Chapter VII: The Road Back (2)

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."

(8)

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 the _Cheval Blanc_ at 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--if _you_ had been there--I would not give a sou for it . . . But _your_ arm . . . 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.

(9)

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!_ They _dare_ to 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 be _always_ now--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.

But it was very brief. The truth surged back upon him ten times more bitter for the ecstasy. He loosed his hold of her almost as if he were suddenly paralyzed; but her little hands were holding him fast by the lapels of his coat and all he could see was the top of her head, with its crown of burnished hair. Yet, though they were so close to each other, an icy stream seemed to Aymar to drive between them, of such a deadly cold that it sucked the breath from his heart.

"Let me go, Avoye!" he said, putting his hands on hers that held him, and the sharp change in his voice made her look up in alarm. Her arms went about him very quickly, and, before he quite knew what had happened, he was sitting once more at her side on the settle. But his head, this time, was resting on her shoulder.

Even this he ought not to permit himself. But it was so paradisially sweet, so unspeakably restful, and he was so tired.

"I should not have let you stand," the low voice like the song of a brook was saying in his ear. "Oh, my dearest, now that you are returned, and I can nurse you back to health . . ."

"I am tiring you," he murmured, and tried to move; but she held him.

"No, no, I am as strong as a rock. . . . You have a friend, you say, who nursed you? Aymar, I envy him!"

"Little to envy," he got out, and tried again to move. But he seemed to have neither strength nor will.

Avoye's glance fell on his attenuated hand, lying inert and open in her lap. Her own closed on it. "Aymar, what a hand! And cold! Oh, my dear, my dear!" She caught it to her breast as if to warm it. "And this bandaged arm . . ."

He said nothing, and for a few moments they both sat in absolute silence by the dead hearth. Then he made a great effort, lifted his head, and drew himself away. It was like leaving the gates of Eden, for he knew that he would never sit like that again with his head on her shoulder, with that heavenly feeling of being cared for by her who had always been his first care. And it was his own act which had shut those gates . . . betrayed to it by just that care for her. If he had been a really honourable man he would not have entered Eden now, even for these few blessed moments.

And something was stabbing at his mind, so weary now that it was difficult to discover what it was. At last he captured the thorn.

"Avoye, I have not yet asked after M. de Vaubernier? Is he . . . well?"

She gave a little soft, half-amused laugh, which showed instantly that she had no sinister associations with him. "Poor Godfather! At the beginning of May he suffered so from sciatica and rheumatism that he went off to Aix-les-Bains, and he has not yet come back. I saw him just before he left; he seemed very gloomy indeed, so I hope that Aix has cheered him up."

Aymar's heart resumed beating. He got up slowly from the settle.

"You know, my darling, that we must be keeping the Evenos out of their cottage, and there is M. de Courtomer waiting. We ought to go."

She seized her hat and riding-whip. "And you are tired to death, Aimé."

It was an old childish variant of his name. She slipped her hand into his, in childhood's fashion, too, as he went to open the door. Just as he unlatched it she said, glancing back at the dim interior, "I shall come back here one day on pilgrimage."

But he whose kiss had sanctified the place for her was silent. A man did not make a pilgrimage to the spot where he had broken his resolve.

(10)

Laurent, walking restlessly up and down by the chaise, saw them coming at length--Aymar and the woman who was all the world to him . . . and who must, by virtue of that distinction, be very specially set apart from any of her sex. She was also the cause of all that had come upon him; Laurent could almost wish that she knew it. And, plainly, she was also the lady of the Tuileries garden. As she came nearer, holding up her long habit, Laurent saw that she had a face that a man might die for--a man like Aymar, at all events. . . .

Then Aymar himself was saying, "Avoye, this is Monsieur le Comte de Courtomer, to whose care I owe my life," and Laurent had bowed over her hand. She gave him a charming smile, a little grave, and said, "That is too valuable a possession to us, Monsieur de Courtomer, to be paid for in mere thanks. I am glad that you are at least accompanying us to Sessignes." And while Laurent was answering rather confusedly that M. de la Rocheterie owed his life, on the contrary, to their good doctor, Aymar himself went off to give orders about the saddle-horses.

Directly he was out of earshot Mme de Villecresne came much closer. "Monsieur de Courtomer, his appearance has horrified me! For God's sake assure me that there is nothing which care cannot put right--no deadly injury, nothing irreparable!"

"Nothing, on my honour as a gentleman," replied Laurent earnestly. "He is very weak still, but that is all"--"save for mental torment," he added to himself, as Aymar, returning, announced that Eveno had gone off in search of his father, and that they could start.

It was soon blessedly plain to Laurent, as they drove along, that Mme de Villecresne had no intention of asking any awkward questions, either of or in front of L'Oiseleur. Whatever she had learnt in the cottage her love, at least, had suffered no hurt there. Despite her visible anxiety, there was a kind of submerged radiance about her which would have told anybody that. As for Aymar, he gave the impression of having been far away and of having incompletely returned. He said very little. But Laurent was not conscious, as he had expected, of being de trop in their company. The atmosphere of care and tenderness which Mme de Villecresne gradually diffused seemed to include him, too, and the perfectly unwarrantable bias which he cherished against her began to be shaken.

He could study her more at his leisure now. She had much the same colouring as Aymar, but otherwise the resemblance between them was not striking. Her hair, where the riding-hat showed it, was brighter than his, and her eyes were less unusual; they were grey . . . or violet? It was not till later that he noticed in her, too, that free and noble carriage of the head which was one of Aymar's most striking characteristics. But he did observe, as she talked to him, both the sweetness of her expression and the air of resolution which seemed somehow to reside in her little pointed chin.

They were at their journey's end before Laurent realized the fact, or had obtained that distant view of the château which he had promised himself. By that time Aymar's extreme fatigue was so impossible to disguise that his cousin decreed he should go straight to his room before seeing his grandmother, and she would present M. de Courtomer.

But these plans were disordered, directly they entered the hall, through the agency of the huge dog who first leapt upon his master with such an impact that he sent him staggering, and then set up so tremendous a paean of joy that the whole house seemed to reverberate with it. It was hardly surprising that, by the time quiet was restored, an old lady stood in a doorway, a little Dresden china image, saying, "Why has Sarrasin been allowed out of the stables? . . . Good God, is that--_Aymar!_"

L'Oiseleur dragged himself to kiss her hand. Laurent saw the delicate colour go completely from her face, and he guessed that nobody there existed for her at all in that moment save her grandson. She caught him by the wrist.

"Go up to your room at once!" she said with a catch of the breath. "Where is Anselme?"

"I have sent for him, Grand'mère," answered Mme de Villecresne. "Yes, Aymar is very tired."

"_Tired!_" ejaculated Mme de la Rocheterie.

"Is it not allowed, Grand'mère?" interposed Aymar with the best smile that he could muster. "However, I will go and rest a little, but first--Monsieur de Courtomer!"

Laurent came forward, still feeling that he had no existence. But there was nothing to complain of in the Vicomtesse de la Rocheterie's reception of him, for all that. She belonged to an age which had valued good breeding above anything else in the world . . . except the privilege of dispensing with it at will.