding an opening, when suddenly the hedge thinned, presenting a narrow gap. He stumbled through it, took a few steps into the thickness of the coppice, laid his burden under a tree, and sank exhausted beside it.

It was much darker in the little wood, and though there was still no sign of pursuit, he feared to strike a light. However, he could just distinguish Louis’ pale features when he bent over him, and on unfastening his clothes his shirt glimmered white, except where it was stained a much darker hue. His heart was beating faintly but regularly, yet the Marquis exclaimed as his fingers met the lukewarm trickle whose nature he guessed too easily. As much by feeling as by sight he located its source, a stab in the left shoulder; how dangerous it was impossible to tell in the starlight. Presumably its recipient had fainted from loss of blood, a not very surprising consequence of his hasty flight.

Gilbert tied up the wound as best he could with his handkerchief. It was amazing that there was no sign of pursuit. Yet they were near, too near the Gerbe d’Or; nor did he suppose that a night in the open was beneficial to a wounded man, and he resolved to try to find a roof of some sort. Lest Louis should recover consciousness in his absence, he tore a leaf from his pocket-book, scribbled on it a line or two to that effect—it was true that he could hardly read them himself in the dim light—and closed the Vicomte’s hand round it. Then he took off his coat, spread it carefully over the prostrate figure, and made cautiously for the gap.

With his departing footsteps the thicket sank into silence. Now and again the leaves rustled, and a dead bramble branch, lifted by a gust, flung itself on to the Marquis’ coat and caught there. The loudest adjacent noise came from the sheep cropping the grass on the other side of the hedge; but down the road, in the direction of Sillé-le-Guillaume, faint shouts announced a tardy and mistaken pursuit. Louis lay stiller than sleep under his tree and heard nothing.

* * * * * *

It might have been three-quarters of an hour afterwards that the Marquis returned. It was grown a little lighter now, and he scanned Saint-Ermay’s face with renewed anxiety as he bent over him. Then he poured a little eau-de-vie down his throat, and watched the effect. In less than a minute a contraction passed over the Vicomte’s features; he sighed, and moved his head restlessly on the arm which supported it. Château-Foix repeated the treatment, and Louis stirred, gasped a little, and opened his eyes.

“What execrable brandy!” he observed feebly, but with some emphasis.

“But you ought to be thankful for it,” returned the Marquis. “I had some difficulty in getting any. How do you feel now, Louis?”

With his cousin’s aid Saint-Ermay struggled into a sitting posture. “Much as usual, thank you,” he replied lightly. “I cannot think how I came to be so foolish as to faint. I remember——” He broke off, and as his gaze fell on the stem of a tree opposite him, he seemed to become aware for the first time that he was not where he had fallen.

“How the devil did I come here?” he demanded in tones of sudden surprise.

“I carried you.”

“You carried me! Great Heavens!” exclaimed the Vicomte, twisting himself in Gilbert’s hold to look at him. “How many miles, may I ask?”

“A matter of a hundred yards or so. It was nothing; you are not very heavy.”

“But those rascals from the inn?”

“There has been no pursuit—at least not in this direction.”

“But I suppose there may be. How long have I been here?”

“Nearly an hour,” said his cousin. “I have found a place of comparative shelter—if you think you can manage to get to it,” he added a little dubiously.

For answer Louis began to scramble to his feet. “My shoulder may be impaired, my dear Gilbert,” he retorted, “but my legs at least are sound.” He got to them as he spoke, but their condition was evidently by no means as unimpeachable as he had stated.

“I thought as much,” said the Marquis, putting an arm round him. “It is obvious that I shall have to carry you again if you do not move less violently.”

“Very well,” responded Louis submissively. “But it is nothing; I am only a little giddy; I can walk quite well.” Nevertheless he hastily put out his hand to a tree-trunk as Gilbert loosed his hold and stooped to pick up his coat. “And how far is it, this refuge of yours?” he enquired, as, with the assistance of his cousin’s arm, he made his way through the gap in the hedge.

“About two fields off; but we had better skirt round by the hedges for fear of being seen. It is a hayloft, and the owner will ask no questions.”

“Estimable man!” commented Saint-Ermay.

“It happens to be a woman,” observed the Marquis, as they emerged into the open field.

The Vicomte was delighted. “I might have known it!” he exclaimed. “Is she pretty? How did you work on her feelings, Gilbert? I have always said that if you _would_ condescend . . . (No, if I am not breaking your arm it is quite enough, thanks.) Did you give her a kiss? Mon Dieu, what I have missed!”

“For Heaven’s sake, be quiet!” urged Château-Foix. “It is no time for laughing. No, I did not kiss her—I should have been afraid. She is a middle-aged proprietress with a tongue, and she will allow me and the friend who has met with an accident to sleep in her loft. She asks no questions, and if we are taken, we are tramps who have sought refuge there without her knowledge. She has no servants.”

“Excellent!” said the Vicomte gaily. “You are a general and a diplomat thrown away. Still, your success remains unexplained. I am sure you must have whispered soft nothings of some sort to her. Or perhaps you bullied her; some like it, I believe. Commend me, after all, to you impervious men for managing a woman!”

“We are certainly lucky,” rejoined the Marquis, ignoring these remarks, “always supposing that she does not denounce us.”

“Denounce us! My dear Gilbert, you are too modest. It is evident to me that you have inspired _une grande passion_, one of those great loves of antiquity or romance. Denounce us! You may be sure that the lady will be cut in pieces rather than betray your hiding-place—in fact, after the usual fashion of heroines, she will probably have you down from your loft, push you behind the curtains in her own chaste apartment, and lock the door. The minions of the . . . of the nation arrive; you know the scene . . . outraged modesty . . . ‘Ruffians, respect at least my bedchamber! Do you dare to suggest that there is a man in there!’ . . . Delicious! I only hope it may come to that, provided I witness it.”

With these and similar excursions of the fancy did Louis beguile their pilgrimage through the first field, though he stumbled more than once, and the weight on the Marquis’ arm grew perceptibly heavier as they proceeded. By the time they were in the second field he had dropped his banter, having obviously little breath to spare, and the two plodded slowly on in silence.

“Does your shoulder pain you?” asked the Marquis suddenly, noticing his laboured breathing.

“Oh, pas trop,” was the light reply, but it was given through closed teeth. Gilbert slipped his arm round the speaker.

“Put your right arm round my neck,” he suggested, and with an attempt at a laugh Louis obeyed. “Your ideas are always excellent,” he said faintly.

Five minutes more of slow and difficult progression brought them to their goal, a collection of scattered outhouses standing in a small and apparently deserted farmyard. Their shelter loomed before them: below, the habitat of a large hay waggon; above, a loft and granary.

“Yes, but how am I going to get you up?” asked the Marquis. He had found a lantern on a peg, and was lighting it, for it was very dusk in the shed. Louis, utterly spent, leant against the upright ladder which led to the desired haven. His breath came in gasps, and the light, when it was obtained, showed the beads on his forehead. “I don’t see how you will ever get up,” repeated Château-Foix, eyeing him dubiously.

Louis glanced up. “It certainly does look steep enough . . . for the path to Heaven,” he remarked with difficulty. “Perhaps . . . if you were to give me an example . . . and a little help on the way. . .”

The suggestion was adopted, and by dint of a good deal of hauling the Vicomte managed to clamber on to the floor above, where, with an unfinished jest on his lips, he immediately collapsed in a second dead faint. After he had seen his face, Gilbert was only surprised that he had held out so long.

The loft, not very large, was lighted by a round aperture at the farther side, and the hay was scarcely more than a carpeting to the floor, except about midway, against the wall, where it rose in an untidy pile to the roof. The Marquis, after a brief survey, lifted his insensible cousin once more in his arms, and carried him over to the other side of their refuge. As he picked up the lantern afterwards he saw that his hands were smeared with his blood. He descended into the yard, got a bucket of water from the well, and by the light of the lantern set to work to investigate the Vicomte’s injury.

After a little hesitation he began with his knife carefully to cut through the collar and the coat-sleeve. Louis still lay motionless. Gilbert next attacked his shirt, but as it had stuck in one place to the wound he was obliged to pull it away, and, gently as he did it, the pain of the operation was evidently severe enough to bring Saint-Ermay out of his swoon. As he opened his eyes the Marquis paused, with a mute question in his glance.

“Go on,” said Louis, with a grimace. “Yes, it hurts damnably, but I am sure that your intentions are good.”

With that he shut his eyes again, and Château-Foix went on with his ministrations. The stab, just below the left collar-bone, was sufficiently deep, though in itself, thought Gilbert, scarcely dangerous. He was not anatomist enough to realise how near it had come to being mortal. The palpable loss of blood impressed him most. As he was bathing the wound Louis suddenly opened his eyes again.

“Gilbert,” he said in an odd voice, “you should not do this. I wish you had left me on the road.”

The words woke in Gilbert’s mind an echo of Louis’ protestation in the bedroom at the Etats-Généraux on the night of his release, and of his own reception of it. Well, it was different now, thank God!

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said cheerfully—and even as he said it something whispered at the back of his mind, “Supposing you had not been mistaken. . . .” He paused in his work and looked down at his cousin. Louis’ eyes, a little sunk in his white face, met his full.

“You think I don’t mean it,” he said unsteadily, and without a trace of his usual light manner. “I do, on my honour!” He put up his right hand and caught weakly at Gilbert’s wrist. “Promise me, promise me,” he repeated imploringly, “that if they come here after us you will do the best for yourself!”

“I shall do that in any case, my dear boy,” replied his cousin. “Now, if you will let go my hand and lie still I will bandage this shoulder.”

The young man sighed, and released the hand. Nor did he say another word while the Marquis bound up his shoulder, using his cravat in default of anything better, except to remark, at the end of the operation, that he was very sleepy. He seemed, indeed, to be slipping back into unconsciousness of some kind. Gilbert arranged the surrounding hay as comfortably as he could, found on a nail an old and not very dirty horse-cloth, spread it over the Vicomte, and gave him some more brandy. As he withdrew the arm which he had put beneath his cousin’s head to raise it, Louis rallied himself for a last effort.

“If ever you loved me, Gilbert,” he pleaded, “promise me that you will do what I ask—that you will leave me if there is an alarm. If you are taken what will become of everybody at Chantemerle? What use is there in sacrificing yourself . . . and for me too. . . . For God’s sake, promise me!”

For the sake of quieting him Gilbert gave the promise he had no intention of keeping. The light of real feeling in the anxious, tired grey eyes had given him a little shock of emotion. He took his hand.

“I promise you that I will consider myself first. Now, will that satisfy you? . . . My dear Louis, you absolutely must get to sleep!”

“I obey,” said the Vicomte, smiling. “I expect I shall be all right to-morrow. If not, I rely on your promise. Good-night.”

He shut his eyes. Gilbert surveyed him for a moment, picked up the lantern, and went with it to the other side of the loft, leaving the recumbent figure in semi-darkness. He sat down himself with his back against the wall, and for prudence sake blew out the light. It was not till then that he discovered that the moon had risen.

He must have dropped off to sleep as he sat there, for he woke suddenly with a start to wonder where he was. He remembered instantly, and looked hastily across the half-darkness of the loft at the still figure on the other side. A shaft of moonlight, passing through the round aperture, lay across Louis’ breast and the lower part of his face. The silence, the danger, the fact that he had so lately carried his cousin senseless in his arms, suddenly tugged at the Marquis’ heart. They were playmates of but a few years agone. . . . As he gazed, the stream of moonlight broadened and grew brighter, and, lying like a pool of silver round Louis’ head, threw up his beautiful profile into startling pallor and relief. Château-Foix left his place, and going quietly through the rustling hay sat down by him.

The Vicomte was lying quite motionless, but his regular breathing and a short scrutiny showed that he was not unconscious but asleep. He was very pale; his hair was tangled and dusty, the ripped coat showed his torn and bloody shirt and bandaged shoulder; his left arm lay stiffly by his side. As Château-Foix sat with his chin in his hand and looked at him memories full of faint fragrance stirred in his heart. It was odd how Louis had retained his boyish appearance. At twenty-six he was still sometimes the self-same engaging boy, “beau comme l’amour et gentil comme un ange,” as all the countryside considered him, who had laughed and danced away his childhood in the old garden at Chantemerle. And there flashed into the watcher’s mental vision the picture of a certain day in their boyhood when Louis was brought home senseless, the result of a fall from a horse which he had been forbidden to ride. Just so he had looked when he had been carried in by lamenting servants, with a broken collar-bone and a livid bruise under his curls. As it had been of yesterday Gilbert recalled his mother’s horror, and his own terrified conviction that his cousin was killed. There, in place of the dark loft, was the wide hall at Chantemerle, the crackling fire, the boy, white and still, on the carved settle, the keen snowy air blowing in through the open door, and, breaking through the men who had just laid down their burden, a frightened, beautiful child, who clung sobbing to him because Hector had thrown Louis in the avenue, and he was dead.

Absurd little tragedy! Was it not Louis who, less than a month later, was descried by the Marquise galloping wildly round a frosty meadow on the very steed to which he owed his discomfiture? Was it not Lucienne who was shortly afterwards discovered in tears because Louis, scarcely convalescent, had teased her so horribly? And it was certainly he himself who, that same winter, settled a fierce dispute with the whilom invalid by the arbitrament of force in the shrubbery. . . . And, for the first time, the almost forgotten blow which had left him victor was a regret to him, for at the present moment it seemed an outrage. Château-Foix smiled at himself; smiled too, as, at the sudden withdrawal of the moonlight, he bent forward and put a light kiss on Louis’ forehead.

* * * * * *

It was about six o’clock when Gilbert awoke the next morning, but as he raised himself on his elbow and looked down at his cousin, his hopes of quitting their hiding-place that day received their death-blow. For Louis was moaning faintly, moving his head from side to side with restless regularity. The Marquis got to his knees and bent uneasily over him. It was plain that he was in a high fever, and there was nothing for Château-Foix to do but to resign himself to a day of waiting.

The Vicomte’s condition scarcely showed a change through the whole of that long day. The Marquis sat by him, unable to do more than to keep him fairly quiet, and to force him once or twice to drink some milk which, with a loaf of bread, had mysteriously appeared in the shed below. He was becoming seriously alarmed as to his state when, about midday, the owner of the little farm suddenly paid her tenants a visit. She was a small, alert, black-eyed scold of forty-five or thereabouts, and as her rather formidable head appeared at the top of the ladder the Marquis became more fully conscious of the magnitude of his victory of the night before. But perhaps she had come to revoke her permission. He rose from his place and waited.

“You may come and take this basket,” announced the woman in her harsh, penetrating voice. “I have brought you something to eat, and there is another pitcher of milk down below.” As she scrambled on to the loft floor Gilbert began to thank her, but she cut him short. “Là là, that is enough. Time enough to thank me when you get safely out of my loft, without setting the hay on fire or trampling it all flat.” Here her restless little eyes fell on the prostrate form of Louis. “How is the other? He is lazy? He takes his ease, hein?” She began to wade through the hay.

“No,” returned the Marquis, following her, basket in hand. “I am afraid——”

“Ah, mon Dieu!” exclaimed Madame Geffroi, stopping short. She was evidently taken aback. Even in his present plight Louis, as usual, owed much to his looks. “Ah, the poor young man!” She knelt down by the Vicomte and possessed herself of his wrist. “Fever,” she remarked, shaking her head; and then, looking up at Château-Foix: “Show me the wound.”

Gilbert complied, quite expecting to hear his bandaging condemned. But Madame Geffroi touched the wounded shoulder gently with her coarse, red, peasant’s fingers, and as gently drew the slashed coat over it again. “Well enough for a man,” she remarked trenchantly. “You shall have some more linen—but next time I will bandage it myself, I think.”

It was such a relief to see a woman in his place that the Marquis clung to her opinion, and asked her, rather helplessly, what he ought to do. She told him, “Nothing, till the fever goes,” and they both looked at the unconscious young man in silence, she sitting back on her heels, Gilbert standing gloomily beside her. Louis tossed his head from side to side, and flung out an arm violently into the hay, with a heavy sigh. The Marquis thought that he heard the sigh echoed; at any rate, Madame Geffroi put her hand for an instant on the burning forehead. “Poor boy, poor boy!” she said almost softly, and, getting to her feet, retired as abruptly as she had come.

The slow hours crawled on with the shifting sunlight, until about three o’clock Louis ceased tossing and sank into a sort of stupor. Château-Foix was consequently a good deal surprised and alarmed when, after lying motionless for about an hour, he suddenly sat bolt upright in the hay and addressed some unknown person by name.

Gilbert sprang up and went over to him. “Lie down!” he said. “Don’t you know me, Louis?”

“Of course I do,” responded the Vicomte in a thick voice. His eyes were extraordinarily bright. “You are Antoine de Bercy . . . I wish I had killed you . . . liar! . . . you are not fit to speak her name. . . .” His voice tailed off into something incoherent.

“Lie down!” said Gilbert emphatically, and forced him to obey. He was becoming very uneasy. A man of the most punctilious delicacy in a matter of the kind, he would rather have heard anything than his cousin’s private affairs. The few words had already considerably enlightened him as to the reason of Louis’ duel with De Bercy, which the Vicomte had so unmistakably intimated that he did not wish to reveal.

Perhaps the Marquis’ vigorous action had broken the thread of Saint-Ermay’s rambling thoughts, for he went off at once on another trail, and for about an hour wandered from one subject to another, now fancying himself at Chantemerle, now in Paris, now playing again a forgotten childish game, now winning or losing (and usually the latter) at less innocuous sports. There were other matters too; and where Gilbert recognised a name it was difficult to avoid acquiring information. But how was it that, for the first time in his life, he felt disposed to condone the excessive number of his volatile kinsman’s _affaires du cœur_, fragmentary testimony to which was here offered him? He knew why, but would not acknowledge the answer.

The stream of reminiscences began at last to run dry, and Louis relapsed into a quieter mood, merely muttering in a low tone to himself at intervals. He had ceased to toss, so, hoping that there was some near prospect of his sleeping, Gilbert went and sat down by him, and, almost timidly, took his hand. He was lying quite still now, but his eyes were wide open and fixed on the opposite wall. Gilbert wished that they would shut.

Suddenly, and in a voice singularly altered, Saint-Ermay uttered another name. “Lucienne . . . Lucienne . . .” he said softly. The word lingered on his lips and died away. Every vein in the Marquis’ body hammered at its walls, but he sat motionless and did not withdraw his hand. After all, Louis had every right to speak of her; indeed, the extraordinary thing was that he had not done so before. And the fact that he still sat there was proof enough that Gilbert de Chantemerle expected to hear nothing that he should not have heard.

For a moment there was silence. All the little sounds of the farm mounted up with intense clearness. A hen was clucking loudly in the yard below. Louis gave a long sigh that was almost a groan, and the fingers of his left hand locked themselves tightly into his cousin’s. Then the voice began again.

“Lucienne, Lucienne . . . my love . . . I can’t . . . I can’t . . . O my God, if things had been different! What do you say . . . he trusts us . . . yes, he must never know . . . never know . . . nev——”

The Marquis wrenched his hand free of the burning fingers which clutched now about his wrist, and staggered to his feet. And as Louis, checked by the withdrawal of his hand, tried ineffectually to struggle up on to his elbow, and fell back with a gasp, Château-Foix recoiled still further, for he was literally afraid lest he should stoop and strike his cousin on the mouth, and the horror of the knowledge of his impulse floated recognisable, for a second of time, on the surface of the fathomless tide of hate and revulsion which swept over him.